#I KNOW ANIME AND MANGA ARE TWO DIFFERENT MATERIALS I KNOW

[ladsofsorrow24]

yeah yeah chainsaw man anime doesn't have similar vibe to the original source yada yada yada

but did you know that there's tons of factors to be considered when adapting a source material into audiovisual media? especially when it comes to animations

(also these people worked too hard and don't get paid enough already, i don't think an anime not having the same vibe as it's original sources is the priority here, man)

#like... idk man it's just sounds so... ungrateful? #also saying mp100 is better because the anime have similar vibe to the manga is... not a very good point because they have their own #style of working in that team #we don't know how these differing team works and how many people in the higher ups they have to go through to get approval #we don't know how much creative freedom is given to the teams too so... #yeah idk man just appreciate the anime and manga as this two different side of the story #yes you can point out it flaws but having different vibe to the original source material isn't exactly a concrete flaw #hmm idk why but i am very annoyed at this #tmi tag

[lilyginnyblackv2]

Buddy Daddies - Episode 11 - Thought Post - SPOILERS!!!

I fully expect that the fandom is literally losing it over Rei’s, “Kazuki!” and Kazuki’s little gasp outside of the safe house. (I know I still am!)

That scene is also the most intimate we’ve ever seen them be with each other on a physical level. And I actually think that is something that made Kazuki and Rei stand out/feel different, and why I never got “queerbait” vibes from them. In a way, Kazuki and Rei are kind of a prime example of how a lot of people’s defense against queer readings of MLM relationships in anime isn’t wholly accurate, since it usually boils down to: male friendships in Japan are more intimate, guys are more emotionally open, etc.

As someone who worked at elementary schools and junior high schools and have seen drunk male teachers at nomikai and enkai before - they aren’t. Not really. In junior high school there was a lot of rough housing and drunk male coworkers might sling their arms around each other when they are doing some kind of silly act or something - but usually the kind of queer subtext stuff that we often get in anime and manga is on a totally different level and not comparable. 

Sometimes it really is subtext (a great example of this would be Nabari no Ou, the mangaka is X-gender and asexual, so any queer subtext you are getting from that series is likely queer subtext), but other times it’s just straight up queerbait. Usually you can feel and tell the difference between the two after a while.

With Buddy Daddies the promo materials never show them half naked wrapped around each other or anything enticing like that. And in-series we see them keeping a common, especially in Japan, physical distance with each other. As the series has progressed though, as Rei has learned how to communicate his thoughts and feelings more, and as Kazuki has learned to let someone in again, we’ve started seeing them communicating with each other more openly. 

And while at the start most of their physical closeness has been in comedic scenes, like Kazuki dragging Rei around:

Or when Kazuki freaked out about Miri getting captured by some creep and took hold of Rei’s shoulders:

Now, in this episode, we have the two discussing a very important topic. Rei is as opened up as can be and communicating properly. He’s made it clear how he feels about taking the life of Miri’s father and through guilt by association, the life of Miri’s mother now too. 

He’s laying himself pretty bear in front of Kazuki and his desire to raise Miri in this scene makes me think of Episode 3 in a way. With Rei in similar, though not exactly the same, role as Kazuki and Kazuki in the role of Misaki. 

Rei, like Kazuki, wanted to take care of Miri. Kazuki, like Misaki who sent her away and wanted nothing to do with her, wanted to bring her to an orphanage and then exit her life entirely. 

They flash back to Misaki’s death for a reason as well, because Kazuki is relating himself to her words.

He’s done this before and the two have been both foils of each other (Ep. 3) and parallels of each other, such as in last episode and even in this week’s episode, with Misaki’s bandaged fingers after she tried properly cooking a meal for the first time: 

Looking like Kazuki’s after he tried sewing for the first:

Right, in that moment with Rei, Kazuki was thinking, “I’m being selfish too. I want to keep Miri even though it’s safer not to.” The difference though, is that Kazuki, unlike Misaki, has a partner who is equally in the known as him when it comes to the potential dangers of what they are about to do. He also has a partner that is willing to take equal responsibility and care of Miri.

Misaki never had that. Not the first time and the second time, when she came back for Miri in Episode 10, she likely didn’t even know how to ask for something like that. Rei wasn’t fully ready yet then either.

I have more I could say about Misaki, but I’ll save that for another post. In this one, I want to wrap around to the beginning of this post. The things that make this physical touch so intimate between them:

1. It is Rei reaching out to Kazuki. A first, iirc, outside of stuff like him putting his arm out to stop Kazuki last episode, Ep.10 (outside of the daycare)

2. The scene isn’t comedic. It is heated. The two are very emotionally charged.

3. Kazuki’s hand reaches out because he was angry at the situation. He grabbed Rei’s suit because of that built up fear and angry at the situation.

4. But Rei wraps his hand over Kazuki’s to show connection. He uses it to add emphasis and make Kazuki feel his words: “Think. What can we do to help Miri?” Rei has always been the one to calm Kazuki down. When Kazuki goes over the top, Rei reels him back in, like here. But this was the first time he had to physically reach out to Kazuki and touch him in order to make that point and actually bring Kazuki back down from the clouds and back into the reality of their situation and what they can do. 

5. Finally, during this talk, when Rei says, “We’ll make Miri happy!” Kazuki doesn’t just think about Miri, he thinks about Yuzuko too. Rei says we’ll and Kazuki is fully acknowledging that.

This time, unlike in Episode 3, where they both decided to be Miri’s papas separately, they are deciding to be her papas together. There was a shift in their dynamic again, just like there was in Episode 3.

I noticed this last week and was wondering how this would play out in today’s episode, but we are seeing parallel episode structure with Arc 1 (Episodes 1 - 5) and this final arc (Episodes 10 - 13). This final arc is one episode short though, so this week’s episode was like a paralleled combination of Episodes 2 and 3.

Putting the rest under a Read More due to length.

Episode 10 Paralleled Episode 1 - Kazuki and Rei getting Miri due to a hit, Kazuki and Rei losing Miri to a hit (the hit being Miri herself).

Episode 11 Paralleled Episodes 2 & 3 - For the Episode 2 parallels you have: 

Kazuki and Rei having Miri at the apartment for the first time and getting taken off the job with the introduction of Ryo killing someone. Versus us seeing Kazuki and Rei in the apartment for the first time without Miri and them deciding to leave their jobs this time along with Ryo killing again (hopefully, for the last time). 

And in the case of Kazuki and Rei trying to adjust to the changes both with Miri in the apartment for the first time and without her in the apartment - they are both a mess, one was just a noisy mess vs the silent mess of this episode (11).

For the Episode 3 parallels, I feel like I talked about that quite a bit already. Though we have some other things as well, like Misaki’s “you know they aren’t your real papas” conversation with Miri:

Mirroring Rei’s conversation with Miri about Kazuki not being her real papa:

And, of course, we have Rei thinking about his father, who he was still staying away from at the time, and contemplating what being a papa really means. Now he has confronted his father, he went back to him, but spoke back to him, and he now knows for certain what being a papa means and is 100% ready to commit to that.

If they really are following this parallel structure, then what might that mean for Episodes 12 and 13, which would, on some level, parallel episodes 4 and 5? In Episode 4 we saw them actually stepping into the roles of “Papas” on a societal level with the government office and daycare and kind of jumping into it all without really knowing what they were doing. 

Now they do know, they have experience, and we’ve seen Kazuki set down ground rules for Rei that Rei has agreed to follow when it comes to raising Miri. So there will be more involvement on Rei’s part. 

There was forged paperwork too...Maybe this time we will see Kazuki fill out that paperwork slightly more legitimately. Someone (sorry, I can’t remember exactly who it was!) mentioned that if Miri’s father never claimed Miri, then Kazuki might be able to claim himself as Miri’s father on her birth certificate. So...maybe we’ll see that. They did make Kazuki look like Miri’s birth father for reasons.

And, if Episode 13 ends up paralleling Episode 5, where Kazuki and Rei got reinstated on the job, Episode 13 would be when they properly leave the job. However that may go down. The interesting thing to think about is what Kyutaro will decide to do. In Episode 5, he told them of the dangers and was tempted to not get attached to Miri, but he did anyway. He acted like a regular café owner with her, watched over her, and told her about her comedian and oil baron papas. 

Now that we know Kyutaro has a safe house, will he deflect along with them and stay with her, will he work as a double agent or spy. I don’t know. But Episode 5 ended with Miri making a presentation, so maybe this episode will end with the Christmas Party at the end, which would bring the series full circle, since I bet that Christmas Party is on Christmas Eve. 

I know that it’s been stated that there won’t be any more “fluffy” episodes, but I think that is tied to the “pretend family” vs. “real family” dynamic that gets brought up in this episode. Where Kazuki and Rei are both 100% all in, so that means there won’t be any “super happy” facade going up anymore, just sincere emotions (which can range from happy to sad to tragic to comedic, etc.). After all, in that quiote, the director also told them to let go of past restraints and to show the intimate feelings that exist between Kazuki, Rei, and Miri. After this week’s episode, I feel I completely understand what this means now.

I’m going to stop this post for now, because I feel it has kind of gone off in various directions and I do still need to take my daily walk around the neighborhood. But I do have a number of thoughts on this episode (I wrote them all down in my notebook to make sure I don’t forget anything, lol). And I’ll be getting those posts up in a bit. 

But yeah, my mind is still going off in like five million different directions. How am I going to make it to next Friday!?

EDIT: SO! Next week’s episode is the last. The parallel aspect can still work though, Episode 12 would just parallel Episodes 4 & 5, which actually does work pretty nicely together. Thanks to everyone who informed me that Episode 12 will be the last!<3

#Buddy Daddies #BD #KazuRei #Kazuki Kurusu #Rei Suwa #Miri Unasaka #Misaki Unasaka #Kyutaro Kugi #BD spoilers #Buddy Daddies spoilers #meta post #thought post #analysis #image heavy post #long post

[skyflyinginaction]

Clamp Art Style Analysis: Part 1: Creation Process and Materials

Introduction

Clamp is a manga artist team of four women. They are a prominent distinguished manga artist team known in the West and in China. The thing they are most recognized for is their highly detailed art style many people may have known and many may not. They did several manga you might have known such as Card Captor Sakura, Chobits, and even Tsubasa.

Clamp is one of the artists whose art style I highly admire and want to imitate in my art. I created this post so I can understand and take apart their art style and better understand it. It is going to be difficult since there are four people with different specialties and years of professional experience in their belt. They are constantly changing and adapting to every genre. 

I am going to analyze Clamps’ art style in this post and this may take a while to crack due to how extensive the Clamp style is. I am going to pile up everything and explain this in this post which is going to take time to explain in this post. I am going to take apart interviews from different sources while explaining their art style in this post.  

I am going to examine their art style and the materials they use. I am going to split into sections talking about the art style and what they use for materials for the manga.

To understand the art style and how it is defined I need to understand Clamp themselves since they created an entirely individual style that is going to talk about other things, not about the art style there is going to be so much I might miss while explaining in this post. I could be wrong while explaining this is an analysis I am going to take my crack at understanding the art style. 

Influences

Though the members of Clamp are largely self-taught they are inspired by many figures that influence their art. The list consists of Reiji Matsumoto, Osamu Tezuka, Go Nagai, Hirohiko Araki, and Moto Hagio. The other works that influenced Clamp are animated cartoons and Galaxy Express 999. Reiji Matsumoto and Osamu Tezuka are major influences in their works Clamp used Osamu Tetsuka’s star system in their works which is seen often in the crossing over of characters from their series into their other works. You can see this prevalently in Tsubasa, X, and Kobato where you would find characters from the different series crossover.

Nekoi's favorite cartoonist was Moto Hagio in high school and Mokona mimics pictures by Reiji Matsumoto when she was younger. 

While working on manga Nekoi started copying Shinji Wada and Rumiko Takahashi, in which She copied her art in drawing legs. She drew them thick and big. She liked the legs Rumiko Takahashi drew since they seemed long until short feet. She took them to make them more delicate and feminine. Clamp used other artists to help them while drawing. 

Go Negai influenced the creation of X, taking inspiration from his work of Devil Man featuring two main male characters, and the murder of the lead's sweetheart triggers the apocalypse. Devil Man is used in creating x The extreme levels of violence depicted in X came from Go Negai's works. Clamp knows about Devil Man. They did a doujinshi of Devil Man in their works as doujinshi artists a while back and even had a doujinshi about the lead character's relationship in their works. 

X was inspired by Go Nagai the heavy violence in x inspired from Go Nageis works and the assembled cast of x is inspired by Kyokutei Bakin's Nansō Satomi Hakkenden, The fight sequences of x were inspired by the manga Dragon Ball specifically Akira Toriyama's use of white backgrounds.

Mokona influences are H.R Giger and gérard di-maccio are used  for the RG veda backgrounds.

Mokona likes Alphonse Mucha who is a considerable influence in drawing XXXHolic art.

Hirohiko Araki is another influence of Clamp with JoJo's Bizarre Adventure fan manga back when they drew doujinshi and starred in Clamp in wonderland animation with Jojo animated.

They drew a doujinshi on Jojo a while back starring Josuke and Kakyon and even they drew Jolynn once.

There is a lot of Kakyoin and Josuke fanart with Yaoi art drawn by these two characters.

Jojo was used in drawing wish with Kohaku and Shuichiro strongly resembling Jotaro Kujo and Noriaki Kakyoin and Kohaku's hairstyle strongly identical to Kakyoin and Shuiichiro resembling Josuke.

Members

Nanase Ohkawa     

The main leader of the group, the main writer of the scenario, is in charge of the original story, script, and design. The other three artists are Mokona, Nekoi, and Satsuki, who are in charge of the art.

Mokona 

Mokona is the artist and designer in charge of drawing. Mokona is in charge of sketching out the construction of the characters by hand. Mokona draws the storyboards and sketches out the characters. Mokona is responsible for drawing female characters.

Tsubaki Nekoi    

Nekoi is in charge of character design, background scenery, finishing touches, and charge of the foundation of the art in their works. Her booth has been painted for design and screens for finishing touches.Nekoi likes to doodle and throw pages. Nekoi is in charge of drawing male characters.

Satsuki Igarashi

Satsuki Igarashi is in charge of design and drawing and is in charge of the finishing touches. She is in charge of designing the cover of the book itself.

Bio 

Three members of Clamp were classmates in high school who took art-focused classes in school; none of them studied at school for manga. Nekoi tried using colored pencils and opaque watercolor in school when she was young. Satsuki and Nekoi were in middle school when they first started drawing manga. Mokona was in an art club in middle school. In high school, she started drawing manga with proper frames and dialogues. Mokona, Nekoi, and Igarashi studied art in high school Nekoi, Mokona, and Igarashi met in high school as a kid She found a friend who loved manga, Satsuki went to an art-type highschool and Mokona high school and college had art-focused classes, Igarashi was at an art department in highschool then to computer graphics vocational school. Clamp started as doujinshi artists who first published doujinshi fanzines Back then they had more people it went down to four in the year of their commercial debut.

The group never worked as assistants with most of the members being self-taught with Tsubaki and Nekoi being more self-taught.  

They never used assistants to help them with their work since they wouldn’t be able to understand the years of jargon they created among themselves They created work for years without any help from assistants since assistants would slow them down and wouldn’t understand when we would tell them to do the same thing as before disrupting the workflow they created for work.

For inspiration, Ohkawa gets her ideas from dreams or inspiration based on events she hears or sees on the news a lot of times its deadlines. Ohkawa doesn’t always take notes and she usually loses ideas.

Clamp’s daily work hours while working on manga is in the morning, get in the studio at about 10 or 11 in the morning and in the afternoon they eat dinner at 6 in the evening then stop working at midnight. 

The members share a single workspace and are separated into three booths while they work.

There are four separate studios and the member's workspace accommodates all four of them. Clamp work requires complete perfection with members having their own space where they have to work to create one of their works 

The art of Clamp is lush layered and amazingly detailed. It has a high-quality art style with extensive details. Due to this, it's almost difficult to adapt to animation.

Each of Clamp’s titles has a different art style depending on the genre or magazine they are running in; their art styles change to suit the work and magazine the manga will appear in. The art style of the work is based on Ohkawa’s decision in charge of the art direction of the work. The art styles and pictures have changed but not their methods.

There is a lot to talk about the Clamp art style which may not be enough to explain one segment

Creation process 

Clamp's work process is similar to an animation production; they work like a small animation studio. if you look closely at the work process for creating works it's more like an animation with the director, playwright, character designer, painter, background artist, creator, and publicist treating the manga or story like a script for a movie or anime, the creative process for creating manga is similar to that of animation and movies.

Ohkawa is the storyteller and writes the scripts other three draw drafts and original design, Mokona is the chief character designer, and Tsubaki and Nekoi work for the background Sometimes they they take turns doing different jobs

Ohkawa writes then it goes to Mokona who draws out the outline of the storyboard and sketches the characters

They would normally go to Nekoi for the finishing touches Igarashi and Nekoi work on the final touches the team may shuffle roles. Clamp members do get outside work with computer graphics. For drawing sometimes the members do character backgrounds or may draw everything depending on the story. They have a work where one person designs the character and another draws the actual story. They make storyboards and start drawing. Sometimes they decide who is going to make storyboards and then start drawing.  The art is drawn by Satsuki, Mokona, and Nekoi, Nekoi draws the rough draft and thinks about how the story is going forward to next month's script. The designs are handled by Satsuki and Mokona. Satsuki worked on the design for the cover page. In the beginning, they believed that everything in the comic from front to back was important to the story. They take turns completing the rough sketch depending on the story. They divide the story into frames; they mostly draw it on art board paper after they create characters and scripts. Ohkawa explains what in each frame props and the characters in they have how they turn around and include emotions in the panel. Ohkawa and Igarashi never drew manga with split frames. They Look like frames from a movie 

When Ohkawa comes up with stories Ohkawa drafts the outline of the story and the story setting The ending for each story is determined from the last scene back to the first scene and the end last and deciding the thing and heading into this way makes way for change drags the reader along for the story Ohkawa drafts the outline the other three members formulate characters designs by creating character profile sheets to avoid confusion. Ohkawas style of writing is considered a color woodblock print in the way it conveys and portrays things the manga is close to picture books and elimination of everything unneeded. Ohkawa thinks about the setting of where the story takes place and Ohkawa constructs a visual image at least in their head then splits up panels in their manga. for the writing process, they come up with the story Ohkawa gets together to discuss the story with the members about the purpose of the story and the main characters when writing and drawing After the members get well used to the story they write it down when creating a story for a weekly magazine they first decide on a rough story from beginning to end Ohkawa works backward from the ending for the story to have an ending like this the members don’t always know how the story develops. Ohkawa's style of writing for stories is not telling anyone the progression of the storyline before it happens reason for that is that when the members of Clamp learn of Hokuto's death one of the members couldn’t draw Hokuto's smile the same way this is how badly shaken they were since that the way Ohkawa created her stories changed for most of the works it was until Chobits she could tell them again. Ohkawa kept using memos in the beginning when she wrote the stories where she kept track of the flow of the story.

Before they start drawing they decide the flow of the story up until the end as well as the materials used for color and monochromatic drawing and the direction of the illustration. The members consider the art style during the planning stage and the materials for the manga, for materials Clamp uses color samplers In the order of how they draw. They draw them the same size as manuscripts, they draw rough sketches, and the size of the manuscript is b4 size and genkou size. They seldom use computers to create manga but only to color pictures, sometimes Clamp uses the scanning method when they draw or draw the rough draft using tablets. They don’t use references for their designs except at one time for Ohkawa she drew inspiration from a perfume and drink package she gathered together she drew more influence from the business art and art from Alan Chai's design. 

The amount of lines and the thickness of the lines in the manga depends on the work. When you look at the manga, there are a lot of lines in the characters, Clamps can make the lines, and the thickness of the lines depends on the nature of their work from the thicker lines shows how serious and heavy the story thicker lines match the nature of their work that fits with a heavy theme like works like Tokyo Babylon, which have a heavy atmosphere. Mokona draws with thicker lines and uses pens with strong pressure when drawing. Clamps drawing methods changed with Tsubasa and xxxholic.

In the process of launching a serialization first is to decide on the major storyline work out the details of the characters later and consider the number of chapters needed to tell a story, second Ohkawa has a meeting with Mokona and Nekoi to decide on the design of the main characters Ohkawa asks for designs once they are finished they go over one more time.  They go about creating manga and have two processes,  one creating a manga based on the request from a publisher The second Clamp decides on the story first and then thinks about the magazine to write it for. Clamp comes up with an outline for the story First after they create the outline they discuss who's going to draw pictures or if they all draw together. They turn the project into a movie telling how a story goes and who the main characters are among themselves. They talk about the rough story and how they should do it when they bring a story to the publisher, attach the rough story and characters, attach characters' settings to them and draw the appearance in the manga to the publisher. Then after they show the work to the editor if the editor thinks it's okay they start the story. After receiving approval from an editor, Ohkawa assigns roles to each group member and then chooses the visual styles depending on the factors such as the complexity of the story and chosen art style the artwork depends on the genre and magazine of the story. Ohkawa provides a rough draft for each chapter with things such as dialogue panel size props and movement and characters' emotions. Storyboarding takes 12 hours while the script takes 8 hours to write. To Mokona from rough draft to inking 10 pages per day, the average Mokona puts into how many pages of black and white manuscript draws in a day the number of pages they draw in a month to finish one installment For example if they're in two monthly publications like Tsubasa and xxxholic one is about 19 or 20 pages other takes one day to finish 6 pages for the foundations for the fishing touches and inking takes a couple of days every 2 weeks when it comes to two weekly series its 120 and 130 pages a week. xxxholic takes two days and x took four days 

Ohkawa will specify the proper production for the story and character. After the story, they will choose a person to perform the character design. Clamp switches up who works on character design and the drawing. Igarashi and Ohkawa do it together. One of them directs the work for design and the person in charge of the drawing for that work will draw a rough sketch which is discussed. Mokona is one of the concept artists When the scenario is specified in detail, Mokona listens to the basic story and consults the original concept with Ohkawa Mokona will show what she designed on the spot of the drafting and period.  Mokona and Clamp often decide on the design first, then Mokona draws the illustration from format, paper, and photoshopping specifications to color specification. Mokona does pencil drawing first then ink and color it the pencil stage first so Mokona can fix errors in the pencil stage. Ohkawa as the main scriptwriter Ohkawa determines the story and setting and tells the members about it and the rest give their thoughts on it Ohkawa maps out the location, ideas, and character design Ohkawa gives the character's figures hairstyles, and clothes she envisions to the designers or sometimes Ohkawa draws them herself only sketches the rest get the art close to Ohkawa original version. Ohakwa doesn’t talk about the characters until it's time to create their visual design, Ohkawa decides the design of the character and the group visualizes it She explains their appearance she sometimes brings sketches instead of explaining Ohkawa decides the characters they have long or short hair their style of clothes and complexity. Clamp discusses together and thinks about how to make characters, Ohkawa makes requests and discusses them with the other three Ohkawa gives concrete and specific thoughts on what she wants the main characters to be. Ohkawa is the one who decides on the details of the characters and Clamp crafts their characters. They explain the story in the works that include the drawing of the clothes of what the character wears. Ohkawa takes all the info she gathered and has them design the characters based on the descriptions she gave like body build, hair length, and small details, next decide who is going to design the characters either Nekoi or Mokona design them characters and pick one of them then make a character setting chart and decide on the character's height. After the story they choose a person to perform character design. When that is happening, they use specific proper proportions for the story and character. They come up with a story through a character design phase Clamp and choose different styles and proportions for the characters. When it comes to designing characters they determine the head and body ratios since the person drawing can change the proportions in their sketches without knowing.  They reference the proportions of the characters in case the person drawing it gets it wrong. Igarashi and Ohkawa consult each other and ask for revisions so that the proportions don’t shift, so it can come in tandem when working for 4 people. Mokona had difficulties drawing Yuko's proportions; she considered drawing them constantly a nightmare. Mokona found it reassuring to have partners who can check your work. Sometimes they decide on the colors to get the approval of the publisher to work on the storyboard and then agree on the birthday and height of the characters. The height is important because it's for drawing proportions that are made to keep consistency when drawing characters. The character designs look like character sheets like the ones you would see in anime. When they first set out to draw the members consulted such things as whether or not thin lines mesh well in the manga. what color materials they would be using the members play it by ear as they go along when they draw. Before drawing the portraits of the characters, Nekoi takes special care of the characters by differentiating them with their hairstyles. 

For creating the clothes for the characters, Clamp dresses their character in stuff based on their own or things their acquaintances wear. Clamp reads a lot of informational magazines and fashion magazines on a personal basis which serves as inspiration for characters. Some of the clothes and other items that characters in Clamp wear are inspired by real-life pieces but most of them are done initially by Mokona.

Once the main characters are completed, they decide on the detailed settings for those characters,  The members decide on each character's birthday and height. The height is used for doing the proportions of the characters. for the character settings the group goes into detail about the characters like what food they eat, special skills, how and when they do things, how they grew up, when they were young, their hobbies, the type of house they live in whether its Japanese or western style, if they are sleeping wearing pajamas or negligees and whether they like sweets or not; for example if a character is eating sweets it means that a character grew up in an environment where sweets can be easily eaten and if a character has long hair it can be tied or untied these details reference the characters way of life and polices the reason Clamp focuses on what a character likes to eat is because what a person eats says a lot about a character in personality. There's a lot of thought that goes into making character settings. It's mostly to advance writing their characters or fleshing them out as individuals. The character settings are important when writing the characters in the story These details are important for them to write for the characters the character profile is used so they won’t get confused when writing a character for the story to keep the writing of the character to remain consistent throughout the story. 

Materials 

When drawing manga and illustrations the group often determines the materials they use to draw during the meetings 

Once they set out drawing they first consult things like whether or not thin lines and colors. Clamp used different techniques, art materials, and paper when they did manga and color illustrations Clamp used different materials at their disposal. For drawing Rayearth, the materials they use to draw manga are used include other works as well. The heavy colors are used to suit the tone of the story. This goes to show that you can change the impression by changing the pen you use and the paper used. 

You can change the impression based on the paper you use. The paper makes a great first impression on the manga. Paper is not the only thing that changes the impression of the manga they draw, also the materials they use are used to change the impression. 

Clamp uses different paper sizes for each work, the manga paper is sorted for each one of the members to use. Clamp has strong drawing pressure for their strong drawing pressure they chose thick paper.  They use paper made by Daieidou printing for manga drawings because the members have a strong drawing pressure so they chose a thick paper that's three times thicker than manga paper. For the paper that the members use for illustrations Igarashi, Nekoi, and Mokona use Watson paper, BB Kent back of manga paper of copy paper. Both Ohkawa and Igarashi like acid-free paper, they love the sandy texture and don't like smooth art-coated paper. The reason for that is that if the paper is too smooth the texture will not be the same. Clamp uses many materials for works such as Copic markers and alcohol-based products, They use Kaimei Indian ink, and for color inks, they use Holbein and Holbein special black The screentone they use Brans that Clamp uses is  I.C. 's and Letraset.

When they first used computer equipment,  they were instructed by Takeshi Okazaki and Katsuya Terada. satsuki was into photoshop so Takeshi Yamazaki gave satsuki lessons in photoshop.  

For the materials that Clamp used in their past works, rg veda used color inks, aeroflash, Liquitex, and modeling paste, Rayearth used Copic markers, Mokona used color inks for Mask of 20 faces, Tokyo Babylon used color tones and angelic layer had them use thick fountain pen like liner markers for drawing the manga.

Mokona’s pen uses a Kabura and a Marupen. Depending on the weather she draws a line to see which is better. Her favorite pens are Zebras Maru pen and Kabura pen nibs. with lnks, her favorite is Kaimei Indian Ink and Holbein’s Grey or Nouvel’s Burnt Sienna. What she used to draw backgrounds is Pigma 0.05, Mokona has strong drawing pressure. The G pen is too soft for her. She tried using one but it is hard to adjust and prefers using a harder pen. She uses a magic marker with a pigment ink called Prokey she used to draw letters on paper and uses Pentels water-resistant brush pens for solid areas like hair. She uses a powder board for paper with larger pieces and Baron Kent paper stretched with water. For RG Veda backgrounds Mokona used a lot of airbrush techniques. Mokona draws with thicker lines, and her drawings have been drawn with thicker lines. In the beginning, like in the third volume of Tokyo Babylon, the character's faces are angular and have thicker lines which show that her art is changing. Syaoran was Mokona’s favorite character to draw in Tsubasa.

Nekoi uses different nibs for the maru pen and g pen; she uses the Kabura pen for concentrated and close straight lines, also Pigma 0.5 for backgrounds.

For paper Nekoi uses whatever paper they have at hand to the back of wrapping paper bits of cardboard that have fallen around the back of cosmetics box envelopes from the publisher, the wrapping paper from a cup of tea that is Japanese style. She uses an eraser to reduce the tones in the screentone and sandpaper to reduce the large areas of tone she uses. A fine grit sandpaper will decrease nicely but not allow for fine adjustment which she had to fix with an eraser later. Nekoi loved experimenting with new painting materials; she especially loved painting in color.

Step to Step in Creating Manga

When it comes to drawing manga there are steps taken to create manga. these are the materials they use for drawing manga The list of materials and things they use in the steps to create manga are listed as this

1.) plastic eraser, mechanical pencil 0.5 HB

2.) Pigma 0.5, magic marker

3.) brush pen

4.) screen tone, tone cutters round sand eraser 

5.) pen white, liquid paper ink, Mython

lastly, for writing the script, they use a pc

For the steps they use to create manga Rayearth I think it might be the same steps they use to draw other manga that come after it might be the same steps they did for Tsubasa,xxxholic, and other manga that come after it, and the materials they use. I bet it's the same materials used for Tsubasa, Card Captor Sakura and xxxholic.

1.) The plot is written by Ohkawa on a personal computer with manuscript paper, For the rough they draw frames with a pencil and roughly insert characters and other elements, they draw the rough while paying attention to the composition and balance the draw the panel as to what you want to show most when you are doing a specific scene. The rough is a lot of lines and its way is less detailed. The rough is used for the placement to know the place of things to ink. You can see the same rough stage with Tsubasa and xxxholic. 

Clamp pays attention to the distribution of lines in the panels, the reason why Clamp pays attention to the number of lines is because it's a manga and they are going to ink over and over again. The reason they pay attention to the number of lines in the rough is to calculate how much you ink while you draw. the number of lines you use while you ink is important because you are going to use it over again

the rough is drawn with a pencil, they used a regular pencil for the rough rather than a mechanical pencil since the mechanical pencil has fine lines 

2.)  Next is the sketching phase, in the sketching phase the characters are drawn with a mechanical pencil they check the drawing by looking through the rough manuscript and back. Once the sketch is finished the member will fix it until they are satisfied The background is only included briefly in the sketch.

3.)  The inking stages for the steps of Magic Knight Rayearth are inked mainly using a Pigma 0.05 or Kaimuji marker or brush. When Mokona was drawing Rayearth Mokona had strong drawing pressure so her lines became thicker She changed pens as soon as she noticed it her strong drawing pressure caused Mokonas tip of her pen to break quickly they often used 4 to 5 bottles a day for inking. 

4.)  Next up the beta stage, after they are done with inking they erase and check it again After that the members add solids the tool used is a brush pen to fill in areas like hair and stuff. They use ink that is resistant to water because if it is water resistant the area will become thin when the eraser is applied. 

The steps for rough and sketch are used in their other works only the materials that are used for inking change consistently Depending on the series 

5.)  Next is the toning stage when they add screentone traditionally to a manga page, when it comes to screen tone they make sure that no more appears in the overlapped areas Clamp use a circular blade type cut when they apply screentone traditionally to a manga and small areas might be scrapped with a sand eraser scrapping the tone can change the texture of the object. They consider the effect and carefully cut it and their grain to the tone and know in which its neatly scrapped directions are not scrapped. 

In Rayearth tint and gradation tones are used, and a little gala for the screen tone of the manga. 

6.) This is the last stage of Clamp creation in drawing manga. The last stage is to express light and create glamorous images white is used for it. when applying white fluid to the image which is done by flicking the brush on the correction fluid with the rim of the container the effect changes depending on the concentration of the liquid. You can add white to the toothbrush or flick it with your finger. It changes the effect of the image. If you add fine white dilute it with water to adjust for the white. Clamp uses quirk drawing because the pen can be put on the white later.

This technique was applied in other manga like Tsubasa, Card Captor Sakura, and their other works. They used the same white ink to make a beautiful panel.  

Next

#clamp #x/1999 #meta #card captor sakura #card captor clear #tsubasa reservoir chronicle #chobits #tsubaki nekoi #Nanase Ohkawa #Satsuki Igarashi #Mokona #magic knight rayearth #xxxholic #kobato #angelic layer #tokyo babylon #my meta

[hanaruri-tunes]

Humiliating Leviathan (Levi x reader)

My first try at some smut, so MINORS DO NOT INTERACT. And here are the warnings I could think of: Degradation, crying, masturbation, usage of underwear, usage of sex toys, going down on MC, two dicks (I gotta follow the common agreement that Levi has two dicks haha), snake tongue (again, common agreement), petting, praising

OKAY. I think that's it. Don't hesitate to tell me if I forgot something. I know all those warnings might make it seem hardcore but I promise it's actually quite a cute fic. Subby and pathetic Leviathan is the cutest. PLEASE DON'T HESITATE TO LEAVE COMMENTS please please this is my first try at smut in the obey me fandom (if ever, actually) I would really appreciate the support.

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You knocked on his door three times. No answer. Knowing Leviathan he was either passed out in his bathtub after binge-watching an anime or playing games non-stop... Or he miraculously decided to go out somewhere. Probably to buy some merch from a limited-in-time store that has no official website from which Leviathan can order. Although he could definitely find some second-hand merch online he refused to do that. He would go on and on about how buying second-hand isn't supporting the franchise thus he MUST buy it directly from the source.

Seeing how there was still no answer you decided to go in. Usually his door had a spell on it that would send intruders into another random place in the devildom but he lifted that spell for you specifically. You were the only one who could enter at any time without any disturbance.

As you did so, there was no Leviathan in sight. Not in front of his gaming set-up, not in his bathtub, not passed out on the floor. So he's out, huh? You wonder why he didn't invite you or at least warn you that he'll be out today. Usually, especially if it's for a limited time anime café, you're always the first one invited. Well, you probably shouldn't pry but as you're about to step a foot outside his room... You stop. This is a pretty rare chance to look around his room without him pestering you.

It's not like you'll pry *too* much though. Just a bit, for curiosity's sake. (That was a lie you told yourself.) You inspect his figurines more closely. He's mostly into magical girl shows and moe blob shows. How cute of him. But you've always expected that he might have some secret sexy figurines as well. Or else why would he be so protective of some of the packages he orders from Akuzon? He's usually so unenthusiastic and slow when getting out of his room for breakfast or dinner and yet he rushes to the door when it's for a delivery.

After checking some of his drawers you find the fabrics and materials he uses for his cosplays. It's all mostly different hues of pink since he prefers cosplaying female characters- how cute. At one point you also accidentally come across his underwear in one of his drawers, it's all mostly black with some funky colors mixed in from time to time. He even has one of a limited edition HanaRuri-tan underwear collection.

And just as you think that you've struck gold... it's just some old stuff. Probably from some of his past obsessions. That includes precure dvds, aikatsu cards, manga magazines, et cetera. Again all cute shows mostly targeted to young audiences. Really, you can't see Leviathan as anything else than a completely adorable dork. People often don't get him for his specific tastes and hobby but all you see is a pure little guy who's still in touch with his inner child and who loves mostly light hearted shows. Surely anything he might hide won't probably be even THAT bad. Or even if it is... that's still cute in another way.

After looking in all of his drawers, no sign of any sexy figurine, of any sex toy or even erotic manga... This is way too suspicious. But then again Levi is smart, he probably wouldn't dare hide any of this stuff in his drawers knowing that Lucifer frequently comes to his room begging him to clean it, only to start off doing it by himself before Levi hurriedly joins him and kicks him out. If he had to hide something dirty where would he... ... You look under the bathtub. Nope. Too easy? Then...Reaching for his blanket and sheets inside the bathtub, you raise them, uncovering some sort of trapdoor?You slide it open and there's a huge box inside of it. If you had to guess, he used the same spell as the entrance of his room. Except this one always leads to the same space: the place where his hidden box is, wherever that is.

You pull it out, open it and there it is. Almost all of the stuff you had imagined him hiding was in here. Sexy figurines, erotic doujins, even some sex toys. Two in particular were bigger than the others. Fleshlights... But why two? Looking at it closer one's a smaller size and the other one is bigger. Did he get the size wrong the first time he ordered so now he has two of them? But more than that, there was something you really didn't expect to find here. A pair of panties. *Your* panties. You thought that maybe you had just forgotten it while moving back and forth between the devildom and human world but here they were, in Leviathan's precious box.

In some way this awakened something in you, a strange feeling of amusement while you realized that the cutest and purest guy you knew turned out to be a filthy underwear thief who most likely used it to jerk himself off.As you started to think that, a loud noise came from behind you. It sounded like some object had fallen to the floor- ah. Probably Levi who just came back and dropped his phone after realizing what you were looking at. Quickly, you wiped off the amused smile you had on your face before turning back to face him. You faked a look that was a mix of disappointment and worry.

"Levia-chan..."

The poor guy looked frightened, as if the sky had fallen on his head, as if his life was over. Even that pathetic part of him, you found it just so cute.

"Ah... ah... That- uh. I-"

Not even taking the time to close the door behind him, he dropped on his knees in front of you, lowering his head.

"I can explain! S-So please don't- please don't freak out o-or agh, I mean-"

His heart dropped when you walked past him. "It's over." He thought. The friendship you guys had built was done for. There's no way you would ever love him now or even want to look his way. There's no way a kind, beautiful, strong person like you would ever even spare him a glance. No way an amazing girl as pretty and genuine as you would give a second chance to a gross creepy piece of shit like him.

As the worst possible scenarios started to play in his head, he came back to his senses slightly as he understood that you had just closed the door in order to have more privacy in here. You slid his seat in front of him as he was still on his knees, sat down and crossed your legs, taking on a haughty tone. Almost commanding.

"So? You said you could explain but I don't really see what is possibly left to explain here. It all speaks for itself. All this filthy shit and even two fleshlights weren't enough to satisfy your dick so you just *had* to have a go on my underwear, huh? You slutty thief."

As you said that last bit you flicked his forehead that he was trying so very hard to keep fixated on the ground, but it was almost impossible anyway since you had your bare legs crossed right in front of his eyes. You know Levi loves it when you wear short skirts, it's hard for him to not look, even in a serious situation like this one.

"Agh. Well, uh. Ahh..."

After about twenty seconds during which he couldn't come up with anything plausible or even any attempt at an excuse he started to tear up. Completely lost, he lowered his forehead to the ground, bowing and apologizing profusely.

"I'm- I'm so *hngh* s-sorry *hic* please don't hate me. Y-You're right, I'm a pervert but please, I beg you for forgiveness *hic* at the very least please don't ignore mee- *hnghg*"

You felt chills down your spine. Was it horrible of you? While this little baby thought that his entire life was over just because you might hate him, you were just thinking how fucking cute he sounds when he's crying while genuinely in distress. You were feeling conflicted. One part of you wanted to pat his head and raise it, kiss his cheeks full of tears and caress his back while assuring him that you don't really find him that gross or creepy. In fact finding this dirty side of him made you giddy.

And yet, the other side of you wanted to play around with him a bit more before giving him ultimate bliss.

"Levi... Are you serious my darling?"

You gently pressed your heels on the back of his head as his forehead was still stuck to the ground.

"You really think such a lousy excuse will cut it? You know just how outright creepy this is, right? You went out of your way to steal underwear from me so you could rub it all over your dick and cum in it and yet all you have to say for yourself is just "I'm sorry, please don't hate me"? You'll have to do better than that."

Still sniffling, you could feel Levi taking a deep breath to calm himself down.

"Y-you're right. Crying about it won't solve anything. I know just how much of a disgusting lame little fuck I am, it's already a miracle how someone as beautiful and amazing as you even considered me your friend. I've been blessed a-and so honored to be called that. So please, please give me a second chance Y/N. I'll do anything, really."

You took your heel away from him. Full of expectations on what the two of you were about to do if you played your cards right.

"Anything? No way. That's just empty words."

"It's not! I'll really do anything. I'll even be your b- um. B-Bitch if I have to."

You command him to raise his head up, he does. His eyes and cheeks are still wet from the tears he just shed and his face is all red from embarrassment.

"A bitch, really? So you'll even accept corporal punishment? If I tell you to lay down on your stomach on my lap, you'll do it? You'll let me spank you?"

For a split second you see it his eyes, this little fucker really feels like he'll get a kick out of this. "It's not a punishment at all!" He must be thinking. He would love to be treated so poorly by you. In fact, one of his occasional turn-ons was to imagine you degrading him, insulting how much of a perverted little shit he is.

"I- I'll do it. Anything you want to do to me, I'm fine with it so..."

You lightly tap on your thighs two times, telling him to get on. Obediently, he does... and immediately receives a slap on the ass.

"You're supposed to at least lower your pants idiot. Or else it won't even hurt that much."

"A-Ah, yes."

You saw it again. That glint in his eyes. He's excited and is just so barely managing to not display a shit eating grin on his face.

As soon as he does as you told him to, you spank him again. Harder this time. He lets out a little yelp. And as he does you grab his hair with your other hand to pull him up a bit and whisper into his ear.

"You think I didn't notice that? The corners of your mouth keep rising upwards you fucking pig."

Finally he completely gives up on the façade he is trying so hard to keep and lets out a huge unrestrained grin, the kind he has when you hug or kiss him on the cheek suddenly. Looking dumb and genuine, though this time it looks cuter as he's obviously enjoying the pain you're inflicting on him.

"Aaahh. I-I couldn't hide it after all, you're right Y/N. I'm a dirty fucking pig who even enjoys it when you're being mean to me. Bully me, hit me, spit on me. I don't care, if anything I love it. I'm so sorry for not even being able to be properly punished ahh I'm so so sorry~"

He says while not looking sorry at all. Pretending to ignore his stupid monologue you spank him again.

"Slut."

"Hnghh~"

He shudders and keeps grinning widely.

Only does he get a bit nervous when you decide to pull down his underwear.

"Ah- wait! ACk-"

You spanked him again, this time your hand made direct contact with his skin.

"Shut up you filthy bitch. Isn't that what you promised? You even said that you'll be my bitch so that's just what you are right now."

Rapidly the nervousness he had displayed a second ago dissipated.

"Ahhh~ y-yes, I'm your bitch. You can use me whoever you want, I'll even drink your spit if you ask me to ehehe- OW-"

"Quiet. Or- No. Actually, keep moaning. It's cute."

"Ehehe I'm sooo happy you said I'm cute Y/N."

"Master."

"Master~ ehehe..."

He was really digging this roleplay type of set-up you had invented. But while he thought you weren't performing and really wanted to punish him, you on the other hand were truly aware that this is all a sham from your part just to turn him on.

As you continued to spank him a couple more times, you noticed something odd. It wasn't that you felt poking against the side of your thighs since you had fully expected him to get a hard-on. It was that the poking sensation was double.

"... Levi, get up for a second."

"Um, w-wouldn't it be better to continue to punish me?"

Another slap made him yelp.

"Don't be difficult."

And so he did, and you finally realized why he owned two fleshlights. It wasn't that he had the size wrong and had to order a second one, it was that he has two dicks. One on top of another on his crotch, with a pair of balls for each. You can't help but wonder just how much more sperm he can produce than an average "person."

As you closely observe his two rods, Levi can't help but squirm under your gaze. Elated at the amount of attention and your focus on his private parts as his pants and underwear are now out of the way.

"It's weird isn't it? I'm so fucking gross that even my genitalia isn't normal. I'm impressed you can even look at it directly haha."

Silently, you keep staring. Utterly turned on by the many ways you could use this part of him when you'll inevitably fuck eachother. Seeing how you're keeping quiet, Levi keeps degrading himself, obviously wanting the same treatment from you.

"I mean what kind of weird monstruous fuck would have two dicks, right? S-So you can tell me, tell me just how fucking gross and creepy it is..."

He keeps smiling, his face flushed by the titillating humiliation he's feeling by having his cocks out in front of you, the girl he loves the most in the world. So you decide to humor him a bit.

"Hmm... So you constantly hide these? Is it why you always try to wear baggy pants? So people won't notice how much of a creepy fuck you are."

"Y-yeah haha. T-Tell me more..."

He's so docile and pathetic, you can't help but strive for more.

"No. That's enough. Even after a couple of seconds looking at it, it makes me sick of it. I'm bored. Won't you show me how you play with them when I'm not around?"

Leviathan's eyes light up at your suggestion. He can't believe a day would come when you or anyone for that matter would ask him to masturbate in front of them.

"R-Really? You wanna see that?"

"Well, you don't want me to be bored right? And you really reaaaally want my forgiveness for being a gross fuck."

Excited yet mortified, Leviathan takes two of the fleshlights and rummaging through the box, he finds some lube. You watch him start off by filling the two holes with lube, all while both of his dicks are still erect from earlier. You're honestly still amazed at how they look.

Just before Levi sticks his first cock into one of the fleshlights you get an idea.

"Wait a sec. Hand it over."

Obediently, he hands the sextoy over. You spit into it, your saliva mixing with the lube and you give it back.

"Here. Hopefully it'll enhance the experience?"

"Ah- S-shit! Had I known I wouldn't have used the lube at all..."

He looks down, disappointed but still ecstatic. He carefully places the tip of his shaft on the entrance of the toy and slowly starts pushing it in, his dick opening up the walls of the toy as he shudders from the sensation and your piercing gaze. He jerks himself off like that for a little while before you ask him if he's not going to play with his second shaft.

"Well... I can either use the other toy or... I can show you how I do it with your panties..." Seeing how silent you are he retracts his statement. "-JUUST kidding ahaha it's already gross enough to see me jerk myself off so disgustingly with a sex toy, n-no one would like to see their own clothing used like that..."

You smile, uncrossing your legs and leaning in.

"No, that's a good point. Show me how you've been using my underwear all this time you dirty fuck."

"A-ah! Yes... ahaha~"

Taking your panties carefully, he wraps it on his other dick and starts pumping it with his free hand. As he does, he starts explaining.

"A-at first, I would only sniff them but I couldn't resist the urge to use them like this. And now that I've used them too much your sweet smell has completely been overwritten by my disgusting stench so there's no use sniffing it anymore ehehe. That's so fucking creepy isn't? I-I'm such a creepy bastard."

There he goes again, degrading himself while expecting a follow up from you. But you give him none of that this time. Instead, you look at him with anticipation and give him a challenge.

"If you do a good job of putting on a show for me I'll let you go down on me."

The air surrounding him turned to a deep purple as he took on his demon form, his scaly tail wagging around like the one of a dog's. Then he started to pant like a pup as well, elated by your suggestion.

"Ah. Ahh. N-no way? Seriously?! I'll do it, I'll seriously do it. So please watch closely!"

All this time he was on his knees, but now he stood up, making sure you have a close look at his dicks. They were right there in front of your face and you had to hold yourself back from taking one of them into your mouth. He kept mumbling and stammering some intelligible stuff, but you're pretty sure it was something along the lines of "I'll do it" and "look at me."

As he was getting close to release, you could feel him lose himself in the pleasure as his knees looked like they were about to fold from the lack of strength he was putting into them. Probably not used to jerking off standing up, he most likely does it either sitting or lying down like most people. In an effort to keep him standing in front of you, you placed your hand on one of his knees then slowly brought it up, caressing his thighs.

"Do your best to stay standing~ I'll be disappointed if you fall."

"Ah! Yes, of course!"

A literal couple of seconds later, the fleshlight was leaking of his cum and your stolen panties were dripping with his seed. Not only was the quantity overkill but the texture and thickness of the liquid looked quite rich. It was like warm condensed milk. As if on instinct, you placed one of your hands under the dripping liquid, allowing a couple of droplets to land on the palm of your hand.

"Y-Y/N??"

You lick a droplet off, tasting it. Seeing you do that, Levi's knees finally give in and he falls to the ground again, looking at your lips and mouth closely while wagging his tail, overly fixated on how your mouth moves while your tongue is probably pressing those drops of *his* cum on the walls and ceiling of your mouth. Savoring it.

Despite it looking like condensed milk it tastes more like a nectar, sweet and unnaturally good. Is it a special characteristic for a demon's cum to taste sweet and good? Maybe it's to push each other to fall into lust... makes sense. Delicious cum would easily push demons or humans alike to fall deeper into the sin of lust.

"W-wah... I can't believe I just saw you do that. Am I in heaven? N-no that sort of erotic scene would never happen in heaven. Aha I'm so glad I'm a demon and that we're in the devildom..."

Satisfied, you open your legs and raise your skirt.

"It tasted pretty good, surprisingly. But I'm sorry to say mine probably won't taste as good as yours."

Levi crawls towards you like an obedient puppy. He closely looks at the small stain that had formed on your underwear due to his performance. He feels like one grateful and lucky bastard that you're allowing him to do that to you. Frozen for a bit by the sight, he drools slightly before snapping out of it and placing his hands on the side of your underwear. Sliding it down as the stain leaves a bead of your warm liquid behind. Levi looks at it stretch and break as he pulls the panties further down, up to your ankles. You get your feet out of them and kick them to the other side of the room, allowing yourself to open your legs better than if they had stayed around your ankles.

Placing your hand on his head, you gently push him towards you and pet his head.

"Will you start or are you too busy drooling?"

Not making himself be begged any further. He starts by so very gently kissing your clit, it's so soft that you can barely feel it. He wraps his hands around your thighs, preparing himself to eat you out. He's so adorable. As he sticks his tongue out you notice how he has the tongue of a snake. Not that you hadn't noticed before, he would try to hide it from you at first but when you told him that it was so unique and cool he wouldn't try to keep it away from you anymore, boldly opening his mouth when he would yawn or when he was complaining about something. Now there he was using his devious tongue on your sweet spot.

He was greedily tasting you, it made you wonder if you actually tasted as good as he was making it seem. Though you're pretty sure you don't have enchanted cum like demons do. He would sink his fingers into the soft skin of your thighs, feeling you up, probably wishing that you'll let him hump your thighs next if he does a good job at making you feel good. You start to mewl and as you do, you can feel his tongue double down on his efforts, desperate to make you feel better just so he can hear you whimper and cry out his name.

You look down, a bit overwhelmed at how good his tongue is at exploring your insides. You see him looking up at you expectantly, a happy glint in his eyes, full of love for you. It's funny how one moment he begs you to degrade him and the next he asks for praise with his shiny eyes. Appreciative of his efforts, you place one of your hands on his cheek, caressing it with your thumb.

"Good boy Levi."

He wags his tail and his eyes light up some more as he hardens his tongue, pushing it further than you thought he could. You let out another whimper, this time mixing in his name. And as you do, you realize how close you are to climax. You grab his horns and cross your legs around his head, trapping him in front of your pretty pussy. Not that he minds, in fact he wouldn't like it any other way. Feeling you come while you call out his name some more, he suckles on your juices, gladly letting it spread all over his tongue before swallowing it all.

As you let him go, he rests his head on your right thigh, his cheek against your bare skin. He keeps looking up at you in awe at how pretty your face looks just after you've come. He rubs his cheek against your thigh hoping to get your attention back at him.

"Did I do a good job? I can um, I can do other things as well~ Oh if the idea of taking me back as a friend immediately is too gross for you I can keep being your fucktoy for the time being ehehe..."

You smile at him kindly and scratch him under the chin. He wags his tail again and displays his signature wide grin. His laugh is so cute. As he did a good job you figure it's time to stop the charade and let him have a real go at you.

"I wasn't really mad at you by the way."

He lifts his head up from your thigh, eyes wide open.

"Huh?"

"I was just fucking with you, I'm not grossed out or anything. You're still my cute little Levia-chan."

You pat him on the head. His eyes well up in tears from relief.

"R-Really? You won't abandon me?"

"No baby, I just thought this was the perfect excuse to push you to do dirty stuff for me. You're not mad right?"

Leviathan jumps into your arms, crying.

"I'm so grateful that a perfect girl like you would choose *me* to make you feel good. H-Had you not forgiven me, I would even be okay with being your sex slave if you'd like to."

"Don't be stupid, I'll let you be my one and only boyfriend. What about that?"

Levi lets you go, then while still grabbing your shoulders he looks at you, his eyes full of hope.

"Really? You'd allow me? You would take a lame fuck like me as your boyfriend?"

You pull him back in, kissing him on the cheek, near the corner of his lips.

"Don't say that. You're my cute little baby boy. Everyone has an ugly and filthy side to them, but beyond that you're a sweet cutiepie who watches magical girl shows, sews cosplays and easily cries at any sad scene in an anime. I mean, look at me, I just tricked you into thinking that I find you gross and pushed you to jerk off then suck me off. Isn't that objectively pretty terrible of me?"

Levi stays silent for a while before you can feel his two dicks poking at your stomach and pussy.

"N-Now that I know you weren't mad, that was probably one of the best moments of my life."

"Perv."

You kiss him again.

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Was initially planning on making them fuck at the end but it got too long. Though I'm not against making a part two if people like it ahah. AGAIN please don't hesitate to comment, I would love to read your thoughts!

#obey me #obey me nightbringer #obey me smut #om! leviathan #leviathan avatar of envy #leviathan smut #leviathan x reader #leviathan x y/n #leviathan x mc #hanaruri writes

[hopefull-mindset]

Finally understanding Beast Mori (as Asagiri intended)

Hello everyone, I am hoping you’ll be nice about me talking about Mori for two seconds and express my thoughts about such a guy like this. This isn’t going to be some fancy analysis picking apart stuff like I’d usually want to or even me addressing every trait he has because I definitely don’t go into everything. This is me finally being at peace with Mori’s humanity.

Before you say anything, I’d just like to share my own peace of comprehension. So if you were similarly confused the way I was, I think you’d appreciate this (Or if you’re looking for a different approach on Mori).

Im sure most of you have read the manga adaptation, so just to let you know, I am going to be using passages from the official Light Novel translation and if anyone needs it, I can send it to them!

For anyone who’s decided to read, hello! Nice to meet you. I’m sure we’ve all shared the same confusion when confronted with Beast Mori’s difference in personality and approach. Thoughts like “Why is he so much nicer?” Or “Why does he care much more about how kids are treated, when he himself has treated kids the same way he describes in the past?”

How could this person be the same guy who was Mori the Port Mafia Boss? The war veteran who used Yosano the way he did? So we came up with many idea of why he’s different to justify it, but here’s the thing: Mori is the same person he always was, this is a universe where everything is the same, but different where Dazai chooses to intervene.

After a few days, I was able to recognize it but I couldn’t hold myself to acknowledge it. It’s hard to see a man who represents the dark, the Port Mafia, to the Armed Detective Agency’s light. I couldn’t wrap my head that such a controlling, manipulative man could have humanity like the rest of the characters.

Why was this so hard for me to see? Well two reasons— the fandom and how the anime cuts down Mori’s emotions when adapting canon material. This happens to Dazai too, but people are much more willing to talk about it compared to Mori. Now the fandom really does love blaming everything on Mori and that’s not the most constructive thing to do when talking about abuse narratives. I can’t blame anyone for taking this route when it came to Mori because of Asagiri’s poorly thought out choice with him…. we all know what I’m talking about. Elise.

However, I need some of you to understand that abuse narratives are never as simple as “oh, it’s all this persons fault because they’re a horrible person, so [character] is resolved from any guilt or responsibility”. This not only dumbs down the situation and seriousness of it, by mischaracterizing the abuser, you’re also mischaracterizing the victim as well and what they’ve gone through. You’re putting their story in jeopardy.

Bungou Stray Dogs is a story about human beings, morality, and what it all means. Mori, and in turn Fukuzawa, are important to understand Bungou Stray Dogs because they are in two pinochle positions that start this discussion of Morality. I am baffled that a story like this, one that approaches these topics with so much appreciation for humanity and nuance, has a fandom that doesn’t want to talk about what it has to offer.

Asagiri’s poorly thought out writing decision of a joke is going to have lasting effects with how Mori is going to be approached forever and I see this, but I think the little girl jokes are the least important thing to talk about because they have as much impact as the Tanizaki siblings do. He’s also written to be not a good person either, so you can dislike him easily, but how many of these characters are traditionally good people? Kouyou, for example, is not a “good person” and emotionally abusive in example to how she treated Kyouka. That doesn’t stop people from liking her friendship with Chuuya and making content with her.

So this attitude toward Mori had me lost when it came to him because I could see how much thought Asagiri puts into writing him the same way he does with so many, but I’ve seen so many disregard his humanity that I had no way to express any of my thoughts to sort out what to think about through anyone else when faced with Beast Mori. Everyone was as lost I was, and the people that weren’t never explained it in a way I could break that barrier.

So what finally made me wrap my head around Mori? It was exactly one conversation I had with a friend and it wasn’t even about Beast Mori in particular, it was just about Mori and his poor humanity while navigating how to lead. Everything just clicked with that.

(Dazai, Chuuya, age Fifteen)

This right here is where Mori tells us what he thinks his position means after the struggling we visibly see him go through. Is it an inherently correct conclusion to make? No, but does it make sense as someone who’s a leader of a huge, dangerous underground criminal organization? Yes, it does.

We have no backstory on Mori, but his poor humanity is easy to explain when he’s been in positions that require him to disregard his own and everyone else’s humanity for years now. As someone who’s seen war up close and a physician, these jobs require him to take control of the other person. Well in his mind at least, he sees these jobs and chooses to the route that’s most efficient.

It’s never positioned to be for himself though, he doesn’t take glee in what he does for self serving purposes, it’s always for the country, the city, the organization. His thought process is never the power hungry yearning we see everyone mistake it for. It’s never that he wants it, it’s that he needs it for everything to go well.

That’s exactly how he treats Yosano because even though it’s creepy to base your abilities looks on a little girl, that doesn’t stop him from seeing her use before her age and humanity.

His clinical utilitarianism is his core trait but also most disliked one from what I can tell in the fandom, and people tend to misinterpret it to make the more non-favorable view of him. But again, he’s not supposed to be the greatest guy ever and you can understand where these traits started forming. And again, to paraphrase another’s words: he’s cunning, but not power hungry.

He’s also not disliked by his subordinates and actually respected, he respectively enjoys the company, but there’s a mixed answer to that and that it is… nobody is going to listen to you if you don’t treat them with decency. Why would you expect a tool to work if you break them? One of his earliest lessons he learned with Yosano and leadership.

(Dazai, Chuuya, Age Fifteen)

For example, we all know this scene is manipulation. He’s baiting Chuuya with information while still treating the teenager with respect and enough honesty to form a bond. Chuuya is perfectly aware that he’s being used in the present and in the past, but he respects Mori as a leader objectively after his own considered failure and lack of control over the sheep, even if he didn’t consider himself one. I don’t think this honesty comes from nowhere because that quote, “only a Diamond can polish a Diamond”, came from Natsume in reference to himself and Fukuzawa.

He sees himself and Fukuzawa in Soukoku fondly, but I tend to rethink this quote time to time because at first it comes off as a quote about partnership and building off of each other’s good qualities to perfect their own, but the way Mori uses it here feels as though it’s positioned to mean that one of them comes out perfected and the other weared down. Pretty competitive if you think about it.

(Bungou Stray Dogs BEAST)

We’re finally at the part you’ve been waiting for guys! So what was my point for analyzing canonverse Mori? So as I said before, these are the exact same guy and all that word jumble? That was an extended version of what was communicated with me to finally get what was going on with Mori in this universe and why he’s suddenly in an orphanage.

Now I couldn’t tell what was going through Beast Dazai’s mind and where this decision came from instead of actually killing him like the rumor’s implied, but I can come close. I think that Beast Dazai recognized this potential of change either from the multitude of universes he was able to witness or recognized it in his own considering canonverse Dazai never does anything against Mori (even if he visibly dislikes him).

Possibility is one thing, the why is another. It was either that he saw potential and good that could come out of this in the long run, Mori’s intelligence and expertise still proves usefulness, less dangerous for Oda in the long run if he let Mori stay there instead of the Mafia, or all three.

I can say for sure though that this is better for Mori because after the years of being in atmospheres that require so much of him intelligently and exempt of any emotion involved for the sake of efficiency, being able to rekindle his humanity where nothing is expected of him except to raise kids in a non-exploitative context sounds really freeing to me. Considering he’s been there for 4 years, I find the development understandable.

Okay I’m hearing what you guys are saying again, “What about him saying he wanted to save Dazai? That doesn’t seem like typical Mori.” And I’m gonna say something really controversial: Well maybe he did.

Really though, I think he did care about Dazai and not because he saw a child struggling (think about Yosano and Q for 3 seconds), but because he saw himself in Dazai, which ultimately changed way more about their relationship than you guys think. There’s a lot of comparisons to Yosano and I understand where they come from because I think there’s a lot you can see similarities in, but Dazai is not purely a tool for Mori the way she was.

The avoidance of letting him die do come from his use and overall importance to the original plan of becoming the new boss, but I don’t think he would’ve left Dazai alone like that for 4 whole years after leaving the mafia if he didn’t care in some way way. What strikes me the most is how Asagiri decided to add “the man who raised Dazai”.

For Beast Mori, I think he’s had enough time to actually feel guilt and regret for Dazai as a person like a normal human being does. Oh I guess Elise is important too. Her aging up just meant that Mori has become less controlling and not like the little girl who he literally sees as a tool since kids are easier to manipulate. Can’t bring that energy to an orphanage, nope!

There’s better stuff out there about Mori that I think if you’re more open to thinking about Mori after this, you should check it out, these are just my thoughts recently. To end this off, here are two links to Asagiri’s own thoughts on Mori.

#bsd #bsd analysis #(?) kind of #bsd meta #bungou stray dogs #mori ougai #bsd beast #bungou stray dogs beast #dazai osamu #bsd dazai chūya age fifteen #I’m not gonna pretend for two seconds that this guy is some misunderstood hero #but he’s less as bad as fanon portrays him #and don’t take my words as him saying he ALWAYS has everyone’s best interest #he just says he does #shit guys wait I just realized this is my first contribution??? to this fandom??? oh well

[mint-yooxgi]

{4} - Hotel California - Yandere!Demonic Entities!Ateez X Reader

Yandere AU & Demon AU - Based off of This ask and Hotel California by Eagles

Genre: Mature, Horror, Angst, Slight Humor

Pairing: Ateez X Reader (Focus on Seonghwa & Hongjoong this chapter)

Words: 11,370

Warnings: Talks of self-esteem and body issues. This is a Yandere story, it will contain themes such as stalking, violence, obsession, possessive natures, and just general overall creepiness and swearing. You have been warned.

A/n: Hehehe, here it is!! The next part!!! I really hope you guys have been looking forward to this as much as I have! I still have a lot planned, so stay tuned for more!! As always, feedback is greatly appreciated!! Enjoy~

Main Story - Part Two - Part Three

A full two weeks have passed since the day you decided to turn your life around while being held captive in this place. It certainly has been a change of pace, but you’re really starting to get used to things here. Especially now that you know of all the different places in the building that you can hang out in.

You had also managed to call your sister. It was on that same night that you had called your parents. After you had finished unpacking, of course. She gave you quite an earful for worrying your entire family, telling you not to give them a scare like that again. You, obviously, promised that you wouldn’t do such a thing to them again in the foreseeable future. Then, just like your father said, she teased you about running away with a mystery lover.

You had shook your head at that, frantically attempting to quiet her teasing and reassure her that that was most certainly not the case. She, like your mother, didn’t believe you, opting to send you a knowing look and a wink before her husband interrupted her to say hello. Needless to say, in the end, the both of them were at least glad to know you were okay.

That night, you had collapsed into bed, mentally exhausted from the day you had just had. You’re just glad you finally had your stuffed animals to hold onto when you fell asleep. It certainly made it much easier, and for once, you slept straight through the night. After so many restless bouts of tossing and turning over the past two weeks, you finally found comfort in something familiar.

Now, more often than not, you find yourself spending your days in the library. Sometimes, you’ll bring your laptop, your headphones already connected as you just watch videos to pass the time. Other times, you’ll bring a book, either browsing through the vast selection they’ve seemingly hand picked out for you, or pulling books off of your own shelf. You’ve already went through your entire collection of Demon Slayer manga again, rereading the series with a soft smile on your face.

Little did you notice the pouts on all of their faces at your choice in reading material. Each man couldn’t help but feel like that particular choice in manga was a pointed selection, given the situation you still find yourself in. Sure, both San and Mingi might have made progress with you that one day, and maybe even Yeosang and Jongho a little bit, but you still are guarded against them. 

At least those four you can now stand to be in the same room as, even going so far as to start conversations with them on your own. Hell, you’re even joking around with them at times! A fact of which drives the other four insane. 

Slowly, Wooyoung and Yunho have been attempting to make progress here and there, but they’re still nowhere near being any closer to you than they were before. 

The first time Wooyoung walked into the game room to see you already sitting on the couch playing Pokémon on the switch, your whole body tensed. Your thoughts were cautious, keeping a close eye on whatever it was that he chose to do. The fact that you seemed so uncomfortable with him sitting so much as on the opposite couch with his own switch in hand, had a pout pulling at his lips. 

Why couldn’t he make any progress, too? You seemed interested in his dancing when they showed you the studio. So, why haven’t you asked him to dance for you yet? He’s even been purposefully leaving the door open whenever he practices lately in hopes that maybe you’ll be walking by, and you’ll stop to stare. 

What he wouldn’t give to feel your eyes on him as he dances. There are so many songs, so many choreographies, that he wants to show you. Ones that he’s made for you, or with you in mind. All that there’s left to do is perform them for you, and then maybe you’ll understand his true feelings. After all, dance has always been his best form of self expression, and to be able to share that part of himself with you would be a dream come true.

Similarly, a certain artist desperately wanted you to come to him and ask him about his paintings. Even so much as a fleeting interest in flipping through his sketchbook by you, and he would be there in an instant, offering this part of his soul to the one he loves most. You already own it, anyways. Everything he was, everything he is, and everything that he is sure to be, belongs to you. 

Unfortunately for him, and despite what his brothers shared with him of that precious moment with you, you do not seem to want to be anywhere near him.

Really, it pains Yunho to no end. Based on your reactions to his work so far, even if you’ve only truly seen the one painting he made for you that’s currently hanging in your room, he thought you would have at least come to him to ask about it by now. You seemed so curious in San’s memory - so touched - that he was sure you would have knocked on the door to his studio to get him to show you his collection. Even still, your thoughts on the matter still warm his heart every time he recalls the shared memory. Finally, he had done something that made you speechless - that made you happy.

Speaking of your thoughts… Yunho, it seemed, you were constantly watching yourself around. He noticed you even started to develop a strategy of thinking about a giant black void around him to cover your thoughts. Unfortunately for him (and his brothers), this strategy seemed to be working. You didn’t do it often, but when you did, it was one of the worst things in their lives.

Now, whenever they would sense you thinking of this ‘eternal void’, as they so nicknamed it, your mind wouldn’t just go blank, but it would seemingly protect you from them attempting to invade your thoughts. It would be as if they were looking into the blackest lake, the water rippling beneath their subtle intrusions to attempt to know what you were thinking. It was frustrating.

The only upside about it would be that you still didn’t know how to fully master it, and you couldn’t think of it all of the time. However, they couldn’t help the pride that would fill their chests at the thought of you figuring out a way to outsmart them like this. Sure, some of your overtly loud thoughts would still make it through, and if they expended a little more effort than simply brushing their minds against yours, they could still invade your thoughts. However, they digress. How much more perfect for them could you be?

As for you being around Hongjoong and Seonghwa… well, they were a completely different story.

Yes, you were still tense as all fuck around the both of them, but ever since you were shown the library, they could all sense a shift in you. Towards all of them.

No longer do you pointedly ignore any of them, but Hongjoong can just tell that you’re avoiding him as much as you can. You don’t quite know how, or what, to feel about him, but he knows you’re fighting yourself against every good thought you have.

All he wants to do is make you happy, but you seem to have such a difficult time accepting him and letting him do such a thing. He just hopes his next surprise for you goes better than the last, especially where he is involved.

At least he’s not the only one wallowing in their own misery when it comes to you.

You still avoid Seonghwa’s tailor shop to no end, making him frustrated that you can’t even pass by the place on your own yet. Each time he would overhear your thoughts getting closer, he would perk up, hopeful that maybe, just maybe, this time, you were coming to see him. Yet, every time, without fail, he would be disappointed. You would rather take the long way around to the library, or pass through the courtyard by the pool, than so much as walk past his shop.

It doesn’t help the fact that when both Mingi and San had shared their memories of that day exactly two weeks ago, you again had refused to so much as look in the shop’s direction. That had nearly crushed his heart, and the worst part is, he has no one but himself to blame.

One of the happiest memories of his life in centuries and he can’t even share in that joy with you. No, you’d opt to think of it as - well, Seonghwa isn’t quite sure what to make of your jumbled emotions every time he catches you thinking about that incident that occurred within those four walls of his shop, but he knows one thing. Despite your best efforts, you do still think about it. About him. About the feeling of his hands on your waist and his lips on your skin. A fact of which could not make him happier.

Now, as he makes his way towards his shop in the morning after those transitionary two weeks have passed, he finds a bitter feeling sitting in the centre of his chest. Just last night you were smiling and laughing with Jongho in the library, discussing some book the two of you had both read. Seonghwa could not deny the growl that had built in his chest at seeing the two of you so close, both physically and emotionally. 

That should be him. He’s the eldest. He’s the one you should be smiling at - the one you should be laughing with first. Seonghwa just wants you so badly, that he can hardly stand it. If only you could see that.

At least torturing that pathetic excuse of a human two weeks ago was fun. Oh, how enjoyable it was to hear the bastards’ screams, his pleas for mercy as they cut into him, only to piece him right back together so that they could start all over again until they were sated. 

Truly, he has to hand it to his brothers. Seonghwa doesn’t think they’ve been that creative with their torturing in a while. He doesn’t think he’s ever seen Hongjoong that vengeful before in his entire life. Hell, he doesn’t think he’s ever been consumed by that amount of rage in all of his long years of living. Even Jongho and Yeosang, the calmest of the bunch, were near insatiable in their fury.

Shaking his head, a smirk tugs at Seonghwa’s lips. At least he doesn’t have to wonder any longer about what they should do - about what they would do - if someone ever wronged you.

Hell hath no fury like eight demonic lovers on a warpath to protect the one they love most. Or, well, six in this particular instance. Even so, Seonghwa knows that both San and Mingi were there in spirit with them each step, or rather, each cut of the way.

A low chuckle escapes his lips as he rounds the corner, shaking his head in the process. He shouldn’t be thinking about this right now. He has more important things that should be filling his mind, like what you’re up to on this particular morning. Besides, he’d much rather listen to your thoughts. They’re far more entertaining, anyways.

It’s instantaneous. The second his mind reaches out to yours, he’s freezing in his tracks just outside of his shop as his eyes behold the sight before him through the glass panel of the door.

Seonghwa blinks. There’s no way you’re sitting there, in his chair, behind his work counter, in his shop right now. 

It has to be a dream. You are most certainly not holding what looks to be a torn sweater in your hands, and you most certainly are not silently cursing under your breath as you begin to stitch the fabric back together at the seams.

His breathing deepens, overcome by the sight before him. Truly, the feeling is indescribable - nothing but unfiltered joy coursing through his veins at the thought that you’re here, in his space, doing something that he loves.

A silence settles back around you as you relax into the stitch, the movements flowing smoother together the longer you sit there with your needle and thread. What’s truly remarkable, is the way there seems to be a faint glow surrounding you the longer you work at the one sleeve of the sweater. Almost as if there’s another presence standing behind you.

You, on the other hand, are none-the-wiser to the watchful gaze of a certain demonic presence as you sit there. You can just hear your mother’s voice echoing through your head as you fall into the natural rhythm of sewing your sweater back up, telling you how you’ve got your grandmother’s touch.

Sure enough, once Seonghwa focusses his eyes on the area just beside the right of your head, he sees a presence standing behind you with a hand resting on your shoulder. The lady is a bit short in stature, but he’d bet anything that this is your grandmother’s spirit manifesting around you right now, watching over you as you share in this moment.

As if the figure has heard his own thoughts on the matter, your grandmother’s head snaps up, looking him directly in the eyes. Her gaze narrows ever so slightly, as if attempting to recognize him, before smiling softly with the gentlest of nods in acknowledgement in his direction. Then, as if blessing him with her approval, she disappears.

Seonghwa’s whole body shakes as he attempts to control his breathing. Not only did you come to seek him out, and are currently sitting in his own personalized space, but he just got what seems to be your grandmother’s approval. Even she can tell that he has no ill intentions towards you, and that he’ll keep you safe - make you feel loved in every and any way he can. Like hell is he going to let that feeling go to waste.

Cautiously, he enters his shop, not wanting to scare you but also needing you to know that he’s here. He’s tired of playing this little game of cat and mouse you seem to have going on. You’re here now, and that’s all that matters.

As soon as you hear the little jingle of the bell above the shop entrance, your head is flinging upwards. Your wide-eyed gaze meets Seonghwa’s own, his lips quirked upwards softly in the corners. 

Immediately, you freeze.

“Uh-“ too many thoughts begin to flit through your mind all at once.

Should you apologize for invading his space? The door was left open. Should you explain what you’re doing here? Well, it’s pretty obvious with the torn sweater, needle and thread held in your hands. Should you go back to what you were doing and hope he ignores your presence? You know that with him, that won’t be possible. Should you leave? Yeah, maybe you should. You’ve gotten what you’ve came for, anyways. You can always finish mending your hoodie in your room.

At least you don’t seem to be thinking of that damned void right now, for your thoughts echo shamelessly through his head. And he wouldn’t want it any other way.

“I don’t know if I should be surprised or offended that you didn’t ask me to mend your sweater,” there’s a teasing lilt to his voice as he approaches you, crossing the room in a few strides as he comes to stand before you.

“I am perfectly capable of doing it myself,” you retort, shooting him a pointed look as he leans against the counter beside you.

“Then by all means,” he grins, eyes shining as he watches you fondly, “don’t let me interrupt.”

Your spine straightens, and you can just feel his gaze on you tracking your every movement. You’ve never liked it when people payed too much attention to you while you worked, and having his eyes on you now, it makes you so nervous. Still, with pursed lips, you attempt to continue.

It takes only a minute for you to be heaving a sigh, seemingly deciding against your better judgment for the moment regarding what you’re about to do. Averting your gaze so sweetly, you hold the material of the torn sweater out to him without a word. He is a tailor, after all.

The smile that breaks out onto Seonghwa’s face is unlike any he has worn in a long time. The vibrance of it alone nearly lights up the entire room as he gently takes the material from your outstretched hand, pulling up a stool to sit beside you in the next second before starting to mend your sweater.

Seeing as he immediately begins to work, you go to stand. You figure since he’s stitching your sweater, you no longer have to stay. Besides, he probably wants his chair back. Only, before you can so much as take a step towards the door, his hand is shooting out to grasp your wrist gently.

You turn to look at him, and the way he’s staring at you - eyes wide and practically begging - has your heart racing in your chest.

“Please,” his voice is soft as the plea falls from his lips, “stay.”

You hold his gaze for a brief moment as you hesitate on what to do. Then, against your better judgement for the second time in the past five minutes, you surprise both him and yourself as you slowly sink back into your seat.

“Do you at least want your chair back?” You ask, eyes following the way he releases his hold on your wrist so carefully before retracting his hand.

“Not at all.” He shakes his head. “I’m just happy you’re here.”

You give him a small smile in response, and even though it’s forced, he cannot help the way his heart races in his chest.

“What happened, anyways?” He quirks a brow, eyes briefly darting to the torn sweater in his hands as he continues to stitch the fabric right where you left off. “Why bring it with you if it’s this torn?”

“Well,” you let out a puff of air through your nose, “believe it or not it was fully intact when I packed it.”

He frowns, not quite following along. That is, until your memory of both San and Mingi literally tearing apart your favourite sweater right before your very eyes flashes through his mind. He pauses only for a brief moment as he gets caught up in the memory before continuing once more.

“Remind me not to ask two of you to do something for me at the same time again,” you huff out a laugh, leaning back into the chair as you cross your arms over your chest, crossing your legs at the same time.

“Ah, I see,” he nods, eyebrows raising in faint amusement. “Those two failed to mention that in their daily recap that day.”

“Daily recap?” You quirk a brow, voice a bit skeptical.

“Mingi and San simply filled us in on what we missed when we were gone for the day,” Seonghwa explains, humming to himself in the next moment as he finishes off the one sleeve, moving on to the next in an instant. “Well, not everything apparently.”

“Is that a common occurrence?” Your eyes, which have been staring at your slipper clad feet, dart briefly over to him. “Sharing your memories with each other.”

So, this is what your meek curiosity feels like floating through your mind. Seonghwa has to stop himself from humming contently at the revelation.

“Yes, and no,” he answers truthfully. “Some moments are meant just for us, while others we can and do share with one another.”

For a fleeting moment, the incident with the dress the first time you were here flits through your mind.

“Yes, like that one,” he comments, not even shifting his gaze from the task he’s currently working on. From the looks of things, he’s almost done.

“I take it they weren’t supposed to find out about that one,” you say, shifting slightly in your seat as you recall the way the other seven reacted the first time they learnt of the memory.

“At least not for a little while,” he hums, before shifting his eyes to meet your own, nothing but sincerity shining within. “That one I wanted to have a little more time to cherish for myself.”

A heat rises to your cheeks, once more averting your gaze as you recall the exact memory he’s referring to. A memory which you still aren’t too sure how to feel about for the moment. Yet still, at seeing the way you become so shy in front of him, because of him, Seonghwa cannot contain the way his lips pull up in a smirk.

You can’t help it, but your gaze drifts to his hands as he finalizes the last few stitches in the seam. The way his nimble fingers stretch and pull the fabric, the thread being tied off in the next moment has you swallowing the dryness in your throat. Again, you’re reminded of what his fingers felt like on your body.

“That’s not all they’re good for,” his eyes are dark, hooded as he watches you from merely three feet away, that same damn smirk pulling at his lips.

Your breath hitches in your throat, mind going to exactly where he’s insinuating. A fact which only makes a pleased growl rumble within his chest as your thoughts of his fingers on your bare skin, stretching you open so delicately as he buries them in your tight, wet cunt, reach his mind.

Now, if only he could make all of your fantasies come to life. You really only need to ask, and Seonghwa is ready and willing to do anything for you. Everything you could ever imagine would be brought to life, and the fact that he would be the one making all of your dreams come true would bring him a pleasure unlike any other.

Instead, what he receive in response in you reaching over to smack his arm, your entire face heating as you attempt to calm yourself down and clear your mind.

“Pervert.” You mutter, the prettiest of pouts tugging at your lips.

Lips which he longs to feel pressed against his own.

He chuckles, rubbing over the spot you’ve just slapped him in tenderly with his hand. Only, he cannot help but focus in on a certain, singular emotion that’s flowing through your mind right now. An emotion that leaves him absolutely confused for the moment, wanting to understand more about why you’re feeling this way.

“Should I add that to the list of reasons as to why I call you Handsy?” Your voice manages to draw his attention to you once more.

This time, it’s his turn to pout. “I really wish you wouldn’t.”

“I guess we can’t always get what we wish for,” you sigh, almost wistfully.

A small silence settles over the both of you, as he smiles. Finally, he seems to be making progress with you again. At least you’re talking to him, even if it’s a little rocky to start. Still, that emotion from only moments before swirls through your mind, and Seonghwa finds his brow furrowing, expression falling as you begin to overthink.

You stare at your hands, thoughts drifting through your head. You cannot help but to recall the dress incident again, and how you felt while it happened. Even now, with this newest memory, you close in on yourself, allowing your whole demeanour to shift in an instant.

If Seonghwa didn’t know any better, he’d say that you look and feel sad.

Then, before your brain has a chance to catch up to your mouth, you’re speaking.

“Do you want to know why I reacted the way I did when that happened?” Your voice is small, as if scared of the words coming from your own mouth. Of what admitting them out loud might mean.

Immediately, concern washes over his features as he shifts closer to you. Your sweater is placed onto the counter with the utmost care, momentarily forgotten by you as your thoughts consume you. He reaches for you, but at the way you stiffen, pulling yourself the slightest bit away, he freezes. No matter how badly he wants to wrap you into his arms right now, perhaps it’s not quite the best idea. After all, he’s still on pretty thin ice.

“You caught me off-guard, for starters,” you lean forwards, curling in on yourself more as you rest your elbows on your knees. Still, you refuse to meet his gaze, staring at your hands which begin interweaving your fingers together anxiously. “You surprised me,” you notice him swallow out of the corner of your eyes, his Adam’s apple bobbing with the movement, “but not in the way you might think.”

Seonghwa does his best to maintain his breathing at a steady pace. Your mind is all over the place, and he can’t exactly pinpoint where this is going, but given your track record, he can’t help but think the worst. Even so, he won’t let go of you so easily. No matter what you say, he won’t ever stop trying.

“At first, I was worried,” you admit. “I didn’t know who you were, or what you were doing. Especially not what you could be capable of.” The briefest of flashes of that same fear that had them recoiling in the foyer two weeks ago has him flinching yet again now. “I know better now, and I don’t know if that made it worse or better but…”

You trail off, your gaze focused so intently on your hands. He holds his breath.

“It doesn’t change the fact that I-“ you swallow, wetting your lips with your tongue, “I enjoyed it.”

Your admission knocks the wind right out of him.

“For what felt like the first time in my life, I felt like I was finally someone’s first choice. Finally, someone wanted me; I felt seen. No one has ever looked at me with such…” you search for the right word, gaze flitting everywhere in the room but at him, “passion in their eyes before. Such longing. I’ve never had someone touch me like that - caress me as a lover would,” you confess, whole body heating as you think about what admitting this out loud means. Not just to yourself, but to him, “and I wanted to revel in it."

“I was confused, and I still am. I didn’t, and I still don’t, know how to exactly feel about it. You have to understand. I am not used to being desired, especially not in the ways that you all want me. I found it hard to believe - still do - that any of you could want me. You’re all demons, for crying out loud! I’m only human. I’m just-” you take a shaky breath in, shoulders seemingly deflating as your expression drops, “I’m just me.”

All he can hear of your thoughts now is you berating yourself, telling yourself that you’re not good enough. You don’t want to believe that you are worthy of all of this, and that is what terrifies you. To accept their proposition, their love, would mean accepting yourself, and you don’t have the strongest relationship with her right now.

“But why?” Seonghwa’s voice is soft, expression filled with a type of sorrow you don’t quite understand. “Why would you think that?”

“Well,” you almost let out a humourless laugh as you lean back in the chair, motioning to your entire body as you do so, “look at me.”

And so he does, his eyes trailing over your figure softly. There’s a certain spark in his gaze that you still don’t quite understand, and when he trails it back up to meet your own, you nearly let out a sigh at the confusion you still see tugging at his features.

“It’s because I’m not-“ the words catch in your throat as you avert your gaze once more, voice barely above a whisper as you speak the words you’ve always believed to be the truth about yourself, “I’m not beautiful.”

Seonghwa can only sit there, stunned for the moment at the confession that has just fallen from your lips. He blinks.

All of those times his brothers and himself caught you staring at your reflection in the mirror, trailing your blank gaze over your body, was in disgust? You weren’t admiring yourself like they always did? Like they always thought you were doing? Instead, you were scrutinizing every little detail of your body? A body of which would make them fall to their knees in seconds, ready and eager to please you at a moment’s notice. A body of which they absolutely adore.

For all of their powers, they couldn’t read your thoughts through the glass. Sure, they could influence your decisions if they tried hard enough, but with that barrier there, they could never truly be sure of what you were thinking. It pains his heart now to know what you truly think of yourself. Of what you believe to be true.

“That is the filthiest lie that has ever fallen from your lips and you know it.”

You’re taken aback by the sudden harshness of his tone as he frowns, and you find yourself averting your gaze once more. Regret instantly washes over you for what you’ve just done. For what you’ve just admitted.

“Please, do not be ashamed of sharing this part of yourself with me.” Immediately, his gaze is softening. “You could never disgust me, or scare me away. Or any of us for that matter.”

You cannot deny the way your eyes widen, even if only slightly, at his words, tears beginning to line the corners.

Carefully, he stands from his seat. Then, as if he were holding the most delicate piece of glass in his hands, he reaches over to guide your gaze back to his as his fingers come to rest beneath your chin.

“I meant every word I said to you that day. We all did,” he stares deeply into your eyes as he leans into you, making sure to not crowd you, but letting you know how serious he is about the words that are coming out of his mouth. “And I would do it all over - say it all again - in a heartbeat.”

You blink, the first of your tears escaping and trailing down your cheek. He wipes them away gently with the thumb of his opposite hand, moving to caress the side of your face in the next moment while still supporting your chin with the other.

“We would do anything for you. We only want to cherish you, to protect you, to make all of your dreams come true. We want to take care of you, to be there for you in your darkest times, and share with you in the light. We just want to make you happy. To hold you, to please you, to worship you is all that we truly desire. Please, do not doubt that. You are the only one that we will ever want. You are the only one that we will ever need.” His voice is firm, never faltering for one moment as he stares deeply into your eyes, nothing but sincerity shining behind his own as he leans in closer. 

“We are so in love with you, it hurts. It pains me to hear you say these things about yourself, to know you think these things to be true. They are not. They never have been, nor will they ever be.” He cups your face in both of his hands, caressing your cheeks so tenderly as he holds you delicately in his palms. “You are so unbelievably beautiful. You seriously have no idea the effect - the hold - you have on us. Your existence is the best thing that has happened to this world, and for the first time in centuries you make us feel alive.”

His confession has a soft gasp escaping you, breath hitching in your throat as your lips part ever so slightly. The raw honesty of his words is reflected in how rough his voice has become as he continues to speak.

“There are not enough words in all of the tongues of the universe to describe your beauty, or what you mean to us. To me.” His thumb brushes against the skin of your cheek once more as he slowly begins to lean in closer with every word. “You are gorgeous. You are stunning. You are sinful in the most delectable of ways.”

You can practically hear your heartbeat ringing in your ears as you watch his eyes dart down to your lips.

“More than all of that, though,” he breathes, tongue darting out to wet his own as he swallows thickly, “you are,” his eyes begin to swirl with that all too familiar blackness as he comes to rest his forehead against your own, “My Divine.”

Once again, your breath hitches in your throat, and you cannot tell who is shaking more: you or him. With every exhale he makes, you can tell that he’s doing his best to control himself right now. Being this close to you, in this position, given what he’s just confessed, is scraping away at the very last bits of sanity that he has in this moment.

Your heart thunders away in you chest, your breaths mingling as you can practically feel the warmth of his lips ghosting against your own.

“Please-” the word is but a strained plea from his lips. “Please, can I kiss you?”

The question makes your heart flutter, your mouth parting with an answer before your brain can even catch up. However, before your response can even so much as escape your lips, the sound of the bell chiming above the shop door alerts you to another presence having just entered the room.

“Seonghwa,” Hongjoong’s dark eyes narrow as he fully takes in the scene before him. “What are you doing?”

The eldest closes his eyes, exhaling a deep sigh as he reluctantly pulls himself away from you for the time being.

“Well, we were sharing a moment, brother,” Seonghwa’s eyes flash as he turns to face the younger, noticing a letter clutched in Hongjoong’s hand despite his arms being crossed over his chest. “I was simply mending our beloved’s sweater.”

Hongjoong’s eyebrows twitch, clearly unamused. “I’m sure that that’s exactly what you were doing.”

Jealousy flares beneath his skin as Hongjoong continues to glare at Seonghwa. He’s been waiting in the hallway just outside of the shop for much longer than either of you two realize, concealing his presence as he listened in to your conversation. Of course, he agreed with every word Seonghwa spoke to you, and it pains him to no end that you would think of yourself like that. 

However, there’s also a part of Hongjoong that despises the fact that it was Seonghwa of all people that you confided in with this first. Really, he should have made his presence known sooner. Maybe then he would have been able to comfort you along with his brother, instead of simply eavesdropping. How you even got on this certain topic of conversation eludes him, but the fact that you shared these insecurities with Seonghwa, the man who has made it painstakingly obvious that he cannot control himself around you, irritates Hongjoong like nothing else.

That should have been him.

As soon as he heard his brother even think the question, he knew he had to intervene. 

In his own, sick, twisted way, Hongjoong wants all of your firsts. He craves them just as he craves you. He wanted to be the first one to touch you, and technically, he was. He will never forget the way his fingers tingled with electricity when he brushed them against yours when he handed you that fake keycard. However, Seonghwa truly beat him to it, his touch having graced your body in ways Hongjoong has only ever dreamed of. 

The thought of somebody else’s hands all over you, even if that someone is his own brother, makes him sick. A rage begins to burn within his core that needs to be sated in any way he can. Like hell is he going to let Seonghwa have your first kiss with one of them, too. That should be him.

You cannot dictate between us who can and cannot have her, brother, Seonghwa’s voice echoes through his head. Only she gets to decide that.

I know. To say Hongjoong is frustrated would be an understatement.

Stop treating everything like a competition. Seonghwa retorts, crossing his arms in front of his chest.

Then, why does it always feel like I’m in last place? Hongjoong snaps, eyes tinging with that all too familiar blackness.

She’s not an object. Seonghwa nearly growls.

Believe me, I know that. Hongjoong has to suppress the roll of his eyes. It’s you who needs to stop treating her like one. Always placing your hands on her like you own her.

Don’t give me that crap, I know you would do exactly the same as me in a heartbeat if given the chance. Seonghwa’s own eyes tint black, his lips tightening into a thin line as a growl builds in his chest to mirror Hongjoong’s own.

Knock it off. The both of you. Yunho’s firm voice cuts through the silent tension in the room like a knife. The last thing we need is you two shitheads fucking things up when some of us have finally started making progress again.

He started it, Seonghwa grumbles.

And I’m ending it! Yunho replies, clearly exasperated. They can just tell he’s rolling his eyes at them right now. Lucifer below!

You know, this is something we’re all going to have to get used to if our relationships with her continue to progress. Jongho chimes in, a teasing lilt to his voice.

Of course Jongho would be the one to say that. They all know he’s the closest to you for the moment. A fact in which makes them all scowl.

Oh, can it, happy. Wooyoung huffs.

You, on the other hand, had zoned out for a moment there, getting caught up in your thoughts about what just occurred. Focussing in back on the room in front of you, you see the two males continuing to glare at one another. Neither move from their spots as a mental battle seems to be taking place right before your very eyes.

You swallow, wiping at your lingering tears with the back of your hand. A fact of which that seems to draw Hongjoong’s attention to you for the briefest of moments. Then, his gaze is softening immediately. “Are you okay?”

“Yeah,” you blink, nodding a few times, “yeah, I’m fine.”

Really, you don’t want to talk about what just happened for the moment.

As if to collect his own thoughts, Hongjoong releases the tension in his shoulders, dropping his crossed arms as he turns to look at Seonghwa once more.

“The council has been summoned,” he says, their disagreement being momentarily forgotten about.

While you are confused by Hongjoong’s words, Seonghwa simply heaves another large sigh.

“What do they want us to decide on this time?” He’s irritated, in more ways than one.

You, on the other hand, take this as your cue to leave despite the curiosity lingering in the back of your mind. Honestly, you’re still reeling from what’s just occurred between you and the eldest here in his tailor shop. Again. 

Taking a deep breath as you stand, you’re quick to reach over and grab your sweater off of the counter. You spare Seonghwa a brief glance, lifting your hoodie in acknowledgment, “thanks again.”

He smiles, eye crinkling at the sides, “of course.”

With an almost shy smile of your own painting your lips, you’re quick to scurry past the both of them and out of the shop. You really don’t want to linger there any longer, for you have to sort out your own emotions for the time being. A lot has just happened in the span of twenty minutes, and you need to settle your mind.

Making it back to your room, you hang your newly fixed sweater in your closet, a smile tugging at your features as you feel the material between your fingers. That, overall, went much better than you had expected, especially after Seonghwa had showed up. Perhaps he isn’t so bad after all. At least now he understands your feelings on the matter.

Your expression drops, panic painting your features as you realize something.

It would take Seonghwa nothing at all to share your vulnerability with the others in their ‘daily recap’ as he so put it. You don’t know if you’re ready for that, but then again, would it really be so bad? They’ve given you no reason not to trust them so far, other than the whole kidnapping thing, but a month in and it’s not like you’re really being held prisoner here. They’ve proved to you time and time again that they’ve created this place with your best interest in mind. The library alone speaks for itself.

Maybe it wouldn’t be such a bad idea if he shared that particular memory with them. At least then it would save you from reliving those fears, those insecurities, every time you told one of them. Or maybe, just maybe, you could do it yourself.

Perhaps, you’re actually starting to trust them after all.

Walking back out of your closet, you cannot help but to think back to the moment you’ve just shared with the eldest not even ten minutes ago. Were you seriously just about to let him kiss you? Some sweet words with his eyes shining in sincerity, and you were ready for your walls to come crumbling down?

You nearly scoff to yourself. It shouldn’t be this easy to get you to crack. You shake your head, banishing the thoughts without so much as another glance in their direction. Time to take your mind off of things for a while, and you know exactly how you’re going to do just that.

The library has become sort of like your own sanctuary, and you find solace within its walls. So, grabbing your book off of your nightstand, you begin to make the trek to that all too familiar place. Only, this time, instead of taking the long way around, your opt to pass right by Seonghwa’s tailor shop. 

Not a sound is made, nor even an acknowledgment towards the shop as you walk by, but at least you no longer feel the need to avoid it at any cost. There is no tenseness to your steps, nor in your shoulders as you hold your book in your hands, keeping your head held high as you walk passed.

What you fail to see, however, is the way two particular men watch as you pass by. Seonghwa wears a small smile, feeling as if a weight has been lifted off of his own shoulders as his gaze trails after you down the hallway. Hongjoong, on the other hand, frowns, lips tugging downwards in a slight pout as his eyes follow your every move.

Making it to the library, you’re quick to enter. You’ve already found a favourite spot: by the large windows right across from your own collection. The seats are plush, and the space is comfortable. You could not have asked for a better area to call your own. (A fact which has smiles pulling on all of their faces as they hear you think such a thing each and every time you sit in the library.)

Settling down on the couch, you tuck your feet beneath you as you fall into the pillows. Opening your book, you begin to read.

For the next hour, you manage to escape into the pages of your book, perfectly content to lose yourself in the writing of this particular author. In fact, you manage to relax so much that your eyes start to droop.

It’s only happened a few times, but you have fallen asleep in the library before. How can you not? It’s comfortable, warm, cozy, and you feel safe. So, when your eyelids flutter shut, you don’t fight it, letting the exhaustion you feel wrap itself around you like a blanket and pull you in to that all too familiar comforting darkness.

An hour and a half later and you feel yourself regaining consciousness. Slowly, you begin to shift, feeling your neck twinge slightly at the position you had fallen asleep in. Rubbing at your eyes, you hear a chuckle sound from across from you.

Immediately, your gaze is locking on the figure before you, seeing Hongjoong leant back with his legs crossed in the chair opposite the couch. A book rests open in his one hand, elbow placed on the arm of the chair as he reads, his attention appearing not even on you for the moment.

“Sleep well?” There’s a teasing quirk to the corner of his lips as you crack your neck quite loudly.

“How long have you been there?” You yawn, blinking a few times to further clear your vision.

“Oh,” he hums, nonchalantly, as he turns a page in his book, “about half an hour.”

“You’ve been watching me sleep for half an hour?” You tilt your head at him in disbelief, your one brow quirked.

“Well, I came to speak with you,” he says, marking the page in his book before softly closing it and resting it on the arm of his seat, “but you were sleeping. I figured it best not to disturb you, and to let you rest.”

“You dodged the question.” You deadpan.

“You still haven’t answered mine.” Hongjoong smiles softly in response.

A small silence settles over the both of you as you meet his gaze. You blink a few times before exhaling a sigh through your nose.

“I nap in places I feel most comfortable in,” you admit. “So, yes, I did sleep well.”

Your confession warms his heart more than you’ll ever know.

“I’m glad,” his smile widens, eyes crinkling at the sides as he watches you.

Still creepy you were watching me sleep, though.

Your thoughts have a laugh escaping him, “you know, I’m not the only one that enjoys watching you sleep.”

Immediately, you freeze, eyes going wide as you halt your movements of flipping through your book to find the page you were on to mark it.

“Like I said,” you mutter, shaking your head as you find the page, “creepy.”

Great, now you have to worry about them sneaking into your room at night to watch you sleep. So much for privacy.

“Do you really think we would do that to you?” Hongjoong asks, a huff of disbelief escaping him. “We respect your privacy enough not to do that since that night a month ago.”

“But you have done it before then.” You frown, clinging to the book in your lap for support.

“I believe Yeosang and Jongho explained the whole glass situation, no?” Hongjoong hums, quirking a brow expectantly at you. “Besides, I’m not the worst culprit for this.”

If you didn’t know any better, you’d say that there was a pout tugging at his lips as he crosses his arms over his chest and leans further back into his chair.

“Then who-“

“There are many reasons why Jongho always finds you in the library,” he cuts you off. “Some are at times when you don’t even know he’s here.”

“Are you telling me that he’s come in to watch me nap, left, then returned right afterwards once I’ve woken up to spend time with me?” You nearly laugh at the thought.

“That’s exactly what I’m telling you,” Hongjoong smirks, meeting your incredulous gaze. “He’s not as innocent as he seems.”

“I still like him better,” you grumble under your breath, and you can see Hongjoong stiffen out of the corner of your eyes.

A growl forms at his lips, wanting desperately to escape as he hears the words you’ve left unspoken echo through your mind.

Than you.

You still like Jongho better than him. A fact which makes his blood boil, a scowl pulling at his features. Yet, for all of his anger, Hongjoong cannot help but feel disappointed. In himself. In the situation. Why can’t you like him? Can’t you see that he’s trying? What can he do to prove to you that he’s really not as bad as you think he is? 

An overwhelming sadness washes over him, suffocating his heart in its hold as he glares at the antique coffee table in between the two of you.

“You said you wanted to speak with me?” Your voice, somewhat timid, yet curious at the same time, pulls him out of his thoughts.

“I do,” he hums, glad for the change in subject, but also glad that you don’t seem to want to run away from him for the time being like you usually do. “I’m sure you recall me mentioning a certain council earlier.”

You nod, you eyes gleaming in recognition as you angle yourself towards him. He nearly hums in content from that fact alone.

“The eight of us are the heads of the realm, the leaders, if you will.” He explains. “Sometimes we need to attend certain events because of formality, and other times we get summoned to meetings or to settle disputes.”

“Geez,” you huff out a breath, “just how powerful and important are you guys?”

There’s an air of playfulness to your words that makes him grin, even if the lingering uncertainty in your mind boarders on fear.

“The council has been summoned to take place a week from today.” He says. “It’s one of those ones that we can’t miss, or decline the invitation to.”

“Makes sense, if you guys really are the leaders or whatever,” you nod, still attempting to wrap your head around what you’ve just been told. Then, a thought crosses you mind which has you mortified. “You’re not expecting me to meet the entire council, are you?”

“At some point, yes.” Hongjoong replies honestly. “We would like to someday introduce you to them as our Queen. Our equal.”

You cannot stop the way your breath catches in your throat at his words, your back straightening as you sit there with wide eyes.

“But we know we’re not there, yet.” He continues, somewhat sadly. “Nor are you ready for that.”

Unknowingly, you breathe a sigh of relief. In the back of your mind, you begin to wonder where this is all going.

“I’m getting there,” Hongjoong sighs, sitting forward to rest his elbows on his knees. “Because of these,” he pauses, searching for the right word, “unfortunate circumstances, we’ll have to leave the house for a little while. Which means that you’ll be by yourself from anywhere between an hour and a half or longer.”

Your mouth parts in shock, pure excitement coursing through your veins. “Really?”

“Don’t sound so excited.” He grumbles, a slight pout to his lips.

“Wait. You’re not fucking with me right now, are you?” You narrow your eyes at him accusingly. “Because if you are, this isn’t funny.”

“I would never joke about something as serious as this, My Love.” His voice holds nothing but sincerity as he meets your gaze. “Especially not to you.”

The brilliant smile that stretches across your lips can no longer be contained, a giggle escaping your lips in the next moment from how giddy you feel. The mere thought of being left alone with, well, your own thoughts for even just an hour is the best thing you’ve heard in a month. Finally, you have something to look forward to.

Although the context is not preferable to him, Hongjoong still cannot deny the way your excitement surrounds him, flooding his veins and making his lips quirk upwards slightly. Now, he finally understands the same feeling of happiness that his brother’s have felt when doing something that makes you smile. For the first time since you’ve gotten here, Hongjoong can finally say that he was the one and only cause of your pure and utter happiness.

He just wishes you were a little more upset by the fact that they’d be leaving you alone for a short period of time. Still, he cannot deny the way his heart positively fluttered when you giggled. A sound of which he hopes to hear more of, and soon at that.

“Is that all you wanted to talk to me about?” You physically have to prevent your hands from shaking in anticipation, holding on tightly to your book for dear life.

“Well, yes and no,” he replies, standing to his feet. “I also wanted to show you something.”

Carefully, he extends his hand out to you in offering, eyes shining as he looks at you. Your own gaze darts to his hand, curiosity pulling you onto your feet as you place your book onto the coffee table before you. Your entire body is still humming with adrenaline, mind reeling at the fact that you’ll finally have some time to yourself after so long with having them invade your mind and listen to your every thought. You still, unfortunately, haven’t mastered that void, yet.

Crossing your arms in front of your chest, you nod, “lead the way.”

Exhaling a sigh through his nose, Hongjoong drops his hand. At least you didn’t deny his entire offer.

With each step he takes towards the newly formed doors on the opposite end of the library, he cannot deny the way anticipation tugs at his own mind. His heart begins to pound in his chest as his nerves start to get the better of him. What if you don’t like it? He worked really hard on getting everything perfect, just like the library, and even though you love that, you might not exactly love this.

Reaching the doors, Hongjoong throws one last tentative glance over his shoulder at you. The corner of his lips twitch upwards as he sees your brow furrowed in confusion, mind racing with the thought of never having seen these doors before in the library.

Slowly, and with the utmost care, he opens the doors.

A gasp escapes your lips almost immediately at the sight that greets you on the other side. Your hands come up to cover your mouth, eyes shining as your heart races inside your chest.

Before you rests the most beautiful garden you have ever seen in your life, flowers of all types lining the cobblestone path leading to a sparkling fountain right in the centre. You can already smell the aroma coming from outside drifting into the library, even as you take a step forward to take everything in.

“Did you do this?” Your voice is soft, full of the same awe that he sees reflected in your eyes. “For me?”

“The guys all helped, but it was my design.” He admits, smiling softly as he give a slight nod. “You said that you wanted a garden, and we- I am more than happy to provide.”

“I wasn’t being serious,” you reply, taking your first steps out into the open space. “I wasn’t expecting this.”

Hongjoong makes sure to follow close behind, clasping his hands behind his back a little bashfully.

“Sure, you may not have been,” he hums, “but we want you to know how serious we are. I want you to know how serious I am about you. We- I would do anything for you. You need only ask.”

“I can’t believe it,” you whisper, reaching the fountain and turning your head to see a few benches tucked away on either side, covered gently by foliage to provide some protection from the sun or from rain. There even seems to be a greenhouse a little ways ahead.

Every step you take, every move you make through the garden, Hongjoong watches. That same soft smile never leaves his face as he hears all your thoughts projecting the awe you feel right now. From what he can gather, this is almost the exact same type of emotion you felt when you first saw the library. A fact that could not make him prouder than he is in this very moment, or any more in love with you than he already is.

Slowly, you make you way around the open space of the garden, taking in every minuscule detail. Each flower is in full bloom, delicately picked to compliment the ones beside it, the colours reflecting beautifully in the light. Everywhere you look, your favourite flowers stare back at you. Roses, peonies, forget-me-nots, lilies: none are left out in this stunning symphony of life as you take it all in.

Suddenly, you are once again overcome by the fact that this has all been done for you.

“This is…” you trail off, reaching out to grasp a peony in your hand, brushing your thumb over its soft petals as you take in its scent. 

“This is…” you swallow, seemingly choked up by your own words as you search for the right one. 

Hongjoong holds his breath.

“Incredible,” you turn your gaze to look at him, and what he sees shining in your eyes knocks the wind right out of him.

For the first time since you’ve gotten here, you are looking at him with such tenderness, such gratitude. As if he hung all of the stars in the night sky only for you. Which he would, if you asked.

Your gaze, so tender and soft, nearly sends him to his knees right then and there. However, it’s your next words that truly make his head spin.

“Thank you.” You breathe, nothing but sincerity shining within your eyes as you meet his own. “For this.” You briefly trail your gaze around the area before coming back to settle on him. A faint smile, gracious and absolutely breathtaking pulls at your lips. “For all of this. The library, too.”

“I’m just glad you like them,” he replies honestly, his shoulders sagging in relief as a weight he didn’t realize he had been carrying is lifted from his shoulders.

Is this what it’s like to feel like he’s actually making progress with you? If so, he cannot wait to continue. Having you look at him like this - so tenderly and full of awe - simply makes him want more. Hongjoong craves you in a way that he’s never craved anything or anyone in centuries. He just wants to make you happy, and from the looks of things, he’s finally doing something right.

“Oh, I more than like them,” you reply without thinking, leaning in to smell the roses as you walk passed. Your eyelids flutter shut as that same smile tugs at your lips. “I love them.”

If only you knew exactly how much your words mean to him, your confession causing his eyes to swirl with that all too familiar blackness as pure, unfiltered joy courses through his veins. Not only joy, but satisfaction, excitement, and eagerness for what has still yet to come. More than all of that, though, love pours through his very soul as he continues to watch you, subconsciously taking a step closer to you and reaching a hand out to place it onto your lower back.

Immediately, you stiffen, his touch unexpected. You step away, clearing your throat.

His expression falls, averting his gaze as he lets out a low breath through his nose. You seem to have no problem letting the others touch you, but you always pull away from his own touch. Still, your words from earlier echo through his mind. “I’m sorry.”

You blink in shock, clearly not expecting to hear those words coming from his mouth. Then, as if recalling your own memories from earlier that day, your lips part ever so slightly.

“I-“ you swallow, now being the one to avert your gaze as you clasp your hands in front of yourself almost nervously, “I’m just not used to being touched. Especially not so intimately by another person.”

“You seem to have no problem letting the others touch you so intimately,” before he can stop himself, the bitter words are out of his mouth, the jealous fire once again prickling beneath his skin. 

Your eyes narrow, and immediately, your guard is back up. “That does not mean I’m used to it, nor does it give you the right to act like this. I am not yours.”

Yet. You are not his yet. Still, Hongjoong has a long way to go before he can so much as think of calling you his own. Well, out loud, at least.

Yet, you’re right. He knows you’re right, and that he needs to calm down. If he wants any type of chance with you, to be able to hold your heart in the palms of his hands like he already knows his is in yours, then he needs to relax. He had finally started making progress with you, only to screw it all up almost immediately afterwards.

Tears of frustration line his eyes as he averts his gaze, his heart squeezing painfully in his chest. No matter what he does, he can never seem to do anything right. Especially when it comes to you.

Closing his eyes, he allows his body to calm down, the shaking in his hands dissipating for the time being. He takes a deep, albeit uneven, breath in.

“You’re right,” he swallows, eyes opening to meet your own in the next second. “I’m sorry.”

You seemingly let out a sigh of relief as you see him visibly relax. You were just having a nice moment with him, and despite this little hiccup, you are still grateful for the amount of effort he’s put into this place for you. Perhaps you should attempt a truce for the moment. Being tense around him all the time is exhausting.

So, you quirk a small grin.

“Good,” your tone is cautious, but light, teasing even, “For a moment there, I was worried I was going to have to stab you with another knife there. At least none of the others can say they’ve shared that intimacy with me before.”

Hongjoong snorts out a laugh, “and I’ve still got the scar to prove it.”

“It scarred?” You blink, brow furrowing slightly in confusion as he nods. “I would have thought it healed considering the fact that you’re- you know.”

The way you motion to his entire being with your hand has a grin tugging at his lips, a pleased hum building in his throat.

“Yes, we can heal both ourselves, and others,” he confirms. “Quite quickly at that, too.”

“Then, why?” You attempt to wrap your head around what he’s just told you.

“We can also prevent ourselves from healing, or in this case, savour a certain wound until we feel the need to heal it.” He explains. “Though, I don’t think I’ll ever get rid of this one.”

“Why wouldn’t you?” Again, your brow furrows, not quite understanding the fact that he wouldn’t just simply heal himself.

“Because,” Hongjoong’s eyes flash, a smirk tugging at his lips as he meets your gaze, “now I have something to remember you by marked on my skin for all eternity.”

“Oh,” his words cause you to blink in surprise, especially at the way his dark eyes seem to be devouring your figure all of a sudden.

In the back of your mind, you cannot help but to think about what other types of marks he has hidden all over his body, if any. Then, just as quickly as the next thought appears, you’re banishing it into the deepest part of your mind, a heat rising to your cheeks.

A pleased growl rumbles in his chest as he catches you thinking about what other types of marks you could leave all over his body. Marks which he would proudly wear for as long as he possibly could. Perhaps even going so far as to make the ones you would leave from your nails trailing down his back to pull him closer into you scar. 

“Still,” you blink, drawing his attention back to you and away from his own thoughts about how he would go about marking you, “I guess I should apologize.”

This time, it’s his turn for his brow to furrow. “Whatever do you have to apologize for, My Love?”

“I did stab you,” you reply. “Though, to be fair, you did scare the shit out of me. I was only acting in self-defence-“

The chuckle Hongjoong lets out has your voice dying right in your throat.

“What’s so funny?” Your eyes narrow, a pout tugging at your lips as you cross your arms in front of your chest.

“Do you think I’m upset that you stabbed me?” He asks, his lips tugging upwards in amusement. “My Love, that was one of the hottest things that has ever happened to me in centuries.”

“Oh,” you straighten, a heat once again rising to your cheeks.

“Not to mention how impressive it was that you caught me off guard,” he adds, taking a cautious step forward to close the distance between the both of you.

“I’ll keep that in mind,” you murmur, mild shock still coursing through your veins at his confession.

He simply hums in response, hooded gaze drinking in every detail of you in this moment with him right here, right now. A warmth spreads through his chest as his lips quirk, happy to know that he didn’t happen to scare you away from him again.

Progress. He’s making progress.

A small silence settles over the both of you, comfortable and soft. You take a moment to simply breathe in. Again, the smell of the flowers invades your senses, and you are reminded of where you are. Taking a brief look around, that gentle smile caresses your lips once more, gratitude flowing through your mind as you glance past Hongjoong and at the library just through the open doors behind him.

Those same emotions you felt when you first entered the library echo through your mind now. Truly, you are touched by the amount of effort and thought that went into this place, and the fact that even if you were joking about having a garden, they went above and beyond to continue to provide for you any and all comforts that you may need.

Maybe it really isn’t so bad being here with them. Maybe you don’t have to be so worried all of the time. Perhaps you are starting to trust them a little bit more every day. Over time, you think you could seriously get used to this. A life with them wouldn’t be so bad, now, would it? They have already proven time and time again that they are ready and willing to provide everything and anything that you may ever want or need.

Seonghwa’s words from earlier echo through your mind.

Perhaps they really aren’t so bad, after all.

“Would it really be so bad, then, if you were to fall for us?” Hongjoong asks softly. Your thoughts linger in his own mind, giving him one of the greatest gifts of all to hold on to as he meets your gaze: hope. He swallows, “for you to fall in love with me?”

You take a moment to observe him, eyes scanning over his face as you truly consider the questions he’s just posed.

“No,” you shake your head gently as your lips twitch upwards. “I don’t think it would.”

#yandere ateez #ateez scenario #yandere kpop #kpop scenario #yandere seonghwa #yandere hongjoong #yandere san #yandere mingi #yandere yeosang #yandere jongho #yandere yunho #yandere wooyoung #yandere au #kpop au #hongjoong scenarios #seonghwa scenarios #mingi scenarios #san scenarios #jongho scenarios #yunho scenarios #wooyoung scenarios #yeosang scenarios #demon au

[cosmicjoke]

I just wanted to say one more time how incredible, not just this final episode of Attack on Titan was, but the previous special, and truly, all of MAPPA's fourth season. The weight with which they handled this story, the seriousness with which they treated it, shows in every frame, in every moment. The voice work from the actors is second to none, and helped bring these characters to life with incredible emotion and complexity. The animators, being overworked and underpaid, put their hearts and souls into this, you can tell, as did the writers and directors. I really can't thank everyone enough.

They captured the drama and seriousness of this story to such perfection, as did WIT when it was the studio behind this show, and together, they've created what, I again say, is the greatest show of all time, bringing one of the greatest stories of all time miraculously to life.

They never handled the material with anything less than the respect it always deserved. One isn't watching a cartoon when they watch this show. One is watching a piece of dramatic cinema worthy of any award celebrating the craft. I really do mean that.

I felt that especially culminated with these final two episodes, which felt more like a genuine event, a cultural moment unfolding before us, than a simple episode of a tv show. These final two specials felt momentous and grand and epic in their scale and scope, and in the emotions they conveyed and the messages they imparted. Attack on Titan is a serious piece of art. Both the manga and the anime. It's a culturally important, and significant piece of culture.

I've come to care so deeply for all of these characters, to regard them as so much a part of my life, that their pain became my pain, their happiness became my happiness, their grief and sense of loss was also in my heart. Watching Armin and Eren speak to each other one last time, watching Mikasa and Eren, watching them hug, and then after, watching them cry and scream at the grief of losing him, all of that was like experiencing a real life friend go through all the same. Watching Jean's and Connie's courage and stubbornness, watching Pieck and Annie and Reiner put aside their differences to work with everyone for the right thing, watching Levi giving every last ounce of what he had left to fight alongside all of them and save humanity, all of it has left an indelible mark on me that I won't ever forget. These characters have become real to me. I care about them like I would a real person. Their story became real to me. When Armin says at the end, people will want to know our story, they'll want to know what we saw, that's real to me. Their struggle, their suffering, their loses, their lives, it's real to me. It means as much to me as any, real life story of heroism, because it's such a realistic reflection of our condition as human beings. It can relate to all of our lives, all of our struggles, all of our grief and loss and hope.

So, thank you MAPPA, and thank you Hajime Isayayam, and thank you Eren and Mikasa and Armin, thank you Levi and Hange and Erwin, thank you Jean and Connie and Sasha, thank you Reiner and Annie and Pieck. Thank you all of you, for bringing so much of worth into our lives. Your story has the power to change the world for the better, to change people for the better, and nothing is worth more than that.

#attack on titan #shingkei no kyojin #eren yeager #mikasa ackerman #armin arlert #jean kirstein #connie springer #reiner braun #annie leonhart #pieck finger #Levi Ackerman #hange zoë #Erwin Smith #the final season #MAPPA #WIT

[kitramune]

Hello!

Fellow inukagger here *shakes your hand* I noticed your tags on an inuyasha video edit post where you stated inuyasha was seeing kagome during their almost first-kiss. I want to believe this soo badly, but I have actually made a post where I argue the opposite bc that’s (unfortunately) my interpretation.

I would genuinely love to hear why you think this as I’m more than happy to be convinced 🥺❤️ If you’ve posted about it before, apologies that I haven’t seen it; please kindly drop a link.

Thank you very much! (It’s all 🫶🏼 and interest in civil discussion, certainly not looking to start anything otherwise)

Sure thing! I think there's a lot of misconception firstly because Kagome herself says this. That he hates her for looking like Kikyou, but when he looked at her in that moment, it looked loving, so she herself put two and two together that he must still be seeing her as Kikyou, but therefore have been in love with Kikyou. Which is partially true in that we know he did have feelings for her back when she was alive. (I have my own InuKik-critical perception on this, but that's a whole other rant and probably not what you're asking.) But I think it's VERY important to keep in mind that Kagome is an Unreliable Narrator in her own story here, particularly where it comes to interpreting Inuyasha's feelings at times. This holds true for pretty much the entire story, but particularly early on, when she doesn't know him as well. First off, I'm going to fast-forward slightly to give examples of Inuyasha himself making it clear he does NOT see Kagome as Kikyou, to prove my point that he's not lying when he tells her so at the almost-kiss. Keep in mind a lot of these are only available in the source material and the anime DID cut them to fuel love triangle drama. The manga is the original intended canon, so that's what I'll be going with for this entire conversation.

(Let it be said that as far as Japanese subtleties are concerned, he is asking Kagome to date him, here.)

For the sake of argument, let's look back at this "very beginning" he mentions, and how long it took him to realize Kagome LOOKED a bit like Kikyou, but was not Kikyou:

Well that was quick. He does compare them a few times after this, but it's always about how different they are. (Usually to be rude, but let's face it, this is early Inuyasha.)

(I include this "comparison" just because he's RELIEVED here at Kagome NOT being Kikyou. It's the first explicit indication that he likes her for her and would be heartbroken if the girls got switched.)

(Then he proceeds to make it even more explicit, and even Kaede spells it out.)

He completely stops comparing them in any capacity after this, and the way he does it says to me that he sees and values them very differently IN SPITE of the slight physical resemblance, not BECAUSE they look alike.

"But Kit!" I hear you say, "These examples are meaningless because they are AFTER he tried to kiss her!" Well I disagree his feelings would have changed that drastically in the small amount of time given the context, but let's still look at all InuKag have been through at this point. I'll just do a montage of Inuyasha feeling pride or affection for Kagome in said arcs because I am self-indulgent like that, lol.

(My boy did not need to protect her, here. If she was gone, he'd be free of the beads and thus free to just take the Jewel. He did it purely out of valuing her life in some capacity.)

(Knowing her scent already? Lending her your only armor just so she won't get hurt? Why Inuyasha, that's not extremely intimate at all!)

(I find him saying her name significant not just because of differentiating her from Kikyou in his mind, but in that Inuyasha doesn't say ANYONE'S name unless they are important to him. Exceptions.)

("I refuse to get involved!" *Kagome's in trouble, immediately gets involved*)

(I love this arc overall SO MUCH cuz they not only have their first friendly pouty BFFs spat, but Inuyasha then immediately comes running to save her after smelling her blood THROUGH SPACE AND TIME, and is so desperate to be relied on cuz it makes him feel good to protect her and he's realizing that.)

(Lest we forget he had SOMETHING TO TELL HER right before threading their fingers extremely intimately.)

(Inu wasn't in this arc much but he WAS very worried and impressed with her.)

(I could honestly put the WHOLE spider head arc in here and gush about every detail of their character development, but we all know the highlight and I think Rumiko put it best in the Profiles Book that Inuyasha had never encountered or thought of anyone who would be saddened by his death before. I truly believe this is when he decided to open up and give his budding feelings for her a chance to bloom. And more importantly for this particular argument, decides NOT TO LIE to her again.)

And it's at this point we come to him trying to kiss her. It's true Inuyasha's emotions are slightly volatile from Kikyou being brought up. It's a definite sore spot, which even Kagome picks up on. Kagome asks point blank if he still sees her as Kikyou and hates her for it. To which he says she has it all wrong.

Considering her previous statement was if he HATES her, we can pretty easily infer that he's answering that directly, here. As in, no, he does not. Reading into context clues and what we see before and after this moment, I'd go so far as to say he's implying he LOVES her, here. Or at least is beginning to realize he likes her much more than as a friend. The last arc was huge for him, let's not forget that. He'd never ever been vulnerable like that with anyone: both in letting them know his night of weakness, and emotionally. All signs point to him having realized he's fallen for Kagome pretty hard and is ready to finally LET himself fall. (Though clearly Kagome's not quite ready herself, yet.) I'd argue that Kikyou's resurrection arc and the arcs following shortly after that I linked moments from earlier are there to just cement that he doesn't see her as Kikyou to any viewers who are still skeptical. In the manga anyway, we're never shown Inuyasha pining for Kikyou or wishing she was back to life. Quite the opposite, he only wishes her to rest in peace and reach Nirvana, which he has said to her more than once. The closest we get is this line right after the resurrection arc comes to an end and Kikyou's presumed dead from the cliff:

Which I personally interpret as him still being heartbroken, yes, but the fact he brings up the idea of falling for another woman tells me he's still mulling over how he has romantic feelings for Kagome, and his trauma regarding romance making him wonder if he should backpedal on that or give up his initial goal that was a symptom of his heartbreak in the first place. (As in, he immediately stole the Jewel after Kikyou betrayed him essentially to make the hurt go away as soon as possible. Also note this is AFTER the almost-kiss, right before Miroku makes his appearance.) So I have a pretty hard time believing that he suddenly decided to lie to Kagome right after his entire breakthrough night of vulnerability with her, and how that affected him. Also keep in mind that Kagome doesn't have concrete feelings for Inuyasha yet, so there is no jealousy or lack of confidence where Kikyou is concerned at the point of time in question. One could (shakily imo) argue that he might lie to protect her feelings later on, when he's worried about her becoming angry or jealous, but he has no such reason to lie, here. Therefore I believe he's being extremely genuine, and probably the most genuine he's been so far since he decided to abandon his previous lie about disliking her scent. I truly think he wanted to find out what kissing was like with this spitfire girl who'd run away with his heart already and made him feel and share things he'd never felt or shared with anyone. I hope this at least elaborated on why I see that scene the way I do! If you have questions or want me to discuss an aspect of it further, don't hesitate to hit up my inbox again! I'm happy to share my thoughts on the series and especially InuKag!

#Inuyasha #InuKag #meta #analysis #xanthippe-writes #asks #my first ask yay!

[russenoire]

here, i'm gonna spill some more ink over studio bones' decisions adapting ???% in mob psycho 100's confession arc... in a lighter color, perhaps.

some manga readers are upset at the lack of separation between '???%' and 'mob' in the anime vs the clear separation in the manga. that separation doesn't exist in the original japanese.

mob's 声優 (seiyuu) setsuo itō's voice acting in this scene from MP100's first season is by turns startling and visceral (tbh, most of the VA work in this scene is amazing, but i'm only referring to mob here).

given the above, i expected a voice come up from the depths of hell for ???% in the confession arc, but bones and itō-san did not indulge my whims here. what they gave us instead...

...actually reflects the source material.

while there is an audible distinction between ???%'s nonchalant contempt and mob's considerably-more-animated (thanks to all that emotional growth we've seen over the course of the story!) upset, they sound like the same person in the anime... because they are. i thought this a tidy way to convey that fact, and this subtle distinction is not that different in feel from what we see on the page in the original language.

inside the teenager's mind, shigeo (???%) and mob quarrel in the same font. tails on their speech bubbles eventually disappear as they continue to argue with each other. i found this pointed lack of separation a little confusing on first read, but eventually became used to it.

(for a breakdown of this full conversation in the manga, check out @exilepurify's awesome translation post.)

shigeo chafes at the thought of considering others' needs. he scorns mob for bending himself into a shape he thinks will suit tsubomi, mocks mob's desire to blend into the background and somehow escape notice. his own wish for tsubomi to accept him in all his explosive vainglory doesn't take her wishes into account, either.

and yet. his desires are subordinate to mob's.

he wants what mob wants -- only without that whole pesky 'consideration for other people' thing -- and he wants to keep mob alive. their full conversation reveals just how much shigeo actually loves mob.

for all practical purposes, any distinctions between shigeo and mob -- private vs public, subconscious vs conscious -- only exist in the boy's head. even then, they have been unfairly imposed... by mob himself.

the teenager laying waste to seasoning city? the teenager his friends and family love? one and the same.

his loved ones and allies address him with the names by which they know him; they assume he's the same person, just experiencing an involuntary loss of control and in need of some help. it's important to emphasize that. drastically different voices for shigeo and mob would have drawn a hard line between them where there is none.

studio bones removed and/or internalized ???%'s lines, apparently robbing him of speech. but ???% is talking to himself, and no one else can hear him.

in the manga, shigeo seizes control of the boy's speech centers and speaks out loud as ???%, in a scratchy, rough font meant to evoke a harsh voice. (it's the same font used for ???%'s last brief, conscious takeover when mob discovers the crispy fried corpses of his family in their merrily crackling home! you can hear itō-san's delightful interpretation of it in episode 9 from the second season.)

he says:

｢僕の好きにやらせてもらう。」 boku no s'ki ni yarasete morau. 'i'll be free to do whatever i want.' or more literally: 'i will take [from you] the allowance to do as i please.' his use of 貰う here emphasizes that he is forcing mob's hand.

this line and the shift in viewpoint serve to highlight the exact moment where shigeo gains the advantage in his argument with mob.

mob and shigeo squabble for external control for a while; ONE shows this by letting them both speak aloud in this same rough voice. both sides of the fight between the two (at least after 'i'll be free to do whatever i want') can actually be heard from the outside. we only get a few small panels of this as it's happening, but it's unnerving.

shigeo, who is winning this battle, not only gets far more lines as seen from without, but his harsh rasp even colors mob's external speech. this is mob's only line the mangaka lets us see in that font, and it's heartbreaking:

｢だって… もしこれが本当の僕の姿だっていうなら…」 datte... mosh' kore ga hontou no boku no sugata datte iu nara... 'because... if this [???%] is what i really am, as you say...

the line continues within:

｢本当の僕になんて誰も近寄らない。誰も…　誰も助けてくれない。そんなの嫌いだ。」 hontou no boku ni nante daremo ch'kayoranai. daremo... daremo tas'kete kurenai. sonna no kirai da. 'no one will come anywhere near the real me. no one... no one will be there for me. i won't have that.'

the full takeover, which happens a bit later, is marked by:

shigeo's dissolution of and absorption of mob's consciousness into himself;

reigen's ｢すまない｣ (sumanai, 'i'm sorry') for not knowing the nature of what his deshi was struggling to contain;

???%'s last glance back at the man before pressing on towards his goal... as reigen begs him to wait, running after him.

thereafter, we see ???% from without. we get two short glimpses of shigeo's internal perspective before dimple's reappearance, then rejoin him inside for his last explosion with mob.

the anime depicts the moment of full takeover thusly:

shigeo's dissolution of and absorption of mob's consciousness into himself;

a ｢すまない｣ from reigen, who senses something has gone even more wrong with the boy and renews his pursuit... begging him to wait;

shigeo's turning his back on reigen and walking on. we see him spurning his mentor from the inside, his face hardening against a stark black backdrop.

the outward shift happens on-screen too. while it eventually returns to an internal view just as the manga does, it largely stays there, owing to a serious expansion of the scene where shigeo indulges his thirst for revenge on reigen.

except for an audible sigh when teru remarks on how normal his friend's losing control of himself actually makes him, anime shigeo speaks to no one.

???% is alone when he speaks in the manga; reigen is nowhere within earshot and shigeo is only addressing mob. in other words, he's talking to himself. shigeo never utters a word to anyone else in either manga or anime, as if he owes no one an explanation for the choice to sack his hometown or injure his friends.

as bone-chilling and unsettling as ???% speaking out loud is on the page, as much as it enhances the reading experience... in my opinion, it adds nothing new to our understanding of this situation on the screen. viewers can see for themselves that:

an internal takeover has occurred in this boy's mind,

???% is sentient and human and ever so divinely enraged at having been chained up for so long;

???% is finally free.

so why should studio bones belabor this point by having him shout, in the middle of a tornado, to no one in particular? if a boy speaks in a tornado, and there is no one around to hear it, does he make a sound... ?

i also don't know that this would translate well to film. in real life, talking to oneself like that usually carries connotations of psychosis, and resolving it as is done here would honestly be an insult to real-life sufferers. i love it to pieces in the manga but understand why this was cut.

the only things removing ???%'s outward speech loses for me are:

one last opportunity for itō-san to flex that audible jump-scare STOMACH-TWISTING SNARL (oh, i will miss it so);

a slightly-less-vague sense of how shigeo might make his wishes known to tsubomi, were he to present himself to her like this... he wants her approval so badly, and is terrified of not getting it. would he be able to speak to her at all? in the manga the question becomes what would he even say to her?

#mob psycho 100 #mp100 #mp100 meta #mp100 anime #mp100 manga #mp100 manga spoilers #sometimes adaptations give you new perspective on the source material #and pose new interesting questions #1-cour anime adaptations are summaries and should be appraised as such #what would ???% say to tsubomi if he met her in this state? #would he be able to speak to her at all? #???% talking to himself is unsettling AF #???% is fun to think about #this is a long post #thanks for reading #let me be clear #i am not uncritical of the anime confession arc #翻訳 #manga translation #if a boy speaks in a tornado #and there's no one around to hear it #does he make a sound... ? #i like that ???% isn't entirely silent in the anime #just nonverbal #which also raises a whole host of fascinating implications #to be tackled in another post #kageyama shigeo #分析

[everythingismadeofchaos]

Hey so I have to ask this question. I am an old, and I've been trying anime sporadically for literal decades (since I saw Twilight of the Cockroaches in the theater), but I couldn't find much I liked and didn't really start getting into it until I saw One Punch Man season 1 after it first came out and before season 2 and it made me laugh and just have a wonderful time. At that point I realized there probably was a lot of anime that was worth my time, and I started looking for it, and what I discovered was that anime is actually like most things: most of it is crap and has no interest for me, but some of it is really good and some of it is fantastic. So just recently I found Dungeon Meshi.

I love Dungeon Meshi. It's inspired me to actually try reading manga, which I've never been able to enjoy before. I sporadically tried comics over the years, but it still hasn't stuck even when it's material that I'm really interested in; I don't know why but it just doesn't work for me. Manga never has either, although I haven't really tried it much. But now I've tried reading Dungeon Meshi and I'm having kind of mixed results but I'm happy I'm trying it even though it's kind of diluted by the fact that I've already seen this story in the anime. I'm really looking forward to another manga by the same author that I ordered the other day at the suggestion of somebody on Tumblr, when I previously asked for advice. I have high hopes that I will enjoy that more than I enjoy the DM manga simply because I've never seen the stories before. Apparently there are seven short stories; that should be fun.

But my question is this. Is the inherent creepiness of anime what's really holding it back in the west? All of the sexualization of young girls, and even leaving aside young girls there's this phenomenon I'm going to call "the chainmail bikini effect" because it kind of parallels a phenomenon in Western fantasy, that all really screws up my enjoyment of the story. I can't bloody stand harem anime. I find it so, so aggravating. And the thing is, I'm really curious about this other genre with all these other ideas and settings and conventions and I really like all of that stuff. It's just the creepy pseudo-pedophilia and hypersexualization. I feel like most anime wants me to be a pedophile and that's creepy as fuck.

So how much other anime is there that isn't like this? One Punch Man really wasn't, although there were one or two characters I guess who were kind of parodies of the genre, which makes sense since the whole thing was a parody, but there's got to be more. I mean I loved Ascendance Of A Bookworm, because even though that was a young girl there was absolutely nothing sexualized about it. I loved the Saga of Tanya the Evil. It really stands out and is completely different from anything else that I'd ever seen in that genre, although it does remind me a lot of a book I read a couple of decades ago called The Blue Max, which they completely ruined in a movie starring George Peppard; the book is about this character sort of fighting against his own personal demons and losing, but the movie character is just a positive decent neato white hat hero guy and it ruins the whole concept. Tanya is like that book (not the movie obviously).

What else is out there in this department? What am I going to enjoy like Delicious in Dungeon because it doesn't carry these creepy garbage ideas? Suggestions actively solicited. And thank you very much in advance for reading this wall of text.

#anime #dungeon meshi #delicious in dungeon #harem anime #suggestions

[fallershipping]

The Absolute Atrocious Audacity... of Anipoke's version of the Hoenn Battle Frontier

The Battle Frontier was arguably the first time in a mainline game where we got introduced to Battle Facility Characters. For a while, we had the titular Battle Tower, but for the first time, we had a unique boss to get to.

Much alike to Gym Leaders, they give out "badges" to commemorate your victory; Hoenn's being Silver and Gold Symbols.

However, for the time, many casual players that didn't focus on Competitive Training missed out on these special characters almost entirely. At the very least, they'd see them in Player's Guides along with their Silver and Gold Pokemon Teams.

But especially during that time, most, if not all, knowledge of these characters came from the botched version of them in the Ash Ketchum Anime.

I say botched because it's an honest to goodness fact that man the writers of the anime made some wild decisions.

This will be focusing mostly on Anabel of course, but I've been doing some snooping around the original Battle Frontier and Emerald's in-game text.

I'll go over why Brandon was never supposed to be the "leader" of the Hoenn Frontier, why Anabel was wrongly mistaken as psychic, why the Battle Tower was the real head of the battle frontier, and etc.

1.Who is the leader of the Frontier Brains?

Short answer, no one as far as we know. Long answer is that there are a lot of NPCs that, while making note of all the unique facilities, the Battle Tower is ALWAYS a stand out amongst them all.

When asking a guide about the Battle Tower, you get this dialogue:

"... It is the gigantic tower considered to be the BATTLE FRONTIER's symbol."

A child right outside the Battle Tower itself claims:

"Wow! It's huge! The Battle Tower feels special. It's different from the others."

Also to note that when looking for the Exchange Service and Rankings Building, they will be pointed over as "Near the Battle Tower" .... Which also points to how important the Battle Tower is to the Frontier as a whole.

It's good to note that no other battle facility gets this kind of fanfare. The Tower is uniquely special in its iconography.

... Seeing how both the Adventures Manga and Ihara's Manga puts Anabel as the symbolic 'final boss' of the frontier... It's safe to say that she's at least part of the very foundation and centralized symbol of the Hoenn Battle Frontier.

2.Why was Brandon the leader in the anime?

Chauvinism Brandon is often referred to as Chief... By only his Pyramid employees, and mostly in the vein of his whole gimmick of the Pyramid being an Indiana Jones type of adventure. So Brandon is the Chief of the expedition team that you meet inside the facility itself.

Brandon is never pointed out as anything particularly special or more important than the other facility heads.

He's probably a dev favorite, or for some reason, Anabel wasn't "leader" material for the anime. You know, the brain of the Frontier's central icon and one who became a head Chief/Boss within Interpol many years later.

3.Why was Anabel written to have Psychic Powers?

Oh you're not going to believe this. But I found that there IS an NPC at the Battle Frontier that is Psychic and can read a Pokemon's mind.

AND IT WAS NEVER ANABEL.

There is a little girl that is often cited to appear a lot at Spencer's Battle Palace. Here's her dialogue:

"Ehehe! I can tell what POKÈMON are thinking! Please! Can I see your POKÈMON?" + "That's silly! An EGG is asleep! I can't talk to it!"

Supplementary NPC dialogue:

"How charming! That little lady claims she can understand POKÈMON!" Beyond this, Ruby/Sapphire/Emerald has an unfortunate Psychic Trainer generic NPC that looks like this:

So the anime writers might have put two and two together that someone who is mysterious and has purple hair MUST be a Psychic type specialist.

Otherwise, the only dialogue in relation to Anabel has absolutely zero implications that she is or was ever psychic to begin with. Which takes me to...

4.Did they change Anabel's personality?

YES.

AND IT'S BAD.

First of all, Lucy got it so much worse. NPCs describe her as a "Scary trainer," with a particular incident causing an NPC to retell their bad encounter with her:

"A while back, I met this older girl at the BATTLE PIKE. She had these eyes that were scary in a real ornery way. She got all furious: "Will you quit eating!" Then she whaled on me. It was a hair-raising kind of scary experience, sure enough."

Another NPC, one who deals in rumors, also titles her as the "Scary Trainer of the Battle Pike."

And she is scary! She doesn't hold back! She tells you firmly that she fought her way to her title, and she IS SUPER PISSED that some kid like you just beat her, telling you to just leave her sight already.

Ahem. IN THE ANIME, Lucy's anime counterpart is kinder and friendlier, probably because kids are watching. But all of her sharp edge is just kinda gone. What's worse, she is so commonly known for a gag in which she was the first woman to "reciprocate" Brock's affections.

For a gag. Because she just liked his close eyes look, as her anime counterpart collects squinty eyed Pokemon like Cyndaquil and Skitty.

Also, Brock is 15. Lucy is stated to be an adult woman in Masters, plus she's pretty tall. The anime is known to de-age characters sometimes but... Echk.

Onto Anabel... Oh sweet Anabel-- Just like Lucy, Anabel's edge was dulled into just being some generic sweet girl for her counterpart. As we know in the games, Anabel is not shy to telling you just how she feels about you; she is not impressed by the rumors she has heard of you, and even when you lose to her in the first battle, she will straight up call it 'disappointing.' She expected nothing and was still disappointed.

Here's some NPC dialogue involving Anabel:

Ace Trainer: "Man! Oh man! I've never lost once before! But I got wiped out with no saving grace at all! And then I'm told I don't have any talent?! Man!" NPC next to Ace Trainer: "This guy ran into a horribly tough TRAINER while he was on the BATTLE TOWER challenge. Now look at him... You need to be cautious if you ever decide to go to the BATTLE TOWER."

Also, Anabel apparently is said that when she's using a fucking Snorlax, Alakazam, and Entei on you, she's trying to "measure up her opponent." When she's serious, she uses Raikou, Snorlax, and Latios.

SHE'S USING AN ENTEI TO MEASURE YOU UP BEFORE BRINGING OUT BIGGER GUNS???

... Anabel in the anime was a joke. Her counterpart was made a glorified psychic type gym leader with none of the very sharp personality she had before. Perhaps kids would have hated a girl who shot down Ash the moment he stepped into her tower. Honestly she could have given him the same treatment Nanu did MAAAAANY seasons later.

But no. Had to be sweet and kind. And had to have a Metagross that dies to a Tauros using Take Down and she also was given an Espeon to replace Snorlax? An Espeon which was just "girly version of Ash's Pikachu" because it had Zap Cannon, Iron Tail, and Quick Attack WHICH IS SUCH A BAD MOVEPOOL FOR ESPEON GOOD LORD.

And of course, the elephant in the room that this version of Anabel's only fucking thing that people remember is that she had a crush on Ash. Why? Because May was being rewritten to have a thing with Drew so Ash needed a "romance"(?) for some reason. Not like it even went anywhere or was ever needed? They had no romantic interactions and it was basically a last minute reveal that she gained feelings for him just out of nowhere. Ultimately, Anabel never came back, and this entire point was practically retconned or erased from existence as OTHER girls later down the line would fill the "romantic undertones" role for the season/series, each one making the former fucking meaningless.

Plus, Anabel and Lucy in Emerald are both referred to as "Older Girls", possibly a localization of "Oneesan", with Anabel being a bit taller than May and Brendan in Emerald, so her original appearance was most likely at the very least a teenager older than the protags? Not that it's TOO bad echk but... CHRIST. WHAT WAS THE POINT? WHY???

The only point for Lucy and Anabel to have pointless crushes and character changes to be appealing and sweet and kind is because "Boys only like girls who are cute and like them and aren't combative."

let's be fucking REAL HERE THIS IS ALSO WHY ANABEL WASN'T THE LEADER OF THE BRAINS and she never kept her original pokemon and ARGH. THAT ISN'T ANABEL THAT'S JUST A SKIN WALKER.

salt over im so angry good lord. People thought this was Anabel for YEARS. Can you believe it??

Whew this was a long one.

5.Why was the Hoenn Battle Frontier in Kanto?

Firered and Leafgreen promotion :'y Had to be made a Kanto thing to "mix the elements" of FRGL and Emerald. This was hilariously walked back on when Ash revisited the Frontier in Journeys... Now exactly in Hoenn and appearing exactly as it did in the games with none of the frontier brains actually appearing.

You can tell they totally have no regrets about doing it the other way. :))))

6.Why did Anipoke do so many changes?

Not out of malicious intent.

The pokemon anime was always primarily made for kids. It's going to have cheerful adventures, and I can see why perhaps Lucy shouldn't be a scary woman on screen or why an adult like Brandon would be easier to see as the "big leader" of the brains due to being an older man.

Lots of decisions were made with kids in mind... Anabel's competitive and strategic nature would never have been as showy as "heehoo Brandon has THREE LEGENDARIES that means he's the strongest!"

Due to mostly boys watching Pokemon.... Girls got a really bad hand. Girls were apparently written to be changed with each new game series and are probably most remembered by being love interests. This is why no one talks about Greta-- She didn't have a romance. She wasn't tugging at the growing mind's "maybe girls aren't so icky" brain cells, idk.

And frankly, the Battle Frontier would just be boring otherwise, I guess. It's very much an older kid/adult set of facilities for advanced players, and Ash Ketchum is not an advanced player.

He is the representation of the little casual kid who believes in the power of friendship. He's not going to use competitively viable Pokemon he's going to use his iconic starters that sometimes don't evolve because they're cute and have a lot of character as their smaller forms. He's not going to climb a tower of high level trainers nor understand what EVs and IVs are. Hell he usually loses championships because he needs to be moved to the next region to start anew all over again.

So... They wrote the Battle Frontier as just. A glorified Kanto Gym Challenge, as they have done. They looked at the characters and their Pokemon and wrote alternate versions of them all to fit a series that is very kid oriented.

Things needed to make sense for kids. Older adult guys are the leaders, girls get crushes on boys, and Pokemon isn't about competitive play but the power of friendship to overcome all odds.

And unfortunately, because so many players were young and didn't get competitive battling, that was the only thing Anabel and the Frontier Brains were known for. Not their original games; but the heavily revised versions made because they needed to fit a children's TV show.

#/VERGO'S LONG ASS RANT #/it's such a travesty that i genuinely don't think these versions even apply anymore since they're so long ago and so retconned #/they never really were brought up all that much ever again really #/And whenever someone says 'Masters Anabel should have an Espeon' this is why I fucking seeth lmao

[generositygullet]

A letter to Akira Toriyama

Dear Akira Toriyama,

I first interacted with dragonball when I was in 6th grade or so, when I started playing dragon ball fusions for the 3ds since the trailer looked cool. Kind of a weird start right? But I was getting really into anime at the time, and wanted to check out one of the most popular ones. I had NO idea who the characters were, and had NO clue what the story was about. But for some reason against all the odds, as soon as I saw the title screen boot up with that soaring music I was hooked. The game was super fun, no doubt about it. But what REALLY kept me going when playing it, was the world of dragon ball itself.

Again I had no clue who any of these people were. But seeing these characters interact with each other, seeing these different setpieces made, seeing all of these powers and personalities, it was unlike anything I’d ever experienced before. It channeled the raw kid desire in me to see two buff dudes duking it out, and god I adored every bit of it.

I didn't dig any deeper than that initially, and like all my other hyperfixations it died down. But again in 7th grade I started playing fighterz, and I was hooked again. But this time I dug deeper in preparation for the release of the new GT dlc, and so the first dragon ball media I actually watched? Was GT. Which is hilarious in hindsight, but I still adored every second of it.

In 8th grade things were not going so well for me, I was losing friends due to being an asshole, and I had to change myself to be worthy of the people around me. I was pretty depressed, and everything seemed sad and hopeless (I know it's pretty dramatic for a literal like 13 year old but bear with me lmao). It's around that time when I decided to watch Dragon Ball Super. And again, I was hooked. I binged it so fast, all 130 something episodes. I could talk big about the characters and everything, but honestly it was just so plain cool. It made me feel excited and happy, it made me feel like everything was ok. And those positive feelings made that much of a difference in me.

From that point on I always was interested in Dragon Ball. my first and only hyperfixation to never really go away. I read the OG dragonball, and started REALLY noticing your artistic talent. From the way you drew Goku moving across the battlefield and the poses he struck. To the illustrations of the action and the punches thrown. It was all so dynamic and energetic. When I was reading it I was always engaged, excited to see the next panel. I wanted to channel the same energy in my own art somehow, to encapsulate the same excitement you instilled in me with your drawings.

I FINALLY got around to watching and reading Z a little later. And of course I loved it. I knew all the basic plot beats, and had a 3 in one Goku vs Vegeta volume collection that I would reread constantly. But seeing them play it is so different. I also started to admire your character design more and more. Trying to draw them in my free time, and getting a bit sad when I couldn't capture the same magic you could.

All of this, of course, was older material though. This was all before my time, I was never there to experience it when it initially happened. Not for super, not for the OG DB, and not for Z. I adored it all, but I always knew what was going to happen.

I remember the reaction on my face when the news of DBS Superhero dropped. I was so so SO excited. More than you could ever imagine. Something new, something I could see with my own eyes, and something about Piccolo and Gohan??? It was amazing. And seeing it in theaters a few years later? God I was on the edge of my seat the entire film. I even started reading the DBS manga, I think it's amazing so far.

When I heard that you were gone yesterday night, I was crushed.

I’m a junior now. And after a long time of thinking about it, being anxious, afraid, and scared of the future. I think I want to be an artist or filmmaker. I want to bring the same energy you did to the world. I'm still trying to figure out my artstyle, and how I want to draw. I’m not great at it, but no matter what, I want to keep going. Because I want to bring a character to life, like you brought Son Goku to life and so many others as well. I want to inspire so many others like you inspired me. With your messages, you brought me happiness. You told me that simplicity was ok with Son Goku. You told me that we need to fight for what we love with Son Gohan. You told me that we should aim to be better than our predecessors with Piccolo Junior. You told me that we shouldn't let our pride consume us with Vegeta. You’ve shown me and the entire world so so much. And I hope you were proud of it. I’m

I said the world of Dragon Ball earlier, but really, it was your world Akira Toriyama. And your world changed mine forever in the best way. Thank you, for letting me dream again.

#dragon ball #dragon ball z #dragon ball daima #dbz #dbz goku #dragon ball super #akira toriyama #dbs #dragon ball gt

[sailorspica]

reijean v-day 💝⚔️

see vee's prompt graphic for this. i tag anyone in any fandom, i want to hear about your OTP!!

💝 favorite canon scene:

these panels in the 57th scouting expedition right here.

in the anime the only internal monologue we get is from jearmin, which is a big rewatch tell of oh shit! why are reiner's thoughts private (armored hehe). but the ONE time, ONE time we get reiner's thoughts in this arc in the manga... it's about jean. and it's not like he takes over narration like armin did when he encounters annie alone, or like jean does once these three meet up. it's just one stray 💭 of "jean really... is different."

sure, other characters note jean's maturity since joining the corps, but recognition from reiner stands out here as a vote of confidence from marcel!reiner, AND four years later: when he still describes jean as "an irresponsible jerk who only ever thought of himself," even though reiner knows first hand that jean grew so, so much after trost. and it's his fault.

💝 a song that reminds you of them:

i previously posted SASAMI's I Was a Window, but another one that screams reijean to me is Till Death by Japanese Breakfast. briefly, it's about marriage, but she wrote a whole book about the context that this song and her relationship come from, which i highly recommend.

so many images in it are so post-rumbling to me: "get these days to go by like the swaying of a ship," (the studio recording starts with ocean sounds); "sing me to sleep, soothe this insomnia"; "your embrace healing my wounds / teach me to breathe, teach me to move." the beginning of verse 2, "steering on hostile waves of panic, like fighting a wheel that pulls to the right" makes me think of a later jbrekkie song, Slide Tackle, which IS reiner.

💝 favorite official picture/graphic:

back to back on the vol. 32 alliance cover baby!!

💝 favorite fanfic:

i have to say two:

vermin by @oxygenbefore1775: delicious cadet days, delicious fucked up time in reiner POV, delicious, smart tangling with the technological/material/cultural gaps between the walls and the rest of the world. how much of RBA's deep cover is culture shock? the total lack of guile jean has while running roughshod over the land mines in reiner's head with just "bunny." god.

from shiganshina with love by @fromriches-tosin: this is really the one that lured me in. it feels like a locked room, three-hander play, when even being in the wide open air (well, not reiner) is claustrophobic because two characters are intertwined and dug into one another. and as someone who has inhaled shelves' worth of eruri fic and doujinshi, vee's levi is one of my favorites.

💝 favorite fanart:

oh, this and everything by @mikibagels. one thing about reijean that goes so hard is jean's growth spurt, cadet and post-rumbling reijean both have height difference. similar vein, @valmendy illustrating reiner's flirting from never let me go: "i feel like i missed out on my little brother growing up." hello???

💝 why i ship:

i binged the anime so late, just in time for season 4, and when the finale came out i could hardly think of anything other than "we're scouts, we don't know when to quit."

back in my day (i'm turning 27 this month), one dude beating up another in shounen launched a ship, a fleet of ships, and kept it afloat for years, but yams gave us their more obvious, huge interactions in the last... fifteen chapters. but there's so much history between them that screams to be noticed on initial reread and rewatch: the reijearmin (horrendous throuple name) date that was the female titan arc, that jean keeps his cool when the 104th hop on the armored as reibert and ymir try to flee, the whole return to shiganshina, the echo i come back to of "the jean kirchstein i know only thinks of himself."

with jean's OVA, they're the characters whose moms we see the most of besides carla jaeger??? the difference between karina and jean's mother is vast, yet their sons turned out so similar, despite it all. so caring, so haunted by that care. jean takes his leadership in the post-time skip survey corps so seriously, he agonizes over his field leadership in trost, while reiner feels like he killed marcel and bertolt and doomed annie, and in his lowest, lowest moments still manages to protect and worry for falco and gabi.

also, another big why: you people. this is such a cozy pontoon. 😘 happy valentine's day!!!

#reijean #jeanrei #reiner x jean #jean x reiner #♃ #aottxt #♀

[trigun-manga-overhaul]

Hello!

So I finally put the effort to watch Trigun Stampede. Thing is I felt nostalgic and watched the anime and NOW I just found out about Maximum. I am curious what chapter or volume does Maximum pick up from the anime. I am aware it missed a lot of things bc of the way it came out. I will most likely go back and re-read it from start. But I just wanted for the time being know if anyone knew what chapter picks up from the anime.

Hey there and thank you for the question!

Maximum does not pick up from anywhere in either of the animes, they're all their entirely separate stories, timelines and lore. The 1998 anime and Stampede both take from inspiration from the manga, the source material, but does their own thing with a bit of throw-back to the manga.

If you want to read the manga, then I strongly suggest reading it from the beginning, which means the two volumes of Trigun, then the fourteen volumes of Trigun Maximum. You might find that Trigun vol 1 and 2 have a lot in common with the 1998 anime, but they're still separate was the timeline is off and characters are very different in the manga than in the anime. There's also essential information in Trigun vol 1 and 2 that will come up later in Maximum, information exclusive to the manga.

I hope you have a good time reading the manga!

#answers

[kohakuxrin]

Trashahime: Massive Recycling!

1) Mistress Centipede

This one frankly seemed alright to me, but the rest...

2) Hitokon

3) Bone Demon and her Father

4) Cat Demon

5) Meioju

6) Ginka and Kinka

7) Mizuchi and Nuwamatari

8) Nikosen

9) Sayo

10) Yuki and her brother

11) Wakana

12) Kodoku

13) The two onis

14) Snow Panther

15) An incarnation of the main antagonist interested in a member of the dog demon clan

16) Not alone anymore

17) A moth demon destroyed by a hanyo in a mindless state

18) Kao and the bug in the chest

19) Shibugarasus, Toads, Kumogashiras

So the demons Inuyasha fought were actually aliens!? 🤦🤦🤦

20) The giant bug with Naraku within

And not just Inuyasha, also Sailor Moon

21) The Rainbow Crystals

- The Silver Crystal was split into the seven Rainbow Crystals so as to seal away Seven Great Yōma. And as Sailor Moon shed a tear for her lover Tuxedo Mask who was mortally wounded, it caused the seven Rainbow Crystals to react and merge into one, forming the Silver Crystal itself. - As Zero shed a tear onto the Sacred Jewel, upon learning the death of Toga whom she was fond of, the seven rainbow pearls came out of it.

22) Chibiusa and the Door of Time

- Chibiusa has a key that leads to the door of time which leads to the future, and she was being hunted by bad guys. - Akuru has a pinwheel that activates the windmill of time opening a path to the future, and he was being hunted by Kirinmaru.

No question in those two because Katsuyuki Sumisawa was involved in the first anime version of Sailor Moon and in the same episodes in which the rainbow crystals assembled and Chibiusa took the Sailor Warriors to the doors of time (episodes 34 and 82).

I know there are some similar materials and characters designs in Rumiko Takahashi’s manga series, but that’s from one work to another that she does some reuse and she still comes up with original materials which makes her mangas differ a lot between each other. In the case of a continuation of one story, it’s really pathetic, which is one of the reasons why Trashahime was a cheap what if made by amateurs.

#trashahime #antiyashahime #anti yashahime #antisessrin #anti sessrin #anti hanyo no yashahime #anti hny #anti-sessrin #antirinsess #anti rinsess #bad anime #yashahime sucks #katsuyuki sumisawa #sumisawa #cancel yashahime #cancelyashahime #inuyasha #sunrise #anti sunrise #antisunrise

[my-rose-tinted-glasses]

If you don't mind me asking, who are your favorite romantic relationship's couples in books/ manga/ anime/movies/tv series (can be canon or non-canon)? Feel free if you want to write the reasons or not of why you love them...Thanks if you want to answer....

Hello!

So I have real hard time with any sort of favourite lists that is that broad. With that said, I chose one that, at the moment, I'm obsessed with. Adachi and Kurosawa because I can watch them in so many different ways.

It's a magical time to be able to watch two of them at the same time.

I think they are similar in most ways, but the thailand version is the one that deviates more from the original source material, which makes sense to me.

For instance one of my favourite scenes - the one from the images above - in all the japanese versions is when Kurosawa puts the scarf on Adachi. In the thai version there is no such scene. Instead of being cold, it's raining which obviously makes much more sense considering it's Thailand. So he protects him from the rain instead with the umbrella. But it's basically the same scene, where Kurosawa, via his thoughts, tell us and Adachi that he's noticed how Adachi is a hard worker and how he's been watching him longer than he thought.

In the manga and now the anime version Kurosawa gets a bit more cheeky in this scene and others, and I appreciate that the anime is giving me that Kurosawa again.

I love these two for a lot of reasons. I like that we get see Adachi using his powers to learn about the people around him and also about himself. And I absolutely adore Kurosawa because he can't control his thoughts but he does make the effort to control his actions, and never make Adachi feel uncomfortable. The growth of the relationship is just one of my favourites also because we get to see a lot of it. I don't know how far the anime will go into the story just yet, so I don't know if we'll get to them "getting married" but I really hope we do.

Anyway I hope your happy with this answer and thanks so much for the question. 💜

#rosy answers #cherry magic #cherry magic thailand #30-sai made Dotei Da to Mahotsukai ni Nareru rashii