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bungeepuppet · 11 months

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Breakup (Part 1)

Prompt: Hisoka and Illumi have a very bad breakup.

Rating: Mature (Extreme Violence, Sexual Themes)

Words: 4,300

Note: Part 1/2 of something between a fanfic and a doujin script, in which this author attempts to push Hisoka into feeling a genuine human emotion!

(☆ PART 2) (+ao3)

⚠️Warning: Contains some self-deprecating dialogue & technical self-harm that could be upsetting. 😵

—

(The setting is a highrise rooftop, with a nighttime cityscape backdrop)

Hisoka and Illumi are in a disagreement, and their talk is turning into an argument. Hisoka turns to leave.

“—Hisoka.”

Illumi calls after him in a sharp tone. Hisoka stops to scowl at the sky before he turns back to Illumi.

“What.”

It’s not a question.

“I need you for this job.” Illumi reiterates. “Chase Chrollo some other time.”

Hisoka frowns in annoyance.

“Sorry to disappoint you, dear. ♠” “But I won’t miss an easy opportunity. Find someone else to accompany you. ♣”

The two glare at each other.

“I’m telling you not to go.”

“And I’m telling you that I’m going.”

Hisoka hates being controlled, and while he usually goes along with Illumi’s orders, tonight is a bad night for his attitude. He fails to stop himself from driving the point home.

“And where exactly do you get off telling me where I can and cannot go? ♠”

Illumi flusters at the pointed question.

“You have always accompanied me when I ask.”

Hisoka’s mouth pinches.

“Well, I’ve never had anything better to do at the time.”

“So, you only agreed to join me on jobs, for years, because it was convenient for you?”

“Obviously. Why else would I? ♣”

Hisoka’s question tests the waters. It baits Illumi to divulge more than Hisoka is willing to divulge himself.

“...” “You… enjoy it.” “You always say that you enjoy our time together.”

Hisoka flusters this time.

“Only because it passes the time.” “I didn’t think you took all that to heart, Illumi. ♦”

It’s a lie, but Hisoka is a good liar, and Illumi can’t help but consider it.

“...”

Illumi tenses his hands into fists while he thinks.

“That’s… That’s not true.”

It contradicts all he knows about his relationship with Hisoka, after all.

“You seek out opportunities to spend time with me.” “You tell me how you enjoyed yourself each time that you leave.” “And every time I ask you to accompany me, you do.” “It is not unreasonable to think that our partnership is more than a cure for your boredom.”

Hisoka frowns again.

No one knows him, he’s made fairly certain of that. Illumi speaks as if he knows him so intimately.

As if they are so close.

And even if technically Illumi has gotten closer to him than anyone else ever has, he is still not allowed to dictate Hisoka’s behaviors like he’s an expert on them.

It infuriates Hisoka to no end that anyone would claim to know how he feels about anything, even if it is true.

“You’re so confident, Illu. ♠” “You don’t think that murder and sex are easy ways to cure boredom?”

Illumi flinches at the comment.

“...” “...They can be.”

“But not with you, right? Because you’re so special to me? ♠”

Illumi blushes in embarrassment in spite of himself.

“I—”

“Right. Because we’re so close. ♣”

Hisoka begins to walk, closing the space between himself and Illumi.

“You believe that, don’t you?”

Illumi squints and does his best to not let Hisoka’s words bother him.

“You’re the one that always answers so eagerly.”

“Oh, really? But you’re not upset at all that I won’t join you tonight?” “Right~♪ Of course not. It’s me that’s so clingy. ♠”

Illumi scowls, embarrassed again.

“I’m not clingy for—”

“Illumi, you seem to have misunderstood the nature of our relationship.”

“Hisoka…!”

“A ‘give-and-take’ means exactly that. We give and take from each other, back and forth.” “No matter how long it’s gone on for, we’re still as distant as the day it started. ♣”

“We are not close.” (“Or moreover, we are not emotionally intimate…♠”)

Hisoka looks down at Illumi, and Illumi frowns up at him. Hisoka feels immense pride in himself for upsetting him.

“At this point, our history just makes things easy.” “You’re easy to go along with, and an easy lay when I need it. ♥”

Illumi stares at Hisoka in shock, past the point of embarrassment.

His brain doesn’t offer him enough time to be mortified before he blacks out in anger.

Illumi’s nails point as he lunges forward, and he severs Hisoka’s left arm in one swift movement. Hisoka is caught completely off guard by the violent reaction.

Hisoka manages to redirect two more of Illumi’s strikes from hitting anything important, but can do nothing more than that.

Claws run past Hisoka’s face and nick his cheek as Hisoka backs up to create distance. The distance allows Illumi more room to move.

Illumi kicks Hisoka onto his back and straddles him. Hisoka brings up his arms to block, but Illumi’s attack is faster.

Illumi lifts his right arm and plunges his hand into Hisoka’s chest. His sharp nails clutch around Hisoka’s heart, and Hisoka’s breath catches in his throat.

A moment passes.

Another moment passes.

Hisoka’s mind catches up to the predicament he’s gotten himself into.

Despite the fact that Illumi has a tight grip on his heart, he hasn’t pulled it out yet. Illumi only sits, crouched in silence, watching Hisoka with a blank expression.

Hisoka fights to keep his breathing shallow. Like with any predator, there is a natural instinct to keep as still as possible once you’ve been cornered, lest you fall prey to being killed and eaten.

Illumi leans in, and Hisoka is frozen. There is nothing Hisoka can do to counter that won’t result in his own death. “As I understand it…” “...after all this time…” “...this is the closest that I have ever been to your heart.”

Illumi speaks very slowly.

Hisoka can hardly breathe.

Illumi continues to stare at him. His eyes are wide and cold. He tilts down further, as if inspecting what he’s caught.

Hisoka’s lips part while he thinks of what to say, but Illumi speaks first. “I don’t want your heart.”

Illumi says. It is more of a reminder to himself than it is for Hisoka’s ears.

“I don’t want your time.”

Illumi reminds himself again.

He has strayed too far from his father’s teachings, that’s obvious now.

Illumi knows that killing should be mechanical. Illumi knows that he is a machine, made to kill. A machine that has no need for pleasure or praise. A machine that should be void of emotion and desire.

He knows that. He knows that, and yet he let himself become intertwined with a man like Hisoka Morow.

Illumi doesn’t remember at what point it became like this, but it is unacceptable. “I don’t want to be close to you.”

Illumi’s eyes are very dark. Absolutely unacceptable. He cannot waste any more time and effort on things that are so passionate.

“I want nothing from you.”

The atmosphere is so tense that Hisoka is sure Illumi will deal the finishing blow any second.

Illumi moves, and Hisoka jolts.

Contrary to Hisoka’s fears, Illumi only slips his bloodied hand out of Hisoka’s chest as he rises into a stand.

Illumi steps over Hisoka and leaves without another word.

Hisoka gasps quietly while he listens and tries to sense Illumi’s aura.

He senses nothing.

Hisoka places his good hand over his chest and seals the wound with Bungee Gum.

“Perhaps…”

Hisoka relaxes against the concrete roof and allows himself to breathe.

“...I took it too far. ♠”

(A short time later)

Hisoka is seated on an armchair in a hotel room. Machi is sewing his chest wound shut while Hisoka holds his detached arm.

“It really is amazing that no one’s killed you yet.”

Machi is irritated to have been called so urgently this late at night, but Hisoka always pays her well for patching him up.

Hisoka stares down past his chin at the punctures Machi is fixing. He can imagine the tunnels Illumi’s fingers must have made around his heart, and how Machi’s threads would look as she stitches the wounds closed tight.

“Yes, it is… amazing.”

Hisoka mumbles. His mind is wandering.

(“Why didn’t Illumi kill me?”)

If Hisoka had made Illumi so angry that Illumi wanted nothing to do with him anymore, killing Hisoka would have been the quickest way to make sure that they would never meet again, especially in such an impassioned moment.

So why did Illumi leave without finishing him off?

(“Maybe Illumi was just talking big. ♦”) (“Maybe he wants to reconcile after he’s cooled down a bit…”)

He remembers Illumi’s blank, black eyes.

(“It really didn’t seem like it, though…♠”)

Machi pulls the last thread in Hisoka’s chest tight and he winces.

Hisoka looks down at his chest. It looks remarkably good for having had a fist-sized hole in the center of it an hour ago.

Despite that, there are still five distinct marks left on the skin from Illumi’s claws.

Hisoka traces the marks with his nails while he stares.

“It’ll heal.” Machi interjects, assuming he’ll complain about the frayed edges.

“You can use your Texture Surprise to cover it in the meantime.”

Hisoka’s nails skid across the marks again.

“Right…”

“...” “Your arm, Hisoka.”

“Oh, right. ♣”

Machi decides to ignore Hisoka’s weirdness, and begins sewing his arm back on.

(Weeks later)

Hisoka is skulking around his apartment while he fiddles with his phone.

Illumi has not contacted him at all since their fight.

Hisoka was expecting at least a few passive-aggressive or bitter parting words once Illumi had the time to find them. Hisoka had certainly done enough to earn them.

Regardless, Hisoka is resigned with his assumption that their partnership has really ended.

Which would be fine if it didn’t bother him so much.

It shouldn’t bother him at all, since the finality of death itself follows Hisoka wherever he goes, but it does

Is the significantly-less finality of an ended relationship more permanent or remarkable than literal death? Certainly not.

It’s just strange, Hisoka decides, to think of Illumi in the past-tense. To think of him as a thing of the past, when he has been a constant in Hisoka’s life for years.

Illumi had inadvertently become something consistent. He was something easy for Hisoka’s mind to go off of as a waypoint.

While everything else in life changes with the direction of the wind, Hisoka could count on that unless they’d finally committed to killing each other, Illumi would be there.

Detached and greedy, and doing as he wishes, but there all the same.

Now Illumi was just another thing that faded away into what once was. An opportunity come and gone. A mark made and missed. A thing of the past.

Hisoka hates the past.

He prefers to never think about things from his childhood, or teenage years, or even the few years of adulthood before he had met Illumi and set Chrollo as his favored target.

There was nothing of value to be gathered from looking back at things that you cannot change, or people that are no longer there, and more common than not, never mattered at all.

Hisoka was alone in his endeavors his whole life, so returning to working solo shouldn’t feel so… bad.

It shouldn’t feel foreign at all. It was having an ally for so long that should have felt foreign.

So why was it that it did feel so bad, and so foreign, then?

Hisoka sprawls out on his couch. He has nothing better to do than overthink tonight.

Hisoka thinks back to what Illumi said during their fight. “I want nothing from you.”

“...” “Well that’s not true, is it Illumi? ♣” “You wanted me to stay so badly.”

“...As if you can control where I go, or what I do. ♠”

“...” “... ♠”

Hisoka sighs and rolls onto his side.

It would have been easy to appease Illumi.

It would have been as easy as saying “OK” for the evening, and then doing as he pleased once Illumi wasn’t so worked up.

Hisoka knows that he lost his cool that night, and that alone irritates him. Losing yourself to your emotions is a pathetic vulnerability that Hisoka very rarely indulges in.

It’s something weak fighters fall victim to quite often, and doing so opens oneself to losing a fight in a miserable and stupid way.

No one should be able to stoke that kind of reaction out of him, Hisoka thinks.

But Illumi was so close to him, despite Hisoka’s confident words to the contrary during their argument. Illumi was closer to him than anyone ever was.

It infuriated Hisoka at the time that Illumi had the gall to believe that he had any sway in what Hisoka did with himself or with his time, but if Hisoka was honest with himself now, it was not the first time that Illumi had given his input about either.

Or more to the point, it was not the first time that Illumi had told him “no”.

“…”

“...Not that it matters. ♠”

(More time passes)

Hisoka has kept busy by chasing Chrollo’s movements, but he’s disappeared again.

And Hisoka is bored.

There’s not much else to do in the city besides drink, so he is at a very nice bar tonight.

He’s sitting by himself at the counter, nursing a scotch that he’s been staring at more than he’s drinking.

The glass looks dumb, sitting there alone on the counter. So lonesome and out of place.

Hisoka orders a second glass of scotch and sets it with his half-dranken one.

It doesn’t look quite so out of place to him now, but it is bothersome that the one who would be drinking the second glass is not with him tonight, nor will he ever be again.

(“...It can be a send-off, then.”)

“...Cheers.”

Hisoka clinks his glass against the one on the counter.

He groans as he finishes his drink.

“This is getting pathetic. ♠”

The motion of long dark hair swaying in his peripheral catches Hisoka’s attention, and he stares in its direction without turning his head.

A figure sits beside him, facing away, with straight, black hair that skims past the barstool where they’re seated.

Hisoka’s breath catches for a moment while he stares.

It’s a woman, he can see, when she turns to her date with a laugh and curls a lock of hair behind her ear.

Hisoka reigns himself in from his initial thoughts, and sets his empty glass down.

Hisoka leaves the other glass untouched and exits the bar.

(“Very pathetic. ♠”)

(At Hisoka’s apartment)

Hisoka is in bed, and is having a hard time getting comfortable. His sheets and pillows are bunched up all over, and he’s lying on his back with his elbows up and biceps to his ears.

Hisoka is not used to feeling so restless.

It’s pointless and stupid to feel wistful.

(“Wistful of what? Of having a drinking companion that can’t even get drunk?”)

There was actually no point in Illumi ordering drinks when they would go out. His immunity to poisons meant that the alcohol would have no effect on him. But Illumi would anyway. (Why?)

Hisoka imagines Illumi’s smile against the rim of his glass.

Miserable.

Hisoka’s brain pulls him into more memories of downtime spent with Illumi.

Illumi was rather boring when they first met. He was very honest though, and answered any question Hisoka asked, with his hilariously flat tone.

It was fun, back then, to pull a reaction out of him.

Hisoka scowls, and buries his face with his arms.

Illumi would sit so politely, back then, like a doll. Hisoka had wanted to eat him up.

Illumi wasn’t easy to tease, since he took everything very literally. Hisoka had found it so funny. He remembers when Illumi started to wear more unique clothes. He remembers Illumi cutting a joke with him the first time. He remembers when Illumi started to look at him with familiarity. He remembers when Illumi started to look at him fondly. He remembers how they met, how Illumi was paid to kill him. How much different Illumi is now, from what he was like then.

(“You changed so much, from then to now…”) (“But it isn’t “now” anymore, is it?”)

Hisoka stares at nothing.

(“There is only a “then”... There is only a “was”.) (“You’re gone from “now”, aren’t you Illumi?”)

Hisoka thinks about Illumi as he last saw him. Illumi was wearing an outfit he was familiar with.

He can imagine Illumi turning to look at him in satisfaction. That’s what Illumi would have looked like if Hisoka had agreed to assist him that night.

("If I had said "yes"...")

Illumi, with his black eyes bent upwards slightly in delight.

Hisoka’s composure wavers.

(“You hate me now, Illu?”)

Hisoka thinks of Illumi’s expression after Hisoka had told him that he was an easy lay. He thinks of Illumi’s expression when he was holding Hisoka’s beating heart in his grasp.

With eyes so dark and wide, his stare blank, balancing between focused on Hisoka and focused on nothing at all.

Hisoka frowns, and tears prick at the inner corner of his eyes.

“You looked so beautiful…♥”

Such a cold, ruthless expression. So much vitriol that went nowhere. Illumi was Hisoka’s favorite toy, and could get a rise out of Hisoka almost effortlessly.

“You were gorgeous, Illu…” “I didn’t have a choice. You could have ripped my heart out…♦”

Hisoka’s heart aches in response.

(“Is it remorse? Do I feel remorse…?”)

A tear snakes its way down the side of his nose.

(“For losing you? Not to death, but over something so pointless…? ♠”)

“Illumi…” “You are so beautiful…♥”

—

“There is nothing about me that is beautiful.”

Illumi stands in his room after a shower, staring at himself in the mirror. He is nude, and is scrutinizing his body.

“I’m not desirable. I was not made to be.”

Illumi sets a hand over his chest as he thinks aloud.

“I was made to kill.” “I am a machine, made to kill.”

Illumi touches his skin lightly.

“He made me… forget.” “For a while…”

Illumi thinks about Hisoka holding him and caressing him as Illumi had come to know. Hisoka would say things like “Illumi~♪ You are so gorgeous~♥” when he would touch him.

Illumi’s expression remains flat.

“No…” “It was me that forgot…”

“Hisoka never said anything more than that.” “It was… me… that took it to heart.”

That was what Hisoka said. That Illumi had taken his words “to heart”.

Illumi’s hand trembles.

Hisoka loved to touch him. He would run his hands all over Illumi’s body. He would squeeze and scratch at Illumi’s skin greedily, like he couldn’t get enough.

Illumi’s nails grow to a point, and dig into the skin on his collar. His expression remains blank.

No, that was not correct. Hisoka did not love to touch him. Hisoka just knew that Illumi would let him touch him.

Illumi was an easy lay for him. That’s what Hisoka said.

Illumi’s claws grip into his skin harder, drawing blood.

“I’m… not beautiful.”

Illumi tries to push back memories of being intimate with Hisoka.

Hisoka would be so gentle and so rough with him. Hisoka would pepper his face with kisses when Illumi would give in and let him have his way. Hisoka would scratch down Illumi’s back and grip at his throat to keep him closer.

It all made Illumi forget, for some time, that he was nothing to be desired.

“Hisoka just…” “He said that as a joke.”

“Hisoka said all those things because they are… stereotypical things lovers say…” “Hisoka did all those things because… it’s funny for him to… fake a role…” “He never meant them.”

“I took them to heart.”

Blood trails down Illumi’s chest and stomach. Illumi lifts his bloodied fingers to his chin, and brushes the back of his nails across his jaw.

Hisoka would thumb at Illumi’s jawline while he admired his face. “You are so beautiful… Illumi. ♥” Hisoka would say. “How did I get so lucky~? ♦” Hisoka would say.

Illumi’s bottom eyelids fill with tears.

He hates the response, but it is necessary, just like when he was young and undergoing torture training. It is better to react and react until there is no more reaction.

“I’m…”

Illumi holds his neck.

“I’m glad that he… corrected me.”

Tears drip down Illumi’s jaw slowly, steadily.

“I’m glad he didn’t lie.” “I’d been acting foolishly for long enough…”

Illumi glides a finger over his bottom lip.

Hisoka would lay beneath Illumi and savor his expression after a night together. He would set his thumb on Illumi’s bottom lip and pet his face, or run his fingers up into Illumi’s hair.

Illumi’s fingers twitch and the veins and tendons in his hand rise from tension.

“I…”

Hisoka’s smiling eyes haunt him.

Why couldn’t they just have sex if that was what Hisoka wanted? Why did Hisoka have to play with him that way?

As if Illumi needed to question it, when he knew very well that that was exactly the kind of person Hisoka was.

“I can’t… afford to hate you.” “I cannot waste any more passion on you, Hisoka…”

“I want to kill you so badly…”

Illumi’s claws twitch.

“But if I did that, it would be an act of passion.”

“There is no way, as I am now, that I can kill you and act as if it meant nothing.”

Illumi drops his hand to his side and stares at himself in the mirror again.

“I need to focus on the basics again.” “I forgot for too long who I’m supposed to be…”

“I need to focus.” “I have to, until you really do mean nothing to me.”

Illumi looks down at the blood that has dripped onto the floor and on his feet.

“Ah… I just showered…”

(More time passes)

Hisoka is in a forest setting in the dead of night, sitting up high in a tree to watch the road. He has taken up stalking Illumi.

Hisoka peers through the tree branches to watch the manor that he knows Illumi will be visiting soon. He smiles to himself.

(“Hmm~ This takes me back~♪”)

When their relationship was still new, Hisoka had to stalk Illumi for some time before Illumi would agree to simply meet with him.

Hisoka focuses his Gyo on the property.

Illumi would normally be invisible even to Nen users, but Hisoka knows what aura to look for, and he is desperate to find it.

Illumi’s figure is faintly outlined as he circles the back of the house. Hisoka smiles hungrily.

(“There you are, Illu…♥”)

For Hisoka, there is an almost voyeuristic excitement in watching Illumi work from afar.

Illumi enters the manor unnoticed, and Hisoka bites his lip to keep his patience. It’s very exciting for Hisoka to see Illumi again after so long.

The dark windows of the house tell a story as lights haphazardly turn on and shadows rush around inside.

After the initial chaos, there are sounds of gunfire. The blasts of light illuminate another darkened window in quick bursts. Then everything is still.

Hisoka cranes his neck in interest when he sees a man fleeing from the manor. Hisoka smiles again when his eyes catch Illumi’s silhouette calmly but quickly following after the escapee.

(“Hh…♥”) (“Always so cool, Illumi. ♦”)

Illumi flings his arm in the man’s direction, and a barrage of needles smatter across his back.

The man stumbles and falls dead on the road, close to where Hisoka is hidden. Hisoka bites back more excitement as Illumi nears the body.

Illumi kneels down to check the man. He rolls the body over to inspect it further and ensure that he was indeed his target.

Hisoka savors the scene below him.

Illumi looks perfectly put together, with a length of his long black hair bowing over his shoulder as he kneels. The contrast of Illumi's untouched figure and the massacre he’s no doubt left in his wake makes him look all the more appetizing to Hisoka.

Seemingly out of nowhere, Illumi raises his right arm, and digs his hand into the man’s chest. Hisoka is surprised to watch Illumi pull the man’s heart out.

Illumi stares at it for a moment.

“...”

“.......”

His arm trembles as he thinks.

Just as suddenly, Illumi slams his fist, still holding the heart, back into the man’s chest. He repeats the action over and over, breaking bones and splattering blood all over the ground and himself.

Hisoka looks on in shock at the uncharacteristic violence.

Illumi stands up and hurls what remains of the battered heart onto the ground, hard. He huffs, then stalks away in silence.

Hisoka stares down at the bloody corpse below.

(“Ah… ♠”) (“Maybe… he’s still a little… mad.”)

—

Illumi is washing his bloody arm in a nearby stream.

“Hm…” “That was not good.”

Illumi sighs and flicks water off of his hand.

It is not good at all that he is still so worked up after all this time.

Illumi’s fight with Hisoka has long since passed, so he shouldn’t be taking out aggression on random dead people. He should be much more professional.

“Damn it...” (Shimatta…)

A blip of a presence jolts Illumi’s senses. Illumi jumps up into a stand and stares into the forest behind him.

Hisoka is ducked down very far off in the woods. He’s knelt with a hand on his knee, staring at the ground.

“Hhhnn… It’s so hard to wait. ♥” “He’s looking right at me…♦”

Hisoka’s eyes peek up. He’s staring at a tree, but he might as well be staring directly at Illumi.

“Illumi… I want to see you. ♠”

Illumi tenses to move, and Hisoka vanishes.

“...”

Illumi frowns in concern.

Illumi is suspicious. He knows what he felt, but wants to believe otherwise.

He does not pursue Hisoka.

#hisoillu #illumi zoldyck #hisoka morow #mine #everything after this gets very ns/fw so ghhghgh good stopping point ig #i have a lotttt more to go for part 2 sobs. making up isnt easy #fanfic

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babyrubysoho-maiden · 1 year

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Scanlation: MR doujinshi "Molasses and Butterflies"

My English scanlation of the Hyakujitsu no Bara doujinshi "Molasses and Butterflies" (printed version) and "Molasses and Butterflies" (copy-bon), both released at J Garden 53, April 2, 2023.

Here's the new doujin! It includes a brand-new story, it's set during their time in Luckenwalde and is relaxed and adorable. The properly printed doujin also includes the recent story "Thorn Crown: Luckenwalde".

Click here or here to get it.

A note about reading: For the new story "Molasses and Butterflies" I recommend reading the copy-bon version first. It's because that version is the completed one, with finished drawings and dialogue. Sensei says she didn't have time to complete the drawing before the main printing deadline, so the version in the proper doujin is incomplete. I included it for your interest, but the copy-bon version is the definitive one!

Check out my master post at the top of the page for my other MR scanlations! Enjoy :)

#hyakujitsu no bara #maiden rose #fusanosuke inariya #scanlation #doujinshi

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michaelmac6072 · 1 year

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Something that crossed my mind when perusing the latest Touhou manga chapters is that I think ZUN often has difficulty making events flow naturally from one to another, and to cover for it, he ends up overwriting a lot of expository stuff that slows things down and takes up precious real-estate in the stories he wants to tell. It's kind of evident in the meme that most Touhou games are 4 stages of beating up randos followed by only 2 stages of people actually related to the incident, but I think a better point of comparison would between the latest chapter of CDS, where Reimu stays at Myouren temple, and the Sanae-san is On the Run doujin by WaHH artist Aya Azuma, where Sanae does the same thing. Both cover the same beats, with a shrine maiden getting an intro to the Buddhists and life at their temple, but Azmaya is able to cover a lot more ground in a lot less space than ZUN did.

More below the cut -- lots of manga pages and spoiler warnings for both comics. As a side note, I wanted to try using colored text to help break up all the black & white and make things easier to follow, but I apologize if it's distracting.

In Detective Satori, our first mention of the Myouren temple is in the end of chapter 23 as the place Reimu and presumably Satori suspect Mizuchi is at next, and so we spend the tail end of that chapter with several pages of establishing panels of the Myouren crew there before Reimu arrives confronting Kyouko, all without dialogue.

Come chapter 24, we begin with... more establishing panels of the Myouren crew doing day-to-day activities, this time accompanied by dialogue and mean-spirited titles, presumably assigned to them by either Reimu or Aya.

We don't even get to see Reimu's request to stay at the temple until page 10 of this chapter, and even then it is only indirectly through Ichirin's mention. By the time we get to Reimu on page 12, she's grouchily preparing a vegetarian meal at the temple before re-affirming to herself her desire to catch Mizuchi here -- which is something we already know from last time, about 18 total pages ago.

After this, that's the last we see of Reimu throughout the chapter - the rest is spent catching up with Aya and Marisa, which also isn't segued smoothly and instead relies on a cut to a couple pages of Kogasa's antics in the graveyard before Aya and Marisa chime in and discuss their own reasons for being there.

I could go on and post more pages from the chapter, but you get the point. The issue here is that there's no transition between these scenes -- rather than link these events together in any logical way, ZUN relies on lots of establishing material as filler to act as a buffer between separate events. You can see how it would be easy to join all this stuff together smoothly without so much establishment, which would give the meat of this thriller story some much-needed real estate. If you don't want to portray the scene where Reimu requests to stay, have ch. 24 begin with Reimu already prepping stuff at the temple, complete with the same grumblings about their lifestyle. From there, the action could driven by her interactions with some of the Buddhist crew -- not necessarily all of them, given the nature of the situation and the tension you want to preserve, but at least one or two of them. Then you can cut either cut to outside and have Aya and Marisa spy on or interrogate Kogasa, or even better, have Aya appear in a window and chat with Reimu, then you can have Marisa spot them from above and swoop in, and then they could all trade notes. Even if we are generous and give the Myouren temple the 5 pages of establishment it has at the end of chapter 23, there's no reason to do so much of it again at the start of chapter 24 and again again with Kogasa during its middle unless you're either deliberately padding things out, struggling for segues, or deliberately padding things out because you're struggling for segues.

Contrast this with Azmaya's comic. Here, the on-the-run Sanae meets Byakuren on the road after Reimu's attempts to exploit the spat between Sanae and her gods backfires. Byak good-naturedly offers her a place to stay after helping her clear up the aftermath of that.

From there, Sanae gets a crash course from Ichirin on the Buddhists' lifestyle, which she also grumbles about for the same reasons as Reimu, but comes to admire in her own way...

...before catching Ichirin and the others cheating on their discipline and storming out of the temple in betrayed frustration!

I would argue that more happens in just these 7 pages with Sanae here than in over 15 pages of CDS with Reimu. Azmaya's able to establish the Myouren temple as the next destination for Sanae in only a page or so, and the ascetic training there is conveyed efficiently in a training montage for Sanae, rather than two separate multi-page exposition scenes of the Myouren crew going through their daily routines. By the time we've reached 12 pages from the start of this chapter here -- where in CDS we were just beginning to see Reimu reacting to temple life -- Sanae's getting squabbled over by Shou as part of an effort to keep Sanae from damaging the temple's reputation.

I know CDS and this doujin have very different aims, and I know scripting a comic and handing it off to another artist leaves some artifacting that doing everything yourself does not. That said, Azmaya's comic had so much less fat on it than ZUN's, and a large part of that comes from how ZUN doesn't link events together well and so constantly re-establishes them, whereas Azmaya's events flow naturally from one another. Sanae at the was out in the village trying to gather embarrassing flyers Reimu made of her, and with Byakuren being a prominent figure there, it's highly plausible the two would meet up coincidentally. This conceit acts as a springboard for everything that happens in this chapter, whose ending in turn acts as a springboard for Shou to chase after her in the next chapter, which itself springboards into further events easily. There's a little re-establishment at the start of the chapter -- it is a serial -- but it's very casual. There's no starting and stopping like there constantly is in CDS: everything builds upon each other with grace and ease in a way that keeps the story going. And because of this constructive structure, Sanae can go through the same beats with Byakuren here that Reimu did in CDS in a much more efficient number of manga panels.

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gunsatthaphan · 1 year

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~ Monthly BL Breakdown: October 2022 ~

☔️ Happy November!!! ☔️

Disclaimer: ALL shows can be streamed here or here, as well as on Dailymotion and Youtube. For more info on where to watch what, check out this post!

New breakdowns coming at the end of every month - feel free to add stuff! (previous breakdowns)

What came out this month? (green tick = seen or currently watching)

🌟 To Sir, With Love - October 3rd (Thailand)

🌟 Kabe Koji - October 3rd (Japan)

🌟 Kabe Sa Doujin Sakka no Neko Yashiki-kun wa Shouninyokkyou wo Kojiraseteiru - October 4th (Japan)

🌟 Ghost Host, Ghost House - October 5th (Thailand)

🌟 Two and One - October 5th (Philippines)

🌟 Catch Me Baby - October 6th (Thailand)

🌟 Big Dragon - October 8th (Thailand)

🌟 My Roommate - October 8th (Thailand)

🌟 Paradise - October 8th (Philippines)

🌟 Remember Me - October 9th (Thailand) ✅

🌟 2 Moons 3: The Ambassador - October 10th (Thailand)

🌟 Self - September 13th (Thailand)

🌟 Roommates of Poongduck 304 - October 13th (South Korea) ✅

🌟 My Tooth Your Love - October 14th (Taiwan)

🌟 Hard Love Mission - October 15th (Thailand)

🌟 Love is Right - October 17th (South Korea)

🌟 Why You… Y Me? - October 19th (Thailand)

🌟 Eternal Yesterday - October 21st (Japan)

🌟 Choco Milk Shake - October 25th (South Korea)

🌟 My Friendship 2: Before the Rainbow - October 28th (Thailand)

🌟 Grand Guignol (Horror Movie) - October 28th (Japan)

🌟 Till the World Ends - October 29th (Thailand)

🌟 Love Bill - October 29th (Vietnam)

Monthly likes/dislikes

❣️ The Eclipse - Gonna put this on here for one last time because how can I not lmao. It wasn’t perfect and there were some bumps in the road but it was still a masterpiece to me. It was obvious that everything about it came from a place of sincerity and passion from everyone involved and the characters, as well as the stories they told, meant so much to me. Idk if others feel that way but yeah. It’s hard to top for sure.

❣️ Roommates of Poongduck 304 - YO this show is amazing. I havent seen anyone talk about it so yeah definitely criminally underrated. The writing is genius, the dialogues are witty and the acting is amazing. Truly a top-notch production in every possible way with all the kdrama feels but yknow... gay lmao. Highly recommend!!!!!

👎🏻 Oh My Sunshine Night - I don’t know where this show went wrong but it was a disaster. It’s been slow from the get go but it was nearly unbearable towards the end. The second half was just a loop of the same scenes and the same lines over and over again which is a shame because I know OhmFluke can do better. 18 episodes wasted. What a flop.

New series & movie announcements

🎥 HIStory 5: Love in the Future - Date TBA (Taiwan)

🎥 Individual Circumstances - Date TBA (South Korea)

🎥 Takumi-kun Series 6 - Coming 2023 (Japan)

🎥 Paano Kaya Kung Tayo (movie) - Date TBA (Philippines)

🎥 Star Struck - Date TBA (South Korea)

🎥 A Story to Remember - Date TBA (Philippines)

🎥 Home Par - Date TBA (Singapore)

🎥 Liquor - Coming late 2022 (South Korea)

🎥 Unintentional Love Story (starring Woo Taemin and others) - Date TBA (South Korea)

🎥 Future - Date TBA (Thailand)

🎥 Jump - Coming January 2023 (Thailand)

🎥 My Beautiful Man: The Movie - Date TBA (Japan)

🎥 Marry My Dead Body (movie) - Coming February 10th 2023 (Taiwan)

🎥 Fueang Nakorn (City of Stars) (produced by StarHunter) - Date TBA (Thailand)

🎥 House of Stars - Date TBA (Thailand)

🎥 La Pluie - Date TBA (Thailand)

🎥 For Him - Date TBA (Thailand)

🎥 Sukisuki Wanwan - Date TBA (Japan)

🎥 Moments of Love - Date TBA (Thailand)

Other news from the BL world

❗️ The upcoming Thai BL Midnight Fortune has been cancelled. It’s unclear whether or not a different company will pick it up.

❗️The upcoming Korean remake of the Thai BL “Why R U” has finished filming and is now in postproduction. The air date has yet to be announced.

❗️The upcoming Thai BL Make a Wish has wrapped filming. The pilot trailer was released on October 28th. The air date has yet to be announced.

❗️The Thai BL Unforgotten Night will have a special episode. There are no further details yet.

❗️A special episode for Love in the Air has been announced for November 26th, which will be released on Vimeo.

❗️Actor Ahn Jihoo (All of us are Dead) as well as actress and singer Kim Doyeon have joined the cast for the upcoming Korean BL Heesu in Class 2.

❗️A movie version for the Japanese BL “My Beautiful Man” has been announced. Filming started in mid October. A release date hasn’t been announced yet.

❗️The upcoming Thai BL Wish Me Luck released its first teaser. The show will air in 2023.

❗️The Thai BL “A Tale of Thousand Stars” won the Special Award For Foreign Drama at the The Tokyo Drama Awards 2022.

❗️The upcoming Korean BL Starstruck has started filming. The series will consist of 8 episodes.

❗️The upcoming GMMTV BL Be My Favorite will commence shooting in November.

Upcoming series & movies for November

☝🏻 Love of Secret - November 5th (Thailand)

☝🏻 Between Us - November 6th (Thailand)

☝🏻 Semantic Error: The Movie (digital release) - November 11th (South Korea)

☝🏻 I Will Knock You - November 18th (Thailand)

☝🏻 GAP (GL) - November 19th (Thailand)

☝🏻 609 Bedtime Story - November 26th (Thailand)

☝🏻 My School President - November TBA (Thailand)

☝🏻 Happy Ending Outside the Fence - November TBA (South Korea)

☝🏻 Young Hoon - November TBA (South Korea)

#doreens monthly bl breakdown #thai bl #bl drama #upcoming bl #update #bl news #my thoughts for october: no thoughts head empty bc the eclipse is over fjkdhgdf #😩😭#i miss it so much okay #its not fair #but other than that a pretty eventful month #lots of stuff aired but i wasnt intrigued by any of it except a few #a lot of thai bls were put in a time machine and were transported back to 2016 because what ive seen from these shows was really not good #dont judge a book by its cover but i havent been happy with what thailand has to offer lately #pretty disappointing #which makes shows like the eclipse even more valuable imo #also roommates of poongduck has been SO good like oof #i love it #but other than that #im not too happy with the most recent shows #hopefully november will have more to offer #im hyped for GAP #and also hopefully never let me go #fingers crossed!!!#also between us but yknow #dont have high hopes for that one lmao rip

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moonphantoma · 9 months

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I did some sorting in my doujin collection (again) and I decided to part with a few. Mostly TodoDeku but there's one BakuDeku and one DekuTodo.

They're all like new. And in Japanese.

1. Orijin o mo ichido by Tsudai - TodoDeku - 92p - Gen - 15€

2. i by tenten.coga - TodoDeku - 20p - Gen - 10€

3. UAFES! by tenten.coga - TodoDeku - 44p - Gen - 12€

4. forgiveness by Miyachi - TodoDeku - 82p - Gen - 15€

5. Kimi no ie ni ikou by Homura - TodoDeku - 32p - Gen - 11€

6. tayutou by Shibaya - BakuDeku - 24p - Gen - 10€

7. omegaverse-extra- by Ten - TodoDeku - 32p - R-18 - 12€

8. UAFES! intermission by tenten.coga - TodoDeku - 24p - Gen - 10€

9. Mo hagurenai yo ni by Eiri - TodoDeku - 90p - Gen - 15€

10. Deep Forest [Part 1] by Miyachi - TodoDeku - 36p - Gen - 12€

11. Distant Sea [Part 2] by Miyachi - TodoDeku - 32p - Gen - 11€

12. Dazzling Light [Part 3] by Miyachi - TodoDeku - 44p - Gen - 12€

13. Kemono × kemonokakeru by Sakuramaru - DekuTodo - 36p - R-18 - 12€

14. 35. by Mimi - TodoDeku - 80p - R-18 - 17€

15. Oyasumi traumerai by Mateyo - TodoDeku - 32p - Gen - 12€

16. Sore wa tatoe chisakutomo by tenten.coga - TodoDeku - 12p - R-18 - 9€

17. Dialogue by Enaka - TodoDeku - 24p - Gen - 10€

18. Koidatta. by Enaka - TodoDeku - 32p - R-18 - 13€

19. Re:Re:cycle by 10days - TodoDeku - 172p - Gen - 23€

20. Mimi to shippo no hon by Omame - TodoDeku - 28p - Gen - 11€

+ shipping (I can ship internationally)

Payment by Paypal only!

Everything is SOLD

#BnHA #TodoDeku #Todoroki Shoto #Midoriya Izuku #Doujin #My Hero Academia #MHA #Boku no Hero Academia #DekuTodo #TodoIzu #IzuTodo #Moon's merch #Struggling to update the post idk how it works anymore

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tribow · 2 years

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2015 comes in on the touhou community to drop the bombshells that are Urban Legend in Limbo and Legacy of Lunatic Kingdom. No miss no bomb score chasers and lunatic players had no idea what they were getting into and the fanon takes a massive hit. No one was ready for this.

This post bleeds quite a bit into 2016 as well. A lot of fanworks started adjusting interpretations and I was simply lost in the sauce. So anyway, here's my findings:

A new ship sails with Mokou and Sumireko due to their interactions in ULiL. Kaguya ain't happy about it.

I've noticed Raiko (and by extension, the Tsukumo sisters) be commonly depicted with tattoos. I don't know if this is a reference to something or if it's just inspired by metal/rock bands.

Wakasagihime gets some of the saddest works I've seen centered around one character in a while. She goes from being a part of a comedic trio to a lot of social trauma.

Sekibanki gotta be one of the funniest touhou characters of all time.

Seiran totally never killed someone! It's just paste! Don't worry about it!

Ringo collapses the instant she stops eating dango.

At this time Junko was not harassing Reisen at all! In fact, in most works I saw they actually somewhat got a long. Enjoy it while it lasts Reisen.

Junko commonly mistakes Seiga and Kaguya as Chang'e.

What if you place other sphere-like objects on Hecatia's head? A lot of works run with this joke.

For obvious reasons, Clownpiece tends to use a lot of english words or speak entirely in katakana

We are at peak psycho Koishi hours. Koishi getting a knife was all that was needed for this fanon interpretation to take over a while. Koishi's Heart Throbbing Adventure is no longer the main inspiration.

Sagume tends to have a very close relationship with Doremy since in many fanworks, her ability doesn't work in the Dream World so Doremy is a character she can freely talk to.

Tsukumo sisters have fallen under the Aki sisters routine of butting into a situation just so they can be involved.

The Tsukumos also seem to have their dynamic flipped for some reason. Benben would be crazy and Yatsuhashi would be cool-headed. Weird.

Kosozu is now an incident magnet and sometimes enjoys it.

Momiji's sword seems to keep getting smaller every year, I remember when she always had a buster sword.

Tojiko has been suppressing her anger as a vengeful spirit, but this also means if she does get mad, all of that anger comes out at once as lightning. The entire UFO and TD crew have to balance antagonizing each other, but not pissing off Tojiko.

Seija now has a mom. (It's Sagume).

Junko is very nice to the fairies

Tewi gets presented as a badass a lot around this time. Maybe she doesn't want Seiran to show her up.

Sumireko knows who Maribel and Renko are (this is not the case in canon...I think.)

Lots of Watatsuki sisters content here, although they're mostly used for catching up with the Eientei gang.

Lunarians can't resist filthy Earth food. It's just too good....well....at least until Sagume accidentally says it out loud.

Kokoro just wants to fight people, she'll use any justification. It's practically how she talks to others.

Hecatia becomes the weird t-shirt girl thanks to Sanae's dialogue in LoLK. She'll never live this down.

As usual, for a lot of the established touhou cast, their fanon portrayals don't change too much. However, the status quo was greatly shifted by the Lunarians. Eientei becomes more of a plot point in many doujins now and that is much different to how it has been for a while.

Bit of a side note, but I really like how a lot of doujins gave Junko a wide-eyed, but empty stare at all times. Really reinforces how broken of a mental state she must be in despite keeping up a casual conversation with most characters.

I feel this is around the time when there was a bit of a resurgance in touhou fans. Not that it was dying out, but much of the fan content did not focus on newer characters nearly as much as this year was.

#touhou #touhou fanon years #fanon #2015 #2016-ish #legacy of lunatic kingdom #Urban Legend in Limbo #this took so long lmaooo #Was hoping for more Seiran and Ringo content than what we got. They just kinda filed in with the other rabbits #doujin

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centrally-unplanned · 8 months

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Lets talk about the Jimbocho book haul! This was a vacation, not a research trip or anything, so I didn't have set goals - instead I just explored and found things that looked interesting or were attached to my interests and seemed “cool” to own. And that strategy worked surprisingly well:

I will as always highlight just a few of them - if you want me to deep dive one of them, shoot me a message. First up we have the "Erotic Newspaper '97 Highlights", a completely-out-of-nowhere find.

Which right out the gate, really pushing my limits here on the "getting banned" front; I don't even know the rules anymore. Made by the circle 児童販売鬼/Juvenile Sales Demon (!), it is this style of “doujin omnibus” that was decently common in the earlier areas and is sometimes still made today; blending essays, personal rants, art, and full comics, often even on to the same page. And of course, this is about ero-doujin, so that blend gets pretty intense sometimes!

But as an “anime fandom “ researcher documents like these are absolute gold mines. The opening page discusses the late 90’s “bubble” in ero-doujin publications, possible legislative action against hentai being discussed that everyone is worried about, and even has that classic otaku identity tic of politicizing their own identity, mentioning a “Rights for Eromanga!” slogan going around (which it cautions against). It seems like a great biased-but-expansive view of the state-of-play in eromanga circles at the time, which few other documents can give you. Primary sources, baby.

Additionally, amoung its topics it has some sections about Evangelion:

And even a section on Utena:

Yeah that entire bottom corner's just... it just has got to go. I am unsure if this is something I will ever scan - its really niche, and being a porn archivist is not really my goal. But I hope to do a full read and post a summary someday.

Next up in a similar vein, I have a copy of Fanroad Magazine from 1996!

Fanroad Magazine was similar to the Comic Box magazine I have discussed before, in that it collected art & essays from fans about the shows of the day and gave them a place for their voice to be heard. Before the internet this was the only real way to do that en masse; by the 2000’s these magazines would almost all die out as social media replaced them. Fanroad was one of the most popular, having highly structured sections, detailed questionnaires for submitters, in-jokes, the works. And of course this edition was a bit of a targeted buy, as the cover surely gives away - Fanroad released a few issues focused on Evangelion, and this is one of them:

I might scan this one, but first I will give it a read and see how interesting the takes are - it had so much cute fan art though, valuable for that alone.

Next up is a very quick and personal one: Comic Cue Vol 4. Which…what even is this, I imagine you are thinking:

Comic Cue was an off-beat one-shot manga anthology magazine that ran through the 90’s into the 2000's, often focusing, not on hentai, but that middle-ground “erotically charged” narrative stories or comedy shots. Its covers were often just insane - no clue why this cover is in English, none of the magazine is. This one is of interest to me, however, because amoung Volume 4’s submissions is:

Yoshiyuki Sadamoto’s Dirty Work one-shot. Yep, thats right, from the random-deep dive essay I put together analyzing a single line of dialogue Sadamoto wrote for Mamimi in FLCL. Now I own the fucker. That's cool! I like that. I am really proud of that essay due to how much I learned from it, writing about a topic whose specificity seemed like it would be impossible to get that much out of; so owning the actual manga is it centered on feels special.

Speaking of niche Ash-writing references!

We have “Girl’s Life on the Flat Battlefield”, the Kyoko Okazaki Artbook made for an exhibit done on her back in 2015, the cover of which I featured in my essay about the proper translation of “battlefield” from River’s Edge. This is an amazing book in its own right though - its content is so diverse. It has essays from her and from other writers about her work that I hope to read. It has beautiful art compositions and solo pieces:

It has recreations of the actual drafts of her manga as she made them - showcasing things like how she would type up the dialogue and cut-and-paste the printed text into the bubbles, the normal way that was done in the pre-digital composition era:

It has this one section by a contributing artist of photographs of “otaku edgy women” and stuff, amazing documentary work:

I see you, Gunbuster figurine on the table! This is probably the best book-as-a-book I found; I highly recommend it to any Kyoko Okazaki fan for the depth of coverage it has on both her work and the context of her work.

You can see some others of course - I found a few copies of magazines like Newtype and Animage from when they covered FLCL! I would like the Catch Them All - these are all generally scanned & archived already of course, so its just for fun. You can see another book on Okazaki, a really cool academic book on the history of magazines and fanzines in Japanese subculture, and the Gothic & Lolita Bibles that Partner is quite excited about. I am very happy with what I found; there is a beauty in the serendipity of these things. Of course I could have searched Yahoo Auctions for a copy of the Okazaki book, I knew exactly what it was. But stumbling on it in a floor-level cubby while my hands were already stacked with magazines and nearly dropping them in surprise is the magic of the physical bookstore in its fullness. It has its own value that the book itself can’t possess.

#Ash Japan Adventures #cw nudity #anime history

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