#and that kinda stuff is just as hard to find as it is to depict in one drawing

[llitchilitchi]

I thought I saw somewhere that you had a big pile of medieval clothing references? Am I crazy, is that a thing? Is it sharable? Otherwise, where do you search for references?

this one gets a little long, sorry about that anonnie

I did mention it at some point, yeah

most of my reference comes from my own personal collection of books that I've accumulated over the years, unfortunately many are not in English or I got them second hand and are difficult to find online

I don't have as much stuff regarding medieval fashion since most of the fashion that I am interested in starts around renaissance, so when I wanna look into older periods, it's fashion history books that are more general and provide a bit of an overview for the time periods

my two go-to books like that are The Costume History and then Fashion: The Definitive History of Costume and Style <-they're very general and barely touch on anything, much less proper structures, but they are a pretty good introduction to western fashion history

the book that I reach for regularly when I look into fashion for Monarchy Restoration is Dějiny Odívání: Renesance (Fashion History: Renaissance) - covers the fashions of mostly 15th and 16th century. this book is available only in Czech as far as I know and came out 23 years ago, also the information isn't particularly great (a trend I noticed with Czech authors, unfortunately.) the book is really well illustrated though which as someone who isn't particularly interested in recreating these styles for myself and only needs it for art is more than enough

I'm also fortunate enough to live in Europe so I get to visit castles and exhibitions regularly and I can gather my own reference by taking photos of the paintings, tapestries and frescos.

a great reference for actual medieval fashion are medieval illuminated manuscripts. I don't know where you're from, nor which area you want to look into, given how the fashion of the middle ages differs from country to country, so I'd definitely start by looking into books on medieval illustrations from the country you are interested in. I managed to snatch a really old copy of a book covering Slovak manuscripts and there's a book covering Czech ones (Krása českých iluminovaných rukopisů). many manuscripts have also been digitalized are available online

another thing you might consider is looking into illustrated books on medieval history. Jacques Le Goff has a sizeable collection and the prints that are available to me locally use many original medieval illustrations and paintings

old blogs dedicated to the topic are also amazing for this. given the state of tumblr and the internet as a whole, these are a lot harder to come by and many haven't been updated in years

I really wish I could tell you to scour the depths of google images and pinterest, but with the rise of artificial intelligence, people have started creating an unhealthy amount of fake history. it's honestly disheartening how many times I've caught myself looking at images and wondering if they are just passable fakes. this hurts even more when it comes to art used as reference, which is the main basis for medieval and early renaissance fashion, since the original garments are for the most part gone

to sum this up, I recommend looking into general fashion history books first. it's not great, but it's a start, especially if you only have a vague idea of what you want and aren't hellbent on finding accurate fashions to Venetian fashion of the 1470s, or something of that sort. a general look is a good starting point. from there, once you have pinpointed what you are after, look into books that might cover the topic. depending on the time period there might be detailed coverage in decent books, or you'll have to turn to other things such as books on the daily life in that time period (which have grown in popularity in the past couple of years) or book covering the art of the time period. those books might actually be better than fashion history books, since fashion history books prefer looking into the high society and not at commoners, who would have otherwise been depicted in paintings. they won't go into so much detail of the dress, obviously, but you'll get to see how the lower classes dressed as well. if you come across some proper vocabulary, it's worth doing a google search or pinterest search, though again, I have to warn you that people on the internet Like To Lie. A Lot. especially about history. while you are at it, you might also notice painter names popping up regularly, so look up their work as well. (personally been really into Cranach.) those paintings are great if you need only outer layers for art reference. in a similar manner, if you are looking into high society, it might be worth looking at the nobility and royalty of the time and their depictions.

last but certainly not least, if you have the chance to visit an exhibition, a castle, a cathedral, anything really that might deal with this stuff, go. you never know what you might come across. a lot of my favourite little reference photos were taken at castles that I visited with family and I didn't even expect to find anything at. it's very much about personal preference in fashion, too, so while you might see images in books, it might not be until you see a medieval painting of a saint that something about a dress just Clicks and you steal that style for your next OC. events organized by fashion history larpers are pretty good too if you don't mind talking to people, same for history themed events (NOT renaissance fairs. unless you run into people who actually know what they're doing) where people dress up for the occasion. not just some actors though, but actual proper historians who looked into their shit. I've met a couple amazing people and learnt a lot.

I don't know how valid this information is and I'm sure actual fashion historians are absolutely cringing at this, but as someone who mostly looks into fashion history for art reference, this is a method I found works for me. hope it helped at least a little!

#asks #fashion history #this got incredibly long oh my #I really wish I had more to share but its kinda hard to find stuff. plus Im more into local fashion history so I cant help with much #many things cross over among countries but it isnt perfect #its good to check youtube as well now that I think of it. but only proper groups or historians pls #besides Im not exactly keeping it a secret that I look into how fairytales depict this fashion as well. especially slavic movies #Im always wary of historical documentaries that has actors in costumes for a couple scenes theyre not always great #hollywood movies are just a massive No for the most part tho I like looking at them for Spice

[bug-is-snug]

starved pt. 2

part one

plot: you're a zombie <3 CW: depictions of violence, depictions of obsession, gore, self-cannibalism (stay safe cutiepies!), blood, gore, eventual smut (That means Minors DO NOT INTERACT), self harm (I think? I'm not sure but I'm adding it to be safe!), military inaccuracies, dead dove do not eat kinds of stuff

A/N: let me know if I missed anything with the content warnings! Also please forgive me for the terrible accents, I am but a small humble person with the brain made of v8 juice- Also some of this was written on mobile so forgive me if there are any grammar errors ^^; banner by: @frostthecupcake (deactivated) and found by using "Find A Banner"

You felt your face grow warm as your mind went back to the sight of your Captain's wrist. Well- mainly his veins...God, he had lovely veins... You imagined grabbing his arm and sinking your teeth in, tearing away at his skin and tendons with gnashing teeth...while you daydreamt you couldn't help but wonder; How sweet would his flesh taste? Shaking your head profusely, you let out a huff and continued to head off towards the barracks while ignoring the emptiness in your stomach. God, you could feel the blood running down your throat, warming you far better than any hard alcohol... "Stop it." You hissed quietly to yourself, as if you had any control over the thoughts that ran rampant in your mind, "Don't think at all, just shut up!"

Taking a moment, you lean up against the wall and desperately try to gather your thoughts. Your stomach growled almost angrily, making you let out a frustrated groan. "Hungry?" A familiar voice cooed playfully, their Scottish accent giving away their identity instantly. You look up to see Soap, your heart instantly beginning to race. Your eyes scanned over his body while your nose took in his scent, which allowed you to recognize that he had just gotten back from the shooting range, the smell of his musk and the gunpowder making your head swim. "Uh-" Christ, you sounded dumb, "Maybe? I dunno, I kinda skipped lunch today...though I do hear that your body can make you hungry when you're exhausted so- uh- maybe it's that?" ...WHAT? Where did that even come from?! What kind of stupid excuse is that?! Soap raised a brow, staring at you for a moment and giving away that he was also just as bewildered as you were over the shit you just said. "...I am going over here now." You quickly walked around him, attempting to make it to your room. "Hold on now, that dinnae make a lick o' sense. What's goin' on wi' ye?" A strong, calloused hand grasped at your forearm making your heart jump to your throat, "Ye alright, lovie?" You shuddered slightly, digging your nails into your palms as thoughts of tearing your precious teammate’s ribs apart and sinking your teeth into his heart while it still beats made you feel dizzy and your stomach ache. What would it taste like? Sweet? Savory? How much would you be able to devour before someone else stumbles upon the sight? You quickly interrupted your own thoughts as you blurted out, "I think I'm sick is all." Soap hummed and reached over, pressing his hand against your forehead. "Ye dinnae feel sick, ye feel cold to be honest, lovie..." He muttered. "Sarge-" You were cut off by his hands feeling up the scruff of your neck and under your jaw. "Sorry, mate. My mum used to do this to check if me or my siblings were sick..." His voice was low, as if he trying not to spook an injured animal. "Sarge, I'm fine, honest-!" You tried to reason with him. You knew he was telling you the truth, but you also knew how he was. To clarify, while the relationship between you and Soap was rather handsy it was usually a welcome action and when it wasn't, you would tell him and he would back off. The touches the two of you would share sometimes bordered on inappropriate, but it often didn't go much further than that. It was a very intimate relationship, one that could be missed if someone didn't have a trained eye. However, it wasn't quite romantic...just intimate and sometimes intense-

Looking into his eyes, you could tell that while he was indeed just checking up on you, there was a small sense of enjoyment at the fact you were letting him casually paw at your sensitive skin. You let out a soft hiss in pain when he pressed down on a particularly tender spot, "Johnny, too hard..." "Sorry, lovie..." Soap said quietly, letting go after a moment. "It's okay..." You assured him, "What's the prognosis, Doctor MacTavish?" He chuckled at your teasing and shook his head, crossing his arms over his chest, "Yer feelin' a bit stiff is all. Probably from yer god-awful posture." "Then I am going to do what I was planning to do and go take a nap. I should probably tell Gaz...I was gonna eat lunch with him today..." You said, disappointment heavy in your voice. "I can tell 'im fer you, lovie. Dinnae ye worry yer little head ‘bout it." Soap smiled, reaching over and giving you an affectionate pat on the shoulder. A sigh left your lips as you gave him a relieved smile, "You'd really do that for me? Thank you, Johnny..." He smiled back, his hand gently squeezing your shoulder. "Yer welcome..." You playfully nudged his arm with your elbow which made him chuckle and give you a wink before he walked around you, leaving you on your own as you finally made it to your room. You remembered the last time you retreated to your room when feeling unwell while you stared at your bed, closing your door behind you. It was a few days after the attack... Your body felt like it was on fire, especially where that damn doctor had bitten you. Your heart raced and your arm felt like your veins had poison coursing through them. You had refused to let anyone know, nor let anyone take care of you going as far as to barricade the door. Stupid? Yes, but what were you supposed to do? Let the teammates whom you trust your life with every single day know you're unwell? Ask them for help because they're your found family and you would drop everything to take care of them if they were in this state because you love and cherish them as people? Cringe- You groaned in pain, curling up in your little bed while digging your nails into the fabric, tearing them effortlessly much to your surprise. "What the fuck?" You huffed out, grimacing as you stare at the ruined sheets, "I just bought those..." Was that what you should have been worried about? Absolutely not, but you have to cope somehow. The pain was unbearable, but the worst of it was the fever and the fever dreams that came along with them. Well, you called them fever dreams; they actually appeared in your mind when you were awake. And most of them were really just...urges... Visions of ripping people apart filled your mind. It felt so real...you could feel your fingers digging into some faceless person's skin, tearing apart their flesh and ripping apart their ribs while they screamed and thrashed. The more skeptical part of your mind shoved it off as just an edgy little thought that you had as a courtesy of watching so many horror movies with Gaz, just a silly little spout of aggression. No, it was the thought of eating the person that got you to worry. It was the thought of burying your face into their warm body and sinking your teeth into their heart that scared you. The worst part of it was the fact that your stomach growled every time you imagined chewing and swallowing, like a forbidden fruit... Blood spilling down your chin like you had just bit into an apple after days of neglecting your hunger became a feeling you craved desperately. "Please just be a really fucked up version of the flu..." You whispered, "I swear to everything that is good and holy if it's not-" You were interrupted by a sudden sharp pain in your stomach, making you cry out. Burying your face into your pillow, you let out a quiet sob while you clung to it. Somehow, you felt embarrassed about how much pain you felt. You've taken bullets for fuck's sake! You have broken bones, dislocated joints-! And a little stomachache is making you cry?!

"What the fuck...?" You muttered, wiping the sweat from your forehead. Upon seeing the literal puddle of it in your hand you cringed, “Mm…that’s nasty…”

Sitting up, you use the headboard of your bed to keep you steady while your head pounds and begs you to lay back down. You huff, leaning your head against your arm for a moment. This fucking sucks. There is no denying it!

Your nose is pressed against your flesh, and you catch a whiff of yourself…Oh my…

Your stomach beckons you, and in that moment, you don’t even care. How can you? You’re starving!

So…

Without a second thought…

You sink your teeth into your wrist with a sickening squelch, tearing through veins and muscle. And, God, if it didn’t taste lovely…

Back To Current Day…

You sit down on your bed, running your fingers over the stitching you had done over the once torn sheets. It wasn’t perfect, but it was good enough!

With a sigh, you lean against the wall, staring at the ceiling as you reach over and gently touch your forearm, your fingertips sliding across the edge of the bandage. You didn’t really want to check if the wound was still there…but you didn’t want it to get infected either.

Your eyes glance down as you kicked off your shoes, scooting into your bed while your hand slowly peeled the bandaid off. You expected infection…a festering, pulsing and pus filled one…however, there was nothing. Your wrist was completely healed, like nothing happened-! How…?

You shake your head as hard as you can, as if it would shake the thoughts away. You ball the bandaid up and go to the trashcan, tossing it before going to your sink and rinsing your hands off. This isn’t so bad, right? It’s- er- not ideal, but it’s something! Maybe you should keep a journal of your changes- No. Too risky. If anyone found it…

Your eyes closed as you lean against the counter, inhaling through your nose while your leg bounce uncomfortably, “I can’t see a doctor…I really should but-! …What if I hurt someone…?”

You found yourself doing that a lot; whispering to yourself, fighting yourself…etc…

But that’s neither here nor there, it’s time to eat.

You started to head to your mini fridge, kneeling down before it and opening it up to take a package of raw meat out. You tear it open with your finger, feeling yourself begin to shake…

Shoveling raw meat into your mouth was not a good feeling. Did it scratch that lizard part of your brain? Yes. But social norms taught you to be disgusted with such bad manners-! However…as you sunk your teeth into the raw chicken breast, you ripped and tore away at it, feeling yourself grow more and more ravenous as it you continued. It tasted pretty okay for the most part, which is what surprised you the most.

Tasted like chicken, obviously, but the raw flavor added to it somehow? It was so hard to describe! But…then those thoughts came…

You were imaging the meat belonging to Soap, your beloved teammate. You felt so dirty and perverted…

‘This isn’t normal,’ You reminded yourself, ‘This is NOT. NORMAL!’

You didn’t even realize someone else had entered your room until they cleared their throat, making you snap your attention to whomever it was.

Oh shit.

#bug sure is snug in this rug #141 x reader #task force 141 #john price x reader #john soap mactavish #kyle gaz garrick #kyle gaz x reader #simon ghost riley #simon ghost riley x reader #poly 141 #john soap mctavish x reader #zombie au #zombie reader #john price #141 au #cod 141

[canmom]

reading Brainwyrms by Alison Rumfitt. it's interesting. clearly part of the post-Topside wave of trans lit, with the same 'plugged in to twitter' energy, but way more British about it. which means most of the allusions are very transparent to me. it's a combo of... hardcore kink driven romance as the main arc, in a near-future setting in which TERFism goes further to the point of outright bombings, and a scifi element with alien brain parasites that it's gradually building towards.

compellingly written, I'll give it that for sure - I lay down to read for a bit and before I knew it I'd read like a third of the book. the main character's disaffected, traumatised air is well observed, and the kink doesn't hold back.

I think my reservation with it so far is that it feels a little too much like a polemic blog post about the way things are going. the MC Frankie is a trans woman with a pregnancy kink who survived a bombing at a GIC and now works in social media moderation - it's all stuff that is blatantly Relevant To The Argument, as it were. it's tricky to criticise it for that because it's like, what you're saying is that it's tightly constructed and thematically consistent and that's bad somehow? but I think I've come to feel that I like fiction to bring me something a little new and unfamiliar.

the chapter I most enjoyed so far was actually a more metaphorical, abstract interlude, in which resistance to fascism is cast as becoming 'one mass of queer flesh, which now grabbed and clawed...'; 'faces locked in kisses until they became one face. the cops would try to pull at this mass, but to no avail'. very 'faggots and their friends between revolutions' stuff.

the chapters which are presented directly as social media posts and articles are also sharply observed. i think a lot of fiction in which the internet features heavily suffers from not understanding the internet very well (Hosoda's Belle for example), but for example the chapter 'Curious Cat' where an anonymous person (blatantly Vanya) is sending messages asking for help with a parasite, and getting rebuffed or misunderstood, and the chapter where Frankie relates a murder of an instagram model by a stalker who posts about it to a reddit community devoted to her, read as very real.

a lot of the story is about responding to a terrifying political situation in sexual terms - a flashback chapter depicting Frankie having sex with some terf's pretentious brother ("with each thrust from him, she thought to herself, I am a traitor, I am a traitor to the cause"), or the preface which jokes about how in another world the author would be writing 'cool horror stories about vampires raping werewolves, ones with no subtext at all'. I prevaricate a little on whether this is a compelling examination of a theme that I do find interesting (the mysterious origins of sexual desire) or just edgy for its own sake.

this is an odd novel for me in some ways because while on one level, this is about people who I could very easily be a single degree of separation from were they real, it's also about a facet of life that is still quite alien to me and in many ways I only know about second hand. I've never been to a kink club (that wasn't in an MMO anyway lol), I'm way too much of a nerdy autist shut-in to know what it's like to be someone who would feel put out if she hadn't had sex in a week. so even before the parasite stuff, it's hard to know how much of Frankie and Vanya's stuff is real, and how much is fantasy. is this really how things go between people? it sounds kinda fun, but unlocking the door this far has already taken years.

when I've read books about the crazy lives that American trans girls supposedly live and interesting sex they're apparently having, they've been at a certain remove, the other side of the Atlantic. and this book feels sort of similar, even though I know it's set right on my doorstep. idk, I've never been good at this.

anyway I don't think I want to write fantasy novels so directly about The Discourse of the day, but it's probably good that someone is. that said, it's hard to parse like... ok, it's titled brainwyrms, and 'brain worms' is a common way of describing an obsessive, cultish idea you receive from the internet.

and like if you look at the newspapers, or twitter trans discourse, you certainly could believe that this country is on a rapid slide to putting us in camps. however, my day to day life has been... it's not without hostility, but the average street harasser isn't doing it because of a Guardian or even Mail article. this country has a subculture of deranged weirdos who hate our guts, and a political class who will happily stoke culture war shit to score points, but most normies I've met don't care one way or another that I'm trans - they might mention a family member or friend they know who's also trans. the day to day conflicts are over way more prosaic shit, the landlord vs tenant forever war, or how the kitchen should be cleaned. which of these windows is more informative of the 'overall' state of affairs? not that a more violent terf cult is a bad premise to write a novel around, but a sense of impending doom is a pretty powerful mechanism to keep you scrolling, right?

like in 20, 40 years - will the terfs really be bombing the Tavistock and banning transness, as Rumfitt imagines in her near-future setting preface? or will they go the way of those newspapers in Thatcher's time who smeared the gay movement, just as they smear us today? of passing political obsessions like 'new atheism'? I don't know the half-life of cult shit.

anyway, time to read the rest of the novel, and see how it handles this brew that it's concocted.

#fiction #sff #novels

[pix3lplays]

Ehehe.

Trying on Argenti’s clothes won.

Of course we all know I can’t help myself and I’ll be doing both but I Must do what the people want-

Cw! suggestive subjects, reader is honestly a bad partner, going behind Argenti’s back by sneaking into his room, stuff like that, kinda angsty somehow

-Trying on Argenti’s clothes-

Argenti is a very traditional gentleman.

A very: let’s wait until marriage kind of man. A very chaste man.

You’ve never shared a bed with him, never even been in his bedroom, nothing like that…and you loved him, and you respected and valued your relationship with him, but you were beginning to feel…lonely in your relationship with Argenti.

Oh you hated the thought of betraying him like this.

But he expressed that he would be busy for a long while piloting the One and Only, and when you had walked by…you noticed his room was unlocked.

And before you knew it…you had slipped inside, as silently as you could muster.

His room is small, given it was on a spaceship, but elegant and elaborate.

He has a desk, with a vase on it, filled with roses.

An image depicting what Idrila might look like hangs on the wall.

And a couple of photographs of you and him decorate the room.

But your eyes first land on his bed. Put together, of course, you couldn’t imagine Argenti not making his bed in the morning.

Plush and fluffy blankets and pillows called to you, and you find yourself running your hands along them, and soon you’re laying down, throwing the blankets over you and burying your face in his pillow, taking in the scent of Argenti.

Roses, of course, and expensive, spicy vanilla cologne.

You can only roll around in his sheets for so long before you get tired of it though. You carefully slide out of bed and do your best to remake the bed…

And you tell yourself to leave. To stop snooping around your boyfriend’s room, reminding yourself that you’ll really break his heart if he catches you.

But your eyes land on the closet.

You remember he’s not wearing his armor right now.

So if you wanted to…you could give it a try.

You know better. You KNOW BETTER. You really, really shouldn’t.

But your fingers are wrapped around the closet handles, and you swing open the doors.

There’s his armor, pristine and clean and shining white and gold…along with his other clothes, all crisp and clean and smelling nice and now you’re pulling on one of his shirts, tugging at the collar, way oversized on you.

Okay.

Step one done.

You had already come this far. May as well try on the armor.

Only.

You don’t know where to begin.

You’re able to get the legs on at least. But unfortunately you drop the chest plate.

Making a loud, unpleasant clang-

You feel the familiar sound of the ship switching to auto pilot, followed shortly afterwards by: “y/n? Are you okay, my dear?” and the sound of his footsteps echoing quietly in the halls.

Saying anything would give you away. So you opt to be silent. Which just makes him even more worried.

You just have to helplessly remain quiet while he scours the ship for you. You can HEAR him becoming more desperate. “Y/n? Y/N?!”

Finally, you can’t bear to hear the panic rising in his voice. It breaks your heart.

“In here, Argenti…”

The sound of the frantic searching stops, and you hear him running in the direction of his own room, before he stops, and hesitates.

Finally the door slides open.

“Y/n? Are you alright?” he’s almost scared to hear the answer, he’s so worried about you.

But when he catches sight of you, there you are, half-dressed in his armor, wearing one of his turtlenecks, a chest plate carelessly abandoned on the floor.

“I-I can explain-“

“Y/n.”

He looks so…it’s hard to describe.

Hurt?

Uncomfortable?

Disappointed?

“You…shouldn’t be doing this,” he says, approaching you.

You’re not scared of him. You’ve never been scared of Argenti. But in this moment you’re afraid of what he’s going to say.

“I’m…I’m sorry…” you say, knowing your words mean nothing. You KNEW better. You knew this was a blatant violation of his trust and your stupid, impatient nature just got the better of you.

“Y/n…I Really don’t want to have to have this discussion with you…” he’s saying, working at helping you remove the armor. “I feel you already know what I’m going to say.”

“Yes. I’m sorry, I’m So Sorry, Argenti…”

‘You have broken my trust.’

He shushes you, gently, but with enough force to tell you he was serious about you needing to be quiet right now.

A few moments of painful silence pass between you while you liberate yourself from the armor.

Once you pull off the shirt is only when he speaks again.

“Please just…refrain from speaking to me for some time. I need to consider this carefully.”

Now you’ve done it.

You’ve shown him that he can’t trust you.

He might be seriously considering breaking up with you.

You slink out of his room, murmuring your empty apologies, feeling tears well up in your eyes and silently cursing yourself out for being so Impatient towards him.

He doesn’t talk to you for the rest of the night, and that evening as he’s laying in bed he finds the evidence of your other trespass.

Your scent was lingering on his sheets.

#honkai star rail #honkai star rail x reader #Argenti #Argenti x reader #Hsr Argenti x reader #honkai star rail Argenti x reader #yes it’s overly Angsty I KNOW-

[flower-boi16]

Rewrite anon here. So, I just remember that Alastor was (supposedly) based off on a wendigo and I find that kinda offensive to the Native Americans because :

1. The Deer-monster ISN'T accurate to how Native American Folklore describes them as (the Wendigo is actually described to look like a skeletal-like figure with grey skin, seriously malnourished form, and followed by the smell of death and decay), and the popular deer monsters were actually a product of pop culture doing what it does best and completely stripping off depth from their source material. This pretty much shows just how little research Viv does when it comes to this type of shit cuz legit it isn't very fucking hard to find an accurate description AND depiction of the wendigo (Until Dawn did it best in my opinion).

2. Again with the pop culture depictions that are just 'Cannibalistic deer monsters', the Wendigo had a very important role in Native American folklore as a WARNING to never cannibalize others since it was seen as an act of betrayal to devour your own kin (Jon Solo actually explained the Wendigo concept way better than I ever could so here's a link to his video on them : https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=axRkTEy4sGo). Knowing Viv and her surface level research, it's obvious she went with 'Wendigos are cannibalistic deer monsters' route which is seriously infuriating because it could've been explored a lot deeper than this.

3. Simply the fact that Wendigos are Native American and the fact Alastor apparently practiced Voodoo? Like, okay Viv, you do realize that Native American folklore and African religion are TWO DIFFERENT THINGS RIGHT?! It's just so fucking confusing how Viv just decided on that to begin with (and while I get Viv made Alastor while she was still a teenager..... she literally could've done a rewrite on his character). Legit if Viv wanted to lean in on both the Voodo aspect and the cannibalism aspect of Alastor's character she could've based him off a Hippo instead because not only are hippos known to be cannibals, they might also have ties to voodoo as well (might be is the operative word here, because all the info I got was pretty vague and stuff)

Then again, this might just be me ranting about the really poor research Viv does, so just take it with a grain of salt.

Viv not putting any effort whatsoever into doing research and just making it come across as a stereotype? What a surprise /s

#vivziepop critical #hazbin hotel critical #hazbin hotel criticism #vivziepop criticism

[trans-cuchulainn]

Could you recommend some good resources on accurate depiction of parchment in the medieval period? I feel like most people interested in medieval studies have a basic understanding of what it is and how it’s made, but you seem more well-versed than most on its tactile properties and regular use cases. Where can others acquire this knowledge?

most of what i've learned about manuscripts and book history has been either during my degrees or from work (i have worked in various libraries including with special collections, although mostly with early printed books and later paper manuscripts in that capacity). and in terms of what it's like to interact with, i have learned this mostly from interacting with it, but if you don't have a library or museum near you that will enable you to do this, it's a bit harder. this makes it hard to give recommendations although there are lots of very good books out there about books and manuscript history

(there's one i read early on in my journeys with palaeography etc that went into loads of detail about different writing surfaces including wood and wax tablets and so on, but i cannot remember the title and past me did NOT write it down which was really unhelpful. if i remember it i'll post about it)

there are also a ton of online resources about manuscripts though. lots of museums have online guides to manuscript production, parchment, writing through history. there's lots of codicology stuff out there. so it's not like you have to learn it in a formal environment -- that's just where i learned it and therefore mostly from lectures rather than shareable resources

but to understand parchment specifically i think understanding the process of making it is a crucial step to understanding why it is the way it is (and why it's not paper). here's a couple of youtube videos that give an overview

this is a more detailed video about a project that got people to make parchment themselves which is just kinda interesting (haven't watched it all the way through but am watching parts):

once you understand how parchment is made and the resources that go into it, i think it's easier to understand why it probably wouldn't be used for ephemera and scraps, and that helps you think about situations where people might use something else -- e.g. a wax tablet to take hasty notes, send messages that don't need to be permanent, send messages that are emphatically not permanent (your recipient can melt it and hide the note), etc -- as well as beginning to rethink the modern world's reliance on the written word in general and consider how oral messages and other non-written communication might have been used

as for the tactile side of things, as i said in a previous post, if you can't touch book parchment, go find your local irish musicians and see if the bodhrán player will let you handle their drum (or good quality orchestral timpani will do too! but with a bigger drum it's harder to feel both sides of the skin). drumskins made of goatskin are very similar on a tactile level to parchment, just a little thicker and not processed to quite the same level as a writing surface. it helps you stop thinking of them as super fragile once you realise people are whacking them with a stick regularly, and you can learn about the difference between the hair side and the flesh side of the skin and stuff and see the way the hair leaves traces in the skin and so on. this helps with the tactile understanding

(the cheaper the bodhran, the rougher the reverse side will be even if the front is still nice and smooth, which also makes you realise the difference between high quality books where you can barely tell which side of the page is the hair side, and low quality ones where they're not fully treated, there's still hair, whatever)

i talked to a conservator lately who told me the way he got into book conservation was via musical instrument repair -- they are more similar than you would think -- and i know trad musicians scattered far and wide enough to be reasonably confident that even if you're in an area with no touchable medieval manuscripts, you can probably at some point find a drummer who will let you play with their bodhrán in exchange for a pint or something, lol

but in the mean time there's lots of cool videos about there about parchment making which i do think is a crucial step to understanding it as a writing surface! and i will see if i can remember the names of any of the books i've read...

#maniculum #answered #parchment problems

[alpaca-clouds]

CyberSix - The 90s trans Animated Series, you did not know about

Okay, I think it is time for me to talk about this Canadian/Japanese/Argentinian animated series, because it just is... surprisingly really good. And while maybe the entire trans/queer subtext was not entirely intended... It is so clearly there and really fucking amazing.

CyberSix is about, well, CyberSix, who has been created in genetic experiments by a Nazi scientist, who after WWII escaped to South America. While Cybersix escaped the laboratory, the Scientist Dr. Von Reichter still conducts genetic experiments on all sorts of animals and people. But he also wants to see Cybersix returned to him. So, to hide from him, Cybersix takes up the identity of the male teacher Adrian Seidelman, who teaches at a school for troubled teens. Things complicate, though, when she develops feelings for her colleague Lucas.

Now, let me be up front about two things... No, three:

Due to low ratings outside of Canada, the show was cancelled after only one season. Which also means that the ending of the show is kinda bittersweet - as what was meant to be a cliffhanger ended up to feel very finite.

The comic this was based on was on one hand very anti-Nazi. But at the same time it also uses a lot of racist stereotypes when depicting the Japanese characters (of which there are quite a few). While the characters are portrayed as good people, mind you, who end up helping Cybersix, they are depicted in a very racist way.

Also, if you look at the open ending and think: "Oh, maybe I should read the comic." Don't. Just don't. Trust me on that one. I read it. And it is... oh boy. Cybersix in it mostly exists as a male sexual fantasy. And in general the comic is very, very happy to show us naked women all the time, at times with explicit rape scenes. So, yeah, you definitely want to skip that one.

Still, despite those flaws. The show... is actually really fucking good. Especially because of the queer stuff.

While in the comic this was based on the fact that Cybersix hides under a male identity is just a plot device, in the series it actually is a lot more complicated. Because in the series we see Cybersix struggle with her gender identity. After all, she has been created, her sex was quite literally assigned to her. And while on one hand she kinda fantasizes about being with Lucas as a woman, she at times also feels more in home being seen as a man.

And while Lucas does not find out her true identity till the end of the show (again, there was another season planned), he kinda has feelings for Adrian and for Cybersix, not knowing they are the same person, making this king bisexual or pansexual (I read him as pan).

Meanwhile, of course, the main plot of the show is quite literally about punching Nazis, which is something I always can get behind. It literally deals with something that has happened in the real world (Nazi folks fleeing to South America) and I kinda think that this is neat.

For a while the show was on Youtube, but it sadly seems it was removed. You can still find it on... certain websites, though, given that the DVDs are hard to get a hand on.

I really recommend everyone to watch this show. Its just 13 episodes and it is... really, really good.

#animated series #cybersix #cartoon #recommendation #trans stuff #superhero #90s

[sleepyconfusedpotato]

You’re probably asked this all the time, but how far along are you in the Cold Heart Fics. No rush at all if they are still going, but I literally eat those fics up. You truly are just an amazing writer. Also completely understand how hard it is to find time to write them or do the art especially with everyone having their own lives lol.

Hello! (｡･∀･)ﾉﾞ

Contrary to what you said, people have actually been very kind and... rarely asks about the Cold Heart fics! It's actually quiet relieving and you guys have been very patient and kind. I know I've been very very slow and stuff not only because of academic reasons but also some family stuff that requires long-term adjustments 😔.

However, I promise you guys I do not forget about it at all! I write every single night, be it one paragraph or a whole outline of a scene. I want it to be consistent and sticks to the timeline of the MWII campaign. There're lots of scrap outs and rewriting, so that's also one of the cause.

Cold Heart fic EXISTS GUYS IT DOES.

I'm actually kinda insane about it I made a whole chart depicting the time difference between campaign missions and the time difference between Las Almas, Spain/Amsterdam, Al Mazrah/Urzikstan, and Chicago so I can fit in some important scenes for Ghost and Jade's development 💀.

I'm literally the embodiment of ☝️🤓 emoji at this point but IMAGINE THE POSSIBLE ADDITIONAL SCENES WITH ALL THESE UNUSED HOURS 🤌🤌🤌🤌🤌🤌🤌🤌

Anyway, thank you so much for checking up Anon, and thank you guys for the patience! 🤗

#call of duty #call of duty modern warfare #cod mw #cod #sleepy answers #cod mw22 #call of duty modern warfare 2022 #simon ghost riley #charlotte jade le jardin #ghost x jade #ghost x oc #at this point I'll probably post the fic after MWIII comes out

[weekend-whip]

Ninjago Fic Rec Week: Day 2

Prompts: AU+Movieverse/Jay Recs! *vibrates at the thought of Jay content*

AU/Movieverse Recs:

if you could date any of the ninja, which one would you date?: Lloyd experiences the world's worst second-hand embarrassment and the rest of the ninja absolutely are not helping. Not actually shippy, just really funny and Lloyd has a (mostly) light-hearted hard time.

Reference Letters: Kai is tasked with recruiting some fresh talent to the Secret Ninja Force, and what starts as a joke to welcome Lloyd Garmadon into the squad turns into a genuine crusade for his friendship. The Green Ninja, however, is having none of that. (It goes exactly how you expect it to and gah it's beautiful. Kai and Lloyd duo forever!)

Who's the New Guy? He Looks Awfully Green: Movieverse fic in which Lloyd is the last to become a ninja, and the last to learn everyone else's identities. It's full of team-bonding (collectively and one-on-one!), hilarious Wu moments, and Movie!Lloyd being Movie!Lloyd ;w;)/

Jay Recs:

Unfortunately, You're Amazing: Jay faces the dilemma of *maybe* possibly kinda sorta having a small little totally non-consequential thing for Samurai X. But beyond that Jay just gets to be his dorky, smart, snarky, easily impressed self and it's so fun and delightful to read, I go back to it all the time!

Play to Win: An au/ canon divergent whump fic where Jay and Cole are roped into a round of Scrap-N-Tap...and that description does NOT do it justice, but if you like emotional tension, a heaping of personal distress, and a Jay who is unfortunately one step ahead of everyone else, you'll love this. Probably not for the faint of heart, definitely for the angsty daredevils (such as myself)

Jay and the Important Differences Between Spider Pokemon: Pokemon AU that explores Jay's "perplexing" fear of spiders post S6. A fascinating and fun idea for a plot, plus, there's Pokemon. it's all good stuff!

And She Wore Blue, Right?: Jay starts suddenly having reason to look into who his birth mother is...was. Hits just right for people who've always wondered how the show might have tackles this little interesting conundrum.

turtle or the hare: WOW I forgot I read this one aaaaaaaa BUT Jay inadvertently meets his bio mom in a rather...expected place. God their personalities are so similar yet mesh so well hnnnnnnnng (we could have had it aaaaaaall)

Jay and the Deafening Sound: ...this one's mine BUT I've got all three categories covered—extremely about Jay, takes place in the movieverse, and has shades of my legacyverse au to boot <3 Not-so long story short, Jay finds himself up against the main faction of the Shark Army all on his own and finally has a good excuse to pop off with his powers <3

this doesn't really have a title but it IS really very good: A scene or so where Jay and Kai spat over caring for each other too much and it's just such a beautiful depiction of their relationship, rocky tho it may seem ;w;)/

The Fantastic Mr. Walker: All these years later and it's still my favorite Jay-related thing to exist. Really gotta re-read it again so I can be delightedly distressed all over again <3

#unfortunately i don't read a lot of au's #and there's never enough jay content so feed me today pls #ninjago #the lego ninjago movie #ninjagon fanfiction #fic recs #ninjago fic rec week #jay walker #tlnm

[celenawrites]

TW - just a vent about fandom stuff.

I feel kinda sad about how some creators in the CoD fandom have now abandoned creating content for the game series due to the demanding nature of other fans who used to consume their content. (fics, art, etc)

Like, these artists/writers in the fandom write fanfics/create art, FOR FREE OF COST and dedicate SO MUCH TIME AND ENERGY to their craft despite not getting much in return, only to deal with senseless hate, ignorance, stupidity and get treated as content generation machines; instead of actual human beings with jobs and studies and friends and families that need their time and attention as well.

A lot of us folks who write or draw do this as a hobby. As an outlet for our creativity, and we find this community for the media we are currently fixated on and we create things inspired by it cuz it brings us joy. IT MAKES US HAPPY SO WE CREATE CONTENT FOR IT!!! And then to see the same fandom/community and their horrendous behaviour driving away the creators from the fandom and the media itself is just....sad. Very disheartening.

Like I miss so many of the creators who have just given up on CoD cuz of this issue. Their works have inspired me to start writing again. They make me wish I start learning how to draw and paint again too. Their works have touch my soul, and made me happy - gave me something to look forward to every day.

But I'd much rather they leave the fandom and take care of themselves and their life, than to succumb to this weird pressure fans and fan-content consumers put on them, y'know?

Plus recently, I've seen a lot of racist and stereotypical prejudices from some CoD fans (and even some creators). I know a lot of them are new to the fandom, I was too. But I took an active effort to learn more about this game series. (and it's an ongoing effort cuz I cannot afford to play the games so I have to settle for wiki articles, gameplays, and comics) And I see so many fans not give a shit about it. They treat these characters as blank canvases to fulfill their hypersexual fantasies. (I like me a good smut fic or two, don't get me wrong) But that just makes it impossible for newer fans to get to know more about the lore and the characters. I had just finished watching the campaign for MW, and let me tell you, there are so many complex missions, characters and storylines to explore and depict through fanfics, and it's insane so many people disregard it for their whimsies so easily. That will just stunt your growth as an artist/writer! Read up on the lore, watch the game plays(the OGs and the remakes!) , maybe even read the comics!!! I promise you won't regret it ever!!!

Also, please! For all that is holy, stop putting these complex fictional characters into restricted boxes and label them. That just makes them so one-dimensional. Like -

Soap is not always cheery and bubbly and your fellow bestie. Simon is not an abuser/emotionally dead asshole just because he has a hard time expressing his emotions like everyone else. König, despite the lack of storyline/lore we have on him, isn't an uwu social anxiety babygirl, damn it. Stop excluding Gaz from your HCs and fics! He's a complex man with so many interesting things to explore about his overall story and psyche as a part of 141. He's not always begging for Price's approval either, he can and has objected to how questionable their methods have been regarding their field/work. Stop excluding Gaz from 141 stuff! It makes you look like a POS, and a lot of the people who exclude him are doing so for....pretty racist reasons. As a POC, this shit sucks balls. Also stop stereotyping POC characters in CoD - Alejandro, Rudy, Valeria, Gaz, Farah....just stop. Their ethnicity or race should not deter you from writing about them in a way that doesn't come across as prejudiced and ill-informed.

Also, not necessarily a rant, but please consider/remember the fact that the military has always been a bit of a morally dubious field of work irl, and just cuz CoD is military-centric and features characters who work in the army or PMC and take out bad guys - that doesn't take away from the violent history military has and how they have contributed to the deterioration of many countries (mainly in the Middle East). Heck, even these characters in the CoD games have done extremely unethical things and employed treacherous methods in order to get the job done. These characters may be good people in fiction, but that doesn't mean that they have done great things or have always stayed morally pure. Explore the dubious nature of it all - explore how dark and harrowing it can be for them and for the people that unwittingly or knowingly get involved in their work. It's dark and twisted but it's crucial since it's inspired from our world and it's necessary for us as humans and as artists to explore such themes and analyse them! It's crucial for the soul!!!

#call of duty #cod:mw2 #kyle gaz garrick #john soap mactavish #captain john price #simon ghost riley #alex keller #farah karim #cod #alejandro vargas #valeria garza #rudolfo parra #fandom #tw vent #celena.rambles

[vindictusoverlord]

It’s a Jhin fic. Have fun degens👀

TW: depiction of murder, harsh language, sexual themes.

Kinky(?) stuff!: choking, orgasm denial, oral, slapping, biting, dirty talk(kinda).

Word count is 6,100. It’s a biggin.

God speed, soldier.

————————————————————————————

"Ah," Jhin coos, relishing at the heavy thunk! of his last victim. Under his breath, he recites to himself; "My cacophony... the diminuendo... an opera of death... truly exquisite..."

It was all the musings of an inspired lunatic and it danced on his tone, bobbing delicately like a swan on the water, but it defined his chaotic nature entirely— he was a heretic of classical theatre.... Despite this, you had found that you were just like him, anyhow— twin flames sharing the same sick, perverted proclivities and an affinity to a dramatic bloodstained curtain call— it only made sense that you'd find yourselves wound up like this after another one of Jhin's flawless masterpieces. Such a remarkably stunning signature on a heap of corpses and all the while, Jhin stood untouched and unsullied before them. He blew the smoke off his pistol as he gazed below, sending a misplaced chair tumbling over with his foot to admire his handiwork.

"You've outdone yourself, Jhin," You removed your mask as you spoke, wiping off the splattered blood with a handkerchief, trying to alleviate his anger with your smile, and placing your palm on the small of his back. "Really, it was a beautiful performance."

The man holsters his weapons, spinning them with a certain theatrical flair as he does so, and adjusts the collar of his shirt. "It would have been different had you not been here," He says, tone heavy and dark like the narrator to a story, but the cadence hinted that he was pleased with your show tonight, even if he was horribly angry at the men below. "My art would be nothing if not for you."

"I hardly did anything at all. Please, save your flattery." You grin coyly, admonishing the false humility, but Jhin laughs anyways, seeming to accept that you were, in fact, just fine. Though he had always found it peculiar, he admired your consistent sense of dignity and grace on the battlefield. It was a recurring behavior that you displayed— that is, shifting all the credit of a smooth job to him— when it was truly you who set the whole gig up. But nonetheless, and despite his mixed opinions on the matter, Jhin knew it was best not to argue it, but rather to focus on the task at hand.

While you fish around the bodies for your throwing knives, Jhin turns away from his artwork to finish what you had both come all the way there for— an entire shipment of shimmer and the blueprints of an illegally built underground warehouse, as they all tended to be. The two of you slowly load up the truck with the heavy boxes of drugs, securing them down with tarp and straps, before making the two hour trip back to your client's base of operations.

While the driver careened down the interstate, you found yourself thinking about the choices you've made thus far. It felt as though it may have been getting old, working for chump change and constantly moving; always at the mercy of the dangerous political climate. On the other end, it seemed as though Jhin didn't much care for the result of a mission or why he was there in the first place, but rather focused his attention to the clean kills and the adrenaline rush he got from it. You felt somewhat similarly if you were honest, but the pay was important if you were both to stay alive and in hiding. As two of the most wanted criminals in Ionia, odd jobs like this were hard to come by and bounty hunters were plentiful. You took it upon yourself to be the eyes and ears while Jhin was better at talking and finessing, and between the two of you, your chemistry was undeniably successful. Had your doubts been even slightly mitigated by this success, though, perhaps you wouldn't be thinking so often of leaving with your resident maniac in tow.

Even when you handed over the documents to your temporary employer, listening to the excessive palaver while they unloaded the cargo, you felt confident and secure in your partnership with Jhin the Virtuoso, and he felt the same in you. Rarely did he come to trust anyone. But you... well, you had an electricity to you. A particular kind of panache. The first of its kind to catch and hold the killer's eye, and likely the last. Jhin had great plans for you as his partner in both crime and in love, and he endlessly daydreamed about those deviant fantasies of ruthless killing and depraved splendor upon a bed of thorns and gold. Frequent dreams of staining the goose down duvet with the bloody theatrics of your trophies and images of your exquisite countenance twisting with prodigious ecstasy blinded him— oh!, indeed, all of that he wished to share with you alone. Jhin had a plethora of scenes he wished to enact with his beautiful accomplice, and as you sat beside him, absently tapping your pretty fingers on your leg, he had half a mind to show you those perversions right now—

"Jhin," You snap in front of his face. "Are you okay?"

He inhales sharply. He hasn't even realized the two of you had finished up so quickly, let alone that you were already home. Jhin's thoughts consumed him, inspired by the way you peered over at him with those deep (e/c) eyes full of curiosity.

"Yes," he says, confidence oozing off of him. "I'm fine. Let's get this going, shall we?" It was so frustrating to be pulled out of such a tantalizing spectacle, but he begrudgingly lets the thoughts drift to the back of his dirty mind, nodding his acknowledgement at you before following your lead out of the vehicle.

As you said your goodbyes and shook hands with the driver, Jhin's eyes wandered to your plump behind. He gave his farewells as well, of course, but as they parted ways and you began your steady march just a short pace ahead, Jhin returned his ardent stare. As quickly as they had been suppressed just moments before, the debauched musings collided with him once again as they had for the last few hours. He counted the steps until the two of you entered your temporary home, timing them just perfectly with the clicking of your rubicund heels. Soon.... He thought, I'll give her a show of a lifetime... another timeless masterpiece for the ages...

You felt Jhin's heavy gaze on you, prickling your skin into a subtle shiver. It was often that you pondered whatever spiraled about in his warped mind, but his disassociation didn't phase you much more than peaking your endless curiosity for this man's inner machinations. Even as you fumble with the key, you can't shake the feeling that something was wrong with Jhin, as he had been a bit off since you had announced the recent contract to him. He had an innate sense for those kind of things, so it left you on edge to know that even he was skeptical.

But for now, you'd enjoy each others company in the warmth of your humble home. Nothing else mattered for the next few days while you both rested, restocked, and recouped.

As the heavy door opens up, you enter the room, allowing yourself to finally unwind as Jhin struts past you. After sliding off his shoes, he sets his things down while you close and lock the heavy door, making your way quickly to the large restroom. You were caked with blood and dirt and, seeing as though you were both germaphobes, you couldn't wait to wash the filth down the drain.

"(Y/N), my dear," The man says. "Might I join you for a moment?"

"To wash up?"

"Don't play dumb," Jhin finally removes his mask, setting it carefully alongside his personal items. "To admire. I'll wash up later in the evening."

"Of course," Despite your perceived confidence, your heart slipped into a new gear. He nodded to your acceptance of his request with a smile, staying behind to allow you a moment to fill the tub, but never taking his eyes off of you as you stripped away the soiled fabric, tossing your mask and cloak into the laundry hamper.

He adored your figure, tracing every inch in his minds eye, even if he'd seen it bare many times before. It never ceased to leave him speechless. His feelings had been confounded to an infinitely constricting noose around a proverbial neck, and as you peeked over your shoulder and sweetly smiled at the killer, Jhin felt it tighten even further.

The hot water felt nice on your submerging body. You hadn't realized how sore you were from the scuffle earlier in the day, and having almost been killed this morning left a sour taste in your mouth. Unseen cuts and bruises stung while you sank slowly into the tub, suppressing a grimace as you come to rest at the bottom of the deep basin, enjoying the bubbles that rose up to your neck and surrounded you. Jhin enters the room shortly after, a glass of wine in both hands, and takes a seat on the side of the tub. He passes one to you, a grin curling his top lip.

"To a job well done," The man taps his glass against yours, savoring the sweet wine as he sips from the rim, humming a song to himself as he rises back to his feet. You simply relax back in the tub, scrubbing down your skin with a washcloth and enjoying the rich tone of Jhin's voice. You sit in silence for a while, simply enjoying one another's company while he sings to you, and before long, he speaks up again.

"Do you have anything else in store for us this upcoming week?" Jhin asks, leaning against the sink counter, amusing himself while you bathe. An air of insouciance lingered about his contemplation as he did so, eyes glittering with childlike mischief.

"Hmmm," You mull it over as you rinse your hair out, brushing through the tangles with your fingers. "Not that I'm aware of." Having finished, you rise up from the tub, bend over to pull the drain, and wring your hair out with the plush towel.

Jhin curls his lip upward. "Lovely. Then I'll have you all to myself."

"Oh, you have plans, do you?"

He says nothing, rather letting his silence speak for him as the glass finds its place onto the countertop. He watches you from start to finish, enamored by the seemingly menial task of drying yourself down. You hang up the towel, your hair still leaving little droplets along your skin, before sauntering carefully towards him.

"You know," Your voice is a soft purr as it comes out, calm and collected. "I'm really quite fond you, Khada Jhin. You do know that, don't you?" Your fingers run up his dress shirt, the fabric still pressed firm and starkly clean, from sternum up to around his shoulders, intertwining yourself into his warm embrace. His cologne was decadent and made you feel love-drunk, the floral musk driving your mind to dangerous places.

"But of course I know." He coos. "I am the luckiest man alive, after all."

You rise to your toes and place your lips softly against the crook of the man's neck, briefly sinking your teeth into the flesh before moving on to another, lower spot. Jhin hums his pleasantry, acquiescing to your painful leisure, and tightens his grip on the edge of the counter.

You enjoyed his white-knuckling— the way he held back and bit his silver tongue; how he melted into you like wax; when his lips parted and he sighed, the air thick with tension... You continued down, showing him just how much you loved him; gradually unbuttoning his collar, loosening the tie, and then the placket. You left neat kisses along his pale, scarred skin, raising goosebumps along the surface. Jhin releases a careful hand to caresses your cheek, desire apparent in his focused eyes. His lips twitch when he lifted your chin up with only his forefinger, forming something of a crooked smirk. His normal tepid expression, characterized only by the mask he wore to disguise his heart, was replaced by a sense of passion and, hidden behind his gaze, an exhausted restraint.

Jhin nudges your nose with his own, softy falling into your lips. His breath tasted of wine, bittersweet and boozy, but his touch was soft and deliberate. You melted against him, submitting to your yearning, but Jhin remained surprised nonetheless. You ruled him, every part of him— you, the deliverer of divine retribution to his physical and spiritual being; the one that took his life into your hands— and his soul flickered and faded with every touch, lingering on the timbre of everything you said, just as your tongues did. They mimicked a decadent crescendo until you both needed a breath, stealing the oxygen from one another like it would suffocate you to disconnect for even a moment. And like comets, you were destined to meet again, and so you did, with his hands pressed onto your waist and hips and one your own against his chest, the other making its way down to the bulge in his slacks.

And you both fell back into the other.

The tide of idolatry was all consuming. As Jhin kissed you, it felt as thought you were ascending— almost like falling upwards through the clouds— as you fell deeper in love with the maniac. Just like the first time you had shared a kiss, you felt the distinct shock through your core every time since then. Those rampant butterflies that almost made you nauseous, the furious beating of your heart, and the dizziness that fogged your mind kept you going back for more. Endlessly craving more.

As if he read your thoughts, a slender hand wrapped around your neck and you hummed into his embrace. Jhin pulls away after a moment, his lips grazing against yours, and following instinct, you lean forward, longing for all of him. His other hand, breaking away from your hip, pulls his belt out of the loops and slides behind the waistband of his trousers. Jhin unbuttons them with a simple flick of his thumb and forefinger, letting you to unzip them yourself, and then returns his hands to the countertop. You drop to a squat before running your fingers along his waist band, lingering on each peck you give his abdomen. Jhin watches intently, seemingly mesmerized by your finesse, and, almost as if he forgot how to breathe, his exhales hitch on an absent thought with every breath he takes in.

You slowly drag the smooth fabric from his slender hips, biting softly onto one side of his undergarments and tugging with your hand on the other, only closing your eyes when you return upwards to leave a trail with your lips along his prominent pelvis bones. His member softly presses against the side of your face as you led your kisses to the base, lingering there for a moment to take in his warmth and the scent of his cologne. Mesmerized by his simple beauty, you peer up at him, relishing the sight of his vulnerability as if it were a drug.

"I've been thinking about you— this— all day," Jhin whispers. The light catches his face in a way that accentuates the sharpness of his features and softness of his skin. He was, by most accounts, a very average looking man, only his demeanor setting him apart from the crowd. He was fairly inconspicuous without his mask, though he hated to be without it, but his almond shaped brown eyes held a certain frigidity and authority-- a professionalism, almost-- and his skin was no longer pallid as it had been when you had met. The honey colored warmth in his gaze captured light and turned it auburn like muted fire or an endless horizon— simply full of life.

You bat your eyes at him, feigning innocence. His confidence faltered when you did that, staring up at him through those pretty eyelashes, eyes wide and full of wonder. The way your gaze gleamed with mischief made him let out a nervous chuckle, one that made his cock twitch with anticipation.

"Just sit back, my love." Making eye contact, you let your tongue drag along the underside of his cock to the tip, amusing yourself with the subtle twitch of his hooded eyelids. "Let me take care of you."

He always acted like it was the first time you touched him, as if it was the stars and sky falling right above him in a perpetual performance. Jhin, who put out an air of arrogance and wise experience, was simply a man after all. And every man had a weakness.

Jhin bit his bottom lip as your tongue twirled around the head and ever... so... slowly... inched down as if to absorb him in his own pleasure. Your lips wrapped delicately around your teeth to protect his flesh as you moved forward, flexing outward as you gradually pulled back, creating a suction that forced a soft moan from your fragile lover.

You, the kind woman that you were, took your time building up your tempo, enjoying the soft grunts Jhin elicits, and begin to glide your hands up his thighs. Your fingers softly prod around his package, wrapping around to cup his balls as the tip of his shaft passes down your throat. You hold it there for a few moments before shifting back, returning to your original tempo, but this time, you go all the way down to his belly, grazing his happy trail with your nose. Jhin lets out a sigh, instinctively twisting his fingers in your wet hair. He knew he was at your mercy by the way you moved your tongue so expertly and pulled those degrading noises out of him. It was as if your intention had been solely to devour him soul first. Unbeknownst to you, had that kind of unity been an option, Jhin would gladly let you.

The churning knot built up quickly in the pit of his stomach, raising a pressure below that made it hard to breathe out against his soft moans. The dirty gargling noises that erupted from your throat had him biting his lip far too hard, his head thrown back to whisper his pleadings with the gods, and somehow even through all the pleasure, he softly thanked them, too.

You wrapped your free hand around the remaining length of his cock, pumping back-and-forth in unison with your mouth, capturing it all within the depths of your greedy throat. None of him would go untouched, unloved, or ungrateful, and you were going to make sure of that. You would love all of him down to the molecules of his very being until the day he died.

And as you took all of him in, pressing your nose against his belly over and over, Jhin bit down on the sleeve of his shirt. It had begun to slip off his shoulders, the sleeves just long enough for him to try to suppress his raunchy melody within the fabric. But his legs began to buckle, his arms flung back to the countertop to keep him from falling, and your momentum didn't stop. You kept it up, eyes closed to bring forth your earned prize, and the sheer thought of you forced the man to utterly submit to your presence. You could feel the flexing of his restraint on your tongue as he held back as strongly as he was able to, but before long, Jhin would meet his limit.

The man leans forward ever so slightly as he snakes his hand around your throat once again. His fingers tread lightly along your skin as they wrap around it, pressing into the flesh. His breath hitches as he feels the girth of his cock sliding down, and out, and back again, amazing himself by how well you could take in his length.

"Oh, fuck..." he murmurs, tightening his grip in your (h/c) locks. "How do you... do that?" Jhin hums as he struggles to pull you off of him, eyes dull and weak as if he was simply a puppet and you were the marionette. You noticed a string of spit hung from your lip to the tip of his curved dick, licking your lips seductively up at his bewilderment.

"No more?" You ask, obediently placing one hand in your lap to play with yourself.

He chuckles— exasperated— eyes flickering between the placements of your hands. "Look what you do to me... it's simply... not fair." He spoke quietly between labored breaths, meekly gesturing at his cock now drooling with pre-cum. His hand finds its place there, long, slender fingers dividing to hold his flesh at the base, accentuating the curve.

"Fairness is a construct," You move closer to his proud member, making eye contact with him as you plant kisses along the his hip bones and his stomach, holding onto his hip with one hand to keep him in place. "If life was fair to all of us, we wouldn't be on the run. And we," You gaze up at him, deviance dancing like demons across your expression, haunting your erotic smile. "Could do whatever we wanted."

Jhin shudders at the sight of you below him, toying with your pussy as his cock stood erect against your flushed cheek. He enjoyed the chase you presented his way as if you were a mouthy slave to his wishes, your sexual deviancy a lure to reel him into a whirlwind of eroticism.

His fingers brush gently through your hair, smoothing out the chaos he had made in it just moments before. "Stand up for me, my rose," Jhin coos, his words flowing off his tongue like poetry. "I think it's your turn, now."

With a quick nod, enticed by his intent, you rise to your feet and take Jhin's offered chivalry. He places your wet fingers onto his tongue, locking eyes with you as he closes his lips around them. His tongue swiped off your juices, delicately dancing along each of the two fingers as he cleaned them up. You couldn't help but sigh, a mewl following shortly after, when you slowly pull your fingers back out. His seduction worked every time, and the image of his face buried between your legs, squished by your thighs until he struggled to breathe... but that intense climax would be worth anything.

"Ready?" He asks.

Baffled, you simply nod.

He leads you to the neat and organized bedroom, shirking off his white dress shirt along the way. He turns and captures you within his arms, positively bursting with passionate affection. You couldn't help but giggle as he did so, becoming ensnared in yet another embrace of his lips. The man slowly walks you back to the bed, never once breaking the contact when he lifts you up onto the mattress. His tall form looms over you, and those same kisses become sloppier as he makes his way down your body.

You feel his slender fingers graze against your skin, down from your shoulders to your breasts. His large palms cup underneath, one hand pressing softly against your hardened nipple, while his tongue plays on the other. Jhin's eyes are closed as he just slightly touches his bottom teeth against the sensitive skin. You grip the duvet under you, trying desperately to hold back the electricity that flowed through you. You could feel the small smile he let slip out, his adoration peeking out through his long, dark eyelashes, and he continues moving down.

The way his hands felt on your skin stirred goosebumps on your skin. They were calloused on his fingertips— a signature sign of a musician— but the smooth palms kept an arch to them that applied just the right pressure as he touched you. As his hands slid slowly past your hips and down to your thighs, he allows his thumbs to just barely brush against your sex while he works his kisses downwards. Before long, Jhin has you wriggling in his arms while he teases you, hushed gasps escaping as you squirm. You prop yourself up on your elbows, pouting your lips and furrowing your brow in protest.

His eyes are narrow, thinned with tension, and he takes it as his sign to brush his lips gently against your heated sex. The man's tongue softly slips from his lips, making a small circle before he kisses your womanhood again. He flattens it out, carefully watching your expression as he goes to work, twirling and flicking in an improvisational dance that landed every move. He kept a consistent pressure and suction on your clit as he always did, skill simply unmatched, volleying the flatness and extending the length of his tongue.

Jhin presses his palm into your lower stomach, sinking it in and holding it there. While he does, his free hand slides his index and middle fingers along your opening, coating them both with a mixture of your juices and his saliva before slowly— oh, so slowly— inserting them into you. He allows you to acclimate, always having loved the tightness and the way you gripped his fingers, humming his praise into your sex.

You let out a soft moan, something more akin to a drawn out, breathy "fuck!", as his long fingers curl upwards, seeming to beckoning you from within. The pads of his fingertips firmly tapped against the spongey part of your sex, curving in and out with a leisurely pace. It felt as though he was coaxing your heartbeat, and it seemed to follow without much hesitation. It descended through your chest, making friends with the butterflies, as it found its home there amidst them. Your breathy moans matched the thudding, decadently rising in pitch as Jhin pushed and pulled his fingers. The pressure built up quickly and formed a fiery heat that began taking root within your depths.

Jhin, of course, knew what you liked and he knew it well, only slightly picking up his pace once your body had flexed, then relaxed and slowed down-- and when it tensed again, he repeated this process, counting to four in his mind to keep a consistent pace.

"Jhin, please..." You beg, a pathetic expression clear as daylight on your face. "I want you—"

He smiles, not stopping his pace and replacing his tongue with the padding of his thumb, swirling it in quick circles, as he speaks. "I know," he croons, melodic in his tone and ever so satisfied with your reactions. It almost sounded like he was placating you, begging for your orgasm as if he wanted nothing more than your body contorting against him.

"I'd like you to cum for me first. Will you do that, my love?" Jhin whispers.

"Yes," You nod weakly, unable to hold from setting your head back down on the duvet. "...sir."

He smiles, going back between your legs with the same fervor. "That's my good girl."

Naturally, you lay back and bring your hands up to fondle your breasts, squeezing the buds softly as you begin to cross over the brink. It takes a few more minutes as you ride your hips into him, taking greedy steps towards the edge as tears formed in your eyes and your thighs cramp from the shaking. Jhin throws his arm over your leg, using a part of the weight of his body on the other to keep them separated and to hold you still as you slip into bliss.

He wouldn't stop until your mind was numb and empty, until your eyes rolled back and your body twitched uncontrollably, letting a pool of drool hang by your cheek. Jhin couldn't hold back from that kind of torture. It was, for him, another pure form of art he performed only for you. And while you lay there squirming, your sweet voice filled the room with a music he could hear every day, all day, for the rest of his natural life.

Your head was spinning, face hot and slack. Your climax had you in a chokehold, lasting longer than you had expected it to. The white hot heat that took over you seared your skin like a brand, marking you forever as Jhin's.

"My sweet girl," Jhin licks his lips, crawling on top of you. "You are so beautiful like this." He positions your legs on either side of himself, cupping your cheek as he kisses your trembling lips, his tongue tracing the soft flesh before he dives back into your embrace. You taste yourself on his breath— the tangy sweetness of your love made you sweat— and you wrap your arms around his shoulders tightly, afraid to let go.

Jhin positions himself at your entrance, tracing his length over your sex before he poses to enter, kissing your forehead before he does so. "Do you want it, my darling?" He hums sweetly, just mere inches from your ear.

"Always," You whimper, barely able to bring yourself to say much else. The fog of his presence held your mind in a bird cage, and it was a helpless, thrashing creature all the while. "Please."

Gradually, he pushes himself in, lowering the tip of his cock into you with his thumb, bringing his hips closer to meet yours. You inhale as his length enters you, the fullness making your breath hitch. You were still so terribly sensitive, arching your back to feel it all— as Jhin gently began to rock his hips, your hands instinctively press against his bare chest. Your fingers traced carefully over his scars, letting them take their place on his collarbone.

"You're doing so well." Jhin's voice is gruff, his kisses dotting your neck and forehead as he speaks. The man brushes the hair from your face, mild and deliberate as he makes his way through the routine. He treated you as if you were a delicate flower on the cusp of a spring bloom, pressing his forehead to yours, clearly relishing in the meek mewls he was able to earn as he picked up his pace.

Jhin pulls back, scooping your legs up onto his left shoulder and straightening his back. He looks so tall and overpowering here, the coldness in his gaze still lingering amidst his dark stare. You couldn't completely take away the sadistic side of the killer, but you loved to see his aggression every now and then.

He picks up his pace, pumping in and out, every move calculated, breaths intertwined as he gazes lazily down at you. He filled you perfectly, the curve of his cock greeting your depths. It was almost as though he could read your mind; the way Jhin's fingers snake in between your thighs while he moves matched your thoughts. He makes quick movements, deliberately toying with you with a fiery fixation on the way your expression contorts.

The man watched as your eyes rolled behind your eyelids, lip quivering against your labored breathing, and he just loved the way you used your hands against the mattress to push yourself back against him. He loved the curves of your body, decorated with your numerous scars. They were a sign of a warrior, uncontested through your countless battles, and while he imbibed your intoxicating aura, you grew ever louder as his pace picked up. The aggression turned primal when his fingers grazed your neck, the melody of skin-to-skin impact filling the thick air. His manicured nails just barely scratch the skin, sending ripples of goosebumps across your body. A crooked, sadistic smile seems to crack across his face, and without any warning, Jhin sends a hearty smack! against your bottom.

And gradually, he slows down to an agonizing pace. He gyrates his hips ever so slightly before moving his callused palms over the length of your body. You sigh out your grievances, something of a mixed bag of pleasure and annoyance, and his brows furrow. Jhin's face shifts, once something so perverse and barbarous, to the warmth of a hearth, or the color of yellow daisies. He was gracious and charming, like the story books would say, but his tone-- a gruffness in his voice-- was the stark opposite.

He leans over, the fingers of one hand clasped on your neck and softly tapping in succession, and whispers, "Who do you belong to?"

"Only you." You murmur it back, only just barely audible, but he smiles as he releases you.

"Show me,"

And so you adjust yourself, slowly making your way to the edge of the bed. Jhin sits down, surveying your every move, but one leg after the other, you lower yourself onto his lap. He holds you, chest to chest, covered in a sheen of sweat. Your breathing was discordant, a tribute to the wild look in your eyes. His, however, were heavy. They were shrouded in ambiguity, a darkness lurking just beneath, and when his lip twitched at the left corner, the air pulled taught once again. Tension could be cut with a knife... But this, well, perhaps not even a bullet could pierce through.

Your stomach churned. All the while, your heartbeat sped up. The man before you was unequivocally methodical about everything he did, even when he brushed the hair from your face and tucked it behind your ear. Without much control, your body squirmed at his touch, much like the shaking of leaves in a breeze. It was a shudder that washed away reality-- one that swept away all of the stress of life. Here in Jhin's presence, you felt as though the moon wasn't so far away. That maybe, just maybe, you could touch the dust upon its surface.

Jhin allowed you to lower yourself onto him, slowly rising and falling as the tide. His broad palms spread out against your bottom, lifting ever so slightly while you move, and his lips... They leave a trail along your shoulder, down to your collarbone, and... back up your neck. The man softly bites into your skin, a groan departing from the floor of his diaphragm.

That guttural noise... so primal and inviting... it always provoked something of a beast within you. A devil that yearned for submission.

Jhin hadn't expected you to push him back so roughly, but his eyes trailed your body as you sat up straight and dug your nails across his bare chest. He didn't react much aside from that and preferred to observe. He loved your lust for power and the way you took what you wanted. It was so aligned with his own methods, and initially what drew him to you, so with every movement and shaky breath that left your chest, he, too, rose to that peak of pleasure. It started in his throat, down to his lungs and all the way to his palms, closing in on his innards, and the to his toes. It consumed him in the same way it consumed you.

He came before you this final time, whimpering so, so very softly, but the moment felt like forever and nothing all the same, like the world was stuck in a volleying limbo. You let your hands drop beside his head, reveling in the quivering darkness hazing your thoughts. It was an absolute wash of warmth that drowned you out like a monsoon— the way Jhin held you in his arms as you both shivered, moving your hips ever so slowly in mesmerizing circles to capture his essence within you.

Tepid fingers twisted together behind his head, absently fiddling with the ring that adorned your left hand, and mind clear... absolved, almost. The man hugged you tightly against his chest, his complexion dewy, heart beats colliding in unison. You sigh outward, satisfied and relaxed, and that feeling of butterflies returned, rushing through your core to make you hum your satisfaction to your lover.

"You inspire me." Jhin croons, so soft and calm as he pants, and runs his fingers across the edge of your jaw. He was riding the bliss of his orgasm, floating high amidst the clouds.

You breathe in the romance, exhaling when you meet his lips once more. "And you..."

He smiles and your heart flutters.

"Complete me."

#jhin lol #jhin league of legends #jhin the virtuoso #khada jhin #jhin #league of legends #lemon #fanfiction #fanfic #not safe for kids #owo #creative writing

[bouncybongfairy]

I love your evil morty fics so much! Not alot of people write for him so I was really happy when I found your account haha

I was wondering if I could request an evil morty x reader fic where it takes place in s7 ep 5 (unmortricken)

reader and morty both work to make the planet their "home," killing aliens, taking crystals, bulding their house, etc (morty is mostly the brains though, we're just there as a sort of bodygaurd/we watch his back so he doesn't get surprise attacked by some alien)

and if possible could you add some smut before his force field gets compromised? preferably where he starts rough due to all the stress from fighting aliens all day then when he finishes its softer and fluffier

hope my request made sense haha, thank you so much! 💖

Hard Feelings

Evil Morty x Fem Reader

Summary: After breaking through the central finite curve, Morty and you have been having some tension building up because of the stress. Things come to a head during a mission which leads rough words and hands exchange between the two of you.

Word Count: 3.0k+

(!Spoilers from Rick and Morty Season 7 EP 5!)

(!This fanfic contains rough and dark depictions of sexual content!)

Shout out to @kaionyx whose account I used as a reference. Not super familiar with.. all that kinda stuff, his blog really helped so, I'll give credit where it is due.

Shout out to the person who sent the request. Hope I did you concept justice.

<3<3<3<3<3<3<3<3<3<3

Morty’s plans to break through the central finite curve were completed. Finally able to be in a dimension where Rick isn’t the smartest asshole in the galaxy. Even though he was free from the shackles of being at Rick’s disposal, he still seemed to try filling some unknown void. It was never your place to say but there were times where Morty’s morals were becoming less and less clear. You were still grateful that he brought you along. He could have left you in your original universe but he saw something in you that couldn’t be replaced. Right now you guys were in the middle of an adventure, trying to find a certain rare type of crystal that Morty wanted to try using to power the planet's force field. He still hasn’t been able to find a crystal that can sustain his tech longer than a couple hours. The mixture of stress of constantly crystal searching and the insecurity that was caused by not figuring out exactly how to fix the problem was eating away at him. If that wasn’t enough fuel to the fire, he also was dealing with his feelings of arrival fallacy. Despite your warnings that getting away from Rick wouldn’t just magically take away the trauma, he chose to die on that hill. At times you thought it caused him to resent you when he was in a grumpy or insecure mood. 

Right now the both of you were in the ship; following the target of a crystal score Morty was pursuing. The ride was silent, it was 29 hours into the mission and the both of you were sleep deprived. As you dissociated, your mind wandered to the events that occurred two days before. Morty was working on the plans for the current mission, sitting at their kitchen table. He’s built the bunker to look like an average home on earth in order to make you feel more comfortable. You were in the kitchen making dinner for the both of you. It may seem like stereotypical domestic bliss but you didn’t cook for Morty because you had to. Simple things like cooking or reading a book in the lazy boy that helped block out the horrors from adventures and missions. Everything was ready and you were making his plate when you heard him let out a deep breath from frustration. His face was bright red and was letting his head hang off the back of the chair. You set his plate on the table and came around and stood behind him. While you kissing the top of his head in order to comfort him, you noticed that he missed a step in the formula of an equation, 

“Look, you were supposed to subtract 0.836 before multiplying by the distance and speed,” you said. He pushed back his chair and led you into the living room before going back into the kitchen and started smashing his chair against the floor. 

You immediately ran back into the kitchen and asked him what the fuck he was doing. He completely ignored you and continued his rampage. It was pointless trying to stop him, he was too far gone in his frustration. Grabbing his blueprints to make sure they didn’t get ruined, in case he wanted them when he sobered up from his anger. By the time he was done, he was practically panting. He’d smashed all four chairs that had previously surrounded the dining room table. He pulled his shirt off and wiped the sweat off his face. Throwing his shirt over his shoulder, he ran his fingers through his hair to keep the damp strands off his face. He pulled the portal gun out of his waistband and opened a portal underneath the pile of broken wood and cushions. Letting it drop into an unknown location, so he didn’t have to clean it up. He grabbed the plate and kissed you before walking into the living room to watch tv on the couch while he ate. For a while you stood there, feeling confused and frozen. You’d seen Morty go crazy while hunting and stuff but never inside at home. 

“Come eat with me!” he called out, not in an aggressive way but that just made you even more confused. The fact that he was acting like nothing happened. You made yourself a plate and joined him on the couch, trying your best to appear unaffected by the event. 

“Were here,” Morty said, breaking you out of the dissociation. 

Following Morty as you exited the ship, carrying a gun in each hand. Looking out for any monsters and he was collecting crystals. It could be the lack of sleep but you could not stop thinking about his freak out. It bothered you that he wasn’t communicating his feelings to you. It also made you insecure about how he felt about you. Painfully obvious that he wasn’t happy with himself and as his girlfriend that has to be partly your fault right? Not to mention you were tired, running on literal injections of adrenaline. The fact that you both hadn’t had sex in a while like literally since he broke through the central finite curve. It just made you feel like he didn’t care anymore or that he had much more important things to do other than well… you. Bringing this up to Morty made you insecure, he rarely showed emotion even before all this shit. So it just felt like you’d be bothering him with something that is so juvenile compared to what he’s dealing with. 

“If you have something to say you should just say it.” Morty stated, as if he was in your mind as you were overthinking. 

“What are you talking about?” you asked flatly. 

“Do you think I can’t tell when you’re bothered by something?” he asked as they walked through the dense foliage. 

“Oh that’s rich,” you practically laughed. 

“Excuse me?” he asked. 

“Are you on fucking crack? You literally went completely feral when you were making the plans for today. Then acted like nothing happened at all, so it’s weird as hell that you’re projecting that shit on to me,” you said, shooting at a large cat-like species that was running towards the two of you. 

“All I said was that I could tell something is bothering you,” he said. 

“No you also said that if I had something to say then I should just say it. Just in actuality I can communicate my feelings in a mature way without smashing shit like a child,” you said.

“Oh yeah great notes, i’m glad you have so much free time on your hands that you can categorize what icks I give you,” he said flatly.

“Please, do me a favor and get your ego in check. We both know if you didn’t need me I wouldn’t be here. I have free time the same way you have your mental health under control and we both know neither of those things are true,” you said, now not masking the irritation in your tone. 

“For sure let me just check that out, last time I checked my ego is backed up by the fact that I can do anything. Should I dull down my ego and aww jeez myself asleep every night? My ego is the reason why we're here,” he said, you could tell he was getting more irritated. 

“Fuck you! Ugh you’re such a fucking dick some times, what the fuck is your problem?!” you screamed, stopping dead in your tracks.

“I'm sure you would love that but still have work to do,” he grumbled.

“Careful their buddy, the God complex you got from your fucking grandaddy is showing!” you said, throwing one of your guns at his back. He stood still for a while, rubbing the back of his neck. Even though he wasn’t facing you it was obvious that his anger was through the roof. He turned around and walked towards you in an aggressive manner. Due to your sleep deprivation and frustration you didn’t let your body language show any weakness like you normally would have. You had your arms crossed over your chest and a wide foot stance. The other gun still in your hand, he was now as close as he could be without being pressed against you. His eyebrows were furrowed and sweat dripped down his forehead. Red in the face and breathing heavily. 

“Am I supposed to be intimidated? Cower down? Beg and plead to stop fighting? You’re fucking crazy if you think I’d beg for shit! Fuck you for real like fuck you.” you hissed. 

“You want me to fuck you?” he asked as he backed you against a tree. You didn’t know what to say, you were mad but at the same time you’d be lying if you didn’t feel the sexual tension. When you didn’t respond he continued, 

“You said you wanted me to be more open about my feelings right? So let me take my feelings out on you right now, I'll show you exactly how I feel,” he said. 

You knew a deep red blush was painted over your cheeks. His eyes were glazed over and every time his breath hit your face, you could feel your cheeks prickle and tingle. He looked feral and had the same look in his eye from when he smashed the furniture. Part of you felt like this was a Catch 22; on one had been in a dry spell for two months and you were just about as sexually frustrated as someone could be. On the other hand, it kinda felt like giving into his advances would be a sign of you admitting defeat. Morty could tell you were weighing out the pros and cons of the situation. His hands began to wonder, running up and down your back. Goosebumps covered your skin as he did, you could control your facial expressions but couldn’t help how your body reacted to his touch. You managed to keep the same unaffected facial expression as he pushed his limits. Somehow he manages to take a step closer, pressing his groin against your crotch. Feeling how hard he was made your core burn and throb. He moved your hair and moved his lips so they were hovering over your ear before whispering,

“I want to build and destroy you over and over again,” he growled in ear.

You were losing the mental battle of maintaining your stubbornness. Giving into him would be admitting weakness and defeat in the mind games you were playing. There wasn’t anywhere to go, you were completely smashed against his body and the tree. He moved his mouth from the ear to your neck. He was breathing against your skin, rubbing his nose up and down. You held back a shiver, leaning over to the side in hope to give your skin a break from the sensitivity. Running his hand up your back, he gently tangles his hands in your hair. Slowly tightening his grip on the soft strands. Grabbing your gun he kills another animal that was running to attack. The loud crack of the weapon was similar to when the gun goes off in a race. You smash your lips against his, fully letting your body melt into his arms. He pulled away from your lips and sunk his teeth into your neck, hard enough to break skin. Squirming away from the burning and stinging but every time you did, he got more aggressive. Every once in a while you’d hear a couple of strands popping. 

“Is that why you’re being so difficult today? You wanted my attention, hmm?” he asked, his tone was ragged and low. 

“Holy fuck.. okay,” you half mumble half moan. 

“Can’t even hold a conversation because the only thing on your mind is being pounded, such a dumb little whore,” he said, pushing you down to the ground. 

It was a lot more aggressive than normal, ripping your shirt exposing your tits. His eyes were wide yet he still kept his eyebrows furrowed and angry. You went to reach for his belt but before you could reach it, he slapped your tit so hard it made you gasp. It’s not necessarily that you weren’t into how dominant he was being. It was making you nervous because this was the first time he wasn’t holding back. You could feel your body shivering in excitement and anticipation. Again you reach for his belt again and in return his palm and fingers smacked against your face. Whipping your body to the side due to the force and the fact that it was completely unexpected. You were laying on your back and before you could finish reacting to the slap, he was on top of you. Using his knees to pin down your things, his legs digging painfully into the muscles of your thigh. Pulling out a dagger from his waistband, it was long and curved kinda like a claw. Using it to cut a hole into your cargo pants, ripping at the fabric. The tip of the knife nicked you, taking in a sharp breath mixed with a gasp. Instinctually you got to sit up and investigate the wound. He pushed you back down into the dirt, a couple of sharp rocks digging into your back. Looking up and staring at him; the sun was beginning to set creating a glow of burnt orange and red illuminating his figure from behind. Now that it was starting to get dark, more creatures from the dense forest were waking up and getting hungry. Every once in a while using his laser gun to kill anything that gets too close. Eventually growing tired of the constant monitoring he puts up a force field. 

“Now: you can take my belt off,” he said, still gripping the blade menacingly.

At first, you were nervous to make any sudden movements. You sat back on your knees, the dirt and gravel on the ground was becoming increasingly bothersome. Slowly you reach up and start to undo his belt, he raises the knife up and starts gently grazing the sharp tip against your jaw. Your hands were shaking from adrenaline, excitement and a little fear. The belt was now fully undone, he was still looking down at you. His silence was making you nervous, you didn’t want to provoke him by doing or saying the wrong thing. After a couple moments of waiting for instruction, you become impatient and reach up again pulling his boxers down. He lets you expose him but then uses his other hand to grab you tightly by the jaw. 

“How dumb are you? What is it going to take for you to learn to do as you're told?” he spat, creating a small scratch on your cheek. 

“I’m sorry,” you cry out, becoming mentally exhausted. This was your 31st hour without sleep and it was starting to affect your patients. 

“Not yet,” he laughed. 

He flipped you over and immediately crawled on top of you. His exposed member pressing against you from behind. Your thoughts were becoming foggy, like you were intoxicated by your arousal and desire. Grabbing a fistful of hair, he pinned your head to the dirt. Every time you exhaled the dirt would fly up a little, like a plume of smoke. You were bucking your behind against him, trying to initiate some type of contact with your sexes. He took this as a sign of defiance, almost humoured that you thought you’d deserve his cock yet. 

“Did you really think you’d get your cunt touched without begging?” he growled. As soon as the words fell from his lips, fire and ice began running through your veins. You were accepting your fate, he was right and you were wrong. He was relishing in the fact that he was breaking you down piece by piece. After you had played a big game about essentially being immune to his mind games. 

“I’m sorry, okay. Please!” you cried out, trying to press your ass against him but couldn’t. He adjusted his position, his tip now pressed against your entrance. Using his head to spread your moisture around your lips and clit. 

“Being treated like this gets you off? Having to beg for it makes you this wet? I thought begging was beneath you, say it, that you’re too good to beg,” you were panting and drooling, part of you wanted to hang on to that stubbornness. That maybe your dignity could be somewhat salvaged, you stayed silent trying to figure out what to say; whether to give in or keep fighting back. He was getting irritated waiting for a response and began slapping his dick against your pussy. 

“Say. It.” He ordered with a low yet strong voice.

“I’m not t-too good to b-beg,” you whimper out, a tear of humility streamed down your face. 

“What? You sounded so sure earlier though.. Say it again, just so I know you’re serious,” he growled, running the blade down your back. As bruised as your ego was, you couldn't lie and say you weren’t equality as turned on. Part of you felt a little ashamed that you’re enjoying this level of domination and humiliation. 

“I’m not too good to beg you! J-just please I can’t-!” you practically shrieked, not being able to take the anticipation and teasing anymore. 

He then lined himself up and slid into you. You tighten yourself around him, fully enjoying the feeling of his throbbing member filling your needy hole. You’d learned your lesson and let him take the lead, using your body however he wanted. His hip bones were stabbing into your ass but you didn’t care. Being sexually frustrated for weeks mixed with being teased mentally and physically made you overly sensitive. Your walls were burning but from a mix of immense pleasure and slight pain from how fast the friction was. His body was fully pressed against yours, fucking you into the ground. Your head was between his elbows and forearms. The side of your head was fully pressed against the dirt, tears turning into mud and sticking to your face. His lips were pressed against your ear, groaning and whispering vulgar nothings. 

“I- can’t, please, it h-hurts,” your words came out garbled and hoarse. 

“You want me to stop? Can’t take it? That’s okay, just say so,” he groaned into your ear. It wasn’t like you were lying, you didn’t think you could take much more. You wanted more though, so you shut your mouth and continued enjoying being stretched. 

“That’s what I fucking thought, silly little cumslut,” he growled, pounding into you harder than you thought possible. 

The force field was beginning to fail, getting smaller and less protective. He pulls you up, putting you in doggie position. Your knees were being scrapped by the rocks and gravel. He spit on his dick as he continued pounding into you. Using the gun to kill creatures trying to break through the force field. Both of you were getting close, his thrusts were becoming more erratic. Feeling you pulse and tighten around you. The gun was getting hot due to rapid use, noticing this: he remembers when you threw it at him. So he pressed the hot barrel against your lower back, right where a tramp stamp normally would be placed. This intense pain combined with the pleasure and overstimulation was enough to send you into climax. Even though you were nearly passed out, you could tell he was cumming into you. It was like he cock pressed deep enough into your spasming cunt. As soon as you were done riding out the high, you passed out.

#rick and morty fanfiction #evil morty x you #evil morty season 7 #evil morty x reader #evil morty imagine #evil morty fanfiction #rick and morty season 7 #fanfic request #fanfiction requests #x reader requests #sadist k!nk #knife k!nk #rough smut #dark smut

[stillness-in-green]

On Heteromorphs and Heteromorphobia (Arc XXI-B + Conclusion, Final War-B: The Hospital Attack)

To preface before I start documenting these final four chapters, there’s been a lot said (not least by me) about how wildly out of touch the resolution to this plotline is.  While I didn't set out to rehash all of that again, it turns out I can't actually talk about how the series portrays heteromorphobia without talking about how it resolves it—if I'd wanted to do that, the place to stop would have been with the last post. This whole piece is also destined for AO3 eventually, so it needs to be readable for those who don't follow me on tumblr. Therefore, if you've been following my #heteromorph discrimination plot posts for a while, there are portions of this post that will be pretty familiar territory!

If you're new and want my full breakdowns, you can find them in my Chapter Thoughts posts or in this pair of posts rounding up the asks I’d gotten on the topic.  Here, I will simply say that I don’t think Horikoshi’s fumbling of the plot can be read to mean that all the stuff I’ve documented thus far was just me reaching too hard, reading stuff into the manga where nothing was intended.  While I’m sure some of it is—I definitely went out on a few limbs!—I think the main answer to, “How can heteromorphobia be such a well-thought-out depiction of a logically foreseeable form of discrimination while also having such a terrible resolution?” is, “Because the mainstream opinion about how best to handle discrimination is wildly different in Japan than it is in progressive American circles.”

That doesn’t mean I’m willing to wave the wand of Cultural Differences over this resolution and forgive everything—there were plenty of Japanese fans critiquing it as well![1]—but it does somewhat modulate my feelings about it.  In any case, let’s get to it.

1: Most of what I saw was on Twitter, but there’s a Japanese site called bookmeter that’s kinda goodreads-esque, and which had several critical reviews posted for the volume, including one that felt like every point laid out was something I’d complained about as well.  Super validating, but a shame it was necessary!

(I'll be changing up my formatting just a bit in hopes that I can find a way to present sub-sub-bullet points that tumblr won't choke on in this 13K post. Pray for me.)

Chapter 370: 

O We open with a scene which we’re led to believe is about Spinner but which the end of the chapter will reveal to be about Shouji.  It’s shockingly open about the extent of the discrimination Shouji faced, and there’s worse yet to come, but here we find people throwing stones at him, telling him to die, saying he has dirty blood that will defile the land, that he should stay inside the house, and that no matter how much time passes,[2] they will never accept “his kind.”

2: Viz renders this as “no matter how much society progresses,” but the word jidai means something more like “the times”/”the age,” and the progression term used can mean improvement, but in the circumstances, probably just means forward movement.  I think the intention is more like, “No matter how much the times march on,” if only because it would be very odd for the people yelling this vitriol to frame it as themselves resisting progression.  After all, bigots don’t typically think of themselves as “regressive” compared to everyone else’s progressiveness; they think of themselves as normal or valuing tradition compared to everyone else’s moral laxity/perversity.

So, remember how I talked about the spiritual/religious charge to the language the CRC used to talk about their “sanctuary” and the League/Spinner’s presence in it?  Here’s the full scope of that.  It’s about kegare, a Shinto concept of uncleanliness associated particularly with blood and death, and while that’s normally something that can be purified simply by undergoing the proper ritual cleansings, when something is, in itself, intrinsically unclean, no amount of purification will fix it; you can only keep it sealed away.  Hence the yelling at Shouji not to leave the house.

The spirituality-based discrimination calls to mind the burakumin, originally an outcaste group of people who made their living working with all the aspects of life Shinto considered kegare—butchers, tanners, executioners and the like.   They were made to dress and cut their hair in ways that identified them on sight, barred from entering temples or schools, and lived in their own villages.  The laws mandating much of this were abolished in 1871[3] and urban sprawl gradually rolled over burakumin villages, turning them into slum areas.  While today it’s not uncommon for people to not even know they’re descended from burakumin lineage unless they’re specifically told,[4] more subtle discrimination does endure.  While it’s clearly not the only inspiration, there’s a lot about anti-burakumin bias that’s reflected in heteromorphobia.

3: Albeit not without considerable and violent protests against the liberation of the burakumin/the idea that they were henceforth to be allowed to hold other occupations and become ordinary citizens.  Arson, destruction of villages, attacks and deaths—all things considered, the anti-Kaihourei riots are probably a decent place to look for inspiration on the historical massacres Spinner’s #2 will be talking about shortly.

4: Or find out because someone who knows the significance of those old neighborhoods finds out first and they’re suddenly on the bad end of some discriminatory act or another.

O We find out that the group Spinner’s leading consists of fifteen thousand people, that number split between PLF remnants and ordinary civilians who support the PLF’s cause.  It’s unknown exactly how that split breaks down, but based on how the rest of the attack goes, I think it’s probable that the group is mostly civilians—if it were more PLF, it probably wouldn’t be so wholly defanged by Shouji’s big plea for peace.  So that’s what we might call a “bad look,” that fifteen thousand ordinary civilians feel so incredibly hard done-by that they not only flock to join a known terrorist, but that they do so for the purpose of attacking a hospital.

O They’re opposed by about two hundred police and heroes, the relevant of whom for our purposes are Present Mic, Rock Lock, Officer Gori, Shouji, and Koda.  With the exception of Present Mic, who will in any case be heading inside very shortly, they’re all minorities of some sort, with Rock Lock being very visibly, obviously Black, and the others being heteromorphs.  None of them are immediately thinking about the composition of the crowd, but rather about how difficult the crowd is being to handle.

O Rock Lock yells out that the rioters are too organized to be some random mob, a dismissiveness that gets him shouted at by the Spinner fanboys—tragically their only appearance in all of this!—that, “Folks with human faces just don’t get it!”  I have to assume that putting Rock Lock in this scene is no accident, but rather is there to make the rioters come off as short-sighted, so deep in their own pain that they lash out at someone who, if HeroAca!Japan is anything like present day Japan, almost certainly understands better than they think!

The phrasing, in any case, points towards the dehumanization that heteromorphs, especially animal-associated ones, are subject to.  After all, as Re-Destro might point out, in the post-Advent world, isn’t it the case that any given heteromorphic human’s face, no matter how strange it may be, is de facto a “human face”?  Yet the vitriol from the Spinner fans clearly reflects how internalized it’s become for them, that they don’t look “human,” despite the fact that “looking human” means nothing at all in the time of quirks.

O Koda gets called a traitor by an elderly beaked heteromorph from, apparently, a rural area, underscoring what’s been alluded to a few times prior to this, and which will be laid out explicitly in a few pages, that heteromorphobia is far, far worse in the countryside than it is in the cities.  Mr. Beak assumes—correctly, it seems[5]—that Koda’s a city kid, because why else other than ignorance would a fellow heteromorph stand against them?

5: Koda’s from Iwate Prefecture, which is only above Hokkaido in terms of population density; a bit of research suggests that its largest city, Morioka, is considered to be a mid-sized city.  So that’s definitely the hard upper limit on exactly how “big city” Koda could reasonably be.  That said, Shouji also identifies Koda as someone who grew up in a city, for which I assume he must have at least some basis.

O Spinner’s #2 fulfills the promise of his early shorthanded characterization of being a fiery, well-spoken zealot by standing on top of a building over the mob and exhorting them onward with revolutionary, inflammatory rhetoric.  And boy, does he bring up a lot to talk about!    

Demagoguery for Fun & Profit

O Quirk counselling and quirk education?  Phony nonsense, he says.  That’s a fairly confusing grievance to bring up in this context, so let’s consider what he might have in mind.

• For quirk education, I would contend that BNHA has shown very little of it, in spite of having Academia right there in the title.  The academics in question are about Heroics, after all, not quirks in and of themselves.  Here’s the complete list of what I would say the reader has seen that could be qualified as actual education about quirks:

Aizawa telling the kids(/low tier villains at USJ) some broad generalities, things like a very basic explanation of how quirks work on the genetic level or how they’re classified.  Most of this is delivered in the context of how his quirk works; the only outlier that immediately comes to mind for me is his explanation of how quirks are like muscles, and can be strengthened via training.    

Mirio and Tamaki’s middle school class doing “quirk training,” which is framed as a P.E. class and is specifically aimed at finding ways for each kid to be “useful to society,” not about them learning anything about quirks in a broader sense.    

Endeavor’s recent reference to Nedzu’s alleged “quirk morality education,” about which I have already registered my skepticism.    

The bit in Re-Destro’s monologue to Shigaraki where he mentions he was taught not to judge others by their quirks.  It’s hard to judge how applicable this is to normal society because Re-Destro was raised in a cult, and the book shown during this sequence was released by Curious’s publisher.

So of those options, what is #2 talking about?  I’d say the last one is probably closest to what he means: don’t judge others by their quirks.  But of course, people judge others by their quirks all the time.  Family, classmates, teachers, people in the same neighborhood, heroes and police—we see examples from literally the first page of characters who are being judged by their quirks or lack thereof.  While that judgement doesn’t apply only to heteromorphs, they are, by dint of their visibility, going to face it everywhere they go, regardless of whether any given situation—say, going to the grocery store or on a date—involves quirks or not.  So, whatever lessons people in this society are getting about quirks and judgement, they clearly aren’t absorbing them.

It also bears pointing out, of course, that #2’s personal affiliation is with the Metahuman Liberation Army, and he definitely shows signs—as I’ll get to in a bit—of the quirk supremacism that group is so unanimously painted with in the endgame.  So while the supremacy he’s preaching is about heteromorphs rather than quirks more generally, he could well be saying quirk education is phony because he’s all for judging people on their quirks!  However, his criteria for that judgement differs from both forms of judgement taught by the society he’s railing against—what they practice and what they preach.

• Then there’s quirk counseling, a practice the story most prominently associates with Toga, who’s barely a twitch of the needle away from baseline (though her abuse is not wholly without reference to her appearance, in that her natural smile is repeatedly branded as scary or deviant).  So why bring it up in association with heteromorphs?  My suspicion is that a heteromorph—especially a heteromorph with an animal-associated quirk!—being visibly “different” in some way makes the people around them hyper-sensitive to behavioral “deviations.”

For a start, you see that hyper-sensitivity brought to bear against Toga.  Curious contends that Toga’s sense of “admiration” was a perfectly normal thing, but it was the tie to blood that made it wholly unacceptable.  It’s notable that, before she snapped, Toga was never shown to actually want to hurt people: the bird was already injured when she found it, her friend got a scrape the way any child might, Saito was involved in a fight Toga had no hand in.  She hurts people now because a lifetime of rejection and dehumanization, but Toga’s admiration of blood was not intrinsically indicative that she’d grow up to be violent; people treated it that way because of cultural attitudes towards blood and blood-attraction.

So, might the same sort of thing be true of e.g. animal-associated heteromorphs?  That they might exhibit behaviors which would, in different circumstances, be totally fine, but which they’re judged for unduly harshly because of cultural beliefs about the animal they resemble?  Let me just spitball a few possibilities:

A cat heteromorph who, as a child, showed affection by nuzzling.  That’s fine when a literal kitten is doing it, and funny and cute when a baseline child sees a cat doing it and imitates it for fun, but when the cat heteromorph does it, he makes people uncomfortable, makes them wonder if he lacks self-control, comes off as weird and too-forward.  So his parents rebuke him and bring him to a quirk counsellor to break him of the habit, leading him to feel ashamed and alienated from a harmless natural impulse.    

A snake-headed girl is the first heteromorph in her family line and the way she stares at people so fixedly, never blinking, creeps them out, makes them feel like she’s dangerous.  She isn’t and has no intention of being so, but she’s sent to quirk counselling anyway and the lesson she learns is to just never look people in the eye at all.    

A condor heteromorph develops a morbid interest in corpses in middle school.  He doesn’t want to eat them, he’s not some kind of cannibalistic animal—at least that’s what he told himself before quirk counselling, where his counsellor, like his teachers, assumed that his interest had to be tied to animal instincts.  He wanted to be a mortician, or join the police and get into crime scene investigation, but when he told people that they just looked at him like he was already holding a fork and knife.  (He ends up getting into photography, and just has to live with the fact that now people have two excuses to call him a vulture.)    

Two children—one with a plant-based emitter quirk, the other an eight-eyed spider heteromorph—are caught in the act of killing some insects by a local police officer.  It’s the sort of innocent childhood cruelty you might find anywhere, and, indeed, when the officer calls their school about it, that’s what gets decided about the emitter—he was just a child who didn’t know any better.  But the heteromorph gets recommended for quirk counselling instead—after all, spiders kill insects.  What if this is an early warning sign for instincts towards predatory behavior?  It’s important to nip these things in the bud.

That’s all off the top of my head or taken from some conversation with friends on the topic, and maybe it’s a reach, but it’s also a very plausible explanation for why a heteromorphic idealogue might bring up quirk counselling as a specific grievance—because, like the Villain-designation for criminals, it’s unevenly and unfairly applied.

O The next point #2 makes, and definitely the one that made the biggest splash in fandom at the time, is his invocation of a pair of historical incidents, possibly both but at least one of which was a mass murder targeting heteromorphs, carried out by a bunch of baseline types.  He names them as the 6/6 Incident and the Great Jeda Purge.  These are both stealth Star Wars references, though the former is disguised a bit better by being in the same format that Japan sometimes uses for naming events like attempted coups.[6]  Given the image we see, it’s fair to assume the event in BNHA was similar.

6: See for example the May 15 Incident or the February 26 Incident, called the 5・15 Incident and the 2・26 Incident respectively in Japan. You see this in China as well, with the Tiananmen Square massacre being referred to there as the 6/4 Incident.

Notice that the perpetrators here are mostly holding weapons.  Were they quirkless themselves, or were they avoiding using quirks such that they couldn’t be branded as Villains?  Knowing the answer to that would give us a timeframe for this.

He goes on to declaim, on the basis of these events, that the history of the paranormal is one of persecution and oppression of those with “differing forms.”[7] The term in Japanese there is kotonaru katachi, 異なる形, which uses a different reading of the kanji in igyou (異形) and muscles in a verb conjugation, which has the effect of softening the harshness of 異 somewhat.[8]  This would be a great catch-all term for those with heteromorphic bodies who might or might not have heteromorphic quirks[9] if it weren’t for the fact that literally the only person we ever hear using it is an anti-social zealot.  No one on Team Hero ever makes this kind of distinguishment.

In any case, #2 is obviously over-simplifying to play to his audience—recall the baseline woman we saw back in that shot of Persecuted Early Quirk-Havers back in Chapter 59—but, as I’ve discussed extensively, being more visible does make one a more ready target.  Also, of course, the presence of the CRC in the story lays the groundwork for this sort of historical horror story even long after the worst days of the Advent.

7: I provide my own translation here because the Viz one, “those who don’t fit the mold,” is vague to the point of uselessness.

8: The koto reading, as best I can tell, seems to be pretty rare, often tagged as archaic in words including it.  The i reading is far more common, in words that denote wrongness, divergence, abnormality, and so on.  But it may be less about the reading and more about the fact that adding the verb conjugation makes the term more of a descriptive phrase than a direct noun.  As ever, take my talk about Japanese language minutiae with a grain of salt.

9: “Differing forms” is broad enough, however, that it could also be read as covering, say, people with amputations, congenital anomalies, or other sorts of non-quirk-related disfigurements from accidents or disease.  As in real life, navigating the linguistic space between specificity and Othering can be tricky.

O Next, #2 rhetorically demands what excuse was given by those who perpetrated these slaughters?  He answers his own question with the quote, “They give me the creeps.” Note how this ties in with my earlier suppositions about the likelihood of discrimination worsening the farther one is from baseline, as well as those about the necessity of putting up a good, positive, appealing front.  It’s a perfectly intuitive leap, that more extreme variants of heteromorphy, or those who evoke negative associations—animals tied to rot or bad luck, people made wholly out of green ooze—are going to be more likely to be found “creepy” than those who look like e.g. sexy bunny girls or straight-laced guys who just happen to have pipes jutting out of their calves.  Of course, that’s on something of a sliding scale; the more biased an area is against heteromorphs in general, the easier it will be to find oneself on the wrong side of that line.

O #2 presents the idea that society has reflected on their actions and made amends, or at least that’s how society’s narrative goes.  Illustrating this, we see two of the three heteromorphs in the police force, as well as Nedzu.  Interestingly, the panel does not include any heteromorphic heroes!  I might guess that this is because heroes are meant to use their quirks to serve others; they’re really just enforcement tools, lacking any particular authority beyond a quirk-use license and some admittedly broad soft power courtesy of the social contract.[10] Conversely, a school principal and a police chief (Gori remaining the outlier here) have actual authority, such that the average heteromorphobia-denier can point to them as evidence that heteromorphobia doesn’t exist anymore.

10: Which is to say, I don’t get the impression civilians are required to take orders from heroes, such that they would actually get in legal trouble for disobeying.  The fact that people do typically follow those orders speaks more to the power heroes wield via their association with the police force, as well as the general tendency of people to assume that someone in a uniform giving orders during an emergency is probably a professional whose orders it would be safe and wise to follow.

In the same panel, we also see a baseline guy palling around with a vaguely murine heteromorph dude (he looks more like a mascot suit mouse than an actual mouse, but he’s certainly nowhere close to baseline!), illustrating another way society wants to pretend it’s moved past heteromorphic discrimination.  I can’t help but note, in regards to this specific pair, that the manga uses faces the readers know to illustrate the point about heteromorphs in positions of authority, whereas to make the point about baseline/heteromorph friendships, it has to make up a new pair to show us because the series hasn’t made the time to actually build any (heroic) relationships that actually look like that!

Now, one could argue that using familiar faces to underscore #2’s speech would imply that he’s aware of those faces, and while that’s fine for figures of authority, there’s no reason for him to be aware of e.g. Natsuo and his mousey girlfriend.  However, the same would apply to anyone placed to demonstrate a random urban friendship crossing the “differing forms” line, including those two strangers.  Who are those two, after all, that #2 is any more familiar with them than he would be of Natsuo and mouse gal?

Honestly, I think the best relationship candidate we have—a pair who would both communicate what the panel needs to communicate to the reader and who would feasibly be enough in the public eye to get pointed at for rhetorical purposes by an in-universe speaker—would be Kamui Woods and Mount Lady.  Unfortunately, they don’t work because Horikoshi has never seen fit to actually reveal Kamui Woods’ real face, so they’re much less visibly “a baseline person being emotionally close with a heteromorph” than the random two Horikoshi made up.

O The oratory continues into discussing the divide between city versus rural views on heteromorphs, and this is, to me, the first clear sign that the series is beginning to lose the thread of this plot.  Taking #2 at his word asks us to concede the heteromorphobia has been completely wiped out in cities, eradicated with that wonderful antidote called “education.”  But discrimination very much does exist in cities!  It may be less violent, less extreme, less vocal, but in the form of things like law enforcement bias, housing discrimination, microaggressions, the quirk counselling #2 himself brought up, it’s very much still there!  Now, it could be that he’s just downplaying that discrimination to focus on the really ugly stuff you don’t see in cities, but I don’t know what his reasons for doing so would be?  Not when there’s so much else he could say that would be equally inflammatory without alienating urban heteromorphs by dismissing their still very much present, modern suffering.

O He then brings up the talk of “light”—echoing Skeptic’s earlier rhetoric—and it not reaching those gathered at the hospital, so they must make their own, for people who’ve never once regretted the quirks they were born with can never be their heroes.  What this primarily puts me in mind of is Hawks’s background with heroes prior to his father’s arrest—that heroes were only on TV, not present to save him in his actual life.  Keep that in mind for Shouji’s response later on.

O Towards the end, #2’s speech finally tips over the line from what could plausibly be read as protesting unequal treatment to an outright call for supremacy.  Notably, he doesn’t call for quirk supremacy, but rather for heteromorph supremacy—for the tables to be turned, the cards reversed, for them to not merely be equal, but rather to be superior.

It’s unclear how much of this he’s sincere about and how much is just convenient rhetoric disguising views that are more quirk supremacist in actuality.  For many reasons, I want to read him in good faith: because the MLA originally struck me as being written in good faith throughout MVA and the first war arc; because #2 never once uses his quirk in this mini-arc, casting doubt on him having such an amazing quirk that he’d benefit overmuch from quirk supremacy anyway; and especially because it would be incredibly bad faith on Horikoshi’s part to make a character delivering a speech like this a total bad faith, manipulative outsider.  Unfortunately, #2’s inner monologue in later chapters will make a good faith read all but impossible to sustain.    

O Halfway through his speech, #2 unmasks himself, revealing both his face—dominated by four pairs of pedipalp-esque mouthparts, though the markings on his head are pretty eye-catching, too—and his scar.  We’re never told how he got it, but the implication is certainly that he was attacked for his appearance.  That may just be a conclusion it serves him to let people make, given his bad faith elsewhere, but thankfully the manga doesn’t go so far as to say that explicitly.  In any case, his deliberate reveal turns his wound into a form of performance art, drawing attention to it, forcing it to be a part of the conversation—the polar opposite of Shouji covering his scars because he doesn’t want them to be a part of the conversation about him, and those scars being revealed because his mask is torn off against his will.[11]

11: This also fits a larger pattern of villains, by and large, choosing their expressions of vulnerability, making deliberate shows of agency in how their weakness is perceived by the broader world—Shigaraki taking his hand off for the first time, Dabi’s video, Toga approaching heroes with genuine questions, and so on.  There are certainly exceptions, but generally if a villain shows his “true face,” it’s because they’re making a conscious decision to do so, and may be actively manipulating how that reveal is going to land.  Conversely, heroes want to present a powerful, confident, untarnished image to the public, so their shows of vulnerability all have to be forced out of them after pitched battles or acts of violence.  Heroes don’t make themselves vulnerable to the public on purpose, which feeds into the way the public then treats them when they are forced into vulnerable positions.

O Spinner’s a mess at this point, and the reason he’s a mess is all tied up in his faith in/desire to help Shigaraki.  It’s not explicitly about heteromorphobia, but on the other hand, given that the thing that drove Spinner to be here at all was his horrifically low self-esteem caused by heteromorphobia, maybe it’s not so irrelevant after all.  It may have taken Spinner longer than the Tenkos, Touyas, and Chisaki Kais of the world to reach the “fall victim to a dark influence due to the neglect and abuse you faced at the hands of Hero Society” plot, but he certainly got there in the end![12]

12: I call this The Sekoto Peak Problem, and it’s a big criticism of mine about how the final arc is framing all these conflicts as being solely brought about because Bad Faith Villain Men like AFO are scooping up vulnerable people and driving them towards violence, without acknowledging the much worse circumstances those vulnerable people might be in if they were just left to their fates.  Touya, for example, if not for AFO’s timely rescue, would likely have simply died on the mountain long before Endeavor was able to find him.

O Shouji takes the mob to task for attacking a hospital without ensuring the safety of the uninvolved innocents within, a laughable bit of sophistry[13] that accurately foreshadows how disastrous his reasoning will be throughout the rest of these chapters.

13: It’s laughable sophistry firstly because the heroes knew this mob was coming but chose to leave Kurogiri at a hospital anyway; one can mount a very reasonable argument that Kurogiri’s teleportation power qualifies him as a military objective, which would make stashing him at a hospital an actual war crime in an international conflict, as well as negating the hospital’s protected status as a civilian object.  It’s laughable sophistry secondly because it criticizes a Villain-led mob for failing to evacuate the building, as if said mob had exactly the same social cachet possessed by heroes, that they could freely walk in the front door of a hospital and start shouting evacuation orders with reasonable confidence that they’d be obeyed.  Finally, it’s laughable sophistry because Shouji is quite simply wrong about the order of the actions he’s describing—the heroes’ evacuation of Ujiko’s hospital was concurrent with their invasion of said hospital, not precedent to it.

   

Chapter 371: 

O Shouji accuses Spinner of taking actions that will set them back thirty years, which is just a really egregiously victim blamey sort of thing to say, placing the responsibility on heteromorphs for the crimes of those who hate them.

O Koda’s perspective gives us a flashback to Shouji telling his classmates about his history—his town and his scars and his reason for wanting to be a hero.  It’s all material that works in the context of all the set-up we’ve gotten—the CRC and the religious inflection of their specific brand of hatred, the rural heteromorphobia, the hints about Shouji’s own discrimination, the attack on the Ordinary Woman, and so on—but that would have been far better served to have been integrated into the story more naturally.  Koda has no specifically established relationship with Shouji (seriously, there is absolutely nothing; it’s shocking how out of nowhere his sudden deep dedication to Shouji is), nor does the scene he remembers have any specific flags for when it might take place,[14] leaving the memory feeling less like a natural extension of their arc than it is a graceless sequence muscled in to attempt to rouse some emotion in the audience when Koda has a quirk awakening he is not otherwise remotely in dire enough straits to have rightfully earned.[15]

14: Shouto and Bakugou being missing might suggest that they’re off at their remedial license course, which would put the scene somewhere in late September up through December (stretching from the aftermath of Overhaul to the introduction of the MLA), save that there are several other students missing as well—Sero, Iida, Sato, and Aoyama, none of whom where in the remedial course.

15: Nearly every other inarguable quirk awakening[※] we know of in the series has as a chief component serious physical injury: Bakugou, Ochaco, Toga.  Geten’s is the only exception, and his is tied to the strength of his feelings for Re-Destro, which are clearly and overridingly his most significant character trait!  Shouji is not anywhere near that central to Koda’s life, and he sure as hell isn’t injured enough to have gotten it that way.

※: By which measure I exclude stuff like the change in Shigaraki’s Decay or Mina’s acid attack against Gigantomachia.  Shigaraki was explicitly just breaking through a mental block to access power he already had.  Meanwhile, if Mina’s Plus Ultra moment had been a sudden quirk evolution, she wouldn’t already have an attack name picked out for it, nor would her horns have gone back to normal after it.  Acidman: ALMA is an Ultimate Move, not Mina having a quirk awakening.

O The flashback itself calls for another subsection.    

Ignoring the Difference Between the Personal and the Systemic for Fun & Profit

O The big thing here the description of the whole town coming out for a “blood cleansing” whenever Shouji touched someone.  This is depicted as Shouji, probably a preteen in this sequence,[16] being savagely attacked with farming tools, the most visible of which is a pitchfork.  This visual, as well as #2’s invocation of historical slaughters, is the darkest heart of heteromorphobia: a child being ritualistically assaulted in the open street as a matter of course, as a consequence for touching someone.  This is the image you should hold in your mind as The Problem through all of the potential answers and responses that get trotted out through the rest of these chapters.

16: Visibly older/bigger than, say, Kouta, but also visibly younger/smaller than middle school Deku.

Before moving on, I do want to examine this image in just a bit more depth.

This is, firstly, the moment that Shouji got those scars, and it’s very important to note that what we’re being shown is likely not a random, representative sample of what the town “coming out in force for a blood cleansing” looks like.  The strong implication is that this is in the immediate aftermath of the sequence we’ll see shortly of Shouji saving the girl from the river: he’s wearing the same clothes and shoes,[17] he’s the same size, and there’s a spray of blood from where he’s being struck across the mouth where he didn’t have his distinctive scars when he saved the girl.  Does that mean the blood cleansings were typically not this violent?  That’s hard to say.  On the one hand, we don’t see any other scars on Shouji, and he wears his arms pretty bare!  On the other hand, we never see any part of his body bare except his neck and arms, and since he can regrow his arms,[18] they’re not exactly conclusive evidence that he’s never been scarred there.  Also, he does say talk about his situation—the scars he bears—as something other children in the country have to bear, suggesting that the norm is rather worse than a little symbolic gash across the palm or something!     17: In fairness, he may not own very much different, as I’ll discuss shortly.     18: The duplicated ones, at least.  I seem to recall reading once that he could regrow the base set as well, but I’m still working on tracking down a citation on that.    

Secondly, as was the case with the image of the historical massacres, the adults here are using tools/weapons in the assault, not quirks.  As I mentioned in a footnote last time, them not using quirks to carry out this attack makes them merely criminals, not Villains, and therefore not nominally a Hero’s job to deal with.  While I can’t imagine any Hero in the manga these days would stand back and let this go on, the absence still stands out—no Hero is participating in this, nor observing from the sidelines, nor trying to intervene.  Heroes simply don’t figure into this picture at all.    

Thirdly, we can see a few children in the background, both there with adults, I assume their parents.  The child on the right is a passive observer, clinging close to their mother and simply watching; their father has one hand supportively on their shoulder.  Neither parent seems distressed, insomuch as we can tell from their somewhat indistinct features and rather clearer body language.  The child on the left is being actively held back by their mother, who’s standing with her back to the violence, her body interposed between it and her child.  The kid is reaching out towards the scene, but it’s unclear what the intent is.  Are they trying to intervene or do they want to join in?     Neither child appears to be the little girl Shouji saved—the one on the right is dark-haired, and the one on the left—the more likely prospect just going by the body language!—is wearing a long, dark T-shirt instead of the little girl’s overalls.  I suppose the left one could be the little girl if we assume she was hustled out of what she’d been wearing by her parents, eager to get her out of now-tainted (and also soaking wet) clothes and into something dry and warm and, in more ways than one, clean.  However, that seems like the sort of thing that would take longer than what looks to have been a pretty impromptu, disorganized bloodletting, unless everyone just held off on assaulting Shouji right out on the street until the “victim” could be present.    

Finally, there’s the pair of adults right at the center of the background.  If anyone in this picture is actually related to Shouji, I’d put money on them being here, watching but not attempting to intercede.  I don’t think it’s conclusive, though; the woman is thin and hunched, making her look older—I’d guess Shouji’s grandmother before Shouji’s mother.  That hunched posture and her hands being raised to her mouth do give her the most obviously distressed appearance of any of the adult, though, to the extent that the person with her is focused on supporting her rather than watching what’s going on in the foreground—and forward attention is what I’d expect if the dark-haired figure is related to Shouji.

So that’s the image we have of the crowd—actively taking part or observing with varying degrees of reaction running from distress to indifference to, potentially, enthusiasm.

O Next, let’s talk about Shouji’s parents.  He implies they were baseline—at the least they were significantly more baseline than Shouji himself, as they lacked arms “like his.”  That makes it quite telling that Shouji’s parents are nowhere to be seen in his story beyond the simple mention of how they were different than him.

Now, I don’t want to suggest here that Shouji’s parents are completely irredeemable people.  While I would imagine that—at least initially—they shared their town’s bigotry, having a heteromorphic child themselves would have exponentially increased the hardship of their own lives.  In a town like that, I’m sure that many if not all of their neighbors must have come to regard them with suspicion of wrongdoing or transgression—recall the first page of the last chapter, where Shouji is accused of tricking the town in his having brought dirty blood to it.  Hie parents almost certainly lost friends and likely became ostracized themselves, and ostracization in a small Japanese town can be a horrifying thing to deal with.

And yet, even with all that being the case, they didn’t abandon Shouji or give him up; they didn’t commit family suicide with him.[19]  Assuming he wasn’t removed from their custody after the incident, they’re presumably paying his school and living costs;[20] likewise, unless he just ran away from home or is carrying out an incredibly elaborate deception about what school he’s attending, they almost had to support his desire to attend a hero school to begin with.  In his situation, parents who support his desire to be a Hero is a big fucking deal.  After all, between the winning and the saving, heroes will de facto be touching people all the time!  If Shouji’s parents still live in his hometown, how do you think those people will take it when someone first realizes the Shouji family sent their kegare-riddled monster off to be a Hero?

19: The history of honorable suicide in Japan casts a very long shadow, and when it’s combined with the meiwaku culture, you get an underreported epidemic of things like parents who can’t see their way out of a bad situation taking their lives and their children’s as well, so as not to leave messy loose ends that others will have to bear the burden of dealing with.

20: I won’t get into whether or not the U.A. students’ parents are paying for any given thing on the following list, but here are some potential costs to consider, assuming that Shouji, like Uraraka, was commuting from an apartment prior to the dorms being implemented: tuition, school uniforms, textbooks, school supplies, school meal plan, food not served at school (e.g. breakfast and dinner or meals when the school is on break), non-uniform attire, personal care and hygiene, housing and transportation costs, a measure of spending money for unanticipated expenses or culturally expected gift-giving, etc.

All that being said, it’s obviously not a glowingly loving relationship, either.  Think back to Shouji’s absolutely barren room in Chapter 99 and consider it in the context of the information we get in this chapter.  Is he really so ascetic by inclination, or is he just used to making do with as little as possible?  After all, it goes without saying that if him coming into contact with someone called for blood purification, anything he himself was in regular contact with was also to be considered incredibly impure.  That includes his clothes, personal belongings and living space; even setting aside his parents’ view on it, who in his hometown would even want to provide or sell things to the family that they think will go to the child with the dirty blood that’s defiling their land?

Shouji’s parents’ absence is also glaring in other ways.  For example:

They’re either not in the beating scene image above at all or they’re that central background couple hanging back and just watching; whichever is the case, what they’re assuredly not doing while their son is being beaten so badly he will still have glaringly visible scars years later is “trying to stop the violence or take the blows themselves.”    

Shouji says he has one single good memory about his body, but his parents are nowhere to be found in that memory.  Ergo, his parents have not given him a single moment of positivity about his heteromorphic form.    

Parents of U.A. students were evacuated to U.A.—not just the ones near it, but even ones like Uraraka’s parents, who live at least a two hour drive away, in a wholly different prefecture with a third prefecture in between them and U.A.  Every student we see in the departure scene in Chapter 342 is shown with their parents except Shouji.

To sum all that up, Shouji’s family situation is not maximally bad, but it’s certainly proximally bad.

O Next, we get Shouji alleging ignorance on the part of heteromorphs raised in cities, that there are still parts of the country in the modern day where stories like his happen.[21]  It’s a milder version of the same assertions made by #2 and the beaky heteromorph last chapter, in that Shouji doesn’t suggest heteromorphobia doesn’t exist at all in cities, simply that there are extremes of violence that can only be found in the country.  It still feels off, however, to suggest that absolutely no one else in Shouji’s class might ever have heard of this through any channel at all: being from similarly small towns, reading about an attack in the news, reading about factors that impact the public approval ratings for Heroes, going through a morbid phase in middle school and researching it, being talked to about it by their parents, etc.

21: The suggestion of the Viz translation of this suggests that city-raised heteromorphs do know this, but only because they’re read about it in textbooks.  My sister-in-law, who does professional translation, tells me this was a subtle mistranslation of the original text, however; the textbook framing is supposed to imply a remove of time, not merely of distance.

It’s not as unrealistic a story beat here as it would be in an American comic, as Japan does tend more towards using silence as a weapon against bigotry—children won’t learn what they aren’t taught, and similar reasoning.  Still, to portray the class as so unanimously ignorant reflects a deep incuriosity, be that in the kids themselves about the world around them or in their author about how the knowledge/perpetuation of discrimination spreads.

This is particularly the case when you consider the story’s handling of the Ordinary Woman—attacked in her own town because people were suspicious of a heteromorph out after dark, turned away from multiple shelters because of her heteromorph status.  It’s certainly true that things got worse for heteromorphs after the first war arc, but for discrimination in that specific form to emerge, there needed to be something for it to draw on.  The fear of villains and the association of villains with heteromorphs are the foundation for the upswelling in anti-heteromorph sentiments in cities.

O Mina’s reaction to all this is one of rather theatrical anger.  That is, no one around her takes her broad declarations—that the world would be better off without the people who hurt Shouji—as anything more serious than hyperbole.  This is, it would seem, the only sort of anger that’s acceptable to show in response to hearing a story like Shouji’s—empathy to the wronged, sure, but no real intent to confront the wrongdoers.

O Mineta stares into space for a second before emphatically apologizing for calling Shouji an octopus once—a call all the way back to his microaggression in Chapter 6!—and asserting that it wasn’t his intention to say Shouji was gross or anything.  Shouji responds gracefully, saying it’s “only natural” that his arms would make people think of octopus.

He doesn’t go on to say, “But that doesn’t mean people have to say it out loud,” but it’s possible that Mineta’s apology is meant to suggest that regardless.  At least, one certainly hopes this isn’t the author’s way of quietly absolving his more popular characters of all the times they’ve done the same thing!  It’s notable, however, that none of the other Class 1-A kids that have done this are in the scene.  Shouto and Bakugou, who have both used that kind of language in anger (and in the latter’s case, also just with no provocation whatsoever) are the missing elephants in the room, and even Sero, who was the actual person to call Shouji an octopus, is, in his absence, Sir Letting The Gag Character Handle This Apology So I A More Serious Character Don’t Have To.

O Shouji brings up the Heroes Who Look Like Villains rankings.  We know the Number 1 on that list is actually Endeavor, per a movie bonus booklet, but bringing it up in this context does implicitly confirm that said rankings have an unseemly slant towards heteromorphs, and what did Skeptic say about Villains and heteromorphs again…?

O Shouji says he wears the mask because he knows that if people see his scars, they’ll wonder about them, and fear he’s out for revenge.  He doesn’t want people to think that, so he covers them up.  He’s praised for this by Tokoyami, and the narrative pretty clearly also thinks it’s admirable and cool.  I have serious issues with this—chiefly that it’s prioritizing the oblivious comfort of the baseline citizens over the fellow feeling and affirmation of other persecuted heteromorphs—but I’m also curious to see if the mask will come back now that its meta-narrative purpose of hiding Shouji’s scars from the reader has been fulfilled.  I note, for example, that Shouji is not wearing the mask in the color spread for Chapter 394, and the color art does have some precedent for being an early predictor of stuff in the body of the manga.[22]

Incidentally, while I’m talking about Shouji’s mask, I do wonder how effective it would even be for him to cover his scars up?  I have my doubts for two reasons.  First and most obviously, heroes are such celebrities, all over the news all the time, such that if Shouji really does get as popular as he intends to, there will be people who want to know what he looks like.[23]

22: The big one is Aizawa’s eyepatch.  It showed up in two pieces of color art (the popularity poll results spread for Chapter 293 and the new art announcing the BNHA Drawing Smash Exhibition) before it was revealed in the manga.  Both pieces released within days of each other in early December, 2020, three months after Shigaraki raked his hand down Aizawa’s face during the war and almost two months before the latter showed up in bandages in the hospital, with another two months to go beyond that before the eyepatch itself made it to the manga in late March.  In a more stealth spoiler, the same popularity spread revealed Shigaraki’s blackened, burned face-hand two chapters prior to Spinner digging it out of Shigaraki’s pants.  The 394 spread is also my basis for asserting that Mina’s horns have gone back to normal after her attack against Gigantomachia, compared to Shouji lacking his mask and Koda having his new horn in the same spread.

23: Edgeshot’s character profile page notes that his fans are split into two factions: those who’re mad to see his real face and those who think the mask is what makes him cool.

O More importantly, though, heroes have to be licensed, and Hero Licenses are photo IDs.  Photo IDs don’t typically allow face coverage because not being able to provide a visual reference to what the bearer looks like defeats the whole purpose.  While we don’t know what full-fledged hero licenses look like to say if they’re taken in or out of costume, we do know the provisional licenses the students carry showed them in their school uniforms, despite the fact that they definitely had working costumes by then:

Pardon the sudden screenshot. The manga has this shot, too, but the anime fills in the details of the text a bit more.

It seems probable to me that the photo on a Hero License must show the bearer’s face, so that if they’re tooling around a crime scene and a cop who hasn’t seen them around before asks for their license, it can reliably be used as a form of identification.  (I wonder how Hagakure manages?)

Also, think back to the press conferences we’ve seen in the story, most recently the one post-war: at every one, the heroes are in serious, solemn black suits, not their costumes.  So at any press conferences Shouji ever has to speak at in the future, he’ll have to show his face there, as well.

O We see a direct flashback to Shouji saving a little girl from drowning in a choppy, swift-flowing river as he says in voiceover that he’d rather cling to the single good memory related to his body than dwell on the bad memories.  He very much uses his quirk to do it, with his right set of limbs used to hold onto the bank while his left ones reach out to the girl, extending out another few “nodes” of arm-length when he at first can’t keep hold of her fingers.  As they sit and catch their breath afterward, the girl clings to one of his tentacles and cries.  This is not quite what his entry in the Ultra Analysis databook was hinting at[24] when it said he wears the mask due to his scary face making a little girl cry; that’ll be next chapter.

24: My apologies for not bringing this up before; it’ll be covered on AO3.  The gist is as detailed above; the databook came out circa the Endeavor Agency arc, so this was a known factoid about Shouji by the time this chapter came out three years later.

O Wrapping up the flashback, we’re left with Koda’s memory of Shouji saying that he knows it’ll take longer than a generation to tear down a wall that’s stood for over a century, so, just as previous generations have done, he’ll keep paying it forward, being the coolest hero the world’s ever seen, “to give good memories to generations to come.”  Which sounds really nice when he says it that way, as opposed to the broader implication that people whose children have been or are in danger of being maimed by bigots should just keep their heads down and “keep paying it forward.”

The whole “be a cool hero and give good memories” bit is particularly egregious to my eye, for a few reasons.

How much good did cool heroes do for Takami Keigo when they were just on TV?  Which is where Shouji will be, because in order to be “the coolest hero the world’s ever seen,” he’s going to have to be at the top of the rankings, and being at the top of the rankings means prioritizing cities, which means all those heteromorphs out in rural areas are never going to see him in person.  And anyway, what’s stopping all those bigots from just changing the channel or going on a rant about Woke Mutie Agendas every time a heteromorphic hero crops up on TV?    

How much did the visibility of previous generations’ cool heroes do for Spinner?  Does Shouji think Spinner was super inspired and uplifted by seeing e.g. Gang Orca on TV using the emitter-like hypersonic waves his quirk gives him to beat up Villains, an undue percentage of whom are also heteromorphs?

It’s certainly nice that Shouji was inspired enough by heroes on TV to want to emulate them, but he is demonstrably not the norm when it comes to wildly disadvantaged and victimized heteromorphs.  Also, I have to wonder how much his admiration of TV heroes would have done him if he’d gotten to the girl just a little later—say, in time to get her out of the river, but too late to be able to save her life without knowing CPR.  As bad as it was for him when he saved a little girl but had to touch her to do it, can you imagine how much worse it would have been if he’d touched her and then failed to save her, being found or having to walk back into town with her body?

I realize that's incredibly dark, but it's the kind of question that presents itself when the story is so insistent on Shouji's exemplary behavior being the model for heteromorphs to follow in their own lives.

   

O Exiting the flashback, when Shouji calls out to the heteromorphs, we finally get a straight-out look at how disastrous this conclusion is going to be in the way he shouts that no, the people who hurt them weren’t justified, but that there has to be a better way, that they should think about how to use their rage—but offers exactly zero suggestions himself for what that better way might be, or what they should be using their rage to do instead.[25]

25: I have seen the argument put forth that Shouji is one (1) teenager, and one (1) teenager cannot fairly be asked to Solve Bigotry.  To this, I would counter that if Shouji doesn’t have even one (1) single idea to offer, why is the camera lens holding him up as the hero who quelled a fifteen-thousand-strong mob with only words?  He doesn’t have to Solve Bigotry, but if he’s going to be used as a counter for other peoples’ misguided but at least active attempts to address the problem, he needed to be better than a mere white knight for the status quo.

Spinner’s #2 calls Shouji out on this directly, saying that if the situation were that easy to resolve, it wouldn’t have come down to this, and accusing Shouji of having no feasible solution to offer, just childish and naïve egotism.  And call me a hopeless MLA Stan and you’d be right, but truly, where’s the lie?

His efforts in this regard, however, wind up pushing Koda to what certainly has all the markings of a quirk awakening because it upsets Koda to see Shouji being “mocked.”  Man, sure is a good thing quirk awakenings are just a dime a dozen and definitely don’t require life-threatening injuries and/or incredibly severe emotional distress over someone who means more to you than your own life, right?

O In a last little stroke of ugliness for the chapter, Spinner calls Shouji gross.  Just to, you know, make it really obvious that the villains are all totally bad faith representation for this cause and thus can be safely dismissed.  (Christ, I hate these chapters.)

   

Chapter 372: 

O We get the flashback of Shouji and Koda asking All Might to assign them to the hospital defense group.  Points of note:

Neither Shouji nor All Might can be bothered to use the Ordinary Woman’s real name, instead just referring to her by her size.  Seriously, I get the intent behind insisting that she’s just an ordinary woman, that there’s nothing in particular stand-out about her in the current age; it’s pretty much the same deal as Shinomori saying that OFA can no longer be wielded by an “ordinary” person, with that phrasing being used to ironically emphasize that quirks are now seen as ordinary, while those without quirks are the unusual ones.  However, it obviously wouldn’t work in-universe for characters trying to specify who they’re talking about to say, “That ordinary woman,” with the end result being that they have to grab for what stands out about her if they want to be understood—in this case, her obviously unusual height.  In trying to emphasize that she’s normal, Horikoshi forces his characters to define her by what makes her stand out.    

Koda says that if Shouji’s going, he is too, a moment that would really land much better if they’d had literally any interactions of note at literally any point prior to this exact moment.  Frankly, even last chapter’s flashback is pretty thin on that front, since Koda is not one of the students who gets speaking lines when cuddling up to Shouji to comfort him.  (I’m not even convinced it’s very in character for Koda to be one of the kids diving in for cuddles—he’s usually pretty shy!)    

Shouji says that he could never call himself a hero if he were to stand back while the hospital attack plays out, implicitly emphasizing the role his reaction to his own oppression plays in his heroic motivation.

O Another flashback[26] gives us Koda’s mother discussing the possibility that he might get horns like hers someday, and what those horns can do, as well as mentioning that she used to have to put up with considerable mistreatment herself, and, lastly, telling her son to grow up into a man who gets angry when people mock those dear to him.

26: The sheer number of them crammed into this mini-arc really says a lot for how rushed it is, but complaining about the structural problems of the last few arcs would be a different essay.

Breaking those down, we’ve got:

The fact that Koda’s mom says he might grow in horns like hers suggests to me pretty strongly that her own horns are a quirk evolution she just doesn’t have the language to name as such.  If it were just a matter of maturation, something that came in with puberty, there’d be no “maybe” about it.  Given what we know about the context of quirk evolutions elsewhere, this in turn suggests that she did not exactly get her horns under peaceful, wholesome, uplifting circumstances!    

This is backed up by her mention of the “real cruelty” she faced.  Interestingly, this kind of raises some questions in relation to Shouji’s assertion last chapter that people like Koda who grew up in cities lack an understanding of the extremes of heteromorphobic violence that endure elsewhere.  Did Koda’s parents move to the city from the country at some point when Koda was young/before he was born, and the “real cruelty” was out in the country?  That might track with the overalls she was wearing.  And of course, Koda’s mother was a younger woman then, so maybe it’s just the fact that heteromorphic discrimination was worse at the time.  Either way, Koda’s mother is clearly open with him about the fact that she was mistreated because of her appearance, though she may have downplayed the severity of it.    

The idea of Shouji being “dear to Koda” is immensely frustrating for how utterly groundless it is, based on absolutely no prior grounding within the story other than the general bond among the 1-A students.  That’s just me complaining, though—more pertinent for this essay is the problem with how this moment frames anger.  Like, the whole mini-arc has the same problem, but this chapter is particularly rotten with it.  To preview: Koda’s anger is portrayed as righteous, as was his father’s, because their anger is about protection, about defensive reaction, about intervening with harm currently in progress—basically all the stuff Heroes are supposed to do.  It is notably not about action based on past harm or proactive attempts to prevent future harm.

O Koda’s bird attack knocks Spinner’s #2 off the roof in one of the most egregious examples of, “I can’t come up with an actual counterpoint for his arguments, so I’ll just shut him up through force,” I’ve ever seen.  Sure, there’s something to be said for not engaging bad faith parties in good faith arguments, but like…  That guy already had a platform of his arguments—he was standing on the roof of a tall building!  The author gave him several pages to make his pitch; the argument’s already out there in the readers’ minds!  The only thing getting rid of him does is guarantee that the person the taciturn Shouji actually has to argue with is…Spinner.  Who is not exactly a born orator at the best of times, and he’s very far from even that level here.

Now, #2 will get a few more lines next chapter, but they’re against one of the people on his own side.  No heroic character has to argue #2 down; instead, they get to match wits with the literally drooling Spin-zilla.  Which is a bit like stepping into the wrestling ring with someone who’s had a bag thrown over his head and his hands zip-tied behind his back.

This confrontation is, woefully, not the only place in the endgame where a heroic character gets all the time and freedom in the world to make their big pronunciations while their opponent gets shut down by some outside factor—interference from other villains, psychological decay, literal possession—but it’s in particularly stark relief here.

O Shouji contends that the crowd is letting their pain be exploited, which is a fair cop, but will become difficult to square with his praise of them next chapter.

O He says that these peoples’ children might be the next targets, presumably because of their actions here today.  This is particularly maddening because it’s coming from someone who was, himself, already targeted as a child!  Not because of anything his parents did, and certainly not because of anything bad he did, but simply because of the bigoted, backwards views of his town.  Children already and still are being targeted!  Shouji’s backstory is all wrong for this stand, and there’ll be another angle on that next chapter as well.

O Here we finally fulfill the promise of Shouji’s databook entry and see the Little Girl Crying Because His Face Was Scary.  She wasn’t crying because she was just scared of his face in isolation, but rather because she sees his face being scary as her fault, directly correlating his wounds to her rescue.[27] Those wounds stand in marked contrast to what happens when other people save small helpless children from danger, and underlines the biggest problem with this whole resolution: the idea that simply Being An Hero will create change.

27: My big question is, “Given that him being in contact with her was so bad it got him scarred for life, how did she even sneak out to see him again to give him this tearful apology?  Did young Shouji even want this apology, or would he have preferred she not risk the two of them being seen together again for both their sakes?

Now, it’s certainly likely in Horikoshi’s world that this little girl will, herself, grow up to be different from the people around her, that she won’t think heteromorphs are tainted.  And like, that’s at least one less person being awful, right?  And doesn’t every one count?

Sure, of course—but what happens when she runs up against that prejudice herself?  Will she try to intervene the next time she sees a blood cleansing?  Will she simply abstain from such action and teach equality in her own household without trying to change the village around her?  Will she simply move away and leave her hometown worse for her absence?  If she does stay in that town, will she herself become an outcast for her views—a form of silent, passive harassment that can be absolutely life-wrecking in those small Japanese villages?  If she gets married and has children, will her husband have her back in trying to raise those kids free of hatred?

For that matter, isn’t there a chance that, being surrounded in people who think heteromorphs are tainted, that she’ll just internalize something like, “It was my carelessness that got that poor heteromorph boy beaten so badly.  He was trying to help, and it only got us both hurt—him for the beatings, me for being in contact with his filth.”  Like, she’s so young in that scene; she’s got a whole lotta years of having the anti-heteromorph narrative reaffirmed at her before she’s old enough to do anything different herself.  It feels to me like the kind of thing that she could easily fall back into as she grows up, only to have a huge spiritual crisis about it once she hits her late teens to early twenties.

In any case, it's just a lot to put on a single child—on her and Shouji both!

O Spinner rallies enough to yell out a message of his own, but it’s just a quote of what he told his followers when he first sent out the call, not anything new to rally them, nor tailored to respond to what Shouji’s saying.  This has been the danger of the plotline all along, and here it comes to fruition: in putting bad faith villains with ulterior motives[28] up against an underdeveloped character who’s hidden the evidence of his mistreatment from Day 1, someone with no apparent intention to ever speak up for others like himself, no one comes out looking good.  Truly, heteromorphs deserve better rep.

28: #2 is the obvious one, but Spinner’s here in bad faith, too.  While I’m sure he’s not totally indifferent to the matter of heteromorph rights, it’s self-admittedly not his current priority.

O That said, if what Spinner says is old hat to the crowd, it is new to the audience, and it serves to sharply up the ante on from what we knew previously about the persecution he faced in his hometown!

But it would have gotten better if he’d just put on a mask and dealt with it, amirite?

Recall that Spinner has previously only said that people in his town called him names—this is self-evidently many steps worse.  Note, though, that it’s another example of the violence heteromorphs face not involving anyone using quirks—that is to say, nothing that’s a hero’s jurisdiction to deal with.  That being the case, how much could Spinner get away with fighting back or running before the “it’s okay to use quirks in self-defense” stops holding?  After all, is it still self-defense if biased cops[29] can accuse him of “escalating” the conflict?  How far away can he get by climbing on walls before it becomes, to some small-town local Hero, unlicensed public quirk use?

29: If policing in HeroAca Japan still works basically the same as it does in IRL Japan, then in truly backwater areas, ones too small to afford the upkeep of a police department, an officer would be sent in from another area to live in a home attached to the police box.  That being the case, it’s not a given that the officer would share the locals’ bigotry.  That’s where we come back to the whole “what percentage of Villain-designated criminals are heteromorphs” statement and what it implies about bias in the law enforcement system.  Also too, building a strong relationship with the community is absolutely essential to rural policing, and there are, oh, so many stories about what happens when someone new in a small Japanese town gets between the inhabitants and their “traditional spiritual practices.”

O Pig Nose Guy starts making an impression by noticing the doctors—most prominently Dr. Yoshi, standing shoulder-to-shoulder with a baseline nurse—forming a human chain in front of the hallway leading to the Inpatient Ward.  This drama is undercut on both fronts by the fact that Spinner is not looking for the Inpatient Ward, and in fact barrels right on past that hallway without even glancing in its direction.  So, the mob stops because they’re struck to hesitation by a group of people protecting a part of the hospital that the mob was not even intending to assault in the first place.

O As part of stopping, Pig Nose Guy seems to have some sort of flashback to a time he saw Dr. Toad caring for an elderly baseline man.  This raises a lot of questions to my by-this-time hyper-critical eyes.

What past circumstance brought Pig Nose Guy—presumably fairly rural, as most of this crowd is implied to be—to Central Hospital, the most technologically advanced hospital in the entire country?    •  If Pig Nose Guy is not rural, but was still so fired up about heteromorphobia that he joined a terrorist-led mob to attack a hospital, wouldn’t that suggest that a lot of people in the story have been misleading us about the extent of anti-heteromorph sentiment in cities?    

If the person in the bed is someone related to Pig Nose Guy—perhaps someone with a rare illness that requires specialized treatment?—why is the guy entirely baseline?  If it’s just a friend, then they must be very close, given that PNG was willing to take a trip to the Tokyo metropolitan area to visit him.  But if PNG is that close to a baseline guy, why did he ever believe that baseline folks are such a lost cause that he, again, joined a terrorist-led mob to attack a hospital?    

Why is this important, impactful memory one of a heteromorph in a caretaker role instead of being taken care of?  To elaborate on why that question matters, a common issue you’ll see minority groups raise when talking about representation in media is the role any given minority character performs in their narrative—the gay best friend there to give the straight female lead advice, the Black person there to help a white person self-actualize, that sort of thing.  This is not so much a critique of any given, specific character as it is criticizing the restrictions on of what demographics are allowed to be portrayed as full, rounded individuals in popular media versus which are relegated to stock stereotypes or supporting cast.     This isn’t something BNHA addresses explicitly, but I do think we have some precedent for suspecting heteromorphs in this world have similar problems—think of the image for Class B’s play in Chapter 173, Gang Orca playing the Villain at the license exam, and, most egregiously, the Hug Me Corporation and its all-baseline-all-the-time image of bystanders and victims.  That being the case, it really gets to me that Pig Nose Guy’s memory here has the man in the hospital bed being baseline while it’s the doctor who’s the heteromorph.     Like, what does that communicate about his mindset, exactly?  “Oh, I remember this time I saw a heteromorph who’d managed to actually kind of Make It in society and he was nice to the baseline guy in his care.  But the spider guy leading us, he didn’t sound like he wanted us to be very nice at all.  Is that what I am?  Not nice?”  On the other hand, if the whole point of this memory is to remind PNG that there can be peace and support between heteromorphs and “people with human faces,” why in heaven’s name isn’t this a memory of a heteromorph being cared for and supported by a baseline person?  Why does the person doing the labor in this picture have to be of the oppressed class?

I hate this panel so much.

   

Chapter 373: 

O The last conversation plays out between Pig Nose Guy, #2, and Shouji, revealing #2 to be a bad faith idealogue who thinks of Shouji with microaggressions and his followers as meatshield patsies.  It’s real bad.

O Shouji says that the feelings that led the mob to come today are neither useless nor wrong, and that their willingness to keep thinking about everything makes them look like a bright and shining light to his eyes.  However, he carefully does not engage with the fact that those feelings, which were previously aimless and directionless, were only stirred up and stoked to the point of “coming today” by the villains.  It’s the same sort of thing the villains always get told, really—you may have a point, you have suffered, but when you act on that point, that suffering, then you’ve gone too far.  All you’re really supposed to do with that pain is—what, exactly?  Thinka bout it and choose to Nobly Endure?

O The last little bit of insult to this chapter, to my eye, is #2 getting an apology from some anonymous hero we’ve never seen in our lives, who says, “We’ve heard your voices loud and clear today.  Sorry for not realizing sooner.”

Remember the bit where the person who apologizes to Shouji for the octopus comment is Mineta, the gag character, instead of Sero, the serious character who brought it up in the first place?  Remember the conspicuous absence of Bakugou and Todoroki, who have actually used that language with conscious demeaning intent?  This apology is the systemic version of that absolute unwillingness on Horikoshi’s part to let his sympathetic/popular/important characters look bad.  It’s the same thing that led to none of the heroes who retired after the war being heroes the readers know and care about, the same thing behind the total collapse of the series’ critique of All Might.  Heroes are allowed to be ignorant, but they are not allowed to be complicit.

Notice, too, what this random hero does not say, what Shouji does not offer, the absence that damns this resolution: any promises of concrete change.  We’ve finally gotten to the crux of Horikoshi’s point, as delivered by Shouji, and it really does all boil down to this:

And I can’t overstate enough what a terrible resolution this is, especially given how Shouji’s own experience puts the lie to it.  Remember, Shouji saved a child from drowning, one of the absolute most prototypical actions someone can do and get called a Hero by the bystanders/victims/evening news.  The only thing he could have done that would have been more stereotyped would have been saving her from a burning building!  He saved that little girl from drowning and the townsfolk attacked him with farming tools for it.

How much more heroic would he have needed to be?  How much more of a shining light could he possibly have been?  In what universe could someone with that backstory possibly think that the answer to systemic bigotry—violence that goes wholly accepted by the community and wholly unpunished by the broader society—could be this Model Minority bullshit?

Ultimately, for Shouji’s backstory to realistically have given him the motivation he professes, his actions needed to have changed the people in his village for the better.  If the reader is meant to believe that Shouji’s “answer”—the premise that selfless heroism can change the hearts of bigots—then we have to see it.  And, you know, even if that had been what we got, there would still be grounds to criticize it!  It would still be a perhaps-too-idealistic depiction of fighting oppression; it would still put too much responsibility on the victims!  But at least it would justify Shouji’s own stance.

As it is, we have Shouji choosing to believe in the changeability of people who specifically shouted while throwing rocks at him that, no matter how much the times advanced, they would never accept him.  His answer does not entail a single non-heteromorph working to bring heteromorphs living in the darkness a light; it entails them kindling their own.  As with Pig Nose Guy shutting down in the face of a memory of a heteromorph doctor, this resolution asserts the life-changing power of…being told that heteromorphs have to do all the work to make baseline people feel better.

   

Conclusion

Do I think that this terrible resolution means heteromorphobia was poorly set up or retconned?  No, I don’t.  I just think it means that Horikoshi is a Japanese man writing a Japanese story from a position of demographic privilege in Japanese society.  I think he’s fully capable of setting up a detailed, intelligent, thoughtful discrimination allegory, a logical, internally consistent extension of the discrimination in the world around him to the alternate future he’s created—and then coming to a completely different resolution than I would because his context led him to different answers than I wanted or found acceptable.  Compared to the U.S., Japan as a culture is more communal, more collectivist; they have less history with successful protest movements, more history with protest movements turning violently extremist or just being ignored by those in power.  The idea of “not making trouble for others” is an incredibly deeply engrained value.

I have a decent idea why this resolution is what it is.  I can try to make myself view it through the more generous, forgiving lens of Cultural Differences; I can fail to do so and instead conclude that this is portrayal is much less about Cultural Differences than it is yet another in a long chain of Well-Meaning Majority-Culture Author Writes Discrimination Allegory, Fucks It All Up Because of His Well-Meaning Majority-Culture Centrism.  That doesn’t mean I believe heteromorphobia came out of nowhere, and I hope this essay has at least demonstrated that much, whatever you might think of its resolution.

——————————

Thank you so much for taking this journey with me, all! At 42,000 words and 93 pages in Word, there's definitely more I'd like to do with this, chiefly taking a spin through the Vigilantes spinoff, which I've always found to be very good at grappling with practical questions and concerns BNHA Core largely ignores. The character of Kamayan is particularly relevant to this topic.

However, for now, I'm going to take a break on this subject and turn my attention to something else. I'm not sure what it'll be quite yet, but meta projects that have moved towards the top of my list concern the ridiculous series of nerfs Toga has been subjected to in this endgame, arc thoughts on everything I hate about the stupid, stupid All Mech fight, and an organized argument for the endgame being chock-full of retcons that are obvious if you look at them for more than the five minutes it takes to read a chapter each week.

You may notice that all of those are pretty negative-sounding, and you would be right. Given that the whole reason I stopped doing my chapter posts is that I was weary of the constant negativity, the actual next thing I do will probably be to get back to one of my neglected MLA fanfic projects.

'Til next time, all!

#bnha #bnha meta #bnha worldbuilding #heteromorph discrimination plot #octolad #plf advisors #my writing #preview for Vigilantes: #Kamayan is a crank and that distracts everyone #from realizing that Kamayan is also right

[pix3lplays]

Ok so have you seen the meme of a father with an arrow in his shoulder looking to a nurse/doctor and his kid is next to him holding a bow? I had an idea for something similar, or at least it’s the inspiration behind it :3c

Do you have any headcanons where you find out your lovely boyfriend/husband winded up in the hospital for amusing/hilarious/embarrassing reasons? (Like they’re ok but it’s something to laugh about later) Whats the reason/story for them winding up there and how do you react?

This prompt is for Gepard, Dan Heng, Blade, Jing Yuan, Welt, and Luocha :3c I hope you enjoy!

Oh my gosh?? I’m not the cleverest but I’ll try!

cw! Graphic depictions of injury! They’re fine but they get hurt

I’m feeling a bit sorry for them now that I’m writing these out, poor guys

-Honkai Star Rail men getting embarrassing injuries-

Gepard Landau: He dropped his guitar case on his foot so hard he managed to break his foot. Even with his boots on?? How do you manage to do that?? Safe to say he was super embarrassed about it, but c’mon…that’s kinda funny. For a trained soldier especially…he could be so clumsy!

Dan Heng: You know how March 7th does that thing where she tries to stand as the Astral Express takes off? Well. She had somehow managed Dan Heng to try it, just once…and he flew backwards and hit his head hard on a table, thoroughly concussed. He was fine but he still had to see a doctor, just to be sure. Ugh, Dan Heng what were you thinking?

Blade: Blade got overconfident…he was fighting some enemies when he got a text from you, and he decided to CHECK HIS PHONE while fighting, resulting in a pretty little axe to his back. You visited him while he was recovering of course, and he would never tell you the true story, but Kafka was there, she saw the whole thing and she uses it as sweet, sweet blackmail content. Blade can’t have you thinking he’s a fool now can he? He’s at Kafka’s beck and call for, like, a month once he’s finally released from the hospital.

Jing Yuan: you know how Yanqing can fly around on those swords of his? Well. He somehow managed to convince the General to try it and-ouch. Just ouch. He fell off the sword, and hit the ground Hard. Poor Jing Yuan…he was okay of course but so, So embarrassed and so, So mad at Yanqing. The young boy got a real proper scolding once the General was dismissed from the hospital. You feel a bit sorry for the kid.

Welt Yang: you would never have expected it from cautious Welt Yang, but he wasn’t paying attention to where he was walking, and ended up falling down a flight of stairs. Oh dear, Mr. Yang…please be more careful in the future. He was alright, just a little dazed, and mostly embarrassed by the fact, but he’ll be okay. You took him to the doctor just to be safe.

Luocha: (based on the Echoes of the coffin light cone) you TOLD him multiple times that surely those thorns that came from the coffin were dangerous, and he should stop messing around with them. But noooo, he’s so Dramatic he just has to mess around with them. And sure enough, he gets a nasty wound through his hand because he couldn’t help himself. You don’t feel sorry for him. He was basically asking for it. You definitely hit him with the ‘I Told you so’ and you wonder if he’ll actually learn from this experience.

Bonus!Sampo Koski: because of course Sampo gets hurt a lot, but your personal favorite embarrassing way is when he accidentally set off one of his own bombs right in his face, and you had to take him to Natasha’s to make sure he’d eventually see and hear again. He was fine, he’s made of sterner stuff, but still?? How reckless do you have to be to set off a bomb in your own face??

#honkai star rail #honkai star rail x reader #my writing #Gepard Landau #Gepard Landau x reader #Hsr Gepard x reader #honkai star rail Gepard x reader #Dan Heng #Dan Heng x reader #Hsr Dan Heng x reader #honkai star rail Dan Heng x reader #Blade #Blade x reader #Hsr Blade x reader #honkai Star rail Blade x reader #Jing Yuan #Jing Yuan x reader #Hsr Jing Yuan x reader #honkai star rail Jing Yuan x reader #Welt Yang #Welt Yang x reader #Hsr Welt Yang x reader #honkai star rail Welt Yang x reader #Luocha #Luocha x reader #Hsr Luocha x reader #honkai star rail Luocha x reader #Sampo Koski #Sampo Koski x reader #Hsr Sampo x reader

[pupyuj]

some isa thoughts?

my baby finally!!!!! isa is so precious to meeee ya'll dont even KNOW 🥺🥺

hmmmm yk so far a lot of things i've seen that are written about isa (and what i mean by "a lot of things" is like.. two bcs nobody writes abt the stayc girls dkhdfkks </3) depicts her as like a hard dom but me personally im a sub-leaning switch isa enthusiast 🤭🤭 and im talking like 90% sub and 10% dom, girlie is not rlly into that dom/top lifestyle 😭 she likes sitting and looking pretty for you that's all!!!!

as for the things she likes, she's pretty vanilla?? isa's a love maker for sureee :(( she just wants to hold you close while she's taking everything you're giving her :( and she loveslovesloves hearing you say "i love you" while doing it, or just praises n cute nicknames in general 🥺🥺 i think calling her a "bitch" or a "slut" would turn her off or upset her sjdhfjdkf cuz sex is such an intimate act for her, isa doesn't like hearing all those bad things from her angel girlfriend's mouth !!

but she's not at all 'boring' i promise!! isa definitely leans more toward the soft kinks side 👀👀

she definitely likes throatfucking or maybe i'm projecting :(( like kneeling down in front of you while you're gagging her with your fingers :(( her getting wet at the way you held her jaw open with ur one hand while the other is shoved down her throat,,, AND WHEN I SAY SHE LIKES SEEING YOU FUCK YOURSELF WITH YOUR FINGERS THAT ARE COVERED WITH HER SPIT... but maybe you're punishing her (for no reason other than bcs you find it fun ofc, isa could never do anything wrong!!) and you're telling her that she can't touch you until she figures out what she did wrong and say sorry :(( but poor baby has no fucking clue you're joking so she's crying, pouting and begging for you to fuck her instead of yourself, bcs she knows it's instant forgiveness the moment your fingers are knuckle deep inside her </3

i also feel like she really is just very traditional? like no toys whatsoever, just your fingers and your mouth is enough <33

she a cat fr tho cuz why is she always on ur lap??! there could be more than enough space on the couch but nope, isa truly believes that her only seat is ur lap <33 and ofc that leads to you opening up her legs and fucking her while you're watching a movie and she's whimpering and shaking trying to hold back her moans bcs you wanna know what's going on in the film </3

ngl i kinda ran out ideas halfway through so this is a bit bland compared to my other stuff 😣 im sorry isa my baby i'll do better next time 👀

#stayc x reader #stayc smut #stayc imagines #girl group smut #girl group x reader #girl group imagines #lee chaeyoung x reader #lee chaeyoung imagines #lee chaeyoung smut #isa x reader #isa smut #isa imagines

[zmediaoutlet]

☁️ and 🎨 :)

:) & <3, both

☁️ ⇢ what made you choose your username?

two options here:

literally, I am z and this is my media outlet. Originally that was on twitter but now it's here. It isn't a lot more complicated than that, lol.

deadlybride: trying to make a hotmail account in like... 2001? 2002? and trying anything to get something that didn't have a number, and tried this one as half a joke bc surely someone would have that emo shit on lock but then they DIDN'T, WHAT? And it just kinda stuck. I really don't like it, haha, but I don't believe in changing usernames bc then links break and stuff's harder to find. Here I am, a deadly-ass bride, for my ~7th grade sins.

🎨 ⇢ link your favourite piece of fanart and explain why you like it

okay mr ask meme list, choosing a favorite of anything is Too Hard and also leaves out way too many absolute delights, so hdu first of all. but I think for right now I will choose:

zmediaoutlet.tumblr.com/post/86330329039

Ruby, by @armellin. (I would actually post the pic but I think that's considered gauche; pleeeeeeease click and go and look at it.) The attitude is just right. First of all it's a fantastic depiction of Genevieve's face, but what makes it special is how she's got that knowing edge of a smirk -- she's playing us, but she's looking pensively away as though she can hide it. The crown is just the cherry on top. Love that shit. (Sasha, if you ever wanted to do spn art again we'd all be so grateful!)

#ask meme #answers