i've never really put much thought into actual dragon dragon-king bakugou, but — what if —
you meet him for the first time in king todoroki's arena — on what you assume to be the last day of your life. over something menial like stealing a porkbun or something, and now his grace has decided that a trial-by-combat is a fitting punishment for you crimes.
only your opponent is a massive, hulking, fire-red dragon.
and you're not the only one thrown in there; a few other vagrants and miscreants, too, and they — stupidly — rush off to meet their own deaths as they try to strike him down with the blunt swords and dented shields you'd been thrown by the guards before they sealed you to your fate.
the dragon is chained up, of course, like a prized possession for the king. a large collar with inward curving spikes around his neck, which have worn scars into his scales, as well as some metal contraption around his maw to keep it shut. it doesn't hinder him useless, though, and when he tries to fly up and away from the amphitheater, the force of his wings sends you all rolling backward.
despite the fact that he's maiming people with the spines on his tail and bashing them into mush with the weight of his head — you can't help but to feel bad for him, trapped in an arena, put on display for people to taunt and laugh at. the chains look heavy, the muzzle tight; you wonder if his wings could even carry him anymore.
so you decide that the only way for you to live through this, if at all, is if you can manage to get this big boy off the ground.
while the other competitors fight the dragon for their lives, you instead rush for the chains that are nailed into the walls of the arena and smash at them with the rounded end of a shield. every time he jerks his head this way and that, or rears back on his legs, wings flapping wildly, the wall he's nailed to becomes looser and looser, starts to crumble and fall away.
and just as he turns to you — his last foe — it breaks free, and you swear, you swear, those big, red eyes of his narrow, brow furrowing, before he's jerking the chain twice. tugging it noisly, almost to get your attention.
you grab onto it just before he takes to the sky.
the rush of air is so cold and stinging that your eyes water, and you hold onto the lifeline as you're carried up and away from the kingdom, over the entirety of it, far enough that he can land safely without getting charged by the guards.
when you both hit ground, you think you're going to puke, especially as he stands tall and stretches his wings like he hasn't been able to for years — but instead of smashing you, too, to a clump in the grass, he only leans his head down to you, nudges you hard enough that you topple over.
you're still clinging to the shield and you use the edge on the nails of his muzzle, too, twisting them loose so that the iron falls away and he can stretch his jaw. show off his long, very sharp teeth that could easily tear you to bits.
and yet he doesn't. doesn't even try.
it'll be harder to get the collar off his neck, but he watches you with his slit eyes, brow arched menacingly, and nudges you to the long length of his neck. huffs until you're grabbing the spines and hauling yourself up onto him, like some kind of impossibly large horse.
and you continue on like that, for a bit; he finds a field of wild bulls and eats nearly all of them, maiming one for you before setting it aflame; you try to gather little shiny things for him, because you've heard dragons like treasure and you want to keep him, but he doesn't seem too interested; you have no family to return to, having grown up alone on the king's streets, and he becomes all you have.
you begin to feel like some chosen one from the fairytales you've heard spoken by firelight. the dragon bakugou stays with you, and the only reason you can fathom is that, maybe, he feels indebted to you — but you've saved one another, and that's what matters.
the night everything changes is when you're deep in the forest, camped up near the edge of a clear-water spring. the dragon bakugou grows lazy, curled around the perimeter of the water with his long neck and — he's a male dragon, you know, but you've got to wash yourself eventually.
you do feel a bit odd, undressing yourself as he watches, but you assume it's only out of plain and simple curiosity that he does; you assume that's why he does anything, for you, like allowing you to lay near his head when you sleep or huffing in your face until you laugh when you try to wrap your arms around his nose.
you try to pay him — an animal, a creature of fantasy — no mind as you dive below the surface, enjoying the refreshing rush of water over your skin. when you reach the bottom, tangle your hands in the gentle weeds, you feel a pang of sadness, that he might never experience such a feeling.
but when you return to the surface — he's gone.
in place at the water's edge is the collar you've never been able to loosen. rusted and creaking, looking much larger off his neck and alone in the grass, and your stomach lurches with a thousand horrible possibilities of what could have happened until —
"oi."
until you turn around and there is a massive, hulking man, naked as the day he came, with eyes the color of the scales that are dotted along his skin in stray patches. crowned in a mess of ashen hair, scars along his neck and face and arms—one of which is inked in some symbol you may have seen once. on those travellers, from the southern clans.
he, the man bakugou, you realize, has no concept of personal space — or the fact that he's totally naked and so are you — and he wastes no time in crowding into you. even rushing, a little, when you squeal and try to clamber back up the bank for your clothes.
like a stubborn boy, he pushes you into the dirt and even grins, evil and mischievous, with human teeth. you have no idea what to expect of him; men have never been too kind to you, afterall, someone without a home or family and easy to be rid of.
but he, the man bakugou, only nudges his face into yours, huffs against your cheek when you squirm, and you think, you think, you can hear some kind of quiet rumbling purr coming from the deep center of his chest.
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(concept art of young taigen - source ; art credit: @abigaillarson)
i cannot get over this concept art of young taigen. god.
just look at this angry bratty boy, too many feelings that he doesnt know what to do with! an abused 9 year old kid in poverty always playing with sticks in the dirt, obsessed with greatness and dreaming to escape his decrepit village—and he does!
he does escape. he runs away. this angry little boy, all claws and teeth and biting words uttered with a lisp, going on the run into a world he's never seen before until he makes his way to kyoto. and knowing him he probably forced his way in to be accepted by the dojo, growling and kicking even as he's thrown out, back into the streets, too stubborn to take no for an answer and never knowing when to give up.
taigen calls mizu a dog, weak, an orphan, a scrawny street urchin. but i can't help but think that he feels so bold to use those words because he had them spat at him too.
because taigen had the idea of "this is how the world is" beat into him from birth. he learned quickly that if you couldn't beat the world you could join it. but that meant losing your way, your values, your principles. and isn't that what true honour is? not just titles and status and glory?
we don't get to see what taigen, as a child surrounded by peers encouraging and goading him on, would've actually done if that meteor hadn't fallen right in front of them at that very moment. would he have really tried to throw that stone on mizu, killing her? we don't know.
but we do see what taigen (his true self, with no one around) does, when presented with the same opportunity. when mizu passes out in front of him, unconscious and near death, vulnerable, the path to restoring his honour lays itself out for him on a silver platter. and he wants to take it, wants to kill mizu, to claim what is his and return to kyoto and get back everything he'd worked tooth and nail for. he feels like it's what he should do. but he doesn't.
and later, again he is presented with the chance to betray mizu, likely offered by heiji shindo to get his rank reinstated within the shindo dojo. and again, taigen doesn't take it. he refuses. "stupidly loyal," fowler calls him later. loyal, like a dog.
because now, pulled away from the sneering looks and jeering words of people around him, telling him that this is what the world is, taigen had met ringo and mizu, two outcasts who refuse to follow a predetermined path to greatness. and so inside something blooms in him. something like hope. a chance to live in a world that doesn't kick you down every chance it gets, to live in a world where genuine kindness and and love and friendship and even weakness is possible, allowed to simply exist without fear.
because he'd been running away from the very idea of it the whole time. when he ran from kohama, he never looked back, never wanted to remember what it was like to be a child, afraid and hungry and angry and hurting, without the words to make sense of it, desperately wishing for something. something more. he doesn't know what. but he hears stories of great swordsmen and decides, yes, this must be it. this is what i want: glory, greatness. the twisted seed gets planted and thrives in this barren land.
and when he returns to kohama with mizu and ringo, he at last is forced to stop running. he must face the child within him again, and he tells that child to put down the stones in his hand, tells him to stop barking at anything that moves or looks at him wrong.
the child drops the stone, and taigen buys dumplings instead, gives them to mizu. the child within him, wide-eyed at the prospect of friendship, moves him to pick up a hammer and toss it to mizu. he's smiling inside even as he does it; giggling like a kid hiding a silly prank. as soon as mizu drops the hammer after him, he leaps at her, tackling her to the ground and they wrestle and laugh unbridled like two children playing while the adults aren't around to barge in and yell at them.
and then his gaze catches on mizu's lips, he stares into mizu's eyes, a sparkling blue, inviting like the open sea in good weather.
it's a man's desire that takes hold then, the child in him sinking away again, and he curses himself for it, because it ruins the moment.
everything goes to shit from there, and then it's back to being a man, back to putting on his grown-up's armour to play hero.
it fails. the shogun dies. fowler's beatings reopen all the wounds left by heiji shindo's torture. "honour is meaningless," mizu tells him. "nothing comes from being a samurai but death."
the words follow him, and he follows the words.
as everything burns down, he runs, leaving the fire behind him, and sees akemi, as well as the verdure of spring behind her, calling him. he does not hesitate then to hold his hand out to her, inviting her to come with him. "i don't want to be great," he says. "i just want to be happy."
what is happiness to him? perhaps he doesn't know it yet, or perhaps he does. but really, i believe happiness is what the child in him always wanted but never received. happiness is a home.
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UNTITLED EVIL LUIGI AU COMIC THING | Page 2 & 3 of (???)
Eggman Bowser’s come to make an announcement. Particularly to shut down any premonitions Mario may be holding onto a little too tightly. Bowser and Mario are able to set aside their differences (for now, at least) so that they can work together on a common goal-- figuring out where the hell Luigi is.
(A/N under cut)
---
believe me when i say i really wanted to link all the pages together in a neat, practical way so that everything would appear more organized than it actually is, but tumblr hates me and won’t let my posts show up in the tags if i include a hyperlink of any kind. :D
i read somewhere that tumblr only disallows posts from showing up in tags if it includes an external link (vs an internal/link to another tumblr page), which, in theory, shouldnt be an issue since the pages i’d be linking to are also on tumblr but regardless it’s not cooperating with me anyway. i’ve been on tumblr for what feels like a million years but this is the first time ive tried to make my posts cohesive like this so if anyone knows how to fix this issue im all ears 🙃 for the record, everything related to this au will be going into the following tags on my blog: #my art, and #evil luigi au. we’ll just have to sort things that way for now, i guess 😭
i start work tomorrow so can’t say when there will be a new page but i do have a lot planned out already. so hopefully i’ll be able to continue what ive started for at least a handful of more pages 🤠 next page will be fun to work on. for a bowuigi-centered story, where’s the luigi?! he’ll show up soon. just in the form of a flashback for now though 👀
also sorry if my handwriting is evil. it’s just personally easier/faster to write out everything by hand than type everything out but i may try to type the next page’s dialogue to see how it goes and to see if it makes things look ✨cleaner✨
(also also i spent so much time trying to figure out how to draw them doing a handshake for the “truce” panel. i ultimately failed. therefore.... fist bumps LMAO)
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do it. gimme the Izzy straight-coded meta 👀
I feel like I need to preface this by saying that Actually, Izzy Is Straightcoded would be the inflammatory clickbait title I'd give this if it were written to draw traffic & ad revenue to my shitty website. So don't take that term too seriously.
There has been a lot of ink spilled about Izzy thinking he's in a story where one can only be subtextually queer. Some even by yours truly, but the more I think about it, the less sense it makes. What would be the purpose of queercoding Izzy?
In general, villains* aren't queercoded to show that men being attracted to other men is bad. It's often the outcome; but it's not why the trope exists. It exists because cishet people tend to be (and are encouraged to be) profoundly uncomfortable with gender nonconformity, and so, making a character gnc becomes a quick and easy way to make him appear twisted and untrustworthy. If he** can't even obey the fundamental rules of his own gender (rules that are inherent and unchangeable!) what other rules does he disobey?
Or: If a man is insufficiently masculine, he can't be trusted to have morals. The villain isn't gnc because that's an evil trait to have; rather, the gender nonconformity is a symptom of his evilness. Being evil is what enables him to embrace his feminine side, and embracing his feminine side is what others him and marks him as a villain.
This only really works when he's contrasted with a hero (or heroine) who is Doing Gender Correctly. The villain is foul to highlight how good the hero is. The Hero will be honest and straightforward, brave, physically powerful; the Queercoded Villain treacherous, cowardly, and physically weak. The hero is a Proper Man, a Good Person. The villain an Improper Man, and therefore, a Bad Person.
Of course ofmd fundamentally rejects this. The shorthand wouldn't work, because ofmd simply doesn't think effeminacy is creepy. It's uninterested in moralizing self-expression; it just lets people be how they are. There's a wide range of expressions of masculinity on this show, and none of it is inherently bad. People are allowed to be hypermasculine, flamboyant, and anything inbetween, can express their gender in whatever manner they want, and it's all fine - as long as they are authentic about it. Be however you are, but be yourself, and this is what Izzy fails at. The repression marks him as a villain. The strict adherence to what he thinks a Real Man Pirate ought to be like. He's very preoccupied with enforcing a traditional (and toxic) masculinity on himself and others. It's no coincidence the characters he antagonizes the most - Stede and Lucius - are also the most effeminate ones. And I know, I know anglophones have a much more casual relationship to twat and cunt, those don't nearly feel as uncomfortable for y'all as they do for me, so I don't want to assign too much significance here, but he is the only character who constantly uses this kind of language, and also the one who uses the most gender&sexuality based slurs (as far as I remember).
All of this while being clearly, obviously queer himself! I do not feel like I need to explain this; his flustered reaction when Lucius asks him if he's ever been sketched speaks for itself. The fact that he meets Stede and immediately slices his shirt off of him, speaks for itself. And so on.
Izzy isn't straightcoded in the sense that the story wants us to believe he's exclusively attracted to women. Much like a queercoded villain doesn't need to be shown to be attracted to men (and can even be shown to be attracted exclusively to women!) to still be queercoded. He's straightcoded in the sense that he's a stand-in for restrictive and toxic gender roles that society enforces on people. He buys into the idea that there's a way of Doing Gender Wrong, and this is presented as a tragic character flaw. Something he has to overcome to be able to do the thing that actually marks a hero in this show: express himself authentically.
Part of why I found his death so moving is because it enables him to set right the toxicity he spread. His rehabilitation arc was about himself; about finally allowing himself to be, accepting love, accepting community. His death was about taking responsibility. About fully recognizing the hurt he caused. Looking death in the face enables him to finally abandon the last shreds of that toxicity, to apologize and be granted forgiveness. In the end, he was not beyond saving, and the harm he has done will be healed.
*Izzy is introduced as an antagonist to both Stede and the central romance of this romcom. I'm not gonna debate this; if you disagree, fine, but you clearly have such a fundamentally wrong different view of the show that it's pointless for us to try and convince each other.
**of course Queercoded Female Villains exist s well, but they are a whole different can of worms and less relevant to this discussion
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