#i would tag this as kin but i also want this to be available for fictives | Explore Tumblr Posts and Blogs

oozeandgoo-art · 11 months

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Links, tag system, and additional info.

I try to avoid reblogging things to this account - that's what my main blog is for. If you see a reblog on here, feel free to let me know so I can delete it!

I handle all commissions through my professional email, artcommissionsbyred (at) gmail (dot) com. For the foreseeable future, my commissions are closed.

If you would like a heads-up on upcoming commission availability, please subscribe to my mailing list here! (Mailing list subscribers also get earlier or sometimes even exclusive access to things like limited-time slots, which I sometimes do when I'm hard up for quick cash.)

Outside Links:

Twitter: OozeAndGoo_Art

Ko-Fi: OozeAndGoo_Art

Bigcartel: OozeAndGooArt

Wordpress: OozeAndGooArt

FurAffinity: TheRedDragon13

Main Blog: @bitegore

Rules of Engagement:

This is a sideblog. I have a lot of people blocked from my main blog, none of which are blocked from this blog. It's okay if you've been blocked from my main for you to reblog from this sideblog - I have genuinely thousands of people blocked, for reasons that are arcane and sometimes really stupid even to me, and if you behave in a rude or unpleasant manner I'll just block you from this blog when it comes up. Go nuts.

This blog contains quite a bit of adult-oriented art, all of which is both marked "mature" using Tumblr's content settings and tagged accordingly. Please browse at your own discretion, and remember to use filtering options where necessary.

In general, off-topic commentary in the reblogs, tags, and replies is totally fine and I like seeing what you guys have to say even when it's not directly about the art. That being said, please do not talk about either how much you hate the character in the art or think the art looks bad. "If you have nothing nice to say, don't say anything" is a good rule to live by, and also it's annoying and rude. Likewise, don't put discourse on my posts. I don't want to hear about it. If you have an opinion about the characters or art that is negative, feel free to make your own post! You can even add my art to it (with a link to this page) if you really want to talk about the art in particular.

Please repost my work only with credit (a link back to this page). Use of my art for avatars, header/sidebar banner images, edits, remixes, collages, and related is entirely okay as long as credit is given. My canon character redesigns are also completely free to use and no credit is required as long as you've done the actual drawing yourself. If you're using my art for something, I'd like to hear about it, but it's not required - it's just really flattering. Please do not remove my captions, however. Just make a repost.

If you want to print one of my pieces for personal use, feel free to reach out to me! I will happily re-color/re-balance the colors so that it will print nicely if I have the time, free of charge. If you want one of my pieces tattooed, go for it, consider this blanket permission. I'd be surprised and I'd love to hear about it, and also I have no qualms at all. Go for it.

Everything is okay to tag as kin/id/etc or claim as muse references. Have fun with it, I don't care. This goes for my ocs too, I really couldn't care less. However, if you disagree on characterization from what I've drawn, please don't tell me about it.

Obligatory "don't be bigoted." This is a racism, sexism, homophobia, classism, xenophobia, religious discrimination, and everything else-free zone. I'm not perfect, and therefore if I've created something that comes over wrong, you are more than welcome to voice your opinion on that, but please approach me in private first*, and message me on my main blog rather than the sideblog as I actually check that account.

Feel free to ask me to tag for more than I currently tag for- either for search reasons or to be able to more easily filter things. I may refuse to use certain tags at my discretion.

Tags:

content warnings: all content warnings begin with the phrase "contents" to help disambiguate them from generic phrases.

#contents: a little raunchy for tumblr - not quite dirty, but still running on adult themes. Rated pg-13 instead of nc-17.

#contents: not safe for Tumblr - the Naughty stuff. All should be marked mature already.

#contents: blood - has blood

#contents: gore - has organic/meat gore

#contents: robogore - has robot gore, presented like something other than organic flesh

#contents: death - someone's dead on screen

#contents: flashing - something in the image flashes in a way that may not be safe for photosensitive viewers.

#contents: dubious or nonexistent consent - there is sex or sex acts of dubious or explicitly nonconsensual nature happening on screen.

#contents: all edge and no point - general assorted tag for finding things that are just really edgy for no good reason. suicide jokes and torture and that sort of thing.

fandom-specific tags:

#transformers - transformers art, including humanformers. At this time I don't tag continuity.

#macaddam - safe-for-work transformers art (for search discovery)

#valveplug - spike and valve NSFW transformers art

#plug and play - cable-play NSFW transformers art

#sparkplay - spark-play NSFW transformers art

#humanization - a character that isn't normally a human, depicted as one.

#rukaan and #deer - Fields of Valhalla (deviantart ARPG) art, mostly depicting fantasy deer creatures. (#deer is there for search discovery and being easy to remember; "rukaan" is the actual name of the fantasy species.)

#dragon - there is a dragon. everyone likes those

#scalie - anthro reptiles - in this case, basically all dragons.

#oc - original characters. Everyone's got em, right?

[character names] - tagged as needed for search purposes. Characters with multiple names may or may not be disambiguated at essentially random. OCs are also tagged by name.

personal navigation:

#red redesign g1 stunticons - my stunticon fan redesigns. sometimes you don't want to see fan redesigns, so now it can be filtered - without having to filter anyone else's stuff, even!

#au: androidformers - the specific humanoid-android designs for the transformers G1 "humanformers" au I have lying around.

#fursona - this character is one of my fursonas. Typically this just refers to Taz.

#mass post - if there's a bunch of pictures in one post because I don't think they can really stand on their own merits or are part of a sequence, this lets you filter that away.

#closerverse - art for a personal original universe.

art navigation:

background - art with a significant focus on the background or scenery. This may include photo overpaintings where the background is significantly relevant even if I didn't paint the background by hand.

#monochrome - art in monochrome - may include duochrome (two-color) work. This tag used to be "black and white" - older pieces may still be tagged with that instead.

#lineart - art that is just relatively clean lines

#doodle - unfinished art with a focus on round, smooth lines and cute shapes

#sketch - unfinished art with more jagged shapes and realistic proportions

#traditional media - art made in "real life", typically with some element of digital color or retouching anyway.

#3d - art that uses some element of 3d renders in it, either as part of a painting that was then painted over or as a whole 3d render without painted-on effects.

#photo overpainting - art where I saw a cool photo and painted something into it without repainting the entire photo from scratch, so large chunks were not made by me.

#animation - animated work (typically short looping gifs), stuff where the characters move

#animated effects - animated work where elements move, but the characters are static - flickering light effects, stuff like that.

#meme redraw - art made in the style of a meme. Sometimes this is entirely redrawn and sometimes it's a photo overpainting.

#gift art - art made for other people for free or with minimal direction

#commission - art made on commission with significant input from the client

*Why do this in private? There are a number of reasons: the first, and most relevant, that it means other people aren't going to randomly jump in and change the subject, so we can have an actual conversation rather than something that comes over more like a random accusation I may not fully understand out of the blue. Secondly, I have a solid handful of followers that I expect would probably defend me, and you don't need people jumping down your throat for "attacking" a person they like, especially if you're right but even if I think you're wrong. I also don't want to deal with that. Finally, I don't like being stuck between trying to understand more and feeling like I have to "save face" because the latter is bad for actually learning and growing as a person. I - of course - still do my best to learn in public, but without the pressure of a significant amount of outside observers it's easier for me to form an initial response and have a normal conversation. You can always take it public later, if you're convinced I've done something wrong and won't make amends. At that point I'm sure we're just going to be enemies so asking you not to is gonna go nowhere lmao. I take bigotry and my own biases seriously, but it's possible that after we discuss and I do some of my own research, we may come to different conclusions as to the relative problems with a certain depiction, discussion, or behavior. This is a normal part of socializing. Please give me the grace of holding a conversation with me first before jumping to getting on my case publicly. (If you're scared of reprisal, first of all, don't be because I don't like to do that, but secondly, you can just make a throwaway account to message me with. It's easy.)

#housekeeping #pinned #sfw

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apompkwrites · 2 years

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As a project sekai and vocaloid addict I've been thinking of making a list of vocaloid songs I think would fit the black sheep because I see some of the lyrics and it reminds me so much of the black sheeps

some that stick out immediately to me and reminded me that I needed to do this:

Bug by Karikiri Bear This song is a commissioned song for a Project Sekai event that is currently only available on the JP servers. Still, this song was made for Mafuyu (a character with severe depression and people-pleasing tendencies along with a very controlling/overbearing mother that controls her life, causing her to no longer have her own thoughts on things. She literally cannot taste anything.) Little Rose kins Mafuyu real not clickbait If you look at the English translations you can make other connections (lost child lost child stuck, hugging the unwanted child, good child good child drowned in words try your best, pruning her heart, tearing off her emotions, emotions breaking down with a shriek, tag of talent, Endless misery. lyrics like this) and also the fact that the "Bugs" in question are her friends who want her to have her own identity and life outside of what her parents want because they are "corrupting" a perfect computer program that was once obedient

Because of this I believe that this absolute banger would fit Little Rose (I also think it would fit Kingscholar, Shroud, and Shoenheit for separate reasons ( I'm only gonna explain Bug because I need to finish hw and I plan on explaining the other songs and why I think they would go well with the Sheep when I finish it)

Abnormality Dancin' Girl by Guchiry

Hitorinbo Envy by Koyori

Bitter Choco Decoration by Syudou

Penguin's Detour by Hayashida

Milk by Ako

Jackpot Sad Girl by Syudou

There are more but these are the ones that stood out to me and I'll add more when I make the whole thing lmao

aaaa prosekai <33 i need to get back into that game ngl,,,

i can't wait to hear the rest of your explanations for the songs :OO

so starting with bug, it def fits our lil rose perfectly! and honestly just the rosehearts siblings in general. so tempted to draw my rendition of lil rose and mafuyu together because "[they] just like me fr" is the vibe i get

#a pompk answers #black sheep

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welch77doyle · 2 years

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eternallyother · 2 years

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hey! could we get a recipe kit request for our morty (rick and morty) fictive? y’dont need to know anything about his source, but he’s looking for like. alien, odd inhuman type foods- or the exact opposite, purely american kid comfort foods. preferably odd inhuman alien type foods. we like cheese flavours, citrus flavours, and we’re pretty. meateating. preferably stuff that doesn’t require too much work to make (we’re dorm cooking). sry if this is too specific and hard to work with, 0 pressure just have fun. thank u!!!!

I have two recipes for you, Morty!

Microwave Bacon Mac 'n Cheese

Foreword: You can totally replace the cheese sauce recipe with a canned/jarred cheese sauce if need be to save dishes/ingredients! I'm making these recipes with a college type budget in mind, but I dunno how much space you may have, and I am operating under the assumption that you have a microwave available. This recipe in particular is more like an actual mac n cheese, but can be swapped for easy mac in a pinch.

Ingredients:

1/2 cup of macaroni pasta (dry)

Water

2 tbsp butter

2 tbsp flour

1 cup of milk/cream

1 and 1/2 cups of cheese

Salt, pepper, and ceyenne/hot sauce to taste

Bacon bits

Directions:

Put macaroni in a bowl, and cover with water

Put macaroni in microwave for 10-11 minutes (or until consistency is to your liking.) Drain out the water, saving about 1 tbsp.

For cheese sauce, melt butter in a bowl, then add flour. Heat in 30 second intervals, mixing between heating, until the flour smell dissipates.

Add the milk gradually, heating in 30 second intervals and mixing as well. The roux and milk should combine to be a thicker sauce. Feel free to add your seasoning now.

Add all that cheese and heat until melted, still stirring. Also add your reserved pasta water.

Mix your sauce and macaroni together and top with bacon bits.

Serve and enjoy!

Out of This Earth Charcuterie

Foreword: I was struggling a bit with an alien-like food that 1) isn't the cheesy kids party "alien foods" and 2) is easy to make, so this is gonna mostly just be prep work that can create a little platter of foods that can be more odd looking at first glance. I tried to lean into the citrus and meat a bit here!

Ingredients:

A pomegranate

Stuffed olives (I recommend either pimento stuffed green olives, garlic stuffed olives, or feta stuffed olives)

A grapefruit

A blood orange

Prosciutto

Salami

Cheese of choice (I recommend sharp cheddar)

Directions:

Peel your grapefruit and blood orange, but don't bust them open. I stead, slice like you would a lemon slice for a drink, so they form circles.

Crack open your pomegranate (you can keep it together, cuz pomegranate already looks a bit more odd, or you can bust it open in a bowl/sink full of water to easily get all the seeds out with less mess).

With the prosciutto and salami, use a shot glass and layer the meats along the rim, moving inwards, to form lil meat flowers.

Slice your cheese into whatever shapes you like! You can use cookie cutters or free hand some shapes; whatever gives you the most space/otherworldly sort of feel.

Plate it all on a serving plate, cutting board, whatever you have on hand (you can use a lil bowl for the olives).

Serve and enjoy!

I hope you enjoy these recipes!

Mod Angel

(P.S: I know your Morty is a fictive, but I'm putting all the usual 'kin tags for exposure! If you want the 'kin tags removed, lemme know!)

#mod angel #otherhearted #otherkin #fictionkin #alterhuman #fictive #rick and morty #rick and morty fictive #morty fictive #mortykin #fictive recipes #fictionkin recipes

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kinoko-kinhelp · 3 years

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Time for an intro post!

I am mod Scar.

I’m the blogs resident kinhelp veteran, but that’s not all I am!

Always check the pinned for updates as I become more confident working with the team here on this blog, I may gain more talents and open up more types of requests

All of the mods have DA’s, and my major one is to Hermitcraft/3rdLife Scar! Pleasure to meet you all.

For those unaware:

A D/A is a delusional attachment, a delusional attachment (DA) is a term coined to describe the type of delusion of grandeur where someone is a fictional character, an animal, an object, another person, or any kind of being outside of being human (such as an elf, an angel, etc). More info is available here.

I’m happy to do kin, fictive, factive, and D/A requests.

If you’d like an example of my work before requesting, please check my work on @stim-creations! And don’t worry if you want something very specific made, I make my own gifs! (I made the gifs for this post, actually!)

Here are my Mod Tags!

They’re also in the tags of this post for quick search filtering, just for you! <3

#Mod Scar

#🦙The vibe machine! | Shufflemancy!

#🦙 let me get building! | request accepted! #🦙 I don't have the blocks... | request denied! #🦙 Which chest was it in? | Need more info! #🦙 This build is juuuust for me! | Made it for myself! #🦙 Fell off of the scaffolding! | Mod is on break! #🦙 Guys, a little help?! | Another mod is taking this! #🦙 I took some photos for inspiration... | Moodboard! #🦙 Don’t you think amethyst looks pretty? | Stimboard! #🦙 I made a blueprint! | Art Request! #🦙 I think that’s exactly what Grian would do! | Headcanons! #🦙 Look at your pretty face! | Icons! #🦙 I made this basket to help you feel better? | Care Kit! #🦙 It’ll be ok! | Comfort/Validation! #🦙 Do any of you know this guy?! | Canoncall! #🦙 Guys, a little help?! | Another mod is taking this!

I’m happy to be here, and I hope you’ll have me.

-Mod Scar.

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iamnightduchess · 3 years

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WIP: Chills (T, Modern AU)

Summary:

A grieving mother finds herself confronting the shadows of her guilt, the long overdue failing of her marriage and memories of the one who could have been the moment they wheeled in an injured soldier from Marley straight into her operating room. The day she saved the life of Vice Commander Braun of Marley’s prized Titan unit was also the day he saved her own lost soul in return.

More often, memories may be lost forever but the heart never lies. He still makes shivers dance down her spine heading down to her feet just like he used to do twelve years ago and his heart still beats as hard for her the same way. Even when he can’t ever remember why. ReinerxMikasa. Modern + SnK HighSchool (Attack on High School Caste) AU.

Ship(s): Reiner x Mikasa (ReiKasa)

AU: Love Like This

-----

Snippet:

June 9, Present Year

Trost Military Hospital, Paradis

The sounds of her boots stepping hurriedly on the polished floors resonated against the clean, white walls of the hallways in hollowed echoes. A voice caught her dead in her tracks as soon as she turned into the corner leading into the more secluded operations wing of the hospital’s main building.

“Good afternoon, Dr. Jeager?” A young man, who seemed to be waiting anxiously near the entrance to the operating theatre DM05, approached her as soon as she came into his view. From his security tag and the embroidered emblem on his coat, it was very apparent that he is the personnel from Marley that she’s supposed to be liaising with on the emergency procedure she was called in for.

After quite some time, she casually corrected this stranger’s greeting underneath her breath. “It’s actually Dr. Ackerman now.”

“I’m sorry?” Perplexed, the man, still apologized for his potential blunder yet his tone remained polite despite the obvious confusion in his tone. “Also, I'm very sorry, I might have a misguided notion that the famous neurosurgeon in Paradis would be a--”

She turned her head to the side. “Some old, bearded guy with a bad sense of humor?” She couldn’t hold back the untimely humor laced with cynical sarcasm within her own voice.

She could see the other young man began to swallow a metaphorical knot nervously down his own throat and his trickling sweat didn’t help her observation either. “You’re not wrong actually. The original Dr. Jeager, my foster father, had been the famous one. Not me.”

“I’m sorry, Dr. Jeager, I mean Ackerman. I got confused.”

“No harm done.” Even she would be confused at her own status. She shook her head, dismissing her own earlier persistence in wanting to be addressed with her own maiden name again. A stranger doesn’t need to know her personal issues or the status of her marriage.

But she really needed to sort this shit out with the administration before more people get confused.

Nevertheless, she prompted for the attending personnel to continue his words.

“Thank you so much for scrubbing in. I’m Marcus Daniels, the attending physician for the patient. We apologize for this short notice but since it’s summer break, all of our neurosurgeons are away for volunteering or break. Rest assured, we have received the signed disclaimer from the patient’s next of kin, his mother, along with the referral from Marley’s Military Hospital. The paperwork has been received by the administration. We’re good to proceed with the emergency procedure.”

The raven-haired woman shook her head, disregarding the standard same ‘ole assurance from the Medical Officer who was tasked to accompany the Marleyan patient currently in between life and death on that table inside her Operation Theatre. Her patients’ lives take precedence before any incidents that could warrant a potential lawsuit. She gestured for the MO to follow suit as she put on the green scrubs and surgical cap available inside the prep room. “Walk with me, Daniels. Give me a brief of the patient. How long ago was the initial contact?”

“Male, 31, a military vet from Marley’s prized Special Ops Unit. The reported time of the initial impact was twelve hours ago. Patient’s BP is stable, X-ray did not display any shrapnels, bullet’s still in one piece but the bleeding unfortunately, had begun to spread to the patient’s medial temporal lobe since six hours ago….and...well….”

They stopped short just in front of the door that leads to the main wash area of the operating room. Her nose picked up the overwhelming scent of industrial disinfectant coming from behind that door. Her eyes leered back at the MO, her forehead creased in reaction to the other man’s trailing words. She did not like that tone or even the single last word of his sentence at all. “What is it?”

“Ma’am, the First Response team had to perform an emergency resuscitation and this could not be just an on-site training incident. There was an excessive amount of Paxil together with alcohol from the patient’s digestive tract. Patient was under the influence right before he went in to support the unit’s rookie training. Bloodwork confirmed this.” The young man, who looked like he’s only several years younger than she is, could only shook his head in absolute empathy.

Paxil and liquor are a deadly mix. The patient must have been aware of his own prescriptions. There was an immediate flash of concern upon her face before she pressed for a confirmation to her impulsive suspicion; asking, “C-PTSD? ‘Intentional’ incident?” She couldn’t possibly be discreet if she’s dealing with more than just the life of a war veteran on the line. An unstable patient with self-harming tendencies requires a much delicate approach especially if the injuries sustained by the patient would require a full invasive craniotomy to stop the source of bleeding from the bullet.

The MO shook his head in return. “We can’t rule that out or in yet without looking into the patient’s psych eval records. Those files are sealed by the Psychiatric unit in Marley, Dr. Jea-Ackerman. We’d need a referral from your Psychiatrist here to access those files after for the patient's recovery.”

“There’s no time to waste then.” There was a short pause in her words as she pressed a digital button on the room’s intercom system. “Nurse Rheinberger, Dr. Ackerman in OT-DM05. Code Blue. Requesting assistance to page Dr. Ian Dietrich, Psychiatry to support emergency neurosurgery a.s.ap. Over.”

She turned her head back to the young MO and inquired as a formality, even though she was very aware that the patient had been placed under anesthesia. “Patient’s name?”

“Uhm…” Daniels flipped open the paper folder in his hands and read the patient’s name out loud. “Braun, Reiner.”

She stopped dead in her tracks, her heart skipped not one but two immediate beats and she could feel it hitting hard against her chest. “Come again?”

“Reiner Braun, Dr. Ackerman. No middle name.”

There are a lot of people with the same name. “Birthdate?” It’s just not possible.

“August 1, 19xx.”

Her hands stood frozen against the door of the operation theater. From where she stood, she could see the motionless body hooked on multiple wires connecting to a life support system on top of her operation table from between the clear glass screens.

“Doctor?”

She looked back at the other man but not before blinking back the shock-induced tears gathered inside her eyelids. “Please get Dr. Dietrich here. Now. It would be against my protocol to operate on a patient with past or existing personal attachments without a senior physician’s supervision.”

“You know the patient?”

“Yes…He was...” Her words trailed unfinished, which only roused the other person’s curiosity although it was none of his business. “Just go. NOW.”

“Sorry, sorry!” The man quickly disappeared behind the main door in a flash leaving her behind with a much needed space and air to breathe.

Oh my God, Reiner. What happened to you?

She rushed towards the faucet and hurriedly splashed her face with the cold water just so she could hide the stubborn tears already running down her cheeks.

Out of all the times, why now? Why here? Why do their paths cross again after six years - with him; his life barely hanging on a thread right now on her very own operating table?

She can’t fuck this up. Never had she ever did before, but never had she ever performed a procedure on someone she personally knew. There are just too many reasons why and too little time for her to be caught in another mulling.

#WIP Wednesday #AO3 fic #Chills #by NightDuchess #snk fic #aot fic #modern au #ReiKasa #reiner x mikasa #reiner braun #mikasa ackerman #ReiKasa fic #ReiKasa Modern AU

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feralphoenix · 4 years

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BUT THAT DOESN’T MEAN YOU’RE NOT PREPARED TO TRY

if you’re following my blog or if you read my fanfiction, you may have seen me talking in tags or comments about how the radiance hollowknight was a pacifist. “feral, wtf?” you may have thought. “she’s the freaking final boss and tries really, really hard to kill you and all her attacks do 2 entire masks damage. where on earth do you get pacifism out of that???”

to you specifically i say, that’s an understandable reaction! the short version of how i got here was that i started thinking about the story implications of radi not inflicting contact damage and took a deep dive into game mechanics and lore. when i came up for air i had made myself Very Sad.

if this intrigues you and you would like to know more, come along with me, i am happy to point out the things i noticed and share the Big Sad around.

this essay is also available on dreamwidth for accessibility purposes, since my layout’s text may be too small for folks on pc with high-res screens.

CONTENT WARNING: This essay discusses pseudo-zombie plagues and associated body horror, colonialism and genocide, horrible things that happened in real life Australian history... you know, the usual topics that come up when I’m talking about Hollow Knight.

ADDITIONAL NOTICE: TPK fans of the “TPK meant well/was working for the greater good”/“TPK and Radi are equally bad”/“TPK is bad but Radi is worse” variety please give this one a pass, it ain’t for you.

finally if youre from a christian cultural upbringing (whether currently practicing, agnostic/secular, or atheist now), understand that some of what i’m discussing here may challenge you. if thinking thru the implications of this particular part of hollow knight worldbuilding/lore is distressing for you, PLEASE only approach this essay when youre in a safe mindset & open to listening, and ask the help of a therapist or anti-racism teacher/mentor to help you process your thoughts & feelings. just like keep in mind that youre listening to an ethnoreligiously marginalized person and please be respectful here or wherever else youre discussing this dang essay

BUT THAT DOESN’T MEAN YOU’RE NOT PREPARED TO TRY: The Radiance Doesn’t Deal Contact Damage And That’s Kind Of Fucked Up And Sad

The vast majority of hostile creatures in Hollow Knight deal contact damage: This is to say, if the Wandering Knight (who I’ll probably spend most of this essay calling by their affectionate fan name Ghost) touches a hostile creature, this harms them.

There are exceptions to this rule. The most notable and most oft-memed example is the game’s literal actual true final boss, the Radiance. Not only will Ghost not be harmed by running into any part of her body, but during her stagger animation, where she drops to the boss arena floor on her front with her whole body splayed out, Ghost still isn’t harmed if she lands on top of them! What’s more, this holds true for her full-power form Absolute Radiance, the secret final boss of the Godmaster quest/endings.

A lot of people find this amusing, because it’s a little absurd that a game’s final boss is an exception to such a consistent element of gameplay! Hence all the “haha moth too soft and fluffy for contact damage” jokes. It is objective facts that Radi is very soft and very fluffy, so it’s very easy to understand why people don’t overthink this too much.

Thinking about things I like in gross detail is unfortunately my hobby. When it comes to Hollow Knight this usually leads to me making myself really sad. I’d like to share the fruits of my theorizing with the class, so other people can be sad with me.

Now, from a game design perspective I can think of a lot of reasons why Team Cherry chose for Radiance not to inflict contact damage. Her hitbox only covers the central part of her body. Her limbs are large, so because of the way she floats, if she did contact damage she would be protected from nail strikes from below and to either side. This would give a player who prefers nail combat a punishingly small margin through which they could inflict damage without also taking a hit, potentially forcing them to adapt to a new and unfamiliar play style at the very end of the game. That’s not fun for anybody and tends to make players feel very frustrated.

In addition to this, Radiance’s attacks are all bullet hell-style spells. All of them except the floor hazards inflict two masks of damage, meaning if you want to stay alive and identify points where it’s possible to heal, you need to learn the spell patterns and dodge a lot. Radi is a large boss. If running into her hurt you this would make the bullet hell elements of her fight extra punishing.

So, I think the purely game mechanics reason for Moth Too Soft And Fluffy is in interest of keeping her boss fight fair, and helping players feel like they have a chance of actually defeating her.

Part of why we all love Hollow Knight, though, is that there’s not much in the game that only exists for purely mechanical reasons. There’s always some form of story or lore integration.

So what on earth is the story reason behind why Radiance doesn’t deal contact damage?

OTHER ENEMIES THAT DON’T DEAL CONTACT DAMAGE

Radi isn’t the only enemy (here defined as fightable/killable creature) in Hollow Knight who doesn't inflict contact damage, so let’s take a look at her fellow exceptions to the rule to see what we can learn.

Broadly speaking there are two categories of Enemies That Don’t Deal Contact Damage. The first is enemies or bosses who used to be hostile, but have become friendly to the player. For instance, when characters like Ogrim and Hornet are not being fought in boss battles, touching them won’t cause damage to Ghost. These story characters who Ghost has more or less reconciled with can’t be damaged by the player out of combat either.

In terms of generic enemies who used to be hostile but have become friendly to the player, we have the mantises of the Fungal Wastes and the Siblings/Ghost’s Shade. We learn from the game’s lore that the mantises Did Not Like The Pale King and were hostile to Hallownest, but that they established a ceasefire conditional on their keeping the people of Deepnest (who were also hostile to Hallownest) from leaving through the area’s main entrance/exit in the Fungal Wastes - essentially the two native kingdoms were pitted against one another by the Pale King.

Now, just because there was a ceasefire, that doesn’t mean the mantises take kindly to Hallownest bugs brazenly trespassing into their dang house; they will get in your face and try to kill you unless you have permission to be there. But once you’ve defeated the Mantis Lords in combat and proven yourself worthy of the mantises’ respect, they’ll let you pass through their turf unmolested. They are no longer actively hostile and don't deal contact damage.

(You're still able to attack them, though - maybe because you’d be locked out of receiving the Hunter’s Mark if you complete the Respect quest/achievement before you’ve successfully killed enough mantises? - and if you attack them, or if your pet charm familiars attack them, any mantises you aggroed will fight back and deal contact damage again.)

The Siblings, as well as Ghost’s Shade, are initially indiscriminately hostile. Our window into Shade psychology is limited, but we know that the Shade died violently and the Siblings probably did too; they may be lashing out. They’re also Void creatures, and Ghost looks a lot like the Pale King, whom we can guess from context clues pissed the Void off significantly by using it as his personal play-doh to make tools and toys with and also using its house as his personal garbage dump for baby corpses.

However, once Ghost recalls their past and breaks the mask of the Kingsoul charm to reveal the Void Heart at its core, the Void recognizes them as a part of it, and Ghost becomes able to direct/lead the Void to some extent. As an extension of this, the Siblings and Ghost’s shade become docile and can now be killed by any weapon in one hit instead of just the Dream Nail (which is made of Radiance’s Light and is the Void’s natural weakness). They don’t deal contact damage anymore either.

That’s it for “enemies that inflict contact damage at one point, but stop inflicting it after becoming friendly or neutral to Ghost”.

The generic enemies which don't inflict contact damage include shrumelings, maggots, maskflies, and lightseeds/lifeseeds. These enemies are incapable of inflicting any damage on Ghost whatsoever, because by themselves they are completely helpless entities with no natural defenses.

Shrumelings are infant members of the mushroom clan who are usually protected by adult fungi like shrumal warriors and ogres. Lightseeds and lifeseeds are harmless single-celled organisms. Maskflies are similarly harmless. Maggots, we glean from the Hunter’s Journal and dialogue from False Knight/Failed Champion, are the bottom rung of Hallownest’s society because they are weak and helpless, and are forced into menial and slave labor by other Hallownest bugs because they cannot defend themselves. The maggots’ plight is the whole reason why False Knight/Failed Champion stole Hegemol's armor in the first place, as he wanted to protect his people.

All of these enemies flee when Ghost approaches them. (Some maskfly groups’ flight triggers are set to specific areas on a map and won’t flee if you can avoid stepping on/passing through those areas, but this is clearly due to a programming oversight because their whole Thing is running away.)

But, there’s something interesting to be observed in the case of lightseeds and maggots: They can fight back against and harm Ghost if they use tools. The little flock of lightseeds you chase around the Ancient Basin eventually get sick of Ghost’s shit and take over Broken Vessel/Lost Kin’s corpse, which they puppet around to try to murder you. By doing so they gain access to Broken Vessel/Lost Kin’s considerable combat prowess and become very dangerous, contact damage included in the bargain. (The lightseeds’ doing this seems to evoke the vessel’s spirit, since they reach for Ghost when defeated. That’s not a gesture the lightseeds have any reason to make. The Lost Kin fight, by which the spirit seems to gain some form of closure, becomes available here too.)

False Knight/Failed Champion’s fights work on the same general principle. Now that he has a weapon he can attack Ghost, and his armor deals contact damage. The maggot inside the armor does not inflict contact damage; essentially both his boss fights consist of your whacking the armor until he’s stunned and pops out of the armor for a moment so you can hit his vulnerable real body, which is the only part of him that yields Soul when you smack him. In fact, his boss fights will last forever if you let him recover from being stunned on his own.

Between these two groups, Radiance very obviously doesn’t fit in the first, as she’s the final boss and is very vigorously trying to kill Ghost with various magic spells. You can tell from her Dream Nail dialogue that she’s furious about what the Pale King did to her and her people, and is afraid for her life. She is willing to use everything at her disposal to try to destroy Ghost so she can survive, go free, and get revenge for the Pale King’s crimes. If she could do contact damage to Ghost she would.

So, the only logical conclusion to make is that Radi falls into the second group of enemies that don’t inflict contact damage. She is physically incapable of causing any harm to anyone with only her body. Her magic is deadly as all get out and the 2 masks damage explosion noise probably haunts the nightmares of anyone who’s struggled fighting her, but without it she is helpless.

WHY CAN’T RADIANCE DO CONTACT DAMAGE?

It might be pretty hard to reconcile the fact that a character with Audre Lorde energy as potent as Radi Hollowknight’s is has a whopping 0 ATK. The biggest clues we get in terms of story context for her inability to inflict physical harm of any kind can be found within the culture of the moth tribe, who were her people.

Thistlewind, the backer-designed moth ghost who can be found in the Resting Grounds, tells you that the majority of moths were pacifists, and that individuals like them and like Markoth who learned to wield a nail were in the minority. Thistlewind appears to have learned to fight as a means of self-defense while they explored the crater area, and describes Markoth as having done so in order to “[brave] the edges of this world, hoping to uncover a truth long forgotten”. It sounds to me like Markoth was trying to recover parts of moth culture that were lost when their tribe was assimilated into Hallownest, or maybe even searching for Radiance or trying to learn what happened to her. (Judging that his corpse is hidden behind one of the Pale King’s shade gates it seems this didn’t go well. Thanks TPK.)

As far as fighting moths go there’s Marmu too, but she seems to be a special case, possibly raised in Hallownest's culture instead of with her tribe. We don’t actually get any sort of canon explanation for how a baby moth wound up as a child soldier who died defending the Queen’s Gardens, but given the overall tone of Hollow Knight as a game and all the colonization/Australian history parallel subtext, some horrifying possibilities come to mind.

So, if Thistlewind, Markoth, and Marmu are Outliers Lepidoptera and should not be counted, how did the majority of moths spend their time? According to Seer, who knows more about the tribe’s history than most (and to Quirrel, who points you to her if you defeat Uumuu before picking up the Dream Nail), the moths’ main prerogative was cultivating and developing dream magic. From the way the Seer describes dreams as a living history as you collect Essence, dream magic seems to be a parallel to the Dreaming (or Dreamtime), a spiritual concept in Indigenous Australian religion related to both history and myth.

To translate this into simple terms, the moths were by and large pacifists whose culture celebrated art, history, and spirituality.

Team Cherry tends to adapt at least some aspects of real-life bug behavior and biology into their sad cartoon bugs, so moths-as-pacifists tracks: Real moths do not really have any way to fight. They defend themselves from predators via their mobility and their markings, which tend towards either camouflage that helps them hide or bright markings intended to scare predators off by indicating they’re poisonous (therefore not good to eat) or look like the face of something much bigger and more dangerous than they are.

There's not that much we can glean about the moths in pre-Hallownest society aside from Seer’s dialogue, because Hallownest destroyed their civilization so thoroughly: Except in the Dream Realm (which is filled with Essence spirographs and the wisteria charms that decorate Seer’s room), their architecture can only be found anymore in hidden parts of the Resting Grounds and at the very top of the Crystal Peak where Radi’s statue and a fuckton of lore tablets Ghost doesn’t know how to read are located.

But, we know that the crater pre-Hallownest was home to a ton of diverse bug nations - the mosskin, the mushroom tribe, the mantises, Deepnest, the Hive, the flukes - and every SINGLE one of those had some kind of warrior tradition, as well as their own unique cultures. In the midst of all that it was only the moths who were pacifists, so from there we can tentatively assume that they were on good enough terms with their neighbors for there not to be any fighting. The mosskin in particular also had and still have a Higher Being on their side, though in the modern day Unn seems to be rather conflict avoidant to say the least.

And we know from Hallownest’s past dealings with the mantises and Deepnest that even having Two (2) Higher Beings isn’t enough to keep rival civilizations off your nuts if they hate you, so it’s improbable that Radiance just did all the moths’ fighting for them.

The only hint that the moths ever had beef with anyone at all is one of Radiance’s Dream Nail lines, “ancient enemy” - this is popularly theorized to refer to the Void and might be corroborated by the Void’s willingness to follow Ghost into Radi’s boss fights and fight alongside them. As the Void seems to be some sort of Higher Being/god of darkness and nothingness, and the Dream Nail’s only offensive ability is to kill Void creatures, the Void and creatures of Light appear to be in a position of mutual vulnerability. Some of the Pale King’s writings in his workshop, which identify the Void as a power in direct opposition to his, support this too.

It’s unclear whether the Void civilization and Radiance ever directly came to blows or whether they were just giving each other the stink eye over being natural enemies - personally I think the latter is more likely because the two civilizations existed on opposite sides of the crater*, and again, the moths were pacifists; plus when Ghost brings the Void along to Radi’s boss fight she is quickly and gruesomely overwhelmed by it.

What I am saying here is that if pacifism was such an integral aspect of moth culture, and Radiance epitomized her people’s culture, and she is 100% incapable of inflicting physical harm, she was probably a pacifist too.

DEEP DOWN YOU KNOW YOU WEREN'T BUILT FOR FIGHTING

Hallownest flourished for a long, long time between the Pale King and White Lady first establishing it and the initial outbreak of the Infection.

There’s no conclusive information in-game as to why this is. We can only guess: Maybe Radiance was so badly hurt or weakened by the moths’ assimilation that it simply took her That Long to become capable of the mass dream broadcast to Literally Everyone In Hallownest that would eventually become the Infection when Hallownest’s people tried to suppress it. Or, maybe it just took a long time for her to come up with a way to fight back. It’s possible that it took her a while to find the resolve to actually fight back, too, with her principles of pacifism in conflict with the necessity of defending herself and taking her people back. Maybe there was a change in the moths’ situation in Hallownest somewhere down the line that compelled her to step in - all the moths are super extremely dead at the time Hollow Knight starts, after all. Even Seer is eventually revealed to be a revenant like Ze’mer the Grey Mourner, only lingering in the world to pass on the Dream Nail and tell Radiance’s story. Maybe it was a combination of all those factors. Barring Team Cherry dropping in to explain this bit of Sekret Deep Lore, we are never going to know.

All we DO know for sure is that when we mosey into Hollow’s brain (and/or Ultimate Showdown of Ultimate Destiny our way to the top of Hallownest’s Pantheon) and challenge the literal actual sun to a fight, Radi takes the challenge with extreme prejudice and comes in swinging.

Something interesting I noticed while comparing the Radiance boss fights with the Pure Vessel fight is that some of their attacks are vaguely similar. Where warrior-mage characters like Xero and Markoth have physical weapons that they summon and manipulate with magic, Radiance and Pure Vessel both create nails and daggers out of Essence and Soul respectively. Both characters’ magical weapon attacks are similar in nature too: Some are used to create hazards that must be dodged or avoided, and some are fired directly at Ghost in radial patterns.

This begs a very sad chicken-and-egg question. Did Radi and Hollow develop these battle techniques independently of each other, has Hollow in their prime form somehow absorbed similar techniques to Radi through osmosis since they’re currently chained together by the brain... or is Radi mimicking and innovating on these attacks she knows Hollow can do?

All her other attacks seem very obvious for a light-themed character, after all: Beam attacks and blobs of light. A flash of bright light is also how she shakes off the Void the first time it tries to grab her, too, making for a strong argument that that’s the original natural defense she possessed, and that’s what she based most of her attack magic off of.

Making sword’s and knive’s from Essence when most of her people didn’t even handle these sorts of tools even at the height of her power and influence, though... that seems less like something that would come naturally to her. i don’t really know i don’t have a definitive answer or theory for this one it just Seems Possible and it’s fucking me up guys

Even the Infection - which began life as Radiance’s attempt to communicate, let’s remember, before it progressed to “The End Of Eva Disease Will Continue Until Someone Actually Listens To Me” and then finally Radi screaming “FUCK U LET ME OUT, GET THAT NEW SUNNY D BOTTLE THE FUCK AWAY FROM ME, HALLOWNEST EAT SHIT” during canon - does not appear to be fatal to living bugs until the tumorous growths grow so large they impede bodily functions, like real cancer. We can observe this phenomenon via a number of NPCs and enemies that are rediscovered as tumorous corpses after the whole Crossroads area becomes infected.

At least to me, all of this points to Radiance being a character to whom violence and causing harm doesn't come naturally, and who has resorted to these methods in desperation.

It actually reminds me a lot of False Knight/Failed Champion. It’s a very common theory among fans that when he stole Hegemol’s armor he killed Hegemol - this is a reasonable thing to believe, since Hegemol is the only one of the Five Great Knights of Hallownest who never appears at all in-game, not even as a corpse like Dryya and Isma. Like Radi, False Knight/Failed Champion is a character who rose up and turned to violence in order to protect his people, despite the maggots not being a belligerent species.

False Knight is one of the game’s first major bosses, sometimes the first boss that players encounter at all. And so Hollow Knight’s story bookends with two separate victims of a predatory system, one who lived within and was cannibalized by it, one outside of it who was deliberately targeted by the Pale King. Neither of them started out as a fighter, but both of them still adopted violence as a tool to protect themselves and their people. Radiance is as doomed as False Knight by the Pale King’s genocide, but just like False Knight, she has no intention of going quietly, and will rage against the dying of the light as only the literal actual sun can.

Cue Deedee Magno Hall voice clip. You all know the one.

*A footnote: There’s no conclusive evidence to tell us whether the Void civilization was contemporaneous with the other pre-Hallownest indigenous bug nations or whether it predated them. Mask Maker has a line suggesting that the Void civilization tried to expand throughout the crater in its heyday and that maybe this was linked to its collapse, but in general the Void lore is just too darn thin to draw firm conclusions - it’s like trying to speculate on the ancient stone age cultures of the Americas that came before pre-settler Indigenous countries when the only sources you can easily access are elementary school level US history textbooks. (To non-Americans: We mostly teach kids propaganda until they hit college-level courses and it sucks so much ass.) This is very realistic worldbuilding, but also please Team Cherry I want to know more about these ancient bugs who apparently got lost in the sauce

#hollow knight #hollow knight spoilers #hollow knight meta #the radiance #hk radiance #essay #long post under cut -#bad and naughty catholics go in the catholic wiggler

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icebergruins · 3 years

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ICEBERG RUINS

READ BEFORE INTERACTING.

DNI

I doubt this will be effective, but I’ll give it a shot.

I will NOT tolerate ableism, including casual use of slurs ( which I see way too often these days ), nor will I tolerate toxicity - if you’re the kind of person who think it’s okay to harass, stalk, threaten, call slurs, discriminate against, intentionally trigger, send gore to, or send death threats or suicide baiting to people for any reason, I don't approve of your behaviour and don’t want you interacting with this blog. Ships, sexualities, labels, cut it out, I don’t care. Act mature, block people if you don’t like them instead of being a prick, and be nice to each other.

PLEASE KEEP IN MIND THAT...

Not everything on this blog will fit your tastes or be catered to you.

You may see shipping boards of a ship you don't like. You may see edits of a character you don't like doubles of. You may see boards of an f/o that you don't share.

Being a bit blunt, I do not have the patience for drama over ships/doubles/sharing/etc. I don't mind if you're uncomfortable by doubles, but if you see something you don't like, ignore it and scroll past it.

I also don't have the patience for you to talk my ear off about standard fandom drama. Whether or not RaiLeon or RaiPiers is a better ship, or if Ghetsis x Colress is problematic, or whether or not liking Faba makes you a bad person. I don't care, leave me out of this - these are fictional characters, cut it out.

ABOUT THE BLOG.

This blog is...

Run by MOD JINDAI! 18, doesn’t kin or self-ship, has too many roleplay blogs, and has a lot more bark than bite.

Blog is kin / self-ship friendly.

You can...

Use any icons, wallpapers, or boards I post here, even if they weren’t made for you specifically. Please reblog when you use an edit from here as an icon, banner, or wallpaper.

@ roleplay blogs - if you use my work as part of your blog’s theme, please place a link back to this blog on your credits page.

Sourcing content...

I won’t knowingly use fanart in any edits. I’ll only use official art in edits! I’ll source any non-custom (non-self made), non-official content used.

WHAT I WILL AND WON’T MAKE.

This blog will make...

MOODBOARDS - a 3x3 board for a character + an optional aesthetic SHIPPING BOARDS - a 3x3 shippy, romantic board for up to 3 characters in a ship DUAL CHARACTER BOARDS - a 3x3 board for 2 characters GRAPHIC BOARDS - a 2x3 board with edited graphics for 1 character or 1-2 Pokémon WALLPAPERS - mobile or desktop, be sure to let me know what your resolution is! ICONS - up to 9 square, round, or shaped (like the blog avatar!) icons. I may opt to fill in icons with related Pokémon - e.g if there’s not enough official art for 9 Piers icons, I’ll throw in some related Pokémon too, such as Obstagoon.

I AM CURRENTLY accepting...

PRIDE ICONS - up to 9 pride-themed icons. “Can I have pride icons of Piers” will get you an assortment of (up to) 9 different flags, “Can I have rainbow flag icons of Piers” will get you (up to) 9 different icons with the rainbow flag. I don’t want this blog to become solely a pride edits blog, so I’ll open and close icon requests as needed.

I can do up to two flags per icon, but would prefer to keep it to one so that designs don’t become too overcramped ( and to make it easier on me! )

I have the following flags available:

Rainbow Lesbian / Gay man WLW / MLM Bisexual / Pansexual Asexual / Aromantic / Aroace Transgender / Non-binary / Agender / Genderfluid Intersex

I’ll do MOGAI identities, but you’ll need to link me to a pride flag.

Keep me out of identity / flag discourse! Please I am begging you. Let people identify how they want.

I will NOT make...

KINK BOARDS. Kink blogs can follow ( not a problem at all! ), but I don’t feel comfortable making, say, a BDSM-inspired board.

GIFS. I don’t have the patience to make these!

CROSSOVER EDITS. I want to keep this place Pokémon-specific!

DNI BANNERS. Too much discourse surrounding these as they’re all subjective, leave me out of it!

ON SHIPPING BOARDS.

These are fictional characters, don’t start yapping up my ask box over a ship you don’t like.

POWER IMBALANCE. These are fine.

ADULT AGE GAPS. These are also fine.

INCEST, HUMAN X POKÉMON SHIP BOARDS - incest ships? Not my cup of tea. You guys do you, but I don’t feel comfortable making these types of boards. Human x Pokémon, I don’t mind it, but I’d just prefer not to post on here. Feel free to request non-ship, dual-character boards for these types of characters, though. They just won’t be... shippy boards.

On adult x minor...

IFFY ON THESE. It isn’t a hard no because some characters have ambiguous ages, some characters have canonically aged ( looking at you, PokeSpe! ), some people go by the timeline and some people don’t, the timeline is funky in places ( hello, games and PokeAni! )... I’ll use my best judgement. Ghetsis x Hilda or Steven x May won’t fly, but Saturn x Thorton or Thorton x Leaf or Leaf x Raihan will - those examples all have ambiguous ages, or timeline aging means that they could fit together without issue.

Ultimately, for shipping boards, I don’t care what you ship, but for my own comfort as the person putting these together, and for the comfort of people browsing this blog, these are my rules.

If I’m not comfortable with a ship you submit, I’ll just turn it into a dual-character board without any shipping undertones. Thank you for your understanding.

THIS BLOG WILL NOT...

BE ABLE TO TAG INDIVIDUAL TRIGGERS. I tag with character names and Pokémon names for searching or blacklisting, and I’ll tag for any common triggers that show up, but I simply won’t be able to remember people’s individual triggers.

#// do not reblog!

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blackicephantom · 3 years

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The black dragon and the coward CH. 12

Note: I know your all waiting for something different, but this needs to happen first. Trust me. Please tell me what you think, because i feel a little insecure about this one......

Please enjoy!

Tagged: @patolemus , @runestarchild

- . - . - . - . - . - . - . - . - . - . - . -

Somewhere in the ocean

A long, serpentine, figure swam slowly through the water, when it felt a certain kind of vibration. The fins on its head tried to locate the origin, but to no avail. Then something poked him at the back of his mind and he started to surface. The blue scales glimmered in the sunlight and the slim face rose skyward. Just a single moment and he heard the cry, the call to come home.

With a swift jump he dove back into the depths of the water, only to jump back out in a high arch and with his own melodious cry. His main fins spread wide and his tail finished his elegant form.

The Oceanblue Raindragon recognized and answered the call to arms. And in a show of power dark storm clouds started to form and seconds later heavy rain fell upon the earth and the sea.

Once his body was back in the water he took the course back home.

Colonello, the Oceanblue Raindragon, swam swiftly and as fast as he could. His family was waiting for him.

Deep in the mountains

Fon sat quietly near his den, when the wind started to pick up and dark clouds started to form. Electricity shot up his spine and he shuddered. He stood up and watched as all the birds stopped singing and the wind howled louder and louder. Red flames engulfed his form and scales replaced soft skin.

In one smooth movement he circled a few times around the mountain he dwelled in, so that his upper body and head are even with the mountain's peak. His mane and his whiskers danced in the wind and he knew. Just then a roar echoed thru his stoney valley and resonated with his own wish and desire.

He rose up, slightly above the mountain top and sang his own song to join that of his brothers. A rough and yet calm sound left his throat and the winds around him turned themselves into little hurricanes and storms, ready to cut down the land itself.

He knew that he said he would look for Kyoya but it seems that this will have to wait, just a little bit longer. As the last note of his cry faded away, he took to the sky and started in the direction of the forest he had left only days prior.

The Bloodred Stormdragon heard and heeded the call to arms.

Inside a secret lab

Beeping filled the dark room a lonesome and glasses wearing figure occupied. Many monitors showed him just as many sceneries and yet nothing changed. He’s been in this laboratory for years now, researching everything that came to mind, but mostly ways to protect his own, so that what happened on that fateful day would not repeat itself. And he’s been waiting. Waiting for that one moment…… Verde knew that his home underground was anything but optional, but he also knew Reborn….. and all the others…..

Suddenly almost all of his instruments measured impossible data. The displays went highwire and a few displays even broke down due to the sudden intensity. A smirk and a low chuckle escaped him. Of course this would happen shortly after he thought about it.

He stood up, ignoring all his different machines and displays and went to the small lift he built to make his way to the surface. On the ride up he thought about many things. Even about his fellow Arcobaleno….. which was more than unusual. But it has been a few years now. And just as Reborn has said: this years have felt like they went by in the blink of an eye for him.

Once he was back above the ground he took a deep breath and looked around.

Unlike what his instruments had shown him, the world was silent. And that could only mean one thing: he was not alone. But out of all the people that knew him, only two could really find him. The first one is the one to call them home and the other one the silent killer in their ranks.

He watched as mist slowly crawled along the ground, which confirmed his suspicion.

A small rustling reached his ears and he just stood still and quiet, once again waiting. Next came hissing and a long indigo coloured body, only seen in parts. The mist grew thicker with every passing moment and the long body started to draw steadily closer. Then there was someone behind him but he doesn’t turn around. Doesn’t need to.

“I see that you’ve found me, Viper.” A hissed laugh was his answer and just as the mist and the stillness had appeared, it vanished. Suddenly there were howling winds and pouring rain and, most importantly, the still sounding roar of their own kin.

Both Arcobaleno looked up into the slowly graying sky and knew it was time.

With the flash of a single lightning bolt a massive creature stood amidst the green. A long maw and strong legs were the most prominent features, closely followed by the sparking yellow spikes that run along it’s back and tail and its dark green scales. Lightning crashed into the trees and rushed through the clouds above while a thick misty blanket fell over the earth, obscuring the view of all that dared to look.

Around that massive body the other one curled in on himself, his body slowly growing and a pair of thin looking wings sprouting from his form.

And thus two more voices joined the almighty song of the weather.

A low and rumbling growl from the Forestgreen Lightningdragon and a deafening yet silent screech from the Indigoblue Mistdragon. Thous two also heard the call to arms and were ready to take back what was once stolen. Their answer resonated with the cries of their brothers and no sooner were they on their way. One digging his way home and the other silently sliding close behind him.

In a village on the other end of the continent

Chains rattled as another foolish human tried to get too close to him, his tails trashing behind him. It's been ages that he has seen the sky or breathed fresh air. These villagers only caught him by sheer luck and a great deal of misfortune on his part.

The long spikes along his back vibrated gently and he raised his head, ignoring the weapons that were pointed at him. The air was charged with something…..exciting. A familiar tension filling his core and making his heart pound. It was like the thrill right before a battle and he fucking missed this. He wanted to stretch his wings, follow the clouds he was born in but this stupid chains kept him grounded.

Then there was a rumbling, right outside his meager cage. He watched as lightning tore through the sky and rain started up, which got stronger and stronger with every passing minute. His anticipation grew as the wind turned into cutting blades, almost blowing his captors away. A storm was brewing and he knew exactly who started it. So he concentrated on the wind, on the vibrations in the air and every sound that comes from somewhere farther away. And there it was: a melody so long forgotten and yet still so beautiful and familiar. The song of his family! It was time to return!

Clouds gathered all around the Village and blocked the usually bright sun. People were starting to panic and the guards that are supposed to keep watch over him became scared. His tails trashed again right before three became one and his two wings became four. Because of the increased mass of his wings the chains keeping him down broke and because of the decreased number of tails the chains keeping him pinned slipped away. He was almost free, yesssss, he could almost taste it! Only thing left to destroy was the cage keeping him here. Four wings returned to being two and one tail became three again and with the spiked tips he just slashed his way to freedom, cutting through the iron bars like nothing.

Taking a running start he swept into the air, chirping his own answer to the long overdue call to arms. The Violentpurple Clouddragon, Skull, was on his way home. Six feathered wings carried him towards his brothers, his purple scales riddled with scars.

The clouds accompanied him and shrouded his figure from view.

Back with Tsuna and Reborn

As Reborn finished his roar he settled back down and listened while he still supported Tsuna at his side. He too could feel the return of the boy's fire and couldn’t help his smirk. Iemitsu and the other foolish have no fucking idea what’s awaiting them.

From far away both could see dark clouds gathering, followed by pounding rain and destructive lightning. The slight breeze slowly grew into turbulent winds which in turn evolved into a raging storm. The air turned humid and the dragon watched satisfied as mist started to spread through the forest. Then he listened as one after another all their voices came together as a unique and beautiful song. All their specific tunes come together but something is still missing…… That’s the moment Reborn hears a soft humming, a tune that Luce used to sing….. It’s a soft lullaby that she sang for the kids.

Roaring once again the Midnightblack Sundragon completed the harmony.

The sky was once again filled with all the raging elements, waiting to avenge the dragon that’s been slain unjustified so long ago and to take revenge for all this undeserved pain and torment.

Inside of Vongola Nono’s office

Timoteo wasn’t an idiot. When he got the notice that Tsuna was missing, again, he knew that something was up. That thous three other boys were not to be found either worried him beyond belief. But when the weather started to change he clasped his hands together and started to pray, because this could only mean one thing.

The Arcobaleno were about to gather. And where the seven strongest get together, calamity almost always follows. And without a sky to soothe their rage he sees no hope for the village and his people. He saw what they could do while trying to protect someone. Now they didn’t have this luxury. He knew that something like this would happen someday, was even prepared to face the dragon's wrath this time. But he had his own duties to fulfill.

A knock on his door interrupted his thoughts and one of his guards entered. “Nono, our mages have returned.” He gave an affirmative hum and sighed. Before the guard could leave again Timoteo called out to him. “Please send in Coyote and the others, it’s an emergency.”

Timoteo, Vongola Nono, hoped against hope and prayed to all gods that would listen that the tragedy would not repeat itself. But when this haunting roar sounds again in the distance, Nono knows that their chances of survival are very slim to none existent. `Please have mercy, oh kind one and spare us the pain. Let us not spill innocent blood, let us not condemn our children.´ It was an old prayer, one that Vongola Primo taught in his time, but Nono has no other option left. A single tear slid down his wrinkled cheek.

`Oh kind one, let us live peacefully and in joy with the dragons harmony, sung in a lovely lullaby.´

_TBC_

#Khr #reborn x tsuna #r27 #dragon and coward #fanfic

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merryfortune · 3 years

Text

The Monster in the Fruits Basket

hi @ina-bon I was your secret santa on the discord

Fandom: Yu-Gi-Oh! VRAINS

Ship: Takeru/Kiku

Word Count: 5,876

Tags: Alternate Universe - Fruits Basket, Angst, Hurt/Comfort, Minor or Implied Child Abuse

“I don’t like it here anymore, Gramps…” Takeru confessed and he stared at his hands whilst thinking about her. Kiku. “It feels like I’m sitting in a lukewarm bath. I’m just getting pruney.”

His Grandfather regarded him cautiously. Ever with a stern brow and a stern upper lip.

Takeru swallowed. “I want to go out and fend for myself again for a bit. I’m sick of being here. I want to pursue my passions in judo and other martial arts. When we went camping for those few months last year, it was the best time of my life. I feel antsy and dull in comparison to living here. With them.”

“I disagree.” his Grandfather said. “I think you are making excuses.”

“I’m not!” Takeru snarled, he banged his hand on the table.

The door slid and Kiku was there, she was holding onto a tray of rice balls and looked jumpy and apologetic. Takeru looked up at her and the grizzle in his face all but vanished when he saw her. His eyes were wide, lit up, and for a moment, a flicker of remorse for having raised his voice.

“Sorry, this is a bad time. But, when you're ready to come down stairs, there will be rice balls and other refreshments.” Kiku said and she excused herself just as quickly as she had interrupted.

“I disagree vehemently.” Takeru’s Grandfather insisted, a low growl to his voice.

Takeru glared. He felt like he was pushing at a wall which wouldn’t budge for it was all bricked up and mortared and more. And when that energy expired, he collapsed over the table, burying his head in the crooks of his overlapping, folded arms. The beads - bone yellow and blood orange - clinked on his wrist and glinted in the fluorescence of his bedroom’s light on the ceiling.

This was twice now that Takeru’s Grandfather had to see his own, intimate kin wear that bracelet.

He recalled meeting The Cat as a youth but his youth may as well have been another world with how it changed and collided. He had been playing out in the courtyard with a ball, just bouncing it off every surface available whilst trying not to hit any of the servants or other passerbys until it bounced to the other end. Into what appeared to be a barely open shed. He had crept inside and found a man in a beautiful kimono in a small room but he was caged. He was also holding the handball that he had been playing. They exchanged pleasantries and the man handed back the ball and he left. The man seemed glad to have had a visitor but his visitor was unsettled by the whole exchange, it seemed so ordinarily peculiar.

He would only later learn that person was The Cat but he would learn it at a wake he unintentionally attended.

After that Cat died, the next one was born and after that surreal moment, like a dollop of honey on a wooden spoon, in a summer afternoon, playing handball, the next Cat was born to him and his wife. He liked to think that he had done his best to raise the next Cat but life was arbitrary.

Takeru shouldn’t have been born the Cat but his father died before he even learned he was a father. A freak accident. It could have been anyone. And his mother. His poor mother. She drove herself to madness because of her husband’s death and when her son was born, when she held him in her arms for the first time, still covered in the mire of being born, he did not remain a baby. He grew fur and claws, became a white and ginger kitten.

It was harrowing for her to say the least and for six years, Takeru never saw his grandparents or even the outside world. He was his mother’s little treasure in every sense of possession. His little hands forever checked for stray hairs and claws. His little wrist was the most delicate of all as she checked that the rosary against all that being inhabited by the spirit and jealous of the Cat entailed. The rituals of it all were ceaseless until one day she didn’t come home from grocery shopping and she still hadn’t even ten years later.

“I think you should go down and have something to eat.” Takeru’s Grandfather told him.

“I’m not hungry.” Takeru complained.

“You should eat regardless, then.” his Grandfather continued. “You will need the strength tonight. There’s a storm.”

“I’m not some little kid anymore,” Takeru spat, “I’m not afraid of storms.”

His Grandfather smirked and there was a clash of thunder. Takeru stiffened to the last hair on the back of his neck.

“Then this discussion is over. Until further notice, I want you to stay here, in this lukewarm bath as you called it. If you run away, I will make sure she brings you back.” his Grandfather said.

Takeru lifted his head off the table and his arms, he quirked his brow, “She? Whose she? At least do it yourself, you lazy old fart.” Takeru growled.

His Grandfather ignored him. Gracefully, he got to his feet and Takeru scrambled to join him, a flurry of limbs until he straightened up. They left Takeru’s room and came down stairs to where everyone was. The atmosphere decidedly terse.

Everyone was clustered around the long, low table in the centre of the room, trying to avoid the windows as they banged and rattled. At the moment, it was more the wind than the rain itself which had everyone on edge - assuming it was the weather at all which had made them uncomfortable, and not whatever they had overheard from upstairs between Takeru and his Grandfather.

Still, Kiku sat on her knees and she already had two plates at the ready as she hailed down Takeru and his Grandfather. Takeru readily sat down next to her as she piled one rice balls onto his plate before sliding it towards him with a smile. Takeru’s grandfather observed her, still standing up, awkwardly hovering close to Shoichi and Jin who were watching similarly twitchy.

“See? No chives since I know you don’t like chives.” Kiku piped up. “Oh, and these ones are tuna-mayo since those are your favourite but this one’s chicken.”

Takeru smiled. “Thanks, Kiku.” he replied but as he accepted the food, his smile faltered. He was thankful for her but she also represented too much to him but he ate the food to be polite. “It’s good.”

“I’m glad to hear it.” Kiku smiled.

With Takeru eating, it could be argued that the atmosphere was easing up from its irrational tenseness. Even Ryoken, who was sitting in the corner, like the mouse that he was, had unhooked his arms from around him and had reached for more of Kiku’s rice balls. She encouraged Ryoken to take more but saying that prickled Takeru, so he grabbed another - one which didn’t appear flecked with chives - and wolfed it down all but immediately.

He didn’t spare a moment to savour it as he swallowed. He was just thankful for the food. It somehow felt that dinner was so long ago but it wasn’t really. The argument that he had had with his Grandfather had simply exacerbated that distance but the rice balls were good. Kiku was a good - no, great - cook. From the moment that she had arrived at this hodgepodge house for the exiles of the Main Kogami manor, Kiku had been charming all of those around her.

Takeru kind of wished he had been there. That moment when she had all but turned up out of the blue and introduced herself to her so-called neighbours; enchanting Shoichi with not only her etiquette but her knowledge of the Chinese Zodiac. His little painted models had been fatefully sitting out in the sun and she had mentioned it to him, talked about how adorable they were but it was a set of twelve rather than thirteen and she was the biggest fan of the Cat from the story. She didn’t want him to be lonely.

But Takeru was the Cat and he wanted to be lonely because bad things happened to those around him when he was anything but lonely.

Yet, since meeting Kiku, Takeru had felt a slight change in him. A transformation different to how he became the Cat and how he became… nevermind that. Kiku was the reason that his fingers were pruning in this lukewarm bath. She treated him with a kindness that he wasn’t used to. Telling him he had a plum on his back and that she wanted to learn things about him, from him, going so far as to do her own research on subjects that he liked such as martial arts. She was dense and happy-go-lucky but her laugh was like nectar. He liked it best when she was smiling, with her golden eyes all lit up like the sun.

Soon enough, Takeru had eaten more than the lion’s share of the rice balls that Kiku had prepared, disgruntling Ryoken in the process but having seen his grandson eat so vigorously, Takeru’s Grandfather was pleased. Yes, there was a tentative serenity to sitting around, having a snack after dinner. There was even laughter and Shoichi, who was standing around, watching, hoping Jin wouldn’t come down from his nap at an inopportune time because it seemed like now was the time to strike. Just when there was a lull in the group.

“Takeru,” his grandfather interrupted the teenagers at the low table, “I want to go outside. To spar.”

“Huh? What?” Takeru half-growled, raising an eyebrow at the absurdity of such a demand. “It’s pouring outside.”

“I think it could be fun,” Shoichi piped up, voice suspiciously airy, “and its not pouring, just… spitting.”

Everyone glanced out the door on that. Opened just enough to let a breeze in because the days had grown humid and stuffy thanks to the spring showers. And it was dark out there but not with thick storm clouds. Just with twilight settling down in the puddles.

“Ooh, you could show me that left hook that you’ve been working on, pretty please?” Kiku emphasised, taking the bait that Shoichi had set out. “You’re always talking about what a great judo master your grandfather is, I want to see this in action.”

“It would be nice.” Takeru said, embarrassedly thinking about how he had been hankering to do just that for the past day since his Grandfather had come around to visit.

“Good.” Ryoken piped up. “I’ll look forward to seeing an old man kick your ass.” Yet despite his stoking remarks, he seemed dubious of this sudden exhibition match between Takeru and his grandfather.

“Oh, shut up.” Takeru snarled but in a more playful way than usual.

“Should we wake Jin up?” Kiku asked, looking towards Shoichi. “It sounds exciting, he should come down.”

Shoichi waved her off. “Him getting enough rest is more important, besides, his sport of choice is soccer. Not martial arts, I doubt he’d be interested.”

“Yeah, that’s true…” Kiku agreed.

With that settled, despite a strange crackling feeling in the air which wasn’t lightning about to strike, everyone got up and shuffled outdoors. Going from the cool air conditioning indoors, just behind a sliver of glass, to getting out into the soggy grass of the front yard was disconcerting. It was humid - sticky and all encompassing - and getting dark. Storm clouds brewed and despite the subtle strangeness of it all, Takeru and his Grandfather took position in front of their crowd.

Kiku stood with Shoichi who stood with Ryoken who stood by himself, out the front, just by the window. Kiku clasped onto her hands, cooing, as she watched how Takeru and his Grandfather eyed each other down. It was heated and fiery, without words, as they stared, readying their stances, and then pouncing.

They all gasped as Takeru was entirely outclassed by his grandfather. Takeru couldn’t let a single strike on his grandfather; he seemed so strangely clumsy compared to his grandfather who avoided him with ease. The nimbleness that Kiku, and even Ryoken, associated with Takeru seemed so slow as his grandfather blocked and parried his decisive movements.

“Appalling.” his Grandfather scolded him.

Takeru gritted his teeth as he tried to force a landing on his Grandfather but he was stopped entirely. His Grandfather took his forearm and grabbed him. It was a reversal of all Takeru’s raw strength funnelled into his own upheaval. Takeru landed with a thud on his back on the ground. Kiku grimaced as she knew she would be the one to do the laundry later.

“Is that it?” Shoichi asked. He scratched his goatee in thought.

Takeru’s Grandfather sank to Takeru’s level. “You’re short-sighted, boy.” he said.

“You don’t say?” Takeru sassed him. “Better get new glasses, I’ve been on the wrong prescription for years then.” He wasn’t even wearing his glasses tonight; they had been annoying him.

His Grandfather rolled his eyes at him. “You need help. To get better at your practice, you need a more holistic and unafraid approach. One more balanced than brute strength. And I’m going to show you how.”

Takeru’s eyes widened as he had the ghost of a question on his tongue, “What…?” he barely managed to eek out of his mouth as he had a terrible realisation of just how helpless he was in this position. His grandfather took his hand and Takeru watched as the bracelet around his wrist, supported and protected, was removed.

It felt as though time slowed for Takeru as he tried to get up, tried to get the bracelet back, tried to resist every inch of what was happening to him.

Shoichi stood, gawking, and guilty. He was acting strange but he couldn’t look away. Completely unlike Ryoken who shut down with what was happening. He looked away, eyes closed tight, and Kiku noticed how he flinched. She had an exclamation or a gasp just beyond her lips but she could only focus on Takeru as he ripped himself from the ground and how his Grandfather let the bracelet drop into the mud. A transformation completely unlike anything Kiku had seen occurred.

When Kiku had first arrived at this house, it had been one accident after another which led into a spiral of female on male contact. Nothing serious. Just hugs and even something as simple as brushing up against Shoichi and then Ryoken and then Takeru had caused the curse upon them to activate. It was silly and kind of funny in hindsight as the pretty looking young men around turned into a dog, a mouse, and a cat respectively. It had been strange but light-hearted.

This, what was happening now, was strange and anything but light-hearted. It was monstrous.

There was genuine fear and horror in Takeru’s eyes as he tried to get up but his body disobeyed him as he transformed. A transformation that was jagged and unshielded by the mist usually produced by the curse. This was raw and grotesque. A stench emanating through the yard, from Takeru, as his muscles burst and his bones broke, reshaping, until he was anything but human. Or even like an animal.

Ryoken refused to look towards Takeru’s general direction; he had a hand clamped over his mouth and he was gagging. Shoichi was transfixed the same way one became transfixed around disasters like car wrecks. He was pale but stern. Kiku. Kiku was somehow both. Her stomach knotted as she recoiled visibly because of the smell and the sights; she wanted to look away, to alleviate the strange and horrible feeling in her gut, but she was unable to.

Takeru became a creature the likes of which Kiku had never seen.

His proportions were all wrong. On all fours and with a long tail but his appendages were stooped in ways that looked broken. His fingers were elongated and his bones were sharp beneath the taut skin of a sickly orange. And his muzzle was jagged with huge, gleaming eyes that were predatory and afraid.

His Grandfather rose to his full height and he observed cooly as Takeru launched himself from the ground in shame. In fear.

“Ta...keru-kun?” Kiku murmured. She blinked.

The sound of Takeru’s claws scraping through mud, through tile, through tree branches - wherever he landed in his fleeing leaps and bounds - echoed through the air. It began to rain but the rain barely softened the horrid sounds: the crunching and the breaking.

“That is the other form of the Cat Spirit,” Takeru’s Grandfather began to explain to the dumbfounded Kiku, “does it disgust you?”

Kiku was silent but she leaned forward slightly with a horrified stare and a slackened jaw.

“Does it scare you?” he asked.

Kiku was silent but she was no longer still. She was propelled forward on something like instinct. She kept her head up and she passed by the bracelet in the mud as she kept going forward, as uneven and rock as her steps were. Where she ignored it, Takeru’s Grandfather picked it up and said his prayers for his grandson on it: not praying to any deity, just a girl whom he, and many others affected and involved with curse, had high hopes for.

Kiku ran into the forest. Chasing after Takeru or what had become of him in this other form. She had no idea. She had no idea that the burden of his Curse ran so deep but it certainly explained some things. In the dark, she was blind to everything but she kept going forward, trying to find Takeru, unfettered even as she fell over and tripped. As she knew she had no idea what she was getting into. The instinct she was acting on was the kindness that she had been taught and she valued so dearly.

She had to keep going, she thought to herself, before bile spiked suddenly in the back of her throat. She got up, on her hands, but she felt her whole body weaken and she threw up in front of herself. She wretched quickly, fouled by the taste and the quickness of how it had come from nowhere but it stopped her altogether.

Confusion was thick and rotten all around her. Kiku didn’t know what to do, what would be right and what would be wrong, that was the truth of the matter as she tried to grapple with what she had seen. The sight of Kyo’s transformation was not something that Kiku would forget soon; the botched way his arms bent and the way his eyes gleamed. Recalling them was more than enough to elicit fear from her, making her skin prickle and her stomach squirm again. But, even so, with tears in her eyes and on unsteady legs, Kiku got up. She clutched onto a tree for leverage as she got up. She kept going.

The rain felt freezing after being so hot. It was pouring down now with no end in sight. Only misery.

Takeru sat on his haunches as far away as he could. He pulled up his knees to his chin and buried himself in himself. He clenched his eyes shut and he felt like a child. Beneath the leathery hide of this monstrous form, he felt like a small and vulnerable child again. Between every lash of cold rain, he could swear that he felt his mother’s breath on him, slowly encroaching on him with a cruel and all encompassing embrace, her hands following his limbs along to that bracelet.

Those memories of his mother raked through him. A growl dribbled out of his mouth in genuine pain of them - and of this transformation. It was anything but painless, it felt like sulphur was in his veins. He hated it and he hated her and he especially hated her love. How it was transfixed on making sure he was protected, insulated, from the big, wide world which would hate him more than she hated him.

Takeru whimpered to himself, all alone, on a little island in the middle of the flooded pond in the forest. He just wanted the world to collapse in on itself so he didn’t have to deal with it. He thrashed about, causing landslides around him with his claws but the senseless violence did little to quell all that fear and fury in his heart. Growling, he looked up, and he was surprised to see someone on the edge of the trees, on the shoreline of the pond.

Kiku stood there, wonky and awkward, holding onto herself and a tree. She was looking out across the murky water to him. She tried calling out to him but her voice was too weak. Takeru’s wasn’t.

He snapped at her, shouting, “Go away!” A monstrous snarl to his voice.

Kiku didn’t even flinch as Takeru’s voice boomed across the water and through the rain. She just stared with this sympathetic look to her face.

“Why… Why the hell’re you following me like nothing’s the goddamn matter?!” Takeru growled.

Kiku tried to call Takeru’s name again but he cut her off with a howl. Her body language drooped. Saddened. And yet she stepped forward, nonetheless. The water was cold and thick around her, even at just her ankles.

“I said go away.” Takeru growled, his voice frayed at the edges now. “What’s wrong with you…? Are you blind? Can’t you smell…?”

Kiku kept coming forward. Takeru watched how she waded through the water, how it ate up to her knees now and how she held herself as she approached.

“Don’t you hate me? I-I’m creepy and sickening and we both know it.” Takeru whimpered. But then he turned to a roar: “Why can’t you leave me alone?!”

Kiku slowly set foot on the island that Takeru was on. She felt exhausted. Drenched to the bone, the taste of vomit still on her mouth, to say nothing of the stench that reeked around her so she came to her hands and knees. Still, she crawled closer to Takeru, her eyes wide and huge.

“I don’t need any of your pity.” Takeru murmured.

Kiku listened but she kept crawling closer. Mud on her hands and knees, skirt dragging in the mire. She came within a talking distance of Takeru, stood at his paws on the mound, and looked up at him.

“Please…” he begged her. “Please, don’t do this.”

“Takeru-kun, but I…” Kiku murmured as she lifted a hand to him with the intention of stroking him so that he might feel some vain semblance of comfort in the downpour and misery. “But I love-”

Takeru didn’t want to hear it. The way that seemingly simple word tumbled out of her mouth elicited the worst in Takeru. He struck out. He swiped at Kiku, tossing her back as she was nothing but a rag doll before him. Kiku screamed, more from the impact than from the horror of being hurt by her friend.

“Don’t touch me!” Takeru growled. “Get lost!”

Kiku was thrown into the water. A huge splash followed after her and then nothing. Just the harsh pitter patter of the rain hitting the coarse surface of the water. There was a moment where Takeru watched, with regret, before Kiku rose up. She broke through, panting and gasping, in the shallows on the bough of the island, fingers scrunching through the mire below her as she roiled with how she had been thrown and near drowned.

“You’re annoying, I want you gone.” Takeru spat with guilt. “Next time, I’ll hurt you for real. For good…”

Kiku dithered and her hand drew back. She noticed that the sleeve of her shirt was torn and beneath was fresh, stinging scrapes. She was lucky they were only shallow but they hurt like an acid burn, not just a cut. She clamped her hand over them for searing relief but it was curt. She looked up at Takeru again, her golden eyes looked like umber in the dim rain.

Takeru turned his back on her. He didn’t want to see her anymore and he didn’t want her to see him, either. He begged and begged that she would turn tail but all, save for the rain, was still. Silent.

Then, slowly but surely, with her head hung low, Kiku got up. Water dripped off her in the course of her sluggish movements and she chewed her lower lip. And she made her decision. She turned around and walked off. Her legs like lead as she dragged them through the pond.

Takeru’s ears, long and ribbon-like, anything but feline or human, twitched. He could hear Kiku leave, the sludge that moved around her, and Takeru’s muscles tightened. He wanted to hurt her so bad that she never forgives him. He had hurt her bad enough that she left - and maybe even left for good - and he wanted that and yet, his heart clenched. He didn’t want her to worry about him and Takeru knew - thought - that lashing out was the best option but… but he wanted to look back and he wanted to see Kiku looking back as well. Even if it was just once before moving on for good because things were too wrecked to be fixed or forgiven.

Takeru couldn’t take it anymore. He was sick of losing people; he was sick of pity, he was sick of feeling miserable, and most of all, he was sick of having things forced upon him.

He remembered something his mother said whilst taking his hand, toying with the beads of the bracelet on his wrist, but he couldn’t remember how cruelly she smiled. He remembered her assuring him that no, he was as human as anyone else. It was all just bad magic that this just so happens to happen to him. The fact that he became a child again afterwards was proof that the human was not the monster because the monster was temporary. That was trite but what she said afterwards was worse. She told him that she wasn’t scared at all and that she loved him. What rotten lies.

She couldn’t have loved him less and she couldn’t have been terrified more. Takeru was revolted with certainty.

Every hour of every day, she checked to make sure that abominable bracelet was in place. She would draw the curtains tight and never let him out of her sight. It had been abhorrent but he had been a child. He hadn’t known any better or anything else but now that he did. He didn’t want anything akin to that ever again and he would rage against such sentiments in whatever form that they took before him.

Even if it was Kiku. Kiku who remembered his dislikes and wanted to engage in his likes and told him that he had a plum on his back. Kiku was, Takeru realised with an alien ease, the first person to recognise him and acknowledge the real him. Completely unlike others who had been in his life before who claimed to love him, like his mother.

Takeru buried his head in his hands. A guttural growl leaked out of between the crooked gaps of his teeth all wrong for his bizarre maw. He knew how those memories ended. Without closure. With his mother simply disappearing and how distant, faceless relatives told him, without knowing a thing about him, that his mother loved him above all.

“Stop it!” Takeru roared, thrashing around, swinging his arms, pounding his fists into the ground below. “I don’t want that kind of love forced on me! I don’t need it...”

He kept murmuring it over and over. I don’t need it. And at the edge of the shallows, where only her ankles were wet, Kiku did hear him. She stopped and she sucked in a breath. She looked over her shoulders, her eyes that were pooled with hot tears, and she surged forward. A force of nature in her own right, outclassing that of the downpour that continued torrentially over them.

Water skirted up the side of her as she ran back through the mire. She slipped and tripped, here and there, but was undeterred. She flung herself onto Takeru. He flinched as he felt her embrace the long spike of his bowed elbow. She buried her face in his grotesque skin. His head bent around with a snarl but Takeru couldn’t bring himself to say something as Kiku hid herself using his limb.

“Let’s go home…” Kiku murmured. “We have to go home.” She reefed her face off him, holding him tighter, her cheeks were flushed as she insisted with the utmost determination, “We have to go home together.”

Takeru blinked and he felt his heart waver.

“O-Otherwise, I have a feeling, Takeru-kun won’t come back home - to that house - ever again.” Kiku said.

She took a sharp breath and she could swear she could hear the front entranceway door of Shoichi’s place slam shut. She cringed. She just knew that Takeru was on the other side of that slam and she didn’t want him to be.

“Stop. Let go.” Takeru growled.

“No!” Kiku shouted, holding him tighter.

“Don’t you get it?!” Takeru snarled.

“No!” Kiku yelled. “No, I don’t get it.”

“Let go of me!” Takeru howled.

Takeru pulled back his arm. His head reared back, maw snapping, teeth glinting, and he hoped to forcibly rip Kiku off him but as he flailed about, Kiku held on. Her legs lolled about, straightly, as she held on for dear life to his arm. She whimpered, afraid, but trying to be brave. He slammed her into the ground, belly first and the blow winded her. She sputtered in the aftermath and Takeru glared. Fierce and vermillion.

Still face planted, Kiku mumbled, “I’m scared…”

Takeru’s ears pricked up. He had almost missed it but he heard her. Her tiny little voice rife with terror. And despite that terror, Kiku began to get up. Her hands trembled but she still tried to hold onto the monster that was Takeru for anchorage.

“R-Right now, even though… even though I hear your voice, it doesn’t sound like you.” Kiku murmured. She shook as she got to her knees, still too weak to properly face Takeru. “Y-You’re in a form I’ve never seen before a-and it scares me.”

Takeru stared. His lips were pulled back in an uncertain and feral way, and Kiku embraced him through it. Gladdened that he had stilled.

“But I want to… I want to understand you now.” Kiku said. “Just like you listen to me when I’m discouraged,” she thought of how they had studied together after that big test had wiped them both out and how their marks improved together afterwards, she thought of how Takeru, and Ryoken, had gone to collect her from her grandfather’s house after the renovations and how it felt so wrong until she had seen him again, and finally she thought of New Years, sitting on the rooftop with him, making wishes on the stars and the skylines, “I want you to tell me when you are scared or hurting, or when you’re feeling weak, and let me worry about you! B-Because I want to keep living together with you.”

Takeru examined Kiku through the lens of his slit eye. She trembled, soaked with water and mud, and she looked pathetic. But she was being honest. His heart fluttered somewhere within the arcane structure of this body’s form.

“I want to eat with you, study with you, and worry about you… All those things, I want to continue to live with you.” Kiku sobbed as she embraced Takeru’s malformed arm. Her tears dripped down her face, mingled with the raindrops.

Kiku trembled as she held onto him, a bawl in the back of her throat. Her words, though quiet, managed to silence the world. The clouds above were grey and Takeru stilled with shock as he listened to her impassioned pleading. And there was a change, almost imperceptible but Kiku felt it. She looked up.

Takeru, naked as the day he was born, stood on his own two legs and he spoke not facing her, “It would have been fine if she didn’t love me at all…”

Kiku was slow as she clutched onto Takeru’s lithe arm, he was wet with the slick of the rain. Kiku felt a little bit confused but elated too, with relief, as she looked at him, unacknowledged. Tears pooled in her eyes but she wasn’t crying, even if the muscles of her throat felt soggy and thick.

“Or if she was scared of me…” Takeru continued, almost aimlessly but there was a shine to his voice, as though he were having a divine revelation about his relationships with others. “Being scared would have meant that she was seeing the ugly part of me. But Mom used to love to avoid looking at me. She avoided thinking about it - and I think she avoided thinking about the ugly parts of Dad, too, or maybe I was just the straw that broke her back…” Takeru began to sink, he sat down and Kiku joined him on her knees, still clutching onto him because she wanted him to feel some comfort in her fingertips. “But I wanted her to think it through with me, to worry with me. I wanted to tell her all the painful things but I never could.” His eyes began to water, his lilac-grey irises were glassy. “I wanted to live in the present with her.”

Kiku reached out and cupped Takeru’s face. He was finally able to look at her. Her hair had become untied and was in waves and clumps of cobalt black. Her golden eyes were huge with concern and worry, edged with lingering tears.

Takeru swallowed a lump in his throat. He had always thought… He had always thought nobody would want to say those things to him, with him. See him as a monster and see him as a cat and seeing him as him as well. Takeru’s heart trembled and his head throbbed. He began to slump forward, into Kiku’s arms.

For a second, Kiku thought she was going to be kissed but then Takeru hugged her. One arm cupping her back and the other taking her hand as his body, weak and wracked with exhaustion, all but crashed into her. He nuzzled his face against Kiku’s, he heard a tiny gasp and then a little, thank goodness, under her breath. And in that goodness, Takeru felt a sublime peace that he had never truly known until this moment right here in the mud and mire.

“Kiku…” he whispered to her, grateful. He felt her flowing tears on his bare skin.

The sky began to lighten. Clouds began to part for a feeble but kind sunshine that illuminated the drear of it all and Kiku held Takeru in her arms. He slept, a calico cat, white and ginger, in her arms and he dreamed softly, of dark nightmares melting back to sweet dreams as he was taken home by Kiku.

#ina-bon #ina bon #entrustshipping #yugioh vrains #vrains #yugioh #takeru homura #kiku kamishirakawa #writing tag #merry writes stuff #i hope you enjoy!!!! <333333

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grians-perch · 3 years

Text

FAQ!

Q: Isn't DSMP kin factkin?

A: I do not view DSMP kin as factkin. In fact, I am strongly against factkin. To show my view, please consider this. Did the cc!Wilbur blow up a nation? Did cc!Dream really kill cc!Tommy? No! They didn't! When non-kinfolk talk about the smp, they even use c! before a name to specify they're talking about the character! I view the characters as separate from the creators because they are! /nm, if you don't feel the same way, I completely understand, and recommend blocking! ^.^

Q: Can factives request from here? What do you think of factives?

A: Factives are completely valid. Full stop. I will say this now, I love and accept factives! I am not willing to do factive requests, but again you are all very valid!

Q: [Insert question about systems]

A: I am not qualified to speak on system issues! Please do not bring system issues into my inbox, as I am not able to talk for systems.

Q: What are your TW tags?

A: I tag my trigger warnings with [trigger] tw! Example: covid tw, school tw, etc! I do not tag food with a tw, as that is harmful to people with EDs, but I do tag posts with food as #//food in case I have followers who are participating in things like Ramadan or would prefer not to see food posts!

Q: What is your policy on using art?

A: I try to only use art for stimboards! When I use art, I try my hardest to find the original art. If it isn't the correct source and I find out, I will immediately change the art used and change the link! If an artist doesn't want me using their art in the stimboard, I will also change the art as soon as I find out and fix the link!!! Artists work very hard and I don't want to cross their boundaries!

Q: How does kin care kit requesting work?

A: Here is the explanation post! And here is the post with availabilities! Kin care kits don't open without an announcement, and I'll keep posting announcements as spots run out, so you don't need to ask if they're open! :D

Q: Can factk!n request? Why are factk!n on your DNI?

A: Factk!n can in no circumstances request. While I don't owe anyone an in depth explanation, I will say that factk!n not only invoke a trauma response from me, but I also don't agree with them morally or on a belief level. They make me very uncomfortable. Here are some of my posts about factk!n. Here are some posts on why factk!n are bad. Factk!n are NOT the same as factives!

Q: I sent/tagged you in a blog promo and you didn't post it! Why is that?

A: Here is a post detailing possible reasons and fixes!

I hope this helps people on the blog!

- Mod Crow

#long reads #not a request #important #blog psa #FAQ

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bsd-bibliophile · 5 years

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I can't remember which one, but I read in the foreword of an anthology that "Yamazaki Tomie's attempts to lure Dazai into double suicide" are well documented, and that Dazai was actually trying to rid himself of his mistress. Is there any truth to that?

The evidence from their suicide seems to be documented well enough and there are multiple theories on what exactly happened between Dazai and his mistress, Yamazaki Tomie, the night they both died. Although there is probably less information about it available in English than Japanese, so we always have to consider that the English texts might not be giving us all the information (though I would assume the translators try to give us as complete a picture as possible). I’ll gather up a few relevant quotes first so the facts are all in one place and then add my own commentary at the bottom:

Dazai also began seeing Yamazaki Tomie, a war widow who worked in a beauty salon. While with her, he wrote another novel, ‘No Longer Human,’ began his last unfinished work, ‘Good-bye,’ and entertained thoughts of double suicide, which led to both of them dying on June 16, 1948 [three days before Dazai’s thirty-ninth birthday].

- Source: Alan Stephen Wolfe, Suicidal Narrative in Modern Japan: The Case of Dazai Osamu

The rest of the quotes go into a little more detail about the suicide, so I’m going to put them under the cut just in case.

Osamu Dazai had tried to take his own life on a number of occasions, two of these attempts assuming the form of shinjuu, the traditional Japanese suicide pact entered into by a pair of lovers. But when he disappeared with his mistress on a rainy night in mid-June of 1948, the signs that he was thoroughly prepared to die were unmistakable. Dazai and his companion, Tomie Yamazaki, left behind a series of farewell notes to friends and kin, the author conscientiously composing his last will and testament for his wife, Michiko. Photographs of Dazai and Tomie stood next to one another in Tomie’s lodging in the Tokyo suburb of Mitaka, along with the traditional water offering to the deceased. Also, nearby was a small pile of ashes, all that remained of the incense that the lovers had lit before departing. After the police began an intensive search for the couple’s whereabouts, they eventually found a suspicious-looking place along the Tamagawa Canal, midway between Dazai’s own home and Tomie’s residence. A strip of wet grass lay flattened from the top to the bottom of the bank, as if something heavy had slid down into the water. The ground nearby was strewn with several objects - a small bottle or two, a glass plate, a pair of scissors, and a compact. A little ways downstream, two pairs of wooden clogs were found against the lock of a dam. Despite these ominous signs, an intensive search along the canal failed to turn up anything more. It was almost a week later - on June 19, the author’s thirty-ninth birthday - that a passer-by happened to notice two waterlogged corpses in the canal tied together with a red cord. This discovery occurred less than a mile from where the couple had evidently entered the water.

- James O’Brien, Crackling Mountain and Other Stories Introduction

Appropriately enough, given Dazai’s history of suicide attempts, [his] final act is subject to some doubt. There were rumors that Dazai was the victim of a homicide carried out by his lover Tomie. The basis for this theory consisted of unconfirmed reports, denied by the police, that signs of the corpse indicated possible strangulation. There were also said to be traces of geta (wooden clogs) in the sand, indicating that Dazai might have been dragged into the water. The homicide theory is reinforced by the realization that Dazai’s unfinished work, ominously titled in English ‘Good-bye,’ was not a farewell to life, as might lend credence to the suicide theory, but rather a farewell to ‘women.’ Accordingly, it is proposed that Tomie, sensing a separation, might have lured Dazai to his death. He may have gone along unsuspectingly, or he may have let himself be led, and then resisted, only to be subdued by her determination. Presumably, though, he was in a state of health and mind that would not have discouraged compliance. He may also have been drinking. A writer of similar tendencies, Sakaguchi Ango, invoking Dazia’s tendency toward alcoholic depression, called it a ‘hangover suicide.’

- Alan Stephen Wolfe, Suicidal Narrative in Modern Japan: The Case of Dazai Osamu

The impact of Dazai’s death was immediate and profound (the body was discovered on June 19, his thirty-ninth birthday), the news of it precipitating a flood of public eulogies of a most intimate variety. There were few who failed to attach significance to the fact of Dazai’s death coming at this juncture of the postwar period. There were many, especially among the young, whose identification with Dazai was intensified with his death, some to the point of considering or actually committing suicide themselves. For them there was little doubt that Dazai’s death being a deliberate suicide. It seemed reasonable enough, and it was esthetically irresistible, that Dazai should have completed his lifework with his own death. Coming as it did at the peak of his life and career, and at the time of national trauma, Dazai’s apparent suicide provided Japan with a human symbol of despair that set into bold relief the shadow lurking behind the optimism of postwar reconstruction.

- Alan Stephen Wolfe, Suicidal Narrative in Modern Japan: The Case of Dazai Osamu

Ibuse Masuji, Dazai’s writing mentor and friend, was a recipient of one of the suicide notes left by Dazai (you can find an excerpt of the note along with possible meanings behind it here). Ibuse-sensei wrote this as a response to Dazai’s suicide:

The police officer told his story. A writer by the name of Dazai had thrown himself into the water. When the corpse was found he went to the scene as the investigating detective. The results of his examination revealed bruises on Mr. Dazai’s neck and throat caused by a cord or rope. It was called an involuntary double suicide. In deference to the position of the deceased, however, this was not announced to the public.

- Ibuse Masuji, “The Ways of the Women”

◇────◇────◇────◇────◇────◇─────◇

I’ll let you make any judgments about whether Dazai’s death was a willing suicide or a murder suicide based on the evidence. But it is obvious that Tomie was a willing participant and likely the driving force that made their lovers suicide a reality. I remember reading somewhere (though I’ve since forgotten where) that Tomie and Dazai had agreed a year before their deaths that they would commit suicide together within the year, so there is a possibility that she was holding Dazai to his end of the bargain.

In regard to the idea that Dazai was trying to rid himself of his mistress that idea may come from the unfinished novel he was working on before he died. The novel description on Amazon (which you can buy for $0.99, though it’s only available on ebook) says, “The war is over and life is returning to normal. A man must say goodbye to his ten or so lovers. However, he can’t do this alone, he needs the help of a special but difficult woman.“ The novel is entirely about a man who is trying to get rid of all the women he’s relationships with, so that could be why people think he wanted to rid himself of his mistress in his own life.

There is more information about Dazai and his relationship to his wife and mistresses under my #dazai and women tag in case you’re interested. I hope that this information was informative and helpful.

UPDATE: A few quotes from The Saga of Dazai Osamu were sent a short while after this was posted that explain a little more about the agreement that Dazai and Tomie made a year before they died. You can find those quotes here.

#asks #dazai osamu #suicide #japanese literature #bungo stray dogs #bungou stray dogs #bsd

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