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pizzagame4000 · 1 month

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NOISETTE THEMED DOODLE DUMP ft. cheesecake and the spouses

copious hazel headcanons under the cut because i can’t help myself

first off: her name is Hazel 👍🏻 ik that’s a common one but it’s literally perfect… canon info to me

her favorite thing to do, besides making experimental food, is actually exercising! she’s an incredibly skilled acrobat and stunt artist, so she needs to be fit for that, but she also just enjoys letting the excess energy out bc she gets really cranky otherwise. she’s toned af and could wipe the floor with you - she doesn’t go around picking fights for no good reason, but if she did… heehee

she has such an unending well of passion for all of her interests that some find her to be too much but she dgaf… she’s unabashedly autistic and does NOT care if you don’t want to hear her infodump about obscure cheeseslime genetics, she will do it anyways

i like to think that, although she is very bubbly, she has an insane morbid streak that catches people off guard. she loves talking about anatomy and gross-out subjects to anyone who can stomach it, and cracks the most fucked up jokes - it’s one of the reasons her and noise get along so well. she is thinking about blood and guts because she thinks it’s interesting!!!! she will give you hyperspecific graphic threats of violence if you make her mad!!! teehee!!

i would put her at like… chaotic neutral but leaning towards good. she has an almost scientific fascination with violence and seeing what kinds of stress a body can take, and doesn’t mind watching shit unfold instead of helping… unless something actually super fucked up is going on (like way past canon typical pizza tower violence), she’s not going to bat for you lol she’s gonna grab a camera and clipboard

her interest in anatomy branches out into a love for biology, medicine and health in general - as much as she loves watching her boyfriend beat the shit out of some chump on live tv, she also loves studying how different creatures work and how to treat injuries. she almost became a doctor! but she didn’t like the rigid schedule and pressure, so she fostered her interest in dance and gymnastics, and went into television as a stunt double instead. that’s actually how she met noise! that’s why they look so much alike - she was told to inquire NTV for a job because of the resemblance. noise thought she was so cool she was asked to be his co-star instead, and they’ve been inseparable ever since.

sometimes she gets tired of the noisette persona, but she does genuinely like theo, so it’s hard. she’s been more busy with this NTV gig (that’s looking more like a full blown career) than she would like, so that’s why she opened her cafe - to do something else for once dammit!! she likes weird shit, food included!!!

i have two shipping scenarios i like, so consider these parallel universes - hazel x vigi, and hazel x vigi x noise

if you don’t like negative takes on the noise relationship i’d recommend skipping to 2 ^_^

1. her relationship with noise deteriorates bc noise can’t accept the fact that hazel doesn’t wanna be noisette all the time! they’re so busy, he barely even makes time for her anymore - he barely even tolerates her! it’s not until vigi comes into the picture that she realizes she doesn’t have to deal w that mess. but it sucks cuz noise isn’t just her bf, but also like!!! a big part of her career!!! and she does genuinely love him but he’s just!!! an uncommunicative ass!!! it culminates in hazel leaving him and crashing at vigi’s farm because fuck it, it’s her life she does what she wants. she will kiss the cheese AND rebuild her tv career, on her own terms this time baybee

2. noise and hazel still have that issue but they actually communicate like adults and fix their relationship problems, so none of that shit happens! happy ending! hazel has her own life and theo actually lets his gf know he loves her! woah! enter vigi, in: “we saw you across the bar and we really dig your vibe…” imagining vigi as a third to hazel and theo, completely out of his depth but too bisexual to care, is SO funny to me lol… like hazel and him are probably the only two together at first but over time he and theo warm up to each other more (gay intent) and it’s perfect

#pizza tower #noisette #cheesecake #pizza tower cheesecake #noisecouple #the noise #theodore noise #the vigilante #pizza tower vigilante #headcanons #noisette x vigilante #noisette x noise #i could make an entire oc out of this lol. love adding depth to characters that don’t have much in canon #she deserves it 💯#minor blood tw #just being cautious #don’t think i need to tag the legs joke but 💀 idk how i would anyways #ask to tag #i guess lol

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radiantlyrey · 10 months

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Thoughts on Uprising Ep 7 The Price of Power

- (apparently there’s no “the” in the title???? why?????)

- cold open shows Shaw the scientist, who comes off as the typical misguided evil scientist type. possibly trying out his invention on himself, given his reaction when Beck tries to save him?? He’s an interesting one-scene character, if a little one-note.

- speaking of Beck: kiddo seems pretty upset that he couldn’t save Shaw. Beck’s humanity towards even his enemies has been pretty well established at this point, but I like that he does fail sometimes to save and or spare people (see also the Black Guard from ep1)

- meanwhile in the B plot: Bartik and Hopper are harassing Zed again, with Mara not taking their guff. Also Zed’s crush is showing again, poor guy. Pulling from later in the episode, I am still fucking BOGGLED that Bartik here and Bartik in Legacy are the same fucking guy!!! How do you go from collaborating with the fascist regime to……. leading an uprising faction against it???? Like HOLY SHIT. Forget Beck; I wanna know what the arc of Bartik’s story is!!!!!!!

- back at Tron’s place: infodump about what the disc add on does, Beck works at a place with a thing that can destroy it, etc. that said: “when are you ever not serious?” OOH BURN NICELY DONE BECK. Also it’s fucking true; Tron is The Grid’s Biggest Grump. Still love him tho…..

- and then, because Beck has a Saving People Thing, he falls right in the middle of Paige’s trap and has to use the weapon to get out and this is why I don’t like this episode!!! I do not like amped up, cocky Beck one fucking bit. I had an epiphany later in the episode, this ep is basically the Spider-Man 3 plot condensed into 22 mins and Beck is basically Symbiote Peter here and I Do Not Like It. I get it, I do, but I really don’t enjoy it at all.

- back at the B plot, it’s nice to see Beck actually like. Interacting with his friends for once. Less nice that it’s under these circumstances (with the shitty personality nonsense), but yeah.

- And then Beck, who is not a great decision maker in the best of times, decides to go and make EVEN WORSE DECISIONS. WHY DID YOU THINK THROWING DOWN WITH TESLER WAS A GOOD IDEA, HON?????????? UGHHHHHHHH

- nice to see Beck snap out of it when Able gets hurt, at least. Kiddo does still have his principles, if nothing else. Also Able recognizing Beck as Tron is interesting as fuck and I hope it is explored more. And then later Zed’s comment about the Renegade: “he’s a menace!!” Which made me think of J. Jonah Jameson and make that Spider-man connection up there and I kinda want a meme or something of that Idk

- back at Tron’s place: THE GIRLS ARE FIGHTINGGGGGGGGGG

- Tron alluding to Beck’s mental as well as physical strength interests me, given the details I have seen about Cyrus (no spoilers here plz, I only watched up to Cyrus’ intro episode 10 years ago, soooo….). And for all that he is a Certified Grump, Tron does seem to care about Beck’s well-being in a prickly, distant parent kind of way, so it’s nice for him to express that belief that Beck will do the right thing.

- meanwhile the ongoing pissing contest between Pavel and Paige continues!! Those two guys, I swear. And then Pavel gets hold of the weapon and is even more insufferable than usual with it, because of course he is. The fight between him and Beck has great music at least, I’ll give it that. Also love that Beck gets it and destroys it instead of keeping it for himself; good strength of character stuff.

- meanwhile: EYYYY ZED DID A GOOD WITH MARA BUT SHE WAS UNCONSCIOUS BUT BECK DID ZED A SOLID (AND OPE BECK DON’T BLOW YOUR FRICKIN COVER MY DUDE)

- and then the coda: the weapon is self-repairing!!! EEK FUCK DAMN. That ain’t fucking good, given that Pavel has it. (And given that Beck has the other half…….) also my theory when I first watched this episode 10 years ago is that that weapon was incorporated into Tron when Clu turns him into Rinzler?? Just because of the harsh gravelly effect it has on the program’s voice, and the enhanced strength and agility it gives. No idea if it’s what actually happens, but. It is a theory.

May or may not watch the next episode tonight; it’s 9:30 and I’m tired and wide awake at the same time so Who Knows!!!!

#tron #tronblr #tron: uprising #skye liveblogs things

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feralaot · 3 years

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AOT characters and their interests/hobbies 💞

been thinking about these a lot and wanted to share :]

no warnings

eren

collects vintage electronic things like gameboy cartridges, ataris, old nintendos, etc. I feel like he would also collect caps from energy drink cans, not for any particular reason, he just thinks they look neat

mikasa

I've mentioned this before but I'll die on the hill that she loves embroidery and sewing and makes things like scarves, hats, and gloves to donate

armin

has no shame whatsoever about being super into flowers and gardening. also likes rambling about marine biology, he was always fascinated by the sea and y'all already KNOW he'd geek about the stuff that's actually in it

connie

really likes insects! he has had several bug collections and some of his favorite decorations are framed bugs. tried to get into pc building at some point but couldnt really figure it out

jean

old music, old movies, vinyl records, etc. has several guitars both acoustic and electric and only knows a few songs on each but he just really likes collecting things and is a bit of an artist so he has sketchbooks laying everywhere. the first song he learned on electric guitar was seven nation army and he got really good at it so he played it repeatedly for weeks until connie begged him to play something else

sasha

y'all mfs already know this girl would love cooking. I also think she would really enjoy being an archery instructor and learning about various hunting methods in her spare time. she has always wanted to try catfish noodling but connie is her impulse control to not do so

historia

literally so good at makeup. doesn't even do it on herself most of the time because she likes putting it on other people. considering how tiny she is she tends to insist on sitting in someone's lap to do their makeup and y'all already know ymir is a volunteer. other than this she's also super "green" and infodumps about environmental sustainability to whoever will listen. once again, ymir

ymir

linguistics. my friend said that ymir would really enjoy studying and learning languages and honestly, hard agree. she would familiarize herself with the dialects of a language and also learn about ancient languages as well

hange

absolutely enthralled by animal biology and the way things work. takes every chance they can get to dissect something. has a collection of various animal skulls and always feels the need to tell people that no, they did not kill them themself, even though nobody asked

levi

this man would be so good at interior design. everything has a perfect aesthetic, is symmetrical, neat, has good palettes, the right furniture, everything. he'd totally talk shit about what you've done with the place

erwin

I cant explain it but he has the vibe of someone who'd be really into mythology and anatomical painting. would also probably taste test wine. a very sophisticated kind of man

reiner

once again I will die on the hill that he doesnt play sports himself but he probably really likes watching ice hockey. only bert knows this but he's also pretty good at carpentry and has built several shelves by himself that he was really proud of. a very hands-on kind of person

bertholdt

bird nerd. bird nerd. he loves birds and always feeds them. is also quite the artist and has lots of little scribbles all over his belongings. likes writing too but hasn't told anyone he writes except reiner

annie

she thought it was dumb at first but armin got her really into gardening and now they manage a garden together. he tends to the flowers and she tends to the vegetables. she also enjoys painting nature scenery, so there's a nice painting of their flower and vegetable gardens hanging up

porco and pieck

putting them together because they're pretty much the same. they both love watching unsolved true crime documentaries/videos together then infodumping to each other about their own theories. porco also really likes history and rambles about it to her whenever it comes up e.g. pointing out historical inaccuracies in films. also porco does yoga don't @ me

zeke

anthropology. I refuse to elaborate but just know I'm right. he goes to anthropology museums and absolutely geeks about everything

yelena

religious studies. need I say more

niccolo

yes he absolutely is into cooking but consider: he's also an absolute champ at pottery. he makes his own pots and jars and little mugs. in fact a lot of the indoor plants armin and annie have live in pots that niccolo made especially for them

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mx-yip-yip-hooary · 2 years

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Greetings and thank you for answering my OC questions. I'm glad you enjoy answering them as much as I enjoy coming up with weird crap to ask <3 that bring said!

Followup Questions:

1. I have no idea what backrooms is much less what "child of the backrooms" is. Please enlighten me

2. Can. Can I give Willson a hug or will that end badly.

3. I am not very surprised that the character named Arson is banned from the kitchen. This isnt a question it just had to be said

New questions:

A. Which character has objectively the best pajamas and describe the pajamas

B. Which character knows how to play Careless Whisper on the saxophone, and which character Doesn't know how but doesn't let that stop them

C. Which character slaps the tops of door frames like a teenage boy

once again, I'm really sorry for answering these late but i will be infodumping so much i am so sorry to all my followers this is the only thing that will be rebloged on my dash for a while

Follow Up Questions

1. I have no idea what the backrooms is much less what "child of the backrooms" is. Please enlighten me.

Ok so the backrooms started as a one off post about liminal spaces which is now a full ass creepy pasta. Theres like a huge fucking wiki and it's treated as reality in its fandom (So tw for unreality if you go to that wiki. Also tw horror)

There's some really fucked up "entities" (aka monsters) so I decided one day that i wanted to come up with one

Boom [No Name] comes out

Also for "child of the backrooms" that just my code name for him until i find a actual one, but it does have something to do with his character

Basically, bitch dead but when the backrooms was processing his soul, the soul flat out smilied and waved at it and asked it how it was doing

The soul still did that after everything that happened in the backrooms

Even after watching his friends die

Even after basically being forced to give up his whole life

Even after dying a painful death by a bone stealer

Still smiles and is kind to the backrooms

(tbh he was kinda semi-concuious at the time but shush)

So the backrooms basically turned him into a entity because that was the first soul to ever show it kindness, and allows [no name] to basically roam around any level without danger. If any wander (humans) decide to try and kidnap or harm [no name] a shit ton of entities will come to the location and sometimes a physical barrier shows up between attacker and [no name]

TDLR: Local alternate universe adopts a 16 year old

2. Can. Can I give Willson a hug or will that end badly.

Please give them hug. I am on my knees. Why have I made them suffer so much I do not know. He hasn't had human contact for the past year. His world has literally been burnt down. Please for god sake hug him

3. I am not very surprised that the character named Arson is banned from the kitchen. This isn't a question it just had to be said

New Questions

1. Which character has objective the best PJs and describe them

[No Image]

Alex (he/him):

So let me give you some context for this bitch

He lived in a out of touch area in the middle of the smack dead forest because he is partially a fox (do not sue me i am not a furry please all he can do is turn into one)

Anyway, when he enters The Human World TM, he just get overwhelmed with all the new ideas to explore, activities to do, and skills to learn. He's basically just really curious to be able to look into human culture

One day Athena (She/they) (OC) was trying to knit something when Alex pops into the room and asks what's she's doing, they basically spend afternoon together (Alex teaches her how to carve wood and Athena teaches him how to do the basics of knitting cause she isn't that good at it)

The next week was spent knitting

Alex now wears a knitted sweater to sleep

It's just a fuckin dumbass unicorn who's split in half around the middle because he knitted a section wrong

So it looks like a unicorn beheading

True artwork

2. Which character knows how to play Careless Whisper on the saxophone and which character doesn't know how but that won't stop them

[No image]

Wyu & Feth:

Since both Wyu (they/them) and Feth (She/Name) live in another dimension (they're part of my "Random circles that got personalities" collection) they don't really understand human culture but Wyu is trying to get some intel for them cause they like to get hands on with research

Anyway, Feth managed to get them connected to the internet and Wyu looks for job listings and the first one that pops up is a nearby pub wanting a music man

Wyu summons in a random instrument that they found by googling "Instruments that are used in pub music" and behold its a saxophone

Feth wishes them luck and Wyu goes out to experience human life

After 4 years of working in the pub and becoming a local cryptid for seemingly not having a house Wyu finally disappears for the last time and returns back to their dimension permanently and with the saxophone

Wyu still likes to play the saxophone and their default is Careless Whisper because a shit ton of people request for it

Feth also likes to come in during these practices and try

To be fair she sounds ok considering Feth can't play the saxophone but it is painful to watch as a saxophone player

[No name (leaning towards Mytho) (They/he):

Anyway this man is once again apart of the backrooms but if they were ever to escape it they would probably try to do so many things and I will bet you that he'll try playing Careless Whisper even if they're literally half ghost

3. Which character slaps the tops of door frames like a teenage boy?

Ok all my tall characters like to do this but these are the people who do it with a purpose

[No Image]

Cale (she/her):

She's like fucking 5'9 and massive so as a assertion of power she will slap every door frame

There lays a hand print on her front door because of how many times she's slapped it

[No image]

Scott (He/anything):

Well

He's like 6'7 feet

He doesn't even mean to hit the doors

He just

Bumps his head into them

He's gotten 15 concussions from this

[No image]

Jaden (He/him):

Man just got to hit doors its part of his personality as Tall Man TM (He's like 5'5)

It used to annoy William (he/him) but

He just wants to see him again

#edgy at the end oop #haha i do that #anyway #Really sorry for the late reply i was busy and depressed and lazy so aaaaaaa #oc asks #i really love your oc asks they are the fuel to my day #ocs #please talk to me about my ocs i will cry #of happiness #i have done so much worldbuilding for all these ocs ok #i just want to share with the class #about them #thank you so much anon :)#i'm stopping my queue so anon can see this

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wispforever · 3 years

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if youre still doing the character thing, how about spirit or marie?

I sure am. How about Spirit And Marie? Both wonderful characters. I’ll do Marie first, then Spirit. Thanks for the excuse to infodump, really. You people are too kind.

Marie Mjolnir

My first impression of Marie was the same impression I get of most female characters in anime. It’s either “why do their clothes have to look like that” or “oh god here comes the obligatory sexist heteronormative romance”. For Marie, it was more of the second. They mention in the same episode she’s introduced that Stein is her “first love”, which told me that if she had a large place in the plot, her assigned male counterpart around which to orbit would be him. Though I’ve never read the Soul Eater manga, I believe they do end up getting together there (I could be wrong). Whatever the case, I was relieved that Marie’s and Stein’s relationship (though heavily implied to be romantic, at least on Marie’s side) was left open to interpretation in the anime. I’m just very sick of cool badass female characters like Marie being reduced to the man they pine after. So, I guess my first impression of Marie and my impression of her now are largely the same. While I appreciate the moments we get to see her strengths and ability to operate on her own, I do think that her character really suffers because of the whole sexist “oh gosh all I want is to find a husband and retire” “oh my I have to take care of Stein” like okay, I had enough at the cat girl smothering Soul with her humungo-tits. I had enough at sexualizing underage girls and women in general. I had enough at making sexual harassment a punchline. That being said, when we push all of the shitty writing to the side, I admire Marie for her strength and how she interacts with the children, Crona in particular. Which leads me to my favorite moment(s).

The relationship Crona and Marie have interests me the most, since I’m really drawn to the parallels between Marie and Medusa. As parental figures (and as characters), they’re about as different as you can get. As Crona’s mother, Medusa is obviously abusive. Along with being negligent, she abuses Crona mentally, emotionally, and physically. In general, Medusa is a person who doesn’t appear to value interpersonal relationships, putting it nicely. She instead is more focused on her own interests, often to the detriment of those around her. Crona is Medusa’s only immediate family (besides Arachne who she is estranged from), and so they suffer the most from her refusal to show even a shred of human decency or warmth. They suffer especially because they are her child, meaning they’re stuck with her essentially, and repetivie abuse between family members like a mother and child often becomes complex because of the necessity of having a parental figure in your life to support you as you grow up. Medusa teaches Crona that their boundaries don’t matter and that they are only good as long as they are useful and do as they’re told. This is what makes Marie’s influence on Crona so cool to watch. Marie is caring by nature, loving and nurturing by nature. Her very wavelegnth is healing. She is kind and does what’s right reflexively. Marie is the exact embodiment of what Crona always needed but what, even upon being rescued by the academy, still felt so foreign to them: unconditional love. Crona struggles to understand why the other kids helped them, why Maka felt the inclination to stop their battle and save Crona instead by trying to understand them, why the kids are still so kind to them even after everything. They do not understand that love is not a bargaining chip. It isn’t leverage in an argument. It’s not a tool for emotional manipulation. Love is caring for the people close to you, just because. Love for the sake of love. The other kids and teachers at the academy are the ones who are able to pull Crona out of all Medusa’s lies, and Marie is a Huge part of that. Even though I have greivances with this being the largest part of her character and what that implies for female characters in general, it doesn’t stop being so beautiful to me that she could help Crona heal in this way. Marie = best mom for the win

Most of the story ideas I have for Marie involve her relationship with Crona or Stein. Say, this covers my unpopular opinion too. I don’t like Stein and Marie as a couple, but I really enjoy writing them as friends, because even though I don’t really jive with them being together romantically, I think their dynamic is an interesting one to explore because they Are so different.

Getting into that a little bit more, I’d like to start by saying I don’t care if other people like Stein and Marie being a couple. That’s great doods, keep doing you. The fanart’s adorable, the meta’s fantastic. Whoever you are, SteinMarie shippers, ffs keep kicking ASS. This is just my preference and opinion. Zero shade in this house. That said, because of my frustrations about Marie’s character I discussed in the first paragraph, I don’t like the idea of her and Stein being together romantically. It’s really a classic sexist trope: the troubled man and his sweet nurse. I’m also just fed up in general with the hetero-nonsense, so there. However, they are both wonderful characters that I enjoy very much seperately. Also, I think it’s worth mentioning that I’ve only seen the anime, so I can’t speak for the manga as far as their relationship or Marie’s character in general.

Oh shit I accidentally already talked about this one lmao [see the second paragraph]

One headcanon I like to think about when I’m writing Marie is that she likes women (in addition to men or not) and she struggles with comphet. Just something interesting I like to think about. It’s really fun for me to take characters who have been written as pining or had 10 million failed relationships and be like “say what if they can’t find a husband cuz really what they really need is a wife”. I’ll talk about that more with Spirit inevitably.

Spirit Albarn

My first impression of Spirit, obviously him being a cheater, really came with a lot of distaste. I come from a family that was torn apart by infidelity, among other things, so it really rubs me the wrong way. However, his saving grace for me was that he genuinely loves his daughter. It appears that, whether it’s played for laughs or not, he just can’t find fulfillment in his romantic relationships. The reason is left up to the veiwers. Spirit, ultimately, is not just a shitty person, which is how most cheaters are protrayed in media. “Well, they cheated because they don’t care if they hurt people”, “they cheated because they are shit and that’s it”. That’s a fine explanation if you plan to do nothing with whatever character you’re describing, but Spirit is relatively recurring and is shown to be neither mean-spirited or emotionally unintelligent. It bothers me that his cheating and routine sexist behaviour isn’t taken seriously enough to be a subject that Soul Eater tackles and deals with. But that’s fine. I’ll just do it myself. At any rate, I still feel that same way about Spirit’s character, but I find it intriguing that he seems to genuinely want to become a better father and is actually a pretty good dad when it comes to his interactions with Maka. If Soul Eater had been brave enough to develop him more, maybe delve into the reasoning behind his impulsive romantic affairs, I think Spirit as a character could have been done more justice. It seems to me that he could be suffering from some of that wonderful compulsory heterosexuality that I mentioned before, then becoming confused when the woman he claims to love leaves him feeling empty. Rattling my gay little cage

When I think of my favorite moments with Spirit, I think of his moments with Maka, but I’m gonna hold off on that until I get to favorite relationship(s). In reference to what I talked about in the first paragraph, one moment I find really interesting when I’m thinking about my interpretation of Spirit’s character is the scene where he and Maka are on the roof talking. Maka asks Spirit why he cheated on her mother if he did, in fact, love her. He doesn’t appear to know the answer, and he doesn’t really understand how to effectively communicate that, though he was shitty husband, what he really wants now is to try and be a better dad. We hear his inner monologue, and he says something like “I love you [Maka] and your mama. That’s the truth. That’s the truth. That’s the truth.” Every time he says “its the truth” it sounds more like he’s forcing it. This is actually something that is SO strange to me. Even if I didn’t project a queer narrative on to the characters I love, I would look at this and be like “huh that is a Weird thing to say in that specific way”. Why does he say it like that? Why does he have to say it more than once? He’s only talking to HIMSELF. It isn’t like he’s trying to convince Maka. Why does he have to convince himself?? Could it possibly be because he’s reached a conclusion about his romantic/sexual orientation that he’s been trying to swallow his Entire Life??? makes ya wonder, doesn’t it, queers?

Just like I said when I talked about Stein, most of the stories I have in mind with Spirit center around that sweet gayness. But also, I like to think of ways Spirit could come to terms with his sexuality, how it might have affected him when he was young, his relationship with all these women, with his wife. I love to think about him being a dad at 18 and trying his best, but how much responsibility that must have been. Lots of great ideas when it comes to Spirit.

Um? unpopular opinion would be all the standard like I said with Stein lmao. “Oh no!” scream the heteros, “that they/them on tumblr is making Soul Eater queer we canst not allow that in our church!!!111!” But besides that, maybe even the fact that I think he’s redeemable?? Idk most everyone I’ve met thinks Spirit is funny at least and just calls him a dumbass and a slut (affectionate). Doesn’t mean anybody thinks cheating on your wife 56 times is okay so. I like this fandom, it’s chill here. My favorite is when I see my art tagged like “aw the stupid man and his crazy bf” like YOU ARE RIGHT

My favorite relationship when it comes to Spirit (besides Stein cuz if I start talking about them again I’ll never finish this ask) is the one he has with Maka. If you can call it a relationship lol. I guess I just find Spirit’s approach to Maka as a parent really refreshing. Not that the parents in other shows don’t love their kids or whatever, it’s just that the loving parent always seems to be paired with some other trope that makes their character hard to approach. especially in anime. Like the perfect mother who dies in the first episode, and we spend the rest of the show mourning her. Or the father whose love is somehow everlasting even though he’s never home. It’s really the fact that Spirit is even THERE that I love. He knows what Maka is up to. He talks about her. He’s invested in her life, and he loves her. All he wants is to spend time with her, and though he’s sad when she turns him down, he doesn’t push her. god dammit I just like a dad who actually loves his kids without all the usual strings attached like. oh my kids are a huge pain in my ass, but I love them in spite of it. oh i’m a man so can’t relate to my children in a meaningful way but i try. Get the fuck outta here with that shit. I want all the dads to get so happy when their daughters wanna hang with them that they throw up like Spirit. Give me the guy who loves his daughter so naturally, whose daughter is such a huge part of his life, that it doesn’t even occur to him stop trying even if she literally wants to murder him. That’s Spirit. jfc

To end with a cute little headcanon, I really love to think that when Spirit gets older and starts losing the color in his hair, instead of getting white or grey, his hair turns a pale pink color cuz he’s such an aggressive redhead. Wouldn’t that just be adorable? late 30′s, early 40′s, Spirit starts getting little pink streaks in his hair and then bam. Little pink old man Spirit XD

There ya have it. Thanks for the ask, and feel free to send more.

#Soul Eater #Ask #Ask game #anon #Marie Mjolnir #Spirit Albarn #this is wisp

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spectral-apparitions · 3 years

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babysitting yinu hedcanons?

Mama tends to handle the political side of things, since Yinu is so young. So that leaves plenty of times when Mama is going to meetings of various sorts, and can't always bring Yinu with. And sometimes she want a little alone time with other adults (not to say she doesn't love alone time with Yinu even more). So that's when she looks for someone to watch Yinu.

Yinu is a kid, but she can be mature, too. She knows that sometimes even when an adult is able to stay with her, they're busy, and gives them space. When she visits with someone else, she packs her own games, notebooks, and snacks to keep herself busy if she needs to. But she loves if whoever she's with spends time with her. Every one of the other artists has their own way of interacting with her, and she enjoys time with each of them.

Artist interactions under the cut, it's pretty long.

Tatiana is the first of the NSR members that Mama trusts, as she spent quite a bit of time with the family and is always looking out for them. But Tatiana is also the most busy. Typically, when Tatiana watches Yinu, it's in her office. Yinu enjoys being in that office, she doesn't mind the height and never gets tired of looking out the big windows to the city below. She knows to let Tatiana work and will sit herself in another part of the office and entertain herself.

Having Yinu in her watch is also a perfect excuse for Tatiana to take a break. She's more likely to keep track of the time and to not get swept up in work when Yinu is with her. She feels more relaxed at work while and after Yinu is there. Sometimes all they do is take a trip to the vending machine on another floor, sometimes Tatiana lets herself take an extended lunch break and they pick out a nice restaurant they both enjoy, getting dessert too of course.

Yinu gets lots of questions about Tatiana's work, but she also just really enjoys hearing her perspective on everything. Yinu is always asking her about her about whatever comes to mind, be it favorite animals or exchanging stories about how people are weird sometimes. Tatiana truly enjoys chatting with Yinu, it's so refreshing when she has to talk to other adults professionally so often.

There are times when Tatiana stays with Yinu at her home, or comes to visit and chat with her and Mama. Yinu likes showing Tatiana anything interesting she owns during these times. Maybe this drawing she did last week, or this nice photo of her at a music awards festival. Tatiana always lays on how impressed she is by it.

Neon J is also someone Mama greatly trusts with Yinu, as he's a long-standing NSR member who's shown nothing but loyalty and responsibility, and an evident soft side with kids. Honestly, we see him serious and on edge in game, you wouldn't believe how soft he gets with Yinu.

But again, he can be very busy, overseeing business for 1010 and getting himself involved in so many projects in his district. So he isn't always available. There are times too when he's working on something that 1010 isn't involved in, so they watch her. Neon J doesn't like to bring her along on any trips, though, so when he/1010 watch her, it's at the mansion.

1010 act like older brothers to Yinu. They get so excited to see her. There's no need for her to pack anything because they won't leave her alone for a second. Yinu is just as excited to see them, she knows she's gonna get treated special and to pick what they do.

And boy there's a lot, from (age appropriate) video games, to hide and seek, to at-home karaoke. Eloni and Zimelu like to give her piggyback rides, Haym will pick her up for holding her upside-down or spinning her around. Or they draw together, or write a story together. And yes, Neon J is part of these activities too

Sometimes Neon J will take Yinu to his workshop if he’s working on something, so she can watch him work. He doesn’t let her get too involved so she doesn’t get hurt, but he lets her do little things like hand him tools and tighten screws if she wants. He’s quite a storyteller, too, but he’s careful about what he tells her. Doesn’t stop her from asking questions about his past, and wanting to know the stories behind pictures and medals. He tones it down as much as he can for her.

Yinu has found old toys and 1010 merchandise, too, and has received quite a few gifts. None of them can say no to her.

Eve will spoil Yinu just as much as Neon J and 1010 will, but in a different way. She’s setting aside whatever she’s doing and making this a Girls’ Day. She can get pretty wrapped up in her own head when she gets to working and get stressed, so spending time with Yinu always livens her up.

They usually spend their time in Dream Fever, but they’ll go to other parts of the city, too, just to try something new. Yinu loves the opportunity to try new things around the city, and there have been times she has encouraged Eve as well, convincing her to go to shops and restaurants she hasn’t been to herself.

Eve will take Yinu out to shops, not necessarily to buy anything, just to look. Yinu will sometimes make silly comments and jokes, and Eve will think of something funny in response, and soon it turns into them making up jokes and stories about many of the things around them, their voices breaking into giggles.I’m talking like putting on a big hat that’s on display and doing their best Single Victorian Woman voice.

In the same vein, they sometimes people watch while they eat or get dessert. It switches between actual observations and deductions vs just making stuff up and trying to be funny.

Eve has also gotten Yinu interested in different arts. Yinu thinks it’s really neat how many ways to make art there are, and she likes listening to Eve talk about them! Mama has found herself buying different types of art supplies when Yinu gets a new interest. She particularly likes trying different paints.

And too, Yinu likes hearing how Eve talks about the meaning behind her own artwork. Eve doesn’t often explain that to people, but seeing as Yinu is still quite young, she doesn’t expect the girl to pick up on the symbolism. They made up a sort of game where Yinu looks at one of Eve’s works, tells her what feeling she gets from it/what she thinks it’s saying, and maybe a title for it, then Eve tells her the actual name and what she intended.

Mama initially wasn’t confident in letting DJ Subatomic Supernova babysit her daughter, but Yinu came back happy the first time and she started to trust him more. He doesn’t oversee as many operations as some of the other megastars and tends to have more opportunity to watch her.

A lot of times what happens is Yinu asks questions, then draws while DJSS infodumps. She’s listening, she just busies her hands while doing so, because he talks a lot.

Usually it’s a science lesson of some kind, with one question leading to another, topic to topic. Or sometimes it’s an intense discussion on what pizza toppings are the best.

She once asked if she could hug him, gradually it became more often and now they hug anytime they’re together. She thinks he gives amazing hugs.

Yinu knows this guy has a sweet tooth, so whether it’s grabbing something from his kitchen or stopping at a shop, she can easily persuade him into buying treats.

Games! DJSS has different types of puzzles around and Yinu likes to try to solve them. If it’s something like a jigsaw puzzle, they work together. She also learned chess from her dad, and DJSS plays too, so they play together.

They also just make up their own games at times!

The Sayu Squad, although great, are the last group Mama has in preference for watching Yinu. They’re quite young themselves, and trying to manage their music and district, and she doesn’t want to add that responsibility. Although, she can tell they all get along great and doesn’t have hindrance when Yinu is with them.

They’ll get out Sayu to play with Yinu if they can! Sayu will let Yinu ride on her shoulders while she swims around. Or they play chase in the stream hub, Yinu getting to run around in the wide area and use the transport rails.

Tila will style Yinu’s hair. She has lots of hair accessories that she’ll put in, too!

They all like video games, so they play them with Yinu. Remi and Sofa tend to be the most competitive. It’s usually racing games or arcade fighting games that they play with her (like Mario Kart and Smash Bros).

Bunk Bed Junction is not allowed to babysit Yinu. Even after they corrected their wrongs, Mama still thought they would be a bad influence on Yinu, so she doesn’t let them watch her. It’s okay for them to chat, though, if someone else is there too.

#writing #headcanons #no straight roads #yinu #um mainly yinu but the whole cast guess I better tag #1010 #neon j #tatiana #eve no straight roads #sayu no straight roads #dj subatomic supernova #this has been in my drafts for a long time as I keep adding to it #phew!#hope this is good anon

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chalkrevelations · 3 years

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Word of Honor, Episode 30. STILL A LOT. This one got long.

(Spoilers. Scroll away and come back later, if you need to.)

Yeah, so, A-Xiang and I are crying again. At least they’re good, cathartic tears, this time? Poor Cao Weining – he continues trying to make sense of all this (It’s all a misunderstanding, right? My good friend Wen Kexing was framed, right? He can’t possibly be the terrifying master of the Ghost Valley, and you can’t possibly be his henchwoman, right?), but nothing he knew is true anymore. Nothing except his faith in A-Xiang. I know you’re good, he tells her. I won’t fail you. And they do make this explicit here, with him saying, “I made a promise I will never fail you in my life, not even once.” I’m flailing on the couch, at this point. Come here, my little cinnamon roll, and let me squeeze the stuffing out of you. And oh. Oh. It just hit me that a girl who was raised by the Department of the Unfaithful (as well as WKX) has found a man who will vow this to her and mean it. Also, I don’t know if this is the closest we’re going to get to this theme made explicit with Zhou Zishu and Wen Kexing, but Cao Weining and Gu Xiang continue to act as proxy here for the m/m couple that has to be more circumspect. (Also, I would compare the way this promise, spoken out loud, bookends this ep – Cao Weining’s heart once again offered here, at the beginning, and the undertones of betrayal in Xie Wang’s words to Zhao Jing at the end, but we’ll get to Xie’er in a bit.)

Digging into our continuing parallels, I said a bit back - Ep 26? sometime before Wen Kexing’s identity had the ultimate reveal in the confrontation with Ye Baiyi, at least - that Zhou Zishu was beyond “you don’t fail me and I won’t fail you” into “even if you do fail me, I won’t fail you.” That’s where Cao Weining is now, knowing (finally) what A-Xiang’s been hiding from him, as ZZS knew about the Ghost Valley even before it was actually spoken out loud. Even if A-Xiang is there to infiltrate his sect, even if she’s helped cause all this death, Cao Weining will follow her into death and reincarnate with her to stay with her and protect her forever. (Ugh. My heart. Cao-dage, how are you like this?) Last ep, watching WKX’s frantic efforts to save Han Ying, I think there was some callback to the Four Sages of Anji, but I also pointed to what I saw as a callback to the paired conversations in Eps 22/23, when Cao Weining tells A-Xiang to be more careful because he knows she’ll feel bad if she kills an innocent accidentally, and ZZS tells WKX he’s trying to protect him from more sins on his hands. This ep, there’s a literal flashback to that Cao Weining/Gu Xiang conversation in Ep 22. I also want to go back to the interminable infodump in the Longyuan Cabinet cave in Eps 19/20, where - similar to Cao Weining finally learning and accepting who A-Xiang is in this ep - Zhou Zishu has finally put together all (well, most) of the pieces, and he makes it clear that he knows (at least part of) who WKX is by calling him “Zhen Yan” to his face. The color palettes for the two couples match in these scenes – slightly more saturated and intense for the older couple, but lavender for WKX and A-Xiang, blue for ZSS and Cao Weining; we also have an enthusiastic hug that’s met by a hesitant response. Although roles are reversed in the hug – A-Xiang hugging Cao Weining, ZZS hugging WKX - the way they shot Cao Weining’s response in this ep, hesitant hands finally going around A-Xiang’s back, is almost exactly the same framing and movements as WKX’s response to ZZS’s hug in Ep 20 (7:37 in Ep 20, 9:00 in Ep 30). I’m just sayin’.

Also, I might or might not have rewound three times to watch Cao Weining wipe the tears off A-Xiang’s face and her responding radiant smile. You can’t prove anything.

The other big parallel I see in this ep is a return to the ZZS/Prince Jin and Xie Wang/Zhao Jing relationships. Everyone is telling their creepy gaslighting mentor/parent figures to fuck off in this episode, apparently. (We even (kind of) get to see WKX do this, seeing the scene of him in the aftermath of killing the past master of Ghost Valley in flashback as A-Xiang tells her tale to Cao Weining). I have to think it’s not just coincidence that the ZZS/Prince Jin and Xie’er/Awful Yifu confrontations play out in the same ep. Not to mention the fact that both happen in the middle of a big fk’n mess, lit. and fig., that ZZS and Xie’er have made of not just their physical surroundings, but their Awful Prince’s/Yifu’s plans.

So, first off, we cut to Bad-Touch Prince Jin. I knew it, you creepster (and ZZS knew it too!). And yet, I still cannot believe you. You kidnap him, try to kill everyone in Four Seasons Manor for the second time around, burn his house, plan to get him drunk and take advantage of him, lit. and fig., and now you’re fondling his sword? Eurgh. There’s definitely an air of “bathe him, dress him, and bring him to my chambers” with ZZS at the beginning of this scene, even if we’re actually in the throne room and not any bedchamber (not that I don’t also enjoy the leather bracers-updo-evil collar look on ZZS, so I’ll give Prince Jin points for good taste, at least). Prince Jin pulls out the poor yifu prince card, because it’s lonely being in charge, you know. And now, we’re back to how could you leave me. Aaaaand then, he blows off Han Ying (Han Ying!), the last sort-of vestige of ZZS’s Four Seasons shidi, and oh, boy. You done fk’ed up now.

So, I love how clearly done with all this ZZS is, from the first minute we see him this ep. I keep hearing this role was a departure from Zhang Zhehan’s norm, and while I plan to check out some of his earlier work, I’m honestly glad I got to see him first in this. I hope it opens up some more doors for him. I keep being struck at various moments by his physicality as Zhou Zishu, which has a weight behind it that just … ah. I keep failing to put it into words, but it gives a substance to the character that makes ZZS feel real, and it’s not particularly in his big action fighting scenes that it keeps hitting me, like you might expect when it’s something about the way he moves and carries himself. I started turning this over in my head last week, when I talked about how I felt that shout at WKX in the wake of the fight with Ye Baiyi in Ep 27, moreso than any of the other various shouty characters we’ve met in the show, even when their yelling is louder and more sustained. There was something visceral about ZZH’s performance in that moment. It reminded me of an earlier scene when Wen Kexing’s been drunk under the table by Ye Baiyi but insists that he’s fine, just fine, and Zhou Zishu, who’s trying to make him go to bed, makes a feint at him and then hits him on the shoulder. (Hold on … I just went and found it, it’s at 37:19 in Ep 17.) Not just the hit, but particularly the feint preceding it struck me the same way Ep 27’s shout did. It’s something that maybe comes through strongest when ZZH is doing leashed anger, where the character’s raw emotion is simultaneously supposed to be controlled but leaking through – that contrast seems to showcase what I’m talking about. Or maybe not just anger, but any really strong emotion, because I got it in this ep, among other places, from the little lip tremble as ZZS drinks some of the wine before he pours one out for his dead homies, as well as from the way he works his jaw to get himself back under control after bringing up all his dead shidi. Also the tiny lip quirk and deliberate breathing while Prince Jin disparages Han Ying. (Not the snarl when he’s faced off with Prince Jin holding his sword blade right before the cheesy cut to close-up split-screen, though. That one didn’t hit right, unfortunately.) ANYWAY, this whole throne room scene with Prince Jin is basically porn for me, with ZZS simmering the entire time until he finally breaks and everything explodes. God, the only thing it’s missing is actual tears.

Cut from the scene of ZZS literally striking back at Prince Jin to what’s going to be – at least it looks like – Xie Wang’s breaking point. Xie’er and his henchwomen seem genuinely surprised that Awful Yifu is the one who shows up as reinforcement for the Gentle Wind Sword Sect, and I’m still trying to untangle all the various strings of this web. I don’t know if I’ve missed some things, or not put something together properly – I feel like Cao Weining, all “Slow down, I can’t keep up!” Anyway, we get a very public repudiation of Xie’er by his Awful Yifu, which is interesting because nobody is supposed to know they’re connected in the first place, right? Yet, clearly Mo Huaiyang does, and no one in his sect – all of them standing around in the subsequent cave scene - seem to react with any kind of shock to the info that Zhao Jing is Xie’er’s yifu. Aren’t we supposed to be hiding this from everyone? So that not only the jianghu but Prince Jin doesn’t know it (yet)? Anyway, as well as getting slapped, Xie’er gets a couple of places with good little maniacal laughs in. Given the apparent surprise at Awful Yifu’s appearance, I’m assuming this was something Xie Wang really didn’t expect, and this public repudiation is the breaking point? Or that Awful Yifu hid this alliance from him? Not that this attack on the Gentle Wind Sword Sect was part of a deliberate long-game to fuck over his Awful Yifu by fucking up this alliance? Anyway, Xie’er has learned his lesson about his Awful Yifu – or at least he says he has - so maybe there will be some deliberate fuckery of Awful Yifu going forward from here? Have you learned your lesson, little gambler? Finally?

I do have to warn you, Xie Wang: Do not touch A-Xiang. This is a hard limit. You will be dead to me.

Scattered other things:

Duan Pengju, omg, this asshole. I love how he just gets dismissed from the throne room like a lackey once he’s delivered the guy Prince Jin actually wants. I love how ZZS says, out loud, with everyone in the throne room to hear it, why would I leave this loser in charge of anyone I cared about? I looooove how utterly dismissive of him ZZS is even as ZZS is literally being tortured by him. ZZS’s mockery and whole air of how he’s just ever so bored with all this torture is delightful. However, I CAN’T BELIEVE YOU’RE ENDING THE EPISODE THERE, SHOW. I’m going to have to wait until at least Thursday to find out what happens??? (This is d/t work schedule, which is 12-hour shifts on Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, leaving no time to watch as the next eps upload, if I want to sleep).

I don’t know if this is deliberate, but when we cut to sleeping Wen Kexing near the beginning of the ep … we’ve just seen him in his very red robes as Ghost Valley master in A-Xiang’s flashbacks, and I notice that what he’s wearing now – it’s not the pinkie pink of the robe he wore to match the winter plum blossom forest, but it’s not blood red, either. It’s muted, something in-between, kind of salmon colored.

Bwahaha, dying at our two little foodies in the cave being the first ones to say “Hey, somebody’s cooking something!” Also, A-Xiang, my clever girl. You know to avoid letting Xie Wang or Zhao Jing (or Liu Qianqiao?) see you. What are you putting together in your head and coming up with about this tangled web of alliances? Also, I see you call Cao-dage over to your hiding spot. Are the two of you still there to hear the conversation between Zhao Jing and Mo Huaiyang, and how Mo Huaiyang and Zhao Jing are working together with the Scorpions and the Ghost Valley?

Last but not least, no intention to leave Jin Palace alive, ZZS? I seem to recall you telling your boyfriend, the terrifying master of the Ghost Valley, that there would be time for him to rescue you once he woke up from his nap. Is it possible you were lying so he wouldn’t feel bad? Mn. Possible. But I also remember the way you yelled at WKX over his plan to get himself killed and leave you alone, and I remember the fact that you won’t fail him, and I have to wonder if your plan really was to die, or if you’re bluffing when you say that to Prince Jin.

#gu xiang #cao weining #wen kexing #zhou zishu #prince jin #duan pengju #zhao jing #zhang zhehan #word of honor #word of honor episode reax

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shippedwithmonsters · 3 years

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Okay, so I'll start with Sophie.

(The actual gushing starts after a hearty bit of expository infodumping; read at your discretion)

I call her "Sophie" because her name is Sophia in the set of characters she was previously grouped with —

(Here's the complicated origin bit: She was originally based on a similar character in my current 'verse, but I imported her design into what amounts to a highly customizable girlfriend-themed paper doll/dress-up app, and I've been steadily creating new characters based on my now 7 designs there over the past 6 years, but I wasn't sure how to re-integrate Sophie into the 'verse she originally came from because out of all of them she was the only one who started there. Actually, if I'm gonna get really meta, I made an avatar for her on the app because she's always been the character I was most attracted to, but I felt weird thinking of her that way because I already designed a canon love interest for her, and even though he's technically also an S/I, he's like an idealized version of me that I have trouble relating to... ...but after exploring self-shipping in the past few months, I figured out how to incorporate her back into my main 'verse as a new character, and while I've had a version of her on the app for a while now, I'm so happy to have her back in-universe in a form my current, more-relatable S/I can interact with.)

—in this 'verse I haven't fully decided on her name, but she's probably "Galatea" (because out of all the designs that in-universe are creations loved so much by their creator that they were given life, she's the one who the name's literal translation best applies to i.e. "milk-white").

She's pretty much my ideal person, if I had to pick only one person. (I may or may not be considered polyamorous; it's more that I've long doubted I'll ever find one person who is simultaneously all the personality types I'm into. Irl I've only loved once and... ...it didn't work out.)

She's a lot like me, personality-wise (devoted, meticulous, and simultaneously hard-wired for logic and overwhelmed by feelings, et al) because on some level that's really the only kind of person that would work for me, so I designed her that way.

Visually, she's slightly taller than me (although about the same height as my S/I) She's pale white like bone or marble with at least waist length black hair and deep indigo eyes (again several of these traits she shares with my S/I, reflecting the above "like me" aspect.

Oh, and she's kind of a vampire? It's more accurate to say she was modeled with all the same traits as my 'verse's vampires (claw nails included) but like all of my other F/O's she's a mineral construct themed after a sea creature, in her case a Vampire Squid. Because of course. Mineral-wise I'm toying with making her diamond because Twilight was a big thing for me back in the day, but she's less sparky vampire and more cold dense statue physiology vampire.

Ok so ^this is why I asked for time 🙃

Now to actually gush about her 😳

-I could stare into her eyes for hours. Days even.

-She knows this, and stares at me when she wants attention.

-In one particular instance, she was ready to go to bed, but I was staying up to work on something, so she basically said "don't mind me, I'll just be sitting here enjoying the view until you're ready"

-The reason for this is because she can't sleep without me. Sometimes she just stays up because "vampires watching their partner sleep" tendencies run deep, but when she feels tired, she likes to lay on top of me and listen to my heartbeat, gaze into my eyes, let me hold her tight and stroke her hair, etc, until she feels safe enough to drift off, and with the weight of her body pressing me into the bed it doesn't take long for me to follow.

-You might be asking, "wait, didn't you say she was cold and stone-like?" Yep!

-Because of this, before bed, we get to engage in a couple of my other favorite rituals- bathing and massages touch-starvation.

-Here's the fun part: because she's like me, she simultaneously prefers giving to receiving affection (like your vampire boy if I recall correctly) and willing consents to receiving said affection because she knows I feel the same way, and vice versa. So we take turns.

-Bathing together so she's warm and slippery, and washing each other's hair because it drives us both wild...

-Exploring each other's bodies (I love her shoulder blades) and leaving the other barely coherent from the sensuality, then carrying them bridal-style off to bed... (I feel so safe cradled in her arms 😳 and then she straddles me...)

-So since her physiology is stone-like, while she's initially cold, she retains heat. So when it's cold, after a hot bath, she keeps me warm all night... (and of course she can be a more traditional cold-to-the-touch vampire during warmer weather etc)

-Ok ok one more thing, and then I'll gush about someone else. Since we both love giving affection, one of our shared passions is taking care of my (/our) other F/O Nettie. I'll get back to her, but regardless of the fact that this version of her is wildly different than her original concept, either way she's an athletic/tomboy type who overexerts herself, and Sophie and I take one look at our tired and sweaty girlfriend, nod at each other, then scoop her off her feet and carry her off to be pampered senseless in many of the same activities mentioned above.

...yeah I really went overboard I just love her so much. Small endnote: a lot of the imagines I write are about Sophie, and part of the reason I described her above interacting with me rather than my S/I is because those imagines are set somewhere between the 'verse I'm currently writing and the app I designed her on. Because I love imagining soft domestic stuff with her but there's slightly less room for that in my canon, so in a sense I really do self-ship with her out-of-context as if she was a more traditional F/O rather than the OC F/O she is. Sorry if any if this is too dense or complicated but feel free to ask for clarifications and stay tuned for more gushing 😊

Definitely no way I can completely comprehend all this tonight, but thank you for telling me about Sophie! I am curious, what dress up app do you use? All the ones I used to use to make my characters died when Flash died. :(

Okay, actually I did read the whole thing and umm I loves? Sophie sounds amazing! And goodness, what is it about falling asleep with vampires that's so darn appealing? rofl.

Thank you for all this! It honestly made me really happy to read!

#shipped with monsters

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dazais-guardian-angel · 4 years

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☕️+ what things do you wish they did with descole (because I am weak and he’s my fave)

Apologies for the late reply to this; tbh I almost didn’t want to answer it, cause I feel like nothing I’ll say will be something others haven’t already discussed (especially since I just saw you asked someone else this same question), and also I’ve only ever played the prequels once back when they first came out and I haven’t reached them again in my replay yet, so I’m not fresh on everything done with his character and all the Azran/Targent stuff. But nonetheless:

In general, obviously, I wish Desmole’s character “arc” if you can even call it that as it is now + plot twists/identity had been much more fleshed out from the get-go and consistent with who they ultimately made him be, that is, Hershel’s brother and someone who never should have legitimately wanted to hurt him or people close to him. While I think the worst of this really only comes out in Eternal Diva, where he literally tries to swordfight Hershel to death and kill Luke on one occasion cause he goes insane once Hershel out-puzzles him, there really just should have been more nuance to him in the first two entries especially (and in Miracle Mask too of course, but he’s barely in that game so) where he shows some level of frustration and hesitance to go up against Hershel and his crew, even if he still does so because he absolutely has to carry out his revenge plan. Just SIGNS that there’s more to this guy than just a walking one-dimensional mysterious deadly flamboyant badass, beyond just Hershel going “hm he feels familiar”, like no of course that’s not near enough. Even if Desmole’s true identity still wasn’t going to be revealed until Azran Legacy, there still needed to be hints, breaks in his facade/character, hesitation, signs of remorse, even if some of these hints are not outright foreshadowing to a familial relationship/desire for revenge. He could still lose it in Eternal Diva, but just make it seem more desperate and broken, and less kill-crazy. Give him moments of humanization, show that Descole can be kind, such as around Melina or Nina; what I honestly wanted to see was him having interactions around girls other than Aurora where his fatherly nature might show (not that him and Aurora aren’t great, I just wanted more); he had to have spent a lot of time around Melina while making the Detragan, and the potential for their relationship while she was dying is so much. Hershel should have had more moments of familiarity, and thinking about him when he’s not around, trying to figure him out, demanding to know who he is because he feels like he needs to know for some reason he can’t describe, and Descole’s answers/non-answers are extremely telling/bitter/curious/thought-provoking. And Descole should imo have had a scene to himself at the end of every entry pre-Azran Legacy where it’s increasingly obvious this guy has Angst(tm) and some beef with Hershel that seems personal and not just to do with getting in the way of his plots, along with all the earlier hints obviously (iirc he had a final scene at the end of Last Spector but it was nothing more than showing “hey we’re not done with this guy!!”, so that definitely should have had more to it; at the end of Eternal Diva I REALLY wanted to see how he survived his fall, probably with Raymond saving him, cue more ~mysterious reactions to Hershel~ as he thinks on how Hershel cried out his name as he was falling despite the fact that they were enemies, etc; and then the one at the end of Miracle Mask is okay I guess, but I still wanted more to it, more, idk signs of regret or remorse or sadness from him before he goes after Bronev, and not just “grrrrrr finally my revenge is close I’mma take you down all I have is angerrRRRRR” also for him to not look so damn stupid when all Bronev has to do is knee him to take him down, like this is DESCOLE, THE KING OF BADASS, THAT ENDING IS SO PITIFUL; WE DIDN’T NEED THAT FOR A FAKEOUT UNMASKING SCENE THAT LEADS NOWHERE).

tl;dr, Desmole’s story being planned from the very beginning would have made it possible for the writers to foreshadow and develop him properly before you finally see him as Desmond, and make you attached to and interested in him much more than just as a cool badass you kinda wonder the identity of but mostly just enjoy watching be badass and evil. The PL series had never had an overarching villain in the main trilogy aside from Don Paolo, who was more of a comic relief villain who they could afford to not make up his beef with/connection to Hershel until the final game because it was a very insignificant reason in the grand scheme of things, and Don Paolo just..... wasn’t that integral to the plots of that trilogy, he was more of a bonus background villain not meant to be taken seriously or have any true emotional impact. But then you have Descole introduced as the key threat over the majority of the prequel series (you think it’s the Masked Gentleman this time, but no lol, it’s still Descole!!), and needless to say, “actually the protagonist’s long-lost brother trying to get revenge on their corrupt father, both of which are involved in an ancient civilization that ruined all their lives in multiple ways” is a biiiiiiit more important than... “jealous dead girlfriend rival” lol. And so there’s a jarring disconnect between pre-Miracle Mask Descole and post-Miracle Mask Descole, because the Azran aren’t even a thing until Miracle Mask at ALL, and so in Last Spector and Eternal Diva Descole just seems like this mad scientist with a dramatic flair and nothing more, who mayyyyyyyy be searching for eternal life? Since that seems to be the running theme with the golden garden and ambrosia? But even then literally nothing is revealed about him in that game and movie so who knows (and unrelated but it seems like those two places have literally no connection to the Azran aside from an offhanded mention of them in Miracle Mask? idk man); the point I’m taking way too long to make here is that it’s very clear the writers had no endgame plan for him until Miracle Mask at the earliest, and even then I wonder how much of it was completely hashed out (considering the... sort of mess that Azran Legacy is, I almost wonder if most of it was literally not decided on until then). My guess is that Descole was super popular after Last Spector so they decided to bring him back (his final scene in that game could have just been to show that he survived and was still “out there somewhere”, whether or not he came back next entry), but then realized they didn’t have a backstory or identity for him so they had to think up something way too late; I can’t confirm this though of course.

Then you get to Azran Legacy, and honestly, despite how bizarre and weirdly unimportant and filler-ish 90% of this game’s plot feels, I love the inherent idea of Descole finally coming to Hershel as himself. Hershel always shows up and gets in his way? Fine, he’ll come to him. He always sees through his disguises? Fine, he’ll come to him in the best disguise he has: himself. Ask him for his help in a mission his curiosity won’t let him refuse. Because then, of course, even though Desmond is doing this to further and finish his plot, and use them as tools, essentially, there’s the wonderfully painful obvious second reason for why he chooses to do things this way, and that is he wants to spend time with his brother, whether or not he consciously realizes this. This way, Desmond can be himself, he doesn’t have to hide his appearance or (most) intentions and can freely express a lot of his regular personality while still working towards his ultimate goal, but at the exact same time there’s so much he can’t show, that he can’t reveal or let himself do, and this has to be a hundred times harder than when he’s posing as Descole because now he’s friends with Hershel and the others, and a part of him must want so desperately to just stay with them forever as he spends more and more time with them and grows more attached to them, (again, no matter how much he may realize this). But this is where his “arc” continues to fall flat in that aside from one or two hints towards his daughter and having a brother, there is literally no depth in Desmond’s behavior in Azran Legacy pre-Descole/brother reveal, just like in all the entries before it. He should have shown small signs here and there of something being “off” with him, of sadness, of hesitation, of trauma and mental instability; strange things said to Hershel alone that makes him and the player start wondering things, just like with Descole. Everyone immediately goes, upon seeing Desmond for more than five minutes, “oh that’s Descole obviously” (plus Raymond is just... there lol), but it’s not for the right reasons; there’s nothing wrong with a predictable plot twist, but there needs to be some kind of hints towards it to make you emotionally invested in what you realize is coming, because you’re waiting for it and you know it will hurt but you just don’t know when and how it will happen; not that you guess it for no other reason than “well there’s this new character who isn’t an existing friend of Layton’s and everything is suspiciously calm and we’re 90% of the way through this and Descole has yet to show himself; it’s probably him”. For the record, I actually think Miracle Mask does its predictable plot twist a lot better, even if that game still has issues; I see a lot of people complain about how predictable Randall being the masked gentleman is, and it is, but honestly? The flashback plot mechanic in that game is EXTREMELY effective in 1) making it VERY clear who the masked gentleman is very early on, like they’re not trying to hide it in any way, but also 2) punching you in the gut to maximum effect when you get to the end of the flashbacks and pair it with the present-day plot. Like, they could have just told the player in dialogue/infodumps throughout the game who Randall was and what his connection to Hershel, Angela and Henry was, like Desmond does to Hershel near the end of Azran Legacy, but that would have been tedious and boring and the player wouldn’t care near as much, and the game wouldn’t have been long enough. Instead, you see it firsthand, you experience it with Hershel, and although I’m frustrated at how little is done with masked gentleman!Randall and showing connections/hints to who he used to be (look, my exact problems with Descole) and making Hershel more involved with him at the end, which would have been the icing on the angst cake, the entire flashback half of that game honestly left a huge impact on me and I think that’s why I spend so much time talking about/getting emotional about Miracle Mask despite always saying that Diabolical Box is my favorite, because getting to know Randall and see that friendship and see how it ended just makes it all hit so much harder, as flashbacks should do. The writers knew it would be obvious who the masked gentleman is and they leaned into that, it was a very deliberate choice, what the entire game revolved around, because the point wasn’t that it was unpredictable, but that you would feel for that character and it would hurt so much more. And while I don’t necessarily think Azran Legacy needed full-on flashback gameplay segments for Desmond like Miracle Mask had, I think having vague flashbacks every once in a while throughout that game, vague enough to not directly tell you it’s him or naming/showing Hershel/Theodore much but clear enough that you can reasonably guess it is Desmond, would have done a world of difference, along with all the little behavioral/dialogue hints I mentioned. Similar to the diary entries in Diabolical Box, or if anyone’s ever played Super Paper Mario, the flashbacks in that game after every chapter about an unknown person that it becomes increasingly obvious as you play through the game is the main villain. I just.... really, really wish, out of all the prequel entries, Azran Legacy gave Desmond so much more emotional depth and resonance once we finally see him as Desmond instead of Descole, so many more scenes with Hershel, and to a lesser extent the others, so much more development of his character, so much more of an emphasis put on his prior family and how much he’s hurting and caring and yet at the same time refuses to give up his revenge; all of this, no matter how obvious it made his identity as both Descole and as Hershel’s brother. The brother plot twist, too, feels slightly lame and overdone and out of nowhere, but honest to god I wouldn’t fucking care at all if they just foreshadowed it properly and made it so painfully obvious how much Descole/Desmond wants to be with Hershel and this family and how much it kills him to turn on them all again at the end of Azran Legacy even if he still goes through with it, and how much he regrets everything as he lays dying in Hershel’s arms, but we get none of that goddammitLevel5whydoyoudeprivemeofsomuch-

*ahem* apparently I still had a lot to say. i just wanted so much more for him; he’s SUCH a tragic character... the stupid wannabe phantom of the opera bread man still makes me cry, despite everything, because i am trash. Oh yeah and he should have held Aurora in his arms as she died. And Azran Legacy should have ended post-credits with Hershel opening his door with his hat off (to show that this is after Unwound Future), his eyes widening, then it shows the bottom half of the person’s face, just enough to see the bread hair tips, and the slight sad smile, and then cut to black. level-5 just hire the PL fandom to make the Desmond spinoff game pls

#replies #professor layton #professor layton spoilers #jean descole #desmond sycamore #meta #'i dont have much to say' *writes a fucking novel*#EVERY FUCKING TIME #NOTHING IS EVER SHORT WITH ME #why did this partly turn into a miracle mask defense/gush fest i am so sorry #but seriously i thought of that point only as i was typing this... that mm's flashback gameplay is why it works so well #and that something much smaller scale would have been PERFECT for Desmond in AL #not before that #but definitely in AL #....but since we can't have that just give me the Descole spinoff entirely please :''')#themadgirlinthefandombox

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ziracona · 4 years

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hi can we pls have some uhhhh 🅱️uentin Smith headcanons, and some killers hcs if you want! I also lowkey hc Jake and Claudette to both be some degree of autistic, I imprint like a baby bird on my fav characters so I hc both Jake AND Quentin to be trans, and Quentin and Meg are ADHD infodump pals. Literally sitting around the cabin taking turns talking about something they love while the other is sitting there... no thoughts... head empty... they r supporting each other

Nice! And Claudette is canonically autistic according to her archives description as far as I can tell, and I’m so glad! You should check out @askthedreamwalker if you’re interested in Quentin art bc their Quentin is trans and they have really nice art! Also u right as hell about Quentin and Meg. He gets v excited and Meg and he can special-interest back and forth for hours One person is pitcher, pouring information into empty pitcher2, then the other takes a turn and pours back into first pitcher. Info dump support friends. Heaven.

And hells yeah, I love son boy! Idk if you mean ILM headcanons or general, so I’m just gonna go with gen.

Quentin’s got a big sense of justice. Not okay with people getting away with terrible shit, which makes the realms extra unbearable (somewhere in the distance Yui and Tapp are like ‘cheers mate’). Holds people very accountable. Boy is very fair and got upstanding character. Expects people to operate with like bare minimum decency and ain’t about to let that shit go if someone wants to be a bastard. Last person ever to let a killer get a pass for going around murdering people in-realm and would hold them extremely accountable and be v willing to kill one in a fight and view them with disgust and righteous anger, but also be one of the first people willing to forgive a killer if they genuinely reformed, or got thrown to the survivor side by the Entity and actually chose to shape up and proved they meant it. He has a huge sense of justice and righteous anger, but also believes in forgiveness and second chances. (Within reason. If any of the particularly bastard killers like GF or Nightmare or Clown showed up with a completely ooc change of heart they will never have anyway, Quentin would be like “…listen. …There are some things only God can forgive…U gotta take this one to him…and away from me. Forever…”. Boy got those high-quality standards 👌

Used to be kinda high-strung, but then his life was a living hell for so long that he ran out of energy entirely and now he has no choice but to be mostly chill. If he gets a burst of energy, the old excitement power switch flips back on and he is both way more talkative and active, and happier. Unfortunately he is usually so worn out he’s about to drop.

Got a bit of a martyr complex. The fact that literally locking himself in hell with his worst nightmare worked does not help. Feels massive guilt over the fact that the Nightmare is in the realm bc of him, but is still kind of glad bc it means he’s not out there murdering his family. Hates that he feels that way because he thinks it’s kind of wrong. Views being stuck in the realm as sort of penance for having brought Krueger unintentionally. Afraid to tell other people it’s his fault because he’s scared they would never talk to him again, and the idea of losing his friends and complete isolation here is unbearable. Feels guilt over that choice, because he feels like he’s in a way lying to them, and that if they would hate him if they knew the truth, they have a right to. Boy loves his friends hard, but does not trust them to forgive him, or to trust in him, so he’s not always completely honest about not just that but anything he’s struggling with. Very sad dumbass. Suffers alone because he’s afraid to ask for help, and/or does not think he deserves it.

Really loves the other survivors and would do anything he could to protect them. Dies in the majority of his trials because he battles endlessly trying to keep the others from being the ones who die. In a way, he’s trying to make things up to them, but he would absolutely do the same just because he loves them, and did for a long time before he ever figured out Krueger and him being taken was his fault (not that I personally think that’s a fair way for the boy to view it). Optimistic externally, struggling internally. Absolutely refuses, ever, to give up, but is always right on the threshold of having a breakdown. Pushes the others to find a way to escape and tries to give them hope. Takes a lot of shit. Will not fight back much if teased just be like -__- and moves on. Doesn’t let people boss him around though, and will always do what he thinks personally is the right thing. Extremely forgiving. (Except to himself.) Snark boy if opportunity presents itself. Can I offer you a shot of adrenaline in this trying time boy? the rest of the time.

Gives people the benefit of the doubt. Not a hoe. Would commit to a s/o very dedicatedly. Also not the kind of asshole who would cut down on time w friends when in a relationship. Boy’s love is not a zero sum game. Would die or kill for Laurie. Loves Claudette and learning botany tips from her. Thinks she is pretty and admires her kindness and skill and refusal to let the world change who she is, and wishes he was more like her. Has not told her that. Is a lot more like her in that regard than he thinks he is. Pretty damn good in a fight bc he always gets back up. Determinator. Still in love with Nancy and loyal af. Misses her a lot. Does not open up about himself as much as people think he does. Misses his dad and Nancy and his dead friends a lot, especially Jesse. Doesn’t actually talk about his problems much. Just suffers in silence because he doesn’t think he can ask for help.

Takes his faith seriously. Prays a lot, and struggles with feeling completely abandoned by God, but won’t give up on that either. Tries hard to believe he cares and things will change. Dedicated to trying to make sure that regardless of what his friends believe in, they are okay. Very sad and alone but tries to not think about that. Tries to help friends stay hopeful. Is both baby and badass sass boy in one package. Fight hard, love hard, someday will get to sleep for a whole year.

If you are nice to him once, will assume that means you are friends now. Genuinely cares deeply for every single survivor at the campfire. Wants to protect people. Constantly suffering bc that’s impossible here. Really just wants everyone to be okay someday, including himself, and simultaneously kind of feels like he no longer deserves to be okay in the end at all. Tries not to think about that. Massive guilt issues. Bottles it up. Loyal as hell. Would die for his friends so much it actively worries them and they’re like “Quentin…please. Quentin-stop—stop. You’ll die again. I swear to god Quentin! I can die this time! Quentin!!! Come back here right now!” But he never comes back. Big sibling energy. Regularly people be like “Damn u could make a pretty fine lil brother out of this” and then they do. He loves so hard. Please be nice to him. He’s always trying so hard and never thinks it’s enough. He works so hard.

Triggers include being grabbed by his hair and jerked around, losing his necklace, the cave, and the Nightmare within 15 feet of someone he loves, so homeboy has just, a lot of bad days. Is playing a fun game called ‘I will absorb trauma forever and not get help for it and then one day it will kill me’. Needs to learn to depend on his friends.

Good sense of humor, enjoys reading and music. Will talk way too much about things he likes and not notice he’s done it and then feel bad. Dumbass sweetheart, will think he’s doing a great job flirting and be proud of himself when he did not, in fact, do a suave job, but it’s cute. Tries hard. All the time. At everything. God he tries.

I would do killer hcs too but this already so long and I cut like half of what I initially wrote rip. I have too many thoughts. Head full. : ( Here’s just a few little ones:

Myers does not like working for the Entity. It tried to pull a fast one and be like, “Yes tis I, another voice in your head,” and Michael was like “Bitch it’s my head. I don’t know you!” and that did not work. While Michael very much would love to kill Laurie and get inner peace, working for the entity provides 0% daily Michael needs, and he hates it. Sometimes he just does what the fuck he wants and gets in trouble (homeslice is the only killer who can kill survivors with no mori and no perk for it. Michael cannot be controlled). Does not like being here at all. He doesn’t cause the Entity a lot of trouble like Krueger does, so it doesn’t consider him a problem killer, but they do not have a ‘Ah yes my favorite killer’ kind of thing going. Michael hates the spider-monster. He is so tired of everything at this point. Boy is suffering. Would fight the Entity if he knew how. Has been hurt by it before, and does not like that, because it takes longer to heal than he is used to.

Myers has a few times had his home area be close enough to the campfire that he could see it in the distance, and he watches them when that happens. For hours. He is lonely, but does not realize that, and probably never will. He does stand there and watch them, being sad and not realizing he’s sad at all. It’s the closest he ever gets to human interaction aside from killing people in trials.

The Entity hurts Max sometimes, not because he has done anything wrong, but because injuring him without providing even a way to prevent it keeps him peak feral and afraid, just like it wants. No time to recover or learn or grow. Just anger and pain and fear.

The Entity promises Rin a lot of things. Not because it has to, but because it enjoys the taste of her suffering. One of her addons is paper cranes, one of 1000 to make a wish, as the description says. I’ve always interpreted that to mean it likes to screw with her and offer her things like that she can do between trials, in the moments of lucidity she occasionally has when completely alone. ‘Make 1000, get your wish,’ but every time she hits 999, it blows the ones she’s made away, and she has to start over. Unclimbable hill. Just to watch her struggle. That kind of thing. Intentionally tends to send survivors her way it knows she would dislike killing the most, just to watch her have to do it against her will and bask in the horror of what she cannot make herself not do.

#dead by daylight #ask #speckeltail #dbd #quentin smith #michael myers #rin yamaoka

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circusglass · 5 years

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Hey, asshole (if your still doing this 💖)

@feralandfair, *janet jackson’s all for you cues up* this got long so i’m putting it under a cut!

CALEB & MOLLY

(ALL VERSES) It’s officially in writing: Molly likes putting Caleb’s wrists in his mouth. It goes beyond biting and is maybe one of the more primal things he does. He likes to kiss/bite (never hard) the inside of his wrists, inside crease of his elbows—all the places his pulse is strongest (temples, behind his ears, his throat, the inside join of his thighs, his ankles). It might also be a blood hunter thing, but it’s not something Lucien ever did.

(ALL VERSES) Molly finds a lot of pleasure in keeping house. He enjoys doing their laundry, cooking for them, mending clothes, cleaning, running errands. He definitely didn’t set out to be a hausfrau, but, well…one of the first things he learned being raised by Gustav, Desmond, and the carnival was how to pull his own weight for the good of the troupe. He also knows that Caleb can get caught up in his work and head to the point of neglecting himself, so Molly makes up for it. It’s one way he shows his love (the other is making sure the food he eats is tailored to Caleb’s preferences, finicky bastard).

(MODERN/COLLEGE) Molly loves going to yard sales and flea markets for…well, everything, really, but especially to hunt for shitty movie adaptations of any of Caleb’s romance novels. Then he’ll invite himself over with box wine and a tub of black licorice and make Caleb watch it with him (half the show is watching Caleb get worked up and infodump—it’s a good catharsis).

(ALL VERSES) They’ve gone skinny-dipping across verses. You can’t convince me otherwise. In college verse, it was in the university dean’s in-ground pool. They weren’t caught, but Molly did have them turn around halfway from sneaking back home to fetch his under things (of course the one time he plans to wear them is the same time he forgets them). This was…their third date?

(DRYAD/CANON) Molly isn’t afraid to say I love you. It took him so long to cop to it because he was afraid of ruining what they had by scaring Caleb. He thinks if he holds Caleb harder and kisses him deeper, he’ll getit, that he’ll Comprehend Languages into what Molly’s trying to tell him without saying because he’s smart, but that’s not how it works (and Caleb, we’ve established, is dumb. So is Molly). It takes talking with Yasha about the fleeting nature of love and life for him to finally get it. Once he says it, he doesn’t stop. He loves reminding Caleb.

(CANON/CANON-DIVERGENT) While Molly was attracted to Caleb from the jump (everyone in their group is attractive, true, but he has a thing for hard cases), that attraction blossomed into a very real, very dopey infatuation when Caleb looked at him and said, “I believe in second chances, Mollymauk Tealeaf.” Being acknowledged and validated made Molly see Caleb in a different light, as someone he could trust the way he trusted Yasha (though he acknowledged to himself that it was probably one-sided).

(DRYAD) Full bloom is a Caleb-exclusive thing. He has no idea how to control it, and at this point doesn’t even try.

(ALL VERSES, more or less) They have destroyed many an inn room. The Nein have come up with a backup list of inns they can move to, leaving Caleb and Molly behind. If that’s not possible, they know to leave a two room buffer between their room and the rest of the party. Them’s the new group rules, y’all.

JESTER&MOLLY

(CIRCUS) When Jester first starts showing signs of homesickness, Molly is quick to act. He talks with Gustav, and they drum up a chart—the path of their carnival, the towns they’ll hit, and how long a courier takes from one town to the Lavish Chateau in Nicodranas. This way they have an estimate on when the Ruby will receive a letter from her daughter, and Jester will know when she’ll receive correspondence in return, give or take a couple of days. It’s not an exact science, so there are times that Jester’s mail doesn’t arrive on time. Rather than abandoning it, Molly stays behind with her a day or two while the rest of the carnival forges ahead, and waits at the designated inn. He tries to keep her entertained in the in-between by causing mischief at local shops and taverns.

(CIRCUS) The first time he actually meets the Ruby, he gets so nervous he drops and shatters a teacup. Marion somehow takes this as a good sign.

(ALL VERSES) Molly loves Jester, plain and simple. The way this love manifests changes from verse to verse, of course, but it remains all the same. She was a quick favorite with Yasha, and Molly wasn’t too far behind—she’s fun and silly and passionate. She has this faith in her beyond her adoration for the Traveler that extends into her friends that seems unshakeable in the face of their lying and Molly…often doesn’t know how to approach that, but he’s grateful for it. He fell into their friendship quickly, as if they’d known one another from the start. In Circus verse, he just–he fucking adores her, you know? She brings a light and love to the circus that wasn’t there before.

(DRYAD) When he returns, he commissions Jester for a piece to cover the knotted scar on his chest. They work together to figure out what would be best suited for the spot with input from the others (shut up, Beau), before going ahead with it. It’s not that he’s trying to hide it, either like he did his other scars, but the memory is an ugly one, and he wants something new to remember the spot by. (He also lets her practice on him—that goes without saying)

(COLLEGE) The last thing they are is the same size in clothes, but they borrow one another’s stuff all the same. There are a couple of pieces that are interchangeable, and their accessories? Forget about it. One of Molly’s favorite things to do is tell her he’s going to borrow something, but instead leaves a little trinket behind (earrings he lifted from Claire’s, bracelets, necklaces, things of that nature).

(CANON/-ADJACENT/CIRCUS) While he knows he needs to wax/oil his horns, he doesn’t start using the proper kinds of salves made for his exact type of horn until Jester tells him (squawks at him, because! What is he doing!). It becomes a ritual for them to tend to one another’s horns.

(CIRCUS) Whenever Yasha returns from her travels, the first night is spent letting her be the meat in the tiefling cuddle sandwich. She is so comfy and she smells so wild. So much purring occurs.

#hewo i wuv u #*purring intensifies*#( HEADCANON. )#feralandfair #( ASK. )

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scratchface · 6 years

Text

Yusaku has better shit to do.

Aka Part 2 of the Yusaku Character Analysis!

Part 1 is here

So we covered why Yusaku is so socially isolated, but now we have to discuss who Yusaku really is and why.

First and foremost, to understand Yusaku, we have to note that he is highly mission-oriented. In season 1, Yusaku is always focused on and prioritizing the task at hand. Everything else comes second, if it even registers at all. Yusaku is so focused on his mission to the point of being oblivious about other matters, such as charisma duelists. He’s very concentrated on his three reasons, his three goals, and nothing short of life-threatening situations can even compete with that in his mind. It’s all about defeating Hanoi, helping Jin, and finding his special person. Nothing else matters, except for people’s lives. Even when Yusaku makes a move to help out other people, it’s because it serves his own goals or is to keep them from dying. That’s why Yusaku, for the most part, outright ignores everybody else’s emotional drama and only sticks his nose in their business when they’re actively doing something dangerous.

So to get Yusaku, we have to understand that what’s significant to us, as the viewers, probably does not matter to him at all.

A great example of this is the non-relationship between Aoi and Yusaku. Take the scene where Aoi overshares with a guy’s she’s spoken to once, because he mentioned her famous brother’s name, then runs off, obviously upset:

This infodump on a near stranger is simultaneously an accusation and a plea for help. This is where the shonen protagonist is supposed to chase after her and comfort her, feeling both offended and guilty. Where they’re supposed to hash it all out and become closer.

But while the viewer feels bad for Aoi here, Yusaku never does anything with this information. In fact, based on their most recent interaction, we can assume Yusaku hasn’t really spoken to Aoi since she ran off months ago, considering she still hadn’t thanked him for finding her unconscious body on the school roof. That’s because, to put it simply, it’s all irrelevant to him.

He only approached Aoi to see if she had information on SOL, and it’s clear she does not, so he does not speak with her again IRL. It’s not that Yusaku is incapable of being kind, caring, or sympathizing, but he has other stuff to do. While the viewer may be attached to Aoi here, Yusaku is clearly not.

The only time Yusaku shows the slightest interest in the Zaizen’s drama is episodes later, when he points out that he doesn’t want to be involved with either of them and doesn’t want them in the darkness. Knowing what we now know about Yusaku and how he perceives the world, we know of “the darkness” = the abyss, not just his quest for revenge. Yusaku doesn’t want them to cross the abyss; he doesn’t want them to live in the same world as him, like Ryoken does. Yusaku recognizes the Zaizen’s as pure-hearted people (to a rather frustrating degree), and wants nothing to do with them, for the best interests of them and himself.

Yusaku obviously thinks similarly about Go and Ema. He doesn’t want them to cross the “abyss” either. And he doesn’t want anything to do with them either, besides what’s necessary. Take, for example, the end of the duel with Ema. Ema outright pulls the most cliche romantic Japanese line on him, and even specifies when Ai doesn’t get it that she’s not actually talking about the moon.

Whether this is a true expression of romantic intent or an attempt to distract Playmaker isn’t clear, but Yusaku just demands she hand over the back-door program. His only interest is, as always, the mission, and not at all in the beautiful woman trying to flirt with him. His no-nonsense attitude leaves Ema no openings to continue.

I alway thought Ema looked kind of sad here, either because of the rejection or because she’s realized not even she can distract Yusaku from his dangerous path. (But she’s also interested and more than a little infatuated with the mystery of Hanoi, the Incident, and Playmaker.)

Yusaku looks at the moon after Ema leaves, but instead of wondering what Ema could have possibly seen in it or in him, Yusaku wonders if SOL’s databank will have what he needs. Whatever feelings Ema was trying to express, they clearly didn’t make much impact.

So Yusaku has other things on his mind and no time for the emotional journeys of the other characters.

Why is Yusaku so single-minded? In season 1, the revenge quest is Yusaku’s last resort. He’s tried years of therapy, of trying to be normal, but none of it helped his PTSD. He never smiles, or laughs, and doesn’t seem to have anything he enjoys or even likes. He’s so worried about the important person he left behind in Hanoi that it “tears at his soul”. He can’t connect with anyone around him, and doesn’t even want to. Yusaku’s life is really miserable. As he told Akira, he has no friends or precious moments, and his youth is already ruined beyond repair. The gloomy abyss scene is suggested to be how Yusaku has seen the world for 10 years. Yusaku is at the point where he is almost unable to care about anything else, because this is his last chance and his last option: revenge.

Either he gets revenge and finally gets a chance at life after, or he dies trying.

But Yusaku also just doesn’t have much else to care about. Almost every other character in the series is motivated by their family.

Ryoken -> his father. Aoi -><- Akira. Go -> the orphans. Spectre -> his “mother”. Kengo -> his mother. Kusanagi -> his brother. Vyra and Faust -> their little “brother”. I could probably go on.

There is no mention of Yusaku’s family. He doesn’t seem to have any, or remember them if he ever did. This makes Yusaku’s task-driven nature all the more unique in Vrains, and makes his fixation on finding the special person all the more poignant.

Yusaku isn’t just focused on his mission, he has to complete it by himself.

Yusaku is a self-proclaimed loner. Up straight, Yusaku just doesn’t like being involved with other people. [I feel ya, Yusaku, I feel ya.] Not just because of the “abyss” but because Yusaku is living a dangerous life. He clearly states he doesn’t want anyone else involved and in danger, and in the worst case scenario, doesn’t want anyone to be associated with him. Just having Cyberse Wizard and calling himself Playmaker’s friend got Naoki kidnapped.

Yusaku doesn’t want anyone else to die in his fight; if he goes down, he wants to go down alone. And his revenge is meaningless if he’s not the one exacting it, so there’s no point in endangering others. Considering its been ten years and the only information Yusaku has gotten about the Incident is what he’s actively and probably illegally obtained himself, and that must have been incredibly frustrating. The result is that Yusaku doesn’t trust authority figures, or even most people. The only way he can be sure that his revenge is done right, even done at all, is if he does it himself.

Yusaku has lived on his own for who knows how long. And that sort of independence at such a young age has instilled in him a fierce self-efficacy as well as self-sufficiency. From these same traits comes a sort of social aversion; the desire to handle things on his own. Yusaku knew Ema was sending him down the wrong path when she suggested they split up, but he didn’t protest or try to follow her. This is also especially clear at the end of the first season when Yusaku rejects a ride home and instead walks, wanting to be alone with his thoughts after the most emotionally taxing day of the entire series. Yusaku sorts through things best when he’s on his own, but he also struggles with that same solitude. He seem to prefer to sleep around people or stay up all night with Kusanagi, as the constant noise seems to relax him. It’s not so much loneliness that bothers Yusaku, but silence. No surprise, considering how his one comfort during the Incident was a voice.

But despite his lone wolf attitude, Yusaku comes to respect other people’s desire to fight. Watching Go struggling against Genome, Yusaku struggles with himself; with his desire to interfere and his knowledge that he should stay out of it.

Yusaku is acutely aware during the Anothers Incident that people are being hurt in a hunt for him. He feels responsible, but also recognizes that Hanoi wants to drag him out. So Yusaku forces himself to stick to investigating in the real world, and then finds Go is fighting on his behalf, with his “identity” on the line.

And ultimately, Yusaku decides to limit his interference to just some tough encouragement. It’s here that we see that as long as they aren’t getting in his way, Yusaku is coming to terms with other people choosing to fight Hanoi. That’s why it’s not quite accurate to say “Yusaku doesn’t want help”. Yusaku is not going to ask for help, and he doesn’t want anyone interfering, but it’s irrelevant to him if others decide to fight on their own.

Moreover, Yusaku doesn’t seem to mind his working partnerships; he’s very comfortable with both Kusanagi and Ai, and easily accepts both their advice and assistance when it’s viable. But for reasons I’ll get to in the next part, Go, Aoi, and Ema will probably never be able to reach this level of closeness with Yusaku, unlike Takeru.

Furthermore, Yusaku struggles between doing the right thing and doing what’s necessary for his goals

When Tower of Hanoi Arc happens, Aoi and Go show up with some words about being heroes and fighting for everyone. Aoi then asks what Playmaker is doing there and Yusaku lists three much more concrete goals.

To stop the tower, protecting Ai and the Cyberse from Hanoi and effectively foiling their plans again, preventing a world-wide disaster.

Saving Ema’s life.

And to fuck up Revolver’s shit. It’s all very focused and not at all like the idealistic answers Aoi and Go gave. Its more concrete, so when their motivations turn flimsy, his remains.

Hours after that Go, Aoi, and Akira all get deleted and join Ema in the Tower. And some of that was pretty damn traumatizing for Yusaku: both Ema and Akira’s deletions drove him into a rage, as he was faced with his own weakness and helplessness. Because despite Yusaku’s focus on his revenge, and his competency, when it comes down to it, Yusaku is really bad at it.

Despite knowing Hanoi’s connections with the experiments that ruined his life, Yusaku struggles with actually resenting the individuals. He respects human life too much to truly wish harm upon them, causing him to spend most of his quest searching for the truth over searching for payback.

And then, when an innocent life is put between him and his mission, Yusaku freezes up. Spectre throws him off-balance, making him question whether his mission is truly reasonable and justifiable, and if it isn’t, if he’s prepared to bear the consequences and do what it takes to complete it anyway.

Yusaku never really gets the chance to make this decision directly, aka make a kill. Akira and Spectre and Kogami all kill themselves, but after Akira Yusaku not only refocuses on his mission, he doubles down on it. When he was forced to doubt himself and then reaffirmed by Akira’s words, instead of opening his mind up a little and seeing more than the mission, Yusaku goes straight into mission tunnel vision. Because Akira gave him the answer: he should choose the mission over people’s lives.

Though he didn’t get a chance to chose the mission over life, due to Akira’s words, Yusaku is recognizing the necessity of sacrifice. As Go disappears, Yusaku is much more controlled and less furious than he was in the face of Akira and Ema’s deaths. And that’s because he’s decided the mission truly does take priority, and Go’s death serves a purpose to it.

Now we see in season 2, in the wake of the Tower of Hanoi, that Yusaku isn’t as cool with other people joining the fight anymore. Before he might have let Aoi do her own thing so long as she didn’t bother him, but now he tells her “thanks but buzz-off”, because putting herself in danger again is unnecessary.

Even though circumstances have changed and things aren’t as life-or-death, Yusaku still has no reason to think he needs help. Yusaku managed to take down the Knights of Hanoi and the Tower almost single-handedly--only two notable members weren’t defeated by him, and he certainly could have and would have taken them down himself had he tried to.

It’s not just a matter of independence or Yusaku’s incredible skill; Yusaku had six months of Ryoken’s “Be strong” echoing either in the room or in his head, every time he showed weakness or failed. Yusaku associates weakness, hesitation, and helplessness with pain and starvation. It’s either “Be strong” or suffer.

Furthermore, in the wake of Yusaku reprioritizing and casting aside his hesitation, Yusaku may truly want everyone else to stay out because he’s not willing to chose them over his goals if necessary. He may very well be trying to avoid another captive Akira situation because he now knows he will have to attack anyway.

Thanks, Akira.

That’s why Yusaku doesn’t protest each time Soulburner puts himself in danger so Yusaku can continue pursuit, and why he ditches them in the most recent episode even with Ai expressing concern. This is not something early Yusaku would be able to do so easily.

The mission to get back Jin absolutely takes priority over the others’ safety. Hell, Yusaku seemed pleasantly surprised when Soulburner came back fine from his duel with Go. He’s so used to other’s failing that part of him probably already wrote Takeru off as sacrificed. So it’s not that he trusts Takeru’s skills yet, but that he prioritizing.

So, all in all, Yusaku is the kind of person that does everything himself and is strong enough to make it work, and the Tower of Hanoi Arc validated that mindset. Having come to terms with making sacrifices for the bigger picture and working through a lifetime of distrust and an entire season of incompetency, he once again wants everyone to stay out of it and keep the body count to a minimum, but he’s at least nicer about saying it.

Yusaku’s single-minded focus on the current task and need to complete it himself without getting any more meddlers killed than necessary are essential factors to the question: who gets to help Yusaku? It all comes down to who can reach him, on the other side of the abyss, and who is good for the mission.

So, how the hell did Takeru manage it, when the others failed?

Well, join me in Part 3 tomorrow, hopefully.

#vrains #yugioh vrains #ygo #yusaku fujiki #fujiki yusaku #vrainalysis

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littlehungrywarrior · 7 years

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there’s a lot of things about me that are fucking absurd and really cool, so when ppl ask me to tell them about myself, i break em out immediately (”my family heirloom is a severed head named oswald,” “I can see disney studios from my house,” etc)

but just bc im bored and I feel like it, here’s some stuff about me that I dont think I’ve ever really talked about? not secrets, but just...mundane things that I don’t really ever say in favor of Ice Breaker™-type things

I have a profound respect for mail services. When I was 7-8 years old, we watched a documentary in class about how the postal system works, its history, and about the various jobs involved. It was an extremely formative experience for me. I don’t send a lot of things over snailmail and so I’m not really sure how to express my respect and support but it’s definitely there. Unfortunately, I’ve yet to play the FallOut game where you’re a mail carrier, but I wanna... I wanna.

Though I’ll claim to the ends of the earth that sports confuse me, I am a huge speed-running enthusiast. One hobby/interest/self-esteem exercise I have is that I really like to learn jargon/lingo involved with...anything, really. So I started watching speedruns to pick up the lingo and I just...became infatuated. I’m no expert but I’m %100 into it for more than the lingo at this point; I’ve long since got that covered. One of my favorite parts is golf-clapping along with other fans when something cool/impressive happens.

I can’t sleep without a hat on. A beanie, specifically. When I was, like...5 or something, I was terrified of vampires, and for some reason I thought vampires bit the skull and not the neck. So I pulled my blankets up over my head at night. My parents thought this was dangerous (I might suffocate) so they gave me a hat to protect myself with. I’ve long since outgrown my fear of vampires (and learnt that they don’t typically bite skulls) but I’ve associated hats with nighttime safety for so long that I can’t fall asleep without one. In the event that I don’t have one, I can wear underwear on my head to suffice...and I think I wore a stuffed animal once somehow but idk.

I’ve had my SPiN in genetics for so long that 5-year-old me used to infodump strangers at the grocery store. When I asked where babies come from, my dad got me a picture book written for kids specifically to answer that question. We still have it; my brothers used it, too. It starts by explaining pollination and then extends the same concepts to dogs and then humans. Most of the information is on pregnancy and fetuses rather than sex, and cell development immediately caught my fascination. I asked my parents for more information about this and they gave me some more microbiology stuff. Combine that with my animal obsession + budding interest in heredity and you’ve got a tiny obnoxious geneticist who wouldn’t stop telling random people in line at the grocery store about how chromosomes are passed on through haploid cells. Dad got real smug about it, it was fantastic.

On a similar note (and I have no memory of how this actually happened), I more or less learnt to read spontaneously? All at once? Again, I have no clear memory of this until the part where I can read... My parents read to me every night but I never was able to do it myself. I had a huge library built into the wall at perfect me-height for reading. One morning, the summer I turned 5, I (according to legend) walked up to my parents, got their attention, said “I’m going to read now,” and then (this part I do remember) sat down and read every single book in that library over the course of two or three days. Super rough estimate, but it was somewhere between 70-200 books, with a variety of target ages ranging from 3 to 10-11. No chapter books, all pictures, but the second I was finished I wanted more books. My mom took me to the store to buy more and insisted I get a chapter book since I’d burnt through the picture books so fast. And that’s where I got my first Warriors book.

That was not the last time I read an entire library. In 7th grade, a friend of mine and I both had sex ed previously and so were allowed to skip that year’s sex ed on the condition that we spent that class in the school library. And together, we read the entire thing. Only what was on the shelves, though; nothing in the back. Actually, at one point on the last day, we’d already read every book in the place and we were bored, so we pulled some books out of the back to look at and none of them caught our interest. One of them was the first Hunger Games book WAY before it got popular. We’d never heard of it, both read the first 2 pages, didn’t like it at all, and put it back. You should’ve seen our faces when it suddenly blew up into a huge thing. The sad thing is, I remember a lot of books that I enjoyed but can’t find now because I can’t remember any specific titles or characters. We sped through everything to finish it all and didn’t really take a lot of time to absorb details so a lot of them are lost to the vague, hazy back of my memory. Still looking for that manga where the ninja kid...stops an evil scientist from...some kind of virtual world machine. There’s a piranha tank? And then the bad guy...gets sniped by a helicopter and falls off the roof, or something? Also there was a manga version of Maximum Ride, which I only remember by name because 2 chapters in it suddenly hit me that this was a comic version of a text-novel my mom was reading at the same time. I bought a handful of books from that library at the end of the year and still have them.

I’ve only been in one play but something fucking sweet happened during production. I was Malvolio in Twelfth Night because, and I quote my drama teacher (who had known me for 8-ish years at that point and also who was smirking her ass off when she said this), “You’ll see why when you read the play.” She was not wrong and to this day that smug fuckin grin gives me life. Anyway, I was Malvolio, and you know that “Some have greatness thrust upon them” speech that everyone’s so inspired by? That speech is a fucking prank pulled on this asshole and it’s about bangin’. So the scene is that I dramatically read this “””love letter””” I’ve received and then run off to go embarrass myself. The speech is LONG and so I asked if I can just...actually have it written on the letter. And she said yes! So I wrote it down with intent of reading it off the letter. But opening night, the actress who was to place the letter grabbed the wrong paper and so I got just a blank sheet. Guess fucking what? We’d re-choreographed that scene so many times the night before that I slammed that shit anyway, word-for-fucking-word. And I was never mad at my friend for grabbing the wrong paper, so I say this in jest, but her punishment for grabbing the wrong paper is that the entire cast/production team did not hear the end of my pride for the entire week. For a timeframe reference, I was 12.

When I was a kid I had a horse named Emmy. She was a rental horse. Actually, I think she was a pony? The way the rental worked was that she lived in a barn with a bunch of other horses. Her owners were a small business who gave riding lessons, but instead of just riding each session, one of the horses was “yours” (assigned by age, height, and temperament, not picked by the kid) to take care of while you were there and ride consistently every session. Essentially, she was only my pet when I was on the property. I can still ride but I’ve gotten rusty and I can’t do anything above a trot for more than a few seconds. Both times I’ve jumped have been accidents, once on Emmy and once on mom’s current horse, Meteor. I’ve fallen only once, and it was off Emmy. Mom’s going to be getting a gigantic thoroughbred soon and I’m both terrified and excited to ride this very large boy.

I talk about this in person but not online because...why would it ever come up online?? I have worn the same style of red jacket every single time I leave the house since I was a pre-teen. It’s to the point where people will only recognize me if I’m wearing it. I had a friend in high school who was/is a really cool guy, we were seniors and we’d been close friends since freshman year. I had my jacket tied around my waist because of the heat. The school had two campuses a block apart and I was walking from one to the other to get something. Friend was walking from the other to the one, so we passed each other. Wordlessly. No wave, nothing. I was tired, it was hot, I didn’t really think anything of it. Then suddenly, a foot behind me, he freezes dead in his tracks and says my name with some kind of stricken shock. He had no idea it was me. At all. Keep in mind: my jacket? Tied around my waist. Not even off, just around my waist. Since then I’ve used this jacket thing to my advantage. Sparingly, I can take it off to sneak around. It’s like I’m invisible to people I know unless I say something and they hear my voice. It’s incredible.

Going back to speed running, way before I knew that it was a thing at all, I taught myself to speedrun two games: The Lion King (PS2, not the impossibly hard one) and Putt Putt Saves The Zoo. As they were unofficial speedruns that I didn’t really call anything and just kinda did when I was bored, I never timed the latter, and I only timed the former once using my mom’s kitchen timer. It was a rough estimate since sometimes I paused and forgot to hit play for a few seconds, or I needed to pause but didn’t for a few seconds, and the timer only counted full minutes anyway, but I still remember the time: 35 minutes. I keep meaning to go back and re-teach myself to speedrun it, perhaps more professionally, and time it with more accuracy. I still remember all the strats but I can’t pull them off with as much fluidity as I could when I was still in practice. I also can, when watching both Lion King 1 and 2, still point out with frame-perfect accuracy exactly when a scene starts that was a cutscene in that game.

wow writing this was fun and I kinda wanna do it again. ok

#what do i tag this as #me??#me

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tryingthisfangirlthing · 7 years

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@viennainspringtime I’m not going to pretend I wasn’t happy I made you feel things. ;D I hope them not being around didn’t feel throwaway, but basically I’m trying to focus on Teslen and the vampires, and, I don’t know, I feel like Helen losing them would have very much fueled a certain single-mindedness about the whole thing (not that she wouldn’t have been single-minded before, but more so now). Also, I’m sorry, this chapter is a bit of an infodump, with a bit more backstory/worldbuilding that’s addressed in part 5 but I didn’t want to spring on readers out of the blue during that scene. I hope it’s not too bad, though. :P

Teslen vampire/hunter AU, Part 4

Contains: guns (that are actually not used for a change), vampires and associated mentions of drinking blood, mentions of deaths of canon characters (Henry and Ashley), mentions of life-threatening situations, possibly slightly obsessive behavior?

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Six days Nikola lay slumped there, in his locked-down laboratory, half-delirious, adjusting the hastily inserted IV whenever he felt lucid enough to safely do so.

He only ventured out, once, near the end, when he became so hungry he feared he might rip into his own wrist while asleep, and once he had retrieved the blood bag he hooked himself back into his blood matrix scrubber, fed, and slept for another thirty-six hours.

It had been a true Hail Mary pass, and he never wanted to come that close to death again.

Defensive hadn't worked, and so he grudgingly began to think more offensively, towards actively disabling instead of merely blocking and deterring, enjoying the challenge of a new design paradigm but hating that he had been driven to it. (Her idea of some kind of energy-based weapon wasn't half bad, actually, right up his alley.) He found a place on the top floor of a converted warehouse, and set up his new fortress, and waited.

He waited a long time, months, in fact, weeks upon restless weeks of looking over his shoulder and perfecting his new systems and very much not wondering what sorts of books or wines she liked. (She just seemed like the type to be able to properly appreciate both.)

A reverse image search with some clear footage from her previous attack turned up one “Abigail Fernley,” M.D., but aside from the standard documentation (birth certificate, driver's license) there was very little, and the entire thing smacked of a façade, the sort he too was intimately acquainted with.

(He really should have turned the images over to the police so they could lock her up if they hadn’t already — his most effective way of getting rid of hunters — but he reminded himself that pressing charges in this case could raise a lot of questions he wasn't very keen on answering, including why he had such an intense security system against someone who was, to their knowledge, a burglar. Her, he much preferred to deal with himself.)

There were also far too many Henrys and Ashleys in this world for those names to be of much use. There was one boy, whom he thought might be the relevant one — a computer science student, whose body had been found drained in the aftermath of a feeding party. But sources made no mention whatsoever of family, and one or two sites on the deep Abnormal web spoke of him being a werewolf — which ruled out him being her son, at least biologically.

There were simply far too many casualties, even a few unwanted turnings — and it angered him, these arrogant fledglings who thought they could rule the world by force and bend it to their petty whims, these idiots who cast a black mark on them all and flew in the face of all the enlightenment his great race was capable of bringing to the world. Thankfully, most of them also woefully underestimated humans, and sooner or later had their spoiled little asses — or rather, heads — handed to them on a silver platter. Those vampires... once the transformation had taken place there was no way back, and he could understand humans eliminating that threat.

(There was a local takedown, recently, some rich upstarts. Nikola was nearly certain that was her work: careful, quick, and with an abundance of biochemical weaponry.)

He began to believe she had given up chasing him — he didn’t fear that, no, it would be a good thing if she had, remember? But he couldn't let his guard down, because it would be just like her to take advantage of that moment. (He debated doing it anyways, deliberately. It would be a clever trap.)

He threw his restless energy into his work in the laboratory, registering several minor patents for efficiency improvements in circuitry, streetcar propulsion, and radio transmission, and into his other work: a book, A History of Vampires, which he aimed to be the premier reference on his species once the world was ready to know the truth. He added a chapter on arrogant spoiled brat fledglings, in the heat of the moment, then revised it, then deleted it, then un-deleted it again.

Their history, though, that was his favorite topic. His race, once the kings and pharaohs of the world, ruling by virtue of their wisdom and bringing peace and enlightenment to their subjects, had been made practically extinct by the Church — sterilized and banished. Until the end of the 19th century, when one doctor, one brilliant woman, had revived them. Helen Magnus had devised a serum from pure vampire blood, and injected a small group of desperate Eastern European patients with it. Whatever her original intentions for that experiment may have been, the great race was reborn, and spread. Nikola himself had been one of the second generation, seeking out these people in the dark corners of 1890s London who were rumored to have become younger, unaging, and nigh-indestructible, and he had practically begged to become one of them, if it were possible. Eternity for his work, and damn any safety precautions.

He had nearly given up on seeing her again, nearly returned to some semblance of his normal life, when she rang his front doorbell.

“Well, this is a surprise.” He couldn't come up with a better quip on such short notice, when he saw her in the evening twilight on the building's door camera. She was bold, and his heart sped up, as he wondered what she had up her sleeve this time. She carried no bag full of gear, just her usual leather jacket, a scarf over her neck, and a holster at her hip. “Though, if you wanted to try to climb into my bedroom window again, I wouldn't mind that, either.”

“I’d be daft, trying to enter directly into a bedroom.” She tilted her head, briefly. “Though given how little you sleep…” She cleared her throat. “May I come up?”

He stilled, debating it for a split second, but his curiosity won, easily. “You leave your gun by the door.”

She clicked her tongue. “That's hardly fair. You have an entire defense system up there, plus your natural advantages. I should at least be afforded my gun.”

“If I may remind you, you're the one coming to me. My rules.”

“I'm not coming to try to kill you. This time.” She stood with her arms crossed over her chest, her expression impassive. “I could suggest a meeting in ‘neutral’ territory, say, a park. A place with so many more possible angles of attack. A restaurant poses its own issues, as well.” She paused, for a moment, to let her words sink in. “I want to speak with you, Nikola, and this is the best place for us both. But I won't surrender my gun. Are you going to let me in?”

He frowned, setting his jaw as he buzzed her into the building. “I'm sure you know which apartment.” His only response was the sound of her boots on the stairs.

It was surreal, letting her into his apartment. She stopped just beyond the door, glancing around, shifting her weight onto one foot, completely unselfconscious.

He swallowed and closed the door, watching her. “Why are you here?”

She folded her arms, staring right back at him. “As strange as it may sound, I do feel obligated to thank you for calling an ambulance. It may very well have saved my life.”

He inhaled. “I hope you don't make me regret that.” Taking a step back, he sized her up, and she did the same.

“Why did you do it?” She held up a hand. “And spare me any platitudes.”

“I hate seeing death. Despite what you may think of me, I don't laugh and watch the world burn.”

She lifted her chin, pursing her lips. “I suppose that's fair enough. For what it's worth: thank you.”

He tilted his head, allowing a half-smile to seep over his face. “You're welcome.” He gestured towards the living room with a flourish. “If I may offer the lovely lady a seat and some wine?”

#teslen vampire/hunter au #rinari's fic #teslen #sanctuary #vampire hunters #vampires #fanfiction

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