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travissimblr · 3 years

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Sims 3 Performance Guide

Lately I have found the direction of The Sims 4 to be rather lackluster. Let’s face it. The game is boring. Still looking for that “Sims Fix” I found myself going back to playing The Sims 3. The Sims 3 can be tricky to get running correctly on modern computers so I figured I would share what I learned over the years. I made this guide a few years ago for another forum so I’m always open to new suggestions/edits etc. Some things may work well for others while some may not make a difference at all. I have applied all of these fixes in my own game and I still experience lag so this is by no means a guide to completely eliminate the lag in the game but a guide to perhaps help your game run a little bit smoother. All of these tips have been gathered from all over the internet and also some things I have picked up on my own over the years. I own a legit copy of the Sims 3 and have never owned a pirated version so I can't say whether or not these settings will work with a pirated version of the game. I also only have a PC so I don't know if any of these settings will effect the Mac version of the game. If anything I hope this guide brings people back to The Sims 3 or allows people to give the game another chance. The guide will be pretty extensive and I take no responsibility if you mess up your game :P

Limit Game FPS - This one has been a godsend. I was experiencing major lag especially in build/Buy mode. My computer is way over spec for this game much like most computers today. What would happen is that while in Build/Buy Mode my FPS would spike into the 200's! During these spikes the game would almost be un-playable.

To fix this issue:

Download this file: https://rd.nexusmods.com/skyrim/mods/34]https://rd.nexusmods.com/skyrim/mods/34

I know it says it's for Skyrim but it will also work for The Sims 3. After downloading it unzip the antilag.cfg and d3d9.dll into X: > Program Files (x86) > Origin Games > The Sims 3 > Game > Bin if using Origin. If you have the steam version of the game use : X: > Program Files (x86) > Steam > steamapps > common > The Sims 3 > Game > Bin . By default it is set to limit the game to 30FPS. I have been using this and it works fine. You can change it to 60FPS if you want by opening the antilag.cfg using notepad. I haven't had a chance to test the game at 60FPS but its not like The Sims 3 is a First person shooter or anything so IMO its probably not necessary. Run the game and your FPS should be capped at 30.

Alternately you can try turning on Vsync in either Nvidia Control Panel or AMD Catalyst software however I wasn't able to get it working. I'm using a Geforce 1080 and the latest Nvidia drivers. When I turned it on in the control panel it did nothing in the game.

After installing this fix I no longer experience massive lag spikes while in Build/Buy Mode the whole game also seems to be running a little bit smoother as well. Unfortunately there isn't much we can do about EA's terrible coding of the game so there will still be lag but this one has helped my game more then any of the other fixes as of yet.

**It also must be noted that FPS fix uses the same file as Reshade, d3d9.dll. I haven’t tested if this works using the d3d9.dll file from Reshade but I can assume it probably doesn’t. I do however believe there is a frame limiter built into reshade which should accomplish this same thing as this mod.

In Game Settings

1. Graphics

Resolution - You should always play at the native resolution for your monitor. Most monitors today use a native resolution of 1680x1050 or 1920x1080. If your game is struggling at this resolution you should always lower the graphics settings not the resolution.

Windowed? or Fullscreen? - This one is something that you will have to test. Some people say that the game runs better for them in Fullscreen and some say it runs better in Windowed Mode. My personal game runs better in Windowed Mode.

Object Hiding - Enabling this can help to increase performance especially if you have a large house. Essentially what this does is that the game renders every object on the lot you are in even if you aren't on that floor. So if you are playing on the first floor the game is using resources to render the items on the second/third floor etc.

Reflection Quality - Setting it to Mirrors and Water will work well for most people but adjusting this lower can offer a slight performance increase.

Edge Smoothing - I personally have not noticed much of a difference in performance adjusting this setting but this is the Anti Aliasing settings for the game. Try lowering it and see if it makes a difference in your game.

Visual Effects - According to the game "Controls the quality of particle effects on objects, Sims, and the town" Medium would be the recommended setting for Visual effects. It offers a happy medium between performance and visual quality.

Lighting and Shadows - Adjusts the shadow quality in the game. I run this on high in my game as there isn't a noticeable difference in performance between medium and high settings. Turning it to low will give a slight boost in performance but the shadows will be ugly.

Tree Detail - Keep this setting on high as there really is no difference in performance between settings. All you end up with are some ugly trees and no real boost in performance.

Enable Animation Smoothing & Enable Advanced Rendering - Both of these items should always be checked. Enable Animation smoothing makes no difference in performance and Turning off Enable Advanced Rendering can actually decrease performance.

Draw Distance - Keep this on high as it does not effect performance.

High Detailed Lots - With this turned up all the way I noticed a fair bit of stuttering in my game. I have mine set to 4 lots but this is a setting that should be tested to see what works for you.

Texture Detail and Sim Detail - Most computers should be able to handle both of these settings maxed for a small boost in performance you can lower the texture detail to medium. Sim Detail should always be set at Very High as lower this setting has only a very small boost in performance that probably wouldn't even be noticeable.

2. General Settings

Enable Shop Mode - This will disable the Sims 3 Shop from In-Game. Turning this off can help with stuttering.

Enable Lessons - Turning this off can possibly help with performance. I haven't noticed a difference but at this point we all know how to play The Sims.

Memories - Disabling Memories can offer a boost to performance and reduce in game stuttering.

**Alternately you can try using this mod if you don’t want to completely disable the memory system in The Sims 3

No (or fewer) automatic memories by velocitygrass on Mod The Sims

https://modthesims.info/d/446281

Enable Interactive Loading Screens - Turning this off has been said to reduce some in game stuttering. Besides nobody wants to play that stupid game anyway.

3. Online

Keep Me Logged In & Enable Online Notifications - Turning off both of these settings will help game performance and reduce stuttering.

4. Advanced Demographics Options

Enable Story Progression - Turning this off will reduce stuttering in the game. If you like this setting you can use the NRASS Story Progression explained further in this guide.

Advanced Settings

I will try to guide as best as I can with these but always MAKE BACKUPS of every file modified in this section.

In order to make this process easier be sure that "Hide extensions for known file types" is unchecked in the Windows Folder Options. In Windows 10 Click on View > Options > Change folder and search options. Switch to the view tab and under Files and Folders uncheck "Hide extensions for known file types"

Edit GraphicsRules.sgr - This setting will help the game run smoother and make for faster clothing changes.

1. Got to X:\Program Files (x86)\Origin Games\The Sims 3\Game\Bin

2. Copy the GraphicsRules.sgr file and back it up in either in a safe location or even in the same directory just name it GraphicsRules.sgr.orig. Click yes when prompted with the rename.

3. Now Open GraphicsRules.sgr with notepad (not the copied version)

4. You will see four lines that look like this: seti cpuLevelUber 4

seti cpuLevelHigh 3

seti cpuLevelMedium 2

seti cpuLevelLow 1

5. Change the four lines to this: seti cpuLevelUber 4

seti cpuLevelHigh 3

seti cpuLevelMedium 3

seti cpuLevelLow 3

6. Save in Notepad and close Notepad.

Edit Sims3.ini - This is how you force the game to use more then 2GB of RAM. I noticed a massive improvement in both CAS and Build/Buy mode with this. Clothing,Objects etc load almost instantly when this is changed. The Origin version of the game has already been patched to use 4GB of RAM however adjusting this value to reflect your systems total ram amount if above 4GB can be beneficial. If you currently have 4GB total of RAM and are using the Origin version of the game you can skip this step. It’s questionable whether or not this makes a difference in the game as The Sims 3 is a 32 bit game that only uses 4GB to begin with but it seems to actually make a difference in my own game.

1. Go to X:\Program Files (x86)\Origin Games\The Sims 3\Game\Bin (same as GraphicsRules.sgr)

2. Backup the Sims3.ini in the same method as the GraphicsRules.sgr

3. Open Sims3.ini in Notepad

4. Under [ResourceSystem] you will see this:

MemoryUsageLimit = 20000000 ( 10000000 for legacy/disc versions)

5. Ignoring the zeros this is showing that the Sims 3 is only using 4GB of ram (2gb for Legacy/Disc versions of the game). Depending on the amount of ram in your system you should change it to half of your total amount of ram. Examples:

8GB Total Ram MemoryUsageLimit = 40000000

16GB Total Ram MemoryUsageLimit = 80000000

32GB Total Ram MemoryUsageLimit = 16000000

**Be Sure to only change the first number not any zeros. For 32GB+ its the first 2 numbers. Putting this too high could cause your system lock up or crash and possibly do damage**

Modding

First go here and follow the instructions on this page to set up your Mods folder: https://www.carls-sims-4-guide.com/forum/index.php?topic=9187.0

1. Must Have Mods - Even if you don't plan on putting any CC in your game these Mod is highly recommended if not needed in order to keep the game running Smoothly.

NRAAS Master Controller -

https://www.nraas.net/community/MasterController

This mod is a must have. It fixes many of the errors in the game and helps immensely with game lag and stuttering.

Under Modules Download: (Not Required but useful)

MasterController Cheats - Adds "cheaty" functions to Master Controller.

MasterController Expanded Tatttoo - Expands the number of locations provided in Tattoo CAS

MasterController Progression - This mod adds progression related interactions to the "Master Controller" menu. Addition to Story Progression (below)

MasterController Integration - (Must have if you install a lot of sliders) This mod replaces all the CAS interactions in the game with the one managed by MasterController, including the "Create-A-Sim" button in "Edit Town".

Now go to this Page and download these other “Must Have Mods” by NRAAS

https://www.nraas.net/community/Mods-List

Overwatch - (Important) Contains error correction and periodic game maintenance/clean up to reduce issues and improve game longevity.

Error Trap - (Important) Core-Mod that performs save-game corruption cleanup, while catching and reporting unhandled script errors.

Traffic- (Important) Controls autonomous vehicular traffic such as the Food/Ice Cream Trucks, and provides some minor vehicle routing settings.

Saver - (Important) Adds autosave function to the game.

Register - (Important) Replaces the EA Role Manager with a custom version that corrects several bugs and allows for greater flexibility.

Other Useful Mods at NRAAS (Optional) Same page as above:

Story Progression - Basically a less buggy, less performance heavy replacement for the EA story progression in the game. Be sure to tick off “Story Progression” in the In Game options as stated above. (Install all the optional modules as well)

Decensor - We all know what this does

Dresser - Adds automated outfit control for inactive sims, adding accessories, and restricting CAS parts.

WooHooer - Alters the romance and woohoo interactions, provides greater flexibility and attraction scoring.

Retuner - Provides fine tuning of many settings in game like autonomous settings, pricing etc. This one can seem daunting at first but there are plenty of Returner settings to be found out there and its really isn’t that difficult to change the settings in game albeit time consuming.

Be sure to look over the other mods if you see something you like download it. Any of these mods should be safe to add to your game with little to no performance impact.

After that extract the files you just downloaded into \Documents\Electronic Arts\The Sims 3\Mods\Packages\Overrides If you don't have an Overrides folder create one. The “Overrides Folder” is essentially a priority folder. Mods put into this folder will be loaded before any other package files you may add to the game.

In-Game NRASS Settings

These are just some settings to change to improve game stability. This is by far not comprehensive. For Retuner settings I would suggest a Google search of other users settings or consulting the NRASS help section for explanations of how to use this mod.

Click on the Town Hall in Map View Under NRASS

Traffic

Ice Cream Truck - I hate that creepy Ice cream truck so I change everything to false and set Max Ice Cream Trucks to 0. If you like having it around still change the Max Ice Cream Trucks to 1

Routing

Allow Performance Career Limos - False (Limos create a lot of lag in the game)

Allow Use of Cars During General Routing - True (if disabled your sims will only use cars when you tell them to)

Always Use Taxis for Inactives Lacking Vehicles - False (Townies will no longer use Taxis)

Allow Immigration - False (Random Townies wont move into your town keeping the population down and helping to keep performance from decreasing as sims move in.

Animal Control - Change the settings below for a performance boost

Maximum Deer - 2

Maximum Raccoon - 2

Maximum Stray Cats - 3

Maximum Stray Dogs - 3

Maximum Unicorns - 0 (Sorry Wild Horses and Unicorns add a good deal of lag to the game)

Maximum Horses - 0

Custom Content (CC)

Much like any other Sims game moderation is key. The more CC you download and put in you game the slower your game will perform. I'm not going to go into detail about how to install CC in The Sims 3 in this guide. These are just a few important tips to take into account when installing CC,

Try to install Sims3Pack files as much as you can. Sims 3 automatically merges these files and this leads to better game stability.

Merge you package files. Girl Meets Pixels made a great guide here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jIZ2LdoT-HY]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jIZ2LdoT-HY

Keep an eye on the size of your Sims 3 Folder in /Documents. It may seem crazy to imagine but massive CC shopping sprees can lead to a massive folder to the tune of 30GB+. Skins and Hairs are a killer. These files are usually rather large sometimes in excess of 80 - 100mb. My suggestion would be to find a default skin you like and just use that. Don’t install any non default skins. Also go easy on the hair. You don’t need 20 different variations of the same ponytail in the game. Clothing is usually fine but pay attention to the size of the CC. That cute dress you found on Tumblr that’s 65mb more then likely has way too high of a poly count and will just lag and be slow to render in the game. Sure it looks great in screenshots but it wont be practical in game. I’m not sure of the exact cut-off for CC but eventually the folder gets too large for the game to handle and it will lead to issues like save corruption or in some cases not being able to save the game at all because the game has run out of memory. Sadly if this happens there is no fix for this and you will lose all of your progress and possibly your save file as well.

Advanced

World Fixes EA left many routing issues in a lot of their worlds that are known to cause lag and often times crashing as Sims bunch up in broken routing areas on the map.

All the World Fixes can be found on Ellacharmed's Wordpress page. Follow the instructions very carefully and install the fixes for all the worlds you have installed in your game.

https://ellacharmed.wordpress.com

Other Useful Tips

Delete your cache!! This one can't be stressed enough. I delete mine before every game play and never have issues starting the game up. A guide can be found here: http://simswiki.info/wiki.php?title=Game_Help:Sims_3_Delete_Cache_Files

Turn off Origin In Game - This will give a noticeable improvement.

Close all other programs running in the background.

Turn on Game Mode or Silent Mode on your Antivirus

Useful Sims 3 Programs

s3pe http://www.simlogical.com/ContentUploadsRemote/uploads/189/

Sims 3 Dashboard Tool http://modthesims.info/download.php?t=387006]http://modthesims.info/download.php?t=387006

CC Magic http://modthesims.info/download.php?t=461888]http://modthesims.info/download.php?t=461888

Delphy's Sims 3 Pack Multi-Extractor http://modthesims.info/download.php?t=364038]http://modthesims.info/download.php?t=364038

Save Cleaner by Kuree http://www.simlogical.com/ContentUploadsRemote/uploads/1532/

#ts3 #s3 #s3cc #sims 3 #tutorial #guide #the sims 3

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telehxhtrash · 4 years

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A masterpost on Togashi’s gay subtext and why it’s intentional.

Hi ! After seeing so many posts about Togashi dropping subtext about Killua's possible romantic feelings for Gon, I thought it'd be a good idea to make a sort of "masterpost" with all the subtext that Togashi has included into his work.

I usually see a lot of people trying to say that HxH isn't about romance and that Togashi isn't interested in writing romance into the manga, but when you analyze all the subtext that's been going on the further Gon and Killua's relationship progresses, I think it's incorrect to say that Togashi has never hinted at the possibility of romance in HxH.

This is going to be a long post, enjoy your read!

Also, please note that I will only base this analysis on the manga, so there can be no mistake that "maybe this is just something the anime made gayer" : i want to prove that the subtext is 100% intentional on Togashi's part.

I'd also like to mention, although I will analyze it further after listing the subtext, that Togashi is a VERY smart man. There are always little details in the story and/or foreshadowing that are easily missed at first but when you notice them, it truly makes you understand how much attention and care Togashi puts into his work. There are countless details and symbolism that are analyzed daily through wonderful meta posts, from the main 4′s birthdays and their link to their character or the religious symbolism in Kurapika’s story arc.... Togashi loves to foreshadow and plant little details into his work, so when Togashi plants subtext, I'm sure he 100% knows that he's writing it, and it can't be seen as unintentional.

I'll also link all my references for this post at the end of it, so feel free to read all the additional textposts and content if you want to know more.

Well, let's get into it!

EDIT : i can’t believe this post is still being used as a reference it makes me so happy... thank you so much !!! i edited this to tweak it a bit because i wrote this a while ago and the phrasing seemed off to me, so if you’re reading or re-reading this post, hi, welcome to masterpost on gay subtext 2.0 !

GREED ISLAND ARC

Greed Island is to me the arc that lays down the nature of Killua and Gon's relationship. It's during this arc that we get to see a bit more of what Killua thinks, how he's lucky to have met Gon and that he feels really grateful. Gon’s behavior in this arc is also very affectionate, with him always reassuring Killua about his place next to him. While the scene where Killua thinks "You've got it backwards, Gon, I'm the one that's glad I met you." can't be considered as subtext, I think it's something that lets the reader know a bit more about how Killua feels towards Gon.

But other than this scene, which can clearly be dismissed as platonic, there are 2 more moments in the Greed Island arc that are layered in subtext.

• The Rainbow Diamond (chapter 151)

During their time in Dorias, Killua uses Risky Dice to gain cards from the slot machines. The first card that Killua gains is called "Rainbow Diamond", the description of the card being "A diamond that shines in a rainbow of colors. Propose with this diamond and she is guaranteed to say "yes"".

There are 3 different things we can take from this panel. First, the card is a marriage proposal card, so it's obviously romantic in nature. Second, the object is a RAINBOW diamond. And third, Killua, wanting to keep the card safe, gifts it to Gon.

In short, Togashi sat down at his desk, decided to draw Killua winning a MARRIAGE PROPOSAL CARD (it could've been any card, but Togashi CHOSE to make Killua win a marriage proposal card) that has a RAINBOW diamond on it and made Killua gift it to Gon.

While I personally don't think that subtext can be used to 100% ascert that Killua has romantic feelings for Gon, I think it's a funny little touch from Togashi, and I'm even gonna say a sort of hint towards how Killua's feelings for Gon are going to evolve in this arc and the next.

• “It has to be Killua” (chapter 166)

Now this is a scene that I've never seen anyone talk about, at least on Tumblr, but when I read a bit of analysis on it I was 100% convinced this was intentional subtext. I'm basically quoting here what this article explains, so if you want more detail, I recommend reading it.

As you probably recall, during their deadly dodgeball game against Razor, Killua decides to sacrifice his hands to ensure that Gon could use all his strength. When confronted about it, Killua insists that it's nothing, and Gon shocks him by saying that he knew all along that he was hurting himself for his sake.

Gon then says that it can only be Killua holding the ball, and that it has to be Killua, resulting in Killua being absolutely awestruck and embarassed. I'm also going to talk about the anime adaptation for this one, because it's perfectly executed and translates extremely well the nuance that the second sentence bears. If you want to rewatch it, this scene happens in episode 70. It's worth noting that in the anime, we see Killua not reacting to Gon's first sentence, but losing his composure entirely when Gon says the second sentence. But why ?

The reason was lost in translation. His exact words are "Booru wa Killua ga motte-kurenai to. Killua ja nakya dame nan da.". Both sentences basically say the same thing : It has to be Killua holding the ball. That second sentence can be translated literally as "If it's not Killua, that won't do." However, the second sentence, in a different context, can also be used to say a totally different thing.

While it's certain that Gon used this sentence in the context of the dodgeball match, the sentence "~ja nakya dame nan da" also serves as a confession of one's feelings in japanese. It's basically the equivalent to "you're the one for me". When you google the sentence, it turns up romantic songs, forum posts asking what it would translate to in English and posts on how to confess to someone.

The sentence basically drowns in romantic subtext. As mentioned before, Killua has no reaction to the first sentence "Booru wa Killua ga motte-kurenai to.", but loses his composure at the second one, and I think that was a very deliberate thing Togashi wanted to convey : this sentence has an additional layer, and clearly Killua is taking it to heart.

I will come back to this specific subtext in a bit, because we can parallel it with another subtext-y situation, so please keep it in mind for now.

CHIMERA ANT ARC

Now onto the sad gay arc! This arc is so RIDDLED in subtext and parallels that it's making me lose my mind.

• Gon, you are light. (chapter 199)

This scene is just... So romantic in nature. I’m not too objective on this, but I really do believe that this moment is the exact moment Killua fell in love with Gon and started to realize he felt a bit more than friendship towards him. It’s Killua respecting Gon for who he is, realizing that he’s light and he’s always been, he’s the one who saved him and who’s always been so bright and optimistic and always makes the best out of any situation. In this scene, Killua lets himself drown in Gon’s light, allows himself to feel this “wow” moment of pure admiration and love, and it’s absolutely beautiful.

It's extremely important to take the context of this scene into account. What happened is that Killua, who has been struggling mentally for the entire series with the fact that he's always running away, ran away once more, leaving Kite to die with Pitou. This ENTIRE chapter is literally adults absolutely DESTROYING Killua, first Kite's troupe bashing him for leaving Kite behind, and then Netero, Morel and Knov coming in like icing on the cake telling Killua that "After all, he's just a kid", and that he should hurry up to his mommy.

Killua is beating himself up for running away again, got destroyed by Kite's team and 3 extremely strong pro hunters. His morale is down in the drains right now. He expects Gon to be mad at him for betraying Kite, for running away once again, for leaving Kite to die alone and ripping Gon away from Kite : he expects that he'll lose Gon for his cowardice.

HOWEVER, the first thing that Gon says to Killua after having been passed out for god knows how many hours is "Thank you".

Gon woke up and instantly eased up all of Killua's fears : he wasn't a loser for running away, and Gon was actually thankful for him. Gon, at this moment, was the only one that showed kindness, understanding and gratefulness towards Killua. Gon even goes so far as saying that he knows that Kite isn't dead, and that they have to help him. At this instant, Gon is truly Killua's saving grace. He's the one that trusts him with his entire heart, and believes in his choices when even he can't believe in himself. Gon is truly Killua's light at this precise moment, because he was the only one who supported him, trusted him and reassured him in this awful situation.

How can someone shine so bright in such a terrible situation ? How can someone be so positive that nothing bad will happen ?

Gon asserting all of this makes Killua respect him a lot. Keep this word in mind, because it’s going to be important in the next piece of subtext I’m analyzing, because those two scenes canonically follow each other and are basically Togashi highlighting that something special happened when Killua called Gon his light, and that his feelings deepened.

• Introduction to Palm's character (chapter 200)

This piece of subtext is very very easy to miss but it's one of the most important subtext-y scene, because coupled with the “Gon, you are light” scene, it’s very clear that this dialogue is deliberately highlighting Killua’s feelings.

This chapter introduces Palm's character (which, imo, is a character introduced for the sole intent of being a catalyst to Killua's feelings towards Gon, but I'll talk about it in my post talking about the CAA parallels) - edit: i talked about this briefly here.

So, Killua having looked into Gon's eyes for like 10min straight and concluded that Gon was the light of his life a chapter ago, is now chilling with Gon as they meet Palm.

Palm takes them to a café and STRAIGHT OFF THE BAT harasses them about how much she's in love with Knov. Like when I say harassing, it's literally a whole page of her explaining her feelings towards Knov.

There are two interesting things that can be drawn from this interaction.

First, it's extremely easy to draw parallels between Palm's situation towards Knov and Killua's situation towards Gon. Palm starts by saying how amazing her master is, that she probably has special feelings for him but the most important thing is to respect the other person. Remember how I talked about how this last scene was Killua having a surge of deep, deep respect for Gon ? Palm makes sure to highlight that special word, that it’s important to respect someone when it comes to love.

She then goes on to say that she hasn't said anything to Knov, and never will. All of this adds nothing to the story, it's empty dialogue, Togashi could've introduced Palm in virtually any other way possible, but he chose to drag her and the gay duo to a café and make her have a monologue about love RIGHT after the extremely emotional panel of Killua declaring that Gon is his light just a chapter ago.

But there's more. Not only does Palm monologue for a while about love, but after finishing her monologue, this happens :

This panel features ONLY Palm and Killua, her looking at him like the psycho she is, and straight up telling him that "love can suddenly spark out of nowhere, don't you think so?".

What's so interesting about this is the fact that Togashi made the deliberate choice to have Palm say this to Killua and Killua ONLY, which after the gay existential crisis he had last chapter, can very much be applied to his situation. Love DID spark out of nowhere, and Togashi wants you to notice. Togashi could've made Palm say this to herself, with no distinct listener like the last panel, but he made the conscious choice to draw this panel with Palm adressing herself to Killua SPECIFICALLY.

Those two pieces of subtext, that fit perfectly together, make me believe 100% that Togashi knows what he's doing and he's not unintentionally planting gay subtext in his work. The fact that Togashi sat at his desk, drew Killua calling Gon his light, and then followed this scene with the introduction to a character who picks Killua apart to tell him that "love is something that just happens, don't you think?" is 100% proof that Togashi knows what he's doing.

• Date with Palm (chapters 217 and 218)

I think this situation has many layers, but many people still dismiss it as bro behavior so I'm gonna try my best to counter argue. First of all, and although that's not proof of anything, Killua looks EXTREMELY distressed by the prospect of Gon going on a date with Palm, but that can be counter-argued by saying that Killua is just worried because Palm is completely crazy.

What I want to talk about is the scene that happens right after, when Gon and Killua go to the gym (because theyre DUDES YEAH WE WORK OUT NO HOMO), and the conversation casually drifts to Killua asking Gon if he's ever been on a date before, valid question considering what just happened previously. There are multiple things here :

1) Killua seems distressed that Gon has been on dates before. While it can be argued that it's a normal reaction because Gon has and he hasn't, I believe that Killua - who is in no way a normal person who would get flustered about "not having been on dates before a certain age" - would not feel uncomfortable that his friend is more experienced than him - especially when literal seconds later, he monologues about how he doesn’t care about dates and just wants to stick with Gon.

2) Gon then proceeds to ask Killua if he's ever been on a date, to which Killua responds :

What I want to highlight is the panel where Killua says "And the truth is, I want to stay by your side... Always...". Basically, what Killua is saying, is that he doesn't care about dates, all he wants to do is be with Gon.

I don't think this can be counter-argued as bro behavior, but with all the subtext I've explained before, this right here is pretty gay. Togashi put this panel deliberately to show that Killua doesn't give a crap about dates when he can stay with Gon, and with the "gon you are light" scene and everything in mind, this is another intentional subtext.

There's also the fact that Killua stalks the date like a jealous girlfriend - but I'm not gonna count that as subtext because it can be argued that he's just worried about Gon because Palm is insane.

• Gon is my best friend ! (chapter 219)

Remember how I told you to keep the "It has to be Killua" subtext in mind because I was gonna come back to it later ? Well.

During Palm's date with Gon, Killua runs into Rammot, who would definitely have ran into Palm and nenless Gon. Killua is forced to confront his worst fear : this is the moment where he knows that if he runs away again, Gon WILL die. Killua is literally overcoming his "programming", the physical representation of years of abuse out of love and care for Gon. He's ripping out the needle from his forehead out of pure, genuine care for Gon, because if he doesn't, then he'll lose him forever.

Now, what I actually wanna talk about is this panel :

What we see is Killua thinking happy thoughts about all his adventures with Gon because he can't - won't - doesn't want to run away anymore, and all this for his sake. But what I wanna draw attention to is the dodgeball panel that's bigger than all the others, and the only one where you can actually clearly make out what's written : "Killua ja nakya dame nan da".

Now, isn't that interesting that the panel that takes a bigger place in the whole panel is the one with this particular sentence? Remember what I talked about a bit earlier, about how "~ ja nakya dame nan da" is a sentence with a lot of romantic connotations (would pretty much equal to "you're the one for me" in English). Clearly this particular sentence stuck with Killua.

I'm not completely objective on this matter since I firmly believe that at this point, Killua has romantic feelings for Gon, but I interpret this as another deliberate thing Togashi did : putting the panel bigger so we can see that it has a particularly significant importance to Killua, and Killua's state of mind right now (not wanting to lose Gon).

In my opinion, two things happened here: One, Killua remembers this specific interaction because he knows how much Gon trusts him and he doesn't want to betray his trust. But I also firmly believe that Killua remembered this specific interaction because of the romantic connotation the sentence "Killua ja nakya dame nan da" has. Those words clearly shocked him, and I think he remembers them in this life-threatening situation, after the "gon you are light" scene, Palm talking about "love just happens", the "i want to stay with you, always" because he realizes that he wishes Gon would say that sentence in a romantic context, and not in the context of the dodgeball match, thus leading him to surpass himself to prove his love and perhaps live to see the day where Gon could say those words in that romantic context.

Now, of course, all of this is my interpretation, so it's really up to debate, but I really wanna highlight the fact that Togashi deliberately CHOSE to highlight this particular interaction between Gon and Killua, this sentence with romantic subtext, to lead Killua to finally break his chains and be able to be protect Gon fully. It’s also interesting to note that the 2011 anime adaptation also makes it a point to emphasize how deep these words stuck to Killua by making it the last flashback that makes Killua effectively rip out the needle out of his head.

Also let's quickly mention the irony in the situation here : while Gon is on a romantic date, Killua fights to protect him, overcoming his weakness to prove his love. It’s not Palm who deserves that date, it’s Killua.

• A lovers’ suicide (chapter 286)

Now, onto the most important piece of subtext, that can not be counterargued as platonic in any way, shape or form. During the palace invasion, Killua leaves Gon's side, proceeds to go kick Youpi's butt only to have to fall back because he used up all his electricity nen. When Killua is charging up, he meets with Meleoron, and tells him that once he's done charging, he'll go back to Gon's side.

They briefly exchange information about the battle, and then Meleoron proceeds to ask Killua what's the plan for him and Gon. That's when Killua explains that "Once Gon is like this, he won't budge an inch. Worst case scenario, it'll be a double suicide.". At worst they both die, cool. They “go down in flames together”. It’s actually much, much more meaningful than that.

The specific word that Killua uses for double suicide is "心中" (shinjuu), which is a heavily romantically connotated word in japanese. Shinjuu, also translated as "lovers’ suicide", is when two people die out of love, by the same method, because there's a belief that this'll allow those two people to spend eternity together. Shinjuu is a major theme of Japanese literature, and it is always used romantically. It's a very uncommon word to use to refer to two people dying together, because of its heavy romantic connotation, and because it always refers to double suicide committed by people bound by love. In literature, it always refers to two lovers, in love. If you want to read more on shinjuu, i suggest this and this, those articles explain its historic roots and the definition, also emphasizing the feeling of "oneness" that characterizes shinjuu. If you’re interested, I also suggest reading the japanese article that defines shinjuu, and hitting the google translate button, it has some pretty interesting sentences like “Shinjuu is traditionally committed by men and women out of mutual love, in the hope that they will be connected in the afterlife because they can't be together in this world.”

So basically, what Killua is saying is that he wants to go back to Gon's side to die with him, committing a "lovers’ suicide" because he doesn't want to leave Gon to die alone, and wants to die with him.

I also want to emphasize how special this word is to Killua, and that he and everyone around him know the special meaning of this word - In chapter 300, Ikalgo literally says "We were... No, KILLUA was ready to commit shinjuu with Gon". Ikalgo is really highlighting the fact that this word holds special meaning, especially to Killua, and that it was HIM who was willing to commit shinjuu by staying with Gon. Ikalgo and company dying with Gon wouldn't be shinjuu, but Killua dying with Gon would be, and Togashi emphasizes this through Ikalgo's thoughts.

This is pretty much the gist of it, but I suggest reading the wonderful post I linked in the references below if you want to know more about this specific subtext.

(edit : i actually wrote a post going a bit more into detail on Killua’s shinjuu wish if you want to read it here ! :3)

• “The one that Gon needs the most is you” (chapter 294)

I will go into this subtext more in details when I write the post about parallels in CAA, but I still want to talk about it briefly here.

Like I said before, to me, Palm was introduced as a catalyst for Killua's feelings towards Gon. Togashi purposefully wrote Palm as having romantic feelings for Gon to foil Killua's feelings for Gon and make him show jealousy towards Palm.

To Killua, Palm is someone who stole Gon from him, he sees her as a threat because maybe she'll make Gon happier than he does ? (ofc we all know thats not true but Killua is baby) - Basically, Killua thinks Palm might be more important to Gon than Killua is, because he believes they are romantically involved. That's why when he sees her again later on, after Gon rejected his help, leaving Killua helpess as to how to save his dear friend, Killua sees Palm as a saving grace.

He knows that if Gon sees Palm as a chimera ant, he will spiral down even more, so he tries to reason with her to get her to be gentle to Gon, because if not her, then who could? Palm would clearly be able to comfort Gon, with whom Killua believes is romantically involved with, better than him, right ? If Gon rejected Killua, then clearly Palm could help, since she seems closer to Gon (BECAUSE HE BELIEVES THEYRE DATING), right?

This confrontation between Palm and Killua closely ressembles a situation like an ex confronting a new girlfriend - and I think this is exactly why Togashi wrote Palm this way. He wanted Killua to confront who he thought was a threat to their relationship, making him believe that this person who's """"dating"""” Gon is more important to him than himself, only to have her openly admit that she means nothing to Gon. The only one Gon needs is Killua.

And that, my friends, coming from someone you believe is romantically involved with your best friend (who you probably have a crush on), someone you're jealous of, the one you thought was the person most important to him, that's a pretty meaningful statement.

Basically, what's happening, is that Palm reaffirms that Gon holds Killua closer than a potential romantic partner. And that's why Killua is so, so happy to hear that. He was questioning his entire relationship, questioning if Gon even cared about him, because he rejected him a few minutes before, but then his "rival" comes in and reaffirms that even she knows that no one comes close to Killua to Gon.

I also want to mention that this act of pure love (Killua only thinking of saving Gon when in a life threatening situation) is what made Palm come back to her human senses. d'awwwwww

• Illumi and Hisoka’s parallel on lovers who die of Alluka’s requests. (chapter 323)

Now onto the final significant subtext - while I don't particularly think of it as subtext-y, I know a lot of people have so I still want to include it here.

When Illumi explains Alluka's powers to Hisoka, he explains that there are two different types of linked deaths when a request is failed : 1) the person who failed + the person they love the most 2) the person who failed + the people they spent most of their time with.

When applied to Killua, Hisoka naturally comes to the conclusion that no matter the outcome, Gon would always be the one dying with Killua, because he's spent so much time with him, and because he's the one that Killua loves the most. In the panel where Illumi explains this, we see a romantic, heterosexual couple demonstrating the effects of not completing one of Alluka's requests, and thus the "most important person dying".

While not making any true parallels, the fact that Hisoka, and the readers, are drawn to compare a heterosexual, romantic pairing to Killua dying with Gon because he's his "most important person" is an interesting piece of subtext.

_______

I want to finish by talking about Killua's birthday and how significant it is in my opinion. All the main 4 characters have birthdays that fall on specific dates, related to Japanese tradition, and often with events that can be associated to their character. Gon's is 5/5, which is Children's Day. Kurapika's is 4/4, the number 4 being considered an unlucky number, and this being an unlucky day to have a child. Leorio's is 3/3, Hinamatsuri (not really any main parallels here but still). But Killua's birthday is 7/7, and is the Japanese day to celebrate Tanabata.

If you are not familiar with Tanabata, the story is as follows : Orihime is a princess who works for her father, working hard and well, but she laments the fact that because of her hard work she can't meet someone and fall in love. Her father arranges for her to meet Hikoboshi, allowing Orihime to leave because he expects her to come back to work for him, but the two immediately fall in love and get married, and she never returns. I won't get into the rest of the story as it's this part that interests me the most, but if you want to read more about Killua and Tanabata I suggest reading the post I referenced below.

Does the story of Orihime remind you of anyone ? Killua also works for his father, but laments the fact that he can't go outside and meet someone. His father then lets him go, saying, and i quote: "he will come back, because he's my son". Doesn't this remind you of the tale of Tanabata ? Killua's story references the tale of Orihime perfectly, and I believe this is intentional : Killua's birthday isn't of any importance to the plot, so why make it Tanabata, a day that celebrates a love story that closely ressembles Killua's story ? The answer is simple : subtext.

With all this in mind, I think it's pretty clear that Togashi is writing intentional subtext to hint at Killua's feelings being romantic in nature. Togashi is a master writer, he has years of experience, and I strongly believe he knows what he's doing and not planting unintentional subtext. He's a very smart man, and knows how all of this can be interpreted.

I will finish by saying that Togashi is NOT an author that would deliberately queerbait his readers. So many people dismiss the possibility of having gay subtext leading onto an actual canon gay relationship because "it's not like the author would ever have gay main characters". While this holds true for a lot of manga authors, especially shonen manga authors, it does NOT apply to Togashi.

Togashi has always displayed interest in queer subjects and queer representation, putting trans characters in all of his major works (Miyuki in YYH, Mikihisa in Level E and Alluka in HxH). There were also canonically gay characters in his previous works : Itsuki in YYH, and a character named Kuramoto in Level E.

Togashi also always had interest in mangas having BL elements, citing Maya Mineo's "Patalliro!" as a manga he was attracted to during High School. If you're unfamiliar with Patalliro, the story focuses on the main character's love life as a gay man. He also admitted to basing Hiei's (YYH) design off a character from that manga.

Last but not least, Togashi mentioned in a note included in volume 1 of YYH that he wanted to write a sports manga, called The Trouble Quartet, where basically all the characters are gay. Togashi said he based it off his own interests as a writer, and that while it was refused by Shonen Jump, he got deeply attached to the project and that he would love to explore this project in a different shape once he made a name for himself. I suggest reading this post because the parallels between The Trouble Quartet and HxH are HILARIOUSLY accurate.

In short, Togashi has always had interest in queer matters, and was always interested in putting queer representation in his work. After YYH, which was a terrible experience for Togashi as a writer, he managed to snatch a contract that basically allows him to do whatever he wants with HxH. Having always held dear BL matters but never being able to explore it to his full intent, I believe Togashi is exploring queer identity further with HxH, because Shonen Jump basically lets him do anything.

To conclude, with Togashi's past experience and skill, his interest in queer representation, and the amount of subtext surrounding Killua, I honestly believe that Togashi is trying to explore further queer representation, and I wouldn't be surprised if HxH ends with Gon and Killua becoming a canon pairing, whether it be delivered in an ambiguous manner or not.

Edit : I actually wrote a post on why I believe it won’t be ambiguous, and that it’s truly never been ambiguous, just developing : here.

I hope you enjoyed the read, thank you for reading all of this, and feel free to show this to anyone who denies subtext in HxH !

REFERENCES

- "It has to be Killua" - Medium article, "Impossibilities in Translating Queerness : The Dodgeball Dilemma"

- Palm's Date Scene - Reddit post, "Togashi's love of Ambiguity: Chapters 217 and 218"

-A thematic analysis of Palm’s character : ”The Issue With Palm”

- Shinjuu - Tumblr post by hunterxhell, "A lovers' suicide, I guess." : + the post that mentions Ikalgo talking about shinjuu

- An analysis on different subtext-y situations

- Illumi and Hisoka’s parallel : here and here

- Killua’s birthday : "Killua, July 7th, and the significance of his birthdate”

- Togashi's interview mentioning Mineo's Patalliro

#hxh #hxh meta #hunter x hunter #killugon #meta #my posts #my meta

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pateldevs · 3 years

Note

Hi! I hope I'm not bothering you, but I love your mood board edits and was wondering if you could explain how you go about making/colouring them? I see lots of places to find gifs but turning them into a set is so hard. Thank you in advance!

hi! first of all thank you so much and second of all it’s not a bother at all! i am happy to give some of my own tips even if my explanation probably isn’t super helpful. i won’t give like a ps tutorial but below the cut (since i included example gifs, it’s VERY long) is my process for my latest jily aesthetic:

i keep track of all my ideas/sets in a spreadsheet (which i won’t show bc there’s a lot of info i’d have to blur/black out) but i always have a list of what scenes i need to gif/what gifs i’m editing and where i’m getting them from. i also include a couple extra ideas in case the gifs i have planned end up being too hard to color or don’t fit in the set. i’ve found it’s best/easiest to start w the list bc there is literally nothing worse than spending hours on a set and then not being able to complete it.

as for actually finding the material, i have a pretty healthy number of scene packs saved in my giffing folder, esp. for things i know i will gif frequently. most of the time i will peruse youtube, vimeo, and instagram for any aesthetic scenes. i also have a lot of gif packs saved specifically for the purpose of making mbs (usually i mix my own gifs w gif packs), if you msg me i’m happy to direct you to some gif packs i use regularly or you can check my #resources tag. a couple tips for finding material:

always opt for download when possible, i used to screen record and the difference when i switched to downloading was astronomical. (it’s easy to lose quality and esp if you’re on mac, quicktime duplicates frames so either you have to manually delete those extras or you get sort of choppy gifs when you load them into ps.)

always use 1080p or better, 720p will work in a pinch for 268px or 177px gifs since you can make up some of that resolution loss with sharpening, but don’t go any lower than that, just love yourself.

for pale sets, look for the right colors. i tend to look for scenes w high color contrast especially if it features poc so it’s easier to color without whitewashing, ie if the subject is a person then i look for light colored or blue/green/violet/white backgrounds. it’ll make your life wayyyyy easier. this also means if you’re making a set try to find scenes with already similar lighting bc you won’t have to work so hard to make it look cohesive.

here’s a quick rundown of what i do before coloring:

import all frames and save all the files in a folder together!!

play around with frame delay so all the gifs are moving at about the same speed, usually keep it between 0.03-0.05s

crop and resize gifs (i use 268x145 most of the time)

convert to timeline

when it comes to coloring it can be really hit or miss, i’ve recently gotten back into my groove but i was having sooo much trouble earlier this year. in general, don’t stress yourself out!! sometimes it’s easier to just find a new scene/gif (hence my list of extras!) than to try too hard to fit a gif into your set. i color all my gifs by scratch (ie no psds) but i tend to follow the same pattern, i’ll explain using these gifs/psd as an example since then i can also explain how to fix white-washing:

first off when you’re coloring gifs with poc always always always make a layer mask so you can compare the edited and unedited skin tones directly! i use the marquee tool to make a selection in the middle of the character’s face, select the folder of my adjustment layers, and hit ‘add vector mask’ (the third button from the left on the layers panel, it’s a white rectangle with a circle in it).

i almost always begin by using hue/saturation layers to highlight and delete certain colors. here i highlighted red and raised the lightness on yellow by a lot since it’s a very yellow scene. then i use a combination of brightness/contrast, levels, and curves layers to brighten the scene. here’s what i have now:

i add a gradient map set to black/white, change the blending to exclusion, and lower the opacity to between 5-10% (depending on the scene) to lighten the contrast further:

then i add back a little depth with selective color in neutrals and blacks:

now i have two main goals: 1. add contrast between the background and the subject, and 2. brighten the scene into a pale gif. to do this, i use color balance to tweak the color of the background, taking out the yellows. this step works best if there’s at least some shade difference between your subject and background, otherwise isolating the two will be impossible. here’s what i have after adding color balance:

i use hue/saturation to selectively highlight the background color. in this case i chose to adjust magenta and used the color picker (the first eyedropper on the left) to identify the exact shade i wanted to lighten. now i have a fairly neutral background and a colorful subject, which gives a sort of pale effect:

and now i use a curves layer and a selective color (white) layer to brighten further:

before i go further, i start fixing white-washing. keep in mind that some variance is normal since you are naturally changing the lighting of the scene; this gif shows it rlly clearly bc of how yellow and dim the lighting is, so some lightening is to be expected. however, both because the vector mask shows a lot of whitening and because i’ve giffed dev patel before and have a general idea of what he looks like in this type of lighting, i know what needs to be fixed, so i go back in under the psd/adjustment layers with a combination of selective color (red and neutral) and hue/saturation layers to darken his skin again:

now that some more contrast has been added in, i can go back to working on the psd and use curves and selective color to play around with the background again:

i use another hue/saturation layer and a black/white gradient to tone down oversaturation:

usually i leave those layers on top, so if i want to make any adjustments (like lightening the background more), i go in under those two. in this case i tweaked the whites and reduced the contrast a little to get this:

again, you can see his skin tone has changed from the original, but variation is to be expected given how much brighter the room is, the fact that i took out a lot of yellow lighting, and the brightening effect of the computer screen in front of him. some other things to keep in mind when coloring:

when you add layers to correct white-washing, you’re likely to end up with overly red/orange skin tones (red-washing). this can be fixed by upping cyans in the reds, desaturating/darkening the reds, or adding b/w or desaturation later on.

when in doubt, it’s better to be darker than lighter (the issue with white-washing is that it promotes colorism, and there is nothing inherently wrong with a darker skin tone) but really. just put in the effort to color poc correctly.

when changing the lighting a lot it helps to look at pictures of the subject in natural/bright lighting, since you get a better idea of what their normal skin tone is.

don’t try to squeeze all your selective color layers into one. you’ll get less grainy gifs if you separate them out and work one by one.

TURN OFF NIGHT SHIFT/NIGHT MODE! yes i KNOW it’s bad for your eyes (especially if you’re like me and gif at night, when the lighting outside isn’t changing every 20 seconds) but your gifs will look VERY different under f.lux or night mode compared to daytime screens. especially if you’re giffing at different times of day, blue light filters can really change the way your coloring appears. best to keep it consistent.

my sharpening settings vary depending on what i’m giffing but in general i do two layers of smart sharpen (500% with radius between 0.2-0.4, 10% with radius at 10px) and then gaussian blur at 2.5px and adjust the opacity so it’s somewhere between 15-20%. i try to strike a balance between smoothing out the graininess from selective color, and sharpening details like clothes and hair. here’s what i ended up with for the gif above:

then i rinse and repeat for the rest of the gifs in the set! i tend to start with the gifs that i know will be hardest to color, which is usually the darker ones (coloring is limited by how much i can brighten the scene) and those that include poc (again, limited by how much i can brighten and adjust the scene’s lighting without white-washing). then i check set cohesion as i go, using those first few gifs as benchmarks. once i have all 8 (or 9 or 10) gifs, i play around with composition and try to balance and vary the subject, colors, and composition of gifs next to each other. i go back and make a couple of adjustments here and there according to what i observe and what i think might improve the overall appearance.

and that’s pretty much it! i hope this was helpful, if you have other questions feel free to message me and i’d be happy to help/troubleshoot. happy giffing!

#Anonymous #*#resources #answered #sorry this was sO long but i hope it helped on the coloring end #tbh i exceeded my own expectations with the dev gif lol #yeahps #completeresources #chaoticresources #tutorial #coloring tutorial

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darkficsyouneveraskedfor · 4 years

Text

She [1]

Warnings: non-consent sex (series)

This is dark! Steve and explicit. 18+ only.

Series Synopsis: Steve Rogers’ life is turned upside down by a reporter.

Chapter Summary: You meet Steve Rogers for an interview but he’s not what you expected.

Note: I’ve been trying to chill the last five days but I obviously got some writing in. It has resulted in this impromptu series and I hope you all like it. It’s looking like it will be about 10 chapters when all is said is done but that being said, I am still working on it.

Thanks to everyone for their patience and feedback. :)

I really hope you enjoy. 💋

<3 Let me know what you think with a like or reblog or reply or an ask! Love ya!

Reader

Your left ankle bent as you leaned heavily on your heel. You stood before the thick walnut door, a round frosted window on its face. The townhouse stuck out on the old Brooklyn row and all knew its resident. It surprised many that he remained in the borough and he was cherished all the more for it. He was the golden boy of New York.

Well, that’s what people like to believe. You weren’t there to paint another flowery picture of the saviour. You were there to speak with the real man behind the plan. There was a story behind Steve Rogers that had yet to be told and when you were selected to tell it, you knew you had to do it right. The task was both daunting and humbling. It could be your big break.

You knocked and adjusted the bag that hung from your shoulder. You didn’t miss the group of kids at the end of the block gathered around for a glimpse of their hero. The door opened and you were greeted by the man himself. He smiled at you as his hand rested on the curled door handle.

“Hi,” He greeted you. “Thanks for coming. It saves me a lot of trouble.”

“Not at all,” You shook his hand.

You’d spoken to him briefly over the phone and negotiated the time and place for your interview. You agreed that him coming to the office would cause too much of a flurry. You were sure he was over that.

“Come in,” He stepped back and waved you through.

He closed the door as you looked around the entryway. A thick banister with the same dark wood as the walls led up to the second level and a finely carved archway peeked through to the next room. It was cozy and a lot quainter than you expected. The exposed brick above the panelling lent it a warmth.

“Shoes?” You stopped by the mat.

“Your call,” He said. “Can I offer you something to drink?”

“Thank you, Mr. Rogers, but I’m fine,” You assured him as you stepped out of your heels. You’d hate to scuff the hardwood. “I’m sure you're just as impatient as me to begin.”

“Steve. And yeah, I suppose. I don’t really do much more than pressers and usually, I don’t do much talking.” He confessed. “Just through here,” He pointed to the front room.

You nodded and stepped through. He directed you to the pair of armchairs before the artificial fireplace and you set your bag down as you sat. He lowered himself across from you as you reached into your bag and pulled out your phone and notebook. You swiped up and flicked your finger across the screen.

“Do you mind if I record you? It helps with editing and of course, accuracy,” You said.

He scratched his jaw and shrugged. “I don’t mind.”

“Great,” You hit the red dot and set the phone down on the small table with the mic facing him.

🖋️

You were a bit surprised by how it had all unfolded, but, you supposed, you were right when you said no one was ever exactly what they seemed. Steve was nice enough as he showed you the door but you could see the agitated impatience behind his eyes. You should’ve eased him into it more. Timing was everything.

Even so, you had promised your editor a story and if you didn’t deliver after being chosen for such a coveted one, well, you would never see its likes again.

So you sat at your desk in your small but comfortable city apartment. It was nothing compared to the star-spangled hero’s walk-up but it was home. If you could work the interview the right way, it might mean an upgrade, or at least a television that didn’t flicker.

You hit play on your phone for the third time that night. Steve Rogers’ voice was etched into your brain. And that tension in his forehead, the tic in his jaw. A thinly veiled wrath unexpected of the valiant soldier-turned-saviour. You shivered and paused the recording. It was almost startling how quickly he’d turned on you, but you weren’t entirely innocent.

You stretched your fingers over the keyboard and sighed as you stared at your blinking cursor. You couldn’t just sit on this forever. You had a deadline and an extension was an impossibility, if not a death warrant for your career.

So you hit play and began to type, pausing to play back snippets as you went.

🖋️

‘It’s early afternoon in the heart of Brooklyn. Amidst the old brick buildings that line the cracked sidewalks is a townhouse unlike any other. The home of a man born there over a century ago. A living ghost that haunts the block. Most would say he is a friendly spirit.

Steve Rogers answers the door as a boy lets his baseball roll under a car and his friends lower their mitts to watch. A teen on a bike, a ring in his nose, even slows to admire the hometown hero as he smiles; a beacon of the borough. A glimmer of hope for all to think that the block is not the whole world.

He greets me like an old friend. “Hi.” The same smile seen in newsprint. He thanks me for coming and ushers me inside. This is the first time I’ve met him in person. I can’t lie; I’m intimidated. I’m just another person in debt to this great veteran.

His house isn’t what you would expect from a man as prestigious as him. No medals hanging on the wall, no vainglorious cut-outs of his image, or pictures of him shaking hands with men in suits. Only framed baseball cards along freshly laid wood-panels. It’s like any other house in Brooklyn, just newer. An ancient skeleton revived.

We sit in the front room, he offers me a drink. I’m not very thirsty. I’m more anxious to start talking. I can see he is too though his facade is hard to crack. He tells me to call him Steve as my recitations of ‘Mr. Rogers’ become almost pathetic. We begin.

Interviewer: “Great.” I hit ‘record’. “I’ll start by saying you have a nice place.”

Steve: “Thanks.” He seems to relax as he leans back in the chair which is nearly too narrow for his broad shoulders. “It took a while but I think it’s coming together.”

Interviewer: “Can’t take the boy out of Brooklyn, I guess.”

Steve: “Wouldn’t leave it for the world.” He smiles again, though he never truly looks less than amiable.

I: “Only to save it,”

S: “I do what I can.

I: “More than most; New York, Sekovia, the world. You’ve done it all. Do you ever just take a break?”

S: “I try. And sometimes I get a chance to just… be here.”

He looks around, proud of himself, of his home.

I: “Any hobbies?”

S: “You know, I used to love to draw. Nothing special, you know. But I found it calming. I actually bought a bunch of pencils and a pad but I never touched them. I’m sure they're just sitting up in my closet, neglected.”

I listen intently, imagining this man bent over a notebook. It’s an absurd picture as my mind returns to the man in his cowl with shield in hand. The red, white, and blue bullseye is more suiting in my head than a pen.

I: “Anything else? Anything you actually do?”

S: “I like to run. Helps me get to know my neighbours, reconnect with my roots. I read… a little. I’m still not really into the whole internet thing but I try. I still get the newspaper just to read the strips and fill in the weekly crosswords.”

He confirms my suspicion. A man lost in time, but it seems he has found his place.

I: “A man for all times. And you work? I’m sure you get tired of talking about it but well, there’s been a lot of speculation about a possible retirement.”

He ‘s silent as he looks away and fidgets in his chair. He becomes the rehearsed hero at his podium.

S: “I’d hate to fan that fire but I think it’s only natural to consider it.”

I: “Thinking of settling down?”

S: “It’s always a thought but I’m not stupid. It’s not that simple. I’m not the type of man that gets to settle down.”

This remark might break the heart of every woman in Brooklyn and beyond but it seems to hurt him more. A grim truth for a man who many would say has the world in his hands.

I: “And if you did hang up the shield, is there anything you want to do? Anywhere you want to go?”

S: “I’d like to try fishing. I’ve heard it’s relaxing. I love the city but it’s nice to get away now and then.”

I: “Is there anything keeping you from retiring? Besides the obvious; we all know you’re a good man and a great hero. You’ve shown commitment to the city, the world, humanity.”

He looks to the artificial fireplace and shrugs. He’s thinking; perhaps censoring his response.

I: “Co-workers? The world is well aware of what you did for your old friend. And it has proven to be a point of contention, even after the pardon.”

He clears his throat and he’s no longer smiling.

S: “Bucky is an old friend and a commendable soldier. He does his job well. I wouldn’t take anything back. He has more than earned his place.”

I: “So, if you retired, you believe that he would retain his place among the team?”

He’s frowning now. He adjusts his posture so that he seems even bigger than before. A formidable opponent, if not an overwhelming one.

S: “He is not there because of me. He’s there because of himself. Because he is an asset to the world.”

His blue eyes are darker now. No longer the crystalline waves shining in the sun but those foreboding tides which crash together beneath the moonless sky. My ship has gone awry, carried by an errant wind.

I: “Well, I can’t help but point out that many wouldn’t agree. You put yourself and several of your associates on the line to save him. To bring him into your fold. To place a man who was once a national enemy beside you. I hate to say it but, frankly, even if he were pardoned on his own merit, I fail to imagine him being allowed the same access to confidential intelligence and tasked with the protection of civilian life.”

His hands are fists. I could put up a front and say I’m not nervous, but I am. I have done what I once thought impossible. I have angered Steve Rogers.

S: “He wasn’r Bucky, but he is now and he has been cleared. I’m sorry, but I thought you were here to talk about me.”

I: “Yes, I am, but the world is well aware of your friendship with Mr. Barnes and all its implications. It is hard to separate him from your life.”

S: “I agreed to talk about me.”

His tone is set in stone. I attempt to stay calm myself.

I: “We are talking about you, but we can move on. Now, even with its dissolution, there are still questions being asked about the Sokovia Accords and your opposition to it. While many can acknowledge the need for your team and their work, they can’t help but wonder at the lack of restraints placed upon it. There are regulations even for the FBI and CIA and other protective services. So why should you be exempt?”

He sniffs and stands up slowly. He retreats behind his chair and nears a table along the wall. He distracts himself with a signed baseball. I don’t have a chance to ask who scribbled along the stitches as he tosses it and finds his voice.

S: “I never disagreed with the sentiment of the Accords. As heroes, of course, we should have obligations. Our first and foremost being the protection of innocent lives. The hardest to uphold but we do it.”

He is ever the statesman but he isn’t finished and his voice gets low. Dangerous, even.

S: “At the same time, we put our own lives on the line and you come here and nag me about formalities? What is it you want? Paperwork? Reports on how I threw my shield to stop a bullet from striking an innocent bystander? How a piece of shrapnel nearly severed my tendon as I threw myself in front of a speeding vehicle?”

I: “With all due respect, I am only asking about transparency. People deserve to know more. They deserve the truth.”

S: “Is that what you’re looking for? The truth? You want to know what we don’t tell you and your readers?”

He puts the baseball down and his hand is on his hip, disapproving. I suspect his lecture will continue. He nears the chair and grips the back of it as he narrows his eyes at me. I fear he might throw it in my direction though for now, I hope it should act as my own shield against him.

S: “About how I have to lie about how many men I lose to keep this world safe. Because I can’t scare the people. Because I have to keep on this mask of the brave hero.”

His eyes go to the ceiling. He takes a breath to calm himself. I can tell he wants to continue. That he is holding back something which has brewed within him for a very long time. It is a moment before he speaks again.

S: “We’re done here. That’s it. Turn your phone off and go.”

The interview is over. What happens next will remain off the record. I leave with a mouth full of bile. My childlike wonder has been extinguished. I came to seek out the man behind the shield and I have done just that, but he is not who I expected.

I was ready for a humble man, a man like any of us; the same wants and desires. Still human despite his enhancements; despite his superhuman status. What I discovered was a man who’s exceptionality has nurtured a sense of entitlement.

And we do owe him our lives, our gratitude, we owe him the world. Yet I cannot dismiss the sense that he might regret his good deeds. That to him, it has become a thankless chore. That we are the needy children and he has been burdened with our cries for help.

So we should not be surprised or upset upon his retirement, not if, but when it comes. And we cannot fault him for his departure. It has been a long-time coming.’

🖋️

You took a breath and sat back in your chair. You rubbed your cheeks as the recording began to repeat itself. You stopped it and checked the time. You’d spend your morning editing and hope you would be ready for submission by the evening.

As you hit save, you felt an odd tremor deep inside. This could be it. Your big story. Or you could be tired and entirely up your own ass. You only hoped it was the former.

🖋️

You sat across from Poppy as she read your article through the glasses which sat low on her long nose. She was just past forty and wouldn’t look it if she didn’t wear the ridiculous half-circle spectacles. She wore a shade of red which paid homage to her name and her lipstick was just as bold. Her long lashes flicked up as she lowered the pages and her blonde hair fell behind her shoulder.

“Well…” She said carefully. “It is…interesting.”

You swallowed nervously as you teetered on the edge of the acrylic seat. Her long manicured nails played with the corner of the article.

“I had initially planned to have this in the back pages. No one really cares about the Avengers anymore.” She said. “But this is… I will discuss it with our marketing team but I know a feature when I see it.”

“A feature?” Your lips parted and you sat back as you gripped the thin arms of the chair.

“Oh, yes,” She said. “Another celebrity break-up is not exactly scandalous and to be frank, I do tire of that ridiculous narrative. But this… you will be hearing from me soon.”

“Uh,” You stood awkwardly at what you were sure was a dismissal. “Thank you.”

“For what? Doing my job? Should I thank you for doing yours?” She countered.

“N-no,” You stuttered.

“Go on then. I’m certain you have other work to do.” She tapped her long nails. “You certainly will once this is ready to print.”

You nodded and left her. She was already on her phone before the door closer behind you and you looked around the blindly bright office. It would be your first feature and it was the first article which had earned you more than a passive grumble from the woman. Perhaps you hadn’t been so foolish to think you had actually done something well.

#Steve Rogers #dark steve rogers #dark!steve rogers #steve rogers x reader #dark steve rogers x reader #dark!steve rogers x reader #she #dark fic #dark!fic #au #series #fic #mcu #marvel #captain america

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neutral-emerald · 3 years

Text

SILVER THE COSMIC TIME-JANITOR (or: dude, what's with all the alternate futures)

silver the hedgehog has a very simple backstory. he's a kindhearted, sorta-naive but altogether very driven psychic hedgehog here to save the world by time-traveling to the past (also known as present-day) to prevent the apocalyptic future he was born into from coming to pass!

[ID: A screenshot of Silver from Sonic 06. He’s glowing with cyan energy as he flies over a dark, post-apocalyptic city.]

...wait, if he's time traveling 200 years into the past to completely change the shape of the timeline, how do the stars manage to align such that he manages to be born at the exact same point in the new timeline with the exact same genetics? how are his parents born? does silver have parents?? and how does he do this no less than THREE SEPARATE TIMES??!

hey everyone, i'm tumblr user neutral-emerald here to make good on the idea i vaguely gestured at yesterday and point out silver's wildly inconsistent backstory(s) and then explain to you how this isn't just sega playing hopscotch with the concept of time travel, but actually TOTALLY EXPLAINABLE if you don't mind a whole lot of conjecture and "fuck dude i just think it'd be cool."

LET'S GO.

before i get started, a few things to establish.

first, this is about… half serious, tops. it’s less of a theory and more of an observation of something that’s weird and then throwing some possible explanations at it because i am a massive sucker for time-based nonsense. if you wanna take my observations and build your own conclusions, go for it. i’m not your boss.

second, i'm basing my conclusions off of both the games and the idw comics. the conclusions i draw are applicable to either continuity, but the logic does rest a decent amount on the comics, so just a heads-up in case you were expecting pure game canon from this.

and third, i'm working off like half a brain and very intermittent checks of the wiki and cutscene compilations, so there's probably many things i'm missing! if you notice something i said was wildly off-base, go ahead and correct me in the replies and i'll either edit the post or explain to you just how that detail doesn't actually matter, depending on whether it. y'know. matters.

with that out of the way, let's get into the first topic of discussion!

part 1: the future is inconsistent, y'all

now, i'm not sure if you've heard, but in the year 2006 sonic team released this little indie game creatively entitled Sonic the Hedgehog. it was a smash hit, won countless awards, and for some reason went down in history as a messy, incomplete bugfest. but that's not what matters. what matters is that it introduced Silver the Hedgehog.

silver hails from 200 years in the future. the world is a bleak, fiery place, and has been since the monster iblis was unleashed after princess elise's death. silver was born into this world, which we know since it's literally the first thing he says in his story.

[ID: A cropped line from Silver's story in Sonic 06. "This world was devastated before I was born."]

i'm not going to drag you through a beat-by-beat summary of the entire plot of sonic 06, you should know it already. silver meets mephiles, gets lied to about who caused the apocalypse, mephiles yeets him and blaze into the past, he tries to murder Sonic the Hedgehog™, and so on. eventually he helps kill god, and then sonic and elise travel further back in time to kill god even deader so that none of the game ever happened, and the bad future into which silver was born never happened, thus thoroughly scrubbing silver's existence from the timeline!

...until.

sonic rivals.

i'm not going to speak much on sonic rivals, mostly because i'm not super familiar with it. but what matters is that silver is back! he's still from the future, he's still here to change the past, and most importantly he wasn't deleted from existence by the destruction of solaris, unlike everything else from sonic 06 including everyone's memories of it. and obviously, whatever state his future is in, it's not the same as it was in sonic 06.

now, i don't have a single clue what is going on in rivals 2, so do inform me if there's some big information i'm missing from that one. all i know is he's fixing yet another possible apocalyptic future, like always. correct me if i’m wrong, i don’t have the patience to trawl through it myself.

then we've got sonic colors, in which silver is again from the future. notably, he’s definitely not from an apocalypse!

[ID: Some screenshots from the DS version of Sonic Colors, again cropped to just the text. Tails and Silver are talking to each other.

Tails: What's the future you came from like, Silver? Silver: A lot brighter than this. Silver: The sky is blue, and everybody's got a smile.]

sonic generations doesn't add much. again, correct me if i'm wrong, but i don't think we learn anything about what kind of future silver is from, and he's definitely not here to fix it this time. that's sonic's job! he's just hanging out like everyone else.

now, up until this point the future has been reasonably consistent, setting aside my somewhat abstract understanding of the rivals games. there's nothing to say that silver's not coming back in time from the same point in a single timeline, which is the one and only version of the future ever since the destruction of sonic 06.

UNTIL.

[ID: Two panels from the comic Sonic Forces: Stress Test. In the first panel, Silver looks worried as he lands in front of Knuckles, who looks skeptical.

Silver: We've got big trouble! Eggman— Knuckles: How can you be here? I thought you returned to the future?

In the second panel, Knuckles looks away with a self-assured grin, while Silver looks more panicked.

Knuckles: Oh wait— I must be dreaming! Silver: What? No! I've come back with a dire warning from the future!]

i have a lot of issues with sonic forces, especially with how its story is written. something i do NOT take issue with is the supplemental comics, mainly because they are WONDERFUL evidence for my crackpot time travel theory.

like i said, up until this point we don't really know whether silver has been experiencing separate instances of the future, or simply traveling back in time to prevent an also-time-traveling eggman nega from messing things up in the past. but here, we get some very juicy information:

[ID: Knuckles and Silver again. Knuckles has his arms crossed and is looking at Silver, who has a nervous look on his face as he slams a fist on the palm of his other hand.

Knuckles: Come again? Silver: Something happens that brings the world to ruin! But the historical records are sparse or make no sense. I came back to hopefully head off whatever's about to happen and save the future.]

silver travels back in time to prevent a terrible apocalypse. this is not the beautiful future silver came from in sonic colors— but this is the same silver. everyone recognizes him. he recognizes everyone. and yet, the future he came from is different.

part 2: silver is a walking paradox

allow me to remind you of what i pointed out when i was talking about sonic 06. silver was born into the iblis-apocalypse. considering no elaborate timeline nonsense happened to him before the events of the game (by his reckoning) i think we can safely assume he was born like a regular person with parents.

in the first post-06 timeline, silver was probably also born. let's be charitable, acknowledge that sonic team doesn't overthink the butterfly effect like i do, and say that silver was born to the same parents, because the universe likes to keep things nice and simple and contrive itself to make this particular character exist in this time period.

so, it's entirely fair that silver comes to exist in a post-06 timeline at the equivalent point in time, aka 200 years in the future. it's also fair that he travels back in time to prevent some kind of apocalypse, because that's his narrative role! it's what he does. when it's time for him to exist in the story, that's what he's there to do.

what isn't fair is the fact that it keeps happening.

[ID: A panel from the IDW comics. Sonic is stretching his legs while looking faintly exasperated at Silver, who is nervously holding his arm.

Silver: Er… No. I came back because defeating Eggman didn't save the future. Sonic: Couldn't even play along. Had to bring the mood down. Sonic: *sigh* Okay, what happened this time?]

[ID: The following panel, cropped to just Silver's text bubbles narrating over a starry sky.

Silver: When I left, my time had been conquered by the Eggman Empire. Everyone lived in fear, choking on polluted air. Silver: When I went back, the Eggman Empire was gone— but so was everyone else. Silver: There was nothing left. No people, no animals, no machinery. Only water and sparse, metallic plant life.]

allow me to summarize my understanding of all this: silver is from the future. normally, the future is good. sometimes it isn't. when it isn't good, he goes back in time and fixes things, then returns to the future to check if that fixed things.

the least conjecture-y interpretation i can come up with is that sometimes silver will go into the past, then go back to the future but end up in a Bad Timeline and thus go into the past again to fix things. there's no weird warping directly between bad timelines, he only gets there by way of the past.

but that's boring, so here's my PREFERRED interpretation.

silver hails from a good future, but sometimes it just changes. he's unstuck from time— if something weird happens in the past, he's the only one to know that the passage of fate was changed, because he went to bed in one timeline and woke up somewhere categorically worse, and the only way he can fix it is by figuring out just what caused this and going back in time to fix it.

or, to say it in a meme:

[ID: A picture of someone lying in a hospital bed with a nurse standing next to them, edited so that Silver is in the bed.

nurse: sir… you've been asleep for 2 hours silver: oh boy i can't wait to wake up in the same timeline i went to sleep in]

part 3: how did this happen?

it's one thing to point out that silver doesn't experience time like a normal hedgehog, and another thing to explain how and why this happens.

fyi, this is the part where i go wildly off the rails and start saying whatever i want. there's a ton of explanations one could come up with, most probably stemming back to sonic 06. i'm just going to go with my own, and probably not come up with a whole lot of concrete evidence because i'm just spitballing. this is me having a fun time. going "heeheehoohoo time traveling hedgehog go brrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrr"

so. something i haven't touched upon is that in all games after sonic 06, silver can time travel. we never see him do it, it's never explained how he does it. all we know is that he's doing it under his own power.

which is kinda odd, don't you think? should he be able to do that?

in sonic 06, we see three mechanisms for time travel. first is the chaos emeralds. if two people perform Chaos Control with a chaos emerald apiece, they open up a swirling rift in the air which can send them to different points in time and space. silver can't be doing that, for obvious reasons— he's only one hedgehog, and he's not exactly running around with a chaos emerald at all times. that can't be how he does it.

second is a time machine eggman built. that obviously can't be it; the machine doesn't exist at all after the timeline gets wiped, and again, silver is doing this on his own. he's actively antagonistic towards eggman, even. absolutely not this one.

third and finally is mephiles, who can make big purple orbs to take himself and passengers to different points in time. this obviously can't be it either, for similar reasons to number 2, right? after all, mephiles is one half of solaris, who was destroyed before he could be split off. he doesn't exist to be silver's time-traveling uber driver.

...right?

well, obviously. i'm not going to try and tell you that mephiles is secretly alive and shepherding silver back and forth between timelines for no reason. that's ridiculous. no, i'm going to try and tell you that silver is mephiles.

or rather, he's solaris. or RATHER, he's the new solaris, sorta-ascended to the role of Time God after the old one got blown out like a birthday candle.

like i said, i'm going wildly off the rails and as such don't have any concrete evidence to explain why it's this instead of something else, but hear me out. after elise blew out the flame of hope, the universe was left in an interesting situation. someone needs to be in charge of the flow of time, but the previous time-god was just unceremoniously destroyed. but all the power and energy of a time-god has to go somewhere, in some form, in some time.

with nothing else to go off of, the role of time-god starts flipping through every notable being it had interacted with. they're all solidly accounted for in the timeline, except for one. silver the hedgehog was born into a timeline that cannot exist. silver the hedgehog does not, and cannot exist. silver the hedgehog interacted quite a bit with both sides of solaris— he spent a substantial amount of time fighting back iblis, and associated with mephiles, even being one of the few people to directly experience his time travel abilities. silver the hedgehog tried and failed to absorb iblis into himself.

here's my theory: after sonic 06, the universe reasserted itself such that silver was the new Solaris. silver is not consciously aware that this is what he is, but he knows that he can time travel. sometimes the timeline will rearrange itself around silver. he is unaffected by this because he is a higher being unaffected by such petty trifles as "an origin" or "paradoxes".

silver the hedgehog probably doesn't have parents. he sprang into existence one day and everyone just kind of went with it, himself included.

oh also something i thought was neat but couldn't think of where to put:

[ID: More cropped dialogue, this time from Team Sonic Racing.

Silver: I'm fine. It's just, something bad is gonna happen. I can't explain it. I just feel it. Blaze: Have your travels through time given you precognition? Silver: I don't know. Maybe they have. Or maybe I'm just thinking too much.]

silver might be becoming psychic in a future-vision kinda way. that, or he’s riddled with anxiety. possibly both.

TL;DR

silver hails from no less than three separate timelines, his existence is a tangled web of who-knows-how-many grandfather paradoxes, and i choose to believe that he's god.

if anyone who cares more about evidence wants to gather up like, little one-off clues that support or conflict with my conclusions, go right ahead. or just throw your own arbitrary headcanons for what's going on with this at me. or incorporate these ideas into an au or something! i just want more people thinking about what the Fuck is up with silver post-06, because by god there is a WHOLE lot of potential packed in there

anyway thanks for reading make sure to like comment and subscribe—

#hey guys check out how hard i can gesture at a corkboard #is it remotely coherent? not a clue! i cannot process my own writing #sonic theory #silver the hedgehog #text #dot txt

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kuinliekkienroihu · 3 years

Note

I (crysuzumushi, haha) am working on answering your ask game prompts, you picked two of my very favorites, thank you! I'm gonna ask you to do Kaname too! And Byakuya.

Okay, thanks for the ask!! Sorry it took so long to answer, i wrote a novel. Also sorry for all the spelling and grammar mistakes, English isn’t my first language

Kaname:

1. Favorite thing about them

How he always seeks to act according to his sense of justice. Also he's one of the best written characters in the entire series. He's very complex, which makes him feel kinda like an actual person with understandable actions caused by his past. There are a lot more things, but i'm not good at putting things to words so yeah.

2. Least favorite thing about them

How underutilized he was as a character. I'm really glad there's more of him in cfyow, even though i've only read the first part

3. Favorite line

" I follow the path least soaked in blood. The path I walk is justice."

4. BrOTP

I have many, mostly Shuhei, Aizen, Gin and Sajin

5. OTP

6. NOTP

hmm, i don't like him and Aizen romantically at all, same goes for Sajin

7. Random headcanon

He has a plant garden in Las Noches in which he grows, among many other things, the ingredients for Aizen's tea, which is Kaname's secret special mix of herbs. Aizen really misses the tea Kaname made for him.

8. Unpopular opinion

He did nothing wrong, or rather, all he did was (more or less) justified

9. Song i associate with them

10. Favorite picture of them

This is my favorite too

Byakuya:

1. Favorite thing about them

Yes. I love every single thing about him. Even the things others would consider as flaws are perfect. I really like how calm and collected he is regardless of the situation, he's intelligent and calculating.

A very well written character with, in my opinion, the best character development. Especially his relationship with Rukia from ignoring her out of pain (since she looks almost identical to Hisana), protecting her to keep a promise, letting her be executed to keep another promise to genuinely caring about her and saving her life in many occasions, clearly regretting what he did to her and trying to compensate for his actions.

Kubo wrote his development extremely well, in the end of the series he's objectively a better person than in the beginning, but his personality didn't change much. He's still the same overly serious, stuck up asshole we know and I love him for it.

Another thing I love the most about him is the fact that he's another walking contradiction. But somehow, these contradictions make a paradox or a perfect harmony without cancelling each other. Kubo did an amazing job making him have many layers in his character. There's this line from a book (had to look it up, the book is called "the chrysanthemum and the sword") that the author used to describe Japanese people, I think I read that in someone's ig story and it got stuck in my head since it reminded me of Byakuya so much, and in my honest opinion, describes him rather thoroughly, especially second, third and fourth ones. His zanpakuto, which is one of the infinite reasons I love him, being fully portrayed by the second one "both militaristic and aesthetic" being combined into the beautiful but deadly weapon Senbonzakura is.

"both aggressive and unaggressive, both militaristic and aesthetic, both insolent and polite, rigid and adaptable, submissive and resentful of being pushed around, loyal and treacherous, brave and timid, conservative and hospitable to new ways"

When you think about it, he has the most fitting zanpakuto for his personality compared to the other shinigami and the way he uses it is one of the tiny details which make him, him.

His spot as a captain and the head of the Kuchiki clan is in my opinion fully earned (rest of the nobles (except Yoruichi) can go fuck themselves) (sorry Tara, ignore this please lol). He is hardworking and precise, almost workaholic, has trained hard from a very young age and puts duty above everything. But he still has a hidden "work mode: off" -side which we see occasionally as cracking a dry joke or the wakame taishi fuckery in general. Latter being, in my honest thoughts, hilarious and adorable.

There is a lot more but i literally can't list everything. This is already a hell of an essay.

2. Least favorite thing about them.

My answer is probably as you can expect: none.

There is one thing i don't really like, but it's about the writing.

!!TYBW SPOILERS!!

In the beginning of the arc i think that immediately releasing bankai, especially when he knew it was gonna be sealed, was out of character and i would have been very upset if he stayed dead, since the action which resulted in that was not something he would do.

3. Favorite line

“If it’s for the sake of my pride there’s nothing I won’t destroy.”

I know it’s from a filler but this line just sums his whole character, personality and motivations up so well.

4. BrOTP

I have so many, i want him to have friends lol. But to point out the most significant ones i'd say Rukia, Renji, Kenpachi, Toshiro and Ichigo

5. OTP

The only one i really ship him with is Nanao. Hisana is kind of “it’s canon and i’m fine with it.” I haven’t seen enough of her to form an opinion about the ship, but it’s obvious how much Bya loved her and it’s so sweet.

6. NOTP

Okay, i have never mentioned this before since i know many of my followers/mutuals ship them. Renji. The only ship I. Can't. Stand.

Like, platonically? Yes, they're bros. But romantically or especially sexually? No. Fuck no.

I don't care if you ship them, good for you, but please tag the stuff so it gets filtered.

7. Random headcanon

He sleeptalks a lot. And it's not mumbling, he talks the same way as when he's awake but it's absolute nonsense.

Byakuya, asleep: Do not eat the drawer.

Hisana, awake: *watches him in utter confusion*

Byakuya, still asleep: Give him a pink tricycle.

Hisana: To whom?

Byakuya: Head captain Yamamoto

Hisana: *trying not to laugh*

Another hc that i have is that he is a closet metalhead and likes especially power- and symphonic metal (this might sound very weird if you know nothing about this kind of music lol)

8. Unpopular opinion

His actions in the soul society arc were understandable. He was put between the bark and the tree (i hope you get what i mean) and had to choose from just letting things happen and going against central 46 and all of soul society (or at least that’s what he thought). Also the line he said to Ukitake, which is still easily in top5 most asshole things he has said/done, in my opinion shows what he thought of Rukia’s execution and why he didn’t do anything to prevent it. “Once you’ve let one of your people die.. ...two or three more make no difference.” Both of his parents are dead, Hisana is dead, Ginrei is most likely dead and he thought for 100 years that Yoruichi was dead too. I think Byakuya thought losing one more person he cares about couldn’t hurt more than it already has and therefore didn’t think it was worth breaking the promise he made in his parents’ grave and trying to save her. And that fucking breaks my heart.

9. Song I associate with them

I have a 6h long playlist which I’m not gonna post. Can’t choose just one lol.

10. Favorite picture of them

*digs through nearly infinite pinterest board, tumblr and phone’s gallery*

This is (one of) my favorite manga panel(s) of him. I love how calm but powerful he looks. The lines representing the heavy spiritual pressure. Like an inescapable doom approaching (which indeed was the case). And for some reason i love it.

My favorite fanart, which i obviously can’t post since you can’t post others art so here’s the link: https://www.deviantart.com/keelerleah/art/Bleach-Byakuya-Looking-Back-127254804

and then one which I think is official art or at least an edit of it, if I’m wrong please lmk

#long post #sorry this took 2 and half eternities to complete #bleach #kaname tosen #byakuya kuchiki #ask game

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shotgun--rider · 3 years

Text

Rumor

A Jensen x Reader oneshot

Y/N’s never considered how many suspiciously snuggly photos there are of her and her best friend. Then they all come out in a Buzzfeed article, published just in time for everyone to grill her during her solo panel. Now what?

Word Count: 4000

Warnings: Really dumb fluff, everyone’s anxious, Jared and Briana are sick of everyone’s shit

A/N: This is dumb and fluffy and dangerously song-fic territory but it showed up and demanded to be written so here you go. I have no idea if this is actually any good. Enjoy?

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You were the epitome of normal, growing up. You had decent grades, run-of-the-mill hobbies, and an average high school cashier job. You could hop on your bike (and later, borrow your parents’ car) and take yourself to the coffee shop, or to a friend’s, and the only people that would look twice at you were drivers checking to make sure the kid on the bike didn’t steer into traffic.

You didn’t win any “most likely to” awards in the yearbook, your college major was undecided for an embarrassing length of time, and your 300-odd Instagram followers were comprised of friends and some polite acquaintances from welcome week. And you didn’t mind. You were perfectly happy to go through your day-to-day without turning heads and making waves.

That was all before you’d answered an open casting call on a whim, strapped for cash and mostly there because a sparkly website proclaiming “50 Easy Side Hustles!” had suggested spending your weekends as an extra if you lived in a big filming city. Before your three-episode contract in a show you’d never bothered to watch turned into a series regular.

Now, you’re pretty much guaranteed to have your face splashed across the internet every time you stick a toe off the end of your L.A. property line. Even if the paparazzi aren’t there to get you in Page Six with some wildly exaggerated nonsense, a fan somewhere will snap a blurry photo and upload it somewhere for people to shout about you in the comments section. You’ve never gotten used to being tagged in edits of your own face, or watching your follower count creep steadily upwards. You’re just… you. You’ve always been just the normal, average girl from a nothing-special hometown.

Even after your third year running on Supernatural, you still forget. You still make it all the way to the end of the block before you remember that the person shouting your name is the bodyguard you accidentally abandoned two errands ago. You still get confused when the restaurant wait staff stares at you, still get annoyed calls from your publicist begging you to at least try to appear in fewer coffee shop paparazzi pictures looking like a disgruntled zombie who’s never seen a hairbrush. (Sue you, you can’t be expected to be functional before a cup of coffee.)

You’re a brilliant actress, an unexpected fan-favorite, relatable to everyone in your autograph line...and you’re kind of a terrible celebrity. Unlike certain child models turned actors straight at 18 you may know, this isn’t a world you were trained in. Which is probably why it doesn’t even occur to you that being caught frequently in the company of your best friend might look like something until you’re staring at your own name in a headline on your phone screen, in line at Starbucks before your first panel of the con weekend.

Y/N L/N’s Secret Relationship With Co-Star Jensen Ackles, howls the bold-printed headline, and you blink stupidly at the letters, uncomprehending, until you realize that someone’s trying to get your attention. “Sorry, what?”

The barista looks impatient, suppressing an eyeroll and starting her spiel before cutting off halfway with a squeak. “Oh, my god, you’re her! I’m sorry, I’m just… you’re literally my favorite!” She’s blushing and stuttering and has a near-death grip on the empty coffee cup she was preparing to write your name on.

“Oh,” you reply, forcing the fog of confusion from your brain and slapping on a smile. “Hi, you caught me.”

“Can I...um…” the girl reaches into her back pocket and sheepishly produces her cell phone, complete with a flaming pentagram case. “Um, selfie?”

You smile indulgently, leaning over the counter. The fans are one of the best parts, really, and it’s never a hardship to make someone smile. (That is, when they’re not selling rumors and lies to the tabloids, you think grumpily.)

The barista girl pulls back with a wide smile and a full-face blush, and keeps glancing shyly up at you while she punches in your usual order, plus the second coffee Jensen texted you this morning to beg for. “So I guess Jensen’s around here too, then, right?” she asks perkily, taking your card.

“Uh...sorry, what?”

She shrugs like it’s obvious. “Since you flew in together,”

You blink rapidly, feeling stupid. You’re obviously missing the punchline somewhere. “We, uh...didn’t. I mean...I flew out of L.A.,” you say cautiously. Your home city is already public knowledge, as is the fact that Jensen lives in Austin, and you can’t imagine she doesn’t know this.

Her eyes pop wide with curiosity. “Wait, so you’re not staying with him?”

This conversation is too much for your poor, jetlagged, coffeeless brain. “No?” you try weakly, so far past confused at this point that you might actually be getting a headache. “Why would I…”

Not that Jensen’s Austin house isn’t lovely, and not that you’d object to staying there, and not that you haven’t stayed there plenty of times before, but you’re pretty sure you’re still missing the point.

The barista lunges forward over the counter, leaning in to ask in a hushed voice, “Did you guys break up?”

An emphatic “No!” leaves your mouth so loudly that the old man in line behind you starts grumbling. “No, you don’t--”

“Get a move on,” Old Man grouches in the background. “I don’t care who you are,”

“Oh, good,” the girl cuts you off with a relieved grin. “You guys are so cute, you know? I mean, I kinda figured you had to have something going on, but actually seeing it--it’s going to be so much cuter if Dean and Sierra ever kiss now, oh my god--”

She devolves into a squeal, and the we’re not actually dating dies on your tongue. You have better things to do this morning than correct the misinformation of one teenage barista, so you end up just shaking your head and taking the two cups of coffee wearily. “Right, well, I’ve gotta go, so--” you duck around the old man and beeline for the door before anyone can say anything else. Oh, god, your publicist is so going to kill you.

***

Jared and Jensen are both in the green room when you make it back to the convention hotel, and you groan softly as you walk into the room. Once Jared hears about your so-called relationship, you’re never going to hear the end of it. Then again, better he hear it from you than find it in the tabloids. May as well bite the bullet now before it comes up in a Q&A.

“Hey,” you slide up to Jensen’s elbow, holding out the requested coffee cup as a preemptive truce. “So, we’re apparently dating now,”

Jensen snorts, shaking his head and swapping the coffee cup into his other hand so he can wrap his arm around your shoulders in greeting. “Yeah, I saw that.”

“I think I may have given a barista the impression we’ve had a tumultuous breakup,” you say ruefully, tilting your head up to look at him in apology. “Sorry,”

Jensen’s green eyes are dancing, though, and he throws back his head and laughs, still keeping you tucked close enough that you can feel his whole body shake. “Of course you did, sweetheart,”

It’s pretty much the reaction you expected from Jensen, who’s so used to your antics at this point that he just gives you a fond smile and moves on to damage control. Jared, on the other hand, is...not commenting, and suspicion cuts short your quiet enjoyment of being hugged against Jensen. It took the boys a while to feel comfortable messing with you when you first got on set, but after they figured out you gave as good as you got, they’d never yet missed an opportunity to tease and prank you.

You squint at Jared warily. “Why aren’t you reacting?”

Jared’s lips immediately start twitching, but he makes a valiant attempt at a mock-concerned face. “Oh shit, sorry. Here, tell me again and I’ll pretend like I’m surprised this time,”

Unwilling to bother unwinding yourself from under Jensen’s arm, you extend a childish foot in the direction of Jared’s shins, scowling at him. He dodges easily, laughing, and tosses out, “Someone should really tell Buzzfeed they’re reporting really old news,”

“Shut up and drink your damn coffee, Padalecki,” you shoot back without any real venom.

“Oh, you mean my hotel coffee? The coffee I got stuck with because you only buy Starbucks for Jensen?”

Jensen straightens up proudly, no doubt making a face at Jared over the top of your head. “Y/N just likes me better. That’s why she’s my best friend.”

You roll your eyes, ducking under Jensen’s arm and a few steps away. “You both suck,” you deadpan, resisting an internal wince at the friendzone. “Now shut up and let me drink my coffee, I have to be on stage in fifteen minutes,”

And God, but your head is way too scrambled for a panel right now. Fifteen minutes is nowhere close to enough time to get your shit together, and you’re going to have to somehow walk out there and not let everyone know.

You take a seat halfway across the room, watching Jared and Jensen still standing there, heads bowed together, arguing quietly about something. Jensen’s starting to wear an annoyed expression and he still manages to look beautiful and goddamnit this is how you got in trouble in the first place.

You scroll listlessly through your phone, a headache beginning behind your eyes, and freeze when you realize that you left the damn article open. The headline photo is a picture of you and Jensen on a sidewalk in L.A., caught mid-conversation with Jensen’s hand on your back and a stupid, dopey look on your face while you stare up at him like he hung the moon. Fuck, you’re an idiot.

A hasty scroll through the rest of the article reveals more of the same, and you could kick yourself for making your dumb crush so obvious. The photo captions are practically mocking you, labelled with things like “an intimate evening for Ackles and L/N” and, under a picture of the two of you at a beach, “We might be a little mad that the two most attractive people are together”.

Well, at least now you know what every single question at your panel is going to be about. And somehow you have to figure out how to play this off like it’s nothing. Of course I don’t have a crush the size of a mid-sized whale on Jensen, hahaha, that’s such a hilarious idea!

Your only saving grace is that clearly, Jensen doesn’t think anything of it. It’s nothing more than a brief joke to him and Jared, and as much as that should bring you relief, it still stings to know that he’s obviously never bothered to think of you that way. And why would he? For all Buzzfeed’s nonsense about you making an attractive couple, Jensen Ackles miles above your league.

You’re pulled out of your thoughts by Misha sitting down next to you, an easy smile on his face as he nudges your shoulder with his own. “So, welcome to the club,”

Typically, you and Misha are pretty close friends, but your patience is too short this morning for any of his shit. “What club?” you shoot back grumpily.

“People who the internet have declared in love with Jensen Ackles,” Misha returns, grinning like it’s obvious.

“Ha, ha. See, except when that happens to you, people think it’s funny,”

“It is funny,”

“Not for me!” you explode, belatedly wincing at your harsh tone. “You and Jensen fuck around on stage and that works for you. If I don’t get my shit together in the next five minutes, I’m getting my name dragged through stupid tabloids and laughed straight off the show because I couldn’t keep my goddamn stupid pathetic crush under control!”

“Hey,” Misha waits until you meet his blue eyes. “That’s not going to happen. Okay? It’s not,”

“Misha--”

“Y/N,” Misha returns firmly. “It’s going to be okay. Jensen would never let anything happen to you. And you don’t have to answer anything you don’t want to.”

You sigh softly, nodding. Rationally, you know he’s right. But mostly, as much as you’re worked up about the panel, your fear is that Jensen is going to be the one laughing at you, and you don’t know how to explain that. “Yeah,” you say dully, just as a convention worker comes forward to collect you.

“If it’s really going to shit, I’ll come distract everyone,”

“Somehow, I think that would be worse,” you shoot back over your shoulder as you start walking to the stage. Breathe, Y/N. You’re fine.

You wait for the introductions to finish and take your place on the stage, a slightly breathy laugh escaping into the mic as you look out at the crowd. That is a lot of eyes watching your every move. And they’re on your side, you remind yourself. It’s the fans who’ve been tireless supporters of you and your character, this whole time.

“Hey, guys,” you clear your throat. “What’s up?”

You chatter for a while about whatever you can think of, telling an edited version of the grumpy Starbucks man this morning and rambling a little about Jared’s latest on-set antics. All too quickly, though, you run out of things to say, leaving you with no choice but to ask for questions.

At first, to your great relief, they’re pretty tame. You spend a solid few minutes breaking down Sierra’s latest character arc, and the time she’s spending hunting on her own. You do get a few questions about whether she and Dean could get together when she gets back with the brothers, but as long as it stays firmly in the realm of your characters, you’re not worried.

“And what’s your name?” You ask gently, trying to reassure the nervous young woman at the microphone.

“Uh, Y/N…”

“I love that name!” you wink at her, rearranging yourself in the chair to be more comfortable. “What do you want to know, Y/N?”

“Uh,” she stutters, her face blushing pink. “You’re my favorite actress, and, I, um,”

“That’s very sweet,” you interject, nodding to encourage her.

“I just, uh, really want good things for you, and I just wanted to ask if, um, areyoureallydatingJensen?” she spits out all in one breath. “Cause you deserve him,”

You blink, shifting in your seat. You’d arrived at the elephant in the room. Damn.

“Uh,” escapes your mouth as you frantically try to construct a diplomatic sentence. “No, actually, no, we’re not.” I wish. “The, um, the article was a surprise to us too!” You added a little shrug in as punctuation, trying to play it off.

“But you guys look so cute together!” Other Y/N exclaims. “He looks at you like--” she cuts off, biting her lip so hard you can see the white from the stage. “Nevermind. Sorry.”

“No worries,” you assure her casually, like you’re not dying to know what she was going to say. “Next question?”

The next one up is another young woman, this time much bolder in her question. “But if you were given the opportunity, would you date Jensen Ackles?”

God, Chuck, literally anyone please kill me. “I don’t know how to answer this without getting in trouble,” you finally laugh nervously. “This is a dangerous question,”

The audience all laughs loudly, some of them throwing out comments and suggestions. “In the interests of not getting killed in my bed tonight,” you say lightly when they’ve quieted. “I’m going to skip that question,”

There’s really no saving you, though. After that first question, it’s like a dam has broken and everyone wants to know about your relationship with Jensen. What do you think of his house in Austin and does he cook for you and what do you do between takes and where’s your favorite place to go together. Someone even asks if you’re hooking up even if you’re not dating, which you’re positive turns your face completely purple before you get through redirecting that fan.

An hour later, you stagger off the stage mentally exhausted and thoroughly grumpy.

“Ouch,” Briana sympathizes, sliding up beside you as you grab a water bottle in the green room.

“Can’t wait for my dumb red face to trend on Tumblr,” you mutter, wondering darkly if you could just jump out one of the windows.

Briana laughs like she knows something you don’t, and rubs a hand over your back soothingly. “Come on, let’s get you out of your head before your photos,”

The two of you end up on a walk a few blocks from the convention hotel, fresh coffees in hand and Briana chattering away while you nod along. It’s not that you’re tuning her out, exactly, you’re just...overwhelmed. You do, however, notice when she stops talking.

“Are you listening to me?” she looks at you sharply.

“Sorry, B,” you mumble. “Got distracted. What?”

Briana shakes her head with loving exasperation. “I asked what you’re wearing to karaoke tonight,”

“I’m probably not going to--” you start.

“Oh, no you don’t. You can’t leave me there alone,” Briana interrupts, folding her arms across her chest.

“What do you mean, alone? Kim and Rich and literally everyone will be there,”

“You are not allowed to skip karaoke.” Briana says firmly, and you suddenly know how her daughter must feel when she’s misbehaved. “Besides, Jensen’s singing with Louden Swain beforehand. Don’t you want to see it?”

“Fine. But I’m wearing this,” you gesture to your plain black top and jeans. To be honest, you’re not sure if you actually do want to see Jensen perform, or bother with the rest of karaoke night. Mostly you just want to crawl into bed and put the covers over your head and pretend that you haven’t been making a fool of yourself all morning, but Briana is a force of nature when she wants something.

She smiles excitedly at your acquiescence, pulling out her phone for a moment to type something before you start heading back.

You nudge her teasingly with your elbow. “Your phone more exciting than me?”

Briana just slides it away hastily before you can read more than Jared’s name over her shoulder. “Just taking care of something.”

There’s something she’s not telling you, but you don’t feel like digging right now. You’re just focusing on getting to the end of this convention without spilling all your secrets and looking like an idiot.

By the time you’re sitting down in the seats for Louden Swain’s set, your face is indeed all over Tumblr. (You always deny having the stupid app, but sometimes a girl’s gotta know what people are saying about her and her hot costars.) There’s comments full of stupid speculation that you’re hiding your relationship, including a whole thread about how you’re clearly hiding your secret threesome with Jensen and Misha. Great.

“Uh, okay,” a familiar voice snaps you out of your thoughts. Jensen’s on stage in front of the microphone, holding his guitar. “This was not part of my original plan, so...if this goes badly, it’s all Jared and Briana’s fault.”

The crowd laughs good-naturedly as your gaze snaps immediately to Briana. Infuriatingly, your friend just shrugs.

“This is a cover of a song neither of us wrote,” Jensen continues, gesturing between himself and Louden Swain behind him. “But I thought it could be fitting,”

He’s nervous, you realize, watching the way he’s fiddling with his guitar strap while he talks. But you have no idea what he’s doing. And you have no idea why he didn’t tell you. The two of you always know what stupid thing the other person is planning, especially stunts in front of the fans. But clearly not this time. With a sinking sense of dread, you wonder if maybe he does hate you a little bit after today, and that article. Maybe that’s why he’s not talking to you. You swallow hard against the sting in your throat, and Jensen starts playing.

The opening chords are definitely from a country song you vaguely recognize from the radio, and you wonder why this is Jensen’s choice over one of his own songs.

“Girl, you know I've known you forever / How many nights we hung out together,”

Across the room, Briana has an enormous smile on her face.

“My boys are laughing and tap me on the shoulder / Making a motion like, ‘Could y'all get any closer?’” He punctuates the words with a little scowl in Jared’s direction.

“There's a rumor going 'round about me and you / Stirring up our little town the last week or two / So tell me why we even trying to deny this feeling / I feel it, don't you feel it too? / There's a rumor going 'round, and 'round, and 'round / What d'you say we make it true?”

There are a lot of people suddenly making noise around you as they come to the same realization that you are, but you’re frozen in your seat. The rumor is you. He’s talking about you. Jensen’s singing for you. And you should be elated but your mind is stuck on a loop of what the fuck there’s no way this is real.

You don’t even realize that the song is over until everyone is clapping and you’re still stuck staring with embarrassingly wide eyes, Jensen up on stage with an embarrassed dusting of red across his face and a slowly deflating expression.

“Hey,” Jared’s elbow digs hard into your ribs suddenly. “Please do something. I can’t take any more of him like this,”

“What--oh--shit!” spills out of your mouth as you stand hastily, your phone tumbling off your lap. “I’m just gonna--”

By some miracle, you make it through the crush of people and around to the backstage area, your heart racing unevenly in your chest. You have no idea what you’re supposed to say, or if Jensen will be there, or if you’re even interpreting this right. Maybe it’s all just wishful thinking. No, Jared wouldn’t have encouraged you if that were true. Would he?

You’re so lost in your thoughts that you end up plowing straight into Jensen’s chest, his arm sliding automatically around your waist as you wobble off balance. “Shit, I’m sorry!”

He steadies you, green eyes searching your face with a flicker of vulnerability. “Hey,”

“Hey,” you whisper back. You have no idea what happens now.

With his free hand, Jensen rubs the back of his neck awkwardly. “Look, if that was too much--”

“No!” you shake your head quickly. “I’m sorry, I was just...processing. I...it was really sweet, Jen,”

“Yeah?”

“Yeah,” you confirm. “I just… me? Are you sure?”

“Why not you?” Jensen’s face wrinkles in confusion. He moves both hands to your waist, the warmth of his skin bleeding through your thin shirt as he tugs you closer. “Y/N,”

There’s something in you screaming that you might not get to do this again, that he’s going to come to his senses, that the whole thing is a dream, and before you can second guess yourself you launch yourself up onto your tiptoes and kiss him.

Your arms go around his neck while Jensen wraps you up tighter against his chest and it’s not fireworks, or earth shattering, or anything so dramatic. His mouth moving against yours just feels like home and love and of course. Of course you were going to get here, of course it was going to be like this.

Jensen lifts you off your feet for a moment before breaking the kiss, and he looks just breathless and flushed enough that you’re equal parts proud and turned on.

“Of course it’s you,” he murmurs, one hand under your chin to tilt your head up to him. “Of course I love you. You’re my best friend.”

------

Something ate my taglist! If you want to be tagged, please message me!

#supernatural #jensen ackles #supernatural rpf #jensen ackles x reader #jensen x reader #spn #rpf #x reader #reader insert #oneshot

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justanothersyscourse · 3 years

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A Critique of LB Lee’s Essay on The Use of ‘System’ in Non-Disordered Spaces

This was originally a reply to a post, but I’ve decided I wanted to post it separate-- not only so it shows up in searches, but as a stand-alone piece that can be found by people who have come across this essay themselves.

The essay in question by LB Lee can be found here.

Firstly, I seem to be completely unable to find any information on professional accreditation for LB Lee, so I would likely take most of what they write and say with a grain of salt. The loudest voices aren’t always the most educated. You can be asked to speak on panels and appear in conventions simply by virtue of being known-- and in this case, LB Lee has a secondary skill of art and comics that would help to draw in crowds by premiering them in a set.

Secondly, and playing off of the first, their list of appearances and work seems to be solely based on their personal experiences, and the vast majority have to do with artwork and trans and LGTBQ+ activism-- not plurality. Only 3 of their 31 listed presentations have to do with neurodivergence and “multiplicity”. How they managed to gain a voice is beyond me, other than people trying to relate to an untraditional and unproven view of plurality by someone who gained the limelight for something unrelated-- because if someone says, “You can have this *TOTALLY INTERESTING AND SEEMINGLY FUN THING* with absolutely NO questions asked,” people are going to jump on that, and some people with unresolved trauma are going to cling to any option that will let them continue to avoid facing unhappy truths.

BUT, the writer themselves aside, let’s look at the article-- well, essay, because it’s certainly not academic.

It seems to boil down to: DID/OSDD systems “likely” didn’t create the word “system”-- Doctors did, if it wasn’t disordered systems, and it was deemed to be demeaning and “forced” upon the community, and it was the “natural and non-disordered plurals” who reclaimed this apparent slur.

I have many, many questions.

First, who decided that “system” was demeaning? The article takes a very anti-medical stance, which can be very, very dangerous when you’re dealing with traumatized and dissociated individuals, especially those with DID experiencing extreme bouts of amnesia. It insinuates, multiple times, that doctors are not to be trusted and that they created language and words that were meant to control us when they “medicalized” DID/OSDD. That seems to be a very personal stance to take-- I consider it quite validating that my problems are recognized and research is being done on how to help me and others like me-- and to do that, yes, they needed to develop a language to discuss the issues. Good god, the horror.

This is how “empowered multiplicity” and “natural multiplicity” and “endogenics” are harmful to the DID/OSDD community. Please stop forgetting that these are GENUINELY mentally ill people. What do you think pushing this anti-medical rhetoric does when spaces cross?

Second, where were the DID/OSDD people during all of this? Were we sitting in a corner, watching the natural plurals fight the good fight? That portion of the community isn’t mentioned at all except to say that we’re perpetuating in-fighting. The article feels very one sided and seems to place “natural” plurals in a saviour’s light. When looking for the earliest use of “system”, they give an example from a natural plural in 1994, and then edit to say they found an earlier example from 1990 in Many Voices-- I’ve actually looked through a good chunk of those, starting in 1989, and those are from therapists and people with DID/OSDD and is now owned by the ISST-D (heads up, the newsletters almost brought me to tears for so many different reasons, be careful reading). This means they were unable to prove who used it first, OR how it was used, really only providing evidence that it was disordered plurals who embraced the language first.

Third, where does this claim that this argument is about “cultural appropriation” rather than “disability appropriation” come from? I’m particularly bothered by this line in particular: “But even if you ignore that, the fact is, multiples are not a culture. Certainly not an oppressed one.” I quite agree it’s not a culture-- it’s a highly misunderstood and debated mental disorder, and we are absolutely oppressed. Rather than discuss that, though, it’s insinuated that we’re only oppressing each other with high school clique level fighting. Here’s the thing-- you can’t be oppressed when what you’re experiencing isn’t recognized medically OR culturally. So, no, multiples are not oppressed, people with DID/OSDD are, and while we’re on that-- hot take-- we can’t be ableist to natural multiples because we’re not in any position of power over them (in fact, our dissociative symptoms would put us below them), please stop saying that, people. Natural multiples, however, can be ableist by not respecting a DID/OSDD system’s personal boundaries.

I also went and read through the entire alt.support.dissociation FAQ, and outside of the one, singular reference to “Some people explore identity or alternate identity games, like role playing, acting, pretending, or alternate social structures to the point where they begin to question their original identity... in their adolescence,” which was curiously left out of LB’s essay, the site is largely of the opinion that it’s trauma, abuse, and stress that create “multiples”, with only a very, very small portion of the community relating to that statement-- which is then immediately followed up with, “Some multiples are unaware of any initial trauma.” It sounds to me like he’s really, really reaching there to say that this site promotes natural multiplicity.

Please keep in mind when reading essays like this that when the writer says things like, “in most cases,” you need to read the entire passage. One of the other quoted passaged by LB is, “ When they come to the question "What causes multiplicity?" Discord and Sapphire Gazelles specifically state that while many experience trauma, "there are exceptions to this."”

If you read this section in its entirely, it says,

“In many (if not most) cases, severe trauma at an early age (by early, we mean before, say age 5), although there are definitely exceptions to this. Please bear in mind that "severe" is an entirely subjective term. In people who developed their multiplicity as a result of trauma, the trauma was very likely some sort of abuse: physical, sexual, psychological, emotional, or religious/magickal. Usually this abuse began at a very early age and was long-standing. Other trauma, such as witnessing a death, or the abuse of someone close to you, or possibly just living in a family where there is a great deal of negative emotion expressed, could be sufficient.”

What the passage is actually saying, is, “Most cases have severe trauma before 5, but OTHER trauma could be sufficient.” It’s not saying they don’t have trauma, it’s saying they have OTHER forms of trauma. Don’t let half-quotes be twisted to a fit a narrative.

Finally, “In 2015, I went to the IGDID Trauma and Dissociation Conference, and nobody knew what I was going on about when I used the term 'system.’” I highly, highly doubt this to be true. In only the paragraph prior they state that “system” had become a general usage term-- and at the very start of the article, says it was doctors that invented the term. Now, suddenly, no one knows what it means at a convention specifically regarding trauma and dissociation? LB also provides several sources of the word being used by therapists and DID/OSDD systems throughout-- so where is this coming from?

It’s an easy answer, because the essay is finished off with, “ So 'system' has been general purpose,” there it is again, general purpose, “for over 20 years, and it's been used by specifically non-DID systems during that entire time. It never got reclaimed by DID folks.” This is not true in any way, shape, or form, based on the sources LB themselves reference throughout-- it’s such a crazy contradiction and such a bold statement-- I’m genuinely in awe. It’s Trump-esque in it’s absurdity. And if it was a slur to be reclaimed, it certainly can’t be reclaimed by people who never held any right to in the first place, because as LB states, it was made by doctors for disordered systems and should be shunned.

And on that note, I’d like to suggest that there aren’t many better terms for this sort of thing-- “system” is pretty perfect, so to the people suggesting that it was used in a derogatory way by disordered systems to reference “those systems” on tumblr, what else should we have called them? I can’t rightfully consider that a valid argument.

Perhaps all the arguments and fighting we’re seeing now ARE DID/OSDD trying to reclaim the slur rightfully owned by them, and the non-disordered plurals are fighting tooth and nail. There’s certainly a case to be made there, but more likely, we’re just tired of people coming in to our spaces and using our terms for something they’re not experiencing, warping their original meanings so it’s harder for disordered systems to voice what’s happening to them in clear, concise, and understood ways.

#syscourse #endogenic #anti endo #actuallydid #actuallyosdd #actuallymultiple #actuallytraumagenic #plurality #pluralgang #system #LB Lee #essay #hot take

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bokunoheroanalysisforthefuture · 4 years

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Alright, and I am back with another update! But first, some stuff a friend noticed in the first few pages and mentioned to me that I didn’t take in when I went over them on my own the first time:

The park they’re in as kids is pretty close to the apartment complex Izuku and his mom live in! Considering that said apartment complex is right there in the background. Which probably isn’t a huge thing, but a neat thing to note.

The age these kids manifest their quirks at seems to be more preteen / teenage years, though I don’t know whether that’s just because it is later activation or because there were (subtle) quirks before that, with the glowing baby just being the one that had people sit up and realize something was actually going on.

Endeavor ad! And it has the time of that event that day, too - 8:14 AM! I wonder what he’s advertising… or perhaps it’s a news report? An interview of some kind? It might just be a ‘breaking news, we got Endeavor on our channel’ sort of thing. The only part that I can read is the first three katakana for the biggest text, which is ‘E-n-de’ and matches the wiki’s katakana for ‘Endeavor’. If anyone can get a good enough look at the smaller text in order to tell me what the rest says, I would appreciate it!

Just a few things, but obviously I need to up my observation game if I want to catch all this stuff!

[No. 1 - Midoriya Izuku: Origin]

So now we’re at Aldera / Orudera Junior High, with Izuku’s class being in their last year before high school. Since Japan’s schools start on the second week of April, we know this has to be that first week of school, because Katsuki’s still 14 and his birthday is April 20th, which would almost always be the third week of April / second week of school.

What is that writing stance. You are going to have an old man’s back by the time you graduate high school. I mean, I wouldn’t know anything about that personally, cough cough…

Anyways! We get a look at Izuku’s class and their quirks, and what a collection. Also, with an attitude like that, no wonder this school is seen as bad, like, what the fuck dude. Not exactly a competent homeroom teacher, are you?

The ones that I can see, from leftmost row to rightmost row, are [1] floating hair, stretchy fingers, dark matter, [2] smokey arms, spike fists, stretchy eyes, frog throat, some sort of flash/illumination quirk, [3] rocky body, ???, stretchy neck, flamethrower arms, extra arms, [4] sharp hair, big chompers, wedge face, [quirkless], mouth face (seen in the next panel and holy FUCK new sleep paralysis demon), [5] horns, telekinesis, [explosion], buff bod, ???, [6] wind control, ???

WHY.

But yeah, this also establishes the first rule of ‘don’t use quirks in school’ thing that… also gets promptly ignored the several other times we see stuff set in this school. Which, what a shock, people sort of sliding around inconvenient rules.

Anyways, Katsuki has proven that he hasn’t changed since those first few childhood panels way back (checks) ten pages ago. And Izuku is being… very shy and trying to avoid drawing attention. But no shaking, particularly, just… wallflower mode, more like.

But yeah, Katsuki is not exactly on great terms with the rest of the class, who are rightfully pissed off at him treating them rudely and calling them extras. Though honestly, I’m surprised that they’re surprised he’s aiming for UA, it’s not like he wouldn’t have been obvious about that for, like, years at this point. You’d think they’d all roll their eyes and be like ‘yeah yeah we’ve heard this spiel before’ or something. IDK.

Oh man, and Izuku already KNOWS what’s coming, look at how he’s hiding his face!

Katsuki is, of course, Fucking Extra and hops on his desk, and gets right into bragging, where, AGAIN, this should have been stuff this class has known about for ages, why are they so shocked?? And huh, interesting, he’s not only interested in surpassing All Might, but also in being one of the richest people in the world. Wow, I cannot even with him, especially knowing he lives in this house in particular:

Which, it should be clear, is an EXPENSIVE lifestyle when most families live in modest apartments because of space being so valuable in Japan.

God this is a fantastic image. I wanna frame it on a wall somewhere. Hori managed to convey all the emotions in one face and I admire the man for it.

With the whole class laughing, there’s a thing I want to note that fandom seems to not pay attention to: they note that Izuku gets good grades! I’ve seen fics that basically have him forced to sabotage his own grades to avoid getting backlash, but like… no, I don’t think that’s actually a thing.

[Also an aside, we finally see one more class quirk, which seems to be some sort of bulked up arm? It looks a bit like mummy bandages, as far as I can tell.]

Izuku gets into defending himself, saying there’s no precedent, but he IS defending himself against them, so again, he’s not cowering as much as some people seem to think he does based on fics, and clearly he’s still willing to stand up for himself to some degree.

...then of course, Katsuki blows up Izuku’s desk and sends Izuku sprawling. And is pissed that Izuku apparently thinks he, who is quirkless, can somehow be on the same level as Katsuki. Izuku swears up and down that it’s not about Katsuki, that he just really wants to try, and this somehow pisses Katsuki off even more.

I want you all to remember this image - save it on your computers, bookmark this post, whatever you need to do. We’ll come back to it in, oh (checks watch) about 284 chapters. Or maybe sooner in a separate post where I can put it under read more and avoid spoiling people more than this does. Because DAMN can I gush on this moment.

Anyways, we have a change of scene, right after noon, with a thief with a sludge transformation and,,,,,,,, legs and pants,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,

Where the fuck did those pants go, sir. Sir. What the fuck, sir.

Also, we get our first meeting with the OG dad, the sunflower man himself, who blooms into 255 kilos of muscle in one panel. Also, man I forgot about the fucking giraffe neck Hori used to draw him with, holy heck, why are you so l o n g.

L O N G.

...right, anyways, back to the school, which is apparently over for the day. The rest of the class is heading out, and Izuku’s back to his chipper self, even humming a happy note as he grabs his notebook-

Before Katsuki nabs it from his hands. There are a few people who’ve hung back who notice the title and pick fun at izuku, so I guess Izuku actually… doesn’t talk about his desire to be a hero that much in middle school, if the others are all so surprised about it. He apparently doesn’t even make his notebooks obvious to them, since this is the first time any of them seem to be seeing it. Which I mean, it makes sense if the class will tease him for it, but like. Even with Katsuki stealing the book, Izuku’s not super panicked or having a nervous breakdown.

But yeah, Katsuki just blasts the book, but! It’s just the cover singed (and edges) when we know he could have demolished that book entirely. Again, he’s definitely being a bully and a jerk here, but he’s got way more self-control than fandom likes to assume.

Izuku’s upset because of his damaged notebook, and Katsuki just huffs and throws it out the window while saying he’s gonna be the only kid from Aldera to go to UA. And Izuku, EVEN WHILE STRESSING, thinks of him as vain for thinking that way! That’s not the first thought of someone too terrified to do anything.

Edit: As pointed out to me in [this post], it was Katsuki’s crony who was thinking of him as vain, not Izuku. My bad!

Also note the lack of damage to Izuku’s school uniform. I know I’ve seen fics where there’s a hole made and a burn scar left that Izuku has to tend to, but Katsuki, again, has not directly used his quirk against Izuku. We’ve never seen it, just the smoke and flash used for intimidation. I’m getting more and more confident that Katsuki has never actually used his quirk against a person, which I’m probably gonna get a bit more into during the battle training in a few chapters.

But yeah, the cronies / extras basically call Izuku lame and that he can’t face reality. And then we get this scene:

That’s not the face of someone afraid. That’s Izuku’s determined face.

Izuku is about to stand up to Katsuki again. The way he always has, the way he always will. There has never been a point in the series where Izuku has NOT stood up to Katsuki when he feels it matters, and that’s part of the reason Katsuki is so pissed with him every time he does - because Izuku REFUSES to see his place! Not once!

(Please, for the love of god, respect the Izuku who didn’t need a quirk to stand up to others. Who isn’t ‘broken’ or ‘terrified’ of Katsuki or anything like that. He’s a stubborn kid and we Stan That.)

Izuku, however, is not confident enough in this situation to want to press the issue, so he relents and says nothing when Katsuki prods him to escalate things. And then we immediately get to the ‘you idiot, don’t fucking suicide bait!’ but you can tell it’s been a stressful few moments for him.

So yeah, the summary of this section is ‘Izuku is not an uwu suffering babey, and Katsuki is way more restrained than people seem to think.’

I’m cutting it off here since, again, we got a lot of info and character examination, and honestly this whole chapter is a long ass one (55 pages!!!!) and it’s establishing the entire setting from the ground up. And honestly, I’m just vibing in being Right about how I’ve been viewing the characters at the start of the series… even if i am guilty of sometimes playing with fanon for my own means…

Still, this is fun! Hopefully y’all are having fun too!

#chapter 1 #opening arcs #readthrough #boku no hero academia #my hero academia #midoriya izuku #bakugou katsuki #yagi toshinori #we respect canon characterizations in this household #I love how hori handles characters and I will definitely be taking notes through this #this time with the formatting done BEFORE I post it

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transxfiles · 4 years

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y’all i cannot express in words how excited i am for the new lumberjanes show to come out.

i know a lot of folks on tumblr are hearing abt lumberjanes for the first time through the news tv show, but it’s based on a bunch of comics by lgbt creators, and those comics have helped me work through so much difficult stuff, and i don’t think it’d be a stretch to say that lumberjanes (and the current fandom around it) has actually saved my life.

lumberjanes is a comic about a bunch of girls who go to a summer camp and solve mysteries and fight monsters and just hang out together and are best friends, and i love it so much. right off the bat, two girls are lesbians in a loving, healthy, caring relationship. the camp director is a butch lesbian. another girl is trans and her arc has nothing to do with being trans - she’s just one of the girls, and she’s trans too, and it’s part of her identity but she never experiences suffering around it. later on she helps a young nonbinary character realize that they’re nonbinary, and then the nonbinary character gets to join the girls at camp, and they’re so much happier there. there’s an entire section of panels about pronouns, but it’s juts a casual discussion, where one girl says, “what’re pronouns” and another says, “oh, they’re just words we use to describe ourselves, like ‘he/him’ and ‘they/them’ and ‘she/her’” and then the nonbinary character says “i'd like to use they/them pronouns please” and everyone accepts them. there are so many characters of color. there are so many diverse family groups (something we see in an arc where all of the parents get to visit their kids at camp for a day) including a girl who only has a mom, and a girl who has two dads, and a girl who has a mom and a dad and whose abuela lives with her family, and big families and small families and lots of siblings and only children.

and lumberjanes is so sweet. it’s complex and well-written and absolutely hilarious, but it’s also so sweet and kind and soft and reading it feels like being hugged and handed a plate of homemade cookies. it’s about friendship and the complexities that entails. the entire motto fo the camp the girls go to is ‘friendship to the max’ and the story reflects that. and the girls get to be loud and goofy and wacky and wild, which is something we don’t see a lot in media. and they get to be soft and scared and sad, too, and then they get to grow from these experiences, and they get to learn and explore and be free. and that’s something i'd never really seen before, not represented in such an honest way. reading lumberjanes set me free. i found these comics in early middle school, when i was going through a really hard time both socially and with my own personal identity. i live in the bible belt, and i go to a school that isn’t accepting of lgbt kids at all. i'd recently been outed to my grade as lesbian by one of the girls in half of my classes, and in the meantime i was also dealing with my own personal gender struggles, specifically waves and waves of dysphoria that i was having a hard time understanding and defining, because i knew i didn’t want to be a girl or a boy, but i had no idea what that meant, and i had no idea that there was a third option, or a fourth option, or a fifth option, or thousands of options, because i didn’t really get the fluidity of gender, yet, and i didn’t understand that i could apply it to myself. but then i saw the characters in lumberjanes, i saw girls who loved girls and were proud of it, so incredibly proud of it, i saw kids who were realizing they didn’t identify with the gender binary and that they didn’t have to, and i do truly think that saved me. because there was a time when i was considering just ending it because i didn’t understand. and then i read lumberjanes, and it saved me.

and those are just the comics - the current fandom surrounding them has been so loving and caring and supportive of me ever since i joined it. we’re small - there’s only maybe forty of us, and the number of us who are actually content creators is so much smaller. when i first joined the fandom, we only had maybe twenty fics on ao3. now we have 93. i’m proud to say i’ve written fifteen of those, and i'm so, so happy to have found and talked with the people who’ve written the other 78. last year, when i started engaging with other lumberjanes fans online through tumblr, discord, and even the ao3 comments section, i was going through a really difficult time at school. it was my first year in high school and it was like the homophobia and transphobia were amped up to 200%, and people who i thought loved me left me, and so many of my closest friends had to leave the school to save themselves, and i felt so incredibly alone. so i said “fuck it” and i made a discord account and i started talking to some people i’d spent years admiring from afar. i spent hours goofing around with them, discussing fan theories and fanfiction and working through my personal life with them by my side. now, i consider them my friends. and i’ve picked myself back up again. i've figured myself out, for the most part, and i've got new friends and i’m staying in touch with old ones, and school is still awful now and again, but i have people who have my back. they saved me, and i don’t know if they know it, but they did. this fandom saved me. i love them so much.

now, the lumberjanes show is coming out, and i'm so incredibly excited. the comics are niche. they don’t reach as many people. i know so many kids who are intimidated by comics, but don’t really know where to start, or who want to read them, but are scared their parents could find them. i understand that struggle. hiding a book is hard. you have to look for a space that you know no one can get to, under a bed or in a closet or in plain sight, with the cover of another book slipped over it. and so often, the risk isn’t worth it.

but hiding a bootlegged file of a tv show? that can be so much easier.

i'm so excited to hear that noelle stevenson and possibly even other lumberjanes creators are going to be working on this show. i think that it will change lives, like the comics changed my lives. lumberjanes is a story about girls loving adventure, loving mysteries, loving each other. it’s beautiful and positive and uplifting, and in my case, lifesaving. i urge you all to please check out the comics. you won’t regret it. and please, support the show.

i, for one, cannot wait to see it.

EDIT: you can 100% reblog this if you want to, whether you’ve read the comics or not!

#my post #long post #lumberjanes #lumberjanes fandom #lumberjanes tv show

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alfhildr-the-word-weaver · 3 years

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So, I’ve been reading the Buffy Season 8 comics, and I have a question. Well, several questions actually, but these are all about one particular panel.

[Image ID: A screencap from the Buffy Season 8 comics which shows Dracula walking away from Renée and Xander, cape swooshing behind him, left hand raised in a dramatic flourish as he speaks. His speaking text reads “It’s not possible, manservant. These powers you speak of--they’re part of the ancient magics. I risked my very soul to attain them. I am their worldly guardian.” The word ‘soul’ is italicized in his speech. End ID]

Does... does this mean that Dracula has a soul??

And if so, how long has he had one? Did he have it when he faced Buffy at the beginning of Season 5? Did he get it between then and now in the comics, and if so, how and why, or else how and why did he get it in the first place? Was he cursed like Angel, or did he fight for it like Spike, or is there some other way to get a soul in the Buffyverse? Why would he want one if he did get it willingly?

Is this otherwise unmentioned soul the reason why he’s willing to fight against other vampires by Buffy’s side in this arc of the comics, or is he another example of a soulless vampire acting for the common good for probably at least partly selfish reasons like Spike circa season 5 (although it’s worth noting that Dracula is doing it without a chip)? Is it because he really likes Xander (as a friend or as a crush), or just a personal grudge against the Japanese vampire group that, in his eyes, “stole” his powers?

Perhaps more significantly, does this make Dracula a third eligible party besides Angel and Spike who might be the subject of the Shanshu prophecy, seeing as he is also a vampire with a soul?? (And how mad would Angel and Spike be if that turned out to have never been about either of them this entire time?)

Or, am I jumping on the soul thing a bit too much? Could he maybe speaking... metaphorically for some reason? Does he mean something different by “soul”, like say, the poetic essence of who he is as a vampire or his honor or some such, rather than his human conscience as it is to Spike and Angel?

Or is he aware of his soul outside of himself somehow, like how when vampires don’t have their souls they’re apparently just out in the nether somewhere, available to be summoned when called upon? If it can be put at risk but isn’t inside of him, then is Dracula’s human soul in some sort of Heaven somehow while his vampiric self is causing mischief on earth, and yet somehow vampire!Dracula is aware of his human soul elsewhere and is aware that his earthly actions may somehow put it in jeopardy? But Spike and Angel seem convinced that they’re fated for hell for being vampires (which irks me, but is a rant for another day), so why would Dracula be an exception? Could he have somehow sold his soul for these powers when he didn’t even have access to it? Does he just mean that he risked his soul back when he initially became a vampire specifically to attain access to these powers? But wouldn’t the specific use of the term “risked” and not “lost” imply that, while there was peril to his soul, the peril ultimately did not persist, hence his soul was neither lost nor damaged, only at temporary risk of being in some sort of harmed state?

Why would the comic writers put emphasis on the world “soul” in a throwaway line that isn’t revisited at any point in Dracula’s stint in the comics so far (I’m just through with the Fray crossover arc now and no one has said another word about this that I can recall) when vampire soul lore is such a complicated and contentious aspect of the Buffyverse? Did they just... forget the significance of the whole soul thing? What could this line possibly mean other than that Dracula has had a soul this whole time without mentioning it to anyone, and yet he casually let it slip while talking about his secret transforming powers?

To put it more briefly, I’ll quote Xander in “Something Blue”: What? How? What?

Okay, so it turns out I have many questions. Well, some of that was more like my own speculations and theories posed as questions since I was on a roll, but anyone can feel free to respond to any of the many questions I put here, honestly. It’s such a small moment but I saw the word “soul” there and it just sent me reeling because... well, it raises all of my above questions and then some. Anyways, I’d love to hear the fandom’s thoughts on this and the possibility of Dracula being a third vampire with a soul(tm).

Edited to put an actual TL;DR: Dracula implies in this panel of the comics that he has a soul!? Thoughts??

#Buffy The Vampire Slayer #BtVS #Buffy vs Dracula #Buffy Season 8 #Buffy comics #Dracula #Count Dracula #Buffy soul lore #comic lore questions #souls in the Buffyverse #Shanshu #the Shanshu prophecy #vampire with a soul #responses and discussion welcome!#I am overthinking(tm) but you can't just say something about vampires and souls in the Buffyverse and expect me not to go wild #I hesitate to tag them since I barely mentioned them but I want people to see this so I suppose #Spike #Angel #anyways #I did enjoy Dracula's run in the comics #well the part where he was suddenly racist was. um. weird #but it was good seeing him again and his friendship with Xander was really cute #and it's definitely possible to interpret the thing with Renée as jealousy #not that being jealous is any excuse for being racist of course #but like it did give off 'Dracula has a crush on Xander' vibes #I've got to stop starting long complicated conversations in the tags lol woops

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firebirds-flaming-art-blog · 3 years

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Amira And The Nutcracker Prologue Page 5 to 8.PNG

Thank you to @transcending-chaos and @thewonderingstars For helping with Editing and input

Transcript Below

Page 5

Panel 1

FWOMP

Panel 2

Chris Drosselmeyer: Hello there Amira, your uncle talks about you quiet a lot. It's nice to finally meet-

Panel 3

Amira: Where did you come from? Why does your voice sound like that? How do you know my uncle? What happened to your eye?

Panel 4

Chris Drosselmeyer: Well, I grew up in Germany but moved to Canada a number of years ago. That's where I met your uncle Turner. We collaborated on a project together and we've been friends ever since.

Page 6

Panel 3

Chris Drosselmeyer: As for my eye, just a workplace accident. This is why you always wear eye protection when working with machines. But don't worry, I'm going to replace it with an automaton eye at some point. Just gotta work out the last of the design kinks.

Amira: When can I see it?

Chris Drosselmeyer: Well, I have to finish building it first.

Panel 4:

Mackenzie Dressler: Thank you sweetie.

Page 7

Panel 1

Glug Glug Glug Mackenzie Dressler: This year I remembered to bring two bottles, but don't tell your mom.

Panel 2

Amira: Why do adults drink that stuff? It tastes like juice gone bad.

Panel 3

Ha ha ha Chris Drosselmeyer: That's a rather astute observation.

Panel 4

Amira: Wait! I have more questions.

Chris Drosselmeyer: Oh?

Panel 5

Amira: Are you the same Drosselmeyer from the book? Or are you just related to him?

Page 8

Panel 1

Chris Drosselmeyer: Ahh, I guess it's pretty obvious, isn't it? The answer is a little bit of both. I'm his reincarnate, this is actually my third life, and my family tree does go back to that man. Though he specifically didn't have any children of his own. To keep things simple I am related to him in blood and spirit.

Amira Mohren: That's amazing!

Turner Dressler: Chris is so sweet, he would have made such a good dad. I wish my niece could be happy like this all the time.

Panel 2

Amira Mohren: Do you still make automatons? I remember seeing one on tv, it looked like a swan swimming in water but the water was made of glass. How would you make it? I figured you could use would you recommend a size 1 inch or 1.5 inche cog. What measurement do you prefer? Centimetres or Inches?

Panel 4

Amira Mohren: Mr. Drosselmeyer, do you think? Is there anything else that happens after the story ended?

#The Nutcracker #Christmas #comic #webcomic #Amira and the Nutcracker #Amira & the Nutcracker #Drosselmeyer #Chris Drosselmeyer #Amira Mohren #Mackenzie Dressler #Turner Dressler #Fritz Mohren #Firebird art

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adrenalineguide · 3 years

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Jeep Wrangler Sport S and Mustang 2.3L Convertible: Two Fours for Summer Fun

Words and Photos By Michael Hozjan

No I’m not talking about cases of beer. I’m referring to the number of cylinders found under the hood of two American icons in the automotive landscape – the Jeep Wrangler and Mustang. Don’t scoff, four cylinders have been making a huge come back in recent years and no, these are not your grand dad’s four cylinders. Both the Jeep and the Mustang rely on turbocharging to get the extra oomph when needed all while delivering below average thirst numbers compared to their V6 and V8 counterparts. Let’s face it do we really need all that horsepower all the time and isn’t it nice to save some bucks at the pump.

Jeep Wrangler Sport: Back to its roots

“There’s something amiss here.” I tell myself as the engine comes to life. I hit the off button and check for the glow plug light, there isn’t one. For some reason the engine doesn’t sound the same, and yet there’s something eerily familiar about the sound. I mistakenly expected the Wrangler to be diesel powered, which it was not. The diesel mill is offered in the Gladiator that I was due to drive, but at a later date. Blame it on old age or just on my eagerness to get behind the wheel of one of my favorite rides.

Well one thing lead to another and another and before I knew it, it was several days later that I popped the hood to gaze upon the turbocharged inline 2.0L four cylinder. THAT’S what the sound was… somehow, the engineers at Jeep have managed to get the sound of the old familiar World War II era four cylinder Jeep into this modern, 80th anniversary edition Wrangler…or maybe it’s just me. One thing is certain, it doesn’t sound like the Wrangler I’ve been accustomed to.

Maybe it’s just coincidence, maybe it’s good corporate planning, with Jeep’s closest off-road capable rival, the Ford Bronco making its debut this year, Jeep has stepped up the ante, not only have they launched the Wrangler Xtreme Recon equipped with the first ever 35-inch rubber straight out of the factory, but are also offering a slew of powerplants to make any competitor nervous: beginning with this week’s tester, there’s the 2.0 L turbocharged four cylinder mated to the 8-speed TorqueFlite automatic, the trusty old 285 horsepower Pentastar 3.6L V6s remain and come with either a manual or automatic trans, there’s also a mild hybrid version mated to the 3.6L tagged the eTorque, a 3.0L EcoDiesel V6 with 442 lb-ft of torque and 260 horses and for the first time in four decades, the Wrangler gets a V8. Available exclusively (dare I say for the time being) in the Rubicon 392 trim, the 6.4L throws out 470 horses and the like amount of torque through the eight-speed TorqueFlite automatic transmission and Selec-Trac full-time active transfer case. It blasts the Rubicon 392 to 100 km/h in less than five seconds making it the quickest Wrangler in history!

Well it appears the Jeep has come full circle with their mills, reverting back to four cylinder power to move their off roaders about. But don’t think for a minute that these are the old WWII flatheads. No sir, and not one but two count them, two four cylinders are offered. Aside from my Snazzyberry Pearl colored 2.0L turbocharged tester which pumps out 270 horses and 295 lb-ft of torque, capable of towing 2,000 lbs (907 kilos), that’s 35 more lb-ft of torque than its V6 counterpart, there’s also an electrified four cylinder that adds an electric motor. The plug in hybrid 4xe delivers 375 horses! Stay tuned for more on this one.

Above and below: There’s nothing missing in the four that you wouldn’t find in the six.

If you’re a regular reader of my posts you’ll know that I do NOT check performance numbers or price tags before I get a feel for what the vehicle feels like. Does it feel like 300 horses, does it feel like 400 lb-ft of torque? I tend to reserve looking at the stats until after my first, second and third impression. That said, despite having 270 horses, it still seemed a bit anemic from my previous Wrangler encounters (with the V6). There’s a noticeable difference at half throttle when leaving a red light or stop sign, but that quickly disappears as you build up speed. Punch the go pedal however to wake up the turbo boost and grab on to the steering wheel. The torque kicks in and bites the tarmac like a banshee. Suddenly Jeeps decision to go with this combo makes perfect sense.

On the highway the four delivers smooth, linear power and actually feels better mated to the 8-speed automatic than the six. Passing semis or climbing grades isn’t a problem and while I didn’t get the chance to go off-roading I suspect that the added torque would be able to let this Wrangler do some serious climbing prowess without hesitation.

Of course one of the other main attributes is that the Wrangler can shed its top when the weather turns warm. With two tops available it still remains the only convertible SUV in the market.

Above: A hidden cubby hole under the trunk floor comes in handy

One of the Wrangler’s Achilles’ heals has always been it’s thirst for fuel. My best has usually been around 12L/100 kms even when feathering my foot. Well the 2.0L netted me a 9.75L/100 average, on top of which a $200 saving over the automatic trannied V6 makes getting into a Wrangler a lot easier. The Sport S starts at $45,465, my fully loaded tester came in at a substantial premium, which leads me to want to see this mill in the 2-door Wrangler variant with a manual transmission. Now that would truly be full circle. If you’ve always wanted a Wrangler but weren’t crazy about their fuel consumption Jeep has just given you several reasons why you should reconsider.

Price as tested: $62,030 *

*Includes excise tax and destination fees

Mustang 2.3L Convertible: Is this the best Mustang ever?

It’s a balmy July afternoon, the kind we wait all year long for and fantasize about from December through to March. I’m in the left lane of the 401 heading west, passing semi after semi. The sun is beaming down on me and I get to thinking how nice this thing would be for a cross-country run. Indeed it doesn’t get much better than this. There are so many semis it reminds me of the rocking chair scene in The Bandit, only I’m not driving a T-top black Firebird with a roaring V8 and Sheriff Buford T Justice chasing me, but a drop top Antimatter Blue (yes that’s the hue) Mustang with a turbocharged 2.3L four cylinder.

For decades Ford has been grappling with the notion of having both a high performance Mustang and an economy Mustang, and yes when it first debuted there were trims that encompassed both. But over the years that concept got lost with muscle cars taking the limelight. It wasn’t until the gas crisis of ’73 that the economy car resurrected itself in the Mustang II, but in the process lost the muscle slice of the pie.

Well guess what, the 2.3L fits both bills easily. Yes diehard muscle heads may pooh pooh the thought of another four cylinder in a Mustang but they have no idea what they’re missing out on.

Pillaged from the darling all-wheel-drive Ford, the Focus RS, the 2.3L mill has been turned longitudinally to fit into the pony car. Although Ford has given the Mustang a larger twin scroll turbo, there are 18 fewer horses pulling the pony car over the RS. Torque however has been retained.

With 310 horses and 350 lb-ft of torque on tap mated to an optional 10-speed automatic my tester galloped along without so much as missing a breadth. Thankfully Ford has retained the 6-speed manual. My unofficial timing showed zero to a hundred kilometers shot in at 4.6 seconds! I have to say that as sweet as the four cylinder is, the exhaust note just tries to hard and gets annoying after a while. It’s like look at me, look at me. Oh shut up! Thankfully there is a shut off switch.

My ‘stang came with the High Performance Package, a $6,500 option inherited from the Mustang GT, which meant stickier 19” Pirelli rubber over the base car’s 17” units, larger brake rotors with four piston calipers, stiffer springs, a beefier rear sway bar, strut tower brace, a larger rad, a 3.55:1 limited slip diff. In other words, all the right stuff to make this a serious tourer.

Above and below: Top up or top down the Mustang looks great. Front spoiler is part of the High Performance Package.

Another plus for the four-cylinder argument is better balanced shedding 147kilos (auto trans) off its front axle. The result is a crisper handling ride with a nominal amount of body roll, less nosedive under hard braking. Switching driving modes from Normal to Sport mode for attacking the lakeside twisties shows the car’s true potential with the engine’s responsiveness hitting the sweet spot over 2,500 rpm and the fun factor sans V8.

This would make an interesting track car.

Inside you get all the usual fan fare of goodies including cooling and heated power leather seats. The hi-po package adds an oil pressure and turbo boost gauge and engine spun aluminum instrument panel. Fit and finish is spot on with comfortable buckets making the drive that much more enjoyable.

Above: Despite what it looks like my 6’ frame spent several hours back there in a friend’s convert for a three-hour trip to the Syracuse Nationals a few years back without a single complaint.

Like the Jeep the Mustang doesn’t come cheap. While the base price is a very reasonable $43,370, my tester’s option list added another $11,800 to the price tag. Stepping up to the $6,500 high performance package is a no brainer, especially if you’re a serious driver, but while the 10-speed is perfectly matched to the engine and responds wonderfully to throttle inputs I’d go with the 6-speed manual and trim $1,750 off the tag. Other options included $1,000 AM/FM/CD/HD radio, $2,300 for adaptive cruise, voice activated touch screen navigation and the Ford Safe & Smart package.

In a move I just don’t understand is the spare tire/wheel has been relegated to option status! In its place is a compressor - just the ticket for a bent rim, blow out or flat in the middle of nowhere on a dark rainy night. Come on Ford!

Yes the Mustang buyer has a number of trims and powerplants to opt for all the way to the 100 grand Shelby GT500 but really, wouldn’t you rather have a car that hits all the right fun buttons without breaking the bank while still passing a gas station or two ( I averaged 10.7L/100 km). Oh and let’s not forget the savings on the insurance premium on the four cylinder So shrug the V8 monkey off your back and hit the road in a four.

Price as tested: $56,970*

*Includes destination charges

#jeep #jeepwrangler #suv #four cylinder #2.0l #turbocharged #pentastar #mustang #convertible #pony car #muscle car #2.3l #high performance #mustang gt #car insurance

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Hi!! I liked your Hawks thing and I was wondering if you would say more about his visor?

Sure! I’m not sure if you mean say more about the times when his visor is removed, say more about patterns in how he wears his visor, or talk about his visor as a symbol of something. So, since I’m most interested in fanfic, I’m going to talk more about the first two things and only briefly about thematic stuff.

Like I said in my other post, the thing I pay the most attention to is when it’s removed from his eyes. (The various times I say “remove” or “take off,” what I mean is removed or taken off from his eyes, not necessarily his head.)

This happens when…

Endeavor confronts him post-ceremony about his shenanigans, and Hawks strategically pulls down his visor to persuade Endeavor he sincerely admires him, wants to thank him, and wants to help him.

When the nomu shatters it, and Hawks thinks about how he admires Endeavor, and he thinks the line about how his back isn’t reassuring.

When Hawks watches Endeavor leave Fukuoka, he pushes up the visor and remembers his promise to get his hands dirty if it’ll save people, and then he repeats his line about wanting a world where heroes have time to spare.

And, ofc, when Dabi stomps on him while shouting that sentiment tripped Hawks up after all.

Besides the automatic potential meaningfulness of removing the visor, Horikoshi also gives these moments meaningfulness through his art style: Hawks earnestly looking up at Endeavor while he thanks Endeavor for being reassuring, and Hawks grimly thinking that he’ll make a better world happen at his trademark speed, are both large, detailed panels without backgrounds, putting all the focus on his newly-bared face and eyes. The panel where the nomu shatters his visor is smaller, but it’s given meaningfulness through the slow-motion effect of the nomu’s tentacle approaching Hawks’s face.

So: there’s something important about these moments, and given how dishonest Hawks is, I’m inclined to think that they’re important because they’re honest.

The only transition moment I’m iffy about is this one:

So far, this is the only time Hawks removes his visor by lowering it around his neck instead of raising it to his forehead, and the effect is that he covers his mouth. This post is actually what inspired me to think about Hawks’s visor in the first place, and it points out that Hawks is often drawn with his mouth covered—and even something like his gesture where he zips up his mouth resonates with his position as a spy and secret-keeper for the Commission.

So, I think Hawks may not be all that honest about his feelings for All Might—it could be more complicated than he’s letting on here.

I’m ambivalent about whether the visor has meaning when it’s already in place…I don’t really see a pattern of him being more honest when the visor is off versus on. But I’ve puzzled over it enough that my brain feels like mush when I think about it, so here’s an info dump.

I think I got this all accurate, but hey, I might’ve made a few mistakes.

Times when he wears the visor:

185 - Hero ceremony

185 - Talking with Endeavor post-ceremony

186 - Lunch with Endeavor

187-189 - Nomu fight (until it shatters) (involves flying)

191 - Receiving the spy mission from the HPSC

192 - In off-duty clothing, saying goodbye to Endeavor

199 - Training Tokoyami (involves flying)

231 - Hauling Jeanist around (involves flying)

240 - Applauding the PLF rally (while remembering delivering Jeanist to Dabi)

243-5 Delivering the MLA book to Endeavor (involves flying)

246 - Interacting with the PLF (including Hawks’s internal monologue about being glad that Class 1-A is faster than him)

258 - Every interaction with Twice (“I wanna fly free”)

263-264 - Attacking Twice

Times he doesn’t, by choice:

199 - Post-patrol, when he invites/kidnaps Tokoyami to take him on a night flight (but he wears it while they talk and fly)

231 - When Dabi phone-calls him to assign him the assassination mission (involves leisurely flying)

231 - In off-duty clothing, when he pays Jeanist a visit

240 - He removes it off-screen while greeting people at the PLF rally, sometime between the end of Shigaraki’s speech and before Dabi comes over.

255 - Teaching Twice (when he receives the hint about the hospital and goes “the pieces are in place!”)

Times he doesn’t, by obligation:

190-192 - because it’s broken. He helps Endeavor defeat the nomu, prepares to fight Dabi to save Endeavor, later confronts Dabi about their mutual sabotage, and then visits Endeavor in the hospital.

191 - childhood, didn’t own it yet.

Unclear:

While delivering Jeanist’s body to Dabi, Hawks is strangely faceless, we never get a proper look at him. I think there’s a blurry visor on there, but idk.

So?

My brain is mush again and I don’t have much insight into how Hawks decides whether or not to wear his visor at a particular moment. He wears it where it’s sort of pointless (i.e., indoors) and he wears it when it’s kinda rude (one-on-one meal with Endeavor). Bidding farewell to Endeavor is the closest Hawks comes to being off-duty, but he’s wearing it then, so I don’t think the visor is purely part of his hero costume. He has it off during ch255 while he tutors Twice, but he has it on in ch258 while he tutors Twice—did something change?

I think there could be a weak correlation between the visor and Hawks feeling guilty or nervous. Hawks wears it as much as he can around Endeavor, and once he grows attached to Twice, maybe he starts to wear it around Twice, too. He wears it during the PLF rally while he’s shaken over how formidable the PLF is, but once he acclimates and gets down to work chatting people up for info, he takes it off (off-screen).

It’s also possible that not wearing the visor is a sign that he’s excited. He’s not wearing the visor when he nabs Tokoyami and takes off, he’s excited that Dabi has folded and contacted him again, he gives Jeanist a very special smile, and he could’ve been excited when he was first befriending Twice.

Or there could be a connection with how hard he’s trying to seem sincere. In ch185, he takes off the visor to try to persuade Endeavor that he is sincere (and in this case, is sincere), and maybe after that he’s not so concerned with appearing earnest, so he puts it back on. Wanting to appear truthful could explain why he’s not wearing it while he’s chatting with people at the PLF rally or when he’s initially charming Twice, but it wouldn’t explain why he wears it around the PLF so much in general (other than battle-readiness), or why he wouldn’t wear it while he’s on the phone with Dabi.

…I know it’s not much, sorry. Maybe someone who reads this can come up with a better idea?

I think the most suspicious—and therefore, most potentially meaningful—incidences of him not wearing the visor are when he’s on the phone with Dabi (Hawks is flying, but he has it off) and when he visits Jeanist, which is the only time Hawks voluntarily doesn’t have a visor with him at all. (Did he take public transit to and from Jeanist’s apartment? Or did someone from the HPSC drop him off/pick him up?)

Anyways, my favorite of my three ideas is that he doesn’t wear the visor while he’s excited, so that’s what I’d go for if I were writing him in fanfic. It meshes well with the honesty-gesture of removing the visor.

Misc interesting notes:

When Hawks is flying, he is obliged to wear his visor as protection against high winds. Flying=freedom is generally common, and it’s especially poignant in Hawks’s case since his ability to fly diminishes the more feathers he sends out to save people. So if the visor itself symbolizes something, then I think that “something” is important to his freedom as well as his honesty. He can fly without his visor…but he won’t see where he’s going. (Unless he has a third eyelid.)

Both of his iconic lines about flying, “Those who can fly, should!” and “I wanna fly free,” are spoken while wearing his visor.

Both Twice and Shigaraki wear things on their faces (or in Shigaraki’s case, previously wore). There could be a foiling between the visor and the mask or hand.

It’s also worth considering, who is Hawks’s honesty for when his visor is removed? For the audience? For himself? For whoever he’s in the scene with?

I don’t think Horikoshi has ever drawn Hawks putting his visor on; he’s only shown Hawks taking it off. In the first scene with Endeavor, Hawks replaces his visor off-screen, potentially while Endeavor’s back is turned. He also replaces it off-screen before flying with Tokoyami.

Horikoshi avoids the cliché of “light flashes off the visor to obscure Hawks’s eyes while he’s being deceptive.” because then we would never see hawks’s eyes Instead, when Hawks’s visor obscures his eyes, it’s usually either during comedy or to make him seem menacing. It is interesting that the same technique is used for both amusement and fear.

The only time I’ve noticed Horikoshi use the cliché is in ch245, when Hawks remarks he recommends everyone to read this book because it’s going to be very important going forward.

Edit: Whoops, I forgot to mention! I read an interesting post yesterday that talks about how vision and telling the truth are such integral parts of Hawks’s character that they’re included in his name. Definitely worth considering in relation to his visor.

#bnha #bnha meta #hawks #takami keigo #spoiler!hawks #asks #no.13 #thematic content isn't my strong suit #sorry if that's what you were looking for anon #bnha manga spoilers

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