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TOKYO VICE (2022-2024) I 1.06 "What happened? Did they hurt you? It's okay. You don't have to explain."

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You're an angel, I'm a dog

(sources in alt text)

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seeking, yearning, reaching hands

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STATS,

NAME. takuma ino note. most people refer to him by his first name rather than his family name, regardless of familiarity. he is also frequently called ino-kun rather than ino-san. AGE. twenty-one BIRTHPLACE. yokohama, japan BIRTH DATE. may 17 ETHNICITY. mixed ( japanese-asian mother, american-caucasian father ) FAMILY. takuma mayumi ( mother ), corey walker ( father ), takuma eito ( older brother ), takuma nao ( eldest brother ) PROFESSION. jujutsu sorcerer AFFILIATION. tokyo metropolitan curse technical college CLASSIFICATION. second grade TECHNIQUE. mediumship ( spirit summoning )

HAIR COLOUR. brown, worn in a mid-length shag EYE COLOUR. brown HEIGHT. 5’7, or 170cm SKIN. freckles along the bridge of his nose BUILD. lean-athletic, favouring agility over strength PIERCINGS. nose, earlobe ( three times on the left side, twice on the right ) DRESSING STYLE. streetwear. dark colours. oversized and baggy clothes (shorts and short-sleeves, privately; long sleeves and pants, professionally). beanies. sneakers. layers. NOTABLE SCARS. large scar across the left side of his forehead. thin scar beneath his right eye, along the orbital bone.  OTHER. ino permanently lost the use of his right eye following his altercation with fushiguro tōji. ( note: the manga implies that ieiri shoko was able to regenerate his eye in some way. i'm choosing to retcon this. )

MORAL ALIGNMENT. lawful good with chaotic tendencies PERSONALITY TYPE. esfj — the consul ( extroverted, observant, feeling, judging ) DEFINING TRAITS. adaptable, naive, optimistic, insecure, caring, altruistic.

BIOGRAPHY,

tba. cool mom raises cool sons. immigrant father fails to assimilate and dips out back to america</3 the whole family would’ve gone together, but SOMEONE had to manifest the legacy cursed technique. mayumi and the boys stay in japan; corey becomes a long-distance father. um. there’s more to it than that. i’ll write it out eventually xoxo

TRIVIA,

ino was the only sorcerer in his graduating class. because of this, his ties to the college proper are perhaps a little looser than those of his peers

he is a legacy sorcerer on his mother’s side, but the takuma cursed technique skipped several generations before manifesting in ino. it did not manifest in his elder siblings

other than nanami, he prefers to spend his time with non-sorcerers. all of his friends are non-sorcerers who ( up until the aftermath of the shibuya incident ) cannot perceive curses or cursed energy. this is an intentional effort on his part. because the job is so emotionally and mentally taxing — and because the risk of losing comrades is so high — he surrounds himself with people and places unrelated to jujutsu culture

he’s an accomplished athlete in tokyo’s skateboarding subculture

tbh he’s garnered a bit of a reputation for being a partier. this guy loves a drinking game. don’t challenge him to a round of pong — you will lose

ino has a fascination with american (rap) culture due to the lingering influence of his absent father and a subconscious desire to feel closer to him

he’s constantly rocking airpods, but they’re hardly ever visible beneath his hat and hair. if you say something to him and he acts like he hasn’t heard it — it’s not an act. he really can’t hear shit past the earbuds

after losing the vision in his right eye, he struggles with balance and depth-perception; however, his channelling abilities have improved. due to his partial blindness, he spends several months post-shibuya remastering his martial art and skateboarding skills

VERSES,

CANON. compliant with current manga developments. in theory i have more to say about it than this. in practice i currently don’t tbh please hold. 

URBAN FANTASY. ino is a medium with the power to summon spirits and channel their respective abilities. while he originally treats these as a party-trick of sorts (à la talk to me), he eventually comes to harness them as a force for good. he daylights as a skateshop employee and moonlights as a vigilante with an unconventional set of abilities, living life with one foot in reality and the other in the spirit realm. ino could probably do more good than he does — have a greater impact against the evils of the world than he does — but he tends toward minimizing his own potential and settling for less.

DEVELOPMENT,

faceclaim

tba

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¹⁾ PINTEREST. ²⁾ PLAYLIST. ³⁾ DEVELOPMENT TAG.

DOSSIER.

NAME. mahito (meaning: true human) SPECIES. cursed spirit MANIFESTATION OF human fear and hatred for other humans. AGE. simultaneously ageless and ~1 year old; curses are immortal, but mahito was manifested into being only recently. assumes a physical form that appears to be in its 20s. GENDER. agender ( he / they / she / it ); tends toward masculine non-binary expression. HEIGHT. 5’11 HAIR COLOUR. blue-gray EYE COLOUR. heterochromia ( gray left eye, blue right eye ) SCARS. patchwork scars across the face and body, giving him the appearance of one who has been stitched together.

PERSONALITY.

ALIGNMENT. chaotic evil. NOTE. mahito is amoral, not immoral. they do not believe in the concept of morality as it pertains to good or bad; consequently, he does not consider himself evil. he simply lives and acts in accordance with his true nature — which cannot be immoral, insofar as morality has nothing to do with truth (and vice versa). DEFINING TRAITS. playful, sadistic, curious, intelligent, manipulative, philosophical, callous, immature.

ABILITIES OVERVIEW.

TRANSFIGURATION. can alter his form at will, limited only by the scope of his own imagination. this includes the basics of appearance, such as height and gender, and more drastic transformations into both organic or inorganic forms. can transfigure their entire body or just selected parts of it. he is also capable of creating multiple, perfect clones of himself. 

SOUL MANIPULATION. including both his own (allowing him to heal and alter his physical form) and others. the ability to transfigure humans into monstrous abominations, as well as combine multiple human souls together into a single, subservient creature. the ability to touch one’s soul and kill them in an instant.

ENHANCED SPEED, STRENGTH, AND DURABILITY. mahito’s physical feats far surpass human capabilities. it is not possible to beat him in raw physical combat without the aid of (jujutsu) magic or supernatural powers.

VERSES.

CANON (JJK). adheres to canon events. mahito strives for the eradication of humanity and the domination of cursed spirits. believing that the reincarnation of sukuna is the best way to achieve this goal, they ally themselves with a group of special grade cursed spirits intent on restoring the king of curses to power.

GENERAL. this verse deals away with the limitations of jjk lore. cursed spirits are manifestations of human fear, hatred, sadness, and other negative emotions. they are visible to the naked human eye and prey upon humanity in varying ways (killing, consumption, etc). mahito is a cursed spirit with a distinctly humanoid appearance and mannerisms, making them a far more insidious presence than some of their overtly monstrous counterparts. his ability to live among and navigate the mortal world allows him to interact with humans — generally in sadistic and malevolent ways. they manipulate, encourage, and prey on negative emotion as a way to sow further fear and discontent. they kill indiscriminately, seeing humans as an imperfect species that will, inevitably, die out to make way for the curses that they themselves brought into existence. mahito uses humans as pawns and as tools, experimenting on them in order to gain more knowledge on the concept of the soul.

THE WITCHER. a particularly malevolent spirit, far exceeding the abilities of a common wraith. unlike other cursed apparitions of his ilk, mahito was not created from the negative emotions of his own, mortal form prior to death — rather, he came into being from the collective fears and hatred that humanity experiences toward itself. they were never human; rather, they are a manifestation born of mortal malevolence. unbound by geographical restraints, mahito wanders the continent and its islands at will, seeking to learn from — and ultimately discard — humanity. they are drawn to places ripe with negative emotions, where they prey on mankind’s hatred for its fellow man. although mahito has been known to kill and experiment on non-humans (such as elves, gnomes, and dryads), he tends his focus toward victimizing the same imperfect, hateful race that brought him into being.

as always, verses listed here aren't exhaustive. i love to come up with verses on a case-by-case basis / plot new ones out with writing partners. i've consumed so much media fr i'll figure out verses for just about anything.

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( YOUR LIFE BURNS DOWN AROUND YOU AND EVERYONE YOU KNOW IS DEAD. ) you relive the memory reflexively. it’s something that just happens to you, like violence. or blinking. you remember too much too quickly and then you get sick and pull out your hair and you remember when you were a child and you yelled at your father until you started sobbing and you remember hiding under your bed crying mother mother mother and you remember so much and you will never cry mother again and ( STOP THAT. ) you are an empty glass. you are a full glass. you have to walk very slow or you’ll spill over. you are angry you are so angry you can’t remember ever being so angry you are so angry so angry you are angry angry so angry

following ragnarök, odin’s remaining forces (the ones we meet during the remnants of ragnarök) initially attempt to rally behind forseti. he is the last remaining aesir prince; older than thrúd; and an established ruler in his own right (as the presiding judge of glitnir). but despite everything, despite the total and irreparable destruction of both his people and his homeland, he does not want war with kratos. he does not want war with anyone. they attempt to name him king and he rejects the position, leaving the surviving asgardian soldiers to fight for the valkyrie queen, gná.

forseti, by this point, has lapsed into complete dissociation. he has lost his home and the vast majority of his family in a particularly violent fashion. he has watched asgard be literally torn apart. he has seen his cousins and uncles and friends and father murdered (as he understands it. noting, of course, that his perception of the events of gow/:r have been heavily manipulated by the all-father). this guy has lost everything he has ever known: trust that he is no longer living on the same plane of reality as everybody else. he has no fight left in him. he is so deeply in shock that he wouldn’t raise a weapon against anyone, even if it was to defend himself.

that is until his mother, heartbroken and ravaged by grief, takes her own life in the wake of ragnarök. peace dies with nanna; this is forseti’s turning point. this is where he draws a line in the sand and calls for blood.

barring týr, forseti is the most powerful aesir god left alive –– one who has seldom ever used that power for violence and who now vows to do nothing but. he seeks out gná and claims what is his by order of birthright: the title of king, and the all-father’s successor. he joins the asgardians in their fight against kratos and forseti’s own grandmother, freya. he swears to see them dead, as retribution for the harms they have committed against asgard and the entire aesir people. he sets aside all tenets of his domain (justice, reconciliation); strips himself of his own nature and morality; and becomes his father, and his father before him. he becomes his own antithesis: a creature sworn to hatred and to vengeance.

even a worm will fuckinnnn turn, baby. and this worm literally has the power of god and anime on his side

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The divine right of kings but it's a curse

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* . THEY CALLED HIM FOX: FIREFOX & HIS HAIR,

without a doubt, firefox’s identifying feature is his hair. it’s probably the most flattering thing about him, and it’s also [screaming into my hands] such an important part of his character:

fox’s hair is a symbol of his bodily autonomy. for the duration of his time serving under capricorn, he wears his hair cropped short. he has no choice. capricorn’s very first act as fox’s master was to have his hair shorn off ––– both as an exertion of power and as a removal of identity. a humiliation ritual that abased fox and marked the beginning of his transformation into capricorn’s monster 

when capricorn disappears and firefox assumes leadership over the fire-raisers, he stops cutting his hair. by the time he kills cosimo, it has grown out to his shoulders. by the time he enters the adderhead’s service, it nearly reaches his waist 

fox has very little control over his life; his pyromania is an expression of his feelings of powerlessness, and so is his refusal to cut his hair. even when he has no control over what happens to him ––– even when he has no real bodily autonomy in service to others ––– he still has power over his appearance 

' do you know what they call children like you? ' margerye asks him one night, her fingers weaving the lengths of his hair into a thick-bodied braid. felix shakes his head, inadvertently pulling the braid out of his mother’s hands. it unravels at the end like cattle rope. ' –––kissed by fire, ' margerye continues, unperturbed. three children, the gods had blessed her with, and all of them wilful and wild-haired. felix considers this at length, his expression terribly serious, and then throws the plait back over his shoulder. ' that’s stupid, ' he says, and does not elaborate. his mother smiles graciously. she wrangles the fleeing end of the braid with a strip of cloth, then nudges her son out of her lap. her eyes twinkle with amusement. ' you little beast! off to bed with you. ' felix flashes a gap-toothed smile and darts off toward where his siblings already sleep, the reds of their hair spread across the blanket like breathing embers.

he refuses to cut his hair, but that isn’t to say that he takes care of it. particularly near the end of his life, fox’s struggle with mental illness and addiction take a toll on his outwardly appearance. i am so serious when i say this guy constantly looks like he’s just survived a five-day bender. brushing out his hair is literally the very least of his concerns 

his hair is stunning, in and of itself, but he cannot maintain it. so he keeps it bound, generally in a braid that he wears for multiple days at a time. if he brushes it, then he does so with his fingers instead of a brush ––– and if a knot becomes too much of a hassle to work through with his fingers, he simply tears it out

' do you know what they call children like you? ' capricorn asks him once, on the very first night. felix looks at him mistrustfully, opens his mouth to say something, and then shuts it again. he shakes his head.  ' why, nothing at all! ' capricorn smiles, and it is neither kind nor gracious. he ruffles the jagged sections of felix’s freshly sheared hair, his hand iron-heavy. ' –––but i think i’ll call you fox. '

suggesting he cut it is a really good way to get a fist to the mouth. talking about his hair at all is inadvisable tbh. his whole life he’s been reduced to an amalgamation of physical attributes. his nickname is literally fox because of how he looks, and as much as he has Internalized this and made it his own, that was capricorn's name for him. only capricorn has any right to his identity (no we do not have time to unpack their relationship right now)

if he allows someone to touch his hair in any meaningful capacity, that’s a good indicator of how comfortable he feels around them<3

his hair is nearly the only part of him that hasn’t been physically marred in some way. that’s his pretty boy privilege right there

some ten years later, firefox tears his fingers through a particularly malicious knot. it refuses to yield, but so does he ––– and by the end of it, he’s ripped the damn thing out at the roots. firefox sits in silence, holding a fistful of his own hair. he no longer has a mother, and capricorn is dead. he is the child of no one. he is a man of no past. he throws the knot into the fire and wrinkles his nose when the smell of it reminds him of home. 

[bonecarve]

Émotion — 1966, dir. Nobuhiko Obayashi

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Images by Carla Cabras

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skane was decidedly northern, but it did not belong to the north. the skanish were considered a barbarous people, more closely related to wildings than the starks who conquered them. they were cannibals or cannibalized, depending on who was telling the tale, and rode unicorns to battle against their skagosi rivals. the island itself was a plane of windswept moors; to combat the unforgiving weather, the skanish grew thick pelts of fur from head to toe. they were bestial in look and in nature, their animalism matched only by the skagosi to their south. skanish politics were the subject of much debate. all that any outsider knew for certain was that they rallied behind a single ruler, man or woman, who the westerosi derisively called the seal king.

note: canonically, the island of skane has been uninhabited since the feast of skane. i’m fudging this for the sake of verse-building xx grr martin eat your heart out

máel is heir to the island of skane, located to the north of the bay of seals ( and beside the much larger island of skagos ). his mother is the daughter of a wildling clan chief, and his father a man with skagosi lineage; together, his parents rule the small but notoriously brutal isle of skane. depending on the timeline, the island is either beholden to house stark or independent of westeros as a whole following years of rebellion. ( ie. during the dance of dragons, skane is tenuously loyal to the north. during the events of asoiaf, skane is independent and not considered a part of westeros proper. ) when the island is under stark control, its ruler is considered a mere lord; however, when skane is independent, they style their rulers as kings and queens in their own right.

skane and skagos have a fraught history. skagos has pillaged and razed its neighbour on more than one occasion, colonizing its population and killing dissenters in the process. máel’s right to rule is a subject of popular debate; while some denizens accept him as a son of skane, others point to his skagosi lineage as cause for usurpation. máel considers himself skanish, and takes a staunchly anti-skagos approach to his politics. in contrast ––– despite skane’s on-and-off-again skirmishes with the wilding clans beyond the wall ––– máel is sympathetic to and generally aligned with the free folk.

A SONG OF ICE AND FIRE / GAME OF THRONES,

unless plotted otherwise, the asoiaf / got verse focuses solely on máel’s time in exile + the pursuit of his birthright. it can take place during the events of the main plot or during robert’s rebellion. 

after his parents are murdered by macbethad and skane falls to skagosi occupation, máel and his younger brother, domnaill, flee across the bay of seals. upon arriving on the continent, máel sells his remaining possessions to purchase domnaill safe passage to bear island ––– far from the murderous intrigue of macbethad and his witch queen. he himself remains behind, working various odd jobs and masquerading as a north-born bastard. he simplifies his name to malcolm in a bid to hide his skanish roots, and is commonly referred to only as mal. where he spends his exile is flexible ( ie. it can be westeros or essos, north or south, winterfell or king’s landing or sunspear etc etc. )

around his twenty-first name day, five years after his usurpation, máel hears rumours of a second feast of skane. on the belief that his people are suffering brutally under skagosi occupation, he resolves to reclaim his birthright and liberate skane. with no allies or resources to speak of, he sets out to petition aid. he has little to offer in exchange besides his own undying loyalty and the combined forces of skane and skagos after he retakes the bay of seals. in a world where near every man and woman in power is occupied with their quest for the iron throne, however, the crownless king may well struggle to secure the aid he seeks. 

FIRE & BLOOD / HOUSE OF THE DRAGON,

VARIANT I. takes place prior to the dance of dragons, after skane has been usurped. this puts him at approximately 20~ years old. following his father’s murder, máel flees to the mainland in order to petition for aid. in exchange for political support and resources, he promises skane’s loyalty to both house stark and the ruling targaryens. this would be the first time in many decades that the northern islands renewed their oaths of fealty to the mainlanders ––– and, as such, a relinquishment of independence in exchange for power. instead of reclaiming only skane, malcolm seeks to conquer skagos and end its reign of terror once and for all.

VARIANT II. takes place during the dance of dragons, after máel has reclaimed skane and conquered skagos. this puts him at approximately 26~ years old at the beginning of the dance. when cregan stark calls on his bannermen to fight on behalf of queen rhaenyra targaryen, máel pledges the support of both skane and skagos. the northmen, who are considered wild and barbarous by inhabitants of the continent, face derision from their allies. they are, however, a brutally effective fighting force. although they hold no love for the mainland or its inhabitants, máel does. he is exceedingly loyal to the starks and targaryens who won him back his birthright, and firmly believes in the legitimacy of queen rhaenyra’s rule.

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máel spends five years of his life being called a throat-cutting, kinslaying usurper and then one day out of nowhere he's expected to become the deified saint and saviour of scotland.

from one extreme to another, he's little more than an abstract concept to others. a figure of legend, good or bad, who embodies the role of fictional archetype. he isn't a real person to anyone left alive –– least of all himself.

máel goes from abhorred murderer to beloved martyr, all based on public perception rather than reality. and tbh he didn't survive that rebrand half as well as everyone wanted him to. the mental whiplash of being reviled for fictional crimes, only to be proclaimed a paragon of righteousness for the very same real ones ( ie. usurping the reigning king, destabilizing an entire nation, and sending thousands to their deaths in civil war ). well. critical psychic damage.

máel knows that he is good. that he is kingly. that he is virtuous. but he can never be a saint, and he will always be the usurping kinslayer.

[bonecarve]

I'm filled with divine love and undying rage

[bonecarve]

META: FORSETI'S RELATIONSHIP WITH BALDUR

my father’s father told his story for him. the same bloodline / the same choice to die. quietly he passed it onto me. A VIOLENT MAN, A GENIUS, A PROPHET OF SUPERSTITION [ … ] all handed down so lovingly. father, please do not give me the gift of living with it. 

forseti was raised predominantly by his mother. baldur was there ––– he was physically present in asgard, just the same as the other aesir ––– but he abdicated his position as a father and a husband soon after forseti’s birth. he felt nothing for his son; worse, he perhaps resented him for not being able to elicit the feelings baldur desperately sought. as much as nanna loved forseti, he still grew up with the distinct sense that his first act had been one of disappointment.

when he grew older, forseti lived across the hall from his father, but they rarely spoke. when they did, it was usually to argue, for baldur was cruel where forseti was not, and they never agreed on how to handle aesir affairs. in general, though, they simply ignored each other. however baldur felt about his son, forseti did not hate his father. he simply practiced indifference ––– which was, in and of itself, an exceedingly difficult task for someone whose entire sense of self is predicated on love and reconciliation. forseti cannot be indifferent to anything. it isn’t in his nature. but he refused to hate baldur, and so feigned indifference was the only thing left to him.

there’s something i wrote on forseti’s original blog that i still hold to be true: “the son feels all that his father cannot, and it seems to have driven him quite mad”. baldur feels nothing at all ––– no pain, no emotion ––– and forseti is hyper-empath who feels everything all at once. he has no emotional regulation. the two of them are opposites, in this way ––– but still not so different in the effect their respective perspectives have on them. no-emotion vs all-emotion, the outcome is the same: functional madness.

baldur was certifiably off his rocks, but forseti isn’t much better. man is literally tweaking out in the great lodge kitchen, baselessly accusing people of attempted murder because he’s been inundated by all of the bad in the world.

and forseti is still young, by immortal standards. he’s at the very beginning of his life. if he doesn’t learn to regulate his own emotions, set boundaries, and unpack the trauma he’s incurred over a nigh century of manipulation, he runs the very real risk of becoming just like his father: boundlessly pessimistic and relentlessly cynical, with nothing but raging hatred for a world that cannot be anything other than cruel.

[bonecarve]

@saintsdawn how it's going

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INNER CHILD,

[ AD ORIENTEM. ] ' you've got your crown, kingslayer, ' said jesus from his cross. ' i dearly hope it was worth the lives lost in its pursuit. '

and malcolm, sinking to his knees before god, crossed his heart and really did hope he would die.

after three years of bloody civil war, malcolm reclaims the birthright he never entirely wanted. thousands have died on his behalf, and the country lies in ruins around him. his advisors assure him that he has done the right thing by unseating his cousin, the usurper. right for who? he asks, and means his people. right for us all, reply the men in power, and mean themselves.

[bonecarve]

firefox sketchdump<3 his crooked, sharp incisors and hopelessly broken nose are so important to me actually. he's just a creature. his hair's always braided because he doesn't brush it except for with his fingers and otherwise it'd be one big knot</3