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#I literally did part of my master's degree about this what the hell
a-dinosaur-a-day · 8 months
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Pretending like biological sex isn't real is ridiculously stupid. You say that you believe in science but you think that humans are the one primate to not have two sexes?
Also stop using intersex people as pawns, it's actually offensive
a) I'm intersex. what is with tumblr anons and assuming I'm not in a particular group I talk about with experience? Ffs. First ableism now this.
b) Biological sex *isn't* real. It's a model. Much as species aren't real. Yes, there are "two sexes", but sexual characteristics don't form two pillars on either end they form a reverse bell curve, with much variation in the middle.
c) I don't believe in science. I know science. I am a scientist. which means I know it's not as simple as "two sexes" for any organism whatsoever.
nice try.
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specialagentartemis · 10 months
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love your addition to that post about misinformation earlier this month, genuinely, but your summary of the situation re: the medicinal ingestion of human corpse matter in europe is kind of misleading. among other things, i don't know anyone who would call the 17th century "medieval." paracelsus didn't even die until the 1540s. periodization is complicated and mostly bullshit when people look for hard lines between "eras" of human history, but using terms that conjure an idea of a time literal centuries removed from the things we're talking about obfuscates the proximity and connections between things like corpse medicine, anatomical theaters, criminalization/execution, and the development of the modern western medical system. sorry for the long rant in your ask box, i just have a master's degree in Literally This.
to be clear, i am not at all arguing that the mummy being used medicinally was always or even often made of Egyptian mummies. i just wanted to be annoying about time periods. though by the early 1600s physicians like oswald croll were outwardly recommending fresh (executed) european bodies as the source of mummy, so i do kind of take issue with the assertion that people always thought they were buying something different. anyway, as a parting gift thanking you for making it this far in my longwinded asks, did you know moss grown on a human skull was also a source of medicine? called muscus ex cranio humano or usnea humana.)
Ohh huh. Thank you for messaging me; this is a lot more context than I had when I made my post.
I’m an American archaeologist (that is, I work in the Americas), so my areas of specialty are the US Southwest/Mexican Northwest ca. 800-1400 CE, and New England (or okay mostly Massachusetts and some New Hampshire) 1700s-1800s. I also have a solid grounding in the Bronze Age Aegean. But what that means is that early modern Europe is not my forte at all, and I did what I caution about doing and relied primarily on Wikipedia and a tumblr user I find reliable for that information. There were some quick to find sources that supported an 11th-12th century origin for the eating of ancient Egyptian mummies as medicine, which is what I meant by Medieval. I also kind of thoughtlessly took “mummy” to mean “ancient Egyptian mummified human remains” when of course ancient Egypt did not hold a monopoly on corpses or even mummies. I wasn’t intending to speak about the ingestion of human corpse matter as a whole, just Egyptian mummies. But both of these made the result end up misleading and not fully true, and I’m sorry about that.
There’s a specific cultural image of Victorian Britons opening sarcophagi and eating mummies that they looted from thousand-year-old Egyptian tombs, and it becomes a thrilling/disgusting synecdoche for British imperialism in Africa. That’s the part that’s a myth (though 19th century Egyptomania was real and the mummy unwrappings and some mummy-paint were also real.)
However, I was not well informed about the scope of European corpse medicine throughout history, and was honestly shocked to learn just how widespread and recent it was! And for sure you’re right, the 1500s-1600s when European corpse medicine was at its peak is hardly medieval. They mostly weren’t eating ancient Egyptians by that point (though they seem to have been at least a little, because in the late 1500s bodies were still being smuggled as contraband out of Egypt and into Europe), but yeah Europeans sure as hell were eating corpses as medicine. (Those links are not a fact check @ you, it’s @ anyone who reads this and wants to read more.) That seems like it ought to count for “they didn’t teach me this in school!”
It’s good to hear from the people who have researched this stuff; it sounds fascinating. Thank you for sharing, and I’m sorry I was misleading.
And re: Usnea skull moss: that’s WILD. I would not want to stick that up my nose.
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fawning-f0r-you · 7 months
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Dance with the Devil | Ch. 1 - WAKE UP
Chapter One | Chapter Two | WIP!!
A/N: Hi so ik it's been so long omg sorry about that but here is some nice fun fluff. I'll post the polished chapters on AO3 (once I get an account lol) but here you'll get the rough drafts to enjoy.
Content warnings: nothing graphic! It's fluff, no gore, nothin'
Summary: Evan Myers died in that forest, Vinnie soon to follow. But, suddenly he finds himself in his early thirties and married. Is this a trick by HABIT or is he living his next life?
。・:*:・゚★,。・:*:・゚☆。・:*:・゚★,。・:*:・゚☆。・:*:・゚★,。・:*:・゚☆
WAKE UP
"Evan?"
Evan blinked, snapping to reality. Well, he tried to. Truthfully, he was in such a distant world, a memory, he couldn't tell you the date or even his age. All but for a moment.
He focused his eyes, seeing a familiar face. One he hadn't seen in… God, five years? Has it really been that long to see her gilded brown eyes? Wait. Wait…
He stared a little more intently. The beauty remained, but there was hints of age. Smile lines, little wrinkles from joyous events. Her face had settled, the face she'll wear for most of her life until she begins to grey.
"J-Jessie?" Evan barely choked out, but tried to quickly recover and hide the waiver in his voice.
He glanced around for a moment. She was handing him a mug of coffee, the color close to his own skin tone. Evan didn't drink coffee. …Right?
He remembered he far more enjoyed the battery-acid taste of a Monster. Yet, on reflex, he took the cup and had a small sip. Instead of retching, it went down smooth. It felt… familiar?
Evan wracked his brain. He closed his eyes and focused on the last thing he could remember. Cold, unforgiving forest floor… a cry of frustration from the being of chaos as they slipped back into the cycle of rinse and repeat. His friend, or what he believed to be, bleeding out as his vision faded and his breathing slowed.
He was supposed to be dead. He is dead. He was dead.
However, as he also peeled back the layers, an entire separate life began to reveal itself. He's 32 now. Jessie Miller, or rather Jessie Myers, was his wife of almost a decade. She still ended their relationship after prom, but they soon reconciled after graduation as she revealed she only ended it due to the pressure from her father.
"He didn't want me ending up like you." he could remember her saying with a wince.
She had gone to college in New York City while he stayed back in Jersey, working odd jobs here and there. He scraped together money while living off of 99¢ noodle cups and his family's trailer to put a payment down on a house. Their house.
He remembered how he had proposed, well both times. The first time was on a regular date over pizza. He had given her a cheap and dainty ring, calling it a promise. I promise I'll follow you to the ends of the earth, I promise I'll do anything and everything I can, for you, Jessie. I'll make you happy. I'll provide. I promise I'll make you my girl. His greatest desire was to keep her comfortable. It wasn't a secret her family was well-off, upper middle class, and so she had a much more cushy life compared to him.
Little did he know, a few months after getting her master's degree, they had a little one on the way. That was the kick in the ass he needed. He put his nose to the nosegrind and went to trade school. It got him a job that paid better than any part-time seasonal gig could. He proposed, proper, kneeling with a diamond ring and everything, and they married that fall.
Hot tears stung the corner of his eyes as he quite literally watched his life flash before his eyes up to the current moment. It was such a radical juxtaposition to what hell he had just gone through.
…it was already starting to feel like a dream. No slenderman, no wolf-spider demon overtaking his body and killing everyone around him, and no…
No entering a secluded vacation home in Pennsylvania, seeing her blood paint the walls. Never having to rip a monster off of her, seeing her body, her flesh, in tatters. Never having to hold her in his arms, feeling her warmth evaporate. Never promising her everything was going to be alright as her wide eyes flooded with fear, knowing he was lying. He was a liar.
He blinked. Again.
Jessie's face had changed to an expression of concern rather than confusion. She asked the question again: "Evan?" Are you alright? What's the matter?
Evan shook his head and cleared his throat, drinking more of his coffee. It was exactly how he liked it. She had it memorized. His heart melted a little more, remembering that nugget of information. "Yes, honey, I'm… I'm alright. I didn't sleep well, it must be catching up to me."
Jessie's face softened as a smile crept across her lips. "I hope you're not too tired. Ashlynn has been begging to play in the snow with you all morning."
All morning?! "What time is it?" Evan asked with another sip, an attempt to hide the glance he stole at the clock. It was noon.
Jessie didn't get a chance to answer as a shrill, excited voice filled the kitchen, "Daddy!"
A little girl, only seven years old, barreled in and hugged his leg. She wore a cute maroon puffy coat with a cat-earred beanie and black gloves to match. It reminded him of something Jeff would wear back in the day.
Evan's breath caught in his throat. Ashlynn… his daughter.
"...I remember feeling her bones on my teeth…"
He scooped her up into his arms, hugging her tight. She returned the hug, her small arms wrapping around his neck. Evan buried his face into her coat. He broke. He started to cry, to sob.
Was this real? Is this just… another sick twisted trick by HABIT?
It certainly felt real. Just as real as The God Killer slicing his artery. Maybe… maybe this really was his next iteration. He was a father. He had succeeded. He married his highschool sweetheart and had his daughter. There was nothing more he could ask for.
"Daddy…?" His daughter's voice snapped him out of it. He could listen to her for the rest of time. He never wanted her to be quiet. Not only could he finally hold her, he could see her. Hear her. No monster had ripped her from the womb, no. She was born in a regular hospital under regular circumstances.
He sniffled, wiping his tears. "Sorry, angel, daddy just… Daddy loves you so much, okay? Daddy is always going to be there for you. Always." He gently set her down on her feet. "Now, can you go wait in the living room while daddy gets his boots on?"
"Okay!" Luckily, Ash wasn't old enough to really question her father.
Jessie on the other hand… She wore her heart on her sleeve. Of course she was concerned for her husband. "Evan, what's gotten into you? You've been… spacey." She gently leaned forward and wiped his tears away with her thumb.
Evan had to fight every nerve in his body screaming to jump, to flee, to flinch. "It's nothing, baby… I just. I've been having some nightmares recently. Not sleeping very well." Jessie bought the lie. It made his stomach twist into a knot lying to her, but how could he ever explain to her what had happened? What happened to him, to her, in a different time?
Jessie made her way around the kitchen island and Evan had to suppress his surprise. She was pregnant. Very pregnant. Seven months, three weeks, and four days to be exact. At least, that was how long medically, conception is not as empirical as doctors made it out to be. He had been counting the days.
Without even thinking, he stepped towards her. He wrapped her into a tight hug as he placed a palm on her round, full tummy. Another one. Another little one. His.
He peppered her face in kisses, not even halting as she burst into giggles. His heart overflowed with joy and love. He finally had everything he could ever want. For a moment, he forgot to consider where his other loved ones were. Stephanie, Jeff, Vinnie…
For now, they could wait. For the first time, Evan Myers was going to be selfish.
Chapter Two
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losthomunculus · 3 years
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Online Safety Relevant to the Current State of the Internet
On twitter I made a tweet about how online safety lessons in school can be very out of touch but that the advice of people who are familiar with the current internet shouldn't be disregarded. So here's my informal collection of online safety tips
Sources: unrestricted internet access since elementary school (not recommended), being a formerly involuntarily home bound person for several years that amassed way too much online experience
This could possibly hold upsetting reminders to people who had bad experiences online including mentions of grooming and emotional manipulation so please proceed with caution!
Information Sharing
Make an online pseudonym for public profiles and websites.
Don’t feel like you have to list everything about you for the world to see.
Sometimes it’s not a question of “can this information be used to locate and identify me irl?”, but simply “do I want this information publicly available and linked to my online persona?”
Unlike offline, being online leaves a constant trail of who you were accessible at all times. People are constantly growing and changing. Try to limit the information you share so you can ditch that trail and start over if need be.
Sharing information with people you make friends with and trust is a judgement call on your part, but always be on the safe side and be protective of your information.
Start as cautious as possible with online safety. Any risks or judgement calls can come later when you are 1. aware of the risks, 2. ready to address them if they occur, and 3. have gathered plenty of information instead of doing something blindly and hoping for the best.
Do not share your triggers publicly, they can very easily be used against you. Instead use websites with a large amount of filtering options to curate your online experience. If you are going to share them, only do it privately with people you trust.
Importance of Boundaries
It doesn’t matter how mature you are, don’t enter age limited spaces you don’t qualify for. It’s disrespectful to the boundaries of the people who made that space. Boundaries like this exist for the comfort of both sides involved.
Just because you can “handle it” doesn’t mean it’s good for you. Desensitization is not something to brag about.
Venting or making r18 posts as a minor on a public account is VERY dangerous. Intense emotional vulnerability is something manipulators will look for as a way to get to you. The same with sexual jokes to develop your comfort talking about those topics casually and eventually escalating the situation. If you are going to talk about such things please keep that in private conversations with people you trust in your age group.
Note the difference between public and private online space. Tweeting something on a public account is not the same as having a conversation in the cafeteria with your friends.
If an adult tries talking to you about r18, run the other way. Doesn’t matter how cool you are, it says something weird about THEM if they’re willing to talk to a minor about that stuff.
If someone( like 3+ years, honestly depends on how old you are) older than you wouldn't be comfortable saying what they're saying to you in front of other people (like a teacher or guardian), that's suspicious as hell. Run in the other direction.
The younger you are, the more age gaps matter. There's a bigger difference in development between a 13 year old and a 17 year old than there is between a 20 year old and a 24 year old. It helps to try to contextualize it with real people instead of numbers. Instead of thinking "oh just 4 years? that's not that weird" consider "oh. that would be like a freshman (13/14) dating a senior (17/18). yikes."
Be just as wary of people your own age talking about things that make you uncomfortable. Just like irl, sometimes you’ll meet people your age that are hurtful.
Friends complain to each other and talk about their issues, that alone is fine. But when people are doing it without permission, draw a line. When people are making it feel like you’re responsible for maintaining their mental health, you need to draw a line. When it starts to effect your mental health, PLEASE DRAW A LINE! I know it feels like your responsibility sometimes, but it’s not. You cannot be there for others if you’re not taking care of yourself first and foremost.
Don’t be afraid to block people. Even for petty reasons. It’s good to block people. Don’t force yourself to see stuff you don’t want to see.
Being Constantly Online
The 24 hour news cycle is not a good thing to follow 24/7. Taking social responsibility is a good thing, but your brain is NOT built to worry about every issue in the world at once. One strategy I use for staying sane is I try to only check the news once a day, and if something needs more attention to set aside an amount of time I’m going to focus on it before I need to take time to step back.
Touch grass. Not literally, unless you can in which case I highly suggest it, sometimes it’s just good to lay in a field. What I mean is you need to dedicate a good portion of your time to being offline (sleep does not count). What your offline time looks like is going to differ depending on your level of ability, but even if you are house bound it’s important to build some hobbies that don’t rely on the internet. Talking to people offline is also a good goal if possible, even just to your housemates.
Social etiquette greatly differs online and offline and sometimes the reminder that were all just Some People gets lost behind the numbers and the fabricated personas. Keep in mind the difference in how information is shared without forgetting that the fact we are all people remains the same.
Be generous with your etiquette. You will avoid a lot of stress if you conduct yourself with the same politeness you would have in an offline interaction. Master the art of "minding your own business" for your own sake.
Arguments and Competition
As soon as you can, you need to internalize the fact that leaving an argument is not losing.
It is inevitable you will be exposed to many people who disagree with you. Some people only want to argue to rile you up. Sometimes that’s not their intention, but it’s what they’re doing. You do not have to remain in conversation with people, especially if they’re not interested in actually coming to an understanding. Even if they are interested, sometimes they just suck!! Leave!! You can leave!!
On that note, sometimes you are going to get valid criticism and it’s going to hurt. That is part of learning. If someone says you messed up and did something hurtful, take a second to step back from your defensiveness and consider: intent ≠ effect. Apologize, repair what you can, and move forward with the ability to do better in the future. You’re going to mess up every once in awhile, it’s inevitable.
To summarize the past two points: don't waste your time on unnecessary hostility but don't close yourself into an echo chamber either. Debates should be about learning.
Sometimes people are not going to like you. This happens offline too but people tend to be a lot more blunt online. Sometimes people dislike you for no reason or for really petty reasons. That’s not your problem, move on.
Don’t actively seek out people you don’t like or who don’t like you to argue with. Whether or not your side is the “right side” doesn’t matter, it’s going to cause you so much unnecessary stress. Feel free to keep posting your opinions on your own profile but don’t seek out unnecessary conflict.
This is a different type of competition than previously mentioned, but be aware of the danger of comparing yourself to other people. Especially if you’re a creative or student, DO NOT GET SWEPT UP IN THE GRIND CULTURE. It’s more subtle in some places than others, but anytime you see the notion that you should be working yourself to the bone be VERY critical. Also be critical of any online cultures (such as gaming and art communities) that brag about unhealthy habits or act like it’s ~part of the culture~ (ex: all nighters, not taking breaks, getting hurt. Any activity that neglects health to work toward a goal).
Not just grind culture, any community of subculture that shares anti recovery sentiments is a huge red flag. Even if they're joking, it's not worth the risk of internalizing those statements.
Everyone’s social media presence is to some degree doctored because it’s a purposefully selected collection of what they allow you to see. It’s fine to like the persona you see being displayed, but never forget that it is not reflective of the entire person. Everyone online is JUST SOME PERSON. Do not forget that and start holding yourself to a standard you can’t even see every side of.
By posting online you are opening yourself to criticism. Whether or not it’s justified can vary, but either way it’s going to happen. Mute stuff, go private, disable comments, etc if you need to.
Misc Tidbits
these are technically just general info that is also good for offline but I have seen things that make me think people online need the extra reminder.
Learn what cults are, how they recruit, and what they do to their members. I'm not kidding. This is particularly relevant at the moment because of current societal unrest and widespread loneliness. No one is immune to cult propaganda, and not every cult is based on pre established religion or family. Many exist ONLINE and are able to manipulate people without ever meeting face to face. (learn more: Loneliness as a Pandemic: The Dangers of Online Cult
Familiarize yourself with the concept of pseudoscience. Please familiarize yourself with the concept of pseudoscience and then learn how to identify pseudoscience. (learn more: Karl Popper, Science, & Pseudoscience: Crash Course Philosophy #8)
Q. How do I know if a source is reliable?
Final Thoughts
It's important people of ALL ages learn these lessons, because the internet is constantly changing and we are all vulnerable when in the presence of other people.
Be cautious and stay safe
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ilikekidsshows · 3 years
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Hey can you talk about the Agreste family. Four seasons have passed by and still we don't know anything about them. Why did Emilie use the Peacock Miraculous? How did Gabriel and Emilie find the Miraculous? What's the deal with the Graham de Vanilys? What about Nathalie and Gorilla? And how do the Bourgeois' and Tsurigis fit into this?
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You know what's really interesting about the Parent Generation of Miraculous? How so many of them are connected. There's a reason people have hypothetically wondered if maybe Sabine or Tom could be connected to the rest as well, because so many Parent Generation characters are connected to another Parent Generation character in fictional version of the Six Degrees of Separation. Audrey was the one who kickstarted Gabriel's fashion career. Gabriel makes business deals with Tomoe. Emilie acted in André's film debut. André works closely with Roger. Roger is familiar with Anarka. Anarka is Jagged's ex. It's a very interwoven web and it also establishes that the kids' parents have pasts. They had lives before they were just Parental Units.
The Agreste/DeVanilly family is an interesting target of speculation, but a lot of the theorizing I've seen has focused on merely very surface level stuff. This is mostly because the Miraculous fandom in general has a preoccupation with treating pretty obvious facts as mysteries to be solved. For example, people are so focused on asking "Does Chloé deserve a redemption?" (it doesn’t matter, her arc will be what the plot requires) that they rarely wonder what’s up between Audrey and André even when we got blatant confirmation that Audrey cheated on André. Similarly, people are so busy asking "Does Gabriel love Adrien?" (yes, but selfishly) that they don't wonder what part Emilie played in Adrien's upbringing, even though Adrien’s abuse was going on even before she disappeared.
Emilie, Audrey and Tomoe all have suspicious things to them in the show. Audrey is away so much she could have been getting away with anything off screen, including cheating on her husband. She and Tomoe both got cutaways in the scene in 'Feast' where the Guardian Temple made the news. Tomoe's car Tatsu's symbol looks a lot like the symbol on Ryuko and the car is even named "dragon" (these Tomoe details have actually been noticed before but seemed to stop being discussed after season four started airing). Emilie is a nonentity and the only people who speak in her favor are Adrien and Gabriel, both of whom are Unreliable Narrators. Adrien also defends Gabriel, and Gabriel himself is absolutely convinced Adrien is some fragile, demure flower who must be protected specifically from other people, instead of a lonely boy in desperate need of friends. Adrien has been conditioned to excuse his abusers because they love him while abusing him, while Gabriel only sees what he can use to justify acting the ways he does. Of course Adrien would focus on Emilie being a loving mother and of course Gabriel would focus on the things that would confirm her to deserve the things he does in her name in his mind.
Actually, with Audrey's connection to Gabriel and André's to Emilie, in addition to the theory that one of the other actresses for 'Solitude' was Tomoe, my brother theorizes that Audrey, Tomoe and Emilie might all be connected, perhaps some type of villainous trio, like an evil Totally Spies. We have no idea what Gabriel’s role in such a setup would be, but his villainy would probably be entirely separate from theirs.
Then we get to the extremely limited Agreste household staff. Nathalie is blindly loyal. She'd literally do anything for Gabriel, including risking her life and committing acts of supervillainy. However, it's implied she only fell in love with Gabriel after seeing just how far he'd go to get Emilie back, meaning it's a new development, but Nathalie has been around for a while, or Gabriel wouldn't trust her with his secrets. What was her loyalty originally based on?
The Gorilla, on the other hand, is more of a symbol than a character. He mostly functions as a way to disrupt or unwittingly aid Adrien’s attempts to sneak off to turn into Cat Noir. Even his Akumatization revolved around this role. If he is in fact mute, he is very similar to guards in fairytales, who'd be struck blind so that they wouldn't view the beauty of whatever they're guiding and be tempted to steal it. I'm saying Gabriel, a man with a whole lot of secrets, hired a man who couldn't tell any tales. It's more a symbolic thing in terms of character design rather than Gabriel's actual in-universe reasoning specifically because other forms of communication also exist, as do languages that don't require spoken words. I mean, four seasons in and the closest thing he has to a name is his job descriptor. He might as well be called The Bodyguard. He’s a symbol.
As for the Graham de Vanilys, hooboy, where do I begin? Amelie’s "I'd smile while I stab you in the back and drink tea while you bleed out on the floor" manner is suspicious enough even without the blatant clues that she taught her son to be a manipulative thief and is proud of him for palming Gabriel's ring based on both his dishonest skills and getting the family heirloom back. Then we add the fact that Félix is, in fact, a master thief in the making, capable of robbing both Adrien and Gabriel without them noticing until they realize they're missing items. Then he moves like a rubberband man while avoiding three Akumas out to end him. Finally, he's fully willing to make a pact with Hawk Moth. He's utterly immoral, has almost superhuman abilities and he's clearly dedicated to the Graham de Vanily heritage. He has his mother's last name, implying his father did as well. The Graham de Vanilys have a family legacy that he's willing to maintain, with his focus on the family rings. And, considering how proud his mother was of his thievery, the family business might indeed be something criminal, most likely related to relieving people of their valuables.
To sum this essay up, we know very few actual facts about any of these characters, but one thing is certain: They All Are Suspicious as Hell.
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astaroth1357 · 3 years
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Brothers React to a Demigod MC 
So, I've gotten some interest to do a Brothers follow-up to a previous request of mine (Undateables React to a Cute, Badass MC), however, I've thus far refused to write one. Honestly, this HC actually plays on a trope I personally dislike and had it not been a request I would have never done it to start with. I just can't see any reasonable way a non-magic human can beat a bunch of demons, I just can't, and that hinders my imagination quite a bit. …But someone who’s not so human? That I can get behind. Fair warning, I grew up with the Percy Jackson series so that’s going to paint quite a bit of how I see modern demigods. Ready for things to get super-ultra fanfic-y for a bit?
Intro:
The day to kidnap bring the exchange students to the Devildom has finally come and the demons have all gathered in the Council Room to open their portal to the human world. Really, things started without a hitch - the portal opened with and their future student dropped down out of it and landed on the floor… before they suddenly leapt up, pulled out a weapon, and lunged at them!
… This isn’t your normal human, it is?
Lucifer
Oh Devil, this couldn’t have been any farther than what they wanted… They were looking for a human and they managed to pull out a halfling! A divine halfling no less!! Why wasn’t this in their file?!
Look, Lucifer might not be on good terms with his father, but even he knows he had it better than any children of the pagan gods… The levels of petty vindictiveness that run through that bunch are literally the stuff of legends...
After he and Barbatos were able to restrain the MC before they hurt themselves or anyone else, Diavolo explained everything to them and gave them a pardon for attacking the Demon Prince on sight… After they identified themselves and their parentage, Lucifer knew they were in for some shit…
He and Diavolo had to iron out an apology letter to their godly parent for days just to keep from saying anything that could accidentally cause a second Troy or worse... It was a mess...
But on the bright side, the “human” came pre-prepared for fighting monsters and demons, which honestly took a bit of a load off his shoulders. That’s less responsibility for Mammon - and in his experience, the less responsibility Mammon has, the better things usually turn out.
… Though their ability to actually hold their own in a fight did make things complicated sometimes - like whenever he was their perceived opponent... 
He wasn’t expecting to have to manage a being that was actually capable of meeting him toe-to-toe on the battlefield and it did hinder his intimidation factor to some degree…It was hard to be threatening to someone who’s likely faced worse than you could ever offer.
In the end it probably worked out for the best, as a live exchange student is better for Diavolo than a dead one - but man did it get on his nerves until they made their pact together… Be scared of him, dammit!
Mammon
The first time he tried to threaten the human, they straight up pulled out a weapon and looked like they were ready to whip his ass!! Didn’t they know he wasn’t being serious?? 😫
He really didn’t know why he had to be on babysitting duty, anymore... This huma-er demigod could handle themselves just fine!
When he first ditched them with Levi, he later found out they managed to cleanly toss his brother over their head and make a break for it all by themselves! And Levi’s no pushover either!!
Later, he saw them getting ambushed on their way back from school and they soundly knocked out about five demons before he even caught up to them… and he’s, like, fast and stuff… 
Their strength is kind of unreal at times, but he could tell they were still far from a mindless killing machine. They were more or less a normal person, they had wants and dreams like anybody else, but they just happened to be a long stronger than the average mortals around them. 🤷‍♀️
After he eventually got to know them and a bit about how their life worked, he felt a little bad for them... Who wants to be hunted down just for being born?
After learning about their struggles, Mammon ended up resolving to help keep them safe (even if a part of him knew they didn’t need him that much).
I mean, if the whole world’s against you, then you can use all the help you can get... right?
Leviathan 
Levi found out exactly one thing about them within the first two minutes of meeting them… their reflexes were killer.
After Mammon ditched them on Day One, he tried to drag the human to his room to tell them his genius plan but they broke out of his grip and threw him flat on his back like was just second nature! 
He was stuck on the ground for a full minute, trying to process what just happened, while they ran off into the House all alone…
Did he just get tossed around… by a human?? Was he really that pathetic!?!
Finding out later that they were actually half-god certainly helped out his self-esteem because, man, if he had lost so easily to a human of all things... He might have just never left his room again…
Levi pretty much kept his distance from them until they finally made a pact together and then he discovered that the MC wasn’t so scary after all. If he’s being honest, being in the same house as a demigod was actually kind of cool...! 
Like, it was almost exactly the plot of the show: “Wait, I Thought I Was the Son of a Pagan God So What Am I Doing in a Christian Hell??” but their MC seemed to know a lot more about fighting than the protagonist of that show ever did…
Plus, because he never had to worry about their safety, he had even more excuse to never leave his room. Win-win!
Satan
A demigod, eh…? He had done plenty of research into human world mythologies in his spare time, frankly he thought the old gods had died out - but it seems they were still up and kicking… and making babies for whatever reason? Horny bastards...
Satan's original interest in the MC was purely academic. It’s not everyday that you get to meet someone of such a unique heritage and he fully intended to learn if all the legends about their greatness were true… and well...
He could say that the MC was certainly different than how he pictured humans being. He’d never met very many before, but from what he could gather they were a weak race that really got by on wit and persistence… However, nothing about the MC was weak.
Their aptitude for combat was surprisingly sharp, both in skill and reflexes. He had once blown up at them in anger and not only did they dodge his swipes but they got in a good few hits themselves with a nearby lamp… He never once thought a mortal could give him a black-eye but, somehow, they pulled it off. 🤷‍♀️
Combine their physical skill with what magical gifts were granted to them by their godly-half and they were a force to be reckoned with… Even Solomon seemed to hesitate and think more about his actions around them (which is saying something for a sorcerer of his strength).
It’d be fair to say a part of him grew to respect the MC long before they ever made their pact and that respect only grew afterwards. If he had to be bound to any master, human or otherwise, he’d rather it be one that he could right about consider an equal not only as a friend, but in strength as well.
Asmodeus 
A demigod…? Oooo, he hadn’t come across one of those since he bedded Aeneas all those centuries ago… Such a gorgeous man, got all his looks from his mother~! 🤭
Asmo was probably the most interested in their godly heritage, but it felt like he was treating them like a zoo exhibit for a while… Something pretty and new to look at, but not exactly someone he wanted to know personally...
He openly and readily admitted that watching their little demigod in action got him hot and bothered (or well, more hot and bothered than usual ) but it didn’t take him to see they weren’t interested at the time…
He decided that he just had to have a pact with them after they saved him from Henry 1.0! It was before he noticed the giant snake and he was lurching back to strike, but the human swept in to knock him out of the way. They probably could have made mince meat of the creature themselves if Levi weren’t begging for them to spare his former pet...
Post-pact Asmo treated them with a lot more respect… but also still fanboyed over their fighting skills hardcore. 
Like, their body had to be fit to keep up with all those monsters, right?? What was their training routine? Could he watch?? Oh please say he can watch!! He just can’t get enough of that fighter’s physique…! 😍
Beelzebub 
So… the human isn’t a human but only part human? And the other part is a god? Does that make them any sturdier than normal humans…? Call him curious…
Beel was probably one of the few brothers who was legitimately weary of the MC from the beginning… He can get a certain feel for a person pretty quickly and something about them just felt…frankly, kind of dangerous.
But they also intrigued him a little… Beel’s used to being one of the strongest demons in any room he walks into (not a boast, just a fact) so for him to get that feel from a mortal was pretty impressive. A part of him just wanted to test them… you know?
So. He did. He asked them to help him train his martial arts one day and even with his awareness, he was not expecting the results that he got.
The MC was strong. Very strong. They were not only able to keep up with him and dodge his blows, but they were able to predict his moves and counterattack in kind. They didn’t even need to tell him that they had actually been fighting for their life for years, he could tell. They had a skill you don’t get from practice matches...
After that point, the two would go to each other to train and keep their skills sharp… but also just to spar for fun. Their fighting styles made a pretty good match and they bonded pretty damn quick because of it. 
If anime tells us anything, when you find a good fight buddy, you stick with them. Even if one’s part god and the other is a demon. 🤷‍♀️ 
Belphegor 
A demigod is still human enough to hate, sorry MC. Not that he knew about their godly heritage at first…
Really, he should have been a little more suspicious of how easily they seemed to take to life in the Devildom... Weren’t demons supposed to scare humans? Why did they seem so comfortable down here...?
His confirmation only came when he tried to enact the final part of “Use the MC to Escape the Attic!” plan and take their life to seal the deal… but oh boy, was he outclassed real quick… 
The MC had already socked him in the jaw by the time he got his full demon form out and then they threw him across the room by the tail… the TAIL!! And it hurt like a bitch, too!! Even during the full blown fight that followed, he could tell they were holding back and it pissed him off something fierce...!
Why was the MC so strong?!? Humans weren’t supposed to be strong!!!
His brothers heard all the commotion and the Lilith confrontation ended up happening up in the attic between a somewhat beat-up Belphie and a barely-scratched MC. Had Beel not come to his defense on instinct, it might have turned out worse for him in all honesty… Something about that human just wasn’t right…
He only found out about their god-half after everything settled down and he promised not to try killing them again (not that anyone thought he could...) and that put some things into perspective. So the Lastborn Ruler of Hell isn’t as strong as one mortal demigod…? Ouch. Okay, fine then... Whatever...
He does think it’s too bad he missed them beating the crap out of the rest of his brothers, though (minus Beel)... That would have been fun to see. 😔
So I tried to keep this one God-parent neutral, but I’ve upgraded this to its own series! Check it out if you’re interested! 😊
Demigod MC Series: Intro, Aphrodite, Hermes
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ouyangzizhensdad · 3 years
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Do you think LWJ took the advantage of being a Young Master of a prominent clan to publicly display the people he hates? (We know who that is) I saw someone claim about it and It's haunting my head.
Hi anon,
I’ll start first by saying that I think the novel does, to a degree, understand that there are people who have, to use Bourdieu’s terms, forms of ‘capitals’ that others do not and integrate that into the narrative and character dynamics. LWJ has not only capital due to his position as a gongzi and the son of a Leader (then later, as heir-in-line) to one of the prominent clans, but also due to his stellar reputation and fighting abilities (and to a degree, the fact he is a man). All this allows him to have a wider range of actions that are considered ‘acceptable/legitimate’ versus another person with different or lesser forms of capital--think for instance of the reaction and consequences when LWJ challenges what powerful men are saying (making up) about WWX versus when daughter-of-a-servant MianMian does the same. However, I find it weird to frame that as LWJ “getting away” with something--with his character, it’s more like he is able to have an opinion or stand up against injustices with less chances of getting punished and ridiculed for it.
Now, if it is about Jiang Cheng, it is kind of a myopic argument to be saying that LWJ “gets away” with “publicly hating JC”. First because by that point JC is technically even higher in the social hierarchy, being a literal Sect Leader. But it’s also weird to phrase this as “publicly hating JC”: LWJ is not running around badmouthing JC or the Jiang sect--the pettiest we see him is when he doesn’t silence LJY when he engages in gossip about JC. Instead we see LWJ standing up against JC when the situation calls for it, which is not the same. Of course, as JC does, it can be considered as an inherent ‘insult’ since it makes JC ‘lose face’ but I think there is a difference. And it’s not like JC does not get away with being impolite towards LWJ and the Lan sect, something we see at Dafan Mountain.
We know with the MXY altercation that JC was ready to kill him on sight for using modao (”Do you have any last words?”/“Break his legs? Haven’t I told you? If you see this sort of evil and crooked practice, kill the cultivator and feed him to your dogs!”). After LWJ intercepts, we have this exchange showing JC being impolite to a degree that prompts LJY to call him out for it, only bringing more disrespect for the Lans from JC:
He raised one brow and spoke, “Hanguang-Jun, you sure live up to your reputation of ‘being wherever the chaos is’. So, you had time to come to this remote area today?” [..] Right now, Jiang Cheng really didn’t seem too polite as he said the words in such a tone. Even the juniors who came following Lan Wangji did not seem comfortable hearing it.
Lan Jingyi spoke straightforwardly, “Isn’t Jiang-zongzhu here as well?”
Jiang Cheng replied grimly, “Tsk, do you really think that you should butt in when your seniors are conversing? The GusuLan Sect has always been known for its respectful conduct. Is this really how it teaches its disciples?”
It is imo more true to say that, due to LWJ’s higher and respected position in society, JC is not able to use his usual means of responding to someone challenging his decisions and thus making him lose face.This is again something we see during this altercation.
LWJ silences JL after he dismisses his mistreatment of other cultivators with the deity-binding nets. LWJ destroys the entirety of the diety-binding nets JC and JL were using to give JL an advantage over the other cultivators competing, something they were only able to do because of the Jiang and Jin sects considerable power and wealth. Is it daring of LWJ? Sure. Would he be able to do so without consequences if he was someone else? Probably unlikely, especially when we’re talking about JC. But is that ‘getting away’ with something? It’s literally the opposite scenario: LWJ is using his own status and capital to make it so that JL (and JC) are not getting away with what they are doing (although there are, in actuality, no consequences for their behaviours; they are just forced to give up on JL’s unfair advantages. Hell, LWJ even offers to pay for the nets he destroys, which I guess can also be taken as a baller move). What’s more, the novel even takes the time to point out that, if LWJ were not such a strong cultivator, JC might have pushed aside the risks of offending LXC and physically confronted him (let’s appreciate how this also serves as well-integrated exposition for their weapons).
Jin Ling’s grim expression was exactly the same as his uncle’s, “What can I do? It was their own fault for stepping into the traps. I’ll solve everything after I finish capturing the prey.”
Lan Wangji frowned. Jin Ling was about to speak again, but he suddenly realized that, shockingly, he could neither open his mouth nor make any sounds.
[...]
The man spoke in a low voice, “Not long ago, a blue sword flew over and destroyed the deity-binding nets that you had set up.”
Jiang Cheng glanced at Lan Wangji harshly, his displease plastered all over his face, “How many were broken?”
[...]
Although four hundred deity-binding nets were a whopping price, it wasn’t too much for the YunmengJiang Sect. Nonetheless, losing the nets were a small matter, but losing face was not. With Lan Wangji’s actions, Jiang Cheng felt a whirlpool of anger at the bottom of his heart, rising higher by every second. He narrowed his eyes, his left hand casually stroking the ring on his right hand’s index finger.
[...]
However, after stroking it for a while, Jiang Cheng compelled himself to restrain his hostility.
Although he was displeased, as the leader of a sect, he needed to take more things into consideration, which meant that he couldn’t be as impulsive as Jin Ling. After the fall of the QingheNie Sect, among the Three Great Sects, the LanlingJin Sect and the GusuLan Sect were quite close due to the personal relationship between the two leaders. By leading the YunmengJiang Sect alone, he was already in an isolated situation among the three. Hanguang-Jun, or Lan Wangji, was quite a prestigious cultivator, while his elder brother Zewu-Jun, or Lan Xichen, was the leader of the GusuLan Sect. The two brothers had always been on good terms with each other. It was best to not openly dispute with Lan Wangji.
Also, Jiang Cheng’s sword, “Sandu (三毒, Sāndú),” had never made actual contact with Lan Wangji’s sword, “Bichen,” and it was not yet decidable whose hands would the deer die on. Although he owned the powerful ring, “Zidian (紫电 Zǐdiàn),” a family heirloom of his, Lan Wangji’s guqin, “Wangji”, was also known for its abilities. The thing that Jiang Cheng hated the most was to be disadvantageous during a fight. Without complete confidence in his success, he would not consider fighting with Lan Wangji.
Now if it is about Su She, again what does LWJ truly do?
He silences him in the Demon-slaughtering cave? Although we’d be hard-pressed to believe LWJ respects Su She after what he’s seen him do in the Xuanwu Cave, the guy is literally trying to get everyone there killed and being a smartass to WWX while at it. And if it had been extremely disrespectful of him, LQR could have lifted the spell--something once again that the novel points out. When it dissolves into a game of calling out between the MolingSu sect and the GusuLan sect, LWJ does not say anything, even if, as LJY points out, Su She was imitating him. It’s only when WWX starts going that LWJ takes part by acquiescing to the truths WWX lays out (which are, yes, damning for the Su She and the MolingSu sect). But again, there are layers to what WWX is doing: he’s not only trying to expose what is going on, but anger Su She into revealing he still has his spiritual powers as proof of what he has worked out. So while WWX and LWJ are being by some measures disrespectful, there is a point to how they are going at it.
Touching his chin, he grinned, “Well I was worried that you’d get mad if I asked him too many things in front of you, wasn’t I? But since you’ve told me to ask him already, I’ll go ahead and ask. Lan Zhan?”
Lan Wangji, “Mn.”
Wei Wuxian, “The MolingSu Sect was a sect that branched off from the GusuLan Sect, right?”
Lan Wangji, “Mn.”
Wei Wuxian, “Although it branched off, the MolingSu Sect’s techniques still used the GusuLan Sect’s techniques ‘as reference’, right?”
Lan Wangji, “Yes.”
Wei Wuxian, “One of the GusuLan Sect’s techniques, the Sound of Vanquish, has the effect of exorcising evil. Amongst them, the seven-stringed guqin was the most powerful, and so there is the greatest number of people who cultivate through the guqin. The MolingSu Sect did the same, and the guqin is the most common in their sect as well, is that correct?”
Lan Wangji, “That is correct.”
Wei Wuxian, “Although the MolingSu Sect’s leader left the GusuLan Sect with knowledge of its techniques when he founded his own sect, is own guqin skills weren’t anything special, and the disciples he taught often make many mistakes too, right?”
Lan Wangji answered with honesty, “Yes.”
Wei Wuxian and Lan Wangji went on back and forth, speaking as though nobody was around. More and more people realized that they weren’t only mocking Su She, but rather taking something apart. Thus, they began to listen more carefully.
Next, Wei Wuxian slowed down, “… And that means, even when a section of the battle melodies that the MolingSu Sect played when killing corpses on Mass Grave Hill was wrong, the GusuLan Sect wouldn’t find it unusual, and only think that they made a mistake because of their inferior techniques and remembered the sheet music wrong, not taking the time to notice whether it was an accidental mistake or a mistake on purpose. Is this the case?”
Hearing the last question, Su She’s pupils shrunk. The hand he placed on the hilt of his sword was suddenly lined with veins. The blade of the sword was already half-an-inch unsheathed. On the other hand, Lan Wangji lifted his eyes at the same time. Both Wei Wuxian and he saw the sense of understanding in each other’s eyes.
He stated one word at a time, “This is the case.”
Su She unsheathed his sword with a clang. Wei Wuxian moved the blade of the sword to the side with two fingers and smiled, “What are you doing? Don’t forget. You’ve lost all your spiritual powers. Would threatening me like this do anything?”
Sword raised in his hand, Su She could neither attack nor put it down. He clenched his teeth, “Aiming at me for so long—just what are you trying to imply?”
As much as we love to talk about LWJ’s hidden sass and pettiness, he does not seem to ever be disrespectful without a reason, and it’s usually in the process of standing up for others. Reading his character as an illustration of a man in a position of privilege and power getting away with things is a little bit of a reach--particularly when JC is literally right there. 
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cellydawn · 3 years
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sans IS gaster (OR the sans theory masterpost pt. 2)
Part 1 || ❤️ || Part 3
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(drawn by me, color by @magenteel​)
Previously, we discussed: Sans and his hand in the destruction of a world, his connection to Ice-E and Deltarune, and how he relates to Gaster. We’re going to continue the thread we left off on.
Section III - Gaster (Cont.)
Snails are mentioned too many times throughout Undertale for them to not be of any significance. As it turns out, they are pretty important in unraveling the mystery behind Gaster and Sans.
When you enter the area with Napstablook’s snail farm, you’ll notice that Sans’s theme is playing despite him not making an appearance. 
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In one of Papyrus’s phone calls, he mentions that Sans recently bought snail-shaped pasta and says “He’ll probably fill them with hotdogs and slime.” Toriel also owns a book called “72 User for Snails”. Track 72 in the Undertale OST is “Song That Might Play When You Fight Sans”. That’s multiple times that Sans is likened to snails. 
Snails belong under the taxonomic class Gastropoda. Gasterpods.
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These long pauses between words and phrases are not unlike how Gaster speaks.
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Here is Gaster speaking with us in the opening sequence of Deltarune. And...
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Now. Let’s move on.
(More under the cut.)
Mus_smile is the track that plays in room_gaster. This is my personal opinion, but the character that is the most strongly associated with smiles is Sans.
And Sans is certainly intelligent enough to be the prime suspect for being Gaster. The proper name for his namesake is Comic Sans Microsoft, or Comic Sans MS. MS can also be used as a suffix for the name of a person who has a degree in a Master of Science.
Sans also owns quantum physics books. The subject of Gaster’s scientific research is revealed in Entry #17: “photon readings negative”. Photons are described as a "quantum" of electromagnetic energy, and are of course within the realm of study under quantum physics.
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Gaster, like Sans, is brilliant yet slow-working. Slower than Alphys, who is repeatedly noted to have nothing to show yet as the royal scientist in the eyes of the people and is shown to slack off constantly.
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Gaster is implied to have perished, and I suppose he did, in a way, if these speculations do end up being correct. However, there’s something more to this statement. Ghosts are sort of in the realm of being not-alive, and Sans and Napstablook have a surprising level of comparability.
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They both:
Get likened to “garbage”
Have connections to snails (Napstablook runs the snail farm)
Speak completely in lower case
Pretend to sleep and say “Z’s” out loud
Have black “sclera”
And the black sclera is also a topic of its own; it’s equated with the status of being brought back to life. Being “determined”. (See: Asriel and Undyne)
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Undyne is especially suspect due to the strange right-eye-phenomenon she has in common with Sans, with spears shooting out of hers. Spears that are actually colored light blue, not unlike Sans’s eye. 
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To recap: 
Sans and Gaster are heavily involved in Deltarune
They have been displaced from time and space
They have connections to snails
They are both doctors with knowledge in quantum physics
They both “fell” into the abyss
They both talk similarly
They are both slow
They are both characterized by their smile
They are both some degree of dead
Sans is Gaster or a significant piece of him. Sans has Gaster Blasters because they belong to him. If all prior conjecture proves true, he is and will be responsible for the destruction of a world or THE world within Deltarune. After all, the Latin definitions of “gaster” and “sans” are to destroy and to be without, respectively. 
That brings us to the next subject: why is Sans Sans? More specifically, why is that his name? Why even change his name?
Below is the Japanese version of the fun event with Sans’s phone call. It features completely different dialogue from its English counterpart. 
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Am I Licca-chan? (Select No) Then from now on call me Sans. I need to check every once in a while. I won’t know when my name has changed. 
“Licca-chan” is a well-known Barbie-esque dress-up doll in Japan, so popular to the point where it is even used as a synonym for other dolls from different companies. Perhaps it implies that Sans is adaptable due to Licca-chan’s nature as a doll and how she is in a constant state of change to reflect the times. It also seems to be a pun on “liquor” because Sans was talking about beer in the English version. I tried to scour the Japanese fandom for clues, but they also seemed stumped. If anyone has any ideas on what this could mean, please let me know!
Regardless, “Sans” doesn’t seem to be his actual name. Perhaps his true name was Gaster...?
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Additionally, If the player changes the name of the fallen child via going into the code, this message appears in the stats menu. The vernacular is very Sans-like, with his frequent use of question tags at the end of his sentences (I counted 14 huh’s from Sans).
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Finally, let’s talk about the number six. We know that it’s Gaster’s number--All of the explicitly Gaster-related fun events trigger for fun values in the sixties, Gaster’s stats are all comprised of 6′s, Gaster’s “typer-value” is 666--you get the idea.
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The concept art Toby drew for the Alarm Clock’s character screen features what is presumably Sans and the number six.
“The Choice”--the track that plays during Sans’s judgements--is “Undertale” slowed down by 666%.
Section IV - Angels and Demons (The “Why”)
In modern day culture, 666 is closely associated with the devil. The Book of Revelation (13:17-18) asserts that 666 is “the number of a man” (this is important, and we’ll come back to it later) and is “the number of the Beast”. The Beast is mentioned as “coming out of the abyss”. 
Sounds a lot like someone else we know, doesn’t it? And how fitting for Sans, the one who judges our sins and demands us “to burn in hell”.
But if we go further, the Beast of Revelation is described to have seven heads representing seven kings. The beast itself is an eighth king who is of the seven and "was and is not and shall ascend out of the bottomless pit, and go into perdition." 
Chara is an eighth of the seven fallen children. 
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There’s something Chara, Sans, and Gaster all share, and it’s their association with demons.
Here is an excerpt from the Cutting Room Floor:
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Among the four strings in version 1.0, the last one, designated by variable “demond”, stands out for two reasons. 
 The letter “d” is separate from the other letters denoting the demon variables--the rest, “x”, “y”, and “z” are in sequential alphabet order.
The speech pattern of the last string is different from the others. It has that signature question tag at the end of the sentence that a certain character is known for.
In version 1.001, the strings clearly reflect Chara’s speech pattern. This time, all the variables are in sequential order from “a” to “d”. 
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Pieces of dialogue at the near-end of a genocide route from Chara and Sans. Recall that Chara is using the same “Now” from earlier with Gaster and Sans.
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Chara makes a reference to Banana Yoshimoto's book “Kitchen”. Take note of the page number.
Chara is also linked to the number nine. It’s the highest achievable stat in-game. It’s the stat of the locket and real knife. It’s how much damage Chara deals. It’s also the number six flipped upside down. 
The connections are undeniable. 
And yet, it goes further. Let’s take a look at how Christmas comes in to play.
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In Deltarune, there are a few references to it, the most foremost probably being the importance of Noelle Holiday as a character. We also get Lancer’s laugh and the joke with “Krismas”.
Back to Undertale, there is significant Christmas iconography represented by “Gyfmas” and Gyftrot (bearing a strong resemblance to Photoshop Flowey, the DT Extractor, and Gaster Blasters).
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What I’d like to focus on is Santa.  Papyrus describes him as “a chubby, smiling man who loves to surprise people.” From the thank you note addressed to Santa we find in Sans’s room, we can assume that Sans is a Santa, at least to Papyrus. It’s pretty fitting, since Sans can be described as someone who “knows if [we’ve] been bad or good”. Maybe he can even tell if we’re sleeping or awake with how the Dark World appears to be linked with sleep and dreams (please read my theory on Sans being a Darkner for more on this).
So we can reasonably conclude that Sans presents himself as a friendly, child-oriented figure, in-line with the nature of Comic Sans, a font for children, and Ice-E, a mascot of a company marketed towards children.
Santa is an anagram of Satan. 
To recap: Gaster’s association with the number 666 marks him as a “demon”. Chara and Sans are also called demons and similarly have connections to the number 6. This is more evidence that Gaster and Sans is or used to be the same people, and Chara has some form of correspondence with them.
I failed to mention before that there is actually a second Beast of Revelation “from the Earth” with "two horns like a lamb”. From the “earth” like Flowey, with horns like Asriel. 
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Asriel is most likely the “Angel” depicted in the prophecy within the scope of Undertale; he’s named similarly to Azrael, an angel of death, and one of his attacks is literally called “Angel of Death”. He also bears a striking resemblance to the Deltarune in his God of Hyperdeath form.
Surprise, surprise, he and Sans also share parallels. 
Let’s start with their introductions. “Flowey the flower”. “Sans the skeleton”. It’s a similarly alliterative greeting and they’re both using fake names.
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Mirrored dialogue yet again...
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…and similar meta-commentary.
These three characters--Sans/Gaster, Chara, and Flowey/Asriel--they have all fallen. Gaster fell into his creation. Chara fell into the Underground. Asriel had “fallen down”. (Sans and Papyrus are also the only sibling pair other than Chara and Asriel. I won’t talk about Papyrus in this part though because this thing is shaping up to be too long already.)
What does this mean for Sans? I have a personal theory.
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Above the entryway of the Judgement Hall, there is a reversed Deltarune. The triangles are inverted and the wings are more bat-like. In the room where only Sans appears, the same room that plays a version of “Undertale” slowed down 666%.
I think Sans is a candidate for the Angel prophesized to destroy the world in Deltarune. I think he is Sans Serif, a seraph. He fell into his experiment and became a “fallen” angel, a demon. 
The Angel’s Heaven mentioned alongside, on the other hand...  Heaven can also be used to refer to God. Dog is an anagram of God. 
Sans has many, many connections with dogs, especially one Annoying Dog. More on this next time.
Part 1 || ❤️ || Part 3
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Cupbearer (Eren/Reader)
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Part II
Part I (complete)
Part III (complete)
Part IV (in progress)
Warnings: MINORS DO NOT INTERACT (im watching you, if you see this, begone!), vampire!eren, hunter!reader, fem!reader, smut, some amount of predator/prey dynamics but only kinda?? there is also a significant age difference but only cos eren is immortal and all that jazz. we're all adults here. there will eventually be smut.... and do i really need to say that there's gonna be blood in a vampire fic?
Description: A story of falling in love in 4 parts.
Eren is a bad man (well, a bad Creature) who has done bad things. When he meets the great-great-great granddaughter of one of his former friends in his favorite blood bar, however, he thinks it might not matter so much what happened in the past, so long as he can make the future something worth living to see.
Ao3 link here
Making deals with a vampire was one thing, (Y/N) supposed, but fulfilling such a deal was quite another.
When Zeke— who held the contradictory position of the regional Commander of the Hunters as well as the alpha of a local werewolf pack— had approached her with the idea of infiltrating Eren Jaeger's inner circle, she had jumped at the chance; her great-to-however-many-degrees grandfather really had been Jean Kirschtein, and she had read his old journal, and her curiosity about the Old Ways was always bubbling just beneath her skin. Zeke, she thought, must have known of her curiosity, because his offer had been everything she was searching for.
You'll have your answers, he told her, And we'll have ours. One way or another, the problem of Eren Jaeger will be solved through your efforts. There is no possible way to lose.
If only she had known how wrong Zeke had been.
At first, things with Eren were simple— well, as simple as things could be with such a delicate arrangement. It had been beyond easy to bait him into approaching her at the Creature bar on 76th Street, and aside from the first time, allowing time for Eren to feed was almost nothing. Even the process of feeding itself wasn't much of an ordeal— there was hardly any pain since he drew from her wrist after a warm soak, and the whole thing took less than five minutes— but around the second time, when the visions began, things began to be… different.
Little snippets of Eren's past began to come as the two of them interacted more and increased the amount of regular feedings. Sometimes it was as little as a feeling, a memory of a face that (Y/N) had never seen before; other times, it was like (Y/N) was truly there centuries ago, in a land that would one day become her home. Now, almost every time she let Eren drink from her, she was thrust back into a world where humanity was (literally) with it's back against the wall, fighting demons and mindless monsters just to survive; and, sometimes, the visions were so intense that she would come back from them terrified, shaking, and incapable of cogent thought. It was during those times that Eren held her, silent, resigned, and yet somehow caring until she was herself again.
It was strange; in the visions, Eren was often passionate to a fault. He was wild, like an animal, but kind, too. During times like these, when he cradled her in his arms as she was trembling with the force of a particularly poignant memory, (Y/N) wondered if the centuries had truly changed him, or if he hid that passion beneath the jaded indifference she had come to expect.
"You think too much," he told her as she buried her face into the crook of his neck. "Your heart is racing."
Of course it was— the terror of watching hundreds of people be consumed by the very wrath of hell itself would do that to a person— but (Y/N) had no rebuttal. She did think too much, and the end result was muddled reports sent back to Zeke and a clouded heart.
"You loved her."
It was a statement, not a question. Mikasa— the brave, beautiful woman that Jean Kirschtein had once loved— may not have always known it, but Eren truly had felt very deeply for her.
"More than life," Eren replied.
(Y/N) thought back to the memory— the sheer panic Eren had felt at the thought of losing his comrades, the desperation with which he strove to save them— and she amended her statement.
"You loved them all."
Eren hummed.
"More than the wide, wide world."
And (Y/N) thought that, perhaps, he truly meant it.
"What did you see this time?" he asked, his voice soft.
(Y/N) pulled back so that she and Eren were face to face, her legs straddling him. His eyes were glowing-green, and she shivered beneath their scrutiny.
"I saw a field full of demons," she told him, unable to meet his gaze. "You and Mikasa were defenseless, yourself having been pushed to your limit, and Mikasa's blades having been broken. There was nowhere to run, and you— you screamed, and—"
A large, warm hand caressed her cheek, and it occurred to (Y/N) that it was her own blood within Eren that gave him such warmth with which to comfort. She placed her smaller hand atop his, and the world seemed to freeze for a moment to allow this brief, intimate interlude.
"Do you understand now?" he asked as he did almost every time she had a vision. "Do you see why I did what I did?"
As always, (Y/N) shook her head, moving his hand from her face.
"No, I don't."
The response was never met with anger or frustration; Eren was only ever resigned to it. Before, (Y/N) might have felt scorn for such a man who cared so little, but now that she had seen who Eren had been, what he'd been through… perhaps he was simply tired of caring so much.
"You're beautiful when you're thinking."
The words caught (Y/N) off guard. She had known that Eren had thought she was attractive— his emotional feedback told her that much— but she had never thought that he would voice such a thought. The compliment heated her cheeks, and (Y/N) had to fight the urge to bury her face in her hands.
"I've always thought," said Eren, speaking slowly, choosing his words carefully, "That one can never truly appreciate the beauty of a blush until one could see it with the eyes of a vampire, or smell it as it rises on the cheek."
Eren placed a hand on her face, tilting it until their eyes were level.
"And as a vampire who has seen many beautiful blushes on many beautiful women, yours is the most bewitching of all."
(Y/N) swallowed thickly.
"Why are you saying this?"
Eren cocked his head to the side, studying her. It was a long moment before he spoke, but when he did, he gave an answer that (Y/N) was not expecting.
"Because it's true, and because I would very much like to kiss you."
(Y/N)'s heart leapt into her throat, but she didn't dare move one way or the other. She just stared at Eren, slack-jawed, as he stared patiently back.
"Why?" she asked when she had collected herself.
Eren shrugged. "Does that matter?"
(Y/N) supposed very much that it did matter, but she didn't feel the need to say so. She studied Eren closely— the latent hunger in his eyes, the set of his jaw, the stain of her blood on his lips— and she thought of how gentle he had been with her, how patient. She had no doubt that he would prove to be equally so in other matters, and she wanted him— but something stopped her.
It would be wrong of me to allow this, she thought, letting her eyes wander to Eren's lips. I'm his enemy, a spy for the Hunters. Allowing him and myself the potential of intimacy is too deep a betrayal, even for me.
Even so, she didn't stop him as he shifted her closer; even so, when his lips brushed hers, she kissed him back, tasting her own blood on his tongue.
"This is a bad idea," she whispered against his lips, shifting in his lap.
"How young you are," he said in return. "There is no such thing as a bad idea, only poor timing and execution. Take it from someone who has centuries of experience; rarely ever is the regret for having done something greater than the regret of not having done it."
So saying, he kissed her again, and (Y/N) threaded her hands in his hair as he reached beneath her shirt. His hands— warm, now, with the heat of her own blood— reached beneath the cup of her bra to cradle her breasts, and she exhaled a hiss as his fingertips found her nipples. She arched into him, pressing her flesh into his hands and parting their lips; he chuckled, dark and low, and she shivered at the sound.
"How many other Creatures have you tricked like this?" he asked, pressing kisses against her neck. "Tell me, pretty girl— just how many have fallen prey to your charms so that you can run back to your little doggy master with their deepest, darkest secrets?"
(Y/N) froze, stuck somewhere between fear, dread, and ecstasy. Eren knew— somehow, he knew— and yet he continued to touch her, kiss her, caress her as though nothing were amiss. Her whole body went still with shock, but Eren never stopped even for a moment.
"Come now, you can't think I didn't know." His lips were just below her ear now, and he closed his teeth around the lobe, teasing her with the sensation. "I can smell him on the papers in your bag; I can hear the clicking of the letters as you type your memos after I've pieced you back together for an evening. Most of all, I can hear the way your heart pumps a little faster when I feed you the information you want. I can taste your guilt in the very blood I take from you. You can hide nothing from me."
"Eren," she said as fear— rancid and terrible— began crawling up the back of her throat, "Eren, please, I haven't told him about the important things, I'm trying to make a case for you—"
He pulled away then, and when his piercing green eyes locked with her own, she stilled like a sparrow caught in the gaze of a cobra.
"I don't care," he replied simply. "You are what you are, and at your core, you cannot change that. It is the same with me. I'm not afraid of my half-mutt half-brother no matter what you tell him, and as long as you want what I have to offer, there's no reason not to take it for your own."
(Y/N)'s mind was reeling.
"Half-brother?"
Eren chuckled at her confusion.
"Oh yes, pretty one. Zeke Jaeger is my older brother, and I suspect he sent you to me just to you with the both of us." With a carnivorous grin, he added, "But little does he know that I play for keeps, and you're not the good little Huntress he must assume you are— that is to say, he must have no clue at all how hungry you are for vampire cock, hm?"
(Y/N) would be lying if she hadn't pictured Eren in… less than appropriate situations, but for fuck's sake, she wasnt blind. The man— vampire, Creature, whatever— was fucking gorgeous, and he damn well knew it, but that didn't mean she was gagging for it.
Did it?
"We can't do this," she said, pushing at Eren's chest, though he didn't budge an inch. "We shouldn't do this."
Eren cracked a grin, toothy with fangs that glistened.
"Says who?" he asked, his large, strong hands coming around to grab her by the ass. "You were perfectly fine with letting me kiss and touch when you thought I was in the dark— is it no longer any fun now that you don't feel like you're taking advantage of me?"
(Y/N) couldn't take it.
"Eren, be serious—"
"I am serious."
When she looked in his eyes and reached out with her own heart, (Y/N) knew that he was telling the truth. He wanted her regardless of anything, regardless of everything.
He simply wanted her.
Could that be so bad?
***
Eren didn't think that this would happen even in his wildest dreams, but when he saw (Y/N) splayed out on his gold silk sheets, he knew it wasn't the madness that Armin accused him of lying to himself about. No mind, well and whole or not, could ever conjure up such a vision. The woman who lay before him— naked and gorgeous— was beyond imagining. She was something from another world entirely.
"What are you doing?" she asked, puzzled as Eren stood over her, watching the rise and fall of her breasts. "Come hold me."
And how lovely was that? His natural enemy, his perfect prey, asking him to come hold her, as though his skin on hers was blessed assurance that he was there and wanting.
Maybe Eren was mad— or, perhaps he was dreaming. If he was, he hoped he never came back to himself. A world without this was not a world he ever wanted to return to.
"Yes," she hissed as he crawled atop her, his mouth suckling at her breast. No other creature that walked the earth could ever taste as sweet as her— having tasted many, many before, Eren would know— but even were that to be disproved, Eren wasn't sure he would much care. This woman would be his undoing.
"Touch me," she demanded, canting her hips up to him. "I want to feel you."
How could Eren ever deny her? He brought a hand down to her sex, caressing her there before parting her folds to quest for her clit. Having found it, he drew small, teasing circles, and she whined.
"Am I still a monster to you?" he asked into the hollow of her throat, placing biting kisses there as his hand kept busy with its work. "Still something to hate and abhor?"
"You're still a monster," she replied, so startlingly honest even now, "But I never once hated you. Oh Eren, please, I want you inside me, I—"
Her wish was his command; Eren plunged two fingers into her depths, and (Y/N) gasped at the intrusion. She was so wet already, and so tempting as she squeezed down on those fingers, rocking her hips as he withdrew them just to the tip and repeated the motion. The way she felt around his digits shouldn't have turned him on as much as it did, but as Eren slid in a third finger, he had to keep himself from letting out a groan.
"You're so beautiful," he told her as she writhed beneath him. "You truly, truly are."
Distantly, Eren wondered what Jean would think if he were alive to know who was finger-fucking his great-granddaughter, but when Eren remembered the nasty right hooks the taller man used to give him when he was being a shit, he figured that he would rather not know. Still, as he watched (Y/N) come undone on the tip of his fingers, he couldn't help but think that perhaps it was something of Jean's spirit— the part that even Eren had to admit was better, kinder, more human than most— that drew him to her.
"I want you," he said, withdrawing his hands and licking his fingers clean of her juices. "Do you feel ready enough?"
And then, as though to prove his point, (Y/N) sat straight up with the cutest little Jean-like scowl he had ever seen and pushed at his chest with no small amount of force. He went with the motion, and he found himself being mounted by her as she said,
"I'm not made of glass— if you can't wrap your head around that, I'll have to show you just what I'm capable of."
She did— and how! Powerful thighs— the thighs of a Hunter— levered her up and down on his cock, squeezing him until he thought he might die from it. He thought she was never going to stop impaling herself again and again, and by the time she did eventually tire, Eren was sort of hoping she never would. He was in ecstasy with her, and like the selfish bastard he was, he wanted it to last forever.
"Such fire," he said, reaching up to press kisses into the skin just between her breasts. "You've made your point, now let me take over."
Let me take care of you.
"Yes, yes, yes," she chanted as he thrust up into her, the head of his cock buried so deeply within her that he marveled at how she didn't seem to be feeling any discomfort. "Oh fuck, right there, please don't stop—"
Eren didn't stop; he couldn't. He was beyond restraint.
"May I?" He asked, tapping the wrist that was trapped in his right hand. "I won't take much, but I want to show you something."
Delirious, drunk with lust, (Y/N) nodded, and Eren pierced her skin with a single fang, letting a drop of blood fall onto his tongue. In that moment, as they connected physically, her blood connected them spiritually, and Eren groaned as he physically felt how close she was through the link he had created.
It wouldn't be long now.
"Oh, fuck!" she cried, and Eren buried himself as deeply as he could within her as he came. "Oh, oh, oh—"
And then (Y/N) was following him, shaking and gasping as her orgasm overtook her. It seemed that the world had stopped existing for a moment, and Eren found it hard to breathe even though he had no particular need to do so at all.
In the afterglow, they clung to each other like the survivors of a shipwreck; when the world began to exist again, it felt new, and as Eren closed his eyes to sleep, he knew that this changed everything.
I must keep her, he thought as sleep overtook him. I don't know if I could feel like this ever again for anyone else.
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dangermousie · 2 years
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More Blue Whisper
1. Royal Court is creeptastic and evil and controls both demon masters and demons, tho to different degree. What a shock!
2. I love that JY takes the first opportunity to flee the hell place, breaking in and grabbing pills she needs - it’s enough for four years and she’s fine either only living that long as long as she’s free.
3. But she ruins her escape attempt because she realizes merdude is still chained in the dungeon and will die. So she frees him and they try to flee together but the spells reactivate. And she’s about to be hit by one but he takes the blow for her instead and I love that she’s wondering why but his explanation is so simple it takes my breath away “it would kill you but only wound me.”
4. I love when they are trapped whatever and surviving and he’s so very literal and old-school polite and honestly, girl, you are gone for him. My fave part is her thinking why the hell does the princess think she’s entitled to keep someone like him (as a slave.)
5. Oh my GOD
Ji Yunhe took a step forward and squatted down with her back pushed out toward him. “Come, I will carry you.” He looked at Ji Yunhe’s back. Her back was straight as if she was full of strength, but her frame was still girlishly thin. The jiaoren stretched out his hand, his arm was as thick as Ji Yunhe’s neck. She waited for a long time and felt no movement from him, so she turned her head to take a look. He was staring at her back in silence. Ji Yunhe asked him, “What’s wrong? Afraid I can’t carry you?” She smiled, overflowing with confidence. “Relax, I am also diligent with cultivation.” “Diligence in cultivation is very good,” he acknowledged her efforts. “Then hurry up and come, I’ll carry you, no problem.” “But you’re too short.” “……” Why not just tie him up and drag him…Ji Yunhe thought. This fish could be a bit too blunt. “Just make an effort to lift the tail yourself!” Ji Yunhe snapped at him, no longer in good temper. “Why grow such a big tail anyway? Come!” The big-tailed fish stopped stalling after being yelled at. He stretched his arms over Ji Yunhe’s shoulders and she pulled them around her neck. “Hold on tight, hold on well!” He listened. Ji Yunhe’s hands reached behind her back and scooped up under his tail so he “sat” on them. When her hands cupped his “bottom”, the jiaoren abruptly stiffened.
Did I hurt you?” Ji Yunhe thought maybe she had accidentally stretched his wound.”
“No…it doesn’t hurt.” The honest and sincere fish suddenly stuttered a little.
Well, we’ve found the xianxia edition of:
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canary3d-obsessed · 3 years
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Restless Rewatch: The Untamed Episode 16 part one
(Masterpost of All the Recaps)  (Canary’s Pinboard)
Warning: Spoilers for All 50 Episodes
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All righty, this one is going to be a laff riot...not. Let's do it.
The first half of this episode is like a beautifully executed standalone tragedy, while also threading together all sorts of themes and paying off all sorts of relationship building that's happened in the previous episodes. My hat is off to the writers, while I also shake a fist at them for making me cry an unreasonable amount.
We’re Sailing on a Strange Boat
The episode starts right off absolutely DESTROYING me with the Yunmeng brothers holding hands, fingers interlaced, in the first of many hand-touching moments that punctuate the episode.
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Jiang Cheng has to be pretty far gone to accept this degree of comfort and tenderness. I think, from their positions, he is also holding Yanli's hand out of the camera's view. 
Zidian finally lets the trio go, and they immediately turn the boat around and head back to Lotus Pier. Wei Wuxian gets the clever idea to turn the benches into makeshift oars but nobody gets the clever idea to use magic to push the boat like they do literally every other time they are in a boat. 
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Their emotional need to go back to Lotus Pier is understandable, but they are being disobedient and irresponsible by doing it. Jiang Cheng is the future of the clan, and should not risk his life, particularly after his mother chose to sacrifice herself to protect him and after both of his parents told him to go hide with his sister and personal bodyguard brother. 
On the other hand, Jiang Fengmian, as clan leader, probably had a duty to go into hiding himself rather than go home to die romantically, so his authority is questionable at this point. Anyway, this is the Jiang Clan, they get to kind of do what they want, except when that pisses Jiang Cheng off.
Lotus Pier Massacre
Back at Lotus Pier, the Wens are kicking Jiang ass. The fight choreography is pretty good, taking full advantage of walkways, railings, pools, and other features of the environment. 
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Using the set this way always makes fights feel more kinetic and real, as opposed to simply sparring in an open area. 
(more after the cut)
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Yu Ziyuan is fighting adequately with a sword, having given her preferred weapon to her son.  She's clearly been at it for a while, and is tiring; the Wen soldiers are starting to land more and more sword blows but no critical hits yet.
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Wen Zhuliu is kicking ass and possibly melting cores, although we don't see him do it to anybody yet. Later we'll hear from Jiang Cheng that he crushed the cores of his parents, but it's not clear when that happens.
Sixth young master replays Jiang Fengmian's entire archery lesson in his head while he waits, and waits, for Wen Zhuliu to finish strangling a dude the right moment to shoot an arrow at Wen Zhuliu. 
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Homicidal tart Wang Lingjiao notices him lining up a shot, strolls over, and stabs him in the back while he's still thinking about what Jiang Fengmian said. One could wish that JFM's archery lessons weren't quite so wordy. 
Wang Linjao normally doesn't carry a sword because of her low spiritual power, but apparently can use one just fine when she's killing kids.
If you start feeling like this episode is unreasonably painful, just think of it as building up calluses so you can handle Yi City when the time comes.
Jiang Fengmian to the Rescue
Jiang Fengmian shows up very far past the nick of time, although he is not actually useful, so it's questionable whether arriving earlier would have helped. But his wife is glad to see him.
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Netflix subtitles say that Jiang Fengmian calls Yu Ziyuan "My Lady!" which sounds courtly and romantic in English. His actual words are "San Niangzi" which hunxi-gullai breaks out here.  I might render this as "lady wife!" rather than "my lady" but I don't think English really has a perfect equivalent.
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Jiang Fengmian sails across the courtyard, knocking down a few Wen soldiers and becoming a young, slender man in the process.
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I mean, come on, that stunt double does not look like a boxy middle-aged man from any angle.
The Dying Bit
The episode splits up the big death scene for dramatic effect but I'm recapping it all together to keep things simple.
Within moments of arriving, Jiang Fengmian gets shanked by Wen Zhuliu like Scatman Crothers in The Shining (or Groundskeeper Willie in The Shinning).
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Wen Zhuliu stops a Wen soldier from finishing JFM off, just so that a different Wen soldier can deliver the killing blow from the back, which is kinda harsh. With all this spin-fighting there is probably not an implication of cowardice when someone dies from a stab in the back, but still. Too rude, Wen Zhuliu.
Yu Ziyuan sees Jiang Fengmian fall, and after having a moment of sorrow and despair, she stabs herself in the heart, falls down, crawls to him and interlaces her hand with his. He revives just enough to give her hand a squeeze and say "San Niangzi" one last time before dying. 
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She dies next, with a smile on her face at the end. The soundtrack plays that amazing "horribly emotional death scene" music that isn't one of the tracks available on the OST, argh. This same music appears at the end of Xue Yang's story.  
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Of the many things I love about the Untamed, the complexity of all the minor characters is possibly my favorite. These two people suck at parenting, and suck at being married, and ultimately suck at protecting and leading their clan, making stupid, selfish choices at every step of the building conflict. 
And then they have this incredibly romantic death scene, in which they both face the inevitability of failure, and find comfort in failing together. Yet their death scene is totally in keeping with who we know them to be, and who they are to each other; the drama doesn't cheat by making them ideal lovers or great people at the end. But they have a great, great moment.
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Jiang Yanli, waiting in the woods while her brothers are presumably running toward Lotus Pier, drops her lotus pendant, which is made of the loudest jade ever discovered, and it breaks with a crash.  
Yanli, who is a well educated young lady, knows a moment of doomy symbolism when she sees it.
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Jiang Yanli: Who put a giant rock out here in the woods? What are the odds I’d drop my pendant directly on it? 
It’s all Over Except for the Crying, Running and Choking
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The brothers climb up on the roof and are shocked to see nothing but Wen soldiers and piled up Jiang corpses... 
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...including one child who is either about to become a zombie or who is being played by a young actor who can't control their curiosity, judging by the way this eye is sneakily opened while the camera is running.
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There's a moment where Jiang Cheng is saying they must have spared his parents, they must be okay, where Wei Wuxian's face is just...wow. You can see right here the gulf in life experience between these two. 
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Wen Zhuliu roams around looking troubled while searching for more people to kill. He’s an interesting villain; someone who believes his loyalty to his boss makes him a good guy, but knows his boss is a bad guy. 
Then we are treated to a hell of a camera move, where it tracks over Yu Ziyuan and Jiang Fengmian together on the floor, heroic in death and still holding hands, and then sweeps up to show their killers sitting on the lotus throne. 
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The dead couple were at odds for their whole lives together, while the evil people who killed them are acting like devoted lovebirds. It's a stunning shot and a terrific thematic contrast. When Wei Wuxian eventually comes to take his vengeance, he will spend some time turning Wen Chao and Wang Lingjiao against each other, before ending them. 
The camera shows us JC's reaction, then shows his mother, then WWX’s reaction, then JF; each reacting to the death of the person who loved them. Some folks may feel that Jiang Fengmian actually did love Jiang Cheng but was just bad at showing it. But Jiang Cheng doesn't think so, and I don't think it's a given that parents love their children.
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Side note: Macroexpression king Wang Zhuocheng is able to open his eyes so far that a giant strip of white shows above his irises, and keep them like that, which is quite a trick. Try it yourself.
Meanwhile Wang Lingjiao and Wen Chao gossip about YZY and JFM's bad marriage. Wen Chao admires YZY's beauty, and Wang Lingjiao insults her character, and announces that she's going to stab YZY's body a few extra times. Jiang Cheng briefly faints at this, taking a page from Wei Wuxian's book, and rolls off the roof. 
Run Run Away
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Both young men run, and run, and run away from Lotus Pier while Wen Chao and Wang Lingjiao mistreat the bodies of Jiang Fengmian and Yu Ziyuan 
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The stabbing happens off camera, because it's ok to stab a live child on camera, but not a dead adult. (As always, there are cultural reasons for "what's ok" in any country, and I'm not saying anybody's wrong about these choices). 
Wen Chao follows this up with pouring a cup of wine across their faces. He does this in the style of a libation for the dead, but as a desecration, combining mistreatment of bodies with profaning a ceremonial rite. In a world where ghosts are real and have sharp fingernails, this is deeply, deeply stupid.
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Yu Ziyuan’s actress Zhang Jingtong is able to have liquid poured INTO HER EAR without flinching. Mad props.
The brothers eventually finish running and arrive in a field with an extreme purple photo filter on it. Which I've done my best to remove for these gifs, with variable results. 
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Jiang Cheng wants to turn around and go back to Lotus Pier. He says he wants to retrieve his parents’ bodies and to take revenge, but he's devastated and it seems likely he just wants to die with everyone else.  
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Wei Wuxian pleads with Jiang Cheng to calm down and stay safe, while Jiang Cheng gives himself over to anger and shock as the brothers shout at each other.
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Punching and running ensues, and Wei Wuxian tries to hold his brother back, grabbing him around the shoulders him in a gesture that painfully echoes the many hugs he's given over the years. 
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This time Jiang Cheng doesn't just push him off. He turns around and chokes his brother for nearly a full minute, while screaming at him and blaming him. 
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Just as when Madame Yu beat him, Wei Wuxian doesn't fight back; he pulls on Jiang Cheng's wrists but doesn't hit him or try to break his hold.
Finally Jiang Cheng lets him go, and cries out for everyone he's lost, while Wei Wuxian weeps silently next to him. Eventually they fall asleep in the grass together, their bodies curled up in the form of a heart. 
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Damn, this episode really brings it.
Side Note: during their argument, Wei Wuxian says, among other things, that "revenge is a dish best served cold," according to subtitles. It's a French saying from the 1800s so it's probably not precisely what Wei Wuxian is saying. More importantly, as a longtime Star Trek fan I can't help but hear James Kirk yelling "KHAN!!!!!" whenever I encounter that phrase.
There’s Got To Be A Morning After
When they wake up in the morning, Jiang Cheng is still in his feelings, but now his feelings have moved along to despair, from anger.
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I feel bad for noticing how handsome they both look in this scene. Let's all feel bad about this together.
Jiang Cheng is free to have this level of emotional breakdown because Wei Wuxian is there keeping his own shit together and focusing on what matters.
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When Jiang Cheng refuses to get up, Wei Wuxian reminds him, very, very gently, that they have a sister, who has waited all night to know what happened.
At this, Jiang Cheng gets up, but won't look at Wei Wuxian, continuing to blame him for everybody else's actions, as he walks onward to find Yanli.
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Wei Wuxian follows, hurt and bereft, as he gets to work internalizing everything that he's being accused of. This is good practice for his future as a widely reviled bogeyman.
Part two will be slightly less awful! Coming soon!
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telaraneas · 3 years
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(i change my mind, copypasting this to its own post cause it really got away from me. long post warning)
i guess what im thinkin is like, that light is the domain of “things that MUST happen, for Reasons”; mind is the domain of “things must/will happen, for REASONS”; void is the domain of, like, “things happen or don’t happen for no discernible reason, necessarily”.
thats not really a great description of it i guess but, for instance, a good example is that one time Rosesprite happened…. For No Reason. and for no reason, really i mean no narrative reason- it ended up setting off a chain of events that resolved the subplots of many minor characters, so it’s not like it’s USELESS, but there was kind of no way to predict that whole thing from a “narratively this is something that we are leading up to” standpoint, which is why roxy’s actions brought it about on accident, and why rose was so thoroughly perplexed by it the whole way through. void is probably closer to the way things happen in real life, but it is sort of the anthitesis to the way things happen in stories, where everything is deliberate and happens for A Narrative Reason… but homestuck was always largely written on the fly at least in the smaller scale things, so this sort of thing just Happens lol
incidentally im pretty sure a mind player like terezi could have technically predicted that, if she had for any reason at all been previously informed of all the moving parts of that whole thing and TRYING to predict what the fuck jaspersprite was gonna do, because it IS perfectly logical in hindsight, but like… that’s the whole thing, why the fuck WOULD you be trying to look into that or predict it????? there was seemingly no narrative reason for any of that to be relevant! and that’s kind of what void is about i think!
on a similar note i thing breath is more along the lines of just…. Things Happen. similarly to void, it’s not about trying to discern WHAT will happen or WHY, but unlike void, the things that DO happen under the influence of breath ARE kind of things that the narrative called for. breath seems to be kind of the aspect dominating narrative contrivance
people often confuse contrivance with plot holes, but from what i understand they’re very different. a plot hole is when something happens, and it makes no sense for it to happen to the degree it breaks with previously established known facts, and it’s just never explained.
a plot contrivance doesn’t really contradict anything, necessarily, it’s just… like… there’s no reason for it to NOT happen the way it does, but there’s also no reason for it TO happen the way it does, and overall the reason it’s considered bad writing is because it tends to come across as lazy. oh, the heroes JUST SO HAPPENED to find the one magic sword that can defeat the bad guy, just laying on the side of the road. how convenient!
…incidentally, john’s entire story arc seems to be built entirely around moments like these skfnkenfke
i think it was smart writing to codify this as 1. the influence of an actual cosmic force that DOES operate on those principles, and 2. make john have to figure out how to get a handle on things by himself, even if the tools and circumstances just happened to be aligned in his favor by everything else in the story. john still has to be the one to turn HIMSELF into a deus ex machina, on-screen, to fix everything. it gives the story a good narrative and emotionally resonant reason to just contrive the hell out of everything john does and goes through, while STILL delivering on his arc as a hero’s journey
(i also think it’s really funny that the ring, which gets LITERALLY deus ex machina’d into the story via the author himself, is CONVENIENTLY found by tavros, and john CONVENIENTLY ends up with it in the story itself sjfnskdn true breath shenanigans, and incredibly fitting that vriska rejected it and played no part in it because there was no previously known indication that the ring would be important in any way until the two breath players started playing hot potato with it)
i’m still not sure if i have a good grasp on what exactly time does, because we have seen very different attitudes taken towards it by various different players AND the official description, and it’s hard to tell what, in each regard, comes from time as an aspect, from the classes of the characters, or from the characters themselves/both things; but for now i think my best guess is that time is kind of “things already happened, this is inmutable, let’s just cut to the chase”, more or less. like, the way this differs from light is that light still thinks of things more or less linearly, even when they UNDERSTAND this is not the case, whereas time tends to just not even concieve of things has “something that is happening”
like, example, vriska vs aradia; they both kind of enabled Big Bad Things that they already knew would happen via timeline shenanigans- but from what i recall, i don’t think aradia ever PERSONALLY set any of those events in motion, she simply didn’t correct any misunderstandings and thus allowed the wheels of time to turn smoothly; whereas vriska went “bec noir Will Happen = someone will make it happen anyways = i’m gonna make it happen myself, cause someone has to, and it might as well be me!!!” because of her compulsion to be the master of her own fate
aradia didnt so much see her actions as her *doing* anything, evil or good; she was pretty much just making sure things ended up where they were already going to end up/had already ended up, devoid of motivation or reason. similar to dave in the first five acts, just opening and closing loops Because He’s Gotta until he eventually runs out of steam and loops to close, because he really never had any motivations for doing what he was doing other than Well, I Already Did Them, So Obviously I Have To Do Them So I Can Have Already Done Them. no intent or motivation inherent to the actions themselves for half the story
a more childish example is caliborn getting fed up with the story and the Interpersonal Problems of the players and being like “fuck this, just skip to the good parts, they’re Going to happen so why do we have to sit through all of this shit!”. obv contrast to calliope, who seems to illustrate the kind of reader who would rather explore the status quo forever and imagine all the character interactions possible, playing in the *space* of the work in between the big status quo shifts and dreading said shifts, where caliborn wants to skip right past the status quo and have a story composed of nothing BUT the big shifts, the start and end of things
(neither of these are a sustainable way to tell a story, which is why you need at least a space and a time player)
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hillariat · 3 years
Text
Bubbline fanfic rec list
I did it. I made a master rec list of good Bubbline fanfics. Will keep updating this until I leave the fandom.
Grouped by setting (eg. Highschool AU, AT universe, Family AU etc.) in alphabetical order. They’re all romantic bubbline unless stated otherwise. This is a living document so I’ll be updating it every now and then with new fics and stuff. For any questions, changes or additions, please feel free to pm me on reddit/tumblr @hillariat
*SMUT = A significant portion of the fic is dedicated to SMUT
*some SMUT= A part of the fic has explicit smut, but it isn't a major part of the story
*UwU=personal faves
calamitous love
Author: lexaproeighty
Setting: Astronaut AU
Status | Wordcount: Complete | 1,173
Tags: Fluff, emotionally stupid PB.
Summary: Author’s summary: bonnie's in her feelings. oh, and about to go into space.
what was missing
Author: spookyscaryskeletons (Buttons15)
Setting: AT universe
Status | Wordcount: Complete | 8,678
Tags: Fluff, emotionally constipated PB.
Summary: Honestly the most solid, canon compliant take on their relationship. I loved this shit and half my headcanons are from here.
Author’s summary: In which Bonnie has feelings, she does, but feelings are hard and complicated and she rather ignore them until they punch her in the face.
Let you Lead
Author: purplebutterflies
Setting: AT universe
Status | Wordcount: Complete | 1,225
Tags: Fluff, Mild comedy,Marceline being an idiot
Summary: Marceline being a useless gay and Bonnie taking the lead. Writing gets better after the inciting incident, trust me.
After UwU
Author: 61wisampa
Setting: AT universe
Status | Wordcount: Complete | 23,888
Tags: Major character death, Grieving, Hurt/Comfort, Angst, Moving On, Friendship
Summary: This shit be an intense feels trip yo. Like an "I stayed up ‘til 6am" kind of intense. I had to reread this fic twice in order to emotionally process everything. It definitely isn't your average bubbline angst.
Author’s summary: It was hard, having someone similar yet different. It kept Marceline stuck walking along the line that prevented her from moving on.
Everybody Knows Your Name
Author: Sunshine18
Setting: AT universe
Status | Wordcount: Complete | 8,671
Tags: Exes, Discussion of past abuse, past Ash being an asshole, pre-bubbline
Summary: Solid exploration of PB and Marcy as exes and how they started becoming "civil" post breakup. References to major events in early AT and how PB and Marcy were affected. Can be read independently of “Contact” even though it is a sequel of that.
Bitter Sugar UwU
Author: QueenOfTheRevue (on both Ao3 and FFN)
Setting: AT universe
Status | Wordcount: Discontinued | 72,000
Tags: Political drama, Arranged marriage, Political Conspiracy, fantasy
Summary:The plot's so intense it deserves to be in a goddamn Kdrama. Literally never read anything else like it in the fandom. A well done, intense drama set in a unique  political landscape. Hybrid democratic monarchies, Age old conspiracies, fandom references, Marceline in military uniform, c'mon just read it!.
Musicology series
Author: CountingWithTurkeys
Setting: AT universe
Status | Wordcount: Ongoing | 625,723 (as of 06/02/2021) 
Tags: Canon compliant, angst, fluff, mindfuckery, sociopathic people, some SMUT
Summary: Set in a possible but not probable AT universe. Darker and heavier overall tone. It's the kind of fic that will give your brain a workout. Dysfunctional Bubbline that becomes healthier. Solid portrayal of dysfunction with a believable interpretation of PB and Marcy
VR
Author: deltau
Setting: AT universe
Status | Wordcount: Complete | 7,004
Tags: Fluff, SMUT, virtual reality, shapeshifting
Summary: Bonnie gets her VR machine working and the couple delves into the realm of Marcy's mind. Bonnie makes some pleasant discoveries and afterwards they have some fun time. 
Our perfect disease
Author: JupiterDelphinus
Setting: AT universe
Status | Wordcount: Complete | 112,000
Tags: Non-chronological, anthology, some SMUT, fluff, hurt/comfort, canon divergent
Summary: Past, present and future scenes from the pair. Tone and ratings (G to EXPLICIT) vary according to the chapter. Each chapter is a self contained narrative that helps build the overarching Bubbline story. Very cute, very uwu feels.
Apples after Midnight series
Author: Xekstrin
Setting: AT universe
Status | Wordcount: Complete | 18,565
Tags: SMUT, feels, fluff
Summary: Starts off smutty but then has a lot of feels. Has a legitimate exes romance plot.
The One Where There's No Gunther
Author: ijemanja (on both Ao3 and FFN)
Setting: Coffee Shop AU
Status | Wordcount: Complete | 8,899
Tags: Comedy, Fluff
Summary: Has very good AT-esque dialogue.I can actually imagine the characters saying the lines.
Author's summary: All are welcome at the Coffee Kingdom, even pain in the ass vampire queens. (No Ice Kings, though.)
Double Sugar, Extra Whip
Author: amphitrite
Setting: Coffee Shop AU
Status | Wordcount: Complete | 4,067
Tags: College, Fluff
Summary: Classic coffee shop AU. Think a Vanilla latte. You know what you're getting
Palpitations
Author: ValhallaKoala
Setting: Coffee Shop AU
Status | Wordcount: Complete | 6,298
Tags: Comedy, College, Adorable af
Summary: Author's summary: Black coffee tastes just as good as a caramel macchiato, right? Right!?
Or
Bonnibel is socially inept and makes some questionable decisions.
Viscosity UwU
Author: The Denominator
Setting: College AU
Status | Wordcount: Complete | 9,049
Tags: Feels, non-chronological, sexual references
Summary: College AU but definitely not a classic college AU. It's one of a kind, makes you feel
C's get degrees
Author: megapidgeots
Setting: College AU
Status | Wordcount: Complete | 102,550
Tags: Comedy, fluff, feels, just college roomies getting along
Summary: Classic College AU, you get what you see. 
Author's summary: Bonnie has just started her first year of University, and finds she has a mostly neutral-verging-on-hesitantly-positive opinion of her new roommate, Marceline.
Cliché
Author: Abadeerly (on both Ao3 and FFN)
Setting: College AU
Status | Wordcount: Ongoing | 67,493 (06/02/2021)
Tags: Comedy, fluff
Summary:College AU but you try to cram as many tropes in as possible. It's fun
Five.
Author: Abadeerly (on both Ao3 and FFN)
Setting: College AU
Status | Wordcount: Complete | 7,883 
Tags: Fluff
Author’s summary:The other woman hesitated, eyes doing that thing where they narrowed and seemingly judged Bonnibel for existing, and then she sighed. “I don’t hate you,” She murmured and Bonnibel felt a weird feeling of what felt like relief come over her.
Escort
Author: breeeliss
Setting: College AU
Status | Wordcount: Complete | 21,058
Tags: SMUT, sexual tension, teasing, build up
Summary: Marcy is a tease and Bonnie is a thot.
Show and Tell
Author: Abadeerly (on both Ao3 and FFN)
Setting: College AU
Status | Wordcount: Ongoing | 1,527 (as of 06/02/2021)
Tags: soon to be SMUT, Camgirl, toys, strong sexual references
Summary: Character interactions (so far) are adorable and endearing. Really makes you ship them
Entry 38 UwU
Author: deltau
Setting: College AU
Status | Wordcount: Complete | 5,969
Tags: SMUT, sad feels, strap-on, car sex
Summary: Smut and sad feels
Happy Birthday, Kitten
Author: Abadeerly (on both Ao3 and FFN)
Setting: College Party AU
Status | Wordcount: Complete | 3,030
Tags: SMUT, car sex, praise kink, Top! Bonnie
Summary: Cop Bonnie and Party girl Marcy. That is all. Come get your Top! Bonnie smut
Coincidence
Author: mellish
Setting: College AU
Status | Wordcount: Complete | 5,932
Tags: Fluff, Angst, Break up, Sad ending
Summary: “It’s like holding a test tube and not knowing what’s inside it, not knowing how much damage will be done if it breaks apart.” Traces their relationship from beginning to end. Has my fave ending line of all fics on this list.
Groupies Wanna Get Fucked
Author: Abadeerly (on both Ao3 and FFN)
Setting: Concert, human AU
Status | Wordcount: Complete | 4,973
Tags: SMUT
Summary: Author's summary: Bonnibel's NOT a groupie. Except, she is because this is smut. Enjoy! :)
Chemistry
Author: laurenjauregui (Ao3) / we4retheincrowd (FFN)
Setting: Concert, human AU
Status | Wordcount: Complete | 2,784
Tags: First meeting
Summary: Very cute character interaction. Short and sweet.
40 Weeks
Author: Plesiosaur
Setting: Family AU
Status | Wordcount: Complete | 221,000
Tags: Pregnancy, Cavity inducing fluff, Slice of life, sexual references
Summary: Domestic grown adult bubbline? Check. Hella extra know it all Bonnie? Check. Snarky Marcy? Check. Some deep feels and backstory? Check. Tooth rotting bubbline fluff? Check. Why the hell aren't you reading this?? This story is really good, starts slow but really picks up after like chapter 12
Pray for the Preacher's daughter UwU
Author: reliquiaen (Ao3) / ArcaFeretory (FFN)
Setting: Highschool AU
Status | Wordcount: Complete | 232,197
Tags: Slow burn
Summary:THE fic for the Bubbline fandom. Its the fic that everyone knows and recommends and for good reason. Strong execution of the Punk x Goody two shoes formula.Just... read it if you’d read HS AUs
Anonymous UwU
Author: laurenjauregui (Ao3) / we4retheincrowd (FFN)
Setting: Highschool AU
Status | Wordcount: Ongoing | 229,681 (as of 27/03/2021)
Tags: Slow burn, fluff, TW for abuse
Summary:The second coming of Pray for the preacher's daughter. JK. Seriously though it's a good slow burn with quality that is as good, if not better than, Pray for the preacher's daughter. The bubbline duo in this fic are just,, pure. So pure I can feel the cavities. Also the author updates every week (as of 6/02/2021)
High School Confidential
Author: gloss
Setting: Highschool AU
Status | Wordcount: Complete | 1,085
Tags: Fluff, Flirting
Summary: Marceline never gets too attached to one place or person. In fact, it's probably for the best because her family constantly moves from place to place like nomads. She might stick around this time though. Cute interactions and flirting.
Variants
Author: laurenjauregui (Ao3) / we4retheincrowd (FFN)
Setting: Highschool AU
Status | Wordcount: Complete | 4,918
Tags: Fluff
Author’s summary:Every species has its variants. Bonnie's just trying to figure out which ones are good and which ones are bad.
A love like war
Author: laurenjauregui (Ao3) / we4retheincrowd (FFN)
Setting: Highschool AU
Status | Wordcount: Complete | 433,715 
Tags: Slow burn
Summary: Bonnie moves from New York to some tiny af town in the middle of nowhere. She is not happy.
Different UwU
Author: laurenjauregui (Ao3) / we4retheincrowd (FFN)
Setting: Highschool AU
Status | Wordcount: Discontinued | 25,022
Tags: Cavity inducing sweet Fluff, Autism, discrimination
Summary: Very sweet and fluffy. Like an I will need to go to the dentist level fluff. Characterisation is a bit OOC but it's a very well written piece. I would send this to people who aren't in the fandom and say it's an original piece. It's that good.It ends off in a good place too.
Tourniquet
Author: alizarin_scribbles
Setting: Highschool AU
Status | Wordcount: Complete | 7,883 
Tags: Mutual Pining, Angst, Sad ending
Summary: Star crossed lovers that were so close.
Author’s summary: How they were now was normal enough, not too intimate or indifferent in any respect. Back then, their relations simply didn't have any room for change. Now, Bonnie couldn't help but wonder exactly how such casual acquaintanceship had led to the ghostlike fire currently trickling through her veins.
Glandular Fever
Author: reliquiaen (Ao3) / ArcaFeretory (FFN)
Setting: Highschool AU
Status | Wordcount: Complete |3,740
Tags: Comedy, Fluff
Summary: Author's summary: In which I bundled all the awkward situations I could into a oneshot... and then made them worse.
the secret admirer
Author: laurenjauregui (Ao3) / we4retheincrowd (FFN)
Setting: Highschool AU
Status | Wordcount: Complete |4,724
Tags: Fluff, tooth rotting fluff, Bonnie being a disaster, Marceline being soft
Summary: Author’s summary: #ohsconfession220: To the girl who always hangs out in the library with the red hair and round glasses and freckles i think you’re the cutest person i’ve ever seen pls date me
Bonnie has a secret admirer... and she kind of hates it.
Will You Sign My Cast?
Author: bigpinkbaguette
Setting: Highschool AU
Status | Wordcount: Ongoing |22,122
Tags: Angst, slowburn, childhood friends, enemies to lovers
Summary: The slow burn that hurts so, so much. Otherwise known as Bonnie is too emotionally constipated to deal with the baggage she has with Marceline.
Slacker
Author: CandiedSweets
Setting: Highschool AU
Status | Wordcount: Ongoing |36,806
Tags: Fluff, angst, Bonnie being the most useful gay ever, Useless gay Marceline
Summary: *gasps, a multi-chapter high school AU that isn't a slowburn?! Yep you heard right!
Author’s summary: Marceline’s missed a few days of school and a certain pink haired classmate brings her the work she’s missed, but accidentally finds out something about her in the process.
Bass Guitars and Grandad's Ashes
Author: LastOneFromHometown
Setting: Road trip AU
Status | Wordcount: Ongoing | 41,448 (as of 27/03/2021)
Tags: Comedy, feels, trippy af, slight angst
Summary: Somehow makes even a funeral comedic. Has a very wild and funny charm to it whilst still having moments of feels. Trippy af, really has some AT vibes in it. Fun read.
Hooligans on the Highway
Author: Valverbek
Setting: Road trip AU
Status | Wordcount: Ongoing | 13,123 (as of 27/03/2021)
Tags: Comedy, fluff, established relationship
Summary: A lighthearted and fun read about the gang going on a road trip for Finn’s 21st. Cute & chaotic vibes.
Slaughterhouse UwU
Author: Plesiosaur
Setting: Serial Killer AU
Status | Wordcount: Complete | 6,846
Tags: Murder, police, gore
Summary: Who'd be the best match for our beloved serial killer? Why, another psycho of course. One of my personal favorites
The Prolific Works of the Arctic Butcher
Author: HaveFunStormingTheCastle
Setting: Working adults AU
Status | Wordcount: Ongoing | 40,627 (as of 27/03/2021)
Tags: angst, feels, exes, murder mystery,serial killer, slow burn, reunions 
Summary: Bonnibel is the mayor of Kingdom city. When seemingly unconnected and unsolved murders begin popping up left and right, Bonnie starts doing her own investigations, believing that there may be more than meets the eye. Somehow that brings her on a collision course with Marceline, successful rockstar extraordinaire and her ex. Circumstances force them both to examine their shared past and revisit the destruction they each left in their wake as they investigate a sinister killer with seemingly devious intentions for them both.
There she is (Or what to do when your ex is back in town)
Author: durantesknight
Setting: Working adults AU
Status | Wordcount: Complete | 11,586
Tags: Exes, feels
Summary: A fascinating translation of the Bubbline relationship into a modern setting. This shit legit got me feeling.
Author's summary: Its been seven years since the last time Bonnie and Marceline saw each other, things weren't okay back then, they're not better now.
40 Weeks prequel series (can be read independently of each other and 40 weeks) :
Author: Plesiosaur
Setting: Working adults AU
1)This Could Be The Start Of Something
Status | Wordcount: Complete | 8,214
Tags: Graduation, first meeting, mild homophobia, anaphylaxis
Summary:Marceline and Jake crash a graduation party for free drinks. An ambulance was called.
2)To Fall, Gently And Otherwise
Status | Wordcount: Complete | 4,628
Tags: Fluff
Author's summary: Set between chapters one and two of This Could Be The Start Of Something. After three years of sharing an apartment Marceline really should know better than to take Jake's date advice.
3)Counterpoint
Status | Wordcount: Complete | 3,065
Tags: Hurt/comfort, intellectual rivalry, differing opinions on alternative medicine, historical character death, feels
Author's summary: Even the most perfect couples can clash when they believe in fundamentally different things. But is Bonnie ready to swallow her pride and apologize even when she thinks she's in the right?
First and Last
Author: Plesiosaur
Setting: Working adults AU
Status | Wordcount: Complete | 15,351
Tags: hurt/comfort, feels, family, repressed gay
Summary: Just....intense feels
Orion
Author: NightBearrors
Setting: Working adults AU
Status | Wordcount: Complete | 8,750
Tags: angst, hurt/comfort, feels, exes, ambiguous end
Summary: Their reunion was like a tangent, colliding once only to depart again.
Dough
Author: ArrowOvis
Setting: Working adults AU
Status | Wordcount: Complete | 1707
Tags: angst, feels, exes, implied rape
Summary: Author summary: Dough can be a lot of things - wet, dry, fluffy, flat, pre-mixed, under-mixed...a lot. But most importantly, it can be shaped into something it wasn't before. Whether that is a good or a bad thing, only time can tell.
Alternatively titled: Bonnibel Buchman got screwed over and doesn't deal with it well.
Stripped
Author: Asharyn
Setting: Working adults AU
Status | Wordcount: Complete | 14,708
Tags: Fluff, some SMUT
Summary: Where Bonnie be whipped for Marcy. And vice versa. Honestly, just fluff and smut stripper AU.
End Of The World
Author: Plesiosaur
Setting: Zombie Apocalypse AU
Status | Wordcount: Complete | 3,465
Tags: Death, Gore, feels
Summary: zombie apocalypse AUs are basically non-existent for this ship, so here's a good one.
Experiments
Author: spookyscaryskeletons (Buttons15)
Setting: Zombie Apocalypse AU
Status | Wordcount: Complete | 9,194
Tags: Death, Gore, feels,angst
Summary: If you’ve ever wanted to read a zombie AU written by an actual doctor this is it. It's good. Set in The Last of Us (TLOU) universe though you can go into this without knowing anything about TLOU and still have a good experience. 
165 notes · View notes
alaskasmonsters · 3 years
Text
𝐀𝐜𝐜𝐢𝐝𝐞𝐧𝐭𝐚𝐥 𝐀𝐟𝐟𝐥𝐢𝐜𝐭𝐢𝐨𝐧 | 𝐌𝐢𝐝𝐨𝐫𝐢𝐲𝐚 𝐈𝐳𝐮𝐤𝐮
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✎...it’s hard to be a teenager with a crush on your classmate when you are as emotionally eloquent as a rock. how do you tell izuku that your emotionally coldness towards him is simply because you were absolutely smitten.
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𝐩𝐚𝐢𝐫𝐢𝐧𝐠: midoriya Izuku x gn!reader
𝐰.𝐜: 7.777
𝐰𝐚𝐫𝐧𝐢𝐧𝐠𝐬: swearing???
𝐚.𝐧: don't ask me why my first published oneshot is already 7k+ because i literally don't know. what happened???? also, the characters are aged up one year, so they're gonna be in class 2-A instead of 1-A. Hope you enjoy :)
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𝐁𝐄𝐈𝐍𝐆 𝐀 𝐓𝐄𝐄𝐍𝐀𝐆𝐄𝐑 𝐒𝐔𝐂𝐊𝐄𝐃.
You had come to that realization the day puberty hit you, when it came into your life all loud and boisterous, bringing the gifts of sudden physical changes, hair growth in all the weirdest places and zits that loved to spout over your skin.
Even years after when you had mostly adapted to all the cruel and sudden changes and your skin had luckily calmed down considerably, being a teenager still sucked.
Always being in this weird state between being a child and an adult, being too mature and not mature enough, not able to be trusted with anything and forced to take on more responsibility, having to grow up and still enjoying the times were you were still young.
It was stupid, all of it was stupid.
And it was exhausting. Finding yourself and at the same time everyone already expected from you to know who you are and what you want in life at age 17.
You could go on hours and hours to no end complaining about your age, which probably said enough about your generation anyway. "The youth is always complaining" as if the question to why was a fucking mystery.
But really, you learnt to deal with all of it to a certain degree. Insecurities, doubt, stress, being overwhelmed with everything, sudden changes in personality and opinion...Not pleasant things, but manageable.
All of them except of one.
Love.
Absolutely horrifying in every way.
You had been a teenager for a while now, so the prospect of a crush was nothing new to you. Hell, no. Quite honestly, you had crushes on people for the dumbest reasons.
Told you you were pretty, was pretty, wasn't ugly, was nice to you one time, smiled at you from across the train for one second... seriously, the dumbest reasons.
Crushes were fun, they were short-lived and easy to take care of and were quicker disposed than they were formed.
Never once in your life has an innocent crush mutated into...this. You didn't exactly know what to call it yet, didn't have a name for it, but it was slowly but steadily turning you into a fucking idiot.
Lov...-no, you refused to call the fungus that had infected your brain that - infatuation was like a virus that had slowly spread through you and mastered the arts of "random brain malfunction" perfectly.
Well, it wasn't random. There was a certain trigger. One person you seemed to lose brain cells around whenever they just did as much as stand near you.
If you would have had to make any guess before, of who it would be you would fall....become infuriated with in 1-A when you first came to UA, Midoriya Izuku would have not been your first choice. Hell, that boy wouldn't have been the second choice either, or the third, or any of the top numbers.
The boy seemed quite plain amongst the very diverse group of teenagers you shared a class with. He had a cute face, sure, but next to Mina with her pink skin, Tokoyami with his crow head or even just Kirishima with his flaming red hair and sharp teeth the boy was not catching anybody's eyes at first glance.
Hell, if this was a tv show, he probably wouldn't even be part of the main cast.
Midoriya was small, hid his muscular and well-trained body in loose clothing and had a baby face, all freckly with wide green eyes, framed by curly green hair. He was a shy and quiet kid, mumbling to himself a lot and never worrying to stick out just the littlest bit.
The first few weeks it had been hard for you to remember his name, the only thing that had made him easier to recognize to you was the fact, that that kid broke his limbs more times in a week than anybody every did in their whole life.
You couldn't quite remember when that form of acknowledgement of Midoriya Izuku's existent had turned into straight up infuriation, but you had been stuck in this state for a while now, too long for your liking.
Crushes came and went, most lasting for a few weeks at most, but when you had started crushing on Midoriya and naively hoped it would go away soon, your feelings had only grown more and more, developed further, mutated into "this". The fungus. The infuration.
You weren't trying to say Midoriya was a bad choice to develop feelings beyond friendship for. No, the boy was stupidly nice, loyal to a fault, analyzing and extremly ambitious, working hard every day to become stronger. And pretty, he was very pretty.
The problem wasn't that you had "chosen" wrong, or rather your heart, that stupid fucking thing.
The problem was that you had chosen at all.
Being 17 was hard enough, being 17 and training to become a Hero in a class, whose teacher was out to test their limits by placing them into deadly scenarios, was even harder. Being interested in another person in that class, someone you had to work with together and see every day while being unable to grasp a coherent thought, was fucking hell.
You had tried to get over it, to just ignore those nasty things people called feelings, push down the warm and fuzzy feeling you got everytime you caught sight of the boy and calm your heart whenever Midoriya Izuku decided it was a good choice to look your way and smile at you. Which he did a lot, damn him for being so fucking friendly with everyone.
You had tried to convince yourself that Deku, as most of his friends called him (altough you thought Izuku was a much prettier name), wasn't worth it. Just another stupid boy with a cute face you crushed on for no reason.
That hadn't worked of course, considering Midoriya was a fucking sunshine kid, who was well-beloved in your class and everyone he ever met for a reason. If everybody else was falling victim to his undeniable charm, how could you hope it would be different with you.
Maybe because you were damn naive.
You had tried everything and more, even gone as far as fully face your feelings, examine them, write down all the reasons why you believed you might have a crush on that Deku kid, come up with 10 (and more you refused to add, since 10 was already too many), put them into your notebook and tried to close the book, both literally and figuratively, on it. It hadn't worked.
All it had gotten you to was this state of awareness, that made dealing with Midoriya Izuku so much harder because now you knew, now you coudln't ignore it any longer. The way his smile made you all giddy, the way his voice warmed your heart, the way the blush on his face (and that boy was blushing a lot) did things to you. Something you'd never admit aloud to anyone.
Everything about him was suffocating but at the same time making you feel lighter.
It was absolutely disgusting.
You thought about kissing his stupidly chubby cheeks more than you thought about how much you wanted to lie down and sleep, that was just bullshit in itself.
One of the worst thing about this whole infuration thing, besides making you brain dead half of the time, was that you were absolutely unable to hide your frustrations with it or even function like a normal human around the subject of your...adoration? You were running out of words, slowly.
See, you weren't a bad person, most days you got along just fine with everyone in class (despite Mineta, friendliness didn't help with someone like that), you'd even go as far to say you were a nice person most of the time. It would probably be all of the time if you didn't have that habit of speaking your mind which led to some not so nice comments about people you couldn't stand (*cough* Mineta *cough*), which was probably the only reason you got along with Bakugou in the first place.
Sure, you sported a resting bitch face, Kaminari kindly told you, looked half-dead and not approachable on most days (Todoroki was probably conspiracing about you being Aizawa's secret love child because of your matching eyebags) and you avoided talking too much...but you were nice!
Around Midoriya Izuku you seemed to lose all social skills along with your brain cells, though. That was the only way you could explain why you were so...rude to him. Not that you were actively insulting him or even looking at him in a nasty way. But whatever you did, you were still rude.
If he asked you a question, you shrugged and gave him a curt one-sentence answer, if he complimented you, you deflected quickly, if he smiled you stared at him for a second before turning away, if he caught your eye you frowned and looked away, making sure you weren't staring again for the rest of the day.
You hadn't noticed in the beginning. In your eyes you had just tried to act as nonchalant and not in lo...not interested in Midoriya Izuku as convincing as you could, but then Mina had casually asked you why you hated Midoriya when you hung out during lunch and you realized, maybe your behaviour has been a little counterproductive.
Instead of you dealing with your stupid feelings by your own, you've involuntarily drawn attention towards it with your out-of-character behaviour towards the subject of your...it didn't really matter. Who also happened to be the class favorite so you go!
Now you were stuck at lunch, Mina, Jirou and Kaminari out of all people surrounding you and observing you with both interest and intrigue. In hindsight, Tokoyami would have made a much better lunch mate, but no, you wanted to sit with Mina.
Figures.
"I don't hate him," you answered simply, trying your best to hide how much the change of topic irked you.
You've already failed to be subtle about you having a so-called "problem" with the green-haired boy, you really didn't want them to know what this problem was.
You hoped that if you were just playing nonchalant your gossip hungry friends would get bored quickly and just let it drop and move on to the next thing.
Mina rolled her eyes at your answer as if to say "Yeah, right." while Kaminari and Jirou exchanged sceptical glances.
"Yesterday he complimented you on your idea in the rescue training and you just walked away...you're never that rude," Mina reminded you.
You huffed out an annoyed sigh. Right, yesterday. As if you didn't remember.
Aizawa had split you up into groups of five and you have had the misfortune of being stuck with Deku as one of your teammates. Misfortune because, well....how were you supposed to concentrate on saving those fake hostages when the subject of your affection was in close proximity, mumbling to himself in that irritatingly hot way he did so often.
You had suggested a method of approach, not thinking anything about it and that fucker had the audacity to turn your way with the brightest smile directed at you and complimented you.
What other choice did you have than to just stare at him blankly before walking away? Grabbing his face and smashing your lips into his certainly wasn't one.
Of course Mina, who had been one of the other three people in your team, remembered that shit show of a reaction.
"Yeah, well," you shrugged, trying to play it off. "Didn't think that needed an answer."
"And Midoriya is so sweet. Didn't think hating him was possible," Mina ignored you, instead turning thoughtfully towards the other two people at the table.
You stared longingly at the free spot next to Tokoyami at the table before yours.
"Bakugou didn't look like he struggled with it," Jirou reminded her and Kaminari nodded.
"Now they get along just fine, though," the blond reminded her.
Right, even Bakugou hadn't been able to resist Midoriya's charm. He'd probably deny it, if anyone ever brought it up, but both of them had taken major steps forward in their relationship and were now at a level of mutual respect at the very least, and tight partnership at the most. Hell, you'd say they were friends, even.
"But Midoriya is just too cute! Hating him is like hating puppies and Bakugou totally gives off that vibe. Y/n doesn't!" Mina countered, defensive of your honor it seemed, although you couldn't really appreciate the sentiment in the moment.
You'd rather continue to ignore the obvious problems your affliction with the green-haired boy had caused both him and you than be confronted and scolded by your friends because of it.
"I told you. I don't hate Midoriya. Can we talk about something else?" you tried again, already knowing it was hopeless.
"You hate Mineta, though. The way you treat Midoriya is very similar to the way you treat him," Jirou commented.
Kami clapped his hands enthusiastically as if she's just made the most brilliant discovery.
"Jirou's right. You ignore his existence until you can't, then you give Midoriya that glare and walk away."
You frowned at the blond's claim, highly displeased.
The comparison between Mineta and Midoriya left a nasty taste in your mouth. Deku was way too fucking polite and respectful to be compared to something like that.
And pretty...he was very pretty.
"Now, thinking i'd ever dislike someone as much as Mineta is just plain delirious," you snorted.
At least they didn't seem to argue with that statement.
Silence returned for a little after that. You even dared think the topic was dropped for now and you could go back to scribbling into your notebook and enjoy the rest of your break in peace.
But Mina, sweet annoying Mina, liked to make your life a living hell.
"It's just really sad having to watch Midoriya look like a kicked puppy every time you reject his obvious efforts to woo you."
Now, fate was just being cruel, or maybe it was just Mina who had purposefully waited for the moment you had deemed safe to take a sip of your drink so she could drop that bombshell on you.
Now you were choking on your juice and maybe that was a good enough way to go, you thought while violently coughing.
Kaminari and Mina were laughing at your expense (yes you had called them your friends before and yes you regretted it), while Jirou looked at you with a mixture of smugness and guilt.
"He does not!" you denied loudly between coughs, feeling the blush already settling on your cheeks.
A few heads turned your direction to see what you were screaming about but you ignored them in favor of glaring at the pink-skinned girl in front of you, now your arch nemesis.
"Yes, he does. I'm surprised you haven't noticed yet with how stupidly obvious it is," Jirou butted in and now it was her turn to be fixed with a death glare.
"Poor guy is crushing hard on you," Kaminari agreed.
Wow, Kaminari, too, then.
This time you didn't hold back your groan.
As if your infatuation with the green-haired boy wasn't bad enough already, now your friends were trying to talk you into the idea that Midoriya, sweet kind Midoriya was returning your feelings.
Your feelings. The feelings of someone who's been nothing but horrible to him the last few weeks and basically ignoring his existence before that.
He'd sure be stupid.
Your friends surely were stupid if they believed that.
"Yeah, whatever."
This was the only comment you were willing to make, sending each of the people on the table a pointed look before you noisely opened your notebook to signal you were done talking and ready to drop the subject.
But boy oh boy, the subject was not ready to drop you.
                                                          ─
It was a few days later when you started to notice...something. You certainly wouldn't have if your friends' teasing words hadn't entirely taken up your mind along with a certain boy who had been living inside there rent-free for months now.
You had been sitting in the common area, finishing up your homework together with Tokoyami (yes, you had learned your lesson) at one of the tables. The both of you had been quietly working, rarely interrupting the other with questions about one of the assignments.
That was until Midoriya appeared out of nowhere, suddenly standing in front of your table and scaring the living shit out of you in the process.
He smiled at you, eyes bright and cheeks flushed. An image of what you could only assume was the most beautiful sight a person could lay eyes on. Although he was nervously fumbling with his hands and blushing, his voice was steady when he asked you, you, yes you, for help with his homework.
You couldn't be mistaken. No, he had certainly looked at you when asking that question. He was asking YOU for help with his homework.
The little traitorous thing in your chest called a heart swelled with hope at this and you had to force down the memories of your friends words to keep on functioning.
Poor boy is crushing hard on you.
It took several moments for you to realize that instead of giving Midoriya an answer to his question, you had stared at him, frowning deeply. For way too long to be considered polite.
So much for functioning.
Again your brain had blanked at the mere idea of communicating with Midoriya Izuku, stuttered to a halt when presented with the opportunity to be decent to the boy for once.
Deku's beautiful beaming smile had dropped in the meantime, replaced by a frustrated pout at your silence. The joy slowly fading from his face frustrated you immensely and the urge to make him smile just once, because of something you said to him, was getting unbearable.
Yes, take my homework. Take my heart, too. Take all of it, you wanted to say.
None of that made it past your lips.
Tokoyami was looking between the two of you with confusion, sceptical of your uncharacteristical silence. You weren't one to just ignore someone's cry for help, even Mineta you'd begrudgingly take pity on from time to time.
When Tokoyami saw that you probably wouldn't reply anytime soon to Midoriya's question, or stop staring for that record, he sent the boy a smile and instead offered his help instead. Not without sending you a last questioning look from your peripheral vision.
Usually this was the moment you'd advert your attention from the scene to scold yourself for falling victim to your stupid hormon-flooded brain.
This time, you had waited a few seconds longer, why you weren't sure. It had been a subconscious decision. Maybe a desperate attempt to spot that something your friends had been talking about. What had they called it? Right, the kicked puppy look.
The boy deflated, shoulders falling as he glanced between you and Tokoyami. He stuttered out an apology directed at you, for bothering you (your heart broke a little) and a thank you directed at Tokoyami before stumbling to take a seat next to him.
Maybe that had awoken the little voice again, the one you'd gotten rid of a while ago. The one that whispered sweet promises into your ear and painted scenarios of you and Midoriya being happy together if you'd just give it a try and confess your feel...affliction with him.
Luckily you were already an expert on how to silent that nasty thing. The boy's reaction to your words was not that suprising after all. You had understood early that Midoriya was trying to be friendly with everybody, when his efforts were ignored his mood dropped quickly.
That was just the way he was.
After all, he was known to make friends quickly with those who weren't looking to get close to anyone, see Todoroki and Shinsou.
You were just about to smother the last bit of naive hope, then you caught Uraraka's eyes across the room.
Usually, you liked to think you and her got along quite well (considering the "i'm an asshole to your best friend" aspect of it). You weren't close but you had definitely reached the level where you were sending each other smiles when passing by or lending the other a pencil from time to time.
The way she looked at you now though made you rethink that.
Her eyes were ice cold, almost making you question if it was really Todoroki that had the ice quirk in your class. Her face was scrunched up in displeasure as she was staring you down.
It made you want to crawl up in a corner and die even more than you did on a regular basis.
You still felt the effects of it after you've turned back to your homework as a way escape what you could only call a disappointed but deadly glare, and to distract yourself. Uraraka had looked a little like a mother scolding you, but at the same time hoping you'd lit up and burn.
Which was a pretty disturbing image.
Unfortunately that wasn't the only occurrance.
You noticed quickly that every time you rejected Izuku's efforts (due to your dumb teenager brain) after that evening, Uraraka's eyes would be on you, schooling you with that icy glare again.
Not once did that fail to make you look away with shame.
You knew it couldn't be because you were being a jerk to her best friend, not even Bakugou had ever received such cold treatment from the brunette and he'd been quite persistent on making Midoriya's first semester in UA as hard as humanly possible.
Kaminari's voice chimed into your head once again and you had to physically shake that thought off.
You didn't need any false hope.
After all you were that kid in class that was always tired, mostly some kind of pissed and despite being kind of nice to most people (which you still think you are!) you were extremly rude to Midoriya.
There was no rational reason for him to be into you. None at all.
The only thing you two had in common was that both of you were constantly hunched over your notebooks, the green-haired boy to add to his collection of Hero analyses and you to do whatever you did with that old thing. You sketched, you wrote down notes and ideas, you made lists...really it was more junk than useful.
You'd been hung up about this fungus for days now, even more than usually and it slowly but steadily took over your thoughts of every awake minute of your day. You needed to stop this before "it" was getting too hard to control. If you weren't careful you would accidentally blurt out your feelings for him or even worse...
Do something as stupid as kiss him the next time he was trying to talk to you. That would be truly catastrophical.
You needed to get over this, be the bigger person and leave the infatuation die out. The best way to kill a fungus was to deprive it of its nutrition after all. So no false hope, no longingly staring at Deku, no picturing you two holding hands, nothing!
You were a Hero-in-Training, you wanted to be a Pro someday, so the only solution was to get a grip and handle your problems face on. By pushing them even deeper down until you were over them.
A knock on your door ripped you out of your thoughts. You startled at the noise.
It was late, you checked the clock and yes, it was late. Not late enough for anyone to be worried you were already in bed. It was common knowledge your sleeping schedule was fucked, considering how many times you joked with Shinsou about it, who, surprise, struggled with sleep, too.
Sitting up from your hunched over position on your chair, you contemplated whether to open the door or not. You really didn't feel like talking to anybody right now, too frustrated by the Midoriya Izuku problem you tried to find a solution for. Still you were curious who wanted to see you around this time, instead of just texting you.
Screw it, you thought.
You jumped up, crossing your room in a few steps before ripping open your door, half expecting Mina or maybe Shinsou in front of it. Who you found instead made you freeze and the greeting you'd prepared die on your tongue.
This was a joke, wasn't it?
"Ahh, i'm sorry. It's just me. I know it's late, i just...Can we talk?"
This was a joke. Your love life was a joke.
Just as you decided to get him out of your system, to stop engaging with him, to stop even thinking about him, who had chosen that exact moment to pop up in front of your door?
Midoriya freaking Izuku.
You stared at the green-haired boy, fidgeting nervously with his hand as he stood in front of you, tell-tale blush painting his freckly cheeks.
The audacity of him to look that adorable. It was beyond you.
Fuck, were you wordlessly staring again? Yes, Midoriya's increasingly worried expression told you you were doing just that.
What was that? Getting a grip on yourself? Yeah, right.
"I...i know, i'm sorry. I'll...it will only take a second," he tried again, stuttering helplessly around his words.
Why did he have to be so damn cute?
The only answer you managed was a curt nod, your brain once again failing to do the one thing it was supposed to do: Make your body function.
"I know you don't like me a lot. I..it's okay, i understand. You don't have to like me. I'm sure...i'm sure you have a reason, uh, it's fine really. I didn't want to bother you. I'll...i'll make this quick. Promise. I just, i need to tell you this to kind of..get it off my chest, i guess? Ochako thinks it's a good idea. To get it over with. To just tell you. You don't have to respond of course. I..."
Deku was rambling now, his cheeks tinted pink and despite how much you loved that sight, a flustered Midoriya Izuku with pink dusting his freckled cheeks, you knew if you didn't stop him now he would start manically mumbling to himself and you would have to struggle even harder to not do something stupid like, kiss the living shit out of him.
"Tell me what?" you disrupted and shit, you sounded more annoyed than you wanted to sound.
You blamed that on the frustration you felt with every growing minute you weren't able to just hold his hand and call him your boyfriend...okay what the hell, get a grip!
"Uh, right. I'm sorry, i'm rambling. I…," he let out a slow breath, straightened his shoulders and looked up at you with a new determination in his bright eyes. "I like you!"
Your brain short-circuited.
Midoriya, sweet, deadly Midoriya didn't seem to notice.
"I think you're amazing! You are so smart, your strategies during training and your idea about how Kaminari could use his pointer technique during the excercise on Tuesday was brilliant. I like that you're so honest with everybody and try your best to be nice to everyone! I know you were the one that locked Mineta into a locker because he was trying to spy on Yaoyorozu in the changing room. And you're, uh... you're pretty, too, aah", his face turned more red after saying that, "I know you probably don't feel the same, but maybe you do. Do you...do you like me, too?"
When Deku had finished he looked at you with the brightest smile you've ever seen on him, basically vibrating with excitement.
You were too overwhelmed by his sudden confession to be awestruck about it, your mind swirling with thoughts. Whatever you had expected, this was not it. This was anything but what you could have ever imagined and you had a wild imagination, your brain constantly came up with the weirdest ideas and scenarios you could be stuck in with him and still it could have never, ever made up something like that.
Midoriya Izuku confessing to you, telling you you were amazing and brilliant and pretty. He said you were pretty. He thought you were pretty. Class 2-A's personal sunshine believed you were pretty.
You were so lost in your own mind you hadn't noticed that you've continued staring at the boy in front of your door with a blank face for several minutes now. Midoriya's expression dulling with every second you didn't respond.
Panic. A wave of cold and suffocating panic washed over your body, leaving your body shaking. And shit, now your eyesight was getting blurry, too. Were you seriously about to fucking cry over some stupid boy confessing to you?
Deku, who noticed your glassy eyes, started to backtrack, throwing his arms in the air to wave them around franctically.
"I'm sorry. You...you don't have to say anything of course. It's okay if you...don't like me back. I-..."
You had shut the door in his face before he could finish his sentence and instantly regretted your impulsiveness at the glimpse you had caught of his face, a heartbroken look in his eyes, right before the door had closed.
Fuck.
Fuck. Fuck. Fuck. Fuck. Fuck.
Why did you do that?
That was not what you wanted to do!
Now tears were freely streaming over your face and you quickly rubbed the fabric of your hoodie to your eyes.
You were so stupid.
How were you supposed to tell Izuku you liked him, too, after shutting your door in his face directly after he told you he had feelings for you.
You felt like absolute garbage.
                                                             ─
Turned out garbage was not the end of it and you could actually feel worse than you already did.
You realized that the exact moment you caught sight of Midoriya Izuku's red and puffy eyes as he stumbled into class the next day.
Your heart sank when the usual giddy greeting the boy sent everyone's way stayed absent and Midoriya quickly scrambled to his seat, eyes lowered to the ground to avoid everyone's (and your) stare. Ururaka and Iida rushed to him as soon as he was sat down, obviously concerned about his blue state but he just waved them off with a smile you could tell wasn't genuine.
You didn't think you could bear seeing Midoriya like this for even a second longer, so you turned away and towards your open notebook again. Even without looking at the green-haired boy, you couldn't push down the guilt that was nagging away at you.
Mina who had noticed your glances towards Midoriya and crestfallen expression leaned back in her chair and gave you a questioning look as she subtly motioned towards the boy in question, who was probably trying to stop Uraraka from murdering you at the moment for all you knew.
The look in her eyes you've seen far too many times not to know what she was thinking.
This is your fault, isn't it?
Before you could answer, Aizawa, who you've never been happier to see, entered the room, his sleeping bag rolled up under his arm and declared the lesson was about to start.
Still, class, despite the partly interesting topic of hostage situations, did not help to take your mind off of Midoriya, who was for once in his life not taking notes on everything said like his life depended on it.
No, instead he was dully staring to the front, looking like his thoughts were far away.
And despite the fact that it made you feel even worse about yourself, you were unable to keep your glance from constantly shifting towards him. If only because you felt you deserved to feel like shit for wiping the smile off of Izuku's face and replacing it with tear-strained cheeks and dullen eyes.
As soon as lunch break arrived you were pulled away by Mina, who barely left you any time to pack up your things before she was dragging you out of the room. Kaminari followed behind you, obviously confused about what was going on but also keen to find out and be involved in the gossip.
You were a little surprised the pink-skinned girl waited long enough until you've gotten your food, which you weren't planning on eating anyway and sat down on one of the tables until she started the interrogation. Not that you planned to eat anyway.
"So, what did you do to our sunshine boy?"
Right to the point then, okay.
Kaminari looked between the both of you in confusion until the realization seemed to dawn on him.
"Wait, you are the reason Midoriya looks like he's cried himself to sleep?" the boy asked loudly, having never heard of subtlety.
Groaning, you buried your face in your hands.
Which was answer enough to Kaminari and Mina as they both started to bombard you with questions.
"What did you do?"
"Seriously, the guy looks heartbroken."
"Poor Midoriya. I've never seen him so sad. Oh no, he's crying."
"We knew you hated the dude, but you usually resort to only making Mineta cry."
You turned your head to look at the table you knew was usually preoccupied by Deku and his friends and fuck, he was crying, Mina was right.
Uraraka was hugging his shoulder, mumbling what you could only guess were reassuring words, or maybe she was telling him about the murder she was planning to commit on you to calm him. That girl was scarier than Bakugou when he was having one of his fits.
Midoriya tried to smile at his friends, probably to not worry them too much, that was so Deku. Unfortunately with the tears running down his face the smile didn't look very convincing.
"I'm a horrible person," you mumbled, turning around to bury your face in your arms.
"Well, only a little," Mina assured. "What exactly did you do?"
"He confessed to me and i shut the door in his face."
Silence fell over your table due to what you could only assume to be the shock your exclamation had caused.
"You're heartless," Mina deadpanned after a minute has passed.
"Well, why did you do that? What did the guy ever do to you?"
Kaminari sounded like you rejecting Midoriya like that was causing him personal pain.
Another groan, this one coming deep from within the depths of your soul, ripped from your lips.
You knew you were an asshole, they didn't have to tell you again.
"I panicked. I didn't know what to do!"
"So you shut the door in his face?" Kaminari specified, eyeing you with a critical look.
"Not purposefully! I just...he was telling me he liked me and then saying how amazing he thought i was and that he thinks i'm pretty and my brain short-circuited! I just...i panicked!" you tried to explain, but quickly found you didn't know what to tell them.
I've been crushing hopelessly on the boy for months now and didin't think he'd feel the same, so when he told me i almost started crying because i was so overwhelmed.
Yeah, not happening.
"Then apologize to him!" Mina urged you.
Kaminari nodded enthusiastically.
"Yeah. Say you're sorry and you didn't mean to be so harsh but he caught you by surprise!" he suggested and this time it was Mina's turn to show her enthusiasm with nodding vigorously.
"Yes! Then say he's a nice guy but you just don't feel the same. His heart will still be broken but he'll get over it," she continued.
Both of your friends highfived each other.
You looked down on the table, avoiding their glance. That would be a good plan, a solid plan, really, if it wasn't for the one vital fault it had.
"Yeah, can't do that."
You had said those words quietly, but Mina seemed to hear.
"Why not? Look at him. He's a mess," she told you.
You did not have to look at Midoriya probably still crying at his table to know that. Fuck, you didn't know if it was your guilt eating away at you but you swore you could hear him sniffling from over here.
Mina and Kaminari were staring you down and you decided to swallow down your pride. Put everything out there.
"Yeah, i know but...i can't tell him i don't return his feelings."
You were expecting outrage, confusion, shock, all of that. What you didn't expect was for Mina to start screaming at the top of her lungs.
"WHAT? YOU LIKE MI-"
You could only thank years of hero training for being able to launch toward the girl and clasp a hand over her mouth before she was able to finish the sentence.
"Mina! Shut up!"
Despite your efforts several heads turned your way, staring curiously into your direction. Out of the corner of your eye you saw that Midoriya was one of them and you started blushing furiously. Shit.
The pink-haired girl, you usually liked to call your best friend but maybe you should stop doing that right this instant, smirked at you with a dangerous twinkle in your eyes.
"You have a crush on Midoriya? Ha, is that why you're always so horrible to him? You're worse than Bakugou," Kaminari whisper shouted, then started laughing maniacally.
Mina joined him.
Staring blankly until they calmed down, you took the time to reconsider your life choices.
How come you had chosen to associate with those crackheads, when instead you could spend all your time with Tokoyami. He was calm, quiet, didn't engage in gossip and quite open to giving advice.
Shinsou would have been a possibility, too, if it wasn't for his involvement with Midoriya's friend group. You clearly lost all sympathy they ever held for you, now that you've broken their sunshine's heart...
"Perfect. Go tell him."
Mina's words managed to rip you out of your train of thoughts quick enough it almost gave you whiplash.
"Wha-"
Before you could finish though, the girl had already jumped to her feet, grabbed your arm and was dragging you around for the second time this day.
Realizing the direction she was heading for with you started panicking. You pulled your arm and dug your feet into the ground, but the girl’s grip was unrelenting.
“Mina. Stop it. Mina! Mina! Let me go!” you tried desperately.
And she did...only to push you the few remaining meters towards the table the so called ‘Dekusquad’ were sat at.
Several eyes darted to you as you came to a skidding halt. The most prominent glance belonging to a set of greens, filled with unshed tears.
Shit!
“Good luck!” Mina shouted from behind you and when you turned her direction you could spot her standing several feet away with fucking Kaminari next to her, both of them grinning and giving you a thumbs up.
"Y/n?" Uraraka's surprised voice forced you to look back toward the table.
You shot her a nervous smile, forcing your eyes to stay focused on her face instead of the boy right next to her. Judging by the worried look she gave you in return, you must look as crazy as you felt like in the moment.
"Uh...hi. Sorry. Wrong address," you sputtered, turning around to skitter away again, but Mina had sniffed out your attempted escape and appeared in front of you to shove you back towards them.
"No Mina. I...i need my backpack," you whisper shouted, trying to calm the beating heart in your chest.
She shoved it into your hands, but you didn’t have time to ask yourself where she even brought it out from, before you were standing in front of the very confused Deku and friends again.
Mina gave the people on the table a wide grin, turning towards the person of your affection.
"Now, Y/n has something to tell you, Midoriya sweetie,” she smiled sweetly at him and pat your head twice.
A last manic grin was sent your way before you were left on your own, again, stared down by Ururaka, Iida, Todoroki and none other than the boy himself.
"You've got something to say, Y/n?" Uraraka asked sweetly, cocking her head to the side.
"Ochako!" Deku complained quietly, before he looked towards you, red eyes wide and hopeful.
He sent you a nervous smile and your heart jumped at the sight. You had missed that smile so much and now you were the cause of it on top of it...
No! No, get a grip.
You scolded yourself mentally. For heaven’s sake, you were in UA, training to become a hero and you couldn't even tell the boy you liked that you were kind of, a little bit in lo...enamored by him.
That was pathetic. You already knew he felt the same about you. You could do this.
You clenched your fists, grip around your backpack tightening. You could do this! Taking a deep breath, then two more, you straightened your back.
"Let's talk!" you shouted, a little too loudly, cringing a little at your sudden outburst.
Fuck. Calm down!
"O-okay?"
Great, now he looked more intimidated than sad. Well done, Y/n.
You gave him a curt nod that ended up looking too robotic probably, judging by the confused glances you receibed, so you nodded once again. Then you clumsily gestured towards the exit of the cafeteria.
Izuku jumped to his feet, stumbling and almost falling in the process, quickly following behind you as you speed walked out of the room to find an area that was more abandoned with less nosy students that could overhear you confessing your...fungus to the boy.
The both of you ended up in one of the corridors that was kinda hidden away from the rest, as the only door led to a closet for cleaning utensilies.
"You...you wanted to talk?”
Midoriya was the first to break the silence, nervously looking around, as he fumbled with his hands. The tears had stopped but his eyes were still puffy and his nose was red. You felt even guiltier at the sight.
All the bravery you had been able to summon just seconds ago under Mina’s pressure had left your body when you realized you were alone with Deku now.
"Uh...yeah."
Before you could change your mind or say more stupid shit like "Uh...yeah" you dropped your bag to the floor, startling Midoriya, before kneeing down to rummage through the contents.
You found what you were looking for quickly, picking it up and pulling it out. Midoriya eyed the object in your hands with curiosity as you stood up again.
"Is that...your notebook?"
Ignoring the question you opened the book, quickly flipping through the pages until you found what you were looking for. You gulped. This would be embarassing, but you knew after making Midoriya cry you owed him some kind of amends.
With a sigh, and a final mental curse, you pushed the open book into his hands. The boy looked startled at first, looking at the item in his hands with interest.
His eyes widened, looking even bigger than they usually already were, when he took in the title of the opened page and he looked up at you with shining eyes.
"Just...read it," you pressed out, fighting the blush that threatened to creep up your cheeks.
That page...it contained 10 reasons of why you had thought you might have possibly developed a crush on him. You remembered you had written them down a few weeks ago, but unfortunately you still remembered all of them clearly.
10 reasons why i think i might have a crush on this Deku kid:
He's a soft boy (his freckles, his squishy cheeks, his cute fucking smile and did i mention the CURLS??? illegal!)
His face is irritating me. I want to pinch it, like every time he smiles or frowns or pouts or god...when he blushes...CAN HE JUST NOT DO THAT?
Extension: I think about kissing his face a lot...that's not normal. it's disgusting!
He is a crybaby and when he cries my heart hurts
Our zodiac signs are compatible (yes i checked)
I remember his birthday (it's july 15, boy's a cancer and nobody is surprised)
Yesterday he giggled and i think i went into cardiac arrest for a bit there
He's so smart, he mumbles a lot about theories and quirk observations and i don't even understand half of that shit but it's fucking hot
Green is suddenly my new favorite color whoops
He's so so nice to everyone! Even me! I'm awful! Stop it Izuku! I don't know how to do words around you and everytime you look at me with those big green eyes it doesn't fucking help.
You had adverted your eyes while Izuku was reading through your listing, your stomach churning with fear at how he’d react when he figured out you’d been into him for a while now.
The silence that followed was killing you and you had to fight yourself not to take a glimpse at the boy to see if he was finished reading by now.
“You...like me, too?”
The question starled you, although you should have expected it. You nodded quickly, still turned away, hoping he wouldn’t notice your flushed face.
A hand grabbed yours and you flinched a little in surprise at the sudden contact, head jerking to look at Izuku again.
The sight in front of you took your breath away.
Deku’s smile was so wide you thought it might split his face in two, his eyes watery and his lips wobbly with emotions. He squeezed your hand once, twice and you felt your blush deepen at the attention.
“I’m so glad, y/n-chan,” he told you, voice filled with emotion.
Your face probably exploded with red at the new nickname he had given you, a small smile breaking on your face as well as you saw Midoriya Izuku so wonderfully happy, smiling because of you.
Finally, you made him smile so wide and beautiful, all by yourself.
Maybe this fungus growing inside your chest with every second you let the boy in deeper wasn’t so bad after all...
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k-s-morgan · 3 years
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Hi! This isn’t an ask, but more of a rambling that I deemed too long for the comments, that stems from your post claiming Book of Circus as your favourite Black Butler episodes. and to that I say - YES. Book of Murder is a masterpiece. It houses one of my favourite scenes - the one where Sebastian says: "This wasn't a scenario decided by God or fate, but one decided on by my master, with timing decided by my master. I was killed by the criminal expected by my master, by the Hione who came to torment my master", which really captures the essence of whole 'Ciel vs God' dynamic that's woven into the duration of the show.
Throughout the plot, there are three major instances in which an offering is made to Ciel - offerings of redemption. The first is from Angela - a chance to purify himself and have an afterlife - which he so vehemently rejects in the knowledge that he quite literally *is* his darkness, and therefore refuses to rid himself of it.
The second is comes from Abberline in his death, where in his final words he tells Ciel he has a chance to take back his future. And Ciel has to watch him die with the knowledge that he has already made up his mind about his fate. I don't think he's so affected because he regrets selling his soul. I don't think he suddenly wants to live, or no longer wishes for revenge. But I believe the reason he is so affected by Abberline's death is because he holds a sentimentality for him that is not dissimilar to the one he feels for Elizabeth. Ciel is cruel, I don't think he regrets the steps he has taken to get to this point, nor the ones he knows he must take in the future. But though he is cruel, I believe he has a sort of fond curiosity for the untainted goodness that characterises those like Abberline and Elizabeth. Like you said before, he feels condescension towards the man perhaps due to the naivety his blind heroism implies, but I think his attachments to him come from an underlying curiosity to see if such goodness can exist in such a corrupted world - a silent hope to be proven wrong in his cynicism. When Abberline dies, that very hope he didn't even know he had gets shattered. It brings about a sort of forced perspective that makes Ciel question himself in ways we haven't seen before.
Abberline's death had been avoidable and it was certainly in vain. Abberline had died for someone who had already made up his mind - someone who had rejected God once before and would do it time and time again as proven in the anime. Ciel is such an interesting character because, although he is dark, he still values the light and makes some sort of effort to preserve it in spite of the contempt he feels for them. It is the thought of dying in vain that seems to bother him so greatly, not death itself. No, Abberline dying isn't enough for him to want to live again, or to even think about throwing away his revenge - that was never in question. But it is enough to extinguish the lingering flicker of hope he had for humanity (despite being so distanced from term himself).
This, combined with the disappointment he feels at Sebastian's actions, causes the existential haze of uncertainty that leads to the third and final offering. And the most surprising thing is that this offering comes from Sebastian himself. He senses the doubt in Ciel and, like every thought the boy experiences, fails to understand it. He mistakes it for him second-guessing his revenge and decides to discontinue their contract. But he isn't angry - that much is clear. Instead, he wishes him to "forget everything and have pleasant dreams", with a rather wistful expression on his face. What this line ends up reading as is a bittersweet  goodbye from the demon - an offering for Ciel to let go of his revenge and find happiness in the afterlife with his now soon approaching death.  There is almost a strong disappointment in him, but is not resentful of it - Ciel is human and he can't keep expecting him not to be. His offering almost acts as a thank you for the moments of excitement their contract had given his monotone life and I believe that is why he makes it.
He sticks around to see if Ciel accepts his offer, though already expecting him to, and is there to witness the very moment the boy rejects it. Gone is the uncertainty of Abberline's death and the Paris crisis, and Ciel, the Earl of Phantomhive, returns to him - sharper, colder, more ruthless than ever. Sebastian realises his misjudgement and returns to his side, ready for the final battle. Killing an angel. It's laughably symbolic.
The rejections of God, the evasion of the Hope Diamond's curse (where he even wore two rings as if to taunt the fates), the references in Book of Murder - they all depict this metaphorical sort of battle between Ciel and God. And the ending of Kuroshitsuji II is the depicts how he triumphs over fate, claiming his rightful place as an immortalised creature of Hell.
I know I've gone on a bit of a tangent here in your inbox, but that one quote from Book of Murder is so symbolic to me in the way it sets up the comparison between Ciel and God (in which 'God' represents power over fate).
Before I sign off, though, I just want to make light of the existence of the show's final offering, occurring in the last few minutes of the series. This last offering has nothing too do with God, nothing to do with any complex battle between the Phantomhive and fate, but is much simpler than that. In fact, the final offering of the show comes from Ciel, and he gives it to Sebastian - it's almost poetic, is it not?
"Are you sure you don't want to pull it any tighter?"
In this single, unassuming line, Ciel is asking Sebastian if he wants to kill him, and release himself from the eternal contract they've found themselves in. Such a noble and dignified soul as Ciel would always be sure to make through on his word and, despite the loophole that now extends their contract, he would still be willing to let Sebastian kill him should he wish to do so. The man may no longer be able to take his soul, but the boy can still give the order to kill him and free himself. Ciel's respect for Sebastian is complex and contradictory at times, but what never changes is his willingness to die by his hands and see through to his side of the contract.
“Is it over? The one who plunged me into bottomless darkness… I don’t even know why she did it.”
In the episode where Angela is crushed by the Church, Ciel offers his soul to Sebastian. Even when unsatisfied with the result, his unwavering nobility led him to make good on their deal and fulfil his end of the contract. The earl faced the demon, his expression calm, and with a steady voice said “A promise is a promise. Take it.”
This unwavering dignity and nobility he holds in himself I believe is the reason for this offering and Sebastian's turn to reject it is almost a 'love confession' (as you have brought me to see it) in itself.
As a final sort of note - I just wanted to let you know that, since reading your reply to my comment on TGSTLTH (from a while ago), I brought myself to rewatch Kuroshitsuji II with your interpretation in mind and ended up really enjoying it. You've singlehandedly made me do a complete 180 on a season I previously hated - looks like I had just watched it from the wrong perspective. So, for that, I thank you
Hey! Sorry for getting to your ask just now. I absolutely loved it :D And yes, Book of Murder is a masterpiece - I still remember watching it for the first time. It was late at night, I had to go to bed, everyone was sleeping, but I kept watching because stopping just wasn't an option, I had to know what happened next.
Ciel vs God is such an interesting topic. In some ways, Ciel and Sebastian exist in their own universe where there is no place for anyone else. There is a God aka Ciel and a demon aka Sebastian. And they are both allies and adversaries at the same time - they are tormenting each other and uniting to torment others.
I agree absolutely that Ciel holds a fondness for certain people, with Lizzy and Abberline being a good example. He has a degree of contempt and irritation for them, but they do mean something to him. Ciel's curiosity is a big and detached thing, and this places him on Sebastian's level in such an interesting way because sometimes it's almost like Ciel isn't human himself - humanity intrigues him as if he doesn't belong to it. His fascination with the light just underlines his affinity with the darkness.
I have many thoughts about Ciel's behavior during the days following Abberline's death, and you certainly introduced many excellent points! My general opinion on Ciel's motives is... complicated. I agree that he never felt like really giving up his revenge and trying to live a 'happy' life - he knew it's not for him at that stage already. However, I feel like Abberline's parting words affected him a lot, even if briefly. When Abberline tells him that he can start everything from the beginning, Ciel sounds absolutely heartbroken when he confesses, "I don't have a future." The way he acts later, telling Sebastian to stop and not kill the angel, hesitating, reinforces this idea to me. I think you described it best - Ciel is having an existential crisis. It's not like he suddenly regrets his decisions, but he's temporary unanchored and unsure what he wants and what he should do. Having a dream where Abberline urges him to give up his hatred also seems to affect Ciel, but it's so telling that he wakes up and immediately says, "Sebastian." It's a fascinating arc and I can't wait to explore it.
I love your words about three offerings - so true. And I'm so happy you liked S2 when watching it from a new perspective! I used to be so confused as to why people hated it: it's not perfect, but I thought it was amazing in many ways, especially its bittersweet ending.
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gatecoeur · 3 years
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hey so, i’m now officially gonna make a slow return onto here - it’s been well over a month, and frankly i missed being on here. i guess i should give a lil update on my life for those who care, but i’ll get the rp parts outta the way first and put the rest under read more.
TL;DR, other than the starters people have written for me that i’ve yet to reply to, i’m dropping all my threads. i just really need a fresh start right now, and given that i’m going into a Master’s degree that’s in the English department, i’m not sure how well i’m going to be able to keep up with my more plot-heavy threads. i hope people see this as an opportunity to throw new ideas at me, and i hope to interact with some of the people who’ve recently followed me, so i feel like starting anew is the best way to go about it. 
for those who’ve left me asks, i’ll do my best to work through them. i may have to delete some, especially if they’re in reference to things that happened while i was gone, so please don’t take it personally. i’m just trying to take things at my own pace and time. i hope you all understand.
now, onto where the fuck i’ve been this past month and a bit.
so, back in late July, i was faced with a situation i was hoping i wouldn’t have to deal with, but nonetheless had anticipated - in searching for a place to live in for the school year with friends, they all bailed out on me. all their reasons were valid, but it put a crazy amount of stress on me, because i was already dealing with trying to get myself a car and the insurance for it. so i poured all of my energy into finding a place before i’d be forced to settle on a room i’d hate. 
for two weeks, i had to travel between my home city and the city the university was in to do viewings, which typically was a full day sort of ordeal. not that i didn’t do so beforehand with my friends, but it was taxing and frankly costed me a decent amount of money, especially when a lot of the places i initially looked at were incredibly shitty. i am so fortunate that i found the place i’m in now - sure, the room’s small, but the place is newly renovated, the rent’s cheaper than everywhere else i looked at, my roommates are very nice people, and it’s close to the university. 
when i had that out of the way though, i still had to deal with getting a car. my mom had been flip-flopping for WEEKS about whether or not she wanted to give me hers or not, but finally she did, which honestly ended up saving me a lot of money. dealing with the insurance had been a fucking nightmare though, and it’s actually still ongoing, but it should be resolved by the end of this week. during that time though, my mom had done absolutely nothing to help my stress, because there was potential that i had to stay with my parents for longer than i wanted to, since the car was still needed to get my brother to work, as well as needed for my mom to travel around to find herself a new car. the situation ended up being way more ideal than what my mom had projected, but still, you can imagine how much that sucked for me.
now, during this time, i had the brilliant idea of getting back into the dating pool. i ended up downloading a few apps, and met a guy that i really hit it off with - we’d talk pretty regularly on Discord, and we even went on a few dates. he had so many similar interests with me, was insanely intelligent, and he treated me with so much respect. by the second in-person date, i’m not gonna lie, i was head over heels for him. we even talked about him visiting me every weekend once school started up again, which was way more effort than any of my exes had ever put into me. 
but then, just a few days before i’d officially move into my new place, he messaged me saying he wasn’t ready for a relationship. even though we weren’t official or anything of the sort, it devastated me. i understood his reasons though, and we agreed to stay friends. sometimes it still hurts to think about, but i’m slowly but surely getting over it. we’ve sent each other the occasional message since then, but nothing more than that. 
i’ve also deleted all those apps since then -  i’m not sure how long it’s going to be before i’m okay with opening myself up like that to another person.
it wasn’t all bad though. i went to a wedding with my best friend, and her entire friend group from her hometown has basically accepted me as one of them - they’ve even invited me to join them in their yearly cottage trip that they’re hoping to have next year. i also got to meet up with an old friend from high school - even though it had been literally 3 years since we last saw each other, it felt like no time had passed at all. i got to see some family members that i also hadn’t seen in years, and just yesterday, i helped a friend move into a new place.
overall, the past month and a bit has been one hell of a rollercoaster for me. i hope things will be relatively more manageable, especially when my mental health is in such a fragile state - i need some healing, and part of that includes coming back here and doing what i love most. interacting with you all.
if you’ve read through this all, thank you. i promise i’m doing much better now, and i hope to get back into the swing of things soon enough. <3
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