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prettyboykatsuki · 5 months

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BLOOD FEUDS, ANCIENT AND MODERN | RYOMEN SUKUNA.

✮ tags ; no curses au, blood incest, use of honorifics (oji-san) abuse (mostly verbal / emotional), classism, grooming / generally predatory behavior, large age gaps (20+ yrs), blood feuds, imbalanced power dynamics, white collar crime, afab + fem!niece!reader, uncle sukuna, the word rape used in text, non/dubcon (not noncon necessarily), fingering, petnames (little one, kid, little lamb), thigh-fucking, and other things, very horrible and gross sukuna behavior 18+

this is very dark and it deals BRIEFLY with sukuna being very predatory to reader when she's UNDERAGE / young. nothing explicit happens WHILE she is underage, but sukuna does leer at reader and it is mentioned. please proceed with caution !!!

PLEASE HEED THE TAGS BEFORE YOU PROCEED!!!

✮ wc ; 10.3k (???????????)

✮ a/n ; thank you vic @saintshigaraki for always indulging my nonsense and also tomfoolery. kissing you.

i'll be honest lads this one got away from me BAD jksdfhjs. i think its interesting at least.I KNOW THE TAGS ARE WICKED but i promise its like. kind of sexy at least.

also yes the title is from the rdr2 soundtrack shhh

✮ synopsis ; blood is thicker than water. resentment, you think, is thicker than both.

Bastard.

An intimately familiar title, lacking tooth and effect. It's meaning eroded with time and usage - and a moniker you've wielded proudly for as long as you can remember. You don't recall much of your life before it became part of you.

The daughter born of wedlock. Bastard daughter. The only remaining stain to your family's reputation aside from your late father.

Your mother often tells you that you were her hardest child to birth. When you were littler it was a story relayed to you with affection, and but now it's with such bitter hatred you can feel it lodged in your throat.

The most important element is the predestination in it. You came into the world kicking and screaming, throat hoarse and violent. From birth, you knew you were half-forged with bad blood and came into the world trying to be absolved of it. It's shaped your life, your relationships, everything about you.

The other half of your DNA, the good half, is from your father. Before you were a bastard, you were your parents' only child. Your father was a good man. The best you know. An average, humble man. From a generation of other working class men with a tough job in construction. Your best memories come from when he was still alive.

A quiet life, untainted by the residual bitterness of your mothers heritage. You lived away from it, outside of it. The mother in your memories from back then seem like a dream now, some mirage from long ago - disinterested in anything but you and your father. Your mama and papa. Your father took good care of you both, and your mother loved him madly.

You lived as a normal family in a small apartment just outside of Gifu for the first seven years of your life. You attended a small local school and had friends with crooked teeth and messy hair.

Your childhood was mostly happy if you break it up into pieces like that. Blissfully uneventful.

There's a concise break of change of what your life was versus what became of it. Your fathers death the splinter in the wood, separating the two halves.

The worst of your childhood, of course, came in your fathers passing. Not just because of the loss, but what it made of your life. His funeral welcomed people of all walks of life with the most notable absence of your elusive mothers side of the family.

Another old memory you have with your mother is looking at her face during your fathers wake. The deep darkness of her eyes, sunken in and hollow. The first time you ever found her terrifying instead of comforting. While the world mourned your father, your mother—you think—mourned her life.

Forced into single motherhood with no prospects and no career, your mother decided it was best for the both of you to return home.

You think the worst of your life started there.

Your mother's side of the family has never welcomed you with open arms. You wouldn't come to know why until much later. You were a child then. There's no way you could've known about feuds that deep.

The only thing you knew was that you were hated vehemently, and nothing could change that.

Your grandmother's estate was always frightening to you in your childhood. You've yet to grow out of that feeling despite living there for the last fifteen years. It's remained unchanged since you moved in and the lights in the hall never seems bright enough. Jade green painted walls and white tile floors. Some rooms have classically Japanese flooring and heirloom paintings from the Heian era. Others modernized with sterile whites and grays and house plants that add no life to it at all. Stretched wide with tens of rooms, and easy for a child to get lost in.

A sinking abyss. A terrible place. A dark labyrinth. Anxiety inducing to even think about now. No place for a child your size or your age.

The best way to describe your childhood after your father died was cold. Removed from your life in the suburbs and placed among other rich kids, you became overtly self-conscious of the differences between you and them. Them being anyone who grew up wealthy and your other extended family. You were constantly reminded of your place as the bastard child. Later learning how your mother left her fiance many years ago for your father, your poor and worthless father.

(You theorize any warmth that your mother had for you was buried in your dead dads casket. Living there, among them, made sure she'd never find it again.)

Your mother is the most complicated part of your life. You don't have a time for when she gave up on raising you. There was a year when she tried, you think. For the most part, you lived in that house utterly alone.

At first that abandonment was miserable (as it would be to any child, certainly) but a time came where you were glad you saw so little of her.

Your mother, who you had once loved and thought highly of, became a pitiful prey animal in the four walls of your grandmother's house. Small and anxious and utterly hateful. A bunny born with some cosmic knowledge and horrific understanding that its destiny is to become food for a wolf. Viciousness between her siblings, no doubt fostered by your grandparents and their establishment, tore apart the aspects of her your father mended and ruined her. You were too little to stop it.

Blood feuds that ran bone-chillingly deep plagued most of the interactions with your extended family for as long as you've been a part of them. Your mother has exactly four siblings. Two sisters between her with her as the middle daughter, and two brothers. One of which is estranged so completely you don't know his name.

And the other being your Uncle Sukuna.

Your hatred for your aunts and their children came to you rather naturally. For every gala and ball and charity fund your worthless bloodline ever raised, came catty arguments and verbal abuse from the shallow mouths of your beloved cousins. You had nothing to prove to anyone in that house. You were detested since your birth and your grandparents made no small effort to show you through as much neglect and verbal lashing as they could get away with.

Rotten girl. Cursed daughter. You're the reason your mother is like this. You're the reason she is miserable. You should've been buried with your father.

Compared to the experience of your grandfather ripping into you at age ten for simply being alive, your cousin's commentary on you was remarkably uninteresting. You resented them for being nuisances, though, with the exception of maybe one who bucked it out of that place as soon as they could. Just like you planned too.

For a long time, Sukuna wasn't around enough to have a real presence in your consciousness. You tried not to think of your extended family more than you had too. You got used to not knowing about your relatives living there, but there was no one so elusive as him.

It was as if, increasingly, you heard whispers of his name at everything you were forced to attend.

The first time you ever meet your Uncle, you're freshly sixteen. It's the birthday party your mother throws for you each year in an effort to show how close the two of you are to the rest of your relatives.

The first time you see Sukuna in person, the only thing on your mind is how much he stands out from the rest of your relatives. He's a head taller than the tallest person there, and he's...bigger. He's not clean or neat, scruff lining his chin. Old, dark eyes. Visible tattoos that reek of disgraced son and hardly of prodigy.

At sixteen, you understood intimately what your family considered to be gold standard. Your uncle was antithetical to it. His very existence a paradox to the ideas you've had been hammered into you for years. Dyed hair, piercings, tattoos - his suit jacket undone to expose his chest. Lacking respect and formality and dignity.

He was a lot like you. You got that impression, somehow.

When your eyes met with your uncles for the first time, you had your second fully formed thought about him.

Dangerous. Like an alarm. Like a ringing bell, throbbing through your skull and pulsing through your teeth. Some part of you just knew that he was a very dangerous man. Not just a wealthy one.

The first conversation you ever had with your uncle proves to be the most significant. Brief, yet - tonal in all ways. The gold standard for how he viewed you. How he would view you.

How he would treat you.

("So you're the new brat,"

Your uncle is an imposing man. You are sixteen and slightly tipsy, which is the least horrible thing you could be since your other cousin is coked out in the bathroom upstairs. You sway, staring at him. You think that's disrespectful.

He's the kind of man who might kill you for that. Might hit you. But you don't find it in yourself to challenge your defiance when you're far from sober and even father form happy. You lean your weight to one side and hum.

"New bastard," You correct him, and take another sip of the flute of champagne in your hand. "My worthless fathers, worthless daughter."

Sukuna pauses, his eyes widening before his lips break out into a grin. You wonder if it's because you're drunk. You think he's staring at you. Your eyes are too blurry to tell but you think he's gazing down the low dip of your top. At the curve of your chest. Leering at the body you've yet to even grow into.

"Tenacious," Your uncle says, and takes a long drink of his sake. You stare at the edge of his glass, carmine eyes gazing so deeply at you - you think you'll throw up. "You're your mothers daughter. Through and through.")

The night of your sixteenth birthday, your uncle announced he'd be opening a business venture in Tokyo. All this time he'd been doing work overseas, but seeing family helped finalized his decision. You remember the look on his face when he announced it. Remembered his eyes searching on you through the crowd as he held the mic up to his lips. How he named you the main reason, one conversation and he grew so fond of his little niece. That you were a clever girl, and that even though he hadn't known you long - he was sure you'd go so far.

Happy Birthday to you, little lamb.

You remember best the feeling afterwards. How the crowd went nearly silent. Hundreds of eyes darting your way in seas of strangers. All the attention people hadn’t paid suddenly mattering, all the congratulations. You remember how they crowded you and how your uncle came to your rescue with a cheeky grin and air of nonchalance.

You remember feeling sick. You remember the chill creeping up your spine, bile in your throat - all wet eyes and nausea.

Your uncle is a dangerous man. And you, the uninteresting bastard daughter, had caught his full attention.

The next four years of your life would pass so slowly, you often wondered during them, if you died that night and you'd live through these days as punishment for the crime of existing.

A little after your birthday, your uncle moved back to Japan permanently - in a residence not far from your grandmother's estate. He became a permanent fixture in your life. Many things came with that reality, none of them being especially pleasant.

You learn three things in the four years you spend with your uncle in your life.

The first is that your uncle is more powerful than you can really understand.

Through conversations at your kitchen table about his escapades abroad, you learn nothing of the work he actually does. Only what it involves, who it involves - foreign governments and people much more powerful than your family. Your uncle has ties to the Gojo family, and the Zenins'. Your time here teaches you that they make up two halves of private militarized arms and they work domestically and internationally. The only thing you need to know about them is they are filthy rich, richer than your own family and twice as corrupt.

And Sukuna works with them. Knows them rather intimately, from the pictures you've seen of Sukuna and Gojo Satoru drinking together - two prodigal sons with silver spoons and unsettling demeanors.

The second thing you learn is that your uncle's power and influence extend past all borders and include your grandparents and relatives. In the years he'd been away from home, he's garnered a formidable reputation. You never cared to notice it before, but it's all you can see now. Every arrogant, vapid relative you have the displeasure of calling family sees your uncle as some sort of king. The golden ticket to grandparents approval. A wishing well for all their hopes and dreams - so long as they appease him.

They fawn over him. Sukuna knows it. But they're all so busy trying to get on his good side they never catch his subtleties. Never seem to notice the cold sarcasm and biting edge to his questions. They pander and peacock to him constantly, but not one of them has sense enough to understand him a little deeper. Except you, incidentally. That's part of your problem

The third thing you learn about your uncle is that he takes pleasure in your cleverness no one in your life has since.... who knows? Since your father died, you think.

And you are clever. A head smarter than the rest of your family and a try-hard in all aspects. You graduated highschool top of your class and got scholarships into better schools. It was never about proving your worth of course, but about survival. You wanted away from this place, and the only way to cut your ties completely is to carve a life for yourself. Academia, education, using your name to make connections - you've been working silently on it since you were in middle school.

The only person who'd ever noticed your accomplishments was Sukuna. In between his work, he'd visit you in your room. You grew close in one sense of the word. It was a secret kept between you - but Sukuna often reminded you of it. That he saw you for who you were when no one else did. That his interest in you exceeds your own understanding, and it'd be in your best interest to remember that.

Some half-way between threats and affection, for four years - your uncle remained at your side. Uneasy as you were, he'd never try to advance on you while you were still in highschool. Some part of you knew he wasn't above it. Rather his interest hinged on getting to know you.

Your uncle is above all things manipulative.

Rather he preferred to keep you on your toes during the duration of your time together. To get close but not too close. To get to know each other openly. Your uncle made sure everyone in your family knew of his fondness for you. He'd keep you close to his side or follow you around, always in public places with a million eyes. He'd whisper to you, laughed and asked questions.

You hated being the center of attention, so Sukuna turned it on you any chance he got. It made it hard for you to refuse him, but mostly it made it hard to go under the radar without his protection. It made it hard for your relatives to insult and berate you.

You hated it. You hated accepting his kindness, because you know your uncle well enough to know that everything in the world came with a cost. And that this protection is little more than luxury, promised to you as long as you played nice.

And you always did play nice. But you were cautious. Never alone too long in the same room. Never somewhere too late. Never drunk, never high. Always within distance of a door. Sukuna was a dangerous man, and you may be a bastard but you're no fool.

It'd work for years. You evaded any real alone time with him for years. Years.

Until earlier this year where your mother had made arrangements for you to spend the summer with your dear old Uncle - in his villa, far from the safety of Japan's main island.

In the years of your uncle's favoritism towards you, no one has been more pleased than your mother. You've come to hate her for it. Your relationship hasn't been good in years and for her to suddenly attempt to be your mother again felt like a mockery.

(It mostly felt like a betrayal. You didn't think she could betray you a second time after she all but abandoned you the minute she stepped foot in that house.

Like something possessing the corpse of the mama in your dreams, your seething hatred towards her started then you think.)

You'd spent years indifferent to her, but it was this change that made you hate her down to your bones. You were furious about the decision. Furious she didn't bother asking, furious about all of it.

About everything.

An entire summer alone with the man you know to be most dangerous to you. You wouldn't put it past Sukuna, to plan this around you - but it didn't make it any less frustrating.

("You'll be going with your uncle," Your mother says, hardly listening to you. There's a baby on her hip, your half-brother and a vacant look in her eyes. You feel your jaw tighten. "We've already made plans. Your stepfather,"

"Your husband." You correct. Your mother gives you a tight-lipped smile.

"We are going on a family vacation. Your grandparents wouldn't tolerate you here alone , so you're going and that's final."

"I don't need to live with you," You seethe, fighting the urge to grab her and punch her. You've never been violent. Your mother makes you homicidal. "I can find my own fucking place, I'm twenty I don't need-"

She slams something. Your half-brother makes watery eyes. She stares at you distantly, righteously angry. Whether she's earned that anger or not, it makes your mood worse. .

"This is the least you could for me. For us." She hisses, turning around. You think of killing her. "For all the shit you put me through."

"What I put you through? Fuck you," You admit, your throat burning like a star falling through the atmosphere. Then, through a shaky breath"There's something off about him, mom. Do you understand what I'm fucking saying? Where you're sending me?

Three expressions pass over her face. The ghost of grief, some kind of solace and then more vacancy. She swallows, turns around to keep folding baby clothes. Her voice trembles. She knows she's sending you to your doom. Knows what waits for you as soon as you go.

"You're going. We need this." She says, and still doesn't turn to look at you. Her voice is so frigid it doesn't sound like hers anymore. "That's final."

You shouldn't be shocked by it anymore, but it doesn't make it easier.

You slam the door on your wait out. You hope their plane crashes on the way there.)

You tried your best to worm your way out of the situation before the semester closed out. But Sukuna, three steps ahead of you at all times, made sure that wasn't possible. Your uncle owned a villa out on an island, private - and the bags had already been packed. You'll like it there, he assured you so many times, it's comfortable. There's a good view and the kids in the place will remind you of the kids you grew up with.

(It's hard not to notice the ways in which Sukuna tempts you into wanting to go. Though there's nothing, truly, that could make the experience a pleasant one - it's posed to appeal to you. A place to remind you of your childhood. You try not to think about it.)

Despite your protests, despite your vehement frustration - there was nothing you could do but go. If you didn't go with Sukuna, it'd be enduring 3 months alone with your grandparents. You could try to crash with friends but the friends you've made so far wouldn't dream of being so polite and you dare not think of burdening your childhood friends with your family problems. They deal with enough as is.

The last option was running away. You're desperate enough to entertain it. You do, several times - considering what the worst outcome could be. All scenarios end with Sukuna coming to find you, because he's crazy and connected like that. Even if he's deliberate in not displaying those parts of himself, you know his apathy to be a facade.

You know him well. He knows you well. It feels like a competition to see who can outsmart the other that you were forced into with no say.

So, come the end of your third year of college - a driver picks you up right as your finals are finished to take you to the airport. A private jet, a nauseating display of wealth just for your uncle to torment you with you're sure.

On the plane ride to a small island on the coast of Japan, you think to yourself that all gods in the world must've abandoned you before you were ever born.

The first few weeks of your stay in the island of Nii-jima prove to be uneventful.

For a small island, it's still governed through something related to Tokyo. It's not the city or even the country, some quiet and relaxing in between. There are people here who've lived for generations and others who are only touring. Your uncle's villa though, is far from all life - and a few miles out from a beach.

You can hardly understand what a single man needs such a big house for. There's staff there too, though less than at your grandparents place which you're grateful for. You've met six of eight, two of them people who take care of the yards and garden.

Sato-san is the woman you see most often. The one cook Sukuna has and the woman who's been working longest. She is kindhearted and sturdy, often bringing her grandchildren with her. She's quiet and motherly - and so warm you're unsure of how to behave around her. Your uncle is seemingly fond of her which is saying a lot. She speaks highly of him.

It's been so long since you've experienced something like maternal warmth, you're awkward around her. You try to not be too attached, try not to be fond of anything in this house because you know something horrible and dormant lies within it and you do not want to stay. Don't even want to entertain the idea of staying.

But Sato-san is good to you, with wrinkles and sunspots and a bright laugh. Her grandchildren are so well-behaved you wonder about how they were raised. A girl about seven and a boy about four, always quiet and inattentive. You've grown fond of them too, despite how bad you normally are with children. They're easy to be around.

You're frustrated mainly because you don't hate being here. The people are kind and welcoming and everyone locally is pleasant and good. You've been in the city too long, with insane people too long, and everything feels refreshing. The bus here is free and you can be at the beach whenever you like. You've made friends here - organically, with no strings attached. .

For the first time in your twenty years of living, you even have a guy you think is cute. It seems small, but back home everyone knows who you are. You've never had a relationship work out for one reason or another, but here? Here no one knows you, and the boy you meet at the beach with his friends is just a boy.

You don't want to like being here, but you do - and you don't want Sukuna to come back and he will. Nothing ever works out for you.

The worst of your luck you think builds on the edge of that thought.

You come home tonight doing a lot of things you would not normally.

For one, you've gotten yourself drunk. The reason being the cute boy aforementioned invited you down to the beach with his friend. You justified going thinking if you were going to be miserable all summer - a single good memory wouldn't kill you.

You had fun. Your swimsuit is underneath your short skimpy clothes, and you sat in his lap and made-out with him all evening. Got to pretend you were a normal girl and you got to kiss for the first time. You still reek of alcohol and his cheap cologne. Blissfully uneventful.

When you stumble into the foyer of the house with blurry vision and hear the T.V. playing, you know it instinctively that peace is going to be short-lived. You know that your uncle is home, and that he was waiting for you.

All the hairs on your neck raise. A shift in the atmosphere makes it hard to think clearly. Your lungs barely get enough oxygen in them to keep you upright. You think of leaving. You think of running up marble stairs to your room in hopes he won't catch you.

"Brat," Is yelled from the living room. Right, as if you'd ever get so lucky. You jump in your skin. "You home?"

Your stomach churns. You feel sick.

"Come to the living room."

You go obediently when Sukuna calls you, trying not to stumble over your two feet.You don’t think there’s more options than fearful compliance.

Your uncle is watching Scarface on the big flatscreen on the TV. The subtitles are on in Japanese though you don't think he needs them. He only barely turns his head to look at you, his interest piqued when he sees what you're wearing.

You feel sixteen again, self-conscious of your body and womanhood. He hides it even less than he did the first time - the leering. He notices your skimpy shorts and top, the bottom of your bikini. And he grins, and stares but doesn't say anything.

"Oh?" He says, calm and casual, glancing back at the T.V. "Finally went and had some fun did you? Thought all that studying turned you into a bookish little shut-in permanently."

You don't say anything, arm clutching your other self-consciously.

"Did you need something?"

He snickers, low and predatory. "Come on. You're here to spend time with me so let's spend time together."

You don’t bother asking where he’s been for the last few weeks. Your gut churns, feet heavy as they drag you to the far end of the couch. Sukuna stares as you sit hesitantly. You have no doubt he's going to make you move, but he's kind enough to leave you alone for now.

"Have fun on your..." He gives you another knowing look then laughs. "Outing?"

You aren't sure how to respond. "Just drank with some friends."

"Friends," He mimics, feeling the words out in his mouth. "The kind of friends that smudge the lipstick off your mouth, huh brat?"

You flush suddenly, embarrassed - and Sukuna barks a laugh. You don't know what he's expecting you to say there so you opt for nothing.

"Sorry," Is the only thing you can manage. Placating. He lets out a puff of air through his nose and relaxes further. There's an air to him, of nonchalance, that unsettles you more than if he was angry or unpleasant. Your throat bobs.

"You're a big girl now," He comments - sleazy and indignant. His indecency towards you, about you glints like a star. A sharp canine and piercing red eyes examine you from his peripherals. "Now that you're showing off it's only natural boys flock to you, hm?"

You can't explain the way this comment makes you feel. So much said with so little. The gap between is and has always been miles wide except sometimes it's not. Your uncle is unusual. Cold-blooded, manipulative, ruthless. There's no warmth in him in a comfortable, loving way.

There's even less of a normal relationship between you.

But you both exist in this space with... similar awareness. Of the world. Of yourselves. There's a conscious intelligence to him that's reflected in you - that you are both fractured parts of your grandparents bloodline in two separate bodies. That self-awareness affords him a presence. In your mind. In your fear.

You are undoubtedly related. Sukuna revels in that.

It’s rare to see that kind of awareness in your family. You’ve never felt threatened by people dumber than you, even if they had more power or money. Vapid and shallow and useless - there’d never been anything that could win you on. It might sound cocky, but it��s true. It’s been true.

It’s why Sukuna frightens you. He has everything, but above all - he’s smart. And hard for you to read.

You swallow, shakily - your eyes looking down at your hands. In a profoundly long beat of silence, the movie plays. A fair bit of gunshots echo through the loud speaker and they startle you.

"You scared? Come sit closer, then." He tells you, less than asks you.

You stand and sit next to him, still a distance away. Sukuna remains unmoving. You don't know what to do with yourself.The silence seems to stretch for miles and minutes. Sukuna just watches the T.V. and stares at his phone - occasionally answering messages. You stay like that for a long time.

"Need a smoke," He says, and it's not really directed at you. "Maybe later. Wouldn't wanna make you sick."

"People smoke around me all the time."

"Do you smoke?"

You shake your head, too tipsy to lie. He laughs at that. "Not even weed?"

You don't bother mentioning legality, you both know it doesn't matter between your lineage.

"Don't like the taste."

"How interesting. What a straight-edge kid. Most I've seen you get is drunk and this is the drunkest I've ever seen you. Still sober enough to talk clearly though."

"I just drink socially,"

"Ohh," He says, and then grins a little sharper. "A little shot of courage to fuck that little college boy then?"

This makes you jolt. "We didn't fuck—"

"No?" He looks genuinely surprised at this, though it's mild. "Poor kid must've wanted too if you came around him wearing that. Unless he came in his pants soon as you sat on him. Boys that age do stuff like that,"

The comment about his age reminds you of how old your uncle really is, and something in your chest flares hot.

"It wasn't that either—I've never-"

He cuts you off. "You're a virgin?"

You flush, stopping yourself from answering and he laughs.

"Ohhh, that's good. Very good," He grins, so genuinely pleased it makes you shiver. "I like virgins. Easy to please."

"That's—It wasn't for you."

For the first time in your relationship, Sukuna bridges the gap between you. He sits up and forward, his hand finding the bare skin of your knee. He rests it there, his thumb circling the flesh.

"Don't touch me," You hiss. Sukuna tightens his grip, but not threateningly. He turns to look at you that time, and you can't help but look back.

There's something in his degeneracy that horrifies you. It's fondness, you think. Genuine fondness.

"You sure?" He licks his teeth in a way that reminds you of a wolf. But not one that's starving. There's no desperation in his actions, but a self-assurance. Wolves don't often survive alone, but Sukuna has. And he hungers with the confidence of a predator who has killed all that stand before him. That's never been told no to what he wants to eat.

Your heart stops. Your voice a low whisper. "Stop,"

"You say that but you came in the house looking all desperate for sex and approval. You always look like that. Have for a little longer than what's normal for a girl your age,"

"I don't look like that!"

"You would've fucked that little college twerp if you stayed wouldn't you? Nothing wrong with honesty, brat."

Before you have a chance to understand what goes on around you, Sukuna changes position. You've never gotten a chance to feel and experience how strong he is - not like the way he's manhandling you now. You gasp at the arm around your waist and back. He pins you to the couch in a swift motion, not sure how he's done it, the alcohol making you dizzy.

Sukuna has never crossed the boundary with you like this before. Your heart is thumping loud, beating against your ribs. The source of it eludes you. If it's fear or discomfort or some other thing entirely causing such noice.

There's a certain blase in his attitude that makes you forget momentarily about the taboo and gives way just to the tension between you. You feel it for the first time with his body pressed against you, all hot and heavy. He smells of cologne, but it lacks the acidity cheap ones tend to have. There’s strong hints of cigarettes and aftershave accompanying it. Appearance wise, he has lines in his face like a man in his forties.

You don't know what's wrong with you. With a relationship so fucked up from the start, you thought crossing this line would feel different. You think you want to throw up, but you're completely calm.

You want to be disgusted. You want to thrash and kick and scream and fight. You squirm away from him, the threads of what's left of your moral conscience urging you to do so. Like a last ditch effort to keep you sane.

But there's just. Something. Something so inevitable about it that your heart doesn't beat at all. The panic itself feels hollow in nature. You are a rotted log and Sukuna has ripped the soft wood out of you with relative ease. But you’ve been that way for a long time, and nothing hurts. Not really.

It's relieving in the worst way.

"Get away from me,” You whisper again with noticeably less fight. Sukuna looks at you bright-eyed.

"You're a good kid," He says. The genuine praise knocks the air out of your lungs. That disgusts you more than anything else happening between you so far. "Interesting. A lot brighter than the other kids in our family."

Our family. You wince. .

"Stop, this is—" You don't know what word to use. He's your uncle and you're his niece and he's been gazing at you like this for god knows how fucking long. "Stop."

"You've got something going on behind your eyes at least, even if you're still just a wet-nosed and angry little housecat," He says, staring down at you. He's so imposing. His facial hair and his various tattoos. Everything about him, down to his bones. "But I can't tear my eyes away from you at the same time. You know that?."

You do know that. You cast your gaze away.

"I applaud how cautious you've been. But it didn't make a difference in the end. You know that too, right?"

You don't say anything.

"Clever little lamb you are, indeed. I like that about you." He hums, leaning down closer to you. His face is inches from yours. "You should be smart enough to know how this ends. But you know, you've been so entertaining to me this whole time I feel like I should at least be a little nice. So I'll offer you something. A deal of sorts, we can even write it on paper."

This catches your interest and he knows it does. He knows. You’re cut from the same cloth. And this place has made you lose your character, just like it always does. So if it means your survival and sanity or your morals, one comes before the other.

He grins at you.

"Come stay with me. Here in Nii-jima and back at my estate at home. I'll take care of your expenses and whatever else. I have better connections than the old hag," He says, leaning down even closer to you. You can smell him. He's intoxicating "You can be away from everything. I'll even let you have boyfriends and girlfriends over. You can throw sleepovers. I don't care. You can do whatever you want."

"What's in it for you?"

You can feel his knee press up against your cunt through your shorts and you gasp, hand going up to his shoulder. "This. Been thinking about this tight little cunt for a while now. You'd have to be at my beck and call. We'd be the closest uncle and niece in all of Japan," He snickers.

You wince at the reminder. You hate yourself for considering it. "Why me? There are plenty of women who are dying to fuck you."

He scoffs a little.

"Once we get you a little farther from the trenches kid, you might start to understand me. Wealth, fortune, fame - all of it's fucking boring. I came back to Japan prepared to leave again but you made me stay. Not much more to it than that."

"You're fucking your blood-niece out of curiosity? Your sister's daughter?"

"My sister never did anything good with her life except marrying your father and making you." Sukuna says, and laughs lightly. You hate how validated it makes you feel. Your skin crawls. "I'll have to thank her for it. She'll be pleased.

You make a face at him, uncertainty. Apprehension. Fear. Frustration. Everything you’ve been compartmentalizing comes bubbling to the surface and making your head feel weighted with lead. You want to kill everyone and everything including him. You want to run away from this place. You want to go home, though you don’t know where that would be anymore. They demolished your old apartment years ago.

You think spending a few years getting fucked and used might be less miserable than the suffocation of living with your mother and your baby brother and your grandparents. How much abuse you’ve endured already vs. what awaits you when their true heir starts to walk and talk horrifies you.

You look at him.

“You’re horrible.”

“Tell me something new.”

“I hate you. I don’t…want this. Any of this. I want to go home.”

You’re just venting. Really. You’ve made the choice already.

“Has there ever been a time where it’s been about what you want? I doubt it. But if you stay with me, appease my wishes for a while, well,” He laughs confidently. “You’ll get something, at least. Better than what you have.”

“The contract. Are you serious about that?”

He laughs at you. “Sure. If it makes you feel better, you can draft it and I’ll just have my lawyer sign. Bring your defenses. Whatever. Don’t really care as long as I get what I want.”

“And that’s me?”

“Seems like it,”

You purse your lips. It seems like a rash decision to make in the moment, but truthfully your heads never felt so clear. Even with the alcohol.

“...Fine.”

Sukuna hums when you agree. It feels anti-climatic somehow. Not that he’s not expecting your yes but that you’ve come to accept it so easily. It’s not like this takes away from the coercion, from the awful feeling of being violated. Sukuna was going to rape you whether you liked it or not. This way, at least, you get something out of it. This way it’s something you choose. Something tangible results from your inevitable doom - the fate your mother damned you to.

It affords you some plausible deniability too. In truth, you’re afraid for yourself. You’re afraid of what will happen when he finally does cross the line completely. You’re afraid you’re going to accept it, that it’s going to feel pleasurable, that years of repressing yourself will come back to make sure you never return to normalcy.

What will become of you when Sukuna has his way with you? Will you become a more apathetic version of yourself? Is it possible? Will you sober and feel like scrubbing your skin clean in the shower?

The worst outcome, you think, is nothing so horrible happening. The worst outcome is knowing you’ve fallen far enough for none of it matters at all.

Sukuna grins down at you. “What a well-behaved niece I have. Good girl. You’ll do well living with me.”

You make a displeased face at him, but your breath catches in your lungs soon after. Your uncle leans in to kiss you and you close your eyes trying to get away from it. But it’s true that your body has been burning up from the inside since you came back home - a dull throbbing between your legs turning you all kinds of stupid.

When Sukuna kisses you - your first thought is that he’s unexpectedly gentle.

You didn’t think he’d care about kissing to begin with. In your head you thought he’d tug off your shorts brutishly and fuck you without any prep. You were readying yourself for tears and pain, for screaming and crying - the sharp sobs of your own voice piercing your ears.

A gentle press of lips startles you from your drunk haze. You can feel the scruff of Sukuna’s face on your own, your arms wrapping around his neck instinctively. The taste of cigarettes and something else mildly smokey fill your mouth and make you dizzy. Sukuna tastes like kissing a man - or what you might’ve imagined that to be like. Not a boy, but a man. You feel his strength, your hands splaying at the base of his neck and feeling the faded undercut of his neck, the texture of his dyed hair. His weight shadows you, his strength making you feel fluttery.

He doesn’t tease you all during the kiss like you’re expecting. Nothing goes the way you expect. He kisses you in slow, short pecks and escalates to his tongue dipping against your lips - a little added element to his deep kisses. He kisses like he’s been doing it for longer than you have, with experience and finesse. You’re all but too conscious of everything little thing. About the sounds you make, about knowing when to breathe, about trying not to get wrapped up in the pleasant euphoria.

All you can think about is how good he is at it. Effortlessly good. You think part of you latches onto it to avoid thinking about what’s happening. Denial feels pleasurable at least.

You kiss like that for so long, your lips have swollen - sticky with spit and saliva. Sukuna has a self-satisfied smirk on his face when he pulls away from you, laughing at the flush in your expression.

You hit him lightly, looking away from his face.

“It’s a wonder you’ve kept your virginity,” He says, chuckling. “A kiss and a dirty old man like me could’ve taken it from you.”

“Shut up,” Your reply is weak. He laughs against your mouth, and you can’t get over the intimacy of it. You hope you’re deluding yourself but then he kisses the corner of your mouth. Hot, warm air tickles against your jaw and neck when he presses his lips there too and suddenly it occurs to you how real it is.

You don’t think your uncle is capable of warmth or love or anything that doesn’t come from coercion. But fondness. Maybe fondness.

He spends more time doing that than what’s comfortable. Relishes the feeling of you in his arms, his bulge grinding against your clothed cunt but not forcefully. Just with enough pressure to make you gasp once in a while when you don’t have a mind to fight it.

“I won’t take your virginity tonight,” He says declaratively. It surprises you. “You’ve got three months with me. It’d be boring. I’ll give you something else.” He looks at you then, then grins impishly. “What do you want?”

Your eyes widen, suddenly unsure of yourself. You push away, brought back to reality by the questions.

“How would I know?”

He blinks at you. “I know you said you were a virgin, but did you really mean in everything?”

You pout at him all of a sudden. “So what. I didn’t have that kind of time.”

Sukuna barks a laugh.

“Huh. I thought you were a goody two-shoes out of necessity but you really don’t do a damn thing in that house. Not even a boyfriend to do hand stuff with?”

“Ugh. No, alright? I don’t have time for that kind of thing like I just said.”

He laughs a little breathless, sitting up for a minute. You’re wondering what it means for you. Sukuna pulls you up along with him. He sits down again with his legs spread before looking at you. He pulls you into his lap with relative ease, until you’re half-way pressed into him with your legs over his thighs. You stare at him, feeling more exposed in this position. You get a closer view of his neck tattoo, realizing how far down his back it must go. You go to ask him what he’s doing - but he’s undressing you before you can.

Confident, large hands trapeze down your back as he finds the end of your overwear and pulls it off - leaving you in the microkini you wore to the beach. It barely covers your nipples. You made the choice to wear it, yet seeing Sukuna examine it so closely leaves you wallowing and regretful. Still, he’s silent as he does something similar with your jean-shorts. A hand lifting your legs up enough to roll the cheap, denim shorts and discard them right on the marble floors.

You’re still half-way over his lap - sitting on his thighs but you’re naked now.

You feel yourself growing self-conscious. Never mind that it’s the first time anyone’s seen you this naked, who exactly you’re showing it to makes you want to throw up. He stares for so long you wonder what he’s thinking, a lazy grin splitting his face. A hand nudges your thighs apart, moving your leg to give Sukuna more access to you. With an arm around your waist, his hand cups your cunt, rubbing it softly. You shift nervously. His thumb moves then, rests at the hood of your clit, pulling up to look closer at it. You hold back any noise as he examines you, bent pointer of the opposite hand brushing over the hair on your skin with a laugh.

“Unexpectedly, it’s pretty,” He says and your eyes shoot wide open. “Good job brat.”

“What are you,” You pant, your breath hitching as you close your eyes.”staring so much for it?”

“It’s mine to stare at.”

You don’t think of your uncle as particularly possessive. It’s more like he believes in that so much, so unshakingly nothing else could be true. You wonder if there’s more to it. He didn’t seem angry even after you told him about seeing a boy.

But comparing the two, Sukuna outclasses him in all ways that it should matter. He must be confident about that.

He spreads your thighs a little further. You’re half tucked into his side now - an arm around the back of his neck and shoulders. Sukuna ducks down a little, nudging his nose against your neck and scraping his teeth lightly against your throat. He doesn’t do much other than… touch you. Not directly. His other hand, the one not secured around your waist, rubs at your pussy but not in an attempt to pleasure you. It’s exploratory and intimate. He’s just touching you in a way that’s making you restless. And the angle he’s bent down, the proximity gives you a better view of him. From the side where you sit in his lap, you can see the tattoo again.

You shudder then, pussy suddenly clenching in a way that leaves you ashamed. Your uncle notices, though he doesn’t look up.

“Thought of something, brat?”

“No.” You deny, vehemently. He spanks your pussy but not hard. You jolt in reply, a shock traveling up your spine.

“C’mon now,” He hums, predatory. “Don’t lie. That’s not fun.”

“Y-your tattoo,” You say, suddenly feeling the influence of alcohol in a way you hadn’t all evening. “It’s…big.”

“Into bad boys or something, kid?”

You frown. “You look like a yakuza.”

This makes him laugh, more genuinely than you’ve ever seen him laugh. “Getting warmer, I guess.”

You don’t say anything to that. Instead spurred by the sudden confidence. “Why aren’t you…touching me?”

He looks at you surprised then tilts his head. “Is that what you want?

“I don’t want any of this but it,” You squirm again. “Feels weird.”

“Sounds like you want something, at least. Go on, tell your oji-san what you want.”

You scrunch your nose up at him, a familiar feeling of disgusting flitting through you. It fades as quickly as it comes.

“I’ve never put a-anything inside,” You admit, suddenly feeling self-conscious.

“That so,” He hums. His middle finger slides down the wet seam of your cunt as you tell him this. You nod but you don’t think he’s really listening. His hand is warm, and big - and his fingers are thicker than yours. One of yours may as well make two of his, no end to how imposing he is. You don’t protest as he starts to touch you. You simply take a deep breath, holding onto him a little tighter.

With your head turned towards him, Sukuna leans in again to kiss you. It’s deep from the beginning this time, and a little rougher. He bites lightly on your lower lips as his middle finger dips down towards your sex. Your insides are throbbing, hot and wet as you feel some friction. It’s the first time anyone else has ever held you in your life, every touched you directly like this. Against your will, your body is sensitive to the stimulus. Everywhere he touches you goes alight, and the kiss makes your tummy flutter. A tender feeling of want spreads you open, tears you apart right in front of him.

With parted lips and a heavy head, you kiss him as his middle finger dips down low enough to penetrate you. A soft gasp pulls from your throat.

It doesn’t feel unpleasant.

“I thought it was going to hurt more.” You admit, feeling him inside of you. It’s a new sensation but it’s not bad.

“It shouldn’t hurt if you’re aroused enough. And wet enough. You seem to be both.”

You frown at him, face pinching. It’s washed away quickly by the sensation of him pushing deeper. It’s hard to describe it as anything other than feeling something inside of you. Deep in a place you didn’t think it could go. You shake a little, trying to get adjusted. Sukuna does it carefully, slowly - thrusting in even strokes and keeping you focused on kissing so you’re not too conscious of it.

He’s not thoughtful, not really - but you can tell that he’s going slower for your sake and that makes your heart stammer uncomfortably. The last word you’d ever use for him is kind but he’s not being horrible and it’s unsettling you.

Once one finger goes in and out smoothly, your uncle starts to add another. You feel it that time, the stretch of it - gasping hard at the sudden sensation. Your breath catches in your lungs, hand clutching at his shoulder for purchase. He pulls away from your mouth, his breath near your ear.

“Easy, little one. Give it a minute.”

“It feels different. It’s,” You can’t form the words as two fingers penetrate you in full, slowly being eased inside of you until Sukuna is knuckle deep. Your breath hitches. “Not like it hurts.”

“It’ll feel good in a second.” He says assuredly, voice smooth and raspy against your ear. You feel combative at his confidence, but then a minute passes of him rubbing along your insides and something strikes against you like lightning. You pause, blinking confused as Sukuna laughs. “There it is,”

“There what is?”

“C’mon kid, I know you’re too busy with school but you don’t know something so basic about your own body?”

“What is it, oh.”

His other hand toys with your clit, rubbing it in slow circular motions as he gauges your reaction to the touch. You jolt from the sudden pleasure, getting used to it slowly. You didn’t realize how badly it was throbbing to be touched until he does it in full. Your mouth dries up immediately. Little shocks of electricity spark up through you as his hands go full in on your body. The combined pleasure starts to uptick, something building slowly but surely. It goes from not feeling like much to feeling like something. Feeling physical.

Your mouth drops open in sudden shock, eyes lidded as you moan unabashedly - unable to keep the sound at bay. You own a vibrator, use to cum quick and hard just to curb the feeling. You’ve had orgasms on your own but nothing has ever felt like this before. It’s undeniably satiating, mimics the feeling of eating something and nearly making yourself sick on it. You go slack-jawed, your nerves on fire.

Two fingers curled against your silken walls and another two toying at the sensitive bundle of nerves between your legs leaves little room in your brain to think. The only thing your body seems to remember is how to moan and whine - make these pathetic little noises you’ve never heard in your life. You didn’t even know you could make. Oddly enough, Sukuna is quiet through it. He makes grunts and little affirmatives but he’s mostly silent. You mostly hear the sound of your own voice.

The sound of your own wetness. You can feel the sticky sensation of your arousal but you can hear it even better. It’s lewd to listen too, wet smacks mixing with the pathetic bleats of your voice make you feel hot all over. Skin prickling with heat and sensation.

“I knew you were sensitive but haah. If I would’ve fucked you today, you would have cried.”

The thought drifts idly by about his cock and your whole lower half reacts to it by going weak. It aches just thinking about anything bigger or longer entering you than his fingers.

“Figure an insolent little kid like you isn’t much of a crybaby. I’m sure I can make you one.”

You don’t even think about asking what he means.

“Feels,” You make a gasping noise, body suddenly going tense. “Hngh, fuck. Feels so good, holy fuck.”

He groans a little. “I’m being too nice to you. I really should be balls deep in your cunt already and I’m not. You gonna cum for me, huh brat?”

You nod your head dumbly, unable to retort. To think of anything but the sensation washing over you.”Go on. Do it. Cum for your perverted oji-san.”

Something about the depravity of it sets your mind numb. Your body goes tight, every nerve firing off at once as you grip onto his shoulder and let the feeling of euphoria wash over you. Your whole body is so stimulated it’s numbing. The feeling of pleasure crashes into you, leaves your spine arching - mouth dropped open and nearly screaming. Your sanity melts, fades off completely and your brain feels like it’s gone empty. You close your eyes so hard little splashes of white show up in your vision, like you’re seeing T.V. static.

You think you scream. You don’t know. You just know that you’re cumming, hard, just from his hands and you’re terrified of what else he’s good at. You don’t think it boils down to sensitivity as the waves of your first orgasm ripple through your body.

You lay in his arms, sweaty and limp. Your vision is blurry with tears as you open them to look at him. Sukuna is rubbing your side, taking his fingers into his mouth. You look at him surprised as he does. He grins.

“Tastes good, kid.”

You flush. “Shut up.”

“Don’t think I’m done with you quite yet.”

Sukuna guides your hand to his pants, over his bulge. You gasp a little at it. His size through clothes is astounding to you.

“I’m not so generous to leave with nothing, you know.” He pats your thigh, moving you from his lap. “I’ve got a better idea than trying to teach you anything today, so try to hold still.”

You don’t know what he’s talking about until he guides you on the floor. You’re confused until you feel him position you - facing towards the couch with your knees spread on the floor. In doggy, you realize a little too late, your upper-half supported by the couch cushion. You feel more confused than you felt a moment ago.

Sukuna positions himself behind you. You can’t see him, but you can hear the soft rustle of his clothes moving as he stands on his knees behind you. More than that, you can feel his cock resting on your bare ass. You gasp, feeling the weight and size slide against your curves. Sukuna does a breathy little laugh at your reaction. He’s huge.

“Don’t cry kid. I told you I wasn’t gonna put it in tonight and I meant that,” He hums. His hands come to your hips, all of a sudden pushing them together. “Push your thighs together as tight as you can.”

You listen to him. You can do it with some effort despite how weak your body feels. You lean forward on the couch for support, bringing your knees together and pressing your thighs. You don’t understand what it’s for until something hard pressing along your spine moves down the curve of your ass. You gasp aloud as his thick cock pushes between your thighs, tip catching against your swollen clit. Your whole body is covered in goosebumps. Sukuna moans low in his throat, resting his head on your shoulder.

“Fuck, that’s it.” He hums, sounding pleased. “Keep them tight for me, alright girl? Try to at least.”

Sukuna is wordless as he grips your hips, your flesh dimpling under his bruising grip. You're silent, your voice threatening to spill again as you try your best to listen to him. You keep yourself tight and firm, your hands gripping the couch cushions as Sukuna pushes his cock between the fat of your thighs and starts a pace.

The angle makes you gasp, body feeling weak at the way it touches your clit with each bump. Sukuna doesn’t hold back at all. You’re not being penetrated but the weight behind each of his thrusts makes you feel like you’re being fucked. The bruising sensation of skin against skin - the hard muscles of his own legs smacking against the softness of your thighs.

Most embarrassing is the way the position makes you conscious of your uncle's cock. You knew he was huge before, but the way he’s thrusting. Where it reaches when he does thrust makes your throat feel nearly tight. You can’t stop thinking about the fact it’ll be inside you. You can’t imagine taking it in your hands - the girth and length of it fucking impossible. And he wants to fuck you with it? Take your virginity?

He’ll stretch you so open if he does. You can barely think of it fitting in you. When you do, your whole body shudders in a horrible and pathetic way - a new wave of arousal striking a strange chord. As he bumps and ruts against your clit and your mind fills with such lewd images, a new wave of lust starts to pour through you.

It’s unhelped by the feeling of Sukuna’s cock - getting so close. The throbbing with each thrust and the low, throaty groans he keeps vocalizing against your ear. All of it proves to be too much for you. It shocks you when you feel yourself grow hot all over again. Not even being touched directly and so soon after your first - a mere few minutes.

And you find yourself with all your muscles tight, your hand reaching back for Sukuna as you plant your face against the cushions and let him fuck hard between your thighs. You feel incoherent, stupid and so fucking horny. You’ve never experienced it. You can’t think of what to moan, so you choose his name.

This makes him laugh as he bends over you, his teeth biting your shoulder blades.

“Gonna cum again from this brat? Aren’t you fucking easy? Come on, cum with me. Just like that, take it. Fuck, that’s it. Good. Good girl.”

It’s the last bit of tension that pushes you over the edge, whether you care to admit it. Your voice breaks as a second orgasm washes through you - more intense but much shorter than the first and you nearly fall limp. You only barely manage to hold yourself up as your uncle keeps thrusting relentlessly.

You can feel him twitch hard between your thighs when his orgasm finally hits. You shake as you feel him squish the tip between your thighs - hot ropes of cum spurting against the swollen mound of your cunt and dripping down your thighs as he finishes. He smacks your ass as he finishes, making you yelp. Your whole body is rife with exhaustion, finally coming down from high-highs and low-lows.

“We’re gonna have a lot of fun together for the next few months kid,” He says, almost affection in his words. You’re too exhausted to reply, looking at him over your shoulder. “Let’s get along and do our best.”

“You’re a sick-fuck, oji-san.”

“And you’re a whole lot like me, aren’t you kid?.”

#sukuna x reader #jjk x reader #sukuna smut #jjk smut #writing tag #dark content cw #incest cw #dubcon cw #abuse cw #grooming cw #<- kind of sort of not really hes just gross.#THIS HAS SO MANY TRIGGER TAGS .. SORRY

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sigmasemen · 4 months

Text

WHEN THEY GIVE YOU THEIR COAT. (1/2)

multiple blue lock characters x reader

tags: established relationship, tooth rotting fluff, short headcanons.

taglist: n/a currently.

characters: jingo raichi, meguru bachira, yo hiori, kurona ranze, sae itoshi, gin gagamaru, michael kaiser, kenyu yukimiya, alexis ness, gender neutral!reader.

word count: 2348

extra notes: reposted from my wattpad ^—^ !! older work… you cannot get me to read this shit. had to post it in multiple parts sorry y’all!!

JINGO RAICHI:

- He's definitely the sort of guy to get embarrassed that he did it. However, he'd also do it for the sweetest reason. Even if it comes at his own expense.

- Probably something simple. A sudden snow storm during your date, he realizes you're shivering as you walk home. At first, he tries just giving you his mittens but your shivering gets worse.

- "Just- Just take this." He throws his jacket over you in seconds, not making eye contact as he does it. You smiled like an idiot when he did it but he just played it off.

- You end up keeping it for a long time, and even though he's embarrassed about the story behind it, he thinks you look really nice in it. He's even got a photo of you in it that he gushes over!

- "Gushes over" mostly internally. He tries his best to never gush aloud about you. A hard but needed challenge.

- One of his friends tease him about the jacket though (Probably Bachira) and he ends up shouting at him to stop laughing.

- The walk of shame to Ego's office to ask for a new coat because his old one was "lost" was known amongst all teams for months.

MEGURU BACHIRA:

- Another sudden storm on your date, except you're both out of a restaurant. (McDonalds, specifically. He took you there because he knew it was gonna rain and he wanted somewhere closer to home. You ended up spending too much time fooling around on the kids area (got kicked out because you're both teenager.))

- Bachira doesn't notice at first. In fact, he's shivering himself. He loves thunder and even attempts to jump in puddles with you.

- Even though you're cold, you try your best to focus on your lovely boyfriend's smile and how happy he seems doing this.

- And not the freezing feeling you feel in your hands and thighs.

- Except after one of his louder and harder splashes, you shiver quite intensely.

- "Oh? Oh!" He probably looks so shocked, but immediately gets close to you and throws his jacket over the both of you. Even if a good portion of Bachira is sticking out of it, he doesn't care.

- "First one to my house wins!" And even though you made it, soaked beyond belief (mostly your lower halves from bending over/standing on tippy toes to each other) you're both more than happy.

- For a while, then you realize you're both sick the next day.

- And even though Bachira's teammates tease him for making a mess of himself and getting sick because he wanted to please someone? He smiles and laugh. "It was worth it!"

YO HIORI:

- Hiori is deemed the prettiest and one of the most "gentlemen-like" people in Blue Lock due to how nicely he treats you. This story was actually quite expected and really not a shock at all. They all sort of shrugged it off as they heard and told the others, "Yeah, not a surprise.

- It was a nice day in Blue Lock, the birds (Ego) were chirping (yelling to get to work) and everything seemed to go soundly. Until a certain coach decided that it was too warm and chose to turn up the AC as high as he could.

- So, almost immediately? You were shivering in your spot and holding onto yourself.

- Until a certain pretty boy walked up behind you and tapped your shoulder. He smiled for a second and asked if you were alright.

- "Oh! Yeah, I'll be fine."

- Hiori pauses and smiles, then wraps his coat around you. "Does that feel better?"

- You pause, then quickly nod and tighten your grip on the zipper of it. "Thanks!"

- Almost immediately does he sit next to you. He isn't a super social person, but that's fine. You aren't one either.

- It's the rare comfortable silence you get around here.

- You fumble with the jacket in your hands, feeling at the pockets until you grasped something. You glanced up at a distracted Hiori, already staring at the corner of the room. So, you dug through your pockets and noticed something.

- "Is this 9S?" It was a small can badge.

- Hiori looked your way and gave a short laugh, "Ah, it is. It's a self indulgent purchase I made last year..." He scratched the back of his head, "Sorry about that!"

- "No! I love 9S!" Your eyes practically lit up as you leaned towards him, "His design, his character, his lore, he's so investing!"

- A pause came from Hiori, before a smile spread across his lips.

KURONA RANZE:

- Kurona is the more silently romantic type. He's not the sort of guy that'll be super PDA like, but he will do a lot of romantic things in private. Like giving you his plate, or letting you touch his shark plush. Hell, he'll even let you feel his teeth and show them off them you ask about them.

- However, the most notable experience of all with him and his private displays of affection are when you two were having a casual walk through Blue Lock. You were just discussing how you wanted to become the best strikers together and your plans for the future, then he paused.

- "Are you cold?" He pointed at the bodysuit, ignoring the fact he was in an identical one. Maybe it was because sharks were secretly warm blooded...

- "Just a bit, I'll be fine!" You smile, then resume your conversation where you had left off.

- Though Kurona was physically present for the entire thing, he seemed to have more on his mind.

- And this somehow led Kurona into your dorm late at night, dropping his jacket off at your dorm along with a note. You knew it was simple, but the small shark doodle with a thumbs up along with his slightly sloppy hand writing made you smile.

- From there on, even if it inconvenienced you, you would wear his coat constantly. During matches, in public, whenever. Every time Kurona sees you with it, it makes him nod. He doesn't smile much, but he always has a slightly less neutral expression his face and occasionally is more touchy.

SAE ITOSHI:

- Sae isn't a particularly romantic person, he only acts romantic when he's dating someone. He's significantly more subtle with his romantic actions. You have one of his jerseys? You probably took it from his locker.

- You've actually given him more of your clothes than he's given you his. He doesn't wear your clothes unless you really nag him about it. Then he'll do it just to make you smile.

- However, there are rare instances where he'll give you just a bit of attention. It's not super pampering, but he will give you his stuff. Specifically his coat if you look cold. It's rare, he does end up asking for it back, but he loans you it a lot.

- You've told him countless times he doesn't have to, but he keeps doing it.

- It's nice. Honestly? It smells just like him. It's surprisingly clean 90% of the time.

- On more often occasions, you're wearing his jersey to surprise him. He always tells you to take it off because he doesn't want it to be messed up (he trusts you, just... Not with his clothing.). He still thinks you look nice in it.

- He gives you one of his coats and jerseys more permanently after you get married, and then has to pry his eyes away. It just makes you want to wear it all the more.

- He has a small photo of it that you gifted him in his bottom drawer. He sometimes looks at it but hides it for the most part.

GIN GAGAMARU:

- Gagamaru has a hard time realizing when hems actually being romantic or nice. He does try really hard to make you happy and do all the romantic things in the world for you.

- However, jackets.

- He never understood why partners were so into giving each other coats because he could only imagine how the smell of the jacket would be. Not that you smelled bad, of course not. He thought you smelled great. It would just be foreign.

- However, that all changed when you first offered him your jacket. It was after a chilly day and you wanted to be romantic, so he took it for your approval.

- He wore it for a few days without complaint. He even asked Isagi to wash it a few times. It was a lot different than he'd thought. It was like carrying a bit of you around everywhere you went. Like he had your arms constantly around you. A constant memory of you in his mind, no matter what he was doing.

- He took a lot longer than necessary to give it back, but he gave it back when you needed it again since you were cold.

- You even when he did it, "Isn't this my jacket?"

- "I thought we were sharing it now." He reached over to pat your head gently.

- Well, you accepted pretty quickly that you were going to be sharing a jacket with Gagamaru from now on. Not like that was an issue though. You enjoyed it.

#bllk #bllk x you #blue lock #x reader #sae itoshi x reader #sae itoshi #bachira meguru #bachira meguru x reader #gin gagamaru #gin gagamaru x reader #jingo raichi #jingo raichi x reader #yo hiori #yo hiori x reader #cupid’s bangers

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vodika-vibes · 3 months

Note

"Lost" made me feel some unexpected feelings, so...

I'd like to request another angsty thing w happy ending. It's soulmate au and both Sev* and reader somehow know their soulmates are dead, so now in this world of predetermined happy couples they have to flirt like normal people.

It's pretty personal for me, because... I had a person who I felt like my soulmate. And he's dead. And I have to live understanding there probably won't be another crazy love like this when you feel like a two halves of whole, enhancing each other, mutually healing, perfectly fitting, understanding each other with minimum of words... But maybe one day I'll meet someone who at least will be able to make me feel safe and bring some calmness to my troubled soul.

*I just love Sev. It's my third Sev request and I know you fully understand me. Sev is gorgeous.

What Comes After

Summary: You’ve been a member of this support group since you were a young teenager, as your soul mate died when you were both children. Every day is a struggle, but you’re starting to come to terms with the fact that you have to look for your own happily ever after.

Pairing: Clone Commando Sev x GN!Reader

Word Count: 1435

Prompt: Soulmate AU

Tagging: @trixie2023 @n0vqni @imabeautifulbutterfly

A/N: Thank you for your request! I'm sorry for your loss, I hope this story offers you the feeling that you wanted. I once read a fic where people who were "destined" to be together chose other people because of reasons in their lives, and the vibe from the story was "the love might not burn like a wildfire, but it smolders, deep and true." And that's kind of what I wanted for this one.

You release a quiet sigh as you look up at the building where your support meetings take place. You’d think, after so many years, that going inside would be easier.

It’s not.

Admittedly, most days you’re fine.

But some days. Some days the messy scrawl on your arm, written in dull grey, taunts you.

Mom, where did I leave my backpack?

Your soulmate died when they were a child. You remember, in vivid detail, the day the vibrant blue script turned grey. You had been seven years old, and you didn’t understand what was happening.

Your teacher did though.

You remember her wrapping her arms around you and sobbing into your hair while you waited for your mom to come and pick you up. And you remember your mother gently explaining what the grey color means to you.

Not many seven-year-olds have their entire life shattered before it even begins.

As it happens, though, there weren’t any support groups for young children who lost their soul mate, your mom looked. So she had to attend meetings to get information to help support you.

You were allowed to attend the groups, with your mom or dad, when you turned 13 years old.

And you remember how the other members of the support group seemed to crumple in on themselves when they saw just how young you were. Eventually, your parents could just drop you off at the support meeting, because the people had become honorary aunts, uncles, and grandparents to you.

When you were 17, you created an online support group for underage people who lost their soul mates. With forums, chat windows, and information to help them deal with the loss.

You’re 25 now, and you’re the head of the Angel Support Group, a massive intergalactic support group dedicated to supporting children and teenagers as they navigate grief. All forms of grief.

And even then, you still attend your weekly support groups. It’s nice, being around people who understand your loss, even if most of them don’t really understand how your loss is different from theirs.

You open your car door and step out while swinging your purse over your shoulder. You kick the door shut and lock the car, this is a safe area but it’s a good habit to have, and you head towards the building.

As you approach the building, you see a man hovering awkwardly near the entrance.

You’ve never seen him before and, as you move closer, you see that he’s a clone.

More tellingly, his entire left arm is grey, and the grey seems to go under his shirt.

For a moment, you think it’s a tattoo. And then you remember that one of the recorded soul bonds is injuries showing up on their soul mate's bodies.

And he’s covered in a lot of grey.

Too much grey.

Your heart aches for him, so you stop and walk over to him, “Hello,” You greet with a small smile, “Are you here for the support group?”

He starts, and you see his muscles tense, “…yes. My brothers say that I should talk to people who might understand—” His voice is much deeper than any other clone you’ve ever met.

“In my experience, it does make everything more tolerable.” You agree.

“I doubt I’ll be welcome.”

“Why would you think that?”

“In case you haven’t noticed, I’m a clone.”

“Well, you’re hardly the first clone who’s joined this group.” You reply reasonably, “If you need help, then you need help.”

He folds his arms over his chest, “You’re a member?”

“Since I was a teenager.”

He blinks at you, surprised, and drops his arms. You see his gaze dart to the grey sentence on your arm, and some of the hostility drains from him. “A teenager?”

“Yeah, well. At the time there weren’t any support groups for seven-year-olds who lost their soul mates.” You reply lightly, “There are now.” You pull open the door, “Come on, I’ll introduce you.”

For a moment he doesn’t move, and then he sighs softly, “Alright. Lead the way.”

Later, you learn his name is Sev, and that he’s a commando. You learn that he never met his soul mate, but that he’s pretty sure she was killed in a Separatist attack. You learn that he’s been having a hard time sleeping and that his brothers are afraid that he’s going to allow himself to get hurt if he doesn’t get support.

It’s nice to see the support group rally around him.

It’s even better to see the tension and unease drain from him the more people share their stories and he realizes that he’s not alone in this.

As the meeting leaves you offer Sev your comm code, which surprises him.

“Just if you want someone to talk to,” You explain, “It’s not a bad thing, having friends.”

He accepts the comm code gratefully, and then you both go your separate ways.

Honestly, you don’t expect to see him ever again, let alone hear from him. But he surprises you.

He sends you a message late that night, admitting that he can’t sleep because he feels lonely, even when surrounded by people. You can understand that, so you sit awake and chat with him until you fall asleep.

It’s the start of a, slightly odd, friendship.

Sev isn’t a kind man. Calling him rough around the edges is a massive understatement and his confession that he likes fighting and enjoys killing should have sent up all of the red flags, but you like Sev despite it.

He’s not a kind man, but he is a good man.

On the anniversary of the day that your soul mark turned grey, a day you usually spend locked in your apartment, Sev invited himself over and forced you to eat and drink, and held you while you sobbed on his shoulder over what could have been.

And on days when Sev’s temper is on a hair-trigger, you seclude him away from the world in the safety of your home, curl yourself around him, and listen to him talk about what should be.

You’re comfortable with him, and he’s comfortable with you.

So, when your relationship with him changes, it’s not a surprise to anyone other than you and Sev.

It starts late one evening, almost a year after you met him.

“Have you ever considered starting a relationship?” Sev asks from where he’s sprawled across your couch, watching you make brownies for the pair of you to share.

“A relationship?” You repeat thoughtfully as you pause mid-stir, “No, I guess not. For the most part, people expect me to be alone forever.”

“Which people?”

“My parents, my siblings, my extended family.” You say, “With my soulmate dead, I guess most people expect me to not want a relationship.”

“That’s sucky of them.” Sev offers.

A laugh falls from your lips, “Well, they’re not hounding me for grandkids, so I’ll take it. What about you?”

“My brothers hope that I’ll find happiness even with my soulmate being gone,” Sev replies.

“What about what you want?”

He shrugs, “I want to stop feeling so empty all of the time.”

You smile at him, “I can understand that.”

Sev watches you for a moment, and then he sits up, “Do you want to go on a date?”

You set your spoon in the bowl and turn to face him fully, “A date?”

“Yeah.”

You don’t answer for a moment, taking the time to carefully consider his offer. In truth, you like Sev. You’re comfortable around him, you feel safe around him. And when you’re with him the empty feeling deep in your chest seems to fade to the background.

So you smile at him, “I’d like that.”

“Yeah?”

“Yeah.”

He stands and walks over to you. Slowly he lifts his hands and presses them against your cheeks, and then he leans in and presses his forehead against yours.

You close your eyes and lean into his warmth, “It’s not going to be easy.” You warn, your voice soft, “We weren’t born for each other.”

“Not that hard,” Sev corrects, “We just have to keep picking each other, over everyone else.”

“Well, when you put it like that, I suppose I might be overthinking it.” You reply as you open your eyes and smile up at him.

Sev scans your face for a moment, and then leans in and presses a light kiss at the corner of your lips, “That’s alright. We’ll figure it out. But we should finish the brownies.”

You reach up and wrap your arms around his neck, “Deal.”

#star wars #tcw #star wars au #vodika-vibes 650 event #clone commando sev x reader #sev x reader #star wars fanfiction #x reader fanfiction #gn!reader fic #answered asks #soulmate au

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song-writer-melo-wrath · 2 months

Text

oc insight | What kind of love are you?

take this quiz as one (or more, in my case) of your OCs

So, thank you to @treshmind , @1000punks , and @neckromantics for all tagging me in this, haha!

I, as always, have many characters, so I'll pick two pairs of them. And before I get into it, I'll tag @fanby-fckry , @cannibaclysm , @rosewritesstoof , and @spiderin-space , since I know you folks have some pretty cool OCs.

First off, Pathos:

Athmoth | Love as a Choice

You choose to love. Love does not come to you easily, but every day you wake up and choose it. It would be so easy, wouldn't it, to grow cold and callous and grim. But you rise to greet the world, making the conscious effort to find something, anything to love. When you fall for someone, you do not kid yourself of their flaws. Instead, you resolve to see them for who they are, mistakes and all and you love them all the same. Your love is work, and it does not come easy. Your love sweats and toils. It is calloused and sunburned; it bears scars and comes with stories. Your love is worn, but it is no less valuable for it. Being loved by you is like being loved by a gardener, a mother, a teacher. Your love may not always be the simplest, but it is worth the effort.

Mythos | Love as a Flaw (as a side note, the irony of choosing both one of my grey-romantic characters and one of my aromantic characters for this is not lost on me)

Cowering, your love hides in the dark. In shadows and under cover of night, your love runs from corner to corner, afraid to linger, afraid to be caught. Afraid, afraid, afraid of everything. When you fall in love, it is with alarm bells ringing. Your love is a mistake, a flaw in the code, a purchase you don’t remember making and desperately want to return. You didn’t ask for this. You didn’t want this. It’s a problem–– your problem ––and you would do anything to pass it off, burn it away, scoop it out of you with bare hands, or carved out with hooked knives before it can destroy you. Get it out, just get it out now. You don’t care who you hurt in the process, only that you can’t afford to be hurt first. Being loved by you is to be loved by a figment of the imagination. It is to be loved in halves, or not at all.

But also, doing Melowrath with this quiz feels necessary.

Melody | Love as Youth

Your love is buoyant. Your love is bountiful. It is ageless, and it will never age. When you fall in love, it is breathless. It is joyful and endless, it is magnificent. You think it, like your youth , will last forever. Youth is eternal, and so is your love. Your love skips rocks and tells stories, your love roasts marshmallows over fires, and laughs freely. Your love does not take itself too seriously. Your love is jumping into puddles just to watch the water splash, and dancing in the rain, and it is watching Sunday morning reruns of cartoons to feel young once more. Your love is forever, forever young. Being loved by you is to be loved by the summer months. And those never end, do they? Well, I won’t tell if you don’t.

Wrath | Love as a Threshold

Your love does not ask for much. Your love does not take. Your love is free, and unquestioned, and here for wherever needs it. When you fall in love, it is as gentle as a breath in the night. It is quiet, and it is effortless. It is tender. If your love was a house, it would readily welcome all who come through. If your love was a hearth, it would warm the hands of whoever stopped by, whether for a day, a month, a year, or forever. When you fall for someone, it is without strings, without conditions, without need. You love for the sake of loving, for the sake of caring for those who need it. You love with a giver’s heart and a giver’s hands and are made so much stronger for it. Being loved by you is to always feel at home. Your love may not always be well-received by those unprepared to linger, but it is unforgettable all the same.

#athy rambles #tag game #tag games #melody #wrath #melowrath #pathos #mythos #the heartsong athmoth

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rubensmuse · 2 years

Note

i just read your tags on a post from a few days ago and?? do you think the tridentarii aren’t identical twins?

My instinctual answer to this question is "You think the Tridentarii aren't fraternal twins?" Because making the snap judgement that they must be identical is just not as intuitive as this ask is implying it is. They're two different builds and color palettes, and Coronabeth has a different hair texture, so it really surprises me that them being "identical twins" is the assumption to which everyone defaults.

The thing that muddies this discussion for me is that, when people on the internet ask whether or not the Tridentarii are "identical", I have no idea if they mean "they look the same!" or "I headcanon that they are the result of a single zygote splitting into two embryos and developed identical genes!" Because those are two different things, and they involve making two different arguments. I get the sense that when people assume the Tridentarii are "identical", they are saying 1) they are monozygotic twins, but also 2) they would have the same phenotype and be indistinguishable if Ianthe didn't have necromancy eating her titties and muscles or whatever. (Which is also a silly thing to assume, because necromancy doesn't eat your pigmentation, but whatever.) Admittedly, Macaroni and Cheese being different shades of blonde is what made me assume they were fraternal, and that isn't a safe assumption for me to have made because genetics just aren't that simple (see this example of monozygotic twins being born with two dramatically different levels of melanin). The other factor here is, y'know, Ianthe being a necromancer, something hazily theorized in-universe to be genetic (something which, to be fair, we don't know for sure, see this fan theory), and if that is true, boom, there you go, fraternal.

But the other thing we have to consider is that the Tridentarii aren't, like, real. We are talking about fictional characters, so where you or I come down re: their genetic similarities will only matter insofar as it changes the meaning of the narrative. If Ianthe and Coronabeth are "identical" in the genetic sense, what does that mean for their story? Does it make any difference? Is there a purpose to me writing this dumb multiparagraph essay in response to a two-line ask on tumblr, other than to be contrarian and jerk myself off??

I mean, I think so. I think Ianthe's and Coronabeth's story is defined by them not being like the other. They are the two faulty halves of a theoretical complete heir; the platonic ideal of the Princess of Ida, with charisma and likeability and necromancy, too. Their parents "wanted a matched set", but they didn't get one. Them trying to correct this discrepancy with lies and secrecy that isolates them from everyone but each other fits in perfectly with all the other frictions of being a fraternal twin. Like, what's the point of you both? Why'd your mother go through all that trouble to get a pair of shitty normal siblings? And it's easy to internalize that, too, that expectation of unity contrasted with that reality of duality. We are one unit, but you are not like me. If we got here at the same time, why can you do things I can't. Well, fine, then, you have your Thing, I'll have my Thing, too; we're better than a matched set, we complete each other. Hang on, why does your Thing let you do something I can't? Where are you going. Take me with you.

Ianthe and Coronabeth are a set trying to be a match, and they can't make it happen, and it drives them so crazy that Corona would rather be killed and eaten than have Ianthe go do something she can't participate in.

TL;DR: Ianthe and Coronabeth are not literally identical (they are not physically indistinguishable). We don't know if they're genetically identical (monozygotic twins as opposed to dizygotic), and the distinction has not become relevant in any of the books thus far. AND I think considering them to be genetically identical makes their story thematically weaker when compared to the alternative. Therefore, I consider them functionally fraternal until Tamsyn Muir herself says that they aren't, and I furthermore remain flabbergasted that anyone in the fandom would consider that a weird interpretation.

#the locked tomb #ianthe tridentarius #ianthe naberius #coronabeth tridentarius #crown him with many crowns #gideon the ninth #nona the ninth #''but mads! why do you care so much!''#WELL I THINK THERE SHOULD BE MORE SAME-GENDERED FRATERNAL TWINS IN MEDIA.#YES EVEN IF THEY'RE FUCKED UP AND INCESTUOUS. GIMME #thank you for your inquiry! nobody else better insist to me that they're identical ever again after this #this is my headcanon this is my hill to die on i won't be accepting alternative theories #also i take it back. if tamsyn wants to argue with me she's wrong #giddynine #harrynine #nonnynine #just squirrelly things #asks

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bubblegummintie · 10 months

Text

Here’s that masterpost I mentioned in my pinned post. It took awhile to fix some things but I'm going to be dividing stuff to make it clear what's original works, more canon works, and then a mix of both for a server I run. (Still loosely taking applications or well, for small interviews for people to join it. 18+ kind of server and pretty rad. Dm me if you want to ask about it!).

A lot of the ones posted or planned to be posted/are being planned to eventually write for a small series I'm doing for an au idea for Smile for Me are heavy topics and contain death, trauma, and just might not be good for some people to read. Don't feel shame in skipping them because I do have plans for more wholesome works to post in between the one I just finished and a continuation of that one in prologue/epilogue form (depends on which I write first). Keep yourselves safe and read the tags for things! {Will edit later and work on adding more to the masterlist as time goes on. If I forget, I'll try posting the links until I post the link to this list}

.˚ *꒰ঌ✦໒꒱ * ˚. Angst Writings .˚ *꒰ঌ✦໒꒱ * ˚.

✧˚₊‧ Original Character works ✧˚₊‧

𖤐 “Nightmares, Nightmares. When Will They Stop?” - is a small story with my OC, Kouya Rivermasu that deals with a great deal of heavy topics. It was my first time posting something so it might not be the best, but read the tags before actually reading it to make sure it's a good story for you.

The link is: https://archiveofourown.org/works/50809402

˚｡⋆୨୧˚ Bloomhaven/AU spin on canon events ˚｡⋆୨୧˚

❦ “Am I Better, Am I the Same, or Just Worse?” - is a two chapter fic that deals with the trauma of childhood, post-Habitat events, and has Boris having a panic attack while in the process of legally adopting my Flower Kid — Aspen. It's set in the current era we live in so these events happen closer to 2 years ago in our time and deals with my seaside, flowery town being mentioned so far. Has a good ending so a lot less trauma, but still deals with canon events.

The link is: https://archiveofourown.org/works/51182377/chapters/129324394

⊹₊｡ꕤ°₊ ⊹ More canon type events ⊹₊｡ꕤ°₊ ⊹

❀˖° "Bad Choices Lead to Dead Ends" - is a two chapter fanfic that will potentially just get it's own section eventually due to it being the second part of a series I'm planning now. It follows the loop au that some people have used where Kamal and Boris are sentient. The twist? One of them is destined to die and the other is meant to stay back to watch the aftermath. The first chapter is Boris' POV and the second is Kamal's POV. I'd suggest reading one after the other to really put into effect the two halves of a picture type style put in. It gets really sad so I'd bring some tissues and skip out on this one if you're sensitive to death and your comfort character dying.

The link is: https://archiveofourown.org/works/51857044/chapters/131115796#workskin

The link to my friend's art for the fic: https://www.tumblr.com/l0nelyappariti0n/735082417599168512/bad-choices-lead-to-dead-ends-chapter-1

˗ˏˋ༻ʚ♡︎ɞ༺ˎˊ˗ Lighthearted/Wholesome Writings ˗ˏˋ༻ʚ♡︎ɞ༺ˎˊ˗

✧˚₊‧ Original Character works ✧˚₊‧

࣪𖤐 [Placeholder]

˚｡⋆୨୧˚Bloomhaven/AU spin on canon events˚｡⋆୨୧˚

❦ [Placeholder]

⊹₊｡ꕤ°₊ ⊹More canon type events⊹₊｡ꕤ°₊ ⊹

❀˖° [placeholder]

More will be added over time so be on the look out and if you lose this post, just know it's in my pinned post as well!

#Masterlist Post #Mint Tea Time Talks #Mint Tea Time Posts

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movemnt · 1 year

Text

so, this is me rambling through a rundown of most of what they cut from the final version of r.esident evil r.evelations 2. This is all summary of what was gathered from the horrid mess in the data files that a friend datamined and we sorted through about a year after the game released. It's a goddamn nightmare in there.

To make a very lengthy story short, they had the full game set to go until about 2 weeks to the first episode being released, and then basically halved it after delaying it for about another week with no explanation??? Nobody knows why they decided to go this route and we probably won't ever know. they left the game data in a bit of a cobbled mess with those data files still in it (and when I say it's a mess i mean it's a M E S S. it took three weeks to get just some of the dialogue that was missing and then much more to make some semblance of sense of the whole thing and piece it all together. like why not just delete all of it???? unless it was a case of 'if i remove this tomato the entire game will cease to function so it stays in this spot outside of the stage'-) and some dialogue tags and actions have zero context to them in the game in its current state.

i'm also not putting in the dialogue tags and am instead summarizing them because this post will be 10x longer than it is.

I also want to note that as much shit as I'm about to give it I fucking adore this goddamn game, it got me through some very dark times in my life, I even have Moira as my alias for most websites- it's amazing, but the fact that they left this much is kinda bizarre and makes me wonder what could have been. also it's v weird to do this summary again. i've done it once before but some details are missing from what i had in a draft of the deleted post i wrote and the post that a friend wrote so some of this is from memory.

alas.

The first episode is basically the same in terms of story. Claire and Moira get kidnapped, they wake up and Moira is freed after Claire does the first puzzle in the cells. It's much more hyper in pace and intense then smoothed into the more liminal space horror that we get in the prison currently. It was lengthy on both sides with a bit more of a reflection on things from barry's side in reference to Moira and LOTS. OF. PUZZLES. ON CLAIRE'S SIDE. kind of a blessing i'm not going to lie. alex went fucking hard (she literally set all these traps herself with a bit of help from neil) and her dialogue tags are ruthless. the xbox 360 demo they sent to cons and press reflect this.

The second episode... jesus fucking christ my guys.

For Claire's side: So instead of the ending being based solely on the choice you make in the third episode, there were a couple of different choices you can make in the second alluding to different endings where some characters die, some don't, ALL CHARACTERS DIE, all but one live, etc (I'll explain this in the fourth episode). Basically, you can help guide Moira's conquered fear a bit more instead of making it based around this one pivotal moment. It's a nice, slow blend into the root cause of her fear. She even talks more about what happened and Claire encourages her to try to protect herself more, even knowing what happened. Moira seems a bit more sympathetic, though is still angry at Barry for being over"bear"ing (ba dum tiss). It's not a constant slew of 'I HATE BARRY'' 'DOES HE ALWAYS TELL THAT AWFUL JOKE' and teenage-ish angst, there's actually much more of a blended mix of her trying to process what's going on and what happened between her and polly years ago. ( also there's a lot of what I like to call "Burton Joke Moments" lmao )

Also. I must state that the N.eil x C.laire dialogue was not present and actually isn't present in the original script of the game still, either in the old version and in the script in the japanese version. C-usa is notorious for implying things in their translation of R.esident E.vil stories (they got some fucking fire up their ass from Capcom and the development team after this one though, it was BAD.). The basis in the japanese script is that they were coworkers, he's the boss, without him terra save might crumble, and the script went more in the route of Claire being concerned about Neil as the leader of Terra Save as a whole.

Also, CLAIRE ACTUALLY ACTS LIKE CLAIRE. While the moment of Moira and Natalia bonding over the bracelets is still present and connected with the other pieces of dialogue, in the pieces of dialogue we found she is much more presently concerned with the actual fucking child they have tagging along with them. "Natalia, are you okay?" "You can come down" "Can you jump that high?" "Do the monsters scare you?" "You've got this, we'll get you out of here, don't worry." "Wow you're strong!" "do you need to catch your breath?" etc. While some of what was found can also be implied to be towards Moira, all of it sounds much more uplifting towards the kid than what we get in the present version.

Pedro's death is marginally the same, though the dialogue is that much more heartbreaking. That man was so fucking scared and Alex taunting him seemingly pushed him even more and made him an example of what those bracelets can do. Claire is also much more reassuring to him and trying to take charge of the situation before it eventually goes to the hell it turns into.

that's what i remember of claire's side, barry's side-

It was so much more creepy because Alex actually follows and watches you throughout the chapter (tbh a bit of an inside joke between me and a friend is that Alex walked so MR. X could run). There's animations and coding that imply she was supposed to be loaded into each scene in the city. Once you load it with the monster Alex model that's covered, she is permanently Watching you it's really fucking weird and was honestly funny to watch my friend test out (after it took hours to get it to Function). This also goes along with the present implications of her watching through cameras and through the revenants. She is literally Always watching you.

Speaking of! Fun Fact that I love just bc of its creepy factor- Alex is literally watching you through the revenants, but even this mechanic seems a bit faulty, or it's faulty on purpose? They don't seem to see Natalia, but heaven forbid they touch Barry if he's hiding it's an immediate grab (npc controlled or not). Oddly enough this is kinda the same for Moira in Moira's dlc chapter. They see her but also kinda dont? i'll explore that in my own hc for her later. Makes me wonder if they have this whole system of snuffing out who's infected and who's not it's really fucking cool. Or if it's glitchy. I'm gonna go for the former option bc it's cool.

anyway- that is most of what i recall from his side of ep 2, i think there was more with the pedro fight but it was mostly repeats of his scared rant in claire's side, if i remember more i'll add on to this.

episode 3-

i dont remember much about anything before the big neil fight, so im not sure if much of it changed aside from the aforementioned script stuff with claire and neil. there was a bit more talk about barry from moira following the encounter with evgeny and it's much more defeated than the high strung nature we get from her in the first chapter. "i didnt have to be told i did something bad" or smth turned into something like "i just wished we could have talked more without being stubborn". like honestly it seems less that they always fought, but were more complacent and silently tense until one of them poked the bear. kinda like a "not causing a fight for the family" sorta deal???

the fight though- i think it would have been so much stronger with the dialogue that was taken out. like i am not saying i dont like 'WE WERE SUPPOSED TO SAVE PEOPLE IT'S IN THE GODDAMN NAME!' but, claire is really going in on what neil has been doing, she's much more reactive after she has gotten some more clarity on what neil has been doing.

there's also like this document found in the chamber where you can find the dead butler, and it talks about albert and his visits and how ppl would just look really weirdly at this dude dressed all in black leather and telling them not to mind him lmao

barry's side didn't change much. barry's discovery of evgeny and then of moira's phone hit me like a goddamn brick wall and i dont think it changed much aside from the little different bits of dialogue you can hear from moira in episode four (i'll explain this in episode 4's piece)

now. episode 4.

holy shit on a shitstick-

some of this will be a mish mash of what i remember, what is missing, what is in concept art pieces, and what we had to gather from all of the above.

Starting with Claire's episode. So, there's a massive reason why claire episode 4 is only 10 minutes long as opposed to the other chapters, in short, there was a LOT cut out of it and connected to other pieces that were cut out, etc. I'll start with smaller bits of info and go up into the rather massive thing that we could only piece together and theorize about because, quite frankly and as much as this might make no sense, what we found makes no goddamn sense unless we connect it to scene stuff.

so, little weird things first- moira was supposed to get a katana from the tower at one point. for some reason alex kept one around, highly suspected to be albert's but i don't know. there's also a silenced pistol that implies that claire was supposed to silently shoot at the glasps that are released once the tower starts to go into self destruct mode. There's supposed to be more puzzles strewn about the lab, and more sight seeing around it too. Like you were supposed to see around it a lot more and not just from the confines of a glass box.

and then you get to moira's death.

you were supposed to hear her voice recording to barry as claire is walking away. that's fucking heart wrenching. like there's a reason why she has her phone in hand but not doing anything with it- she was about to record her final words to her dad, thinking she was about to die.

Now the big thing.

When you take the camera away from the insulated box they have you in with claire and moira and go beyond alex, you can find some bits and trinkets: two hospital beds (of which you can already see) some tricell equipment and purple tubes with rocks. Close inspection shows that they look a hell of a lot like lava rocks. Now hold on you may say, would that imply alex was trying to clone a certain brother of hers- i don't believe so. However, it implies that she had his dna. It's also implied that she was testing out what she was doing with natalia to see if she could do the same with albert's dna. which. makes a lot of other things make sense. Honest to god the one thing i hate about the way they did this is all the disconnected plot lines, like the one that "you were right albert it's not enough to live i want to transcend" alludes to. Like they left that in there and just didn't bother to explain why and let you assume he just rambled on about it to her one time and he continued that ramble into 5- yeah just. ugh.

another thing to ramble about before going into the brief discussion about barry's episode 4- the ending of barry's episode 3 (among other things) is just so. so unclear without the piece that is missing from claire's episode 4. alex grabs natalia and there's a brief moment where alex shows genuine fear, that's because her experiment worked, but only half way. See, half of her escaped and transferred into natalia and now lays dormant, the other half, however, is cursed to stay into the mutated form she is in. The only problem is this half in natalia is the worst half. this is where the "true or false, you, natalia, are false, i alone am true" thing and her raging hatred for natalia comes into play. only thing is they didnt show this or explain it.

and then barry's episode 4.

so, the multi-endings bit kinda comes into play here. Right now we have only two endings, a good ending and a bad ending. However, there's parts that make it look like the ending was supposed to be split up. Barry and Moira were supposed to work together for a bit (like when they escaped the area the first boss fight with alex happened in, it just cuts to them somehow running outside even though this cave was DEEP into the ground), there's some lines for evgeny (even though he dies which is honestly really curious).

that's honestly all i can recall at the current moment and as i dive into old files i might find more. hope yall enjoyed my ramblings.

#ooc ;; stilled #idk what to tag this as tbqh with yall #but yeah have my 2k+ word explanation of whatever the hell they left in those files.#we could've had it allllllll rolling in the deeeeeeeeeep

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quantummindclassicalheart · 2 years

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I posted 6,184 times in 2022

That's 2,433 more posts than 2021!

29 posts created (0%)

6,155 posts reblogged (100%)

Blogs I reblogged the most:

@/naamahdarling

@/ladyshinga

@/astridbecks

@/bunjywunjy

@/sashthesloth

I tagged 4,829 of my posts in 2022

Only 22% of my posts had no tags

#kqueuequeueoverrsquared - 1,824 posts

#critical role - 431 posts

#cr spoilers - 89 posts

#miraculous ladybug - 87 posts

#widojest - 59 posts

#the locked tomb - 58 posts

#ref - 52 posts

#essek thelyss - 51 posts

#this is an essek blog now - 49 posts

#the owl house - 40 posts

Longest Tag: 136 characters

#and a very sneaky implied rhyme in the lines that bookend the song– ‘we’re in for a scar’ is a five-syllable rhyme for ‘laerryn coramar’

My Top Posts in 2022:

twelve Essek Thelyss valentines/pick-up lines that no one asked for

Are you a Gravity Sinkhole? Because I'm feeling a powerful attraction to you.

Can I quantum tunnel my way into your classically forbidden region?

My favorite food is soups, but I'm thinking of eating out tonight.

Do you have truesight? Because you see right through me, valentine.

Let me show you a kindness.

No war crimes tonight, valentine. Unless you are into-- look, I said I was sorry--

Valentine, I'm walking on air whenever I’m with you.

The inexorable flow of linear time isn't the only thing I'm violating tonight.

Do you believe in love at first sight, or shall I invoke Fortune's Favor and reroll my Charisma check?

Can you clear the cats off the bed, valentine?

Have you been bound to a Luxon Beacon? Because I think you're conse-cute.

Of my many regrets, loving you will never be one of them.

(edit: now with art by @ultrainfinitequest! see also: nein Caleb Widogast valentines)

121 notes - Posted February 9, 2022

There's something delightful about the Percy & Ashton interaction in C3E36 that speaks to a similarity between Taliesin's characters. Like, Ashton sees this formal, prissy old aristocrat who they sort of assume has never really known suffering or loss, and they treat him accordingly.

And while Percy definitely thinks Ashton is young and naive, he also sees something familiar in Ashton and the way he both lashes out and clings desperately to this bunch of weirdos he's found and has become determined to protect. It's not enough to make him like Ashton, but it earns a little bit of recognition, and Matt and Taliesin played both halves of this interaction so well.

235 notes - Posted October 11, 2022

There is an old folk song that is sung in Exandria. It goes by a lot of titles--In Marquet it’s commonly known as The Liar’s Love, while natives of Xhorhas would know it as The Fey Groom, and the elves of Syngorn’s version has a title that translates to “The Sacrifice of Truth for Love.”

This is one bard’s rendition of the song in Common, as accompanied by ukulele.

(Best with headphones! With credit for the original idea to @ihaveatypeanditstrickstergods and the original characters to @quiddie and Sam Riegel. Album art generated by Craiyon.)

Lyrics below the cut.

Refrain: This sordid scene, my love, we're in, oh, We're in for a scar And yet tonight by morning light I'll fall for you once more.

Verse 1: There once was a fey who chanced one day From lands so wild and strange For stories told worth more than gold Exandria's face would change.

Among the clouds a city bright And there its beating heart Did kindle love within his own For her he'd craft his art.

Verse 2: A vision clear did guide his dear With this its one refrain Her city’d rise beyond the skies And loose its mortal chain

Beneath the streets his love did seek Her dream at any cost, But fortune claimed its pound of flesh, A friend too soon was lost.

Verse 3: The fey saw true that if they knew, Her legacy’d be blight And so he lied to deftly hide Her deeds from public sight.

And though his heart was ever hers, Her work, for now, meant more She’d fix them soon when she was done So he walked out the door.

Verse 4: And soon an hour of arcane pow’r Was finally at hand For on that night, with her Leywright She’d make them understand

But one thing more stood in her way Her masterpiece abjured She struck it down, and with that spell Calamity ensured.

Verse 5: And with her sin the fiends poured in With death and fire and hate, But one last spell at ruin’s knell Might change Exandria’s fate.

His healing words would keep her hale, Her spellwork holding fast, And at the heart they’d both go down Her work complete at last.

Refrain: This sordid scene, my love, we're in, oh, We're in for a scar And yet tonight by morning light I'll fall with you once more.

270 notes - Posted November 5, 2022

I added some more lyrics to this post by @/mikkeneko and @/neraitsuze. Karaoke track from here.

lyrics:

i heard from our sweet boy you guys took a trip into the city and as i understand he said dad told him weird things 'bout demons and ghosts and then more demons while you both watched the band he said you got all weirdly intense when you talked about his future as he sipped lemonade darling will you explain them your reasons and what the fuck you meant by the so-called black parade

322 notes - Posted January 28, 2022

My #1 post of 2022

For those of you who weren't in Twitch chat last night, you missed this incredible bit of lore.

2,549 notes - Posted May 27, 2022

Get your Tumblr 2022 Year in Review →

#tumblr2022 #year in review #my 2022 tumblr year in review #your tumblr year in review

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void-dwelling-snail · 4 days

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>:) helloooo people!!!! I’m back with more stuff for my Void Skaters AU!!!!! This post is gonna be entirely dedicated to explaining the sport so everyone’s caught up and not confused. I hate yapping about something and then finding out people have no idea what I’m talking about. But that’s besides the point!!! Now sit down, grab some popcorn and a drink and get ready cause I will basically be giving a not so brief explanation of this :333 — Snail

Roller derby (or derby just for short) is a contact skating sport. Two teams play on an oval shaped track. There are 5 people on the track at a time. There are typically 15 people on a team. I think for my teams there’ll be 10 players per team but the reason for this will be explained in a later post (if I remember). On the track there’s the jammer and four blockers.

A very important rule in derby is that while it's a contact sport, you're not allowed to use heads, elbows, forearms, hands, knees, lower legs, or feet to make contact with the opposing team. Using any of these parts or making an unsafe play that could severely harm your opponent could result in a penalty.

—————-

Just some general terms would be: Jams, Jammers, Blockers, and Pack

Jams are the formal term for the periods of actual gameplay. Jams are usually 2 minutes long with about a minute in between them. The game is split into 2 halves of 30 minutes.

Packs is the term for the group of blockers. The blockers goal and what not will be later explained.

the Jammers wear a star cover on their helmet to distinguish them from the other players. The jammer's goal is to get through the pack of blockers before the other jammer does. If the jammers get through first they become the lead jammer and are able to call of the jam (TLDR they get to decide if it ends sooner). Jammers can tend to have different strategies when it comes to getting though the blockers. Some jammers focus on being able to quickly squeeze between the blockers quickly, while others can use brute strength to push through them. I’ve seen both styles in games. Both styles will appear in this AU.

The blockers are the remaining 4 people that group together to try and prevent the opposing jammer from getting through, while trying to help their own get through. The groups of blockers are referred to as packs so keep that vocab word in mind, folks!! I can’t really think of much else to say about the blockers. Blockers can also be jammers in case theirs gets a penalty but they usually have a backup jammer.

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I think this is all for now…. If I remember anything I'll edit and add it in later. But in the meantime I’ll link some sites that explain these rules so much better (https://rules.wftda.com/summary.html) . As for the next post? It’ll most likely be my team rosters. Not everyone will be from Hermitcraft. There’ll be some Life Series players so just an FYI. There will also be mild shipping. Just Hot Guy + Cute Guy stuff, ya know the drill. As for where I want to take this story? Well as of now it’s just a silly little thing I want to show to the silly people in my screen (you guys!!). I will probably make this a fic, although I don’t have an AO3 account so it’ll probably be all on here. I’ll probably make little comics when school isn’t kicking my butt. But hey if this does well maybe I’ll do more with it. Idk what “more” is but I’ll cross that bridge when it gets there. Regardless, I don’t care if this gets 2 likes or 2,000. This is my silly little project and it'll be here for all who care. If you have any questions ask in the tags or do something with the inbox??? Idk. Well anyways, that’ll be all for now!! —Snail

#Void Skaters AU #Hotguy #Cuteguy #hermitcraft #mcyt #trafficblr #life series

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stirdrawsandreblaws · 10 months

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Ten Characters, Ten Fandoms

i got tagged by @apathetic-theme-song

Shion - King of Fighters

Sabrina/Natsume - Pokemon

Duo Maxwell - Gundam Wing

Makoto/Lita Kino - Sailor Moon

Cho Hakkai - Saiyuki

Yuuko Ichihara - xxxHolic

Count D - Pet Shop of Horrors

Vincent Valentine - Final Fantasy VII

Kimimaro - Naruto

Alphys - Undertale

i can never think of anyone to tag but if you wanna do this because you saw me do it, feel free to @ me and make me look at your list :3

also this isn't required but bc i love them i put images and brief descriptions of all of these characters under the cut

Shion, my beloved; the androgynous sub-boss of King of Fighters XI, he uses multiple weapons including a rope-dart, chinese spear, meteor hammer, and can punch air so hard it turns into a projectile. he often quotes Sun Tzu's Art of War, knows tons about cooking, and loves eating delicacies. currently wandering some kind of weird extradimensional space after his boss tried to kill him (he got revenge tho >:3 he can have little a murder, as a treat.)

Sabrina/Natsume (left) in the Pokemon anime had psychic powers so strong she splintered her personality into a grown-up half and a child half, both of which were able to exercise their own wills independently (the latter via a doll). she was scary, but eventually became more lighthearted and rejoined her split halves thanks to a goofy Haunter.

Duo Maxwell (center) is many things: orphan, gifted mechanic, and self-proclaimed God of Death--which is why he's the pilot of the Deathscythe, a grim-reaper-esque mecha. he witnessed a lot of death early in life, to the point that even his first and last names connect him to people close to him who died

Makoto/Lita Kino (right) is Sailor Jupiter; she's strong, tall, tomboyish, and self-sufficient after the loss of her parents. Her lightning attacks are powerful, but her sense of justice is even more so. She has a cute side, too, and gets flustered when someone calls her feminine. >:3

Cho Hakkai (left), problematic fave #1. the mom friend, and a stepford smiler who took a correspondence course in lockpicking, he's atoning for incest and mass-murder by....doing more mass-murder, but the gods told him it was cool this time. to be fair, he's mostly a healer now, as well as the party's designated driver (his dragon, named Jeep, turns into a Jeep).

Yuuko Ichihara (right) is a space-time witch who grants wishes. i want to say more but instead i'll just plead with you to read the xxxHolic manga (and read/watch Tsubasa -RESERVoir CHRoNiCLE- for the full experience, since they have some story linkage).

Count D gets two images for a little gallery because look at this freak. gorgeous. the way they move in the OVA is fantastic. genderless sugar-addicted ecoterrorist; what's not to love??

Vincent Valentine (left) is a gunslinger who can transform into a fanged monster and chooses to sleep off his depression in a coffin, but he's not a vampire. that's just how it is sometimes. he even joins the hero party without doing anything to fix his bed hair.

Kimimaro (center) has a bloodline ability that lets him utilize his bones as weapons. As a child, he was kept in a cage and only released for combat, despite his gentle nature. Orochimaru (the series' first main antagonist) found him after his clan was wiped out, and took him in; being valued by Orochimaru gave him purpose, and he fights like a zealot as a result... (;A;)

Alphys (right) is a cringefail otaku lesbian lizard who, nevertheless, is a brilliant scientist. she created Mettaton's mechanical body, after all. we don't need to talk about her other works. :) really. :) :) :)

#i wanted to avoid duplicating any moth already did so i made some different choices than i usually would #also i tried to limit it to characters that didn't have the same va/seiyuu (thus being able to cut 8 characters voiced by akira ishida lol)#also avoided picking series by the same creator (ruling out every other CLAMP thing; i could make a list like this just from them otherwise #these are always hard but this one seems like it's just to pick a variety and not necessarily favorites so that made it easier lmao #that said i could not pick a single yugioh character bc i like far too many to choose one as representative here ugh #stirring up trouble

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swissmissficrecs · 4 years

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Word count: 19,827 Chapters: 5/5 Fandom: Sherlock (TV) Rating: Explicit Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply Relationships: Sherlock Holmes/John Watson Characters: Sherlock Holmes, John Watson Additional Tags: Nightmares, Dealing With Trauma, Because let's be honest both of these boys probably have PTSD, Developing Relationship, Friends to Lovers, Fluff, Eventual Smut, soft, Love, Healing, Nightmares depict traumatic events, References Past Child Abuse, References the Morgue Scene in TLD, Comfort, Growth, References Serbia Scene In TEH, Oral Sex, Dirty Talk, Idiots in Love, Hand Jobs, Sherlock Holmes Loves John Watson, John Watson Loves Sherlock Holmes, Rimming, Anal Sex, Anal Fingering, Bottoming from the Top, Bottom Sherlock Holmes, Top John Watson, they're in love, 4+1, Or 4 Times They Wake Each Other Up From Nightmares, And 1 Time When It's Not a Nightmare ;) Summary:

Sherlock's got quite an imagination, he always has. As a child, he had very vivid dreams; they come back with a vengeance after all that has happened in the past few years. Luckily for him, his best friend moved back in and has some experience with PTSD and nightmares. He seems more than willing to lend a helping hand.

In short, it's a story about two men who have had a very tough couple of years and are long overdue for a little tenderness and healing. Or four times that one of the boys wake each other up from a Nightmare and one time when it is not a Nightmare. ;)

======

Rec: The author’s name perfectly encapsulates this story, in that it is both fearful and beautiful. The nightmares are pretty heavy on the angst, but then so have been John and Sherlock’s lives. The beautiful part is how they comfort each other, so naturally and without judgment. And how they so easily slide into being more, or perhaps, what they have been all along: two halves of one heart. The alternating POV allows us to see into both men’s process of coming to terms with what they’ve been through, and how profoundly their newly defined role in each other’s life affects them. It’s really a gorgeously conceived piece of character work and development, taking place nearly entirely in bed with oodles of emotional and physical intimacy, all topped off with extensive and luscious lovemaking.

#fearfully-beautifully-made #10k #first time #angst #romance #series 4 #fluff #ptsd #marriage

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kiatheinsomniac · 4 years

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Unwoven Fate III

[MY MASTERLIST]

@fuckinherondale (thought you’d want the tag)

(Y/n) urged the horse forward as the church steeples and guard towers of Forlì came into view, hearing the hard thrumming of the creature's hooves become quieter as the ground gave way to softer marshland. She remembered this village outside of the city's walls, remembered her mother teaching her how to horse ride on its outskirts. She gripped the reigns tighter, biting her cheek to suppress all the emotions that she decided she could deal with later; for now, she just had to find her old home.

She wondered if she even had a home now. Either her old familial home was now abandoned or inhabited by a new family and her Aunt and Uncle's villa no longer felt like home.

She had lived within the walls, far from the citadel (well far for a child to walk anyway), that much she could remember. She could recall one of the guard towers being visible from her bedroom and that the villa had a small courtyard in the centre with a mosaic on the floor.

As she approached the city gates, she made her way to a stall where she paid the boy to watch over her horse for a few hours. Patting down her dress, she made her way into the city, trying her best to not look as lost as she felt, deciding to follow the wall and see if anything seemed familiar to her. She hadn't been here in over a decade but she was alone now and she needed answers.

Always more questions without enough answers to satisfy them.

People bustled around on the streets, children playing, women running errands, men working. (Y/n) pulled her cloak around her, eyes flittering around. She was sure that enough had changed over the past decade and a bit for her to be at a disadvantage in relying on familiarity. But she hungered for answers and the only lead that she had was this villa: confronting her remaining family was out of the question. What if it put her in danger? Surely they loved her too much to harm her? Why did they have her parents killed? Why was she spared? Why did her Aunt talk about them like that?

Why? Why? Why? And absolutely no 'because...' to accompany it. Biting her cheek again, she realised that she had never felt like such a naïve and vulnerable child in her life until now.

After an hour of fruitless searching, she decided that enough was enough and set towards the church, deciding to ask for directions. Approaching the grand building, she stepped into the large, open doors. Her footsteps starting to echo around the room, seeing people seated on the pews or kneeling before lit candles, their prayers to loved ones lost. Slackening a moment, she approached the racks of candlesticks, watching the flames dance.

Picking up one, she used it to light another two on the front row, placing the candle back where she had plucked it from. Her breath caught for a moment as her eyes glanced up for a moment to the stained glass of the holy virgin that was showering her in an array of colours.

"I'll find out what happened to you. . . What happened to us. . . I promise." She whispered before stepping away, seeing a priest walking in. He was old: his hair white, posture stout and skin marked by time, leaving lines of stories and memories upon his face.

"Excuse me," (Y/n) started, approaching him, "I'm a little lost and was wondering if you could give me directions." Best to ask the old people, they were more likely to know the way; past the age of travelling, they must have stayed put for some years at the least.

"Of course! Where would you like to go?" He smiled.

"I'm looking for the (L/n) family villa, well, it may not have been called that for some years." She put forward.

"That place?" He seemed taken aback, "Why would a lady like you need to go to such a tragic site?"

"My cousin survived the attack there years ago, poor girl. She wants to find out what became of her old home but couldn't bring herself to face it again. I offered to go in her place." She lied. Her Aunt and Uncle would have people looking for her soon and she didn't want to be found. Best to not leave any leads behind. They would find the innkeeper soon and she didn't want anyone following her. She had to try and cover her tracks somehow.

"Oh, the poor child, I remember the news of that attack. I never knew the family personally but they lived near the wall towards the east." He continued to give her the specific address before they parted ways with a blessing from him on behalf of her and her 'cousin'.

Within minutes, she was standing before her old family home. The flowers around it were well-kept and she could see that same mosaic through the gates. The columns, arches and crème-coloured stone were all just as she remembered.

"May I speak to one of the residents here?" She asked a guard, seeing their distrustful glances, never having seen her before. "I lived here before this family and I was just wondering if I could look around, for memory's sake." She smiled softly, wanting her pure intentions to get across. One of the guards turned to the gate and called for the gardener who was instructed to fetch someone.

Within a few minutes, a finely-dressed woman with dark locks and tanned skin was making her way to the gates, eyeing the young woman who stood before her. (Y/n) was very aware that she looked less refined as was expected of a noblewoman. Her hair was not styled and was rather wind-swept from the journey, the end of her dress stained from the splatters of mud from the marshes.

"I hear that you lived here once." She began. (Y/n) bowed her head respectfully.

"Yes, signora." She replied, "I merely wanted to revisit some memories. . . for closure. I lived here as a child."

"The child who survived the attack?" She raised a brow.

"Yes, signora." The woman seemed to think for a moment before motioning her hand to the guards.

"Let her in."

While being allowed to wander the rooms and halls, (Y/n) found herself approaching the drawing-room last. She knew that it would be a difficult place to face but she also knew that she needed to find something, anything. Everywhere else had given her nothing so far. But she had to face the tragic room eventually and when she did, she felt her throat close up.

Suddenly, she was a child again, in the maidservant's arms, crying out for her parents. She could see her father's body kicked to the floor and her mother falling to her knees with a dagger in her chest. Her teeth sank down into her cheek as tears welled in her eyes.

"I'm sorry." She shuddered as she took a moment to compose herself, unsure if she was talking to herself, her parents or the owner's wife who was following her around. "This is where it happened." Her fingers quickly dashed under her eyes.

"Don't apologise, dear." The woman consoled, hesitantly resting her hand on the younger woman's shoulder.

"I should be on my way now." She sniffled, getting her emotions in check at last, "I'm sorry if I've been a bother to you." She felt a weight in her chest at the lack of answers she had found here, not knowing where to go next, finding herself at a dead end.

"Not at all, I couldn't deny you something so simple." The woman replied as she led her out of the house, back across the courtyard.

But something stopped (Y/n) in her tracks, a feeling like a pulse, a calling. She turned around again, looking around the courtyard to the mosaic with its image of an eagle. Her feet seemed to carry her before it and she felt something surge in her veins, a familiar feeling. That odd feeling where she could mute the world of colour, see it be reduced to dark blues and greys.

Air filled her lungs as she muted out all the world's bright colours only something was different this time, something new. There was a pattern on the mosaic, highlighted in gold and shimmering. Two halves of an image facing out from each other with one piece in between. She got onto her knees and ran her fingers over the pattern, hearing the woman ask if she was alright.

(Y/n) pressed her hands to the art, pushing down on the two outer pieces as hard as she could and trying to rotate them. Not having used enough force, she pushed her body forwards and the right one shifted, meeting the image in the middle seamlessly, beginning to show the whole symbol. Now using both hands on the left side, she shifted that into place too and there was a hiss of air as the whole mosaic shifted upwards.

The symbol was one she was sure that she had seen before but couldn't remember where. Like an arrow facing upwards with a pointed curve beneath it.

Fingers digging into the edge of the secret door now, she pulled the piece up and pushed it across the stone floor. There was a shallow compartment beneath it, containing a scroll and something wrapped in cloth.

Her eyes widened and she could have jumped with joy. Something at last! Shoving everything into her bag, she put the mosaic back and turned around to the woman who seemed more than surprised.

"Thank you so much!" She smiled before getting on her way, deciding to leave the city and rest in Florence for the night. She didn't want to stick around Forlì now that people knew she had been there. She needed to learn how to disappear. Looking at her cloak and dress, she knew that it would attract more attention, especially now that travelling was taking its toll on her appearance. It only made her look suspicious. She needed a much plainer outfit.

Making her way to the tailor's by the southern gates, she greeted the man with a smile, seeing a woman in the back organising all the fabrics.

"What can I get for such a fine young lady? Silks imported from the east perhaps? Dyes from beyond Arabia?" He offered.

"I don't have a lot of money." She replied, keeping in mind that she would need to save what coin she had for rooms to rent at night and food to eat, "But I can sell you my cloak and dress along with the coin, it only needs a light wash. I need a peasant's pinafore, a pair of trousers, a plain but warm cloak and some boots. I can give you 18 florins with my skirt, bodice, shoes and cloak. The material's velvet and the ribbons are silk." She threw in for good value. The man narrowed his eyes at this request and she could see suspicion growing on his face.

"I must ride alone to my betrothed in the countryside and I don't wish to be attacked along the way. People see the clothing and know I own something of value to have stolen from me." She quickly excused.

"Ah, I see. I did think it was quite odd." He replied with a sympathetic smile, "Poor girl."

"I just rode into here to make sure that the sword I have commissioned for our wedding will be done on time." She began making small talk, hoping to erase the man's doubt entirely, "The blacksmith doesn't seem very good at replying to letters." She laughed.

"Well, I'm sure your husband-to-be will love his wedding gift almost as much as he loves you." The man smiled as he led her inside the shop, knowing she would need somewhere to change.

⚜⚜⚜

Within a few minutes, (Y/n) was dressed in a grey pinafore dress with a black cloak, a pair of boots that stopped halfway up her calves and a pair of trousers in her bag.

As she laid her old dress, cloak and shoes over the counter and counted out her coins, she looked up at the tailor who seemed unsatisfied.

"There it is," (Y/n) spoke, hoping to get an answer out of him. He looked up with a frown.

"That's not all of it." He replied.

"We agreed on my dress, shoes, cloak and 18 florins!" She retorted, brows furrowing.

"I want those earrings too." He nodded his head towards her, eyeing up the rubies and pearls that were set in gold. (Y/n) bit her inner cheek.

"If I throw in the earrings you only get 7 florins." She spoke bitterly, knowing that he had backed her into a corner by doing this.

"13 florins."

"How about two florins, no earrings and I run out the gates now?" She clenched her fists, willing them to stop shaking.

"Is it worth your life?" He narrowed his eyes, glancing over her shoulder to a group of patrolling guards.

She could just take off now. Her horse was just outside the gate and she'd be gone before the guards could even get over the first bridge. Or she could play it safe and pay the man what he wanted.

"10 florins and the earrings." She bit out. The man smiled widely, knowing that her earrings were worth an awful lot more than those extra coins anyway.

"Deal." He grinned smugly. (Y/n) took the jewellery off and let one of them slide off the counter and onto the floor in spite.

"Bastard." She hissed as she took her leave, fuming that she had lost so much money for such a cheap disguise. She had intentionally kept her jewellery to sell as a last resort for if she ran out of money - which she knew was bound to happen eventually. Either way, she still had the broach in her bag and two rings. The string of pearls around her neck was out of the question; they had been her mother's.

With an aura like a thunderstorm, she collected her horse and began riding south to Florence, feeling hunger start to bite at her stomach. As she did, something loomed over her which told her that getting answers would not be as easy as she originally thought. The new weight in her bag of the scroll and whatever was wrapped in that cloth told her, whispered to her almost, that this wasn't even a glimpse into the truth and her journey was only just about to begin.

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aj-anime-blog · 3 years

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To the Abandoned Sacred Beasts - Review!

First review here we go!!

So, after being completely and utterly obsessed with Jujutsu Kaisen and AOT season 4, I decided to check out MAPPA studios and watch a bunch of stuff from their roster. My so-called "MAPPA binge" included this strange and unknown piece: Katsute Kami Datta Kemono-tachi e, or in English, To the Abandoned Sacred Beasts. An adaption of a manga originally released in Bessatsu Shounen (you might recognize this as the magazine that released Attack on Titan!), it looked pretty promising. I do have to admit that I didn't read a page of this anime's manga, though the art style on it looks gorgeous!!

The concept behind the show: A war has torn two halves of a nation apart, split into the North and the South. The Northerners, who were previously greatly outnumbered in battle, created a half-human, half-beast species known as "Incarnates" because of their God-like abilities. But the Incarnates begin having some issues when their beast forms take over their bodies, turning them into monsters. When the war ends, our protagonist, Hugh Hank, an Incarnate and previous captain of the Incarnate squad, swears to kill all of his mutating Incarnate buddies before they can destroy the world.

This review will not contain spoilers until the labeled "Spoiler" section at the bottom.

In general, what do I think?: 4/10, this show kinda sucked. Ouch! I hate being that blunt! Especially on my first review here! But To the Abandoned Sacred Beasts (let's call it TTASB from here on out!) had glaring flaws that, while it did hold up as a show, made it uninteresting and hard to love. Not only were the characters mediocre and boring, but the show seemed to contradict itself and its own opinion of the Incarnates all the time! Are they bloodthirsty monsters that need to be killed? Are they misunderstood humans who should be given peace? I don't know! Our main characters don't seem to either! Other than the "war bad" motif that gets shoved down your throat from episode one, the show felt stagnant in what it was trying to make the audience feel.

I hate being so cynical about it, though, because it does still earn those 4 points! Even though a lot of it falls flat, as a whole, it's still an ok show! Hank and Schaal have good concepts and their dilemmas are interesting in certain parts when the writers manage to nail pits and pieces of their development! The fight scenes were cool and I think that the concept for the world was neat! And the show does have a pretty cool title. Let's be honest, To the Abandoned Sacred Beasts sounds super metal.

So what about those characters?: 5/10! Hugh Hank and Schaal are our two main protags for the show, and they both have pretty interesting concepts! Hank is an Incarnate, he used to be the leader of the other Incarnates, and he made a vow with them that when they lost their minds, he would kill them himself. Schaal is the daughter of one of these Incarnates that fought under Hank. Interesting, right?! How could these two opposing characters get along with one another?

TTASB tries to give the two of them a sort of grumpy-old-mentor-teaches-a-cheery-youngster relationship (which, admittedly, is one of my favorite tropes) and manages to forget everything good about having this kind of relationship. To start, it feels like Schaal has next to no reason to be tolerating Hank, and vice versa. She follows him around because *insert some excuse about understanding the Incarnates?* and Hank lets her because *insert I really don't know*. It really feels like Schaal doesn't need to be there, and she's just a plot device to move along Hank's character development.

Then, the two of them never really interact in ways that really moved me. It never felt like they made a deeper connection that meant something to the plot. They interacted, sure. They spoke about their issues, yeah. But it never felt like Hank needed Schaal, or that Schaal was emotionally tied to Hank, until the show spoonfed it to you that they were.

In the end, neither of their developments felt compelling or interesting. There were a few scenes that maybe, if you squinted, hinted towards them growing as people, but for a 12 episode anime, it was very menial. It also felt like said scenes were fairly forced, with their development not really leading them to the point that they ended up at. Again, TTASB has a bit of an issue with contradicting itself.

The villain was so meh. He has a motive, yeah. It's pretty lame. He's not compelling at all. Nothing about him is interesting or kept me hooked on him. The show probably could've existed without him, to be entirely honest. I don't really have much else to say about him! I just did not really care about him at all.

The best characters in the show are hands-down the supporting cast of Incarnates. Each one has fairly interesting motivations, and even though they're only given an episode or so to tell their stories, they feel the most genuine. My biggest qualm with them is that the show doesn't build their connection to Hugh Hank at all, so when he gets emotional over them, you're kind of like "uhhh u know this guy??". More about this down in our spoilers section, as I'll go over a scene where this is prominent.

So characters were meh, but what about the story itself?: 4/10, just as meh. Again, very interesting! Lots of potential! But it fell flat where it mattered. To be clear, just before we dig deeper: the 12 episodes of TTASB isn't the entire story. It's clearly intended to be continued, though, as of writing this, I haven't been able to dig up any news about a potential season 2.

I don't really mind if animes aren't completely original, as long as they're fun, but TTASB didn't really do that. A lot of the episodes felt boring and reused like it was a watered-down copy-paste of other material. Some episodes were repetitive and seemed to be trying to hammer in the same themes, only to be later contradicted by other episodes. TTASB will spend a few episodes showing you how misunderstood and sweet the Incarnates are and then have an episode where an Incarnate murders a bunch of people. I would love it if it was, in any way, shape, or form, sarcastic, but it is not. TTASB just thinks it can get away with the blatant disregarding of its own morals. It only ends up feeling disconnecting and frustrating.

It follows an almost monster-of-the-week style format for introducing the Incarnates, which does them a bit of a disservice, in my opinion. I really would have liked it if there was a bit more overlap between the Incarnates and their stories! We know that they're all very close (or, at least, the show tells us that they are without really showing us) so seeing them interact with one another outside of their respective episode would've been fun!

The story tries to be darker and grimier than it actually is. I didn't end up caring much for the nation itself and much of the politics that the show tried to utilize felt boring and, again, watered-down. It felt like the show wanted to make it a political drama about war and human rights and only ended up shying away from what makes those genres impactful. Again, this isn't to say that TTASB's story is bad, it's just not as good as it could've been.

But it's MAPPA, so the art has to be good, right?: Yeah! Art was cool! Nothing golden, like MAPPA's newer stuff, but a solid 7/10! The fight scenes were nice, and even though a lot of them felt redundant to watch, they were still smooth! I have some qualms about a few of the Incarnates' beast forms (especially Hank's) looking like they belong back in 2001, but they still looked cool nonetheless.

I don't really have much to say on this front! Nothing really blew me away, but I never looked at the screen and winced away.

Ok and finally, pacing!: 4/10. 12 episode animes always have tricky pacing to them. I like to think about the show being pretty much only 5 hours long, which isn't that much time to cram in as much story and plot as they might want to. Overall, TTASB actually had pretty decent pacing, with a long enough build-up that led to a final showdown. If you ask me, I do think there was a pacing problem in the second half, as it felt far too stretched out, but that could've just been my perception of it.

My biggest issue with pacing loops back to the characters again. They're never really given time to explore or build up relationships. Especially not Hank and his prior team of Incarnates. I think that there should've been more screen time dedicated to their time in the army, to better explain the emotional distress that he's going through as he's forced to hunt them down. Instead, TTASB relies on a throwaway line or scene to deliver this emotional blow, and it nearly always falls flat.

Music!!!!: 6/10, The soundtrack in this anime really wasn't memorable and I don't remember much from it. Whoops!

I did like the opening a bit! It was done by Mafumafu, who I think has done a Pokemon intro song? Either way, it was energetic and fit the theme of the show well! The ending is also a bop, now that I'm thinking about it! It manages to be nostalgic and sad without being too slow! So good music on both fronts!!

OK, now we're in spoiler territory! Be warned!

I don't have too much to say regarding spoilers. Nothing in the show really feels important enough that I have to mention it under a spoiler tag. A few small notes, I suppose.

The show treats Hank like the more important character but then throws him away in his "death" to focus on Schaal, which was a very frustrating episode. Schaal felt so bland and useless in it, even when she faced her father again. Bringing him back to life felt like a sad excuse to force her into character development. I did like it when she found the courage to shoot him, but I also thought that it wasn't really as emotional as the show wanted it to be.

Hank's connection with Schaal, particularly in the second half, feels completely unnatural and forced. When she gets kidnapped, he has some sort of mental breakdown over her and it, if anything, felt creepy. It was undeserved and was forced down your throat rather than built.

Beatrice was the best character in the show and I think that if they stuck to ideas like hers (misunderstood creatures who just want to go back to their old lives), the story would have been much better. Instead, you switch to characters like the Gargoyle Incarnate, who just goes on a murder spree, and it ruins a lot of the development that Beatrice brought to the table.

& our deep deep look at one part: Forgive me if I get this screwed up a bit, it's been a weekish since I finished the show and my brain dumped out all details of it already.

Hugh Hank goes to the mountains and fights the Garmr Incarnate, Rex (Roy? I'm a bit confused on his name), in an epic show-down. Obviously, at the end of it, Hank wins, killing Rex. Now, if you're like me, you sat there for most of the fight going "who tf is Rex and why is this battle important?" and only at the very END, when he's dying, do you see a clip that you might remember from the very beginning of the anime, with Rex talking about Schaal. You go "oohhh I know who he is!" but you wished that you remembered this ten minutes ago when the fight started because it would've been so much more impactful. The show didn't remind you of this scene. It didn't tell you that Rex was this same person that you already met. It expected you to remember, and I didn't. This scene sums up a lot of the character problems with the show, where even if something does have emotional weight, the show doesn't act on it.

Now we're done!: Sorry if this was harsh, but that's my full review on To the Abandoned Sacred Beasts! I'd love to hear if you agree with me or think that I'm totally wrong! If you've read the manga, tell me if it's better or worth a read! And thanks for reading!

(The crossed-out "Hugh"s are all of the times that I got Hank's name wrong! I'm not super great with character names, but I always take it as a bad sign when I screw up the name. )

#anime #mappa #studio mappa #to the abandoned sacred beasts #to the abandoned sacred beasts anime #review #anime review

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