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ububunes · 1 year

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Anyways I finished psychedelicha of the black butterfly... Like a week ago? Man I'm slow...

Anyways. Spoilers if... Literally anybody cares about this game. It was truly mid up until the very end but I have to give it some credit for that. Content warning for child death, attempted SA, some baked in misogyny (from the game), and gaslighting (from Karasuba). Now time for:

Basic character info

Beniyuri/MC/Ai

She's the heroine and because of that, she's kind of lacking in personality. Maybe. I'm sorry, at a certain point I started skipping through the side stories... But in the main story she's mostly defined by her willingness to help, her honesty, gullibility, and her fear. She's got some trauma and is fairly stuck in the past.

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Yamato/Takuya

If you went to his TV tropes page, I'm 95% sure he would have something like "Needs a hug". They aren't wrong, honestly. He's got a short temper and is almost always fighting with Karasuba. His favorite sport is soccer and when he was a kid he would "tease" (frankly, semi-bully at times) MC because he had a crush on her. Don't do that in real life. Monshiro's twin brother.

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Karasuba/Aki(to?)

My least favorite! He just keeps finding new ways to try and get MC to himself, and will not stop making very uncomfortable advances before calling them jokes. He is the character who figured out Hikage first though, and by his good ending he decides to work on himself and improve with MC. Still not redeemed but congrats! He would get upset if you followed any other dudes on social media, get anxious if you make even a slightly too long phone call or look at your texts too long. Would also beg for your PIN and get sad if he wasn't your lock screen AND homescreen. No thaaaanks.

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Hikage

Look. This image just goes so hard I HAVE to show it in it's full unaltered glory. He's the evil big bad and tricked the entire cast blah blah yeah he's basic as hell. He's also misogynistic! If I hear him talk about how all women are weak one more time, I frankly might just break down. He's like. So generic anime bad guy that I can't hate them for it, they're just following the assignment.

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Kagiha/Natsuki

This dudes dead! He's been dead since he was like, eight actually. I'm not sure how ethical it truly is to date him but I also am too tired to care. He's another of the least favs anyways. He made a promise to marry MC when they were kids and man is this dude taking it way too far. I have no idea what his plan is if he 'comes back to life' like Hikage promised since he's been presumed dead for ten years... He's also working with Hikage.

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Monshiro/Kazuya

Again I'm frankly not too sure on how ethical it would be to date him. He's been in a coma for ten years, since AROUND age 7. He leans on MC for comfort and has been wandering the mansion for ten years waiting to give MC her ribbon back. I don't know what else to say about him, he's not that fleshed out imo... Yamato's twin brother

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Usagi

Truly the most underdeveloped character. She's Hikage's little sister and the reason he's insane. I would ask her to get him to therapy or to be his therapist but there aren't any therapists here and if he saw her face he would genuinely lose it.

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The story is honestly pretty much summed up as "repressed memory trauma with otome game action and shooting segments." I'm sure it can be explained better than that but if I'm being honest I'm already starting to forget details. Whoops.

My favorite endings have to be the Yamato true end, the best ending/common route ending (it's literally just called "best end" on the flowchart, I don't know what to tell you), and the secret ending. I find it kind of strange that Hikage and Kagiha (whose names I continually mix up. I'm not very good with names) only have one ending each. I guess you could could the singular bad ending, which is also an honorable mention just for being there and being kind of awful if you accidentally trigger it, as an ending for Hikage since it's (probably) his book, but that sounds lame and doesn't completely check out. I guess you can also count the best ending as Kagiha's true ending but again, seems cheap? But also way better than his default ending where you seemingly lose your mind in the mansion and live in "happy married bliss" with Kagiha.

Probably also a good time to mention that Hikage and Kagiha are both dead.

Basically the whole story goes as follows

The main characters (minus Hikage) go to a summer camp at around ages 6-8. They get warned not to go to the lake because weather changes quickly in the mountains (where the summer camp was, I guess.) They go to the lake, find an abandoned mansion and start exploring, find some glass shards that ARE lore important, just ten years from now. Anyways it starts to rain incredibly hard and the kids desperately try to get to the shore and back to camp. Unfortunately MC and Monshiro both get swept under the water. Kagiha rescues MC first, then Monshiro who is still comatose from the accident ten or so years later. Kagiha ends up drowning and his body is never found*

(*His body is found in the common route ending, but I don't remember any mentions of it in any other endings.)

Ten or so years later, Karasuba, Yamato, and MC meet again after Karasuba and Yamato moved, following the accident. MC is still pretty torn up about Kagiha's death, partially from guilt, and semi-refuses to talk about it. Yamato has been visiting his brother in the hospital every day, also from guilt. Karasuba moved on, and was more concerned with becoming stronger since he could only stand and stare as MC and Monshiro drowned. They go on a Fun Bus Ride!™️ And plummet off the side of a cliff after the driver... Falls asleep? Gets hit by mother nature? I dunno.

They end up comatose and in a mansion that's in a place between life and death. They have to find the shards of a magical kaleidoscope so they can return to earth and Hikage can get his wish fulfilled. Frankly uninteresting romance happens. Yamato turns into a monster and then partially back. This all sounds cool when simply laid out but when you're playing the game multiple times and the slowness of the max speed of the skip button starts to hit? Maaaaaan it sucks. It also makes some sections of the game unintentionally funny because while voices don't play during skip mode, sfx do and it's kind of hard to take Hikage seriously when he's in his evil mode but his walking sounds like someone chopping veggies really fast.

One aspect that really disappointed me was that there was only one real (labeled) bad ending. There are no endings where you all end up trapped in the psychedelicha forever because you can't find the last shard, there's no ending where you give up, no ending where, in a mansion with deadly and aggressive monsters in it, you get killed. That might sound weird and honestly maybe it is but the one bad ending simply being a choice of whether you open a book (bad end) or not (you get to continue playing) feels out of place. Yes some of the characters endings can absolutely be counted as bad ends but... They don't get you the achievement that triggers when you get the 'Bud' ending. (I am unsure as to why it is called that.)

The true endings are all nice. Again Yamato's feels the nicest simply because he gets to apologize to his brother and make amends. He also gets reassurance that no, he isn't an awful person just because he made an admittedly very awful decision as a child.

Karasuba gets shown that he's kind of awful and gets to grow into a better person with MC. Good luck with the relationship.

Monshiro gets to give MC her ribbon back and also gets told that no, you didn't deserve to die instead of Kagiha. Good for him. I'm still conflicted.

The additional scenes unlocked after certain endings were nice too. Seeing Karasuba confront Hikage about his identity was honestly really cool. Seeing what Hikage was up to scheming before the games events was nice. Seeing Kagiha and Monshiro interact was neat, especially since they don't really do that very much. Plus it adds lore.

And finally... The secret ending. You get to make the choice of actually staying in the mansion during the summer camp, keeping everyone safe and alive. It's definitely a nice addition after spending this whole game in danger and having to deal with issues. I honestly had started to wonder why they didn't do that. Like yes they're kids but... None of them had thought of it? Damn. Being able to not traumatize MC was great. Having to deal with four clingy guys? Not so much.

Here's the complete in game flowchart if anybody was curious as to what it looked like!

In conclusion.... Yeah no I can't completely recommend this game. It kind of sucks, it's vita exclusive (I think?), and one of the mechanics forced on you (the butterfly hunt mini games) are kind of jank and annoying to replay and replay for points. And again this game is exceptionally mid. Not good mid, not bad mid, just true neutral mid. Anyways, remember: hooray! Hooray! Beniyuri-chan! Hooray! Hooray! Kagiha-kun!

#psychedelicha of the black butterfly #otome games #spoilers #for a game that kinda sucks.#got the plat trophy but at what cost??#what a shameful first platinum trophy....

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sneezemonster15 · 3 years

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Calling bullshit on the opinion that Kishimoto doesn't know how to write romance.

The reason why this entire shipping business on Naruto has been going on for over a decade and still going strong, making fans go absolutely mindless, about a story which is not even about romance, about things that are so effective and impactful that the fans feel completely consumed with it, to the extent where they have almost completely defined their life and philosophies on its basis, is because Kishimoto can write a good fucking romance. And that's what he did. That's the reason why ships are fighting with each other, because it's not just about Naruto the manga or Naruto the series, it's about how they imagine their own romance, it's a deep, profound feeling. That's why they have strong motivations and convictions that drive their insight into the story. That's why there is so much polarity in Naruto fandom. They are ready to jump to protect their ship at a moment's notice because that's how much it means to them.

Are you telling me that it just happened on its own? Just happy coincidences and random factors?

No.

A lot, a lot of thought goes behind closed doors of the studios. I know this because I work in the business. The reason why I was so astounded with Naruto's story because it was actually a brave story. A brave concept. In a shonen. Because I am ready to bet a million dollars I don't have on the fact that Kishimoto knew what he was doing. Anyone who enjoys poetry, or literature, or drama can, if not approve, appreciate Naruto and Sasuke's story. Because it's that deep. Because it's that impactful. Because it's that dark. Because it's that tragic. Because it's that tender. Because it's that painful.

Because it's so...

(Applause.)

Romantic.

These are all the ingredients of a well written romance. This is the reason why I don't care about other ships because I know that SNS is not random or a projection. It's mindfully and carefully and even tenderly written and developed.

Kishimoto's projection? Oh sure. It stands to reason that someone from his real life affected and inspired his favourite character through and through. He did say that he based some characters on certain people from his own life. And he did base Naruto on his own self, if partly. And the reason why I am able to surmise that he could have had a real crush on someone like Sasuke in real life, is because how clearly and insightfully written and contrasted the two characters are. So nuanced. They are like poetry, that's why I am so dazzled with them. Their story is so beautifully shaped by their characters and growth that it creates a clear impression of who they really are in the story. Soulmates. That's the whole crux of the story. They are written out to be this literally 'once in several lifetimes' pairing that finally broke the bonds of hate with bonds of love and changed the entire world and as a result, grew themselves. This is reflected in themselves what with Sasuke being propelled with hate and Naruto with love and coming together finally in a world that they made happen, for each other. And all of their parts and counterparts with which they think and move and function are so well in sync with each other that they lock together perfectly, like two pieces in a two piece puzzle box.

To say that this intricately and intelligently and tenderly written story is just like, an accident, my lord no!

No. The content that is finally syndicated on screens all over the world, especially with the type of response Naruto has enjoyed, and believe me when I say this, everything goes through many levels of scrutiny during production; to the extent of why would this camera angle work better than all the other angles, here's a flowchart and analysis of all of them and let's spend three days on deciding it while the producers are going crazy frustrated with fanatic creatives. This is a very common thing to happen in most serious studios.

Naruto stood out at the time it came out and reached a much larger audience for several reasons. But one of them was that it got the right exposure and was shown to critics outside of Japan, who could appreciate and admire it's cinematic beauty and this reached a different subset of audience. This extra effort is not consistent but it shines at so many places, because it's just good storytelling technically and aesthetically. And the reason why Naruto and Sasuke stand smack dab in the middle of that storytelling, is because Kishimoto told their story with so much feeling, it literally shows. The nuance is just crazy. Note that I am saying nuance and not subtext, even though it's there in heaps. But I want to make a distinction clearly. Like I can write pages and pages over it. Anyway, their story stands out because the nuances are so well defined and mindfully drawn by Kishi, that one can't help but wonder if Kishi actually experienced them. And they are just small things but still get a lot of exposure in the manga and anime. And because they are so small but clearly noticeable, it makes us stop in our tracks and think. And the thing is Kishimoto could have easily done without them and it would have made everything still seem undisturbed but he chose Not to. That kind of decision is a direct result of deep understanding, feeling and thinking in terms of forming a certain visual approach and meaning. The visual language Kishi has used to show their chemistry, their bond, their need for each other, is so tangible, like you could cut it with a knife, that it makes one feel something is right below the surface, simmering and about to explode, but you can't put your finger on what it exactly is. Until you start to think. And it takes some time.

You think that kind of writing is random? Are you out of your mind?

No, Kishi is a maniac. He pulled something that was not easy at all. He is a genius. He is also sadistic because he knows he didn't give us a resolution. Resolution is cathartic to viewers and the reason that nobody got any with Naruto and still not getting any from Boruto is making everyone go crazy. Fifteen years is a long time man. And I can bet my other non existent one million dollars on it. He owns a lot of rights over Naruto franchise, I don't think he can be cowed down to such an extent even by the studio. Kishi fought studios for a few significant scenes of Naruto and Sasuke, he is not unfeeling about them.

Maybe I am being a mere deductionist but more often than not, deduction is right. It's a valid form of acquiring knowledge. Sherlock is right more times than he is not.

Anyway, my point is, Kishi can write romance. Kishi can write very good romance. He could have chosen to remove some tropes and make Naruto and Sasuke either just brotherly or friendly. But he chose not to. A lot of people think that they are platonic. And I think I know why. But I don't. They are not platonic. They seem like they feel physically aware of each other, acutely so. they just don't know what it is. Maybe Sasuke does, Naruto doesn't. Kishi used also such common tropes to show this element, but just because it is in shonen and between two boys, y'all won't believe it. Don't you feel that palpable feeling, the simmering tension and emotion when they fight at the valley of the end both times? And it makes you think maybe it's just you, and what you are thinking can't be true because this is shonen and it would mean they are gay, let me tell you, no it's not you. It is Kishi. And it takes skill to write. Something like this is almost always used as a trope of unaddressed sexual tension in media. Pick any romantic drama of this genre, where 'hate turned to love' or 'two unlikely people who fall in love' and you would find it in almost every single one of them.

Why do you think Kishi designed it that way? You think with all the detail (action moves are literally inspired by real life martial arts, lighting, sound, editing, dialogues that sound like out of a Bronte novel), that was him just playing innocent?

No. No. No. And No!

He wrote SNS throughout Naruto and Shippuden and is still doing something of an extension of it that has made Boruto a weird and uncomfortable to watch family drama.

#sns #sns in boruto #sasunarusasu #sasunaru #sasuke #naruto uzumaki #narusasu #naruto analysis #kishimoto why

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riding-with-the-wild-hunt · 2 years

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3, 8, and 15 for either or both of the Dork Lords?

It may have taken me a moment and a half, but I'm here with extra freshly baked headcanons so I think it all evens out ^_^

Melkor

3. Scars or painful spots

My Melkor always wears gloves to protect the burns on his hands, since in my mind, they never really healed. Out of all his injuries, I think they hurt the most on a day-to-day basis, given that they were essentially dealing Varda-and-Fëanor-infused radiant damage.

Honestly, though, I think post-Valinor Melkor was in pain all the time. Because I am an entirely cheerful and well-adjusted earth human, I like to imagine that after a while, his transgressions against literally everything started to take a toll on his physical form, so he was essentially agonizingly rotting from the inside out for most of his time in Middle Earth!

(I restate that I am an entirely well-adjusted individual.)

8. Bad memories/experiences

Probably his worst experience ever, though it comes at the end of his known story, was standing trial before a jury of his siblings and all the public and personal humiliations that would've gone with that.

15. What it takes to make them cry?

I absolutely think Melkor is a big rage crier. I mean, this is the guy who yelled loud enough that the entire world could hear him. Multiple times. Something that he put effort into goes wrong? Tears. He can't do something he wants to do? Tears.

Melkor's life is like a big flowchart where every path leads to TANTRUM in huge letters on the bottom.

As for sad-crying, I think that would mainly come around humiliation or perceived humiliation. He's sensitive. ("Yeah, no shit," say the millions of people he killed, displaced, cursed, chained to chairs, tortured, dragonized, etc.)

Sauron

3. Scars or painful spots

Physically speaking, Huan chewed his neck up, which would've been painful even if it hadn't been followed with some loud sparkly kid from Doriath kicking him out of his own house and threatening to yeet him into next Tuesday. Blegh.

However, I feel like it probably hurt more after he drowned in Númenor, since he was really deteriorating physically after that. You know, with the becoming-a-giant-spiritual-eyeball thing. :\

I think his tenure as the Necromancer was probably just one long convalescence that he never really left.

8. Bad memories/experiences

Again, his time in Númenor with Ar-Pharazôn was probably pretty rough emotionally, given that he grieved so hard he made a whole cult out of it and used it to wreck the legacy of hundreds of generations. (Ya know. The normal stuff one does when in mourning for a loved one.)

Up there also are ever meeting Lúthien, surrendering to Eönwë, and spending thousands of years in a fortress with the force of chaos incarnate.

15. What it takes to make them cry?

Feeling out-of-control. I think of Sauron as essentially an obsessive micromanager who absolutely hates anything he planned getting messed with ever in any way. That, for me, really fuels why I think of Númenor as the worst time of his life--because he was completely subject to the whims of someone else, and had to play nice through it all, no matter what happened.

#call and response #the professor's world #melkor #sauron #the silmarillion #brought to you by me #frens

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somecunttookmyurl · 3 years

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sorry if there was another part of this post/those tags that i didn’t see but… i don’t think that doctor was trying to say that doctors know more about drugs than pharmacists do?

i’m an md also, i graduated from medical school a few years ago. and that person is right. we do learn about pharmacology and drug mechanisms and interactions in medical school. at my school (which was broken up into long blocks by body system), this was all integrated into everything else we were learning, meaning it was on every test. and it’s continued to be on every test i’ve taken since graduating. the point isn’t that we know more or even nearly as much as pharmacists about pharmacology, but that we know enough that someone who completely ignores the concept of drug interactions or the idea that different patients may metabolize certain drugs differently is a bad doctor. and i’m sorry that you’ve run across so many of them

the thing about medicine is that there is so much to know about human anatomy and physiology and disease that it’s basically impossible for any one person to know it all. medical school lays the groundwork, but there’s a reason we specialize, and spend 3-7 years in additional training in our particular field. it’s important to know what you don’t know (which is a lot, no matter what kind of doctor you are or how long you’ve been practicing). that means consulting with pharmacists when prescribing a new med or changing a dose whenever possible, just like you’d consult, say, a nephrologist when treating a patient with kidney disease. but when there isn’t a good pharmacist available, it means looking up that information yourself. i may not remember every single drug that interacts with warfarin, for example, off the top of my head, but i sure as hell know that it’s a long list and i better check everything else a patient is taking before prescribing it

anyway, good pharmacists are an incredible resource and i wish we had more of them at my hospital. and if you can’t admit that there are things you don’t know, medicine is not the field for you

yeah i've had like. no joke. 2 good doctors in 31 years. and one of them i don't even get to see again it was a one-off. but i am surgically attached to my GP until one of us dies and by god i hope i go first.

(incidentally those 2 doctors are the only ones i've ever met who even knew that differing drug metabolism on different pathways was even a thing like at all. my old psych straight up said "never heard of that, don't think that's true" even when i was presenting him with literal medical journals to the contrary like okay buddy good talk let's never do this again. i wish so much this was an uncommon experience bc i for one am tired of giving the TED talk)

readmore bc this got long

the fact you guys don't learn stuff to the same depth as pharmacists was really like my entire point. i mean, sure, you have some knowledge on it but normally pretty limited to within whatever field you practice. you've only got a limited number of brain cells. if you did have all that knowledge then pharmacy wouldn't exist as a separate degree in the first place.

so a doc coming onto that like "oh we do know side effects and get tested on interactions" is uh. i mean do you? a little, sure, but there's a limit to that knowledge by design. it's really the pharmacists who know, you know? they're the experts on it, and it kinda struck me as "i did a bit of training on this so i know everything" which is an attitude i encounter.... a lot with doctors, sadly. along with the assumption a patient can never know anything about their condition/have any input or ideas of any value/that there may be gaps in their own knowledge.

[also along with complete lack of intellectual curiosity which always baffled me like "welp, don't know what that is goodbye forever" do you not... want to know? not even a little bit? god why are you even here. if all you wanted to do was flowcharts and tick boxes there are plenty of careers in the data entry field. not quite sure why you went to medical school my man]

you sound like a good doctor. hold onto that. sadly you're more the exeption than the norm, as pretty much anybody with a chronic illness or unusal presentation/response can attest. also women, and POC.

if you've got it in you to keep at it without having a nervous breakdown (rather have you in the field than out of it babes) absolutely chew out any other doctor you catch acting like a Supreme Unquestionable Being Who Can Never Be Wrong though.

honestly? i think, genuinely, most do start out like you (you said you only graduated a few years ago right? so you're still new really) and... at some point along the way they become fucking insufferable.

i don't know if it's burnout bc it's a stressful job, or if having power over the health & wellbeing over other people eventually goes to your head, or you get stuck in "what i learned 20 years ago is still unquestionable" or "i've been doing this for years pfff i don't need to check things anymore" complacency or what but there is for sure SOMETHING that changes in a whole lotta doctors. hold on to how you practice now. be one of the few who STAY like that 10, 20, 30 years from now. please. stay curious, stay cautious, stay sharp.

i don't hate doctors (i say it jokingly, true, but don't take it personally) but i have absolutely met enough of them that don't listen, or check, or investigate that i heavily side-eye a new one until they demonstrate otherwise. you're listening to me and working with me and checking things? cool! i'm still gonna double-check anyway because even good doctors make mistakes,

but a good good doctor doesn't take offence at that anyway. i mean. it's my health you're in charge of here. remaining alive and not hospitalised is generally preferable.

hey, maybe it's a bit harsh to judge from a couple tags but coming onto a post saying that pharmacists are the real drug nerds here and doctors have limited knowledge about that (with a heavy dose of complacency a lot of the time, tbqh) so please make sure stuff is checked with "we do know about interactions we get tested on it" sent up a HUGE "i can't admit when there are gaps in my knowledge and can't handle being questioned" red flag.

#my GP went absolutely OFF once about specialists having god complexes and it was a delight #but there is a lot of that going around and like. taking offence at being questioned or checked?#bro i ain't trust ANYONE implicitly that goes double for someone making health decisions bc you CAN'T know everything? you just can't?#AMOUNT who think they do though mein gott #man if i trusted doctors implicitly and blindly i would honestly be dead 3 times over from the fuckups #good doctors exist they just get progressively more rare the longer they stay doctors #it's like a pokémon evolution but bad #FUCK GO BACK #my fav psych appointment was when there was a trainee present who knew more than the man WHO HAS BEEN A CONSULTANT FOR 20 YEARS #bc he is simply allergic to acquiring knowledge and back in the stone age we did not know this particular thing i was talking about

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thepageofhopes · 3 years

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Undertale Multiverse Classpects Part 1/??

It’s inevitable once I get super into something that I do this.

I will most likely do more characters but for now I started with just some of the biggest characters of the multiverse/underverse specifically.

Explanations will be under the cut. Long, long, explanations. (Almost 3k words!)

Error: Bard of Time Ink: Rogue of Space Nightmare: Knight of Doom Dream: Page of Life Cross: Witch of Blood XChara: Prince of Heart XGaster: Thief of Light

Most of this was done using the theories of 0pacfica, whose amazing classpect theory posts can be found on Ao3 here:

https://archiveofourown.org/series/1960270

Though this was also cross referenced with bladekindeyewear’s older theories (particularly on the roles of the classes and active/passive pairs) and a sprinkling of the extended zodiac.

So this is another classpect where it’s actually easier to do in pairs for a lot of the characters due to how intertwined they are.

Error: Bard of Time

Ink: Rogue of Space

When starting with these two, it really was a giant debate between me and my friends about whether Ink and Error were time and space or hope and rage. It was very hard to move away from Hope/Rage when it represents unchecked creation and destruction which...is pretty much the entire backbone of underverse, but after lots of back and forth we found Time and Space fit better overall.

It’s useful to think of Space as Beginnings and Time as Endings. Ultimately what Ink does is facilitate a bunch of new beginnings. Ink is also all about the growth of the multiverse, which is the closest analogue we really have to Skaia. Hope may be creation, but it is creation as counter to the greater narrative, and often counter to Skaia and the reproduction of the universe. On the flip side, Rage, while being destruction, is generally destruction of anything non-fundamental. Error, by contrast, does not care what is being destroyed. His goal is ultimately the end to the multiverse itself; the end of the narrative. Time and Space are also the main building blocks of the universe and without them sessions become void. Ink and Error ultimately represent the core of the multiverse and are also key in most of the big multiverse spanning stories. As well, there’s really no escaping how similar Error and Caliborn act in both personality and actions.

Finally, looking at the extended zodiac, even their personalities fit decently well, though mostly Ink and Space. While classpect is actually much more about narrative arcs and roles than personalities, it’s still useful to look at the most personality based descriptions of the extended zodiac. Space has the description ‘They are patient, masters of the art of 'wait-and-see', and are inclined to take things as they come. That isn't to say that they're pushovers or willing to let injustice lie-they just choose their battles wisely, understanding that sometimes you have to let something burn to the ground in order to build it back better and stronger than before. To this effect, they tend to be innovators, concerned with creation and redemption.‘ and if that doesn’t describe Ink in underverse at least, then nothing else does. Time is a little less fitting personality wise for Error, but these few bits are pertinent: ‘Their lives are often marked by struggle, not so much because fate has it in for them, but because they are fundamentally incapable of just accepting things as they come.’ ‘At their worst they are ruthless, defensive, and impulsive.‘

So now that Aspect is out of the way, I can explain classes. Let’s start with the easy one first. There’s no way we could have Error as anything other than a destroyer class, so Bard or Prince had to be one of the titles. Then from there it comes down to whether Error is active or passive. While it may be easy to say ‘well he actively destroys things’ it’s useful to remember someone's powers can look very similar even if active or passive. My go to for this is Roxy who despite being a passive void class, ultimately can still actively steal nothingness from concepts.

And I have to ask- does Error really actively use his aspect? Because I don’t think so. There’s a popular fan concept of Error as a ‘Forced god of Destruction’ that I think really cements this. Time as an aspect tends to also represent Fate, and if there’s a character who has been actively fucked over by Fate, it’s Error. Even from his time as Genos, Error has been the butt monkey of terrible circumstances. 0pacifica talks about ‘Student’ classes (Thieves, Seers, and Bards) as one where the aspect changes the player, and if that doesn’t describe Error just.

Also it gives Error a codpiece and isn’t that just fucking perfect.

So onto the harder class to explain- Ink being a Rogue. Unlike the Destroyer class, there’s no ‘Creator’ class to nicely fit Ink into (although some suspect that the Heal class of Sylph and most likely Maid class can double as both Heal and Create) but even then, Ink doesn’t really actively create. Rather he tends to try and inspire creators to create. For Ink it made more sense to use 0pacifica’s chart to lower down the class, and then make sure the powers still fit from there.

To start with, there’s no way Ink is anything but a mutualist class. Both Ink and the multiverse benefit from Ink’s role in the multiverse. But even more telling that Ink is a mutualist class is the line in the flowchart ‘The story is not complete until I have accomplished what I have set out to do or found another way to satisfy my initial impulse.’ From the start of Underverse at least to now (though I also suspect to the end of Underverse) the story has been driven by Ink’s actions and motivations. There wouldn’t be a story without him, for good or ill.

From there using the chart, it was easy to lower it down to Rogue or Knight. Ink really isn’t changed or used by their aspect, unlike Error. So it really comes down to does Ink use his aspect or change his aspect. From here I really like 0pacifica’s one sentence descriptions. Rogue is ‘I change my aspect to a more useful form’ while Knight is ‘I use my aspect like a tool’. Eventually we decided on Rogue because Ink doesn’t really actively use his aspect- he’s much more about inspiration- allowing others to steal his ideas, if you will ;P. He ultimately changes other beginnings in service both to the multiverse and himself- squeezing them for paint so he can keep feeling.

Also Rogue just kind of fits Ink’s aesthetic with that cute little bandit mask

What’s really cool is these two classes are also on opposite ends of the ‘Reinvent/Change’ segment of the class chart.

Hopefully this is the longest segment..

Nightmare: Knight of Doom

Dream: Page of Life

Here’s another pair we really had to decide between Hope/Rage for and Doom/Life. But honestly there wasn’t actually a lot of debate. If Doom is Stasis and Inertia, then that fits Nightmare’s ultimate goal to a T. If Nightmare gets his way, the entire multiverse will be plunged into negativity, and with no contrast, everything would just be mired in the same. In contrast to both Nightmare and in particular, Ink, Dream is all about growth and making things better. Joku has specifically stated that Dream and Ink had a falling out due to this- Dream doesn’t care about creator intentions or their story. If there is someone suffering, Dream wants to fix it.

Another way these two fit is in something 0pacifica observes regarding Doom and Life players- Life players come from ‘the top of the pile’ with every advantage behind them, while Doom players come from the ‘bottom of the heap’ with everything working against them. From their beginnings Dream has always been put upon a pedestal, with the love and adoration of the villagers surrounding them, while Nightmare was always hated, always considered as a problem before he has any type of sway over negativity. In actuality, they were born equal, but the circumstances of which side they happened to represent tilted them in their respective directions.

For the extended zodiac, since Nightmare is such a terrible person, even more so than Error in a lot of ways, means that it’s not as useful. The descriptions ar emeant for people to identify with after all, and no one is gonna self-identify with being told they are a monster. There is a bit of the extended zodiac we can use though, and that’s Nightmare as a commiserator. In underverse he gains Cross’s trust by empathizing (in a way) with his negativity, and he surrounds himself with crew that have been in as bad circumstances as he has been. Life however, has a great section that fits Dream perfectly: ‘ Those bound to the aspect of Life are the universe's healers. They are concerned with the betterment of themselves and those around them, as well as the onward march of positive progress. Deeply empathetic, they have an intuitive understanding of other's suffering and the best way of righting those wrongs.’

When looking at classes, we considered the Commensalist sections for both Dream and Nightmare for a while. But we ultimately decided against that specifically with the line that ‘my accomplishments and failings are purviews of the fringes of the narrative’ which just can’t be true for two beings so fundamental to the multiverse. Indeed, you’ll actually see none of the characters in this post fall under this side specifically because I started with the most ‘important’ characters. We ultimately decided on mutualist for Nightmare- despite his ‘bottom of the heap’ status, he ultimately tends to take control of the narrative, and much of underverse and even a lot of fan works are centered around his actions, much like Ink. Dream, by contrast, is constantly fighting an uphill battle and for most of underverse is more a pawn than any true figure of movement in the story. Parasitic fits quite well for poor Dream who no matter what ending of Joku’s story you go by, always dies.

There really is no other character who quite wields their aspect and powers to their advantage like Nightmare. I really can’t find a lot to add here, it was a pretty unambiguous choice and had very little debate in our classpect talk. All his manipulations are steeped in death and decay and well, negativity, all which fall under Doom. Knight is theorized to be the active Exploit class which fits nicely into 0pacifica’s class descriptions. So, for Dream, looking under parasitism, Dream doesn’t really change his aspect, he’s pretty much defined by Life. This lowered it down to Prince and Page. Dream, unlike Nightmare, isn’t really an active manipulator of his aspect and of his positivity. It’s more a part of him, and thus Page, who in the flowchart literally uses the line ‘I am defined by my aspect’ seemed to be the perfect fit.

Like Ink and Error, these two are also opposites on the ‘manifest’ side of classes, and even better, Knight is the active Exploit class while Page is the passive exploit class.

Thank god this section was actually shorter

Cross: Witch of Blood

XChara: Prince of Heart

While these two characters aren’t opposites in aspect or class, it’s useful to talk about both of these two at once both because of how closely they are tied together, but also because how similar their goals and narrative journeys are in general.

Basically with aspect it came down to Blood and Heart for both of them. The more material aspects really have nothing to do with either of them, both of them are much more focused on narrative meaning. Light/Void is out of the question as when it comes down to it, through all their posturing, they ultimately are much more focused on themselves than any kind of big picture or big over-arching questions on the nature of reality. This also phases out Mind for both of them. And finally, this sentence on Breath is about as anti Cross/XChara as it comes: ‘what’s meaningful and important is discovering something new, expanding that perspective, broadening the meaning-horizon and rising above the mere material of the world until ‘tradition’ is a speck of dust on a marble’.

Ultimately we went with Blood for Cross over Heart. Cross is primarily motivated by the past in a way XChara really isn’t. Hell, one of the main reasons Cross decided to fight against Frisk and XChara in Timeline X was because the timeline they were currently in was a happy place for him and the rest of the monsters. Cross is also shown to utilize bonds- it’s a vision of Cross that stops XChara in his fight against Swap/Blue. XChara, on the other hand, is much more focused on the idea of control and being in control, because they know what’s best better than anyone else. Heart is appropriately labeled as ‘egoism’ in 0pacifica’s chart and if there’s one thing XChara has, it’s an ego. There’s also the line ‘Heart is the reading into and reading out of, the situating of what’s been read in the personal and the familiar, the reshaping and reinterpreting of the text outside of the author’s hands.’ If we see XGaster as an author, then what better describe’s XChara’s role?

Honestly the extended zodiac isn’t really great for these two, once again due to the fact they are largely negative and corrupted characters. Most of what’s there isn’t truly yet in the text but implied in the opening to Underverse Season 2 (Cross being a leader through inspiration) or something that I’ve basically already covered (Heart being self-obsessed). This is long enough already so lets just move on.

There’s no way either of them are anything other than a parasitic class. ‘I could beat myself bloody against the bars of the narrative and still get no closer to the form of success I personally desire’ describes both of their experiences in XTale and Season 1 perfectly. (’All my efforts were for nothing..’) As well, for how much these characters were corrupted and damaged throughout the course of Underverse, what changed them was much more outside forces than anything having to do with their aspect- they both tend to own their aspect.

XChara is pretty definitively a Prince- He is incredibly talented at utilizing his own personal potential and even his own ego to advance his own agenda, even as it actively fucks him over. And how do his overwrite powers manifest? A complete domination of others personalities and identity. He destroys others identities and personal narratives. Cross is a tough one because most of what we’ve seen of his powers and actions have been actively manipulated by XChara whose very aspect dominates identity. But one thing that we very much see in Underverse is how Cross actively forces other people to team up and form bonds to stop him. This forwards the narrative while being actively detrimental to Cross himself. And finally, one of the last moments we see with the new Cross at the end of season 1 is him actively changing his bond/deal with Nightmare to save Dream, which gives Dream the determination and ability to escape to the Omega Timeline with the other survivors. Unfortunately most of what is in the actual text isn’t super concrete but there is enough foreshadowing and implications of where Cross’s character is going to go that Witch just ‘feels’ like the right fit.

Whew I was afraid this was somehow going to be as long/longer than the first segment

XGaster: Thief of Light

This one should hopefully be fairly short as if there was a classpect title there was the least amount of debate and back and forth on, XGaster was it.

There’s no way XGaster isn’t Light. The literal second I saw the sentence of Light that says ‘There is one answer’ there was no way he could be anything else. XGaster’s entire storyline is about finding/creating the one true perfect universe. Essentially, in classpect and narrative terms, his entire narrative is about the Search for truth and meaning. Which is literally the sentence used to describe Light in 0pacifica’s writeup.

In the interest of wrapping. this. shit. up. I’m just gonna post this section from the Light part of the extended zodiac. It feels fairly self explanatory. ‘The Light-bound will go after knowledge with a fierce intensity that others may find distasteful. They aren't overly concerned with laws or norms, either. They often take rules as simple suggestions, instead searching for loopholes or work-arounds.’

Class is where I will probably actually have to explain a little more. I don’t think mutualist is anything I really need to extensively justify- the narrative of Underverse bends to accommodate the goals of Ink and XGaster, basically everything I said about Ink also works with XGaster with how closely they are tied.

The fundamental shift of XGaster’s narrative arc and even personality is all based around knowledge. He learns from Ink that other multiverses exist and in that instant it sets him on a new path. Thieves are all about acquiring more of their aspect to change and benefit themselves, and XGaster literally gathers ideas and knowledge from other universes to create and enrich his own. I know it’s cheeky to not have just one but two canon titles, but they undeniably fit.

Also he sure does have all the irons in the fire *shot*

Aaaaaaaaaaand we’re done! Look how fast that last segment went.

#undertale #utmv #underverse #homestuck #undertale multiverse

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thechekhov · 4 years

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Do you ever worry that someday you'll unknowingly post something that's unintentionally offensive and you didn't know it was offensive, so you apologize and take it down, but people won't take your apology and cancel you anyway even-though you repented. I worry about that, any advice? We all make mistakes, but so many people now a days don't accept apologies... : (

Hmmm... Do I worry about making an ‘offensive’ post? I suppose I do, sure, as much as anyone. I am aware that I’m not perfect, I have made mistakes in the past and I will make mistakes in the future.

I try to be critical and judge the info I’m giving out and reblogging carefully, but we’re all human, and we’re all prone to mistakes. I don’t think there’s anything shameful about being wrong about something as long as you’re willing to learn. I really love learning - I’m a teacher. I think learning and making mistakes is one of the most important things there are.

None of us popped out of the womb knowing everything, nor did we always know the correct terms for everything, or what was hurtful and what wasn’t. Many of us even grew up in an environment that actively taught us incorrect or skewed worldviews. I think the process of unlearning that should be praised, and I try to give people the benefit of the doubt - naivety in itself is not malicious.

As for apologies and worrying that they won’t be enough...

Well, that’s a bit more tricky. It depends on what I’m prioritizing, right?

1) What am I more scared of - doing harm or being rejected?

Am I more scared of hurting another person with my words, possibly perpetuating something bad?

Or am I more scared that some of my followers will leave/hate me?

[Image Description: A flowchart depicting two ways a situation can go. In the first, topmost panel, a figure is showing a sign to a group of three other figures. The sign reads x > y. The group appears to be contemplating this.

In the first way a scenario can go, a panel below depicts the figures getting mad at the sign-holder. They are ranting at them angrily and the sign-holder appears upset and anxious.

In the second way a scenario can go, another panel depicts the group having gone a little ways away from the sign-holder. They are now pursuing a new figure with the letter Y on their chest. The group begins to rant at the Y figure instead, following the beliefs the sign-holder had inadvertently taught them.]

We’re social creatures, and rejection for a mistake, for failing to read the room, for breaking some moral code, is pretty scary for us. We don’t like it when we don’t get along with people in our groups. We want to make up. We want to live in harmony.

Is that scary to think that I’ll post something on accident and cause negative feelings? Make people hate me? Well, I definitely don’t want it to happen.

What I mean when I say ‘I don’t want it to happen’ is not ‘I don’t want people to hate me’. I mean ‘I don’t want to hurt people.’ I worry I’ll post something and end up causing undue harm with my words.

To be honest, I can handle backlash - I am a whole ass adult human, I have a job, I have a life outside of the blog and, given enough time away from the keyboard I know I’ll barely be affected by a few mean messages sent my way.

2) Action and Reaction

Do I think sending people death threats online as a way to ‘punish’ them back into ‘proper’ behavior is acceptable? No, absolutely not.

But barring those extreme cases, if I post something harmful, something that perpetuates racism, or prejudice, or incorrect information and I get people commenting at me at an angry manner - I’m not the only person hurting in this situation. I may feel negatively about backlash but also, I may have legitimately done harm to others as well. I need to take both things into account.

Rejection is a reaction, not something people decide to do out of the blue. If you post something bad, people will call you out. And sometimes you’ll apologize and they’ll decide that you may be trusted... and sometimes they won’t.

And both of those things are alright. People make up or people unfollow and move on. People decide on their own how to tailor their online experience. People decide on their own whether to forgive someone or whether they’re not gonna risk that again and just put some distance there.

3) It’s not a personal.

It’s not personal, no matter how much it feels like it should be, because... they don’t know you personally. It’s difficult to know whether an apology is sincere online. Most people you interact with don’t know what type of person you are, and how well you learn from your mistakes. And to you, yes, it may seem like unfair judgement, but most people are just doing their best to avoid being hurt.

If you’re scared of being rejected for making a mistake - that’s normal and natural. You’re allowed to be scared. Making a statement, any sort of statement, always carries with it a risk of retaliation.

But the important thing is to focus not on the reaction of the audience, but on the reaction of the people affected by your words.

You mentioned the fear of your apology being accepted. But I would have to disagree a little bit here.

The function and goal of an apology is not to be accepted.

The function of an apology is to communicate that you understood in what way you harmed someone.

If you are prioritizing the outcome of the apology more than the content of the apology itself... I’m afraid that’s going to skew your results.

Whether or not someone accepts your apology is none of your concern, trust me. It doesn’t really matter whether or not they do - because regardless of that fact, it won’t change anything, including whatever it is you did to make people angry/upset.

The goal should probably be to try to understand better, learn more. Keep in mind: it doesn’t mean just blindly changing every viewpoint people get angry at you for - it means evaluating critically whether that criticism is justified, and, if it is, adjusting your behavior to do less harm.

Sorry, went off on a little tangent there.

TL;DR: Learning is good. Making mistakes is a part of learning.

But in the process of learning and making those mistakes, you may hurt other people, and they are also allowed to be angry at you for hurting them. Both of these things can and should coexist as true statements.

#Anonymous #chekhov answers

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mochideleche · 4 years

Text

maybe draco malfoy isn’t all that bad...

pairing : draco malfoy x female ravenclaw reader

summary : when one fateful day your new potions seating plan ends up with you sitting next to draco, but from that springs a little friendship with little library sessions and astronomy tower rendezvous that leaves you constantly in internal conflict

A/N it starts in third year but it isn't a full-blown fanfic if u get me just the important parts. i tried my best to follow the harry potter plot to make it seem canon as possible but there might be some bits that don't overlap because my memory is a bit fuzzy, hope you enjoy! ;) (also my requests are open)

warnings: fluff, lil bit angsty, no smut because that’s cringe

It started in third year when you were made to sit next to him. Of course you were scared, you were being made to sit next to the draco malfoy, the son of a supposed death eater. Yes, you had heard all the horrible things he had done, seen the way he had treated those he deemed unworthy and witnessed as he bullied countless people for his own entertainment. You despised him for it. Thankfully, you had never been at the end of his wretched tormenting but that didn’t change the way you felt towards him.

But for Draco on the other hand, he was over the moon when he saw you sitting next to the desk he was assigned to. He stared at you, eyes focused on your textbook, hair falling in your face and your hand tapping the table as you read. He loved it when you did that, he noticed how you hands seemed to have a mind of their own when he first laid eyes on you in transfiguration, 1st year. He loved the way your eyes sparkled when you laughed, he loved how nonchalant you were when you answered a difficult question with ease and he loved the way your smile made him feel. Although, that smile was never directed at him. He would never admit it, but you were the prettiest girl he had ever seen and let’s say, he developed a soft spot for you. Making sure that none of his cronies made you their victim and always steering clear of your path when crabbe and goyle where looking to attack anything with a pulse. But he’d never let anyone know, he could never let anyone know that the cold slytherin pureblood had fallen in love with a ravenclaw sweetheart.

You refused to acknowledge his presence, letting him drop his books on the desk and slouch in his chair, resting his chin in his hand and he looked at the front, boredom evident on his face. You sat stiff in your chair, trying all the best to concentrate on the instructions snape was setting. Not only did you have to take a dreaded class with Hogwarts’ most hated teacher, but you were now made to take the class next to Hogwarts’ most hated student.

But to your surprise, it wasn’t as bad as you thought.

Through out the year you and Draco became- well, close-closer than you were ever expecting, but you wouldn’t call yourself friends.

It started when you just couldn’t seem to get your fire going and were falling behind as your classmates took the best pick of the ingredients, you rolled your eyes at your sudden inability to produce a fire and knew immediately you would be left with scraps of herbs and powders and a low grade.

But before you could drag yourself to the store cupboard to collect what was left of the ingredients, you noticed a neat pile of the ingredients next to your cauldron. Your eyes whipped up to Draco who was staring into to his pot, already mixing the concoction with a lazy hand. He looked up to you gave you a small smile and went back to stirring.

So he had done it. You couldn’t believe that draco malfoy had just done something nice. Maybe he wasn't all bad...

The rest of the year went on like that, little things in potions such as you starting both yours and his fires as he got the ingredients, him chopping up things you didn’t like the smell of and you tidying up his desk when he went to present his final potion to snape.

And not in just potions too, he also sent small smiles to you in the hallways, gave you little waves across the great hall when nobody was looking and sometimes making small talk as you two approached your next lesson.

And throughout the months, you began to realise, Draco wasn’t all he seemed to be. Of course, you said nothing of it - not to anyone, not because you were scared what people may think if they found out you didn’t totally despise the muggle born hater but because you knew that Draco didn’t want anyone to know that he didn’t totally hate his ravenclaw potions partner.

Then came fourth year, you weren’t seated next to draco, but hermionie granger who you absolutely loved. Now the two smartest girls in the year were partners in potions.

That year you had sat next to her in the majority of your lessons and the two of you became rather close. This was one of the reasons you weren’t so upset that you weren’t sitting next to Draco anymore. Hermionie was a great reminder of all the dreadful things Draco was responsible for doing.

Over the summer you found yourself thinking of a certain someone. You didn’t want to admit it but maybe coming to not hate Draco was an understatement, but you didn’t want to say that maybe you had fallen for him.

You shook the thoughts out of your head on the first day of school. Maybe it was because the attention Draco gave you made you feel special and caused you to think that you were in love with him, no- not in love- you couldn’t be in love, it was only a small crush which was entirely unreasonable and would go away soon...right?

Besides, think of all the horrible things he’s done, they didn’t just go away because he was nice to you? He’s an arrogant pureblood supremacist, bullies other houses and freely uses the term mudblood. You could not let yourself fall in love with someone like him.

Not to mention his father, but you couldn’t set that as a reasonable excuse, children are not their parents choices. But you still deemed Draco as a bad idea. And just looking at hermionie, an avid victim of Draco’s terror, made you guilty that you even considered being civil towards him.

But despite all that, nothing stopped your heart from pounding when the same blonde hair boy tapped you on the shoulder one night in the library.

“Y/N, can I ask you a favour?” he had asked, scratching the back of his head, as his stormy grey eyes looked everywhere but you.

“yes?” you answered, looking up at the boy who seemed, for some reason, nervous.

“Is it alright, if you help me with this? please” he said, placing down he herbology essay that was due the next morning.

You stared at him as if he was joking, draco malfoy, asking for help?

“You’re one of the smartest people in our year” he reasoned, pursing his lips and trying to avoid eye contact, “ so I thought maybe you knew how to-”

“I can help,” You said softly, wanting to stop Draco from trying to persuade you, it just made you all the more flustered.

His eyes lit up and he hurriedly sat down in the chair next to you as you took your quill with a shaky hand and began explaining.

You scribbled away at the piece of parchment in front of you as you tried to explain the various uses for different types of herbs and plants but out of the corner of your eye you could see that Draco wasn’t looking at your detailed diagrams or flowcharts, but at you.

You hoped you weren’t as red as you thought you were.

the two of you sat there for what seemed hours but thankfully draco had got the answers he had came for and had began on his essay. After you had explained, you had hoped he would go to another desk or back to his common room

but he stayed there with you.

You could not concentrate on a single word you tried to read whilst he was there. You glanced over at him, his back hunched over the desk, his eyes, narrowed, following his quill as he wrote away.

You were surprised he took in that much, you were never a good teacher. In a weird way, it felt like the old days, when you two would get on with your work not giving each other any attention but fully aware that the other was there next to them.

You did your best to read, your hand tapping away at the desk as it always did, when a large hand enveloped your own.

“Do you always have to do that?” Draco asked, a small smirk on his lips and a raised eyebrow cocked towards you.

“Sorry, I can’t help it” you replied. Your heart pounding even louder, since when did Draco take in that little detail?

“Well, I guess we’ll just have to give your hand something to do then” and he moved his hand from on top of yours and settled his long slender fingers in between your own. Holding your hand gently.

you were definitely as red as you thought you were now. So you turned away, not wanting him to see you blush, your face facing straight down at you book but your eyes were not reading the words on the pages.

you heard him chuckle and that made your heart explode.

And the night went on like that, you, trying awfully hard to read the textbook and Draco scribbling away and all the while your hands settled on the desk between you, holding on to each other. You were estatic.

However, as much as you dreaded it, the night had to come to an end,

Draco walked you out of the library and you came to notice that you two were the only ones left in there.

“Thank you, by the way” he said, his eyes scanning your face as if he was looking for something.

“It’s alright,” you said and with fear of being left in awkward silence you began to walk away slowly.

Draco seemed to get the message and began retracting too, towards the stairs that led down to the dungeons, “Goodnight Y/N” and he turned around, a large smile painted on his face.

“Goodnight Draco,” you said quietly, not sure that he heard but a small laugh escape his lips as he walked further away leaving you with an equally large grin plastered on your face.

Maybe Draco Malfoy wasn’t all that bad.

The rest of fourth year went on like that, little visits from Draco now and then when you were in the library. He’d sit next to you and you’d both get on with your work until curfew.

He’d even break into small hushed chats with you and through those you got to know him more. He’d go on forever about how he wanted to travel the world, learn all kinds of magic and how he’d get himself a pet dragon. How he adored flying, how he loved his mother, how hard his father was on him.

It surprised you, that the Draco you grew up to know was nothing like the blonde haired boy sitting next to you. He was simply- misunderstood, so to say. But you knew it was more than that.

and at the end of every session, he’d walk you out the library and wish you a goodnight.

But you thought nothing of it.

At least you tried to, but you heart thought otherwise.

You kept on having to remind yourself of all the horrible things he had said and done- and it wasn’t hard either, not when he was tormenting people on the daily. Word spread and you heard it. And it kept you grounded.

Not to mention your growing friendship with hermionie, through her you heard of all the rivalry between harry and draco, finding yourself favouring harry despite not knowing him very well. But deep down, you kept thinking, what if I could be the one to change Draco?

As far as you knew, Draco was only ever sweet, gentle and well- pleasant around you. To everyone else he was cold, pompous and malicious. If everyone saw him how you did, they would see that draco wasn’t all that bad.

But the guilt came flooding in when you heard hermionie was crying from being bullied and being called, yet again, a mudblood by draco. He’d gone too far.

That night when you saw him walking down the aisles of the library towards you, you scooped up your books and walked away from him.

And of course he followed you.

“Y/N!” he shouted after you as you stalked down the hallway, away from him.

He grabbed you by the wrist, you turned around and unleashed your fury.

“Why do you do it?” you asked, doing your best to stay relatively calm.

“What-” he began, confusion washed across his face, but you weren’t finished.

“Why do you act the way you do? Thinking that anyone who isn't pureblood is less than you are, thinking that it’s alright to call people disgusting names, thinking that you can just bully anyone for your own entertainment?” You rambled, obviously shocking Malfoy greatly, he had never seen you angry before.

“You act so-so-so different towards me!” you exclaimed, trying to find the right words to explain how you felt, “not arrogant, not egotistical, not haughty at all, so why draco malfoy, do you chose to torment the rest of the school? What makes me so different that you show me someone nobody else knows? why can’t show who you really are to the rest of the world, show them how I see you? or is the person you are when you’re with me all an act?” you said, your eyes brimming with tears.

It was so difficult, having this constant internal conflict of wether you should give draco a chance or not. It was difficult feeling so guilty whenever you heard another evil deed he had carried out yet you still let your heart loose control when you saw him.

Then he did something unexpected.

He hugged you.

You felt his arms engulf you before you were aware of what he was doing. He pressed you against his chest, arms wrapped tightly around you as if he was scared to letting go.

You breathed in his minty scent, the smell of his freshly washed uniform, you felt his heart beating incredibly hard against his chest.

Then you were crying.

You two stood there, holding each other like your lives depended on it, what an odd sight to see. For anyone who would stumble into the third floor hallway, they would be completely baffled to see Draco Malfoy hugging a crying Y/N Y/L/N.

Because, nobody knew.

Nobody knew how Draco and you became aquatinted, nobody noticed the smiles or waves draco sent your way, nobody saw how your eyes lit up when you saw him, nobody walked up to you two when you were together in the back of the library, nobody knew how much you cared for draco, and nobody knew how hard draco had fallen for you.

“It’s because I’m not ready for the world to see yet” Draco whispered into your hair as you clutched at his sweater vest.

The next few weeks, you were beginning to see how wonderful life could be.

Draco no longer sneered at everyone, but kept to himself and was rarely starting fights anymore. He didn't even try to start a row with harry every time he saw him but just ignored him and walked on. And ever since that night, you had never heard him call anyone mudblood again.

Hogwarts was relieved that they were free from Dracos torments but that didn’t mean they weren’t all still scared shitless by him.

And you were also very thankful that hermionie kept harry and ron civil too, so life at hogwarts was pretty great, you were sure everyone would see that Draco Malfoy wasn’t so bad...

Then fifth year started.

Umbridge, made your life a living hell. not to mention, Voldemorts return. but you couldn’t let that get in your way. As a newly chosen prefect, you found yourself comforting people more than ever, telling them how things would work out, how dumbledore would come back and how they shouldn’t give up hope so easily.

Easier said than done.

You saw less of Draco these days. With Umbridge’s stupid rules keeping you apart.

Although his visits always made your week no matter how infrequent they were.

He even made an effort to sneak up to the astronomy tower where he’d bring you food from the kitchen and you’d spend all night lying next to each other and looking up at the stars.

“Do you see it?” he asked one night, pointing up to the sky as you two stood shoulder to shoulder by the railing, “sirius, the brightest star”

“Where?” you asked, leaning in closer to his to see his point of view, the top of your head resting just next to his chin.

“There” and he moved his hand to wrap around behind you and pointed up to the sky, his long, slim fingers coming out from the corner of your view.

“Oh, I see it” you giggled, turning your face towards his which was much closer than before causing you to hold your breath.

“Oh really?” he smirked, bending his head down towards yours, looking down at your lips for a quick second, then back up to your eyes.

“mhmm” you replied as you felt his arm now making its way to your waist as you turned your body to face his.

And before you knew it his soft lips were pressed against yours.

You couldn’t stop yourself from smiling.

Sooner or later, you thought nervously, as you walked to transfiguration.

Sooner or later, people will find out that i’ve been fooling around with Draco Malfoy.

These days, your never saw Draco. After your kiss, his visits began to gradually stop which made your heart ache.

You knew it was because he had his stupid inquisitorial squad to lead but on the other hand you were rather relived.

It took a lot of convincing but hermionie had got you to tag along to the dumbledore’s army meetings. Of course you wanted to go and thought it was brilliant that harry was teaching defence against the dark arts: You absolutely despised the new system umbridge was forcing onto you and you weren’t going to fail your exam.

But, you knew very well that umbridge was breathing down your necks trying to spot rebels who disobeyed her rules,

and one way she did that was through draco.

Through out your little rendezvous you never mentioned what draco was doing for umbridge and neither did draco. Things were simpler like that.

You didn’t want what you had to be ruined. One of the only things that kept you sane throughout your painful days of rigid education.

But that very same thing kept you apart.

And oh did that barrier cause so much inconvenience when one fateful night in the room of requirement, where the walls being bashed down from the outside.

Harry told you all to run off first, and so you did. You, dean, seamus and Angelina all running down the seventh corridor like your lives depended on it.

But not before you saw a tuft of blonde hair out of the corner of your eye when you raced down the stairs.

There was no hope now.

You knew draco had seen your name on that list. And it had been a week and he still hadn’t talked to you.

Not to mention his father being thrown into azakaban.

You knew he was suffering because of it, and you wanted to comfort him, but how? How on earth were you meant to comfort draco when you thought that lucius malfoy had every right to be locked up?

And after what draco did to your friends? After all of fourth year getting him to change? Suddenly going back on his word and becoming horrible again and helping umbridge terrorise hogwarts, the place you though of as a second home?

No, you had been too kind for long enough.

Maybe Draco Malfoy was a bad idea.

But what about all those times you spent in the library? on the astronomy tower? When he kissed you?

No, Draco Malfoy was a bad idea and you needed to stop denying it.

Sixth year - the first year you weren’t excited to be back.

The return of voldemort had finally settled within the community and it made everything so dreadful.

As a prefect, people came to you for advice and comfort surrounding school and homework,

now people came to you scared and overflowing with anxiety wether their families would be okay or whether they would make it to another year of hogwarts.

Then there was draco.

You first saw him get off the train when you arrived, taller than last year, paler than ever, and with a permanent frown on his face.

You had to admit, his black suit made him look extremely dashing but, no

You had to stop thinking of him like that.

But he always caught your attention, the almost white blonde hair was hard not to miss.

You tried not to notice but you couldn’t help it, you couldn’t help noticing how he looked sadder these days, picked at his food, never seen around the castle if it wasn’t in class.

Heck you even changed your prefect duty so that it would be on the same night as his, but he never seemed to show up for it.

You couldn’t help but worry about draco.

But he acted as if you didn’t even exist

The stolen glances, the small smiles, little waves thrown across the hall, all gone. But you didn’t care...did you?

Then you started hearing things, how draco malfoy was a death eater, how he was seen with death eaters during the summer and how he was the one to curse katie bell.

You tried to not let it bother you, you shouldn’t care.

But you did care when you heard what happened in the bathroom.

Without a second thought you ran to the hospital wing, in the early hours of the morning when you were sure nobody would be around.

You saw draco, his torso wrapped with bandages and your heart broke.

Collapsing on the side of his bed you cried. Oh God how hard it was to see him like this, how hard it was to pretend that you didn’t give a damn about what happened to him, how hard it was to pretend that you didn’t love draco malfoy.

You left as soon as you could, not wanting draco to see you at his side, not wanting to face an awkward argument and not letting him know that you still cared.

But as draco woke up and found the side on his blanket wet and smelling vaguely of a certain perfume, he knew exactly what you’d done.

And it made his heart break.

The astronomy tower was where you used to go when you couldn’t sleep, which was very often but now, you avoided that place like the plague.

It had now become yours and dracos place, where you’d spent nights together, where you’d wish on stars together, where you’d had your first kiss with him...

you hadn’t stepped near that place at all when you started the year and now you stood there, and it felt so wrong.

You wanted some time to think, sitting down in your pyjamas, knees tucked up to your chest and staring at the sky.

You looked at all the constellations trying to make out the ones that draco had pointed out to you-

Nope, for fucks sake.

But before you could get angry at yourself you realised you weren’t alone.

Someone had come to the top of the stairs, their footsteps echoing down the empty stairwell, stopping once they saw you.

You stayed put, you didn’t want to turn around, maybe if you stayed still for long enough, they won't even realise you're there.

Oh, but they did.

He stood next to you, his glossy black dress shoes right next to your legs.

Oh you’ve got to be fucking kidding me.

He sat down, crossed his legs but kept his gaze up at the sky.

“Do you see it?” He asked softly, you hadn’t heard his voice in months.

You shook your head not knowing what else to say.

“Sirius, the brightest star”

Your heart pumped against your ribcage, as if wanting to escape, tears began welling up in your eyes and your voice choked as you spoke, “where?”

He leaned in closer, pointing up to the sky and tilting his head so it brushed against yours, “There”

“Oh I see it” you said quietly, without emotion or bounce to your voice like you had said it before. what was he doing?

“Oh really” he said sadly and you forced yourself to look at him.

He was staring right at you with sad grey eyes.

“I’ve missed you” he croaked out, and you couldn’t help yourself.

You flung yourself on him, almost causing him to lose his balance and fall back, but you felt his arms encase you around your waist and he held on tight.

Oh how you cried.

You were sobbing, getting his jumper all wet, but he didn’t seem to care.

He began mumbling softly, his voice cracking as he choked back tears, “Y/N Im so sorry, im so so sorry, the things I did...”

He stroked your hair, rocking the two of you back and forth, “I had to- I don’t want to do it. I-I-I have no choice. he’s making me do these things, I can’t do it, but he’ll kill my family, he’ll kill you”

You stopped breathing at that point, so it is true.

Draco was a death eater.

But you couldn’t bring yourself to rip away from him and interrogate him, you decided it was best if you let him let it all out.

So that was why he was avoiding you, Voldemort was threatening to kill you if draco didn't obey him.

Oh God, what had draco got himself into?

“It’ll be okay,” You said, you didn’t think it would be but what else could you have said?

“I’ll be here for you, no matter what happens” You stated, wrapping your hands tighter around his neck, “Promise”

“I’m so sorry” he shuddered against you, heaving greatly and crying into your shoulder, “I can’t let him hurt you...”

And from that moment you knew Draco Malfoy wasn’t all that bad.

his words ringed through your ears “Please promise me, you’ll stay in your dorm tomorrow night, please I beg you”

You couldn’t say no.

He had held your hand in between his, grey eyes pleading with you, to not lay a foot outside your common room until morning.

And so you did.

But as soon as you heard the commotion, fellow housemates running around and the sounds of mass of students leaving the common room, you had to leave.

I’m sorry draco.

But as soon as you got out of the castle you wanted nothing but to go back inside.

Seeing you headmaster, crumpled on the floor caused your heart to drop 10 feet.

And knowing who had done it made your heart stop beating all together.

At the funeral you felt so guilty, knowing that the act was going to take place but you hadn’t said anything about it to protect draco.

Of course you didn’t question him on what he was asked to do, you didn’t want to force him to speak about something he so highly detested.

You were so conflicted, you loved a murderer.

But you knew that he only acted to protect his family, to protect you.

You spent the next few days locked up in your dorm, crying.

Draco had disappeared and you had a very good idea why.

The day before you were due to leave school, a knock came on your door. You thought it was just another one of your friends bringing you the dinner you had always decided to skip but this time it was hermionie.

You didn’t even question how she had got in, she sat on your bed and took a hand to comfortingly pet you.

“ Draco didn’t do it” Hermionie said suddenly, and you sat up.

“He didn’t?” was the first of many questions you wanted to bombard her with, your heart rate picked up speed, how did she know about you and draco?

“It was snape, draco couldn’t do it”

Relief spread over you, but it quickly disappeared, if draco couldn’t complete his task, what was going to happen to him now ?

“I saw you together once” Hermionie started, looking at you with kind eyes, “in the library- and I couldn’t believe it, but then when i noticed how behaved he was being and i had a good guess that it was because of you”

you nodded your head and let her to continue.

“then when you declined to join dumbledores army, well it all clicked then, but it was so strange i didn’t know why you’d wanted to date draco, no offence “

“none taken” you sniffled, she had every right to think that but you wondering, how could hermionie be so calm about the subject?

You felt so bad about keeping it from her that you immediately broke out into a ramble,

“hermionie, i want you to know how awful i felt at the start when i had even had the slightest feelings for draco, but then i started to see it was all an act, to please his family, he’s not all that bad, he’s sweet, caring and-”

your voice faltered, but hermionie understood.

“he said-” you continued, tears falling out of your eyes again, “that voldemort had threatened to kill his family- to kill me if he didn’t do it”

Although hermionie was incredibly smart, and smart enough to figure out what was going on between you and draco, this seemed to surprise her.

“And now he’s failed to do it, i don’t know what’s going to happen to him” you cried, and hermionie rushed to hug you.

But it brought no comfort at all.

Seventh year, you didn’t want to return at all.

Hogwarts was no longer your second home, but a prison.

You didn’t care about your education anymore, all you cared about was surviving. You spent countless nights planning and sneaking around the castle, trying to evacuate as many people as possible without getting yourself killed.

You hated life.

But you had to keep going. Classes were down to about 10 people per class- mostly slytherins, and your common room now only consisted of a couple of younger years and the older students who were insisting to stay to take back hogwarts one bit at a time. You were one of them.

Then there was draco.

When you fist saw him in the great hall you were thankful that he was alive.

unfortunately, the good news ended there.

he’d ignored you, like the beginning of sixth year but now you hoped it was for good reason, because he was protecting you. besides, he had a lot of his own reasons to worry about.

But seeing him and not being able to talk to him made you even more depressed, it just made the whole thing a lot more worse.

As a person from dumbledores army, you were taken in, questioned about harry’s whereabouts, where the missing students had left to and how they were leaving.

The carrows and slytherins were horrible, forcing you to drink veritaserum, locking you up until you agreed to talk and using crucio on you once or twice.

the pain was unbearable but you didn’t want to give them the satisfaction of seeing you crumble.

So when you were finally kicked out of their office, you strode away with your nose held high but as you were out of sight, you allowed yourself to slump. You held back your tears though, crying wasn't going to solve anything.

Then you were pulled aside into an alcove which once held a statue but now remained empty.

Draco’s grey eyes were looking down at you with the upmost concert, scanning your face and gripping the sides of your arms tightly.

It broke draco to see you like this, he knew exactly what the carrows had done to you and everything you had to go through. He hated that he couldn’t stop it.

You were thinner, paler and you had a fresh scar on the side of your left cheek where a 7th year slytherin had hit you during one of your questionings.

Tears where welling up in dracos eyes as he cupped your face in his shaking hands, “leave, please,”

“Draco i can’t-”

“I know you know where they are, please leave, for your own sake, I can’t bare to see them hurt you anymore”

You knew that draco wanted to stop them but he couldn’t do it without making it obvious he had someone to care for on the enemy side.

it wouldn’t do any of you good.

But you couldn’t reply as the moment was cut short by the sound of blaise and pansy’s voices echoing down the corridor.

draco left you with one last pleading look as you stood deep within the alcove.

“draco!” pansy squealed and the sounds of their footsteps leading away faded down the stairs.

the battle of hogwarts had started.

It was a blur, you tried your best to keep everyone calm as you helped usher the students through the portrait hole and out of hogwarts wondering if you’d live to see them again.

you were assigned to kingsley’s team but you evidently got separated from them as you battled for your life.

Deatheaters were screaming avada kedavra, luckily none of them hit you.

You could never imagine saying it, so you stuck with your ‘stupefy’s but at one point you found yourself standing at the body of one of your friends, so you resulted to spells that your victims couldn’t ever heal from.

It hurt seeing your friends attacked, outnumbered and hit. You faught with a constant panic within you, narrowly missing and blocking spells which would had definitely killed you.

But you saw it through.

It pained you to see draco’s family screaming for him, no longer occupied with the war but only for finding their son.

No doubt you too felt the same but you couldn’t see the tuft of blonde hair anywhere throughout the night or the early morning as ran through the castle.

Once the whole thing was over, you made your way around the hall, helping to heal the wounded, comforting the mourning. But you had have enough, you couldn’t take it.

And somehow you found yourself back at the astronomy tower.

In ruins now, yes, half of the end wall had been broken down so it opened to a 100ft drop to the bottom of the mountains, asphalt and bricks laid everywhere and half the railing had been torn off, now hanging lonely over the edge.

staring down at the castle grounds you hoped that perhaps it could be rebuilt, even stronger for the next generation to come. How far you had come, how lucky you were to have survived, it was all over.

then like a miracle you heard foot steps walking up of what was left of the stairs, you turned and standing there in his white dress shirt, ash stained trousers and missing his blazer, was draco.

You couldn’t believe it. At the end of the battle you didn’t know what to think but when you couldn’t spot any of the malfoys, you assumed- you had hoped, that they escaped-along with draco, to safety. But you couldn’t help but think, what if he didn’t make it out safely?

Now he stood there, in front of you- all in one piece, when you had braced yourself for the worst.

“you’re alive” he smiled, and you ran to him, jumping on him and encasing him in the tightest hug you could muster.

Tears that you had been holding back fell from your eyes as you rammed out your ‘i’m so glad your safe’s and ‘i’ve missed you so much’s and ‘where were you?’s

a small laugh escaped dracos lips and that reply was all you needed.

“I love you” he whispered against your hair as you sobbed never ending tears of pure happiness and relief.

“I love you too,” you croaked out between your intakes of breaths with a smile appearing on your face.

you forced yourself to step back a bit so that you could look up to the face you so dearly missed.

“your family, are they alright?” you asked genuinely concerned.

“Yes, they’re fine. they’ve had to come to face a lot though, and I don’t think my father would be happy if he found out i had fought for your side” he sighed, looking down at you with a tired face and a lazy smile.

your eyes widened, “you fought for our side?!”

your heart leapt for him even more.

“Of course i did!” he smiled, leaning down so that your foreheads touched, “I couldn’t see you at all, i tried to find you as soon as the fighting started but-”

“well im here now” you interrupted, seeing the anxiety creeping back on his face. you decided it was best to remind him that the two of you were there together and that was all that mattered.

“and so you are” he grinned and with that he placed his lips on yours, just like he did that one night two years ago.

#draco malfoy #draco malfoy fanfiction #draco malfoy imagine #draco x reader #draco malfoy x reader #harry potter #harry potter fanfiction #ravenclaw #hufflepuff #slytherin #griffindor #slytherclaw #ravenclaw reader

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ka-za-ri · 4 years

Text

Prize Pt 2

Henlo! more commissioned smut? Heck yeah!! Uh... I suck at summaries, so please enjoy the Satan smut. I’m sorry, but also not really... ‘cause I will never apologize for slammin’ down some pr0nz your way. Enjoy! °˖✧◝(⁰▿⁰)◜✧˖°

Chapter Index and Obey Me! Masterlist: here Ao3 Mirror: Here Pairing: Satan x Reader Genre: smut Wordcount: 6,200 ish Tags: Demon Sex, Rough Sex, Breeding Kink Summary: Now that you’ve pieced together what’s going on, it’s up to you to take control of this game.

Match Point

After your private ‘study session’ with Asmodeus, something changed among the brothers. Their attempts became much more candid. As if a seal had been broken, it was common now for one of them to make a scene at the table first thing in the morning to usurp your time after classes. Even if none of them had stated what their damn game was, it was clearly a competition to claim your body as theirs. Asmo’s brief mention of having children together only helped confirm the suspicion you had ever since the beginning.

Now that you had a better idea of what they were plotting, it became easier to predict their plans. Even if you knew what they were up to, it didn’t mean that you had the ability to avoid them until another breaking point like what happened with Asmo. Whether it was to stay late and do some ‘make up’ work with Lucifer or to have an innocent ‘movie night’ with Belphegor, you came to expect some level of intimacy with every one of your meetings with the brothers.

At least now with their plan mostly exposed, you knew who you wanted to be with if your hypothesis was true. Unfortunately for you, trying to get any sort of dedicated time with Satan was nearly impossible unless he initiated due to how his brothers were playing. Not only that, out of all of his brothers, he seemed to be the most detached from the game. His aloof, nonchalant strategy attracted you if only because he seemed much safer to be around.

As the days passed, it became more difficult to dodge their advances; and at some point, it was normal to find yourself whisked from one raunchy whirlwind fuck to another. Any spare time you had was essentially dedicated to avoiding them if you could. Whether it was due to luck or it was his game plan to the competition, Satan approached you with a deal.

“Study date?” he suggested, pointing in the direction of the library one day before breakfast. “There’s a test in Demon History later next week, and I know you were sleeping through it.”

You sighed in relief. A day without anyone accosting you seemed like a dream. The fact that Satan had specifically pointed out the library gave you enough security to feel like he wasn’t going to try any sort of funny business. Though there were lingering doubts about his intentions, a chance to just get away from it all was ideal; and it gave you the chance you were looking for to spend time with him.

Any attempts Mammon made at the table that day were quickly shot down with confidence. Your preapproved arrangements with Satan gave you the peace of mind that you’d be able to rest your body as well as get some actual studying done. You knew your notes weren’t the best; and with how studious he was, you were sure you could bribe Satan to let you copy his own.

“Thanks,” you mumbled once you met up with him at the library.

“For what?” he looked up from his book and cocked an eyebrow.

“For you know…getting me away from all that today. You know how chaotic it’s been. You’re a lifesaver.”

“I’m only making sure you pass that test,” he shrugged and went back to his book. “I’d hate for the average of the class to drop because you’re not doing well.”

Due to all the antics that ensued among the brothers, it was odd the most calming thing you could do was to actually knuckle down and study. You didn’t think fretting over your classes would be less stressful than finding a way to discreetly avoid everyone; yet there you were, copying notes and trying to make sense of the Demonic timeline. Things were only made worse when prominent members of Demonic society started to time travel.

“How do you even pass a test with all this information in it?” you lamented, idly flipping through the textbook. You understood the words on the pages separately; but when you tried to comprehend them together, it was practically a different language to you.

Satan put down his book and looked at the pages you were grumbling over. He shrugged and took back his notebook once he saw you were done copying everything down. “Memorize it. It doesn’t have to make sense if you just know everything.”

“That’s easy for you to say. You’ve only lived through half of this history.”

“Not really. Closer to maybe about 10% of it. The others? Maybe a quarter of it. History is very long, longer if you count all the time travel.”

“I don’t want to count all of the time travel.”

“It’s going to be on the test,” he warned.

“Ugh, fine. Just help me with how to make sense of this chart then,” you turned the textbook over to him on the page with an extensive, yet somehow it was still labeled ‘abbreviated,’ flowchart of Demonic history. “If I can memorize this, then maybe my grade won’t be too bad.”

He chuckled, looking over the page and pointing out the key events you would need to know. “A lot of this is just found in trivia games. The more important stuff is going to be underlined in red.”

You nodded, picking up your pen to start jotting down the important dates but then paused when you got a few lines in. “Wait. Almost everything is underlined in red.”

“Guess there’s a lot of important stuff in there.”

You huffed, realizing that you weren’t getting anymore help than he was willing to give. It was already a breakthrough for you that he was even willing to tolerate your presence alone for a longer period of time than necessary. The tranquil ambiance of the library seemed to bring out a more mellow side of him. Having a time and a place where none of the other brothers could bother you did wonders to your blood pressure and mentality.

Hours passed as you poured your heart into memorizing as much as you could before you were kicked out of the library. With how chaotic things were outside of that sacred quiet place, you didn’t know when the next time you would get any sort of quiet time to study would be. Your eyes ached, and your brain struggled to remember the last thing you read by the time Satan suggested leaving.

“Do you think you’ll do well?”

“Depends on how much of all of this is going to be retained,” you shrugged. “Hopefully it’ll be good enough to pass.”

“I’m sure you wouldn’t let me down. I’d hate to see you be the reason the class average goes down,” he teased.

You pouted, even more determined to pass now more than ever. “Fine. Whatever, just help me study again next week. There’s an Advanced Sigils test soon, and I still don’t understand half of what’s going on.”

“Are you really having trouble in that class, or are you just trying to spend more time with me?” he raised a brow, curious as to how you would answer his inquiry.

“Is it not allowed to be both? If I’m studying with you it means I don’t get bombarded with requests to go out, and I get to actually do some schoolwork. Do you know how hard that is to do when Levi is rattling off TSL trivia in the middle of trying to do homework? At least you’re willing to do it in the library, and I’m guaranteed a few hours of real concentration time.”

Satan chuckled, his eyes crinkling in untold joy at your words, “Well then, let’s make it a regular thing then,” he suggested. “I will admit, it was nice to have you around for company.”

You broke out in a grin, feeling as though some progress was finally being made with him. Seeing him like this, unbothered by the presence of his brothers, softened the generally haughty nature he displayed when around others. You’d hold onto the precious softness he showed you for as long as you could, so asking for more study dates with him seemed to be the most logical thing to do.

“So, see you next week?”

“Same time, same place,” he confirmed.

Study dates with Satan were the thing you looked forward to the most during your week. Often, you found yourself daydreaming about the next peaceful date with him in the library. It gave you the sanity to survive the otherwise hectic life you lead. Having a predetermined break in your week also gave you time to figure out what to do the next week when it came to dodging as many advances as you could from the others.

You always felt safe with him. Perhaps it was because you always met with him in a public space, or perhaps it was just because he never overtly tried anything with you. The two of you stayed a respectable distance from one another with no pretenses or ulterior motives. With all the chaos that surrounded you, it was nice to actually have a dedicated time to get away from it all and focus on classes or daydream about times back in your realm. Satan didn’t seem bothered with your dozing off unless he knew there was a test looming near. Then, he would put some effort into pointing out the right books to pull from the library to aid your struggles. If he felt merciful, he would offer to tutor you, though that opportunity rarely presented itself. Even if Satan was in on the competition, at least it didn’t seem like he was intent on making his move during those peaceful moments.

So, when he abruptly disappeared in the middle of the week and refused to answer any of your messages, you quickly became worried about his well being. None of the others mentioned his condition, and they all carried on with their lives as if his disappearance was normal. You heard vague whispers, but nothing you could make out or really understand.

You didn’t admit it to anyone, but you missed Satan. Not just because of the quiet times you got to spend with him, but his overall aura and company kept you sane. To have that go missing without warning was a shock to your system, and you didn’t know how to handle it.

“Is Satan sick?” you brought up the topic finally during breakfast while the others went about their morning routines. “I haven’t seen him in a few days.”

“He’ll get over what he’s got in a day or two. It shouldn’t be much longer,” Lucifer answered calmly with a shrug, his eyes never leaving the article he was reading on his D.D.D.

“None of you are worried? I mean, he’s just gone for half a week, and you don’t question it?”

“Aww, you really don’t gotta worry yourself over him,” Mammon reassured with a pat on your shoulder. “All of us gotta go through it too. He’s just unlucky that he’s gotta go through it now while you’re around.”

“Wait. What?” you blinked, trying to understand what they were talking about. The way Mammon talked about it and how nonchalant everyone was made it seem like it was a normal occurrence. Your mind went through the notes you had taken during Demonic Culture Studies in an attempt to figure out if it was some sort of rite of passage for demons when they became a certain age. Nothing clicked.

It wasn’t until you heard Asmodeus skipping out of the room that you recalled what he had said weeks ago.

“Makes me wish I was rutting right now so I could breed you over and over again.”

Ah. Maybe, just maybe...

The term was vaguely familiar to you. You were sure you had heard it during a lecture at some point, but couldn’t remember which one. Luckily, after a quick search online, you were able to get an idea of what he might be going through. If your suspicions proved to be true, it would be an ideal opportunity for you to play the game in a way that would guarantee your favor. Running through your schedule and obligations, you cleared up the rest of your day, determined to get to the bottom of all of this.

“Are you alright? I haven’t seen you around in a few days,” you knocked on his door after classes, hoping to get some answers. Satan had been avoiding everyone; and though you had an inkling as to why, you needed to confirm it for yourself.

You didn’t dare to breathe while you waited for the door to open. You could hear him get up and move around. Just as you thought he would finally let you in, there was a long uncomfortable moment of silence. You could feel him hesitate before finally turning the handle and cracking the door open just a bit. “Sorry, I haven’t been feeling well…”

From what you could see through the tiny crack, he looked as if he hadn’t slept in days. His normally messy hair was even more unkempt than usual. It was clear he didn’t want to be anywhere near you, but disappearing for days on end without notice was concerning. The others seemed to know what was going on, but kept themselves mum about it all. It was frustrating to have to take things into your own hands and figure things out for yourself.

“I got notes from class for you,” you offered, reaching into your bag and pulling out your notebook. “I actually paid attention in class and started using the shorthand you showed me, and let me tell you, it’s definitely helped me out a lot the past week. The professor was talking so fast,” you started to ramble, just glad to see his face again. It felt like ages since you got to talk to him and having contact with him made you drop your guard in a heartbeat. “Did you want me to copy them for you? I can also help you with homework. I promise I haven’t slept through any of my classes lately.”

“It’s fine,” his reply came out strained and rather curt. “I already have notes, Levi dropped them off for me earlier.”

That was a lie, and both of you knew it. You knew better than to push your luck with him. Satan had a propensity to lash out, but something told you to persist. Jamming your foot into the door as he tried to close it, you ignored the pain and pushed through to gain access to his room. “I’m not leaving until you tell me what’s going on. This isn’t like you.” You stepped past the threshold of his room and looked around.

The piles of books he surrounded himself with didn’t seem to be in terrible disarray. It was the first time you had actually stepped foot in his private quarters, and you took a moment to look around. While you were distracted, Satan took the time to close the door and turn the lock to it. Now that you were in his space, the aura he had tried to suppress came out in full force. He stalked around you like a cat waiting to pounce. His eyes trained on your body as he circled around you, his footsteps light and quiet.

It didn’t take much for you to notice the slight change in his demeanor. One moment he was looking absolutely sickly and unwell, the next moment he was pacing around you. The way he watched your every move was unsettling, and you tried to offset the unease you felt by placing your arms over your chest. Huffing in annoyance that he was still being rather cryptic, you started to demand the answers no one was bothering to tell you. “So, are you going to tell me, or are you just going to walk around looking at me?”

“I’m not… well,” he said, the last vestiges slipping from his control now that you were so close to him. He didn’t want to break the tentative trust the two of you had built over the last few weeks. He wanted to think he was better than what his hormones were telling him to do with you; but since the opportunity presented itself so neatly to him, it was hard to pass up. While you tapped your foot impatiently for an answer, he let go of the last bit of control he had on his hormones; and an odd calm washed over him. A haze settled over his mind as he let himself be carried away by instinct. He would find time to apologize to you later, after he won.

“You don’t look that bad. Maybe a little sleep deprived...” You reached up to touch his forehead, checking for his temperature. He didn’t seem particularly warm, but you didn’t really have a very good frame of reference for what normal demon body temperature should be like. It wasn’t until you got a closer look at his complexion that you noticed how dark his eyes had become and how flushed his cheeks were. “Okay, maybe I take that back...”

You pulled your hand back just a second too late. He reached out and held onto your wrist firmly, the barest trace of a smirk played at the corner of his lips. He understood that you were saying things to him, the words were supposed to make sense; but in his addled state, it was hard for him to care about anything other than the hunger roiling within him. With just your slightest touch, you destroyed the little bit of control he worked so hard to maintain around you.

It didn’t matter anymore. You had squandered your last chance to leave when you touched him. He had you cornered in his own territory. The hunt was over, and he could finally play this damned game on his own terms. He had been so patient, biding his time and waiting for the right moment. His rut came upon him just as he was about to make his move, and he was sure he had missed his chance with you. However, you had chosen to walk into his room even knowing he wasn’t well. You had chosen to seek him out, almost as if you knew what he was going through. Maybe it’s fate…

With a strength he rarely showed, he pulled you to the bed tucked in the corner of his room and nearly threw you onto it. He exuded an aura that shot down any protests you might have had about his rough treatment of you.

He moved according to instinct, wedging his knee between your legs and pushing you down onto the soft covers of his bed. “I think you can understand how I’m not well. After all, from what I remember you saying, you passed that biology test with flying colors.”

“I…yes...” It was only a matter of time before you bedded him. It was the most fortunate of circumstances that it happened during a time when he was holing himself away due to a rut. You couldn’t have planned it any better. The rules had never been said out loud, but Asmodeus’ words held so much more weight and meaning to them than you could ever imagine. “Maybe I do know what I’m getting into.”

“Good girl. Then I won’t have to explain myself,” he purred, nuzzling your neck and ran his lips across your skin. His voice was pitched in a way that made you shiver. There was much more passion in the simple gesture than anything else he had ever shown you publicly. Your unique scent seemed to fill his whole head and made him dizzy. He pulled you closer with one arm around your waist and he took a deep breath to memorize just how you smelled right before he took you. The intimacy was strange, but not unwelcome. You wondered if he would be anything like this if his mind wasn’t so influenced by his hormones. His fingers found your chin, tilting it up to meet him eye to eye. “I’m sorry.”

Satan didn’t give you time to think about the oddly gentle apology before his lips found your own in a heated kiss. He claimed your mouth greedily, running his tongue across your lips just once as a forewarning before it delved into your mouth, tracing your teeth and swallowing your moans. One hand on your chin kept your head tilted just the way he wanted, his other hand laced itself into your hair and held you steady as he claimed you like he had already won.

He didn’t want his first time with you to be like this. It was supposed to be sweet, romantic and soft; not what a demon in heat was going to be like. Perhaps knowing that he wasn’t the first to get to you was what drove him to want to possess you even more. If anything, he at least knew that the state he was in granted him the best chance of victory over all his brothers. Perhaps they would call it cheating; but he considered it good luck with a hint of strategy that got him to where he was.

He pinned your arms above your head with one hand, keeping you firmly in place while his other hand swiftly slid under your skirt. Curling a finger, he pressed it against your heat. Even though the two of you had only kissed, he was pleasantly surprised to feel quite a bit of dampness between your legs through the fabric. It felt like after a couple of run-ins with his other brothers, your body seemed to be primed for the taking at any moment. His luck didn’t seem to be running out anytime soon.

Your gasp brought him out of the haze of lust for a brief moment only to have him redouble his efforts into making you squirm for him. He had the darkest, most wild look in his eyes as he watched your every movement. It pleased a deep part of him that out of all his brothers, he was the one who was able to get you to squirm and whimper like this. It wasn’t hard to hear how the others made you feel; they didn’t make much of an effort to hide what they were doing to you. It was a bit shameful for him to admit to himself just how he had memorized your breathy sighs late into the night.

What wasn’t shameful was just how different it sounded when you were so close to him, and there weren’t any walls to muffle the pretty noises you could make when you were given pleasure. His knuckle pressed against your heat a little harder; and out of instinct, your legs spread wide, giving him access to your body. He played you like he had studied you for decades. As if he knew which part of your body would make you sing the loudest for him.

Satan’s lips peppered kisses all over your heated skin as he worked you up to the peak of your arousal. He buried his head at the crook of your neck, taking time to lick and suck the sensitive skin there. He nipped you with his teeth in between his kisses. Nothing hard enough to break skin, yet enough to leave dark marks proving to anyone who saw where he had been.

Your fingers tingled from being pinned down so firmly, but all that felt negligible compared to how he was making you feel with just his lips and his finger against your clothed heat. You rolled your hips to meet his knuckle, encouraging him to keep going. “Ah…Satan...” you breathed, your eyelids fluttering when he pressed just right against your clit.

Outwardly, he didn’t show it; but his heart sang when he heard you call his name that way. There was nothing quite like the elation he felt when he realized just how much power he had over you. The instincts that guided him only egged him to go further to get even more sounds from you. His need to breed and fill you with his seed only grew the warmer you body became thanks to his ministrations. He didn’t care if you wouldn’t last much longer. No, now that you were in his territory, he owned you; and he had so many more plans to exact after one climax.

“Don’t you dare think about moving your hands from where they are,” he growled, loosening his grip on your hands momentarily. You flexed your fingers just to get circulation back into them, other than that, you complied to his demands without question. His hand now free to roam your body made quick work of your uniform. He had the decency to at least make an attempt to not rip apart everything, though in his haste, you swore you heard a seam tear at some point.

You laid bare, save for your panties, under him; and it was a sight he was going to remember for the rest of his life. There was an innate fear in your expression that made you irresistible to him. In one swift motion, he divested you from the last piece of clothing you had on. There was no denying just how aroused you were with the bit of resistance your underwear gave him as he pulled it away from you. He could clearly smell how excited you were from just the little bit of teasing you had done.

Swooping in to give you a torrid kiss, it was too easy for him to slide two fingers into your wet heat. Your moans were muffled by his lips as he worked his digits in and out of you. The pace was just enough to have you seeing stars and gasping for air anytime his lips left yours for a brief moment. In a moment when you had your eyes closed, when he curled his fingers just right inside of you, you heard an unfamiliar rustling sound. When you cracked open your eyes again, you saw grand, curling horns framing his face.

After his transformation, the pace changed once again. There was almost a malicious glint in his eyes as he watched your expression change the closer you got to your climax. He had dreamed of this moment so many times before. To see it happen in front of him was a wondrous sort of magic, a magic he had complete control over. “Remember to say my name when you cum,” he growled before using his thumb to rub your clit alongside what his fingers were doing to you.

You choked back a sob as your body shuddered in the wake of your orgasm. His name did leave your lips at that moment as he demanded. You were also sure anyone else in the building could also hear you as you called out for him while your inner walls clenched around his fingers, soaking the digits in your essence.

He pulled his fingers out of you and looked at just how coated they were with your juices. While you recovered from your climax, Satan took a moment to lick his fingers clean, his long tongue lapped up the slick mess on his fingers as he hummed in approval at your unique flavor. It would make claiming you much more special now that he knew how you tasted as well.

You only had the time it took for him to remove his clothes to recover from your orgasm before he took control once again. “Hands and knees,” he demanded and you scrambled onto your quaking limbs to comply with his needs.

You could see your faint reflection in the window in front of you.The outline of your body and his prepared you for what was to come next. You felt the bed dip with his added weight as he lined himself up behind you. There was no additional preamble before he sank his length into you and started a brutal pace that had you clutching onto the sheets below to prevent you from moving too much. Having already cum once, sliding into you was too easy; and with how tightly your walls were around him, it only made the first pass feel that much more rewarding. Even if you never got a chance to properly see the unique shape of his cock before he buried himself into you, you definitely felt every particular ridge and divot he had.

He lost himself the moment he entered you. Gone was any notion of soft loving and romance. All he had within him was the innate need to breed, to see you filled to the brim with his seed. The only thing that mattered was the feeling of finally fucking you and how he was going to continue to fuck you until both of you passed out from exhaustion.

“You have… No idea how long I’ve waited for this moment.” His nails dug into the flesh of your hips, helping you stay right where he wanted you. He couldn’t care less about being too rough with you, not when your moans were encouraging him. He could see your face scrunched up in pleasure whenever he glanced up at the faint reflection on the window. The scratches he left on your skin welted up so beautifully, it only drove him to dig his nails deeper into you until you bled. His need to mark you overpowered any common sense he had.

The pain and the pleasure you felt mixed into something so much more than you had ever experienced. He had given you no time to adjust to his girth and length before he started fucking you in earnest. Even if you didn’t get a chance to see it, you could feel the tip of a hard, bulbous knot press against your entrance with each hard thrust. You clung to the sheets underneath you for dear life, riding out the brutal pace. He didn’t moan as much as he growled whenever your walls clung to the ridges of his cock just right. Satan leaned over, biting your shoulder hard enough to where his canines broke skin. Seeing your blood well up in contrast to your complexion only had him craving for you even more. He licked at the wound he created while he continued to rail into you, your cries sending him into bliss.

He could tell you were close to another climax; and just when you thought you would crest over, he stopped his pace abruptly, pulling out of you without warning just to flip you over and reenter you. Satan grabbed onto your leg, propping it against his shoulder before he resumed fucking your abused hole. With the new angle he was granted, he took more measured strokes, letting you fully experience everything his cock had to offer you. Sweat beaded on his forehead from the exertion, but the high he was getting from ramming his length into you over and over was worth the exhaustion he would feel later once the brunt of his needs were sated.

He could feel you ramping up for yet another orgasm. It would be the last push he needed to fully embed himself inside of you. His thrusts slowed, if only to press his knot against your entrance, letting you feel the sting and burn of being stretched out to accommodate the last few inches of his length. You whined, feeling both the need to accept him but also a bit of fear, wondering if that was even a possibility.

He seemed to notice your trepidation and leaned in for a surprisingly soft kiss considering how roughly he had treated you thus far. “Soon,” he said, his voice hoarse and gravely. He pressed his hips forward again, and you forgot to breathe as you were pushed to your limits. Satan pulled back only to repeat the motion once more. “Soon...” he growled again, his cock twitched in anticipation, knowing what was to come.

Subconsciously, his tail wrapped around your leg, tightly squeezing it as if to reassure you it would all be alright. He showered your neck and collarbone with kisses before reaching in between your bodies and rubbing your clit. “I know you’re close. Cum for me, and accept all of me...”

The combination of his low voice so close to your ear and the stimulation of his fingers gave you all you needed to once again reach your climax. Your walls pulsed around him, pulling him further into you; and it gave him just the little extra push he needed to fully seat himself within you with a satisfying “pop” sensation. His breathing wavered as he relished in the feeling of being buried within you so intimately. Looking down, he could see your entrance throbbing around his length, the sight of being joined with you in such a way had his heart soaring. All the time he spent with you, keeping you at arms length for this moment was so worth it.

You on the other hand needed to contend with both the feeling of your orgasm as well as being filled far beyond anything you had ever experienced before. His knot kept him lodged within you for as long as it took for him to be properly satiated. He waited, feeling your walls clench tightly around him before feebly caressing his hard length once the most intense part of your orgasm passed.

“Good girl,” he purred. His expression was surprisingly soft and loving as he brushed your hair out of your face. Now came the part that he had been looking forward to the most, the part that his body had been craving ever since you willingly walked into his territory. He rocked his pelvis slowly, causing you to gasp and accommodate him. He didn’t have the freedom of movement to thrust into you as he did before, but the subtle jerking motion of his hips rocking against you gave you enough stimulation to have you seeing stars and gasping for air.

“Satan...” you whimpered, your eyelids fluttering as you struggled to get a hold of yourself above everything you were feeling.

The sound of your voice calling out for him only made him rock more insistently into you, pressing further and further, deeper until the tip of his cock pushed against your cervix. The fullness, the pain, the pleasure, it was all beyond anything you could ever imagine; and just when you thought you couldn’t take anymore, you felt him release inside of you, a guttural moan coming from his lips as he finally climaxed.

He buried his head at the crook of your neck, desperately sucking and nipping at your skin. The warmth of his seed filled your hot caverns and spilled out, coating your thighs and the sheets below you despite his knot still being crammed tightly into your entrance. The amount of cum he pumped into you felt unfathomable as he seemed to climax for an eternity, his body trembling above your own in the aftermath of such an intense release. “Good girl...” he purred again, kissing the dark marks he had left on your skin.

The haze of need dissipated from his eyes now that he finally let go of his pent up desires. When his heartbeat finally settled a bit, he coaxed you to lay on your side facing him while he was still connected to you. He sighed in content, brushing your hair from your face. His legs tangled up with yours while his tail lazily swished from side to side, grazing your calf lovingly from time to time.

As you basked in the afterglow, you finally had a chance to admire him in his true form. Your fingers idly played with his hair and traced the curves of his horns. He sighed softly, eyelids fluttering in the softness that came after such a rough session. It wasn’t what he expected out of you visiting him, but he was glad for the outcome.

“Well, you look like you’re much better now.”

“Maybe a little. But I think a few more rounds will be needed to really get me on the road to recovery.”

You paused everything you were doing, feeling your body react to the possibility of even more sex with him. Blinking you gave him a shaky laugh. “You’re kidding right? I’m already half dead after one round.”

“Well, I hope you’re ready to accept the consequences of seeing me when I’m unwell like this,” he purred, flexing his hips to remind you that he was very much still inside of you, “but for now, rest.” He pulled you close, kissing you on the forehead and pulling the sheets over the two of you. “I hope you don’t have anything else planned for the rest of the day.”

You giggled, snuggling up against his chest, settling for much needed comfort and a nap. “Well, taking care of an unwell friend is more important than anything else I had scheduled.”

“Hmm, Good answer.”

#Obey me! Fanfiction #Obey me! smut #Obey me Satan #Shall we date obey me Satan #shall we date satan #My writing #Commission Work #i'm trash you're trash we're all trash

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coralstudiies · 5 years

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SURVIVAL GUIDE & STUDY TIPS

hello everyone!! this post is a collab with the lovely and amazing @boinkhs because we've both reached 2k followers :D she'll be doing study tips for college students and i'll be doing study tips for high schoolers. check out her post here!

i've split this into part 1. survival, which concerns how to study & learn better in general and just tips on how to get through high school. part 2. is on specific study tips for each type of subject, namely sciences, maths, languages and humanities.

Hope this helps <3

1. Don't snooze please

you just end up snoozing 5 times then you’re late for school

2. If you find you have difficulty getting out of bed, just keep in mind ONE TASK you need to do.

for example, making your bed. then you just gotta focus on that! it should help fight the sleepiness because you’re forcing your brain and limbs to be active.

3. Do the necessary things like brushing your teeth, putting on clothes and eat breakfast

i don’t know why but some people don’t eat breakfast before coming to school like ???? excuse me ???? please eat at least a small snack, or a fruit or something. your body doesnt function on an empty stomach! also, drink some water to hydrate yourself

4. On the road, you should do something that puts you in a good mood.

for me, i go straight to spotify and listen to my playlist. you should also review the previous day’s learning so that you refresh your memory before going back to class. personally this is my fav part of the day HAHAHA

5. If you like, you can choose to read a book.

just make sure you’re calm but ‘warmed up’ to focusing in a sense.

1. Hydrate frequently

idk man it just keeps you awake + i dont feel so icky if i drink enough water

2. Learn actively

if the teacher asks questions, try to answer. sit at the front row. offer to help give out the worksheets or notes. clarify your doubts after. when they speak, copy down notes. don’t worry about the aesthetic; i mean you can but you need to write fast and neat which unfortunately doesnt come together very often. i suggest you spend more brain power digesting and understanding the content.

3. Don’t over highlight

ONLY KEY POINTS that are stressed by the teacher. you can tell when their tone changes, expression changes, when they use more hand motions, or they keep repeating a few key words. yes , that. highlight that. stare at it while listening to them speak. make sure you understand. if you don’t please ask. but make sure you don’t have a fluorescent page because that’s not ideal study material!

4. Write down any questions you have

if they’re answered in the lesson, cancel them off. if not, ask after the lesson. dont be scared! *sends virtual courage*

5. Use whatever free time you have to finish homework

because you’re gonna thank yourself later. you should spend more time at home revising than doing homework. ( doing homework isnt equivalent to revising PLEASE I KNOW SO MANY PEOPLE WHO SAY THEY REVISED FOR 3 HOURS BUT ALL THEY DID WAS HOMEWORK ) also it feels better knowing you have one less thing to worry about

6. Record down all assignments, due dates and test dates

do it in a planner or your phone. doesn’t matter just keep them somewhere. it can be demoralising to see an entire entry of shit to get done but still it’s better than not knowing what needs to be done. ignorance is NOT bliss. try to color code or symbol code them, for example • for assignments (due date behind), - for tests etc. act on this when you go home (see below)

7. Have a file/binder some form of organisation to keep different subjects’ worksheets, tests, notes, reading etc.

you can have one massive binder, one binder for each subject, one folder file for each subject or anything that suits you. for me, i clip all materials of one subject together with a binder clip. the materials i use most are at the front for easy reference. then put those bundles into zipper files, perhaps one for math and sciences, another for languages and humanities. or whatever suits you best! make sure you have everything in one place so you don’t panic and dig through a pile of dog-eared paper.

8. If you can, when it’s near the exam period, don’t stay back after school unless it’s to study.

i used to stay back for training and to play volleyball with my friends and i kid you not we would play from 2pm to 6.30 pm and get nothing done but it was fun. and i’m not saying deprive yourself of that fun but when the exams are near, you should be studying somewhere quiet/ somewhere you can focus. you should go somewhere (preferably home) where you can focus and get things done.

9. Decide if you’re a lone wolf or if you need a study buddy/study group

personally i’m a lone wolf because i hate distractions and i don’t want to distract others. but when my friends ask me for help i don’t mind staying back a little to teach them and/or study with them. Personally i find that for subjects like english which require you to write about an array of topics, studying with someone else can help in generation of essay points and to just broaden your understanding of the topic. so yeah it really depends, just do what suits you :)

10. Take notes in class

try to understand while copying, and if you didn’t understand something, you should raise your hand and ask for the teacher to repeat so that you hear it again. also, it gives you more time to take notes as they re-explain the content. read them after the lesson is over to help internalise some facts. you can create your own method of organisation for your notes, e.g. colour coding.

1. Review the day’s learning on the way home.

if you take public transport, try to flip through your notes and worksheets to review new content for the first time.

2. Eat lunch, have a snack, take a shower, everything that’s necessary.

if you use your phone while eating, make sure you don’t eat slowly just to use your phone because that’s wasting time.

3. If you’re super tired, just have a 15-20min power nap

nothing more otherwise you will NEVER wake up until the dead of night. just take a nap to get some energy back. doesnt matter if you wake up feeling more tired, because you’ll shake that feeling in a while. keep a glass of water beside you so that you can drink it once you wake up!

4. Look through your ‘list’ that you made earlier in the day. (in class, pt. 6)

you might want to spend max 10 mins updating your schedule. then stare at the dreaded homework. start with the easiest and least time consuming to build up momentum. this could actually be the remainder of what you’ve finished in school. then look at the due dates. do them in order of due dates. unless it’s a huge project or assignment, you might want a head start on it!

5. With the remaining time, you should start revising

review the day’s learning AGAIN.

make notes/mindmaps/flashcards whatever works for you. you should prioritise the subject or chapter that you were most confused about. quickly revise and try to clear up any questions you have about the chapter. if you have additional time, go ahead and make notes for the next subject! another way is going through corrections and clarifying your doubts with friends/teachers, and summarise the day’s learning on a post-it or two. if you’ve already taken notes in class, look at other sources e.g textbook and combine what you’ve learnt before re-writing or re-organising your notes.

1. Pack your bag!

remove unnecessary materials, and pack the necessary one. make sure your bag isnt too heavy. you can choose to hand carry some files or binders if they’re too bulky, but make sure you’re all packed before the next morning

2. Have a meal & clean up

again, basic necessities. don’t go to bed hungry or feeling icky because thats not how you treat yo self!

Before class:

if you’re going to continue on a chapter, review the content that came before it. Try to make your own connections between the already learnt and to-be learnt content so that you’re mentally ready for class.

In class:

take down notes, highlight, annotate and DRAW DIAGRAMS. you can’t do sciences without diagrams. for physics or chemistry which require more calculation, copy down the problems your teacher goes through and solve them along with him/her. write the formulas on a post it note so you can stick it onto the page where you’re writing for easy reference. if the teacher plays a video which is MOST DEFINITELY NOT GOING TO WAIT FOR YOU you have to write only the relevant points in the most abbreviated form possible.

Note-taking:

I find that linear notes help me most in sciences. for chapters that involve lots of interconnected processes, for example o chem, then mindmaps or flowcharts will be helpful. also if you tend to forget something, post-it that stuff on the front page of your notes where you are FORCED to stare at it. yes. write down example problems and their steps, then write explanations for each step so that if you’re confused you can always refer back. again, draw any required diagrams.

Answering techniques:

if there’s a ‘standard’ way to answer it then you have to make sure you follow that way even in your homework because it’s muscle memory. when you get to exams, your hand will automatically write in the same format so you don’t lose marks or spend time recalling the correct format.

imo sciences are quite logical so as long as you remember and follow the flow you’ll be fine!

In class:

copy key terms, facts and examples and write all examples that the teacher has gone through. write all formulas and definitions on a post it, then shift it around the pages as needed. if there’s a type of problem you particularly suck at, ask your teacher for help IMMEDIATELY because it’s so easy to forget the steps to a problem.

At home:

do your homework, do additional practice, correct your mistakes, clarify, and repeat. memorise formulas and definitions (perhaps using flashcards or post its) then practice more and make sure your concepts are strong. there’s no easy way and sadly this is all i can comment.

In class:

copy down notes, think actively, and if you’re given a sample essay you should annotate the heck out of it and keep it somewhere safe.

For essays:

read up more and write up. befriend the best writer in class and ask for their essays. write essay plans and consult your teacher. brainstorm possible approaches with friends. read the news, and copy the links of interesting online articles for future reference. have a go-to list of examples and quotes you can use, for any and every topic. read these like your bedtime story and never forget to keep updating them.

For comprehension passages:

read the questions first. then you’ll be more sensitive to what you need to read in the passage and how you need to analyse it. try to question yourself about how and why the author does something or makes you feel something. do not rush-read the passage or you will fail horribly (personal experience). do one or two extra comprehensions and ask your teacher to mark them.

In class:

ARROWS TO LINK EVERYTHING and annotate any class notes given. write down new examples provided by the teacher. if there is a link you ‘can check out’ go check it out. it’s probably something thats gonna be on the exam.

At home:

you have to rely on mindmapping and flow charts because everything is linked in some way and you cannot ignore those links!!!! although i do my humanities notes in linear form, my in class notes are all in the form of mindmaps. and actually i revise from those in a pinch because i can see everything at one go. watch vids on the concepts, for example plate tectonics. those things are so hard to see when they’re deadass sitting on the page and not budging. watch a video where they really move instead of being frozen.

If you’re so frickin lost:

watch more videos on the concepts, watch more videos on the events, search up interpretations online and ask your teachers!!! for everyone who gets equally lost as me when i’m faced with a new chapter, another way is to pre-read before the teacher starts teaching. if you’re lazy to read just watch a couple clips on it so that at least you have some background. even if you wake up the next day with 0 concrete memory, which you won’t, you’ll already have the flow of things which will help you if you’re usually the straggler.

(disclaimer i study geography although i've tried history and english literature but i think that they're similar to some extent, especially on how to study them)

#study #studyblr #studying #coralstudiies #revision #study motivation #notes #study tips #study advice #studying tips #studying advice #high school #lectures #tips #advice

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things2mustdo · 3 years

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I doubt anyone needs to be reminded that the media is rotten to the core; even the most reluctant and closed-minded people are accepting this as a given now. But despite the media being widely condemned nowadays (my special thanks to Germans for bringing the word “Lügenpresse” back), few people know or understand what’s really going on in the journalistic kitchens, where the foul slop of lies that people are fed every day is cooked up. However, there is always a way in—through purposeful infiltration or, in my case, by accident.

I have an old friend—let’s call him Sven—whom I always knew as a kind-hearted and sincere man. However, these traits are also coupled with always assuming the best of people and being rather naive. Due to this, he keeps ending up in awkward and sometimes dangerous situations. One of them turned out to be a short stint as a journalist for a popular online newspaper. He barely maintained contact during his employment and eventually went completely off the grid. In about a month, he resurfaced a changed man, and not for the better. As he explained, he quit the job and then shut himself in for a while, armed with nothing but alcohol, to cope with the depression working as a journalist gave him.

Now, this probably sounds very soft to many of you, including myself. Men don’t sink into depressions or try to drink themselves out of problems. While I granted my friend the clemency of explaining his failures to him, I also recognized the usefulness of his experience and started questioning him about what he saw and heard at the job. I will relay his findings below; however, I will not disclose his true name or the name of his employer—given the “free” country we live in, this can land him in very hot water.

Whoever pays you, owns you

Sven joined the ranks of journalists to tell people the truth. To his credit, he believed he would be doing exactly that. His first assignment sounded so simple, after all—talk to a person, record the conversation, write an article, publish it. The reality turned out to be diametrically different—after our fresh-baked journalist returned from his first interview, he was immediately ordered to transcribe the recording and email it to the content manager. Half an hour later Sven received a heavily edited version of the transcript, with the parts he considered most crucial replaced with meaningless buzzwords or removed completely. When he went to the manager to voice his indignation, the manager simply replied: “This man did not pay us for an article that would disparage him. Get back to your desk.”

This was far from the only case of Sven witnessing how much pull money has in journalism. His numerous colleagues almost never produced independent content—they were too busy publishing one paid article after another. When Sven asked whether these articles should be marked as sponsored, the only reply he got was a bitter laugh. Very often the content manager would come over to his desk and say something along the lines of “Do you know the guy you are writing about is a close friend of our boss? Do not screw this article up.” Sven was also surprised to see that many interviewees (usually politicians) would not even bother to talk to him, instead referring him to their secretaries or assistants. One of them even went as far as to hand him a pre-written speech, tell him to work with it and walk away.

However, our Sven also happens to possess a burning sense of justice, which has several times led him to ignore the “recommendations” his content manager gave him, deviate from the official story and allow small snippets of truth to make their way into public view. For each of such occurrences he was called to the manager’s room, given a strict admonishment and had his paycheck for the month reduced. Any “unsanctioned” things that he wrote were quickly edited away afterwards—even if the article had already been read by thousands of people. And his was supposed to be a “neutral and objective” media outlet!

Standards? Never heard of ’em.

It was a big shock for Sven when he finally realized that his employers were beings without conscience who whored themselves out to the highest bidder. It was an even bigger shock when he discovered how nonchalantly his colleagues treated their responsibilities. Investigative journalists relied on information they got from Google searches and Twitter posts, editors and sub-editors used rumors and hearsay to write scathing op-eds, website managers just posted any content that caught their fancy as long as they could come up with a flashy enough headline for it to attract people. Fact-checking was almost unheard of, unless someone specifically paid for it.

When it came to choosing topics and writing articles, the guideline for the entire establishment was simple: do not make the people angry. Not the regular people, mind you—those were not even considered human beings, just a faceless mass that one threw articles at and got pageviews and money in return. No, the label “people” was reserved for people who mattered. This included representatives of the powers that be, well-known public figures, moneybags with fingers in the political pie and, of course, personal buddies of the outlet’s owner.

These were to be protected, coddled and praised at all costs, while everyone else was fair game. Needless to say, politics held as much sway in the outlet as money did—whenever something noteworthy happened, “protectors of truth and objectivity” immediately went to work spinning the events in a way desirable for those holding their leashes. Hit pieces against political opponents and undesirables were churned out, smokescreens were cast, facts were omitted, denied and misinterpreted. Sven confessed to me later that the day his outlet covered the parliamentary elections was the first day in his life when he spent the entire evening drinking. Journalistic ethics, a term that the media loves throwing left and right, turned out to be nothing but hot air.

In the media omelet, you are an egg

The title says it all. For top dogs in the media business, a rank-and-file worker is not just a pawn—he is a condom. Contrary to what many people think, a typical journalist’s existence is quite pathetic: underpaid, undervalued, thankless and constantly bossed around. Staff turnover in the “kitchen” is very high, and not because people are getting promoted. In this field, the term “veteran employee” frequently means a poor sod who has no alternatives and cannot quit.

According to Sven, plenty of his colleagues worked only for the sake of getting their paycheck, which explains their negligence. Grey faces, pinched mouths, shifty eyes and sour attitudes—whatever it takes to get through the day. In addition, the higher-ups avoided any responsibility for the published content: whenever an angry reader called the office and complained about an article, the guy who wrote it was immediately thrown under the bus, even if his work was reviewed and approved by the management before publication. After all, what does it take to find another office drone with half-decent writing skills?

However, Sven also describes those of his coworkers who enjoyed their job. They arrived at the office with a spring in their step, a smile snaking across their faces and a mischievous glint in their eyes. These were the “talented” favorites of the outlet’s boss—unfeeling, cold assholes who would sell their own mothers for a juicy piece of gossip that they would later smear all over the website. Whenever they got a chance to write a hit piece, spread a nasty rumor or ruin someone’s life, one could almost see them light up from within. Remember all these smug, holier-than-thou, oh-so-intellectual articles churned out by rags like Salon, Dagens Nyheter and Huffington Post? You can bet your pinky finger they were (and are) written by these people. Which brings us to the next topic.

No wrongthink allowed

As you have probably noticed long ago, the media field is a huge and accommodating Petri dish for all varieties of Kulturbolschewismus. In Sven’s case, it wasn’t just a fear-based company policy of snitching and self-censorship, but an actual agenda at work. He told me there was a flowchart hanging in the newsroom explaining what to do when reporting crimes and incidents. It went something like this: “Was the perpetrator native (white)? Y = report in detail, amplify, N = gloss the details over, downplay.”

Sven wrote an article about a national holiday once, but his content manager refused to approve it for publishing due to it being “too patriotic,” advising him instead to “write more inclusively about minorities’ participation in the festival.” Anything praising the country and its indigenous inhabitants was undesirable and omitted whenever possible, while any piece that brimmed with self-hate, praised inhabitants of other (read: African and Muslim) countries or attacked the natives and their way of life was a big hit and flew through approval like a bird.

Needless to say, the outlet’s newsroom was crammed full of women, their pet cucks and, of course, Jews. The former enjoyed absolute power regardless of their position—a simple complaint to HR was enough to fire anyone, no proof required. The cucks, represented by twig-armed, piercing-laden, wispy-bearded creatures in Che Guevara shirts, were very pleased with the way things were going, sipping lattes and snitching to HR on those who expressed ideas incompatible with the narrative. Jews were in their native element in the newsroom, doing their usual “arrogant intellectual” schtick and getting promotions out of nowhere. The majority of articles bashing natives, their culture and values came from them, as later study of the newspaper’s website showed me.

Liars for hire

So, to sum it all up: the media is not composed of good but misguided people, as many still think. On the contrary, it is a very purposeful and self-aware entity that positions itself somewhere between an unscrupulous opportunist and a loyal lapdog of the state. At best, it is faux-patriotic (“such a wonderful country we have, let’s invite more immigrants!”), while at worst, it is openly hostile towards the indigenous population of the country it exists in.

Moreover, it allows for consolidation and self-affirmation of globalist forces—the traitorous governments, the world Jewry, the multinationals, the entertainment industry and the like—against the increasingly disenfranchised and declining native population. And last but not least, the media is complicit in crimes committed in the West by non-White immigrants due to purposeful obfuscation of them and, if that fails, rabble-rousing to pressure the courts into letting the criminals off scot-free. To me, the latter reason alone is enough to send all the journalists and their owners to the gibbet.

The bottom line is to always remember that the media is not your friend in any way, shape or form, even if its lowest tier operatives fit the description of hapless victims rather than nation-wrecking enemies. The media must be opposed, exposed and boycotted at every turn until it starts bleeding money and choking on its own venom.

Read More: Is Washington Post Writer Adam Taylor A Shill Or Part Of Something Larger?

While reading Roosh’s article about Adam Taylor and the Washington Post, I noticed quite a few things I would like to share with people here. The direct link between Adam Taylor and the Radio Free excerpt is an anomaly. Such blatant copying is a very rare thing to occur because it gives away a possible collusion between entities.

Looking for these open relationships is long and hard. The better way to analyze the relations and motivations of certain publishers, policy makers and other manipulators is to study the various themes they put out and where these themes repeat. While Roosh might assume that Adam Taylor is the paid shill by himself, I’ve noticed that his writing changes to whoever publishes it. Therefore the Washington Post Worldviews section may be the one that is parroting US State Department themes not just Adam Taylor.

As is shown in Roosh’s article, the similarities between Adam Taylor’s piece and Radio Free Europe are quite telling. It is a possibility that it is a coincidence but a small one. People that try to influence public opinion go to great lengths to ensure things like this do not happen which is why I’m assuming that Adam Taylor is part of larger machine and not a shill by himself.

Looking back at Adam Taylor’s writing for the Huffington Post, he wrote fluff pieces about gay dogs and other mass consumption items for that audience. His writing about geopolitical intrigue only takes the current form when he begins writing for the Washington Post. All his articles are the Who’s Who of what the US State Department doesn’t like. The roster includes Russia, China, Venezuela, Syria, and Zimbabwe. He writes nothing critical of any American allies.

Could this mean that his change in format indicate that someone turned him? I doubt it. Compare his work at the Washington Post to the rest of the “world views” section there, his writing is merely a contribution to a giant echo chamber and not unique to him.

As I said earlier, it’s very rare for open evidence of collusion such as the similar quotations to present themselves. A better technique to discern propaganda and collusion is to analyze trends and themes.You should look for such things as what the work attempts to convey, does it try to get you to think or act in a certain way, and does it try to get you to disregard other things.

In the Adam Taylor case, the pattern changes significantly from the Huffington Post to the Washington Post. You can also apply this trend analysis to pretty much any author. You can even apply to the contributors here at Return of Kings and see what you get. Do the trends indicate that the publisher may dictate what the writers write about? Do the trends indicate whether or not the writers have freedom to write about whatever they want? To help you readers out on this exercise I’ll inform you there were two articles I did at the direction of the publisher. They were my article for fat shaming week and my article for #backtothekitchen. Feel free to comment on any other trends you might notice and if they do not line up with the “about” page.

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bigskydreaming · 4 years

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Batkids’ Viewing Habits Headcanons:

Dick: Foreign films and shows. One thing Dick really dislikes about being rooted in one place and culture after coming to live with Bruce is the sameness of Hollywood entertainment. From a young age, he was exposed to the entertainment of dozens of diverse cultures and cinematic landscapes, and he’d much rather sit down to marathon films from China, Eastern Europe and Brazil back to back than just a string of Disney movies. He does tend to prefer things like romantic comedies and low-stakes dramas that let him unwind from the pressures of actual high-stakes, end-of-the-world type missions, and he has a particular fondness for Bollywood.

The best gifts for him are old DVDs of C-list movies that never even got uploaded to American territories and that his friends and family pick up from wherever around the world they travel, because he insists the best stuff are the movies and shows that never get picked up by the American markets. When they were teenagers, Garth once gifted him with recordings of famous Atlantean plays and became the gift to beat.

To which Bruce gritted his teeth, intoned “Challenge accepted,” and sucked it up and paid Hal Jordan to pick up the equivalent of box-sets from various alien cultures he came into contact with.

Jason: High octane thrillers and action blockbusters....but not for the reasons people tend to assume. He watches them because he gets a kick out of critiquing them the way lawyers and doctors complain about the inaccuracies of legal and medical procedurals.

Watching Jason’s choice of movies or shows is basically sitting down to a running commentary about how that explosion is all wrong for that particular payload, how the actors aren’t compensating for the recoil of their guns, and scoffing at the choice of counter-strike in a choreographed fight scene when a jujitsu move would clearly have been the better option. He once paused a movie to spend two minutes making the sounds that should have accompanied the gunfire from a particular assault weapon, as opposed to what sounds it made in scene.

Jason’s a big believer in the axiom “If you’re going to do something, do it right, dammit.”

His siblings are big believers in the axiom: “Oh my god, shut up and turn the movie back on.”

Cass: Anything animated. She hates live action. Its all equally boring and pointless to her, because barely any actors are capable of marrying their acting choices to the minutiae of their body language, making it all but impossible for her to suspend her disbelief when watching them. They tend to telegraph their real emotions to her eyes more often than they do their actual acting choices.

So she’d much rather plop down in front of Saturday morning cartoons, animated films, Bob’s Burgers or various other animated shows, where she can just immerse herself in the shenanigans of cartoon figures that are as two-dimensional to her as anyone else.

She hates most CGI though, just on principle. What was wrong with basic animation, she wants to know.

Tim: Soap operas. The more ridiculous the better. He used to watch them with his various nannies when he was younger, and as he grew up - and became increasingly entrenched in the bizarre and weird world of superheroics - his fondness for them only grew, because its basically the only form of entertainment that’s consistently more out there than his actual life.

Stephanie tried to hook him on reality TV like “The Real Housewives of Gotham” but that was a non-starter. Its not the same, he insists, like the day-time television purist that he is.

When Jason eventually reconciled with the family and was trying to figure out how to awkwardly apologize and/or make it up to Tim for the whole “so about the time I almost killed you, that was my bad” thing, Dick advised him that the quickest way into Tim’s good graces would be if he gave Tim free reign to come up with a way to resurrect him in the public eye. Tim’s eyes literally glazed over when Jason told him this, followed by: “Brb, I have to go...research.”

What followed was a week-long binge of every soap opera resurrection while he took detailed notes complete with spreadsheets and flowcharts before he somewhat manically presented the rest of the family with no less than a dozen proposals for explaining away the presumed death, mysterious disappearance, and ultimate return of one Jason Todd-Wayne.

Damian: Documentaries. Initially nature documentaries, with an emphasis on wildlife, he likes to zone out in front of them, occasionally drawing or sketching based on his viewing choices, but always with a ready claim of “Some of us choose to use the television to expand our minds instead of rotting them,” whenever someone walks in on him and muses that perhaps he really just likes watching cute little seal pups flopping around on the ice.

Eventually he branched out into documentaries of all kinds, and lately he’s been on a “How Things Work” viewing kick. Which has in turn expanded into....him trying to apply his newly acquired knowledge in various ways.

Just last week, Tim wandered down to the kitchen to get something to drink and found Damian hard at work on the plumbing under the sink, wearing a spare utility belt that had been haphazardly modified into a kind of handyman’s tool belt.

“Wha-,” Tim had said.

Damian’s eyes had squinted dangerously and done all his talking for him.

Being the brainiac that he is, Tim had then decided discretion was the better part of valor and slowly backed out of the kitchen without another word, hands raised in surrender. He was mildly vindicated later when Bruce arrived home to find the kitchen half-flooded and Damian still at work under the sink cursing about shoddy instructions.

“Did you break the sink just so you’d have something to fix?” Bruce demanded, pinching the bridge of his nose to fight back a progeny-induced migraine.

Damian threw his arms up in exasperation, still sopping wet. “Well I wasn’t going to just wait for something to break on its own! How inefficient would that be?”

Stephanie: Nobody actually knows. She takes eclectic to an entirely new level, and claims she’s not about to allow her entertainment choices to be used against her by adding to the psychological profiles she’s convinced all of the rest of them have of her. Whether she seriously believes this or is just in it for the drama....again, who can say.

“Nobody’s getting any free real estate in my brain, no sirree!”

Tim, Dick, and assorted others have tried over and over to express “None of us care that much, you can stop treating ‘What do you want to watch’ like a CIA interrogation,’” but she just snorts oh so elegantly and sneers down her nose at them.

“A likely story, Bat-brats!”

“Steph, you’re a Bat-brat too,” Tim tries explaining patiently.

“Only by association.”

“You’re literally Batgirl.”

Anyway, the long and short of it is when its Steph’s turn to pick what movie or TV show is watched in the den, her choices range from reality TV from obscure black and white films from the 50s to Japanese re-tellings of Shakespearean plays. They’re all at least a little convinced that half of the things she picks she hates as much as the rest of them do, and she’s just silently suffering through them to make some point that’s incomprehensible to anyone but her.

Duke: Anything that can be spoiled. See, Duke has a vindictive side, and an epic ability to hold a grudge. After his first few weeks living at the Manor had revealed unto him that everyone else in this weirdo family had a bad habit of deducing the ending to anything as soon as possible and spoiling it for everyone else because apparently everything in this household has to be a competition, Duke’s further exploration of his powers eventually revealed that here at least, he has the ultimate edge. In time, he figured out how his ghost-vision can be used to literally watch what’s on the TV a minute or so ahead of everyone else.....and he is merciless in exploiting this.

To the extent that many of the others just flat out refuse to watch any kind of game or contest or mystery with him, period.....but Duke is a Bat, after all, and not so easily thwarted.

This eventually snowballed into him 'practicing his stealth techniques’ in the den, family room and other assorted places where the family tended to congregate around a TV.....whereupon he’d leap out of hiding at a crucial moment in the show, yell “Spoil Bomb!” and hastily shout out the spoiler while they were all still cursing and swearing about being caught off guard.

“You were supposed to be the normal one,” Bruce said to him, somewhat mournfully. Duke just shrugged.

“That sounds like a you problem, old man.”

Then he ran off cackling while Stephanie chased after him shouting about trademark infringement.

“You just had to give him a suit that can make him invisible,” Jason commented in a superficially neutral tone that was actually anything but.

Bruce sighed. “Jason -”

“I’m just saying, you never gave me a suit that can turn invisible.”

“You’re never just saying.”

“Oh, so now you’re calling me a liar, too? Nice, B. Thanks a lot.”

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h3l10tr0p3 · 5 years

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Bnha Spoilers Chapter 232-235 ahead:

Shigaraki Tomura's Past

This is an analysis of what we know as of yet about the boy born as Shimura Tenko.

The Shimura Household-

Shimura Koutarou, son of Shimura Nana (7th OfA holder, and All Might's mentor) is a successful businessman who owns a two-family home, invites the parents of his in-laws to stay. The joint family consists of- Koutarou, his wife, his in-laws, his (elder) daughter Hana, his son Tenko and their Corgi Mon-chan.

From the start, Shigaraki describes this family as a family of his Father- Koutaro, and not the family of the eldest in the household (the in-laws). It gives us a clear idea of where exactly the authority lies and how much of an influence he holds over its members.

The family is a really well-off one: Two cars, a two-stored suburban condo with a seperate study, a lovely backyard, and they have a pet dog. Shimura Tenko was far from poverty.

Let's look at the members

The Grandparents

Clearly, they love Tenko and Hana a lot, and dote upon their grandkids as grandparents are wont to. But they are 'adults' the same as Tenko's father and Tenko's mother.

When Tenko keeps craving for approval and validation of his dreams to be a Hero from an adult figure, they their try to distract him into psuedo-satisfaction (with his favourite food) or try to (mildly) guilt-trip the boy so that his dreams and his 'inconvenient' calls for acceptance remain buried under the 'happy and peaceful' suburban dream that they seem wary of breaking (and it seems like they are wary of provoking the final authority in the family, Koutarou)

These kind of actions are incredibly commonplace and it happens all the time - this doesn't make their actions excusable though, only relatable. But from another point of view it implies that the grandparents are meek and might actually be afraid of Koutarou for either of two reasons- his known history of violence or the instability of his character (more on this later).

The Mother

She is also caring and loving just like her parents- she takes care of Tenko, is incredibly worried about his allergies. rushes after Tenko when The Father pulls him away to punish him, and finally confronts him when he has gone way too far. But Like begets like, environment moulds character. Thus, she too is another meek personality who cannot stand up against the overbearing authority of the patriarch up until the last moment where violence gets involved. She too is undoubtedly aware that Koutarou can indeed get violent and grim- and this makes her the cautious parent, the stopgap, trying to keep the children in line so that the Father doesn't have to resort to drastic measures. Thus, despite all the love she can shower her son with, she never once supports Tenko's dream. Again, it's understandable. It's cause she knows very intimately what happens to the families of Heroes - she married the man who came from such a family. Instead of supporting Tenko, she asks him if he is sure of it, perhaps trying to seed doubts in his mind, perhaps being sympathetic to his wishes. But rven when Tenko repeats he likes to play Hero and was really happy when his friend compared him with All Might (showing us once more how deeply rooted the currently retired Hero was in Tenko's childhood)- the mother never really encourages Tenko's dream.

When Tenko asks if his dad hates him for being possibly quirkless, she says it isn't so. It's just that his father knows how hard a Hero's life is. And that's that.

You can see that longing for approval in Tenko's eye and the disappointment that follows when the words he yearns for (You can be a Hero) remain unsaid once more. Up till now, 3 people, 3 adults out of 4 have denied this dream and the last adult, The Father, is vehemently adverse to it.

"Children can be surprisingly self-centered and straight forward"

Let's take a small break here from the family members- here, we see one of the two monologues that has been repeated in the chapter 'Children can be surprisingly self-centered and straight forward'. Ngl, I thought this was Shigaraki commenting how his friends Mikkun and Tomo-chan repeatedly left him out when they played together. But the sequence of scenes, gives me a different idea.

From what I gather, it is Shigaraki saying that 'Tenko' as a child, was self-centered and straight-forward. Because right after his conversation with his mother he should have felt dissuaded from continuing with his dream to be a Hero, it has already worried his mother, grandparents and sister, and possibly led him to believe- that his father hated him. However in the very next panel, we see Tenko has gotten into trouble for persisting with that dream and getting into trouble for playing 'Hero'. Shigaraki, as an adult, has begun to condemn that idea in retrospection- going as far as to alienate himself from the past by reffering to his own childhood self with a generalization - 'children'. (There is an alternative reason for this)

Self-centered because Tenko didn't think of the grief and unease of his family when he continued to dream;

Straight-forward because Tenko doesn't have the complex rationale of an adult to support his dream. He selfishly wishes to be a Hero, not for anyone else, but only for himself - there is no other reason for it. A child shouldn't have anymore complicated reasoning for it either.

But Shigaraki clearly considers this his own folly for giving into such emotions at that time.

The second time where this line is repeated when The Father comes up threateningly towards Tenko with the intention of punishing him.

Contrary to the previous use of thia line, here it implies that there is a different subject as the panel moves directly from Hana to Tenko. Which brings up two possibilities -

The line is meant for Tenko himself again. But it doesn't seem to fit.

It is meant for Hana.

Before I explain how it is directed towards Hana, let's return to the Shimura family

Hana

For a few chapters, Hana has been portrayed as Tenko's only true sympathizer and supporter who takes his side in the world of dream-crippling 'Adults'. Although she is maybe only 2 or 4 years older than Tenko, Hana has the wisdom that becomes the first-born, elder sister- she displays incredible emotional intelligence and understands her family dynamics well, probably from past experience. She knows that their Father would get mad at her if she openly declares her intentions to become a part of the Hero-Sibling duo with her younger brother, so instead she tells him that he wants to become a housewife like her mother - a very tactical answer indeed. I suggest so, because in turn it again subtly hints at how fearsone the Father's temper can be, which in fact gets so bad at times that Hana does not take any chances of tempting this ire by suggesting any profession other than that of a Hero. Saying 'housewife' is safe. It keeps her in the clear. From this itself, we can interpret that she values her self-preservation, and is prepared to bend her morality for it

But exactly how far will she go to protect herself? We get that answer very soon-

To evade punishment from the Father, Hana, makes Tenko the scapegoat by suggesting that he was the one who roped her into commiting what was forbidden. It put majority of the blame on Tenko's poor shoulders. Was it cruel of her? Yes. Dud she want to do it? No. Why would she do something so cruel to him if she didnt want to see Tenko hurt then?

The answer is simple-

Hana probably did not think things your escalate so far. Yeah, she probably imagined her Father would be incredibly pissed and take it out on Tenko, but she didn't think it would go down the road of physical violence. What she did was not right, absolutely not. But can we really blame her for it? This is a child, we are talking about. By nature children are afraid to enrage authority, and Hana is no different. She was self-centered in what she did. But did she lie? Not really. Her wording might seem to the Father that it was completely Tenko's idea, but 'he wanted to see it', is not a lie. It's straight-forward. Tenko did want to see the photograph once he was told about it.

From what we have ascertained to be the common vein in all the members and how they have each failed Tenko in their own way is the Father. Either they are sympathetic of his past or afraid of his temper- the later being more prevalent and pronounced in it's effects. Tenko too, at some premature level, understands that all this happens because of his Father's Authority. Thus comes the second idea which was repeated twice-

"The house that my Father built"/ "This house was the one my Father built"

This line is always mentioned in conjunction to Tenko's punishments and can be said that Shigaraki considers his Home a Punishment in itself too.

This idea is reinforced with this simple statement.

"It only itches at home"

The implications of this are perhaps more grave. This instance mentioned is by no means Tenko's first punishment. Tenko has gone through enough of them to have come to anticipate the emotional pain (and on one instance, physical) with every misdemeanour he commits. The cycle goes from his Dream to a Misdeed, to Home, to Punishment to Pain. It's a water-tight assembly line. No surprise why Tenko would come to think of his Dream as a Source of Pain later on. But at this point in his childhood we see how the flowchart cements the aspect of Home = Punishment.

We know (or at least conjecture) that the dermatitis that affects Shigaraki might be a side effect of his quirk as it has begun at such a young age. With that logic, it isn't a leap to say that since his quirk's effects Only at his Home (his source of Pain), it is a Protective Response. Shigaraki's quirk is Decay. It activates to Decay noxious stimuli - like pain. Like his Home.

(Please excuse the horrible squiggly lines)

Why does this happen sting occur then?

Instinct. Quirks are physical abilities which heavily relies on instinct - which explains why Bakugou is so flawless in his control, he is 'pure instinct'; or why All Might had very little difficulty is mastering OfA - the answer is Instinct. In Tenko's case, it is the instinct to Protect Himself. Because right after he throws the ball and looks at his hand, his Father storms in with a brutal intent. That Sting is his Quirk telling him to Protect Himself. It isn't dog hair, or some indoor allergen that makes him hurt. He hurts because pain is the most powerful noxious stimuli that can incite a protective response.

It has a psychological as well as a physiological effect on Tenko. He hurts because he expects it. It's his body's way of telling him that 'If you dont use your quirk now- you'll hurt even more".

After the Father has hit Tenko. A new emotion takes the position of 'stimulant' for his quirk and that is

Hatred

In here, Tenko throws a ball for the Dog and immediately after he feels a sting. At first it seems as if it might actually be from the Dog. But it doesn't make sense. Tenko says that it gets worse only inside the House, not outside it. Yet in this one instance, he feels a particularly violent sting not just outside the house, but also AFTER he as stopped touching the Dog. It isn't the post-monsoon moisture either which is making him hurt, his narration doesn't really serve as a clue as to what causes his allergy, it simply lends the vividness with which Shigaraki remembers this important moment in his life.

Another thing to notice. Shigaraki never once says "This is the Home my Father built"

He says House. Shigaraki has deliberately used House here, because he doesnt feel any familial warmth from this place anymore, and hasn't for a while now. Instead what he feels from this 'House' is pain and denial.

I am gonna break character here just to scream about this part. (*takes deep breath*)

Okay...

Children-

Not Child. But CHILDREN. PLURAL. FUCKING PLURAL.

NANA SHIMURA HAD MORE THAN ONE CHILD.

Koutarou is not her only child!! She has another child!!! And any fucking guesses who?

MIDORIYA INKO

Both All Might and Izuku have agreed (indirectly at the very least) that Midoriya Inko has a likeness to Shimura Nana. SHIGARAKI AND IZUKU ARE COUSINS. I REPEAT. THEY. ARE. COUSINS!!

I don't give a fuck if this doesn't turn out to be canon. The manga reader can give me documented fucking proof and say it to my goddamn face that Shigaraki and Izuku are not cousins, Dabi is not a Todoroki, Inko didn't accidentally marry the biggest baddest evil legend of Quirk Era. I am gonna spit at their faces if they dare to feed that horseshit to me after THIS level of FORESHADOWING.

((Edit: Some Corrections and more Useless TRIVIA ABOUT CONNECTING SHIMURA KOUTAROU AND MIDORIYA INKO))

Okay, now to end this shitty long post!!

The Father

We are meant to hate Koutarou. We do hate him - he has imposed the absolute law of his will upon an entire family and terrorizes them with his temper. We should hate him. But then we are given a snippet of his past- A boy whose mom was hardly there for him and his sibling(s?), who left them behind to fight some evil guy without choosing her family and ultimately choose her duty as a hero over her family. But despite having this animosity towards his mother, Koutarou wishes that Nana had hated him, instead of loved him so much. He says so because then it woukd have been easier for Koutarou to whole-heartedly hate his mother for leaving them behind. But she truly, selflessly loved him - he understands that and still doesn't forgive her, because he wanted her to selfishly choose her family above everything else. Her absence has left a hole in his life that he cannot fill with hatred, nor with love - he is caught in this infuriating middle where he laments his short temper against Tenko, but also fears that his own child might be ripped away from his family again because of Tenko's dream. Heroics has taken the most important things from Koutarou's life and he doesn't want to see it happen again- he is prepared to go to any lengths to prevent that from happening. But he acknowledges that violence was a step too far. He blames his mother for his insecurities and fears of losing his family again.

In fact, Koutarou's desire for a complete family is so immense that he solely bought that two-family house for the exact reason he could invite his in-laws. He even calls them 'Mother' and 'Father' directly, as if they were his own. It doesn't fill that gaping hole in his heart that yearns for Nana, but it's atleast something.

Koutarou is not a good person. He is not meant to be, he is supposed to be relatable like so many bad guys in the manga - Everyone is a Hero in their own lives, everyone believes what they do is (if not right, then) for the better.

Fear drives Koutarou to extreme actions and cruelty. And I am convinced that whatever Tenko will have to suffer in the future due to his father will also be a byproduct of his immense fear of losing his family.

Does this imply that Tenko hates his Father?

Paradoxically, no. Although Tenko says he Hates everyone it isn't so for Shigaraki. Shigaraki keeps the 'Father' hand closest to Himself. Even when Bakugou knocked out the 'Father' hand, that itself was enough to spike Shigaraki's temper. He didn't have any recollection of his family then, but he still held on to it. Shigaraki, much like Koutarou himself, doesn't hate their parent - but is lodged in an in-between. For Shigaraki he is seeking his Father's approval even when he is long gone, he is carrying forward the misinterpretted hatred of Heroes by being a Villain set out to destroy everything. Out of everyone in the Shimura Family, Shigaraki constantly keeps craving the acceptance of one Adult Figure, and whose acceptance would mean the most? Obviously the one who held most Authority, whose opinion matters most. His Father.

Tenko may have decayed his family's everything but their hands. We know from previous chapters that he might have been handled with other equipment instead of direct skin contact because his family members were afraid of his power. But, instinctively again, Tenko wanted their physical contact so dearly that his quirk ended up decaying everything But their hands.

The Hands were the only things left because Tenko's power couldn't bring itself to destroy his last chance of physical contact with his family.

#shigaraki tomura #bnha shigaraki #my hero academia shigaraki #bnha #mha #spoilers #bnha spoilers #bnha manga #manga #meta-ish #i tried #i tried really hard #long ass post #WHAT THE FUCK TUMBLR #YOU BUTCHERED MY POST #I DIDNT WRITE IT IN THIS RETARD SEQUENCE YOU LITTLE SHYET

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ghostmartyr · 5 years

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1/2 I was a mega fan of snk a few years ago but started drifting around the erwin/armin rooftop serum showdown, and now I want to be there for the series' end but I have no idea what's going on anymore. Not bc I haven't read it, but bc... I just have no idea what's going on anymore. That ENTIRE volume dedicated to Gabi aka Diet Eren and a bunch of strangers, w/o any sign of the characters I'd been through everything with and loved, really pushed me away emotionally. So this is just a rant but...

2/2 …what, in your opinion, is even the message of the story anymore? Before, it seemed to me to be about the reality of survival juxtaposed with the horror of war, simply a presentation of life’s unanswerable truths. Since then though, I feel I’ve stopped being able to connect with the story and I’m lost. And I hate to bring this up, but taking into account Isayama’s possible political views of certain military figures, …

My opinion continues to be that the ending is going to shape a lot of how to feel about the rest of the series. I do still think that it is a story studying the cruelty and beauty of the world. To a point, I still believe that the beauty is going to win out, even with the current content not too focused on that.

The troublesome thing about stories that deal with larger themes of humanity is that there’s always a threat of the final point landing somewhere unseemly. Sometimes the tragedy’s there for the sake of reminding us all that the world is a fucked up place. With the current plot, you could make a case for how the story is about how abominable denials of human decency are consistently excused as long as there is a different evil to scapegoat.

It could be about how even the most evil systems in the world have good people worth wanting better for. It could be about how nothing ever actually gets better. It could be condemning true freedom as a myth.

With stories, we often get the true thesis statement at the end, after all of the evidence and arguments have been displayed beforehand. Attack on Titan is one I’d put in that category. It has a lot going on, and if it truly has something to say about any of it besides being an illustration of the human condition, the staging of the ending is going to matter a lot.

For right now, I think the story is going through a sort of hybrid of a problem that it’s always had with pacing. …Though calling it a problem is a misnomer here; I think it serves the story as a greater work, and is really hard to sit through month by month.

But so usually, this series goes with a lot of exposition that sets things up so no one really has to explain things while the action is falling out. This time, since the exposition is being shady and hiding under Eren’s hair, our main protagonists for 100 chapters are scrambling to keep up without knowing anything. They don’t know what’s going on, they have little control over the situation, and they have no win condition. Their aim right now is breathing until the next page.

That means that we get Marley’s side playing the more standard protagonist role of viewpoint characters.

As the saying goes, fuck Marley.

For all of the reasons that ‘fuck Marley’ is so satisfying to type, it’s awkward having them be the most fleshed out party in our post-timeskip world.

It’s a symptom of showing the various forms of Eldian oppression, as well as the story needing some set of characters who actually have a stated goal that has everything filled out on a flowchart. That doesn’t make it any less concerning for anyone who’s starting to form worries about where all this is going, because really, Marley being allowed to slip into the protagonist role for any length of time, even with villain protagonists being a thing, is vexing.

What I will say, and I will always say it until we go elsewhere with all of everything, is that this story has never painted genocide in any kind of flattering light. That, consistently, in a world of greys, has been pitch black and condemned.

This might be going a very bad place, but I don’t think anything is going to spin the moral compass of the work around. An interest in showcasing the horrors of humanity means acknowledging it as horror.

#attack on asks #tl;dr

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teddystrap · 5 years

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[神なる君と] Osananajimi Duo - Yakumo

Second route of the game. #mfw ==== (ง•̀_•́)ง‼

-Takekiyo Yakumo-

Niiiiisssssaaaannnnnnn!!!

Yakumo is the other osananajimi of the trio. He is one year older than Sakuya and Narumi, and acts as the protective big brother - when they were young, some older kids took Sakuya’s *precious amulet*, and Yakumo went to get it back from them and got beaten up really badly.

Sakuya later tells him that at that time he seemed like a ‘hero’ and she had always looked up to him. So I guess there’s like a love triangle (...love flowchart??) that goes: Narumi --> Sakuya --> Yakumo since the very beginning.

Also early on in the story, Yakumo tells Sakuya in a ‘simulation event’ that, even if he loved her, he would never confess and they can never be together, because it would end in tragedy. Pfffft whatever nii-san, that just means I will have to make the first move *evil laugh*.

My feelings during his route went from hilarious, to sad, to finally disconcerting. He’s kind of a poor bastard and MIA in half of his own route. When I finally got the the two endings I wanted to throw my game console out of the window... (╯°□°)╯︵ ԀSԀ

Yes, exactly.

Aaanyway, there are two big revelations here:

1. Aki’s backstory: Kibi Aki is the 16-year-old spirit medium sent by the Ministry to spy on monitor Kunihoshi Shrine, because Mikoto forgot to send in his report (#justMikotothings). After Sakuya accidentally fucks up one of her assignments, it’s revealed that she actually comes from a renowned onmyouji family, and left home to train under the ministry at a young age in order to prove herself.

2. Kunugi’s backstory: Kunugi is the shape-shifting demon who stole the *magical seal* that protects the town, and Aki’s target of investigation. I didn’t expect to like him at first, but his tragic romance is pretty kewl I have to admit:

Kunugi was a douchebag since birth and terrorised the village so all the villagers hated him. One day, a girl named Yuki wandered into his territory. She was a grade A-level village idiot idiot, and after 3 days of trying and failing to find her way out, he gave her some food and water so she wouldn't die on his grounds. She was very grateful and started to get close to him. She also begged him to stop terrorising the village. Eventually she annoyed him enough that he agreed.

Then gradually, he began to help the villagers here and there, and even became friends with them. One day they wanted to thank him for his help. They gave him a small wooden box, and told him it was some kind of national treasure. Just then Yuki intercepted, and the box emitted some light beam that went into her body.

After that Yuki got progressively sicker and on the brink of death. Out of anger and confusion, he tried to destroy the box, but it's more sturdy/fireproof than an LV tote bag. Eventually she told him that the box contains a cursed rock (i.e. the remains of the Great Demon), and once every two hundred years the village has to offer a human sacrifice to prevent the curse from escaping and causing disaster. This time the villagers chose him, so she gave her life to save his...

Kind of hard to imagine how she fell in love with this (ahem *Aki*)... hopefully a few hundred years ago he took on a sexier appearance...

But I digress. Let’s get back to Yakumo XD. So his deal is basically that the Takekiyo bloodline has been chosen as the human sacrifice every 200 years. As a result, Yakumo is inflicted with a curse that puts him to sleep for longer and longer periods, until he eventually goes into a longggg sleep and never wakes up. This also explains his superhuman athletic abilities and sixth sense, because the Force be with him powers of the Great Demon live within him.

Early on in the common route, he occasionally says things like, ‘you must live on happily when I am gone’ and gives Sakuya a #sadface, like someone with a terminal illness. Eventually Sakuya finds out the truth from his parents, after which he couldn’t hide anymore, and starts to reveal all his fears and doubts, as well as his feelings for her.

As it turns out Yuzuru knows a way to break the curse, but it requires putting Yakumo into a coma for years, and there’s a good chance of death. Basically the supernatural equivalent of a high-risk medical operation I guess. He has until the hoshimatsuri to decide whether to take a gamble with this method, or let the curse continue slowly chipping away at his lifespan.

...Of course he chooses the former. You’d be an idiot not to.

1. Good End: It’s been 7 years (!), and he still hasn’t woken up from his coma. According to Yuzuru, 5 years is the ‘safety period’, and after that he’s as good as gone. Sakuya doesn’t give up, and **10 years later** (#tumbleweeds) he finally wakes up on hoshimatsuri night. They go on to have a baby who looks ridiculously like Yakumo ...and will probably be affected by the same curse...? Oh well let’s hope Yuzuru is still alive by then to do his thang.

2. Tragic End: Under Yuzuru’s advice, Sakuya gives up and lets him erase all her memories. Yakumo eventually wakes up after 10 years anyway, and it sucks for him because unlike in Narumi’s end, Yakumo still remembers everything and has to live with it for the rest of his life. Like I said, poor bastard...

Understatement of the year.

[Thoughts] Somehow this route felt shorter and less tearful than Narumi’s, maybe because I got used to the general setting and gameplay. Yakumo’s ema events feel like they came out of a shounen manga and had me in stitches the whole time. I can’t recall any other otome game that made me laugh this much (...except maybe 「私のレアルは充実している」).

What I like about this route is the added tension here compared to Narumi’s route: in Narumi’s case it’s pretty obvs that he has a crush on Sakuya. He said it himself that he’s never viewed Sakuya as a sister from the beginning. So on that front there’s no doubt from his side, his whole conflict revolves only around the ‘forbidden love’ aspect.

Whereas with Yakumo, when he shows hints of feelings towards Sakuya, they’re often ambiguous between the actions of an older brother towards a little sister vs. a love interest. That made it all the more exciting.

Also apart from the curse/risk of death and that stuff, Yakumo also had his ‘manly pride’ to reckon with - letting Sakuya see his weak side and realise that he’s not always her ‘hero’. It was pretty damn emotionally satisfying when he finally came clean about his secrets and started letting Sakuya into his world. Although, much of his later dialogue is pretty cliche tbh. I actually found his baka persona more interesting. But eh.

I guess it’s this pride of his that makes it necessary for Sakuya to be an adult here. Whenever his white lies or ‘fake cheerfulness’ made her angry, she had to learn/choose to coax things out of him gently instead of calling him out on it. Conversely I felt that with Narumi she was more direct, and had more leeway for wagamama.

The Aki/Kunugi story arc was a high point of the route for me. Aki’s background helps to explain her personality in so many ways. I love her character growth and development here, as she eventually learns to accept help from other people, instead of trying do everything by herself. Ahh... her whole story strikes so many chords with me. I also love how she got her own grand love story here.

(Part of me is curious if the Aki-lookalike and Kunugi’s ‘true form’ will make an appearance later on. It’s a long shot, but let’s hope!)

This route also revealed a lot about Yuzuru, whom I’m liking more and more and whose story I’m really looking forward to... I thought I had more to say about him but nahhh. Asshole who’s a secret softie at heart <3.

I’ll sign off this post with the following pun from Genpei which I thought was pretty cheeky -

#otome #otome game #idea factory #otomate #psp #kami naru kimi to #sakurai takahiro #wafuu #supernatural #fantasy

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