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rutilation · 1 year

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See these two? I’ve been thinking about them. A lot. So much so, that I’ve started getting ideas about what their deal is, what their roles in the story may turn out to be—that sort of thing. Maybe the following is pure fanfiction, or maybe I managed to mind meld with Fujimoto after staring into space for long enough. Time will tell. But, I warn you now: I did not merely don a tinfoil hat to write this, but an entire Venetian ball gown’s worth of the stuff. I’ll be attending the conspiracy masquerade dressed to the nines. I’m gunning for the tinfoil crown. Click the readmore if you’d like to be my date for the evening.

Before we can attend the soirée in question, there’s a big ‘ol something I need to unpack: I’m one of those people—those wretches who believe that Yoshida is secretly the Death Devil, and what’s more, a whole lot of my thoughts regarding both Yoshida and Famine are predicated on it. While I only very recently started engaging with this work and its fandom, I’ve nonetheless gotten the distinct impression that this particular theory is something of a sore point for a lot of people—one that had already been argued to the point of exasperation and resentment by the time I got around to ticking Chainsaw Man off my reading list.

To any potential readers of this humble essay who feel that way, I have this to say for myself: while I can’t guarantee you’ll find my reasoning convincing, I can guarantee that my thoughts on the matter are more substantial than pointing at panels of Yoshida in a conspiratorial manner and trying to find the kanji for death, or the numeral ‘4’ amidst crosshatching. I find that exactly as inane as you do. With that said, I’m first going to address some common objections I’ve seen to this theory before I get into the real meat of my speculation regarding these two mysterious characters.

The Death Devil embodies a primal fear, and is too strong to be killed. So whoever they are, they’re still in hell. Paradoxical as it might seem on the face of it, the Death Devil might have an easier time dying than their fellow primal fears—who’s to say their mastery over death can’t extend to themselves? If I were to put myself in the shoes of the embodiment of death, I can easily imagine being bored with the entire concept of self-preservation, turning off my regeneration, and letting myself die every now and then in order to bounce through different reincarnations, trying to sooth the crushing ennui of my cursed existence. And what do you know, Yoshida seems pretty chill with the prospect of his own death.

Why doesn’t he have the swirly eyes? Despite being a dead giveaway for the four horsemen, no one in the story ever notices or comments on them. Yoru couldn’t even recognize Famine at a glance,* despite being close enough to clearly see her special anime eyes. I’m thus inclined to believe that the concentric rings in their eyes exist for the benefit of the audience and are invisible to the characters, or even completely non-diegetic. And something that is displayed for the audiences’ benefit can be obscured for that very same reason. Alternatively: his eyes are black with black rings.

Why would the actual Death Devil get bodied by Quanxi? And why would he have to rely on another devil to fight, for that matter? One: because she’s just that cool. Two: If he is the Death Devil, presumably the most powerful in existence, it may be the case that it’s actually impossible for him to use his power offensively for anything other than mass, indiscriminate death. Thus, he would have to rely on other devils or his own physical strength to fight in a remotely constructive way. All else would be like using a nuke to open a pickle jar. Another possible explanation is that his life would be upended if his identity were ever revealed, and so he goes to great pains to not let even a hint of it slip. If I’m correct about bullet point one, he would see dying and starting anew as preferable to the inconvenience of living with a constant target on his back, and thus wouldn’t use his own powers even when his life is in danger.

Kishibe, who is a living lie detector, trusts him. There’s no way Yoshida could hide being a devil from him. To the contrary, I think Kishibe is in on it, and I’ll get into why I think so once I’m in the meat of my speculation.

Makima would surely be able to smell it if Yoshida were the Death Devil, why would she want him of all people guarding Denji? Calling on your unfathomably powerful brother (who you’re hoping to kill in the near future,) for a sham security detail as part of a passive-aggressive power play is not only in-character, it is downright Makimacore. I don’t think her primary concern in this situation is necessarily how powerful the hired help is, but whether or not they would have a reason to steal her precious Chainsaw in the first place. Or, perhaps she simply couldn’t smell him properly for a reason that has yet to be explained.

Devils can’t make contracts with each other, so how could he have Octopus at his beck and call? Maybe they’re buddies who go way back. Maybe Octopus doesn’t want to anger the biggest fish in the pond, and serves him out of fear. It could be anything. Hey, if you think about it, the number eight is really just two fours. In various east Asian cultures, the number four represen—

*I am taken out via sniper rifle.*

In the grand tradition of Fujimoto’s iconic female villains, Death, the final boss, ought to be the mommy-est domme of them all, and anything short of that would be an insult to the femme fatales who came before. Listen, I also love his bad bitches. No arguments there. But who says the Death Devil has to be some sort of overarching supervillain in the first place? I’d honestly find it more interesting if they weren’t. Thus far in the narrative, death with a lowercase ‘d’ has been presented as something you grapple and come to terms with in order to fully appreciate love and life, and it wouldn’t be especially interesting if the character who embodies that concept were a Final Fantasy super-witch. In my humble opinion, it’d be more profound if they were just as lost and pathetic as the rest of us. I’d honestly rather Fujimoto pull a fast one and unveil Kobeni as the Death Devil, as opposed to giving us a scheming Ultimecia-alike for the role, you feel me?

I like Yoshida better as a tragic cog in Public Safety’s system. Why can’t he be that instead of the Death Devil? ¿Por qué no los dos?

If Yoshida were the Death Devil, it would ruin my ship. Come on, don’t succumb to the quitter mindset. I believe in you.

Now, far be it from me to undermine my precious bullet points after I just went through the trouble of writing them, but I don’t actually think this whole back-and-forth on what would constitute a plot hole is especially productive. None of it matters. At the risk of getting a bit abstract, I’m of the belief that a plot hole is something that only exists in retrospect, and as such, they aren’t useful guides for predicting how an ongoing story can or cannot play out. When you’re in the position of storyteller, you can spin things however you desire, and the reasons you come up with to justify your decisions are similarly arbitrary. It is solely the audience, and not the author, that is relegated to following breadcrumbs and extrapolating based on what came before, a process that only becomes problematic if their fingers can catch on splinters and loose threads in the seams of the plot after the fact. Whoever the Death Devil is—whether they’re someone we’ve already met, or a yet-unintroduced character, their identity won’t be determined by the readership’s painstaking process of elimination, but by Fujimoto thinking “wouldn’t it be neat if [x] happened?” and then honing and molding the idea to make it fit into what was already written.

All this is to say, I’m invested in my interpretation not because of how well it slots in with the other puzzle pieces—all of which are malleable anyways, but because of what I think it could potentially add to the story. And with that, I think I’ll cool it with the bloated preamble, and start getting into what I believe that potential to be, starting with the moments in the story that convinced me of this theory in the first place.

I’m sure people have harped on this moment before, but I want to reiterate that this, right here is, a truly ludicrous thing to ask on the face of it. To my knowledge, even the anti-death transhumanist crowd envisions humanity’s ideal relationship to death as one where it is a voluntary option at the end of a very long life, which is a far cry from death itself being retroactively purged from the weave of time, unable to exist anywhere in any capacity. And the latter is exactly what it would mean for Pochita to eat the Death Devil. It would create a universe inimical to any form of life aside from cancer cells, and anyone who’s given the matter more than two seconds of thought could understand that. I can see why Makima would try it—she was so high on her own hubris that I wouldn’t expect her to objectively consider the viability of her whims—but why would Yoshida, who, by all accounts, is not lost in the sauce, want this?

For such an extreme desire, there has to be an equally extreme motivation. And I haven’t come across an explanation—or managed to think of one myself, for that matter—that satisfies those bizarre parameters other than Yoshida himself being the Death Devil. The fact that he’s thoroughly unbothered by the thought of his impending demise one moment, and wistfully wishing the concept of death itself would disappear the next, feels like a smoking gun to me. The best I can come up with is that he, like a certain other devil who deals in death, is sick of the burden that comes with his existential condition, of being constantly inundated with the grief and fear of the dying and the bereaved—and that it’s gotten to the point where he wants to be put out of his misery for good, consequences be damned.

The second scene that pushed me into the arms of this theory was the café scene in chapter 122. I know a lot of people took this chapter as proof that Yoshida couldn’t possibly be the Death Devil, but for me, it was quite the opposite. Something about his interaction with Famine here felt off to me, as if the reader is not privy to the full context of the conversation. Why does Yoshida feel comfortable approaching and threatening one of the four horsemen without leverage or backup? Why did she acquiesce to his threats regardless, all while seeming completely unafraid of them? Why did Famine take him up on the invitation in the first place, something even he found strange? What’s with all the terse, silent glances between both parties?

It’s fishy, quite fishy. I actually have a lot to say about this scene, but I can’t get into my interpretation of it in any depth until I delve into my thoughts on Famine. So, we’ll just have to put a pin in it for later. For now, though, I’ll say that many of those niggling logistical questions go away if you assume that the answer is: ‘he’s a more powerful devil than her, and what’s more, there’s shared history between the two.’

So, because of those two scenes, I couldn’t help but consider Yoshida as the Death Devil to be a strong possibility. But, beyond that, I also think it makes sense as a matter of narrative efficiency. It seems to me that, among other things, Part 2 is going to be about the horsemen—who and what they really are, what their deal is, etc. If I’m right in that assumption, then one would want to start getting all their ducks in a row early, especially if that someone is a design-by-subtraction enthusiast like Fujimoto. So, the idea that we’ve already met the Death Devil, and have been given a little bit of context as to what drives their character, makes sense to me.

But, who am I trying to kid, pontificating the finer points of structure, and expectation, and all that jazz. I’m wearing this tinfoil crown, so I ought to live up to it. We have a ball to attend. Wild speculation, ahoy!

Let’s imagine the sequence of event goes something like this: Pochita has his grand climactic battle with the four horsemen and weapon devils, vanishes from hell, and finds a young Denji, who seems to be about six or seven years old, shortly thereafter—he was freshly wounded in the flashback, after all. If that incarnation of the Death Devil died during the fight (probably for shits and grins—see my first bullet point,) then his present incarnation could conceivably be around Yoshida’s age now, accounting for the fact that devils seem to skip infancy and are born as children. It may also be the case that rate at which devils mature is variable depending on the environment they grow up in; a devil being raised by a human would have the luxury of indulging an extended childhood, while one who’s basically a critter in the wilderness couldn’t afford to do so.

Anyway, I believe Yoshida belongs to the former category, which brings me back to my assertion that Kishibe is “in on it.” Like many, I too get the vibe that there’s some sort of father-son relationship between the two (a somewhat strained one, to be exact, but I’ll get into that in just a moment.) What if the reason Kishibe thought it would be a sound idea to have Denji raise the new Control Devil was because he had already done the same thing with the Death Devil years earlier? Perhaps he happened upon a young Yoshida, and, already weary from the deaths of his comrades in this endless meat grinder of a conflict, decided that killing him would be a futile act of kicking the can down the road, choosing instead to raise him as his son in the hope that the most powerful devil would grow up to become something other than a monster.

If all that is true, it adds a layer of tension to Kishibe and Yoshida’s relationship that might explain some of the latter’s aloof attitude, along with his stated aversion to emotional vulnerability. Any affection he might feel toward his father figure is tempered by the knowledge that whatever love and care he was shown in this lifetime was given with the express intent of neutralizing his potential as a threat. Even if this were a misconception, I could definitely see Kishibe being too emotionally constipated to properly correct it. And so, Yoshida never pressed the matter, and never crossed a line. In essence, he kept things parasocial. Because, without the veil of plausible deniability, he might actually find out for sure what his relationship with Kishibe amounts to, and if the answer is one he doesn’t like, it might just crush him. And so, like Asa, he leads a lonely life of being symbolically boxed in by his own speech bubbles.

This is a tangent, but while people often point to Kishibe and Yoshida’s conversation in chapter 67, along with the former taking Quanxi’s fiends hostage to save the latter’s life, as implicit proof of their relationship, there’s one other instance in the story that also gave me that vibe. That implicit vibe. It’s Kishibe’s comment that Denji is most fit for the role devil hunter out of anyone he’s met. Given what we know of Kishibe’s philosophy, Yoshida would, as far as I can tell, more perfectly fit his definition of an ideal devil hunter. He’s much more emotionally detached than Denji, he can go almost toe-to-toe with Quanxi—Denji’s not even close in that regard, and while he isn’t quite as galaxy-brained, he can still unnerve and outwit most opponents he comes across. So, why Denji and not him? Perhaps it’s because, in his heart of hearts, Kishibe doesn’t actually want his own kid in this line of work, even if he is God’s perfect little killer.

So, if Yoshida is, essentially, a domesticated primal devil, it would also give him a more personal stake in this prophecy business. The King of Terror mentioned in the prophecy could be reasonably interpreted as—if not Chainsaw man—then the Death Devil. And if the devil in question is some moody teenager who wants nothing to do with the apocalypse, who’s spent his life trying to not be an existential threat, who may have even developed an entire complex about it, he’d have a strong incentive to directly involve himself in stopping the prophecy from coming to pass.

This is all a bit heavy, so I’m going to slip on my tinfoil party hat for a minute. In addition to the Sturm und Drang, I believe there is quite a bit of comedic potential that could be mined from Yoshida being the Death Devil. For one thing, it would be pretty amusing if our leads for Part 2 comprised a literal three-ring circus of portentous secret identities. And beyond just that, it would also add a wicked and belated punchline to Asa and Yoshida’s farce of a first meeting—the one where Yoru brazenly hits on him, all while taking Asa’s humiliation smugly in stride. But, if Yoru were to learn later on that she was, in fact, propositioning her own brother, then just imagine her reaction. Comedic gold, imo. It’s high time she felt the weight of her own cringe.

Most of my speculation up to this point had been slowly pin-balling through my brain in some form or other for a couple months, but I wasn’t particularly invested in any of it. I thought it might be cool if Yoshida turned out to be the Death Devil, and wasn’t inclined to rule it out, but I didn’t think it was especially likely either, and I certainly didn’t have any desire to put myself out there, and breathlessly post about it. Waiting and seeing seemed more appealing. But, then, I started thinking about Famine. I just about bored a hole through her head as I asked myself: what purpose do you serve, and why are you here? Well, the answer I eventually came to excited me enough that I not only devoted some three thousand words to her, but I simply had to take Yoshida along for the ride as well, once the pieces really started falling into place. And with that, I think I’ll start talking about Famine.

Whereas Part 1 is full of fragile, yet intense bonds in which the characters can find solace between their excursions through the meat grinder, Part 2 is all missed connections, people talking past each other, trust issues, and crippling loneliness. With that in mind, what does it imply that the apparent villain for this stretch of the story wears the mantel of deprivation and disparity? Chainsaw Man places such profound importance on food as an expression of love, be it wholesome, toxic, and everything in between. So, there must be strong thematic significance to a character who is, quite literally, defined by its lack—a lack of food, a lack of resources, and a lack of love. It’s a whole bundle of key concepts which the story has revolved around, all embodied in a single word. So, while the series has had a few throwaway villains in the past whose purpose was, essentially, to look cool for an arc and then exit stage left without leaving much of a lasting impression, I felt fairly certain Famine wasn’t one of them for the aforementioned reasons. Nevertheless, I struggled to get a read on her for the longest time.

I asked myself: what do I know about Famine?

She claims to be on Yoru’s side, and says she’d do “anything for my little sister.”

She’s insinuated herself in the devil hunting club at Asa and Denji’s school.

Yoru wants nothing to do with her, claiming that she’s dangerous, and unhinged.

In addition, Yoru is averse to discussing her at length.

She’s in favor of Asa/Yoru turning Denji into a weapon.

She doesn’t care about hiding her identity.

She insists on being called Fami.

She’s at the very least aware of the prophecy, and Public Safety has reason to believe she’s working to bring it about.

She’s subdued and cold in her affect.

Her totemic animal symbol is a penguin.

Her design is full of asymmetrical elements (e.g. the moles and extra lobe piercings on her right ear,) which are meant to evoke the image of unbalanced scales.

She’s constantly slouching.

Her scale earrings happen to resemble Denji’s pullcord.

No amount of food satisfies her.

I also tried thinking about her in the context of the previous antagonist. Makima was presented initially as an ally, and did things that were technically positive and heroic. But, she was up to so much underhanded and menacing shit that it was impossible for even the most careless reader to take her at face value, and much of story’s tension lied in whether she would be revealed as an outright villain, or merely a cutthroat, duplicitous ally.

Famine feels almost like the inverse of that. She’s presented as an antagonist, and does some vaguely villainous things. But, is she one? There’s a dearth of clarity of intent by comparison. While Makima held her cards close to her chest, her actions themselves were never ambiguous, if that makes any sense. Famine’s motives, her aims, what she does and doesn’t have a hand in—they’re all completely obscure. There are a whole lot of assumptions and impressions of her floating around from Yoru and Yoshida, and she’s probably involved with this Justice Devil business… maybe. But, the devil in question has very little to say for herself, as opposed to Makima, who, when prompted, could justify herself ‘til the cows came home.

Makima’s iconic expression was one of self-satisfied serenity. Famine’s typical expression is, by my reckoning, one of constant, subdued dejection—the sort of look you might wear after glimpsing a dead bird on the pavement, feeling vaguely bummed about it for the rest of the afternoon. Where Makima was consistently scary, Famine has been, at most, creepy, and, more often than that, simply awkward.

With all that in mind, I thought to myself: “Okay, she probably is a villain, but she’s definitely not of the Machiavellian girlboss persuasion. Her vibes are completely different. Makima shall keep her crown”

The degree to which Yoru avoids her was also interesting. If Famine were “crazy” in a straightforward manner, I don’t think Yoru would be so reticent to talk about her. If you think about it rationally, shouldn’t she want Asa to be thoroughly debriefed regarding a powerful enemy who just stepped onto the playing field? For all of Yoru’s clumsiness in other spheres, she’s clever when it comes to fighting, to tactics, to all the things that war entails. But instead, she withdraws into herself and refuses to discuss Famine beyond a single curt warning. Whatever happened between these two, the emotions must have run high.

Then there’s the matter of penguins. For those who aren’t compelled to keep up to date with the intricacies of Japanese wordplay as they become relevant to the story, let me offer a refresher. In Japanese, Famine’s name is 飢餓の悪魔 (kiga no akuma.) The most common term for penguin in Japanese is the loan word, ペンギン (pengin.) However, kiga, when spelled 企鵝, is another word for penguin. She is properly introduced immediately after Denji stomps off to go see penguins, and his line about it is also the subtitle for the cover of volume 14—the one with her face on it. To the Japanese readership, it’s readily apparent that Famine is being connected to penguins in much the same way as Denji is to dogs, Power to cats, or Asa to birds. (As an aside, I’m not sure if this was purposeful or not, but Famine’s conspicuous fuchsia eyes seem reminiscent of a Macaroni penguin’s.)

Now, charming though that pun may be, the question of the meaning behind Famine’s association with penguins remains. Prior instances of characters being personified as animals have always been thematically important, so it’s worth digging into. Here’s what I envision when I think of penguins: they survive in an uncaring and unforgiving environment. They gorge themselves on fatty fish so they can survive fasting as they huddle together for warmth through the sunless winter. They are birds, but cannot fly. They are effortless swimmers, but cannot remain in the water. They live in cute little families, build cute little pebble nests for themselves, and use their cute little feet and bellies to shelter their chicks from the frigid air. The choice to associate her with penguins evokes, in my view, a constant push-pull between profound devotion and stark deprivation.

The denouement of the aquarium arc makes me think I might be onto something with this interpretation. While Kiga (飢餓) perches ominously atop a building in the typical villainous fashion, distant and forlorn, Kiga (企鵝) curiously waddles up to Denji looking for affection, for that all-important hug, which he is happy to provide. And, in that same moment, Famine and Yoshida share a tense glance. I’d like to think I know subtext when I see it, and this moment seems loaded with it. At this point, I started to get the feeling that Famine was being subtly set up as a tragic figure.

It was when volume 14 was released that my synapses started really (mis)firing. When I first saw its inside cover illustration, I felt a heavy sense of significance that’s hard to put into words. There’s a sense of bleak exhaustion radiating off the page, and it fascinated me. Okay, she’s definitely going to be a tragic figure, nothing subtle about it, I thought to myself. I started pondering: just what could that tragedy be? What would have enough gravitas to warrant representing Famine with such dire imagery? And then, the realization that made me obsessed enough to start writing down my thoughts hit me. The four horsemen are siblings. Siblings. What if they’re actually a dark mirror to the would-be siblings we fell in love with in Part 1? Certainly, if I were in Fujimoto’s position, I wouldn’t be able to resist drawing parallels.

I started absentmindedly walking into walls as I wondered to myself: okay, tragic siblings. Got it. But, what is the saddest possible way one could combine these ingredients? Well, how about something that Chainsaw Man has touched on, but never deeply delved into: the devils’ cycle of reincarnation.

I noticed something: neither Makima nor Yoru have ever indicated that they regard their fellow horsemen as siblings, much less addressed them with any implicit camaraderie or endearment—thus far, only Famine has ever done so. And then, I started thinking about that in the context of my musings that the Death Devil might be more killable than the other primal fears. Rather than Death, I venture instead that Famine is the horseman who has never once died. If that were the case, it would serve to explain why she has resting-depression-face, and why she slouches over as if she has something weighing her down.

Consider, also, her insistence on being called Fami. There’s no way to know for sure until we’ve seen her talk to someone who definitely can’t be a horseman, but what if “Fami” (Kiga-chan) isn’t what she wants to be called in general, but how she wishes to be addressed by her siblings? (I suppose Asa would be considered an in-law in this scenario.) It’s a bit weird that Famine objected not only to Yoshida addressing her by her devil title, but also to him calling her Kiga-senpai. It just had to be Kiga-chan. Perhaps that’s how her siblings used to call her, once upon a time, and by insisting that they address her as such, she’s clinging to the vestiges of their old relationship.

Let’s say the story of the four horsemen goes something along these lines: Once upon a time, they were a loving family, found or otherwise. Life sucks, as it does, but in finding solace in each other, they could weather whatever life threw at them. One by one, though, each of them die, except for Famine. That’s okay, though: all she needs to do is seek out their reincarnations, and they can pick up where they left off. But, it’s not quite that simple, is it? Because she’s the only one who carries the memories, the love, the expectations, and the trauma of loss. Even if she managed to make it work out in earlier iterations of the cycle, by the time the story starts, all of that has completely fallen apart. The four horsemen are now enemies bound together by nothing but a shared title, and Famine is the only one who remembers that they were ever anything else.

If all of this is starting to sound familiar, that’s because it’s what Denji is going to have to contend with when he reunites with Power. While hybrids like Denji are very difficult to kill (I’m assuming they work off of lich-rules,) devils like Power don’t have a long shelf life in practice, even if their bodies have no definite lifespan. Assuming he doesn’t get himself truly killed, or otherwise permanently dismembered, then on a long enough timescale, Denji is going to keep persisting while Power, and even Nayuta, are going to keep dying. If he wants to keep their relationship alive, he’s going to have to recreate it every. single. time. a feat which will become increasingly difficult as Denji’s baggage grows, and the shared context forming the basis of their relationship gradually drifts out of synch. That, I think, is the entropy which Denji will soon find himself up against, and Famine’s purpose in the story is to show its terminus—what it means to succumb to it.

Like Denji, Famine will partake of the crapburger for as long as she has a purpose to cling to. That purpose is her siblings, and their former relationship—one that, once upon a time, may have been as profound and loving as the bond between Denji, Aki, and Power. And in that, we may have found the reason why Famine’s most prominent design element is one she shares with Denji. Her pullcord-like earrings are meant to clue the reader in that these two are foils, a pair of middle-children who were thrust into a role of heavy responsibility after losing their siblings.

If Famine were to lay down her burden and let death take her, it might be a relief. But, she has decided to bear the burden of remembering, of witnessing the arc of her siblings’ lives across their many reincarnations. If she lets go, then who they once were, and the bond they once shared, would be completely lost to history, its final thread broken. And so, she keeps on trucking, her expression growing ever more haunted, her feelings and actions becoming ever more unnerving and inexplicable to her siblings, her heart growing ever more twisted, and her signature stoop growing ever more pronounced with the millennia. And, while keeping all that in mind, let me remind you of Yoshida’s possible desire—to erase himself from existence.

Obviously, this all pure conjecture, (an entire Venetian ball gown’s worth, in fact.) But I think an ordeal of this degree would give Famine a tragedy worthy of both her name, and her association with an animal that struggles to keep its family alive against a backdrop of utter desolation. Not only that, it would also tie her into the ongoing theme of parasocial relationships: she can’t help but project her siblings former selves onto their new incarnations, unable to meet them where they’re at, and see them for who they are in the here and now—this disconnect may well be why Yoru is so creeped out by her.

(Speaking of all this reincarnation angst, do you ever think about how our silly little guy Beam seemed to recall his past life with perfect, nonchalant clarity, and simply never saw fit to share with the class? I think about it all time.)

Anyway, if you assume that Famine’s goal is to protect her siblings, and that she’ll intercede whenever one of them is in danger of permanent death, her actions start to make a bit more sense. Why would she want the prophecy that ends with ‘Mars’ reigning to come true? Because she shares Yoru’s worry humanity will stop fearing her, and that her sister will subsequently die for good. Why does she antagonize Chainsaw man? Because she knows her brother wants to use Pochita’s power to kill himself—something she could never abide by.

She may have resigned herself to never being loved or even understood by her family again, to perpetual emotional starvation, but if Pochita ate one of her siblings, then she’d never get to love them again, whatever wholesomeness they once shared would be unspooled from time itself, and not even her memories could keep them alive. She’d fight like hell to stop that from happening, with Pochita and, by extension, Denji, rising to the top of her shit list. This may also serve to explain why she wanted Asa to turn Denji into a weapon—something which would ultimately be counterproductive to Yoru’s goal of getting him to regurgitate the nuke devil. If Famine wants to neutralize the threat Pochita poses to her siblings, merely killing him would only delay the inevitable, since he’d soon be reborn back in hell. But, if she were able to trap him in some sort of limbo state, that might actually ensure he’d never be a threat again. And thus, she sets the aquarium arc in motion.

TL;DR: Famine is basically Homura. Purple? Check. SHAFT headtilt? Check. And with that, I’m finally ready to talk more about the café scene, and why I’m not normal about it.

Having heaped all that additional (highly speculative) context over top it, the scene between Famine and Yoshida at the café is transformed from a mere vehicle for exposition, to a fraught reunion between two people who were once close, but can no longer recognize each other. It would explain why this scene made my subtext senses tingle the first time I read it. When I revisited chapter 122 in light of my speculations, there were several new things I noticed.

Something that had stuck in my craw for the longest time were these little symbolic gestures which connected Yoshida to Aki, of all people. It made no sense to me. Aside from their shared tendency to tower over everyone like a beansprout, what on earth does this smug jackass have in common with our dearly departed, single father of two?

But before I get ahead of myself, I should clarify what those parallels are. Part 2 is littered with small callbacks to concurrent events in Part 1, which seem to exist in dialogue with each other. As for those linking Aki with Yoshida, it starts as soon as the latter’s introduction to Part 2. Part 2 doesn’t have an equivalent to the muscle devil chapter; we go straight from the initial demonic possession to meeting the bestie and saving cats, as it were. As such, Yoshida’s introduction in the second chapter of Part 2 is essentially in tandem with Aki’s introduction in chapter three. Next would be the scene of him and Denji in the café, which is in tandem with Aki’s scene in the hospital in chapter 11. Both come after the Bat Devil is killed and a cat is saved, and both involve Aki and Yoshida respectively trying to bribe Denji with food into behaving. This last one isn’t concurrent like the other two, but Yoshida sitting on Denji reminds me of Aki doing the same at the beginning of the International Assassins arc. It’s all pretty conspicuous, and I’m far from the first to have noticed. So, considering it’s almost certainly deliberate, what is it, then, that motivates comparing Yoshida to Aki?

After eating several rolls of foil, I realize something. What if Yoshida is being compared to Aki because, once upon a time, he was someone’s Aki? Famine’s, to be exact. Given that Famine refers to Yoru as her younger sister, it’s probably safe to assume that the “birth order” of these siblings, as it were, is the reverse of the order they were introduced in the relevant verse from the Book of Revelations, with Death being the eldest, and Conquest being the youngest. The comparisons, I posit, are meant to clue us in that they’re both older brothers.

And then… and then, I realized that, if I was on the right track, you could draw a clean thematic through line from Aki cutting the little bunny apples at Denji’s bedside to bribe him into behaving, to Yoshida taking Denji to a café to bribe him into behaving, to Yoshida inviting Famine to that same café for their stilted conversation. And what’s more, they’re at the same table, and with the same seating arrangements—the only difference being that Famine takes Denji’s spot, providing her with yet another parallel to him. I just about started seeing shrimp-colors, I was so starry eyed.

Maybe I’m hopelessly lost in the confirmation-bias sauce, and seeing something that isn’t there. But, to me, it seems that Famine’s expression becomes slightly more crestfallen than usual after Yoshida threatens her outright. It’s a subtle microexpression, and she’s back to her usual poker face on the next page, but assuming I’m not jumping at shadows, then this further convinces me that he means something to her. I can’t imagine that just any old thing would be capable of putting a dent, however subtle, on Famine’s stony countenance. But, for someone she loves to threaten to kill her? That must still sting, no matter how long she’s had to get used to it.

So, that’s what I think the story of the four horsemen is building to: a millennia-long family drama that’s about to reach nuclear criticality, with both Asa and Denji poised to get caught in the blast radius.

Phew, that was a lot. And I’ll be downright embarrassed if none of it ends up panning out. There’s nothing quite as jarring as pouring your heart and mind into an interpretation, downright making it your baby, only to later realize that you and the author weren’t ever on the same wavelength. However, if we want the rewards of glimpsing shrimp colors, we must submit to the mortifying ordeal of crack theories. To anyone who’s still here, thank you so very much for reading my brain vomit. If even 15% of this ends up being ballpark-accurate, I will die on the spot. In the meantime, please talk to me about how Chainsaw Man is a stealth shonen reimagining of Mawaru Penguindrum; I feel like I’m going insane in my little corner here.

*I think there’s a strong case to be made that Yoru intuited who she was at the time, and was just in denial because she didn’t want to deal with or think about Famine, but my point stands regardless. If she were able to perceive the rings in Famine’s eyes, there’d be no room for either doubt or denial.

#chainsaw man #i'm like... 55% confident in my read of yoshida #75% confident in my grand unified theory of fami #and 90% sure of my penguin analysis

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leejihoonownsmyheart · 11 months

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DO YOU THINK WOOZI WOULD LISTEN TO AYESHA EROTICA. THIS IS SO RANDOM BUT LIKE WOULD HE???

YOU LIKE EDGING PEOPLE?? man how do you even do it...like i can never tell when someone is close it's kinda frustrating

so if peer pressure is real...could we all collectively peer pressure you into marrying all of us?? i mean you did say you could do the craziest shit... (ok but thank you to peer pressure because we got an amazing dom!yn fic so huzzah)

I THINK HUZZAH SHOULD BE BROUGHT BACK TOO!! yipee, booyah, all white american venacular...

GALLAGHER GIRLS, DOCTOR WHO, AND SUPERNATURAL??? that's actually really..diverse? thats so cool wtf pls tell me more about those shows

I WILL GIVE YOU IDEAS!! as soon as i can think of them..what do you like to write? i'll kinda base off my asks/ideas off of those so you'll have a better writing experience </3

YOUR BRAIN IS NOT MID??? do you think a mid person would bias woozi?? didn't think so 😒😒

IKR??? HOW COULD HE DO THAT 😭😭😭 istg he literally messaged me first and asked to do everything with me and then out of nowhere he just invites someone else to tag along when we hungout??

im sorry that you're feeling stressed rn 😕😕why is everyone mad at you wtf?? i promise you don't sound narcisstic when you talk about it because if it's bothering you, you gotta let people know how you feel!! im glad the blog and a couple friends can help you feel better; ily and hope you feel better!!

-MISSED YOU TOO (🫨 anon)

I literally have never heard of her before (ASIDE FROM THAT ONE VIRAL TIKTOK AUDIO) but listening to one of her songs... I MEAN HE DOES LIKE SEX SONGS.. listening to some song by arianna one time that had me screaming into a pillow... AND HE WRITES GREAT LIKE SELF-CONFIDENT (?) BOPS (Hit... Super...) ITS VERY POSSIBLE I WOULD NOT BE SURPRISED

OKAY IVE ACTUALLY NEVER EDGED ANYONE BEFORE I TALK TO HEAR MYSELF TALK PRETTY OFTEN... I HAVE ALMOST NO ACTUAL SEXUAL EXPERIENCE I JUST ACTIVELY PARTICIPATE IN IN THAT TYPE OF INTERNET CULTURE... I AM A FAKE.. A FRAUD...

i feel like it would be really hard to tell when someone is close...

I would marry all of you??? I am literally ready to get married right now??? Let's go???

there's something to be said about white venicular like... It can be so good and funny to say, I used to love 20s slang. Like Hoover was president... people were drinking giggle juice... that shit was the bee's knees !

GALLAGHER GIRLS IS ACTUALLY A BOOK. A TEEN BOOK ABOUT THIS GIRL CAMMIE WHO GOES TO A SCHOOL gallagher academy! that is a private all-girl's school for spies. The first book is pretty good but in the SECOND book you find out that there is also a all-boy's school called Blackthorne Academy AND YOU MEET MR. ZACHARY GOODE HIMSELF.... bro... the books kinda evolve past silly little teenage drama among spy kids who don't know how to be normal and get more serious but my favorite part about my time in that fandom... is that... in the books there are four main girls: Cammie, Macey, Liz, and Bex and all of them have blackthorne boys that we all shipped them with EXCEPT Macey. She had a different love interest cause she is like the daughter of a politician or... something and so her love interest in the books was kinda a lamo nerd and NO ONE LIKED HIM SO ONE PERSON CREATED ONE OC WHO LITERALLY DOES NOT EXIST IN THE BOOKS AND WE ALL ADOPTED HIM. I think his name was maybe Nick? But completely made up. And we all wrote him the same and everything I miss the good old days....

BUT anyways I won't be crazy about doctor who and supernatural but just know I AM crazy about them... my beautiful amazing hyper-fixations.

Doctor Who, a man who stole a time and space travel machine and ran away to save people across the universe just being eccentric and getting up to all kind's of hijinks? Yes. IMMEDIATE YES. The doctor is so funny and relateable and his character is so heavy it just gets me going

AND SUPERNATURAL I am a dean apologist and destiel shipper till DEATH Destiel was the first gay couple in a show I shipped, but like those first few seasons the horror anthology-esque feel of the show is just so fun

WHEN IT COMES TO FANFICS I LIKE WRITING UHM.... uh wow I don't know actually. Anything that will get two characters into a long-relationship kinda fast. Like fwb to lovers kinda? I am kinda good at writing fwb these days LIKE that's like all I write BUT I CAN WRITE ANYTHING I LOVE REQUESTS THAT ARE A BIT DIFFERENT THAN WHAT I USUALLY DO

BRO WHAT THE FUCK. He's playing you... HES A PLAYER. FORGET HIM. BLOCK HIM (i'm just kidding) but also booo him. Get you someone who will treat you right....

I will not go much into it because my stress is making me a little crazy and I'm being a bit crazy these days but in defense of my friends who are all mad at me it's fair. They're mostly mad because I'm hanging out with three different groups of friends and Groups A and B I've been close to the longest and really judge me for hanging out with Group C but I work with Group C the most now and... idk it's a lot. I'm sick thinking about it...

#BRIE IS NOSY SO IF YOU WANNA KEEP ME UPDATED ON HOW THINGS GOOOO....#FEEL FREE TO :)#IM EXCITED FOR YOUR REQ/IDEA FOR THE HALLOWEEN FIC #AND DONT FORGET... treat you better... shawn mendes...#ALSO SORRY ABOUT GOING OFF ABOUT GG I HAVE BEEN WANTING TO TALK ABOUT IT FOR A MONTH NOW I MISS THAT SERIES #b: 🫨 anon

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joshhhhhhhhhhhhhhh · 1 year

Text

I like intrinsically want all the new Sonic lego sets, right. But fuckin. Money is a thing. And physical space is a thing since my room’s quite small and has a lot of stuff in it. So I very much need to dial back and get something specific if I want anything at all. Which then raises the hell that I don’t actually like most of the sets all that much? The fact that they’re all mostly just disconnected chunks of stuff isn’t really my style, and then like 3 of them are designed for that speed sphere thing I have a negative amount of interest in. Like really any singular set here isn’t really that appealing, especially for the price points.

But then if I am gonna try narrow it down anyway, because I still fundamentally like the idea of Sonic Lego sets, what set am I going for?

Green Hill Zone Loop Challenge is off the table - it’s the most expensive and the only things I’d really care for from it are the Eggman mech plus his and Amy’s minifigures. Those minifigures are available in other sets anyway, and everything aside from that is either sorta cool but not £100 cool, or just not something I really care about.

Speed Sphere Challenge exists in this weird zone of seeming appealing for being by far the cheapest, but then the DJ kit and Chaos Soda fridge are like the only parts I think are actually quite cool. The rest is fairly eh.

Death Egg Robot seems okay? I like the actual Death Egg Robot itself which looks like the main part of the build, plus it’s the other avenue for an Eggman minifigure and even comes with a tiny Cubot which is cool, but again there’s so much disparate junk and the speed sphere thing and it’s still one of the more expensive sets so like, idk man.

Tails’ Workshop is I think one of the more appealing ones to me, because it’s on the cheaper side, I get a Tails minifigure, and by far the coolest part to me is getting the Tornado. I actually like, want the Tornado standalone more than any other thing in any of these waves. The Tornado is sick. I can’t actually stress enough how much I love the Tornado and how cool the Lego Tornado looks. But then, ah, I just don’t really care about the rest of the set, yet it’s so much of the price? The Buzz Bomber looks rough and then Tails’ actual workshop is so small and separate from everything that it’d just feel like a paperweight. I’d still maybe consider this one because of the Tornado but like, argh, you know?

I think Animal Rescue Island is definitely the most appealing set overall to me. Compared to the other ones being a bunch of scattered pieces that feel very eh over all, this is actually just a whole complete island thing. And a fairly neat looking one at that! It also gets me a Tails and Amy minifigure and considering I already have a Sonic minifigure from the initial Green Hill Ideas set, I’d feel yk pretty good about the minifigures I’d have, although not having an Eggman minifigure is depressing but that’s like money still, you know how it is. This set’s also still in a relatively comfortable price range. Doesn’t really have any drawbacks and it’s a pretty cool set, I think it’s just that it’s not literally the most appealing possible set they could’ve come up with.

So I mean yeah idk I’ll. Probably buy Animal Rescue Island if any and see if I can’t work some other magic to get a standalone Eggman minifigure and even aim for getting the Tornado alone without Tails’ workshop. Or I’ll splurge and buy Animal Rescue Island and the Workshop? Maybe I’ll also pussy out and buy Speed Sphere challenge since it’s the cheap one. Idk. I shouldn’t be that surprised that these new sets are more kids and play focused than the Green Hill Ideas set - so compared to like nice displays there’s a lot more “you make your own fun” type things. Not gonna criticise that whatsoever, like duh obviously do that - but at the same time it does make it less appealing to me specifically and that’s why I will pass up on like most of these sets. I mean I don’t know how well I communicated this but I definitely feel like at least getting a minifig of every character is important to me. With Sonic I like the characters more than the locations and specific pieces of iconography so, minifigs are good for that. But then I still want cool iconography and junk so that’s the appeal of the Tornado. Perhaps if these sets do well we’d get more waves as it were, and suddenly I can just buy Lego Sonic sets that feel the most cool to me instead of worrying about whether or not I want to collect everything. Idk. We’ll see. If I do end up buying one of them I’ll post about it anyway soooooooo

#sonic #1.8.23

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condorclaw · 4 years

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TW: panic attacks, child abuse, death

"Excuse me, are you okay?"

The voice was unfamiliar, yet comforting. It was a stranger, but it bore a resemblance to somebody that Tommy held close to his heart. He tried to speak, to ask what was going on, but his throat felt empty. His vision was dark, his head pounding with pain.

"Oh dear... he looks awfully young..."

Another comforting voice, but Tommy couldn't even try to identify who it could belong to in the moment. His arms burned, feelings of lingering scratches scorching along his skin. Tommy wanted to cry, but though he could open his mouth, no sound emerged.

"Here, come here, John. Use his arm."

Tommy felt his body moving, though not on his own volition. His arms were draped over two different surfaces, and if Tommy were slightly more stable, he could identify that they were shoulders. A sharp screech ripped from Tommy's vocal chords as his feet were placed on the ground, the first noise he made upon awakening. The two figures jolted at the noise, almost letting Tommy's arms slip from their hold.

"Give 'em 'ere. Gently now."

A third voice, one that sounded far deeper than the other two, and one that stirred a memory from a while ago. Tommy's body was maneuvered, being placed in the large, strong arms of the newcomer. The sensation reminded Tommy of being carried through the snow, those same arms holding him close as hot breath blew across his face, trying to warm him. Tommy wanted to cry from the sensation alone.

"Get th' weird guy. The one with th' radio."

The sound of quick footsteps grew fainter as one of the unknown voices left. After what felt like an eternity of floating, Tommy felt slim fingers brush across his hair, gently raising it from his face. He winced as they touched along the left side of his face, tracing a pathway across his features.

"What could have happened to him...?"

Tommy wanted to know too. His mind was foggy, faint memories lingering so close, yet so far. All he could remember was the sound of blood rushing to his ears and screams of pain. They might have been his screams.

"Ey, man!"

The familiar greeting struck through Tommy's thoughts, his body immediately jolting in an effort to get up. His limbs still felt like lead, but Tommy didn't need to get up to know who it was.

"M-Mexican Dre...?" Tommy whispered, the name catching in his throat as he tried not to cry.

The energetic skipping of footsteps ceased almost immediately after Tommy spoke, replacing the sound with quick, yet soft clicks of shoes as somebody rushed to Tommy's side.

"Tomas...?"

The voice was filled with horror, something Mexican Dream rarely showed, if he even experienced the emotion of fear. A gloved hand rested along Tommy's right cheek, sending a comforting wave through his aching body.

"Oh, Tomas... What has he done to you?"

Tommy wanted to cry. He wanted to move. He wanted to do anything. Mexican Dream was here, within his reach, and yet Tommy couldn't touch him.

"Eyy, pig man." Mexican Dream's attention shifted away from Tommy, his hand sliding off of Tommy's cheek, causing him to whimper at the loss of the comforting contact. He needed to know he was safe.

Mexican Dream and the stranger carrying Tommy began to talk, but their words were lost on Tommy as the ringing in his ears returned. The burning sensation in his arms returning as well with painful ferocity as he tried to struggle out of whatever held him. It didn't work though, as Tommy could barely move, let alone try to break free from the stranger's grasp. Feeling hopeless, he cried out again.

"Tomas," Mexican Dream had returned to his side, moving his hand to gently grasp with one of Tommy's. "We're going to take you somewhere, okay? It'll make you feel a lot better, man. Trust me on this!"

Tommy had no other choice. Even if he was one of those crazy people who didn't trust Mexican Dream at all, there wouldn't be any other option than to allow his pained form to be taken somewhere else. After he let out a whine of agreement, Mexican Dream's hand patted his before pulling away, causing Tommy to softly whimper once more.

The stranger began to move, loud, heavy footsteps following behind a pair of softer ones. The anxiety of the situation stung at Tommy's thoughts, causing his breathing to quicken, alerting the attention of somebody he had never heard before.

"Deep breaths, kiddo." The voice was low, yet soothing. "Just copy me, okay?"

Unable to answer, Tommy followed the man's instructions as closely as he could. He could feel the synchronized breathing loosen his muscles, allowing the sensation of his throbbing head to diminish slightly. It was easier to focus with the pain gone, and Tommy tried to identify what he could while continuing to breathe in tune with the man.

The arms that held him were rather rough, feeling like the rawhide of an animal. They held a gentleness to them though, one that felt protective and trustworthy. A thin layer of hair could be felt along the limbs, gently prickling parts of Tommy's body through his clothes.

Tommy's breathing slowed as he managed to relax, the sound of the heavy footsteps getting fainter as the intensity of his pain subsided. It still hurt, but not as much as it did before.

"Thank y-you." Tommy whispered out, feeling a slight smile begin to form.

"Pleasure's all mine, kiddo."

It was almost kind of relaxing at this point. The sway of movement, the knowledge of potential allies and friends by his side, the relaxing beat of his own heart-

...

Tommy didn't have a heartbeat.

The last thing he heard was a screech of alarm before the boy blacked out once more, the sensation of his skin burning returning.

"-ommy. Tommy, wake up."

A sting of sorrow pierced through Tommy's body as he felt himself regaining conciousness. Another hand was caressing his own limp one, fingers tracing along the scratches littered across his skin. The protective touch sent Tommy's mind to a lingering memory, his hand gripping tightly to a man's own as he was pulled through the forest, the sound of footsteps thundering behind the two as the tips of arrows nearly missed piercing their bodies.

"Come on, Tommy-!" The man's panicked shout was cut short, the smell of blood stinging Tommy's nose as the man was struck by an arrow. Cries of victory were heard, and all Tommy could do was drag the body of the man away to a hiding spot, watching as the life drained from the brunette's eyes. One left, the thought echoed in Tommy's mind.

"Wilbur?"

The hand shifted from tracing Tommy's scars to rest in Tommy's hair, a whisper of relief barely reaching Tommy's ears.

"Yeah. It's me, big man."

"I can't see you," Tommy muttered in return, the darkness in his sight never faltering even once. He needed to see him.

"I know, it takes a moment," Wilbur continued to pet Tommy's hair, combing his fingers through the tangled mess. "Your eyes are closed, can you open them for me?"

His eyes had been closed this whole time? Immediately stabbing thoughts pierced through his mind, yelling insults and repeating horrible shouts for him to stop being so stupid. Wilbur must think of him as an idiot, just like back in Pogtopia-

“I know, it hurts. Do you need me to help?”

Tommy wasn’t sure what he said in response, the swarm of demeaning words clouded out his senses until he could only focus on Wilbur resting his hands on both sides of Tommy’s face, his thumbs stroking his eyelids in a soothing motion. The contact allowed for him to familiarize himself with his face once more, recalling where all his features were. Slowly, he began to lift his eyelids, Wilbur removing his hands as he saw Tommy moving.

Tommy came face-to-face with Wilbur, the wave of emotion causing a prickling feeling at the corners of his eyes. Wilbur’s skin was pale gray as it had been while he was Ghostbur, and his eyes glowed a soft white, which was different from the black void that Ghostbur had. Aside from the changes of color, Wilbur looked just like how he did in the Camarvan. His face was pulled into a kind smile, and although he had no pupils, Tommy knew he was looking directly at him.

“There you go.” Wilbur’s teeth were sharp as he grinned, leaning down to bump his forehead with Tommy’s own. “I knew you could do it.”

Wet drops fell across Tommy’s cheeks as he reached out a shaky arm, desperate to hug his brother close once more. Wilbur understood what Tommy wanted, helping his brother to sit up before wrapping his arms around Tommy’s trembling frame. Tommy could feel his tears being soaked up by the fabric of Wilbur’s yellow sweater, only making him cry even more. He could hold Wilbur again.

The faint sound of a bottle popping caused Tommy to raise his head slightly, twisting to see where it came from. There were no buildings or items anywhere in sight, just a white abyss that encompassed everything surrounding them. Sitting a few feet away from the two brothers was a familiar beast. His horns were twisted upwards, nearly covering half of his own gray face. The suit he wore was a bright blue, contrasting the dark hair upon his head and along his chin. Somehow, the man looked more alive here than Tommy had ever seen him up on the podium.

“Schlatt?”

The man nodded, hoof tapping the ground as he took a swig from the newly-opened bottle in his hand. He let out a large burp and wiped his mouth before standing, taking a few steps towards Tommy. “Got that right, kiddo.”

Wilbur let go of Tommy, leaving the boy sitting up, still slightly dazed from seeing the former dictator look so… peaceful.

“But, aren’t ya dead? You died in front of us.”

Wilbur and Schlatt exchanged a look of concern, Schlatt being the one to speak. “Tommy… you know Wilbur is dead too, right?”

“W-What? No, Wilbur was-”

Explosions. The withers. Philza crying out.

“...killed.”

A sigh escaped from Wilbur’s mouth as he returned to Tommy’s side, letting his hand rest in the younger’s hair once more. “I’m sorry, Tommy. I didn’t think you’d be here so soon.”

The seed of worry in Tommy’s stomach exploded into a forest of realization.

He was dead.

Dream had-

The memory came rushing back like a typhoon, drowning Tommy’s mind with that one moment. The loud crack ringing out from Dream slamming his foot onto Tommy’s wrist. The screams of pain ripping from Tommy’s throat as Dream slammed his fist into Tommy’s cheek. A hand grabbing his hair and tugging him to the nearest wall, pulling his head back and slamming it forward with the sound of bone shattering.

Tommy’s arms wrapped around himself as his breathing took a sharp turn, becoming rapid and irregular. Wilbur’s hand jolted back from his brother’s head, hovering a few inches over Tommy’s shoulder in reflex. Schlatt took a step back, alarmed at the sudden shift in emotion. His hand was raised slightly at his side, looking on worriedly.

“Schlatt?” Wilbur spoke softly, shifting his gaze towards the former president. “Could you-”

“Yeah, yeah. Don’t worry, I know what it’s like. Take care of the kid, okay?”

Schlatt turned away, walking off and vanishing in the white abyss, leaving Wilbur alone with Tommy. Upon Schlatt leaving, Tommy allowed a desperate sob to escape, his hands entangling themselves in his own hair. He tried to tug on fistfuls of the strands, but it only caused his panic to grow as his thoughts would immediately take him back to his last moment alive.

“Tommy, Tommy, hey. Look at me, please?”

Tommy’s hands loosened their grasp slightly as he moved to face Wilbur. His brother’s arms were open and inviting, a calm expression relaxing all of Wilbur’s features. His eyes glinted with worry, but he didn’t speak it.

Within seconds, Tommy’s hands were clutching the back of Wilbur’s sweater once more as the man loosely wrapped his own around his little brother, holding him as closely as he could. As they embraced, Wilbur began to sing. It was a song Tommy had never heard before, but Wilbur’s soothing voice made him remember all those nights in Pogtopia, when Tommy would wake up after nightmares and his brother would sing him to sleep.

“You’re safe here,” Wilbur whispered between lyrics as Tommy felt his eyes beginning to shut with exhaustion.

“You promise?”

“I promise.”

Tommy had no idea where he was specifically, or who else was with him besides his friends, but he could work all that out later. For now, he just wanted to stay in Wilbur’s arms, listening to the melody that reminded him of home.

#decided to try my hand at writing Tommy and Wilbur reuniting because ow pain #dream smp #c!tommy #c!wilbur #c!schlatt #mexican dream #tw panic attacks #tw child abuse #tw death #by the way the four unnamed people with Tommy are John John. Lyaria. Sheriff Sherman Thompson. and Catboy!#because the idea of them all existing in the same death space is pretty cool and can lead to more pain #my writing #my post

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no-droids · 4 years

Text

The Secret

Pairing: Anakin Skywalker/Reader

Word Count: 4.2K

Rating: Explicit

Summary: On a dark and dreary night, Anakin tries to see if he can influence your dreams.

A/N: idk what in the hell this even is tbh I just started writing it two days ago idk what happened this is some inception shit but not the crazy ass mind bending plot twist part at the very end of inception but like just the cool middle part where you kinda get what’s sorta going on but not really okay anyways I gotta go

Warnings: There are DUBCON/NONCON ELEMENTS to this, smut/oral sex, a splash of m/m (sorta?), dark Anakin uses the force to mess with your dreams without your knowledge or consent so please read at your own discretion

***

Anakin knows it’s wrong.

It’s the middle of the night on a moon he never bothered learning the name of and Anakin knows it’s wrong when his eyes shift over to you for the fifth time in the past minute. Curled up with your back to him and the crackling firelight illuminating this tiny little cave, breathing soft and quiet through your nose as you sleep, the wind roaring monstrously outside. Anakin acknowledges it—the moral impropriety of even sitting here thinking about things he shouldn’t be with you so close by. It’s wrong, no getting around it.

But there’s also something inside him that… wants the wrongness.

He likes it. Anakin likes having secrets, he likes breaking rules even when nobody is consciously here to witness it. It makes him feel alive in a way that battlefields just can’t anymore, not after two years of constant conflict where the only enemies to feel his wrath have been comprised of nuts and bolts, their robotic cries never leaving him with any satisfaction anymore. At the start of the Clone Wars, sure, it was a thrill to slice through voice boxes and body parts, even if they were mechanical. But the droids aren’t afraid of death, they’re just programmed to stay alive. It’s like killing large, dumb swarms of bugs—it needs to be done for the common good but there’s never any true fulfillment in it anymore, it just feels like a task to be completed instead of an earnest, hard-earned goal.

He’s also been given direct permission to do it. He’s even been ordered to carry out enormous droid massacres on behalf of the Republic, but that’s the thing. Anakin isn’t looking for permission, see, it takes away half the thrill.

No, he wants to feel wrong. He wants to wonder if he shouldn’t have. He wants the quiet guilt, the sparkle of holding a secret he’ll never breathe a word about, the addictive power trip from having real influence over something, something equally as real.

Technically, Anakin is supposed to be on lookout right now. He’s meant to stay awake and patrol the perimeter of the cave for enemy combatants, but he doesn’t even bother pretending to be diligent when it’s just you two here. It’s not necessary. He’d be able to sense another lifeform miles away in this secluded, barren wasteland; there’s no threat to be found right now. He can keep warm by the crackling firelight in this cave, sheltered from the dust storm that spontaneously broke out a few hours ago. He can stay awake without moving a muscle and listen to your slow breathing all night long, letting it fill him with shameful desires he spends the daylight hours fighting and suppressing.

He silently flicks his gaze over to you once more, blinking as he studies you. He can sense your mind becoming creative in its slumber, beginning to swirl into dreamlike possibilities around yourself, about to choose a path for your consciousness to follow tonight. Yes, this is what he’s waiting for. He can’t force you to dream—that’s beyond his expertise as a Jedi. But if he finds himself in the right place at the right time, he can certainly try his best to… give you a suggestion.

The wind whistles outside and the fire pops quietly and you continue to breathe. In, and out. In, and out.

Anakin closes his eyes, and begins.

He first maps your body with the Force, trying to understand it on a deeper level. Gauge it—its proportions, its ambience, the thrumming lifeforce flowing through your veins even as you sleep. He has to be careful—as a fellow Knight, there’s no guarantee you won’t immediately be able to spot him exploring your energy in this way, there’s nothing to stop you from suddenly rolling over and asking just what exactly he thinks he’s doing.

But Anakin is patient. It’s one of the only times he can remember truly exercising that untapped potential inside him, perfectly content to allow you to drift while he works to find his bearings with you. Minds are complex, especially when they’re unconscious. They’re finicky and never stay in the same spot for long—it’s not like they evade, necessarily, but instead, they just… float around. Pulsing. In and out of existence, hiding behind and under immovable things, no rhyme or reason for it, vanishing into uncertainty and nothingness as soon as he thinks he’s found it. Like trying to find a microscopic air pocket in the depths of a pitch black ocean. He’s not losing any oxygen by existing right at the edges of your sleep, but it takes hard concentration to stay here, hidden, not allowing himself to slip. He’s looking, he’s looking… but he soon realizes he just needs to wait longer. He needs to wait until you float your way back around to him, until you present the opening yourself.

So Anakin waits.

And waits…

And then suddenly—

—There. He locks onto a flicker in the Force and holds, finally isolating and breaching the surface of your inner subconscious. Anakin smiles softly, a bead of sweat slowly dripping down his temple at the effort it took to locate you without alerting you of his presence. There you are. Maker, it sure is pretty in here, isn't it? He has you, he’s cradling the buried, hidden, most fragile part of your soul as you slumber, not knowing any better.

His heart thumps with excitement even though he’s barely done anything yet. To someone without sensitivity to the Force, they might just think the both of you are asleep right now. Just the two of you sitting still in this relatively small space, eyes closed, neither of you are touching, nobody has said anything or made any substantial movements in hours, nothing has changed in this world. All of it is existing in another plane, a place most people wouldn’t be able to recognize unless someone informed them of its existence, and even then, it would be beyond understanding.

But he has you now. He’s there, and he’s not going anywhere. He can allow his focus to dip just slightly, knowing your mind will pull him along through the comatose current. He senses you already working through the beginning whispers of dreams, but they’re not the kind people can ever remember. These aren’t formed, there’s no substance to them—it’s just pure, abstract dreamspace for your mind to drift through while you slumber.

Finding your true consciousness through all the murky, shapeless slumber was the test in skill. Now comes the luck.

Very carefully, without arousing any suspicion or drawing undue attention to himself, Anakin begins to drag the tip of his tongue against the back of his teeth. He doesn’t open his mouth, he doesn’t move a single muscle outwardly—he just lets his tongue begin to flitter around slowly in its enclosed cavern as he breathes, making the movements as soft and hypnotic as he can, matching the aimless way you’re carrying your mind and his shadow through the darkness.

He’s tried this before. Once or twice, with a pretty Ambassador he was tasked with protecting for a few months at the start of the Clone Wars, but the results were always less than ideal. He could never seamlessly transfer his desires through her consciousness before she awoke, perhaps because she wasn’t Force sensitive. The dream would either never happen, or he would push too hard and it’d turn into a rabid nightmare that fractured her thoughts and made her terrified to close her eyes for weeks. Not this time, though, Anakin isn’t going to allow it. Not with you, not after all the unprecedented effort it took to even just get himself here.

He finds a bit more passion to put into his movements, his jaw beginning to work with more purpose. Stars, he wants this to work, and while it’s probable that there’s an easier way to accomplish it, this isn’t something the Academy trains for. There’s only so much he can do except just be patient and giving with his soft, muted thoughts, urging you to make use of them without ever saying them aloud.

And suddenly, like the dark waves of your sleep decide to illuminate for him all on their own, your subconscious mind responds to the gentle stimulus. It carefully reaches out and studies the suggestion he’s silently offering, having spent what feels like an eternity trying to entice your rawest, most fundamental being into going somewhere it normally wouldn’t go, all without letting you know he’s even there.

His tongue is still moving. With purpose, with a specific intent in mind, Anakin allows his head to slowly fall back as he lifts his chin up towards it, wanting it more and more the longer you take to consider it, as if your mind is actively trying to tease him by playing hard to get. He can feel you right there, feel you thinking about it, and the whole thing is almost like some elaborate courting ritual while he waits with bated breath for you to decide whether or not to humor him.

But then, just when Anakin fears you may be too strong to be swayed, too powerful in the Force to be tempted by an outside source, you abruptly snatch the idea from him and start to run with it.

Suddenly parts of your spirit begin illuminating that should be dormant right now, and Anakin follows you, wherever you’re leading him. He knows none of this is necessarily intentional on your behalf—nobody can consciously pick and choose their dreams, not even Jedi. But this endeavor proves that it’s absolutely possible to subtly inspire them in each other, regardless of the morality behind it.

The wind continues to howl outside the cave and remind him that an entire universe still exists beyond your beautifully soporose mind, but the dreamscape gradually begins unfolding around him without any further prompting, requiring nothing more than what he’s already provided. Anakin’s tongue continues to simulate and suggest regardless, only now he feels the ghost of it beginning to materialize somewhere else besides the roof of his mouth, the sensations appearing before the images can be conjured to fill in the gaps. His hands suddenly tighten on his thighs at the soft, enticing feeling beginning to take root in you.

And oh. It’s… good. It feels different when his own body isn’t really the target of the stimulation, when he’s doing nothing more than simply experiencing it vicariously. Anakin supposes he could’ve bypassed all this effort, just aimed the pleasure more directly from the very beginning instead of working to inspire and coax it out of your own consciousness, but that was never his intention and it misses the point entirely. Where’s the challenge in it? The finesse is lost, it doesn’t appeal to him. It’s brash and brutish and not his style. No, this is what he wanted. He wanted to get just close enough to plant the most basic, fundamental idea in your head and then witness the rest of it all play out as a phantom passenger. Step back, strap in, and see how you kindle and manipulate the desire yourself, exactly the way you want it.

Anakin starts to breathe a little heavier through his nose, shoulders tense as he works to ride the slow swelling of your own prolonged pleasure with you, not knowing if or when it’s going to peak. He’s never made it this far before, he has no idea what to expect. Your consciousness does all the heavy lifting for him, your floor muscles move and contract without him needing to do anything to encourage it, the dream he seeded now completely taking over and whisking you both away.

But then… then suddenly Anakin doesn’t understand. Because yes, your mind works exactly the way he hoped it would—everything goes the incredibly precise direction he intended, and yet the destination is somehow… here? Back at the very beginning?

You dream of a cave. It’s exactly the same as the one you’re both silently holed up in for the night, and no new faces have appeared. If Anakin fluttered his eyes open at this specific moment, absolutely nothing around him would change. Except, perhaps, the subtle glow around everything—the watery way the air seems to be moving, as if it can’t decide whether it wants to exist or not so it strangely succeeds in doing both at the same time. He’s not really here—at least, he doesn’t think he is, he’s just seated on the dirt floor, appearing as nothing more than an invisible witness to it.

No. No, actually, he takes that back, he… is here. It takes him a moment to see the full picture as you’re still putting the puzzle pieces together, but… that’s him. A projection of himself at least, looking only slightly different but recognizable enough. Dark robes, robotic right arm, steady gaze.

But where are you? Anakin looks around the empty cave, still trying to understand how you’re painting this, his conscious mind moving much more rapidly than your own abstract one and yet also somehow taking so much longer to catch up to you. You’re not here. Why aren’t you here? He’s getting stuck on the details, he knows he’s lagging behind.

It takes a moment longer. Just one, before Anakin suddenly realizes that… he’s not just an invisible witness, is he?

He looks back down to see his own head now buried between his thighs.

But they’re not his thighs, not really. They’re yours. He’s just seeing everything from your point of view, feeling everything you’re feeling from the small little space he’s occupying in your mind.

At this point, Anakin needs to anchor. He feels himself—his real self, the one currently stuck in a cave in the midst of an unexpected dust storm—curl inwards and clamp his legs together. This will work. If he focuses enough to pinpoint the way his knees feel pressed tight together, he can have a tether to separate himself from your dream, the way yours are currently… wide open. This is all too similar to your true surroundings—he didn’t expect this, he doesn’t want to get lost.

And yet… Maker, it feels good. His long curls feel so soft in your hands, his tongue drags slow magic between your legs. When Anakin first suggested the idea to you, he didn’t think you’d assign the role back to him. He assumed you had someone else in mind, somewhere else you wished to be besides this dull, dreary setting. He gave you just an inkling of a prompt, and this is what the most creative part of your mind created. Something he could be doing at this exact moment, if only he’d known you’d be interested.

Then again, Anakin thinks, you may have just recognized him subconsciously. You may have attached him to the idea already, if only because he was the truest originator of it. But it doesn’t matter now, he can’t process such complex thoughts while maintaining the suspended mental state he’s in—he feels like he’ll either completely fall into it or out of it if he tries.

But as your muscles continue to work and your pleasure continues to build, it becomes harder and harder to separate where he is in relation to you. Anakin clenches his legs tighter together as you open yours wider apart, the dream gaining more strength as it develops. Stars, it’s—it’s—

Anakin starts to lose it and he needs to tug on that tether to his surroundings again, but it’s way more difficult than it should be to recognize himself. His calloused fingers on his left hand tremble as he reaches up and uses them to cover his face, biting his tongue to stop the low rumbles of ecstasy that want to claw their way out of his throat. Maker, this feels so… different from the build he knows. He thought—if he was successful—that he’d be able to handle it as silently and stoically as he’s able to handle his own pleasure, but this is something else entirely. Why does it feel so… so spectacular? Maker, he never realized the sensation was all that different on the inside, much less that he was actually missing out by having a dick between his legs.

But then suddenly there’s a pause, a break in the way you’ve been rhythmically squeezing and flexing your body for him.

The dream adapts to it. Anakin looks down between your open thighs just in time to see himself pulling away from your warmth, putting two fingers in his mouth, before slowly easing his hand back down between them.

No, he thinks, a bright flare of panic sparking inside him as he immediately snatches and yanks the tether to reality, popping his eyes open and pulling away from your mind entirely, oh no—wait, that’s not what I—

But see. That’s the thing about being so meticulous about conjuring something that doesn’t actually exist. Once his brilliant creation decides to backfire on him—a fool-proof way to escape it doesn’t actually exist either.

He… he can’t wake up. No matter how much his body struggles backwards on the dirt floor of the cave, how wide he can feel his eyes are right now, how excruciatingly aware he is that none of this is real, none of this is actually happening to him, he’s caught in the dream he planted and you’re hauling him along for the ride. The closest he can describe it is like having footage play in one eye while the other can see perfectly fine. He knows where the line that separates reality is, but he can’t escape your consciousness’s crushing gravitational pull; it’s too massive and overwhelming now, he can’t gain enough velocity to get home. Real life exists but only through a window, and being stuck on the other side like this—knowing he’s dreaming but not being able to jolt awake when he’s very ready to leave—is suddenly more terrifying than any nightmare Anakin has ever experienced.

It also has unintended consequences. Clinging so desperately to his own body has made him completely aware of it in the purgatory he’s now trapped himself in, but the pleasure is still there so the source of the stimulation is still there. They’re not your thighs anymore, they’re his thighs again. But that’s also still him between his legs, continuing to ease his fingers forwards.

He keeps retreating back and away from them no matter what, but there’s nothing more he can do.

Anakin helplessly watches on as his own fingers slowly disappear up inside himself, and his eyes instantly lose focus and his jaw goes slack as he feels it the way you would. They’re not real, so there’s no pain, no true pressure or stretch, just… hard, unadulterated stimulation starting to burn up inside him.

He doesn’t realize his body kept moving until he suddenly feels the wall of the cave slam into his back and he has to brace himself against it, frantically shoving himself back into it as far as he can with his legs and digging his nails into dirt at the base, scrabbling for breath and stability. Anakin tightens up wickedly as you both bear down on the phantom intrusion, sweat beading at his hairline as he works to process the foreign sensation and you whimper quietly in your sleep. His cock is rock hard between his legs and he shudders to think that his mind will compensate for the difference and his alter ego will actually take it into his mouth—but no, the projection doesn’t change because it’s still coming from you, still being led by your own desires. Dream-Anakin’s mouth drops and his tongue comes out to keep licking your slit but to the real Anakin, it just looks like his mouth disappears somewhere near his balls, and then a magnificent swell of bliss suddenly kicks in before he can fight as savagely against it as he wants. He’d normally be repulsed, and maybe he currently is to some extent, but because your pleasure spikes so dangerously with it, his hips stutter into the sensation just as desperately.

He’s making noise, he knows he is—he can feel his throat working too hard for just air to be moving through. No, he’s whimpering, or moaning, or doing something but he can’t hear himself at all. His instinct is to yell as loudly as he can, to try and wake you up manually, but it doesn’t seem to work, you’re way too far gone now. He listens for the dust storm that should be screaming outside, the popping of the fire somewhere in this cave, but they’re suddenly nowhere to be found. He’s being dragged under by your enormous current that’s somehow still continuing to build in strength, losing oxygen by the second. He’s not ready for it, he doesn’t want it, he’s terrified, he needs to wake up—

Anakin slams his head back against the wall hard enough to make himself bleed and gasps raggedly as he loses his grip on everything, shutting his eyes tight with his fist shoved up against his teeth. Nothing exists at all anymore but the swirling typhoon that continues raging forth. Beyond purgatory, and then beyond heaven.

When you finally do manage to find the absolute peak of your climb, he’s sure he all but blacks out with it.

It’s pure, blinding rapture on all levels—physical, metaphysical, whatever else exists after that. It surges up with razor-sharp claws of merciless ecstasy and he’s just not equipped to experience anything anywhere close to it. The connection between your minds thrums and sparks violently; Anakin feels the way your body practically soars over top of the pleasure while his is just being ruthlessly pummeled into the ground by it. He’s not meant to handle this, he literally wasn’t made to survive the devastating anomaly—it’s as wicked and excruciating as it is dazzling, and he wonders if he’ll ever truly be able to come back from it.

Eventually, Anakin manages to find his way back to himself. Eventually.

His cock is throbbing, that’s the first thing he‘s able to notice. The dirt floor beneath him that somehow feels slightly different than before, the fetal position he’s assuming on top of it, the once sturdy wall now crumbling to dust against his back.

The next thing he notices is the utter, complete mess he made. Blood slowly drips in a line down his neck and more cum than he’s ever felt himself produce before drenches the front of his pants. Anakin slowly blinks his eyes open, trying to fight the vertigo and wondering if he might have a concussion right now. There are cracks and fractures in the ground that branch out from the small crater at his back, and the fire is completely extinguished now, charred logs splintered and strewn about like somebody detonated a bomb in here.

At some point, his gaze drags over towards you, and remarkably, you haven’t moved. Still curled up on your side with your back to him, still breathing slow and steady and undisturbed.

Anakin pants in exhaustion and waits for you to turn over to address him and what he did. There’s no way you’re still asleep, not after what just happened. Anakin couldn’t get through it without sending a giant shockwave through the entire cave and quite literally rupturing the ground beneath him, he’s surprised you even managed to stay in one spot the entire time. He doesn’t know if you feel violated right now and are refusing to acknowledge him, or if it’s just taking as long as he is for your brain to catch up and start functioning again.

That is, until he hears a small snore come from your unmoving body once more.

Anakin blinks.

No. You have to be awake, he figures, moving to prop himself upright and wipe the blood from his neck with the dark sleeve of his robe. There’s no possible way that the orgasm you both shared is actually… normal, no, the sheer power of it had to be influenced by his presence somehow. He must have… increased it, or something. Anakin doesn’t know how, but he knows he must be directly responsible, this had to have been the strongest you’ve ever cum in your life and you just don’t know how to confront him about it right now, so you’re pretending to sleep. Yes, that’s what it is, that’s what it has to be.

He’s not going to check, though. He’s not going to find any lingering energy left within himself to summon and look for the thick darkness of sleep still enveloping you, he’s not going anywhere near your signature right now. No, Anakin is fine just like this, exactly where he is. Instead of verifying or confirming his own understanding, he’ll just be extra confident in it, that’s always worked well for him.

So he just sits back and takes a deep, shuddering breath, feeling like his whole body is weak and trembling with fatigue. Maybe you are asleep, he shrugs. Maybe he’s wrong, and selfish, and an idiot. Or maybe.

Maybe you just like keeping secrets, too.

#anakin x reader #anakin skywalker x reader #anakin skywalker #anakin x you #anakin skywalker x you #Smut #reader insert #dark anakin #no-droids

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five-rivers · 3 years

Text

Danger First

Chapter 10

@pocketramblr :)

One day - and not even a whole day, because of travel time and Inko wanted Izuku home for dinner- simply wasn't enough time to master a quirk. Although he could turn Float on and off, now. So, they made plans to come back next week, and the next, up until the sports festival. Which. Wow. Really was only two weeks away.

Izuku had never realized how close to the beginning of the school year it was.

He was going to die.

"You're not going to die," said Mr. Yagi. "I'm not going to say the sports festival isn't important, because it is, it's one of the best ways to make professional connections for students, but not doing well isn't the end of the world, especially not in your first year. No one expects you to be perfectly polished."

"But," said Izuku, "I'm supposed to be the next you! I've got to stand out, right?"

Mr. Yagi looked very guilty. "I... may have given you that impression when we were first training, yes. But, since then, with all my research into the past holders... few of them were popular, flashy heroes. If you want to walk the same path as me, that's great. But you don't have to. Even I didn't really start that chapter of my life until after college."

Izuku looked down at his hands, letting silence fill the space between them as he contemplated Mr. Yagi's words. "This isn't about me manifesting One for All differently, is it?"

"What? No, no of course not, my boy. I mean, it certainly helped me come to this conclusion, I wouldn't have done so much research without it! But I certainly hope I would have come to the same conclusion eventually, even so."

"Okay..." said Izuku, still dubious.

"I mean it," protested Mr. Yagi. "Most of my work is essentially underground, you know. There's a reason the battle trial was what it was."

"H-huh? You? Underground? But you're so recognizable!"

"Am I? I firmly believe in bringing all my resources to bear in the fight against evil! Ha ha!"

His laugh devolved into a cough, and he fumbled for a handkerchief. But he recovered quickly enough.

"I guess that makes sense," said Izuku, cautiously, once he thought Mr. Yagi wasn't going to start coughing again.

"You didn't think I stayed number one by popularity alone, did you?"

"I- the formulas the Hero Commission uses to determine rankings are secret, and it only includes spotlight heroes, so when I extrapolated the hero billboard rankings, yes, I assigned a high weight to popularity. There were always some discrepancies between my predictions and the end results, but I figured I missed some events, or the commission assigned them different values…"

"That's quite impressive, my boy. But, though popularity is a factor, the HPSC does take unpublicized fights and rescues into account. Assuming you report them…"

That was the second time Mr. Yagi had mentioned not telling the commission something.

"Do you, um, do you do that a lot? Not tell the commission things, I mean."

"Eh? No, no, I try to stay up on my paperwork. I get a lot of help from Naomasa, though. Some heroes, especially independent ones, without an agency, do have trouble keeping up, sometimes."

"It's just… the other day you said something about not telling the commission about All for One."

"Ah," said Mr. Yagi. He drummed his fingers on the steering wheel. "You're quite right. How should I put this… The HPSC knows All for One exists, and I have made them generally aware of his modern exploits. I haven't told them about his ability to give quirks, though they may know through other avenues, there are certain battles I've had with him that I haven't told them about, and they do not know about One for All."

“Why not?”

“Villains aren’t the only ones who seek power,” said Mr. Yagi. “The HPSC provides a vital service, and I think what one does matters more than why one does it, but… it is my observation that many of the people there are more concerned with personal power than doing the right thing. And positions of power and authority tend to draw in those who would abuse those things."

"Even heroics?"

"Especially heroics. The HPSC Ethics Review Board is supposed to stop that, but no system is perfect." He shook himself. "But look at me! I was trying to give you a pep talk, not saddle you with doubts about the government!"

Izuku laughed, nervously. "I mean, you've definitely distracted me from the sports festival…"

“Yes. The sports festival. Don’t worry about making a big spotlight combat debut. If you want to focus on rescue, or investigation, or the underground, I’ll support you all the way.” He paused. “You do need combat, though, because, because of-”

“All for One?”

“Yes, exactly. All for One.”

“Way to kill the mood, guys,” said Banjo.

“I think the mood was thoroughly dead already,” said Yoichi.

“Unlike your brother,” said En. “Ninth’s father.”

“Come on, it was just a little omission of information. It wasn’t even a lie!”

“It was definitely a lie. You’re so lucky that my relief about you not being a pedophile eclipsed my righteous fury regarding your mendacity.”

“You know, the fact that you’re delivering that completely deadpan gives me doubts about the fury part.”

“I’m mad at you.”

“You love me.”

“Doesn’t mean I can’t be mad at you.”

“Hey, hey, wait a minute,” said Nana, making a ‘T’ shape with her hands. “Time out. Ninth’s father is All for One.”

“Yes,” said Yoichi, hanging his head, “I thought that had been established.”

“So, are we… What Toshinori is saying is completely valid, by the way… but, are we expecting this kid to fight his father? Is that a thing we’re doing?”

“Uh,” said Yoichi, “in our defense, we did think he was dead.”

“Maybe Eighth will get ‘im before Ninth has to deal with it,” suggested Banjo. “He’s got to have a better chance of that, now what with Fa Jin and all.” He paused. “But, you know what would give Ninth an even better chance, if he does have to fight his deadbeat dad-”

“He’s not a deadbeat,” interrupted Hikage.

“What?”

“Calling him a deadbeat would imply that he is neither supporting the Midoriyas financially nor regularly in contact with them. He is on both counts.”

“What?” squealed Bango.

“Did you miss his phone call with his father immediately following his return home after the USJ attack?”

“Oh,” said Yoichi, “no, I was very aware of my brother’s evil, evil voice. It’s just that these guys were too focused on scolding me to listen to anything I had to say. I still can’t believe he sent someone like that to attack his own son’s class.”

“Didn’t he, like, kill you?” asked En.

“No, my death was largely unrelated. You’ve got to remember, I was a chronically ill fugitive from the law with no money. Who told you that he killed me?”

Everyone looked at their immediate predecessor. Yoichi tracked the path back to Third, who had gone very stiff.

“What the heck, Third? You were there when I died. Why would you tell Hikage that?”

Third did not answer.

“Actually, what did he tell you, Hikage?

“Oh, it was very moving and heroic. It happened while you were saving a busload of metahuman orphans. You sacrificed yourself to let them get away from All for One. I even cried a little.”

“Is it weird that I’m now disappointed in myself for not dying like that?”

“Very,” said Nana.

“What were we talking about before this?” asked En.

“I have no idea,” said Banjo.

Izuku delayed going to class, nervous about everyone's reactions to his quirk. It wasn't that he thought they'd reject him, but more that he had no answers for the inevitable questions.

But he also didn't want to be late.

"Todoroki was so cool!" Hagakure exclaimed as he opened the classroom door. "He was all like, blam, bam, swish! And- and he checked whether or not I was there first, before attacking, which was super cool of him."

Todoroki's expression was halfway between 'statue' and 'help, I've been hit by a truck.' "Cool?"

"Very cool."

"You've grown since the first day, kero."

"Ah! Midoriya!"

All heads turned towards him. In the next second, he was hugged by several people, which was more friendly skin contact than he'd had since… ever, probably.

"Eep," he said.

"We were so worried about you," said Uraraka. "We made a group chat, after, but since you were unconscious…"

"Hm," said Monoma, "your quirk still is definitely a stockpile…"

"Monoma!" shouted Iida. "Did you join this hug just to copy quirks?"

"And what of it?"

"But speaking of quirks," said Jiro, "you can fly now? We kind of went along with it at the time, but that's kind of different from a sensory quirk."

"I know," said Izuku, "and I have no explanation."

"Maybe your quirk stockpiles danger," said Monoma, contemplatively. He rubbed his chin with one finger. "That could be why you can sense danger- you're stockpiling it. Then, when the danger gets over a certain threshold, you can release it as flight… why are you all looking at me like that?"

"Oh, nothing," drawled Kaminari. "Just that you're more thoughtful than you look, pretty boy."

"I don't want to hear that from you."

"Th-thank you, Monoma! I'll have to mention it when I go to quirk counseling next."

Which may or may not be this afternoon, depending on how Mr. Aizawa felt and- His head snapped to the door. "Mr. Aizawa's coming!"

They all rushed to their seats. The door creaked open.

"Oh my gosh, he's a mummy."

"Iida?"

"What is it, Midoriya?"

They were having a bit of a break during English while Present Mic cycled them through for short sessions with Hound Dog.

"I didn't have a chance to ask you earlier, but how's your brother?"

“He’s alright! It’s the first really major injury of his career, so he’s going to take it easy for the rest of the month, to make sure his engines heal properly. He’d prefer not to of course, but, ah, there is a silver lining.”

“That’s good,” said Izuku, encouragingly.

“I really shouldn’t be happy about it,” said Iida, rubbing the back of his neck, “but he’ll be able to come see me during the sports festival, and he probably would have been too busy if he were active.”

“I think it’s okay to be happy about good things, even if they happen because of bad things,” said Izuku. “It isn’t like we can go back and make the bad things not happen, after all…”

“That’s very true, Midoriya! What a mature way of thinking about things.”

Izuku didn’t know about that, but he was willing to take the compliment.

“Midoriya,” said Shouta, who was absolutely and unquestionably recovered enough to teach. Even if he had zoned out in the corner of the room in his sleeping bag all morning rather than trekking back to the teacher’s lounge… or teaching any of his other classes… shut up. “What are you doing at the window?”

“O-oh. Mr. Aizawa. I didn’t know you were awake?”

It was, maybe, a little unfair to single Midoriya out like that, since the entire class was standing by the window, and the way Uraraka, Sero, and Midoriya were closest to it, with Monoma a close fourth, was concerning, but Midoriya was the first one Shouta saw, and the one most likely to to cave and tell him what was going on.

“Midoriya.”

“R-right. Well, going out the door seems a little unpleasant today, so we thought we’d switch it up?”

What did that even mean?

“We were going to bring you with us, of course,” continued Midoriya.

What did that even mean?

“Out the window.”

“Um. Yes.”

“What kind of unpleasant are we talking about?”

“Battle trial unpleasant?”

Shouta groaned and hauled himself up, walking over to the door. He looked out the window and made note of all the students from other classes standing out there, circling like sharks. Great. Maybe they needed to have an assembly about respecting boundaries or whatever, especially if the people whose boundaries were being crossed were potentially traumatized.

Something to bring up at the next staff meeting he attended. Which… would probably not be soon.

Anyway.

He opened the door.

(“A mummy,” whispered someone.)

(First his kids, then these kids… he wasn’t that wrapped up.)

(Was he?)

“What are you all doing here?” he asked, voice rasping rather more than he wanted it to.

The students didn’t seem inclined to answer. Someone did mutter something about the sports festival, but it was far from the complete answer that Aizawa wanted.

“Right. Whatever. Scoping out the competition is one thing, but you are aware that class 1-A is recovering from a traumatic experience. And you’re blocking traffic. Clear off.”

The crowd slowly dispersed. Shouta sighed. He knew this would only be the first of many such incidents. He made a note to talk to Nemuri about whether or not she’d be willing to donate some of her class time to talk about public relations.

“You know,” said Nemuri, “if you actually rested, Recovery Girl would be able to heal you.”

“I know nothing of the sort,” said Shouta, glaring at his desk in the staff room. “I’m forgetting something.”

All Might walked in. “Er, young Aizawa,” he said. He paused for a painfully long, awkward moment. “Are you still meeting with young Midoriya today?”

“Crap.”

Did Izuku expect Mr. Aizawa to come to their meeting? No. The man had casts on all of his limbs. But, he hadn’t cancelled it either. So, better safe than sorry, right?

But it had been a while, now. Izuku could probably safely assume he wasn't coming after a half hour. He got up, packed his bags, and reached out for the door handle-

Only to freeze as Mr. Aizawa yanked it open and pulled Mr. Yagi into the classroom after him.

Izuku scurried back to his seat.

"Nothing physical today," croaked Mr. Aizawa. "We're going to figure out your quirk."

“O-okay,” said Izuku.

Aizawa collapsed into the seat behind the teacher's desk. “To be short, this quirk, One for All or whatever, is complete nonsense.”

“Uh,” said Mr. Yagi. “Sorry?”

“Sorry,” whispered Izuku.

“You should be. Not you, Midoriya. You’re fine.”

“Okay?”

“Right. So. You’ve got two quirks right now. Danger Sense and Float. Unless something else showed up over the weekend?”

“No, it’s, um, it is just those two right now.”

“And you’ll most likely get Smokescreen, Blackwhip, and that strength enhancement eventually. Plus two mystery quirks.”

“That is what I’ve been able to find out,” said Mr. Yagi.

“So, we have to figure out some way to get all those under a coherent umbrella that can account for the mystery quirks, and before the sports festival, so the evil immortal supervillain doesn’t notice that you have quirks just like a bunch of people he had personal beef with.”

Mr. Yagi cursed in English. “I hadn’t thought about that.”

“Yeah, I wonder what else you haven’t thought about. Maybe this year I can get Nezu to take my suggestion about doing hero names before the sports festival seriously. You know we’ve had people stalk students before because for some godforsaken reason we use their real names? I need a drink.”

“Ah, water?”

“No.”

“Young Aizawa, you’re a teacher…”

“A career choice I question daily. Midoriya, do you have any thoughts about how to make your quirk make sense in a way that won’t get you killed or abducted by the HPSC?”

“I- Does that happen?” despite his conversation with Mr. Yagi over the weekend, he still had generally positive thoughts about the hero commission.

“I have no idea. Wouldn’t put it past them.”

“Well, um, I was talking to Monoma earlier, and he said something about stockpiling danger, and how it might let out the stockpile as the energy necessary to levitate- which, really, would be a fascinating quirk if it did work that way- but I thought it might also work for Smokescreen and the strength enhancement? I mean, general responses to danger are fight, flight, or hide, so the strength enhancement is fight, Float is flight, and Smokescreen would be hide…”

“That might work. What about Blackwhip.”

“Yeah, that one has kind of stumped me.”

“Blackwhip sure is a problem,” agreed Mr. Aizawa.

The ghosts started laughing. “You’re a problem, Banjo,” chortled Nana.

“Come on, guys, that isn’t funny!”

"It is! It's hilarious!"

"They were just talking about All for One tracking the kid down and killing him!"

The mood sobered quickly.

"Considering that he is Ninth's father," said Hikage, "I suspect it's far too late for that."

"Yeah," said Yoichi. "But, just to be safe, and in case there are other weirdos out there, new rule: no giving him new quirks in public. Not that we can do anything about when he eventually manifests the stockpile…"

"What if he's going to die?" asked Hikage, raising his hand.

"He already got your quirk, why do you care?"

"We'd like to hear it," said Banjo, somewhat forcefully.

"Well, if he looks like he's going to die, do whatever you can to stop that from happening, I guess. But chucking a quirk he doesn't know how to use isn't always going to be the beat answer."

"Wait," said Nana. "Hold up a second. A few days ago we were talking about the potential for multiple quirk brain damage, weren't we?"

"Oh, good catch," said Yoichi. "I guess I forgot to mention it, which means Nana is the only one I'd trust babysitting my nephew in the event a quirk rewound him to elementary school age-"

"That is a suspiciously specific scenario," said En.

"-and all the rest of you are fired. You didn't even question giving him more quirks? Really?"

Hikage raised his hand. "I assumed you had discovered that Ninth had a constitution capable of handling multiple quirks, similar to yourself and your brother."

"That is true. Okay, Hikage would be another exception, but he's disqualified from babysitting for other reasons."

"That's fair."

"So we need something that can do all that, and has tentacles," said Izuku, squeezing his bottom lip in thought.

"Yeah," said Mr. Aizawa. "Honestly, even really dumb ideas would be welcome right now."

"Why are you looking at me?" asked Mr. Yagi.

"You know why."

There was only one creature Izuku could think of that could do all the things Izuku one day might be able to while maintaining room for the two mystery quirks. "Cthulhu."

Mr. Yagi looked mildly scandalized at the suggestion.

"Nah, it'd have to be something like eldritch. Cthulhu's trademarked in Japan, and that can give you aboveground types trouble."

"What is it a trademark for?" asked Mr. Yagi.

"Ask Midnight. I don't want to talk about it."

"Ah," said Mr. Yagi.

"The problem with that is that you currently have no justification to call it that. Now if you already had Smokescreen…"

The adults looked at him.

"... I don't think it's going to just show up like that," said Izuku.

"Why not?" asked Banjo, staring at En. "They practically asked you for it."

"Well, first off, I live for drama, so jot that down."

"Huh? What about me?" asked Yoichi.

"Nothing, it was just an idiom. Second…"

"...Right," said Aizawa. “For now, then, we’ll have to give it a temporary name, because it’s starting to get to the point in time where it’ll actually be illegal for you to not register it.” He shuffled his casts. “Yagi, start filling out those forms with what he can do currently. Midoriya, make sure you check him when he’s done. For now, we’ve got to come up with a name.”

“Um,” said Izuku. “Float’s the only one that’s really visible, so I could just call it Float?”

“Vetoed. You aren’t picking a name that the immortal supervillain knows.”

“He did seem to only refer to people by quirks unless he really hated them,” said Mr. Yagi. “Except his brother, who he always called ‘my foolish brother.’”

“Focus on the paperwork.”

“And he called himself by his quirk name as well,” mused Izuku. “Do you think it was a side effect? Quirks have document impact on people’s personalities-”

“Focus.”

“R-right. Um. Feather Fall? No, that’s part of a game. Flight Reflex?”

“Good enough for now,” said Aizawa. “Flight Reflex it is.”

#bnha #boku no hero academia #danger first #danger first au #fic #fanfic

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haikyuuuuuhypeeeee · 3 years

Text

Chapter 3

⚠WARNING: Mention of previous characters' deaths

• ────── ✾ ────── •

You have no idea how you got here.

Here, being in front of the lone coffee shop on campus, on your way to meet the stranger who’s had the misfortune to get Hajime’s old phone number and receive your sad ramblings meant for no one else.

And you, the author of those sad ramblings, written in moments of weakness, are going to sit with this stranger and….

You haven’t gotten that far yet.

Honestly, you’ve been more incredulous at the odds of this meeting even happening.

What the hell am I doing???

You really have no explanation, not even for yourself. The time is 9:58 and in two minutes you’re going to walk into the cafe and meet with a stranger who is going through a traumatic life experience similar to yours.

Ok, so you can explain what you’re doing. But the why is what’s escaping you. And frankly that should scare you more than it is currently doing.

Especially seeing how you haven’t told your friends what you’re doing. You bugged off lunch (much to Oikawa’s annoyance) but didn’t tell them why. Not only would Oikawa throw a fit but he, Mattsun and Makki wouldn’t understand your reasoning for meeting a stranger you met only a few hours ago.

They really wouldn’t understand why you don’t have a solid reason for meeting this stranger.

Put all the red flags together and you would find yourself locked in your apartment with no means of escaping under Oikawa’s watch.

To be fair, you are meeting them in a public place and you have no intention of going anywhere with the stranger. You’re just going to go have a cup of tea, shoot the shit, and then leave.

Yeah, it’s definitely doable. And not at all crazy.

You take a deep breath before walking inside the shop. It’s a bit crowded - the weekend mid-morning rush makes the employees hustle behind the counter to fill orders. All of the tables are full, leaving no space for two strangers to sit and….

Oh, this was a bad idea. A really bad and stupid idea.

Your phone rings in your pocket. You pull it out and nearly jump at the caller ID.

Your brain points out that it’s not Hajime but the stranger you’re meeting. You pick up the phone quickly. “Hello?”

“Heya, how’re ya doin’?”

You hope you’ve schooled your expression into nonchalance but you can’t help your eyebrows jumping hearing the clear Kansai dialect through the phone.

Besides the surprise at the unfamiliar drawl, you’re pleased to hear a clear and strong voice on the other line. Nothing creepy or weird or anything your brain was trying to convince would be the case.

“Hi.” You reply into the phone. You can hear background noise from his end, which assures you again that he must actually be here.

“‘M over in the corner with the baseball cap.”

Your eyes move to the corner immediately and zero-in on a figure sitting at the table there. It’s a man, wearing a dark long-sleeve shirt and a dark ball cap. And he’s staring straight at you.

You hang up the phone and walk over to him. You spot a coffee cup on the table in front of him and watch as he takes his hat off and sets it on the tabletop. His silver-grey hair is messed up from the hat but that’s the least of your concerns at the moment.

No, what has you almost faltering in your steps is the exhaustion that lies deep on his face. The bags under his eyes are heavy and stark against his pale skin. His mouth is drawn in a small frown and with his eyebrows furrowed slightly it makes him look troubled.

You recognize his weariness. This is a man who is burdened to carry an intangible weight.

However this man still meets your gaze and gives you a small, tired smile. The small gesture brightens his face considerably but doesn’t completely erase the empty look. But you feel your nerves settle when he smiles at you.

“Hi,” he says when you approach the table.

“Hello.” You sit in the chair opposite of his and shrug your jacket off. “It’s busy, thanks for grabbing a table.”

“No worries.” Hearing his calm and measured tone in person relaxed you more than you realized and you felt some tension release from your shoulders. “‘M here all the time and I figured they’d be a bit busy on Saturday. D’ya want me to grab ya something from the counter?”

“Oh, you don’t have to do that.” You shake your head to emphasize your point.

“Nah, I insist. Coffee? Tea? Fancy mocha drink?”

“Uh,” you’re startled by his insistence but relent. “A tea, please. Jasmine if they have it.”

He nodded before standing and making his way to the register, letting you fully settle in your seat and try to still comprehend what the hell you are doing.

Mid-inner freak out (oh god, what if he drugs my tea, what am I doing?!) a cup materializes in front of you. Osamu comes around with another cup for himself and sits in the chair across from you.

“They had Jasmine and it smells amazin’.” He shifts in his seat and takes a sip of his coffee. “‘M not a big tea drinker but that smells like it would calm ya down real good.”

You send him a smile before lifting the cup up. The smell of jasmine tea was soothing and the taste was even better when you took a small sip. “It’s my go-to comfort drink. I’ve probably had a few more cups than normal in the past few months.”

The sympathetic look the stranger sends you makes you purse your lips, realizing too late what you said. You look away, cursing to yourself. Great, way to go and make it awkward now. It’s quiet for a bit, now awkward by your weird ~fun fact~

“My name’s Miya Osamu.” You look up at the man and see a rueful smile on his face. “I probably shoulda told ya my name earlier. ‘M a first year student at Sendai University.”

You blink. Of fucking course you didn’t know his name. You never thought to ask when texting him earlier. You met up with a LITERAL stranger for tea and coffee.

“Wow, I’m sorry for being so rude!” You hurriedly say. “I should’ve asked AGES ago. But my name’s L/N Y/N. I’m also a first year student at Sendai.”

“Huh.” Osamu (not The Stranger) says. “What a weird coincidence.”

You nod. “Yeah, um are you not from around here? I can tell by your dialect.”

Osamu hums. For the first time you see his face fall and set into something more stone-like. It’s a subtle difference but it’s there nonetheless. “Hyogo. Came to Miyagi for school and had to get a new number.”

“Oh.” It’s a dry answer that you really don’t know how to reply to. “Do you like it so far?”

He shrugs. “It’s not bad. Pretty far.”

You nod. “Yeah, it is.”

You both lapse into a silence that is neither comfortable nor relaxing.

Oh my GOD this is so awkward! Why did you agree to this? Why did you think this was a good idea?! Yeah sure, he’s not a freaking weirdo serial killer, you can check that off your list. But you didn’t think about what you would actually TALK about!

“Do ya wanna talk about Hajime?”

Your reply to his question is to spit your tea across the table.

You look up to meet Osamu’s concerned gaze. Neither of you move before you both reach across to grab napkins from the dispenser.

“Are ya alright?”

“Oh my god I’m so sorry!”

In your haste to clean up your tea the napkin dispenser gets knocked to the ground, and the napkins explode out like an explosion of white confetti.

“Ahhhhhhhh!” The napkins springing up startle you so much that your knee knocks into the table hard, almost upending Osamu’s coffee.

“Argh!” You lean down to clutch your knee as it throbs painfully but your head collides with the table instead. “OUCH!”

“Are ya alright?!” Osamu asks frantically.

You exhale deeply. “Yep, I’m just a klutz. Fuck, that hurt my head.” You wish you could keep your head down and disappear. But you look up, your face bright red with embarrassment, and meet the concerned look from Osamu.

“I’m ok,” you reassure. “Really.” You look around at the mess surrounding your table and catch a few people gawking. Good lord. “Besides my pride taking a beating, I’m all good.” You stoop down to grab the napkins scattered around, wincing at the waste. Osamu also bends down to help.

“It looked like a pretty hard hit,” he notes.

“It’d be worse if I had something in my head worth keeping safe.”

Osamu smiles at your quip, a little half-smile. It’s nice.

Soon you both stand back up to throw out the napkins. Osamu grabs the bunch from you, letting you sit back down. You try to cool the fuck out and you will your face to not resemble a tomato when he comes back.

“Are you sure yer alright?” Osamu asks again.

“Yes, really.” You nod. “I’m sorry if I spat tea on you. I was just really surprised.”

Osamu tilted his head. “From what I said?” You nod. “Why?”

“I mean,” you start. “It mainly just caught me off guard. I’m not used to it, like just talking about him.”

“Do ya talk about him at all?”

You want to nod, but thinking about it you honestly don’t remember the last time you were able to tell someone about Hajime. Not his passing, but just talking about the person that he was.

“Oh.” Osamu pauses, looking at you considering. “Well my old therapist said it’s good to talk about this stuff, so I figured that’s what ya wanted.”

You don’t know how to reply to his simple explanation. Because you do want to talk about Hajime. You want to so badly. You want to tell the world how amazing he is, how he makes the world a better place just by existing, how strong he is and how much lighter you feel when he’s around

Or, how it was.

But you haven’t been able to talk about him. Every time you tried to talk outside of group therapy with your friends, Oikawa shuts down and Makki and Mattsun get uncomfortable. Your therapist is always able to handle anything you throw at her, but it’s not the same as just talking about a friend to someone.

So maybe Osamu is right about just talking about Hajime.

“He has hair like a porcupine.”

Osamu gives you a look of confusion before you continue. “Our friend Oikawa used to call him prickly, and we’d tease him when he’d bristle up and say he looks like a porcupine.” You laugh at the memory of Hajime bristling up, constantly egged on by Oikawa. “It wasn’t even bad hair, it was just so sharp. It was weird.”

Osamu doesn’t say anything for a second before he bursts out laughing. “Atsumu had weird hair too - dyed bleach blonde. Thought it made him look badass.” He rolls his eyes and shakes his head.

You wrap your hand around your cup of tea, hesitating. An obvious question hangs in the air but for the first time since sitting down Osamu looks a bit lively.

“Was Atsumu your brother?”

The lightness on Osamu’s face is extinguished when he nods at your question. “Yeah, he’s a pain in the ass but I love him.” He pauses, looking down at his coffee cup. “Well, he was.”

You can feel the pain radiating from that one word. You understand the horrid dread that comes when you realize you’d been speaking about Hajime in the present tense. Even more so when you have to admit it out loud.

You look at Osamu and frown upon seeing his withdrawn expression. You feel immense guilt, knowing that you’ve contributed to his change in mood.

You’re desperate to lighten the mood and bring that smile back to Osamu’s face. You search through your memories, trying to find something funny. A thought crosses your mind and you feel a small smile grace your lips.

“There was one time that my friend was determined to roast smores on Iwa’s head.” You giggle at the disbelieving look on Osamu’s face. “Yeah, it was the stupidest idea he’d ever concocted. We didn’t even get one marshmallow on his head.”

“We?” Osamu asks, his voice lifting in amusement ever so slightly.

“Of course.” You reply, a smile spreading over your face at the memory and at Osamu’s content face. “I too was curious if we could do it.”

Osamu snorts, shaking his head as he brought his coffee to his mouth. “That idea would have intrigued Atsumu for sure. He was all about the far-fetched plots to piss off everyone around him.”

You smile, leaning forward in your chair. “Oh yeah? Wanna share some notes?” Osamu’s face brightens slightly at your words and he begins to talk, more animatedly than before.

• ────── ✾ ────── •

A/N: So nothing bad happened with Y/N meeting the stranger (besides her being a clumsy klutz, where are my fellow klutzes at?) Thank you for reading, I hope this chapter was a little soft respite from the initial angst~

Taglist Open! Please send an Ask with the request to be added to It’s [Not] Okay Fic & SMAU (bold cannot be tagged): @psycho-nightrose @camcam1617 @kamalymaly @toobsessedsstuff @shookykookie30 @roro-707 @qualitygiantshoepsychic @cerealfrdinner797 @ara-mitsue @gray-444 @tanakasimpcorner @rintarovibes @jellien

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hermitcraftheadcanons · 3 years

Text

Hermitopia AU Masterpost 1 [COMPLETE]

This is a gathering place for the events of the Hermitopia AU, as well as art and writing resulting from it (art and writing listed at the bottom). Please read the AU introduction and rules here before submitting! Feel free to join the discussions on the HCHC discord server!

(Disclaimer/PSA: All points are asks contributed by the community, the mods take no credit for the ideas within them)

If you would like specific credit in the masterpost, please sign within the text of the ask! (A dash and a signature at the end should do.) Asks not signed will be treated as anonymous.

Summary posts:

Not all elements of plot and character will be summarized, but here are a few basic things you may want to be familiar with before submitting an ask! (Unless you are purposely aiming to create an [ALTERNATE] idea for a Hermit)

1 - Starting positions and each Hermit's powers (based on the submissions from Day 1)

Summary post 2 - Interpersonal connections (based on Day 1 and 2 submissions)

Make sure to check out the second masterpost here for more up to date information, including newer art and writing!

Asks:

- (copied ask) [summarized mod comment]

- Hermitopia | Scar was experimented on by Cub. He gained dangerous powers and wings that resemble a dragon’s, but he keeps both hidden. Unless someone makes him angry. He has no idea who gave him his powers. Eventually he and Cub decided that they wanted to control things beyond their corporation, so Scar ran for mayor. (there are things to fill in but im lazy) [Scar assumes he got the powers in an accident during research. He enjoys having them but has no idea that they were intentional.]

- Hermitopia AU team ZIT is a superpowered crime-fighting trio!

- owing to a very particular set of guidelines he put in place, Joe can now copy powers if he sees them in use and can reverse-engineer how those powers are used. needless to say, this is massively overpowered in the right hands.but it got worse. at some point, there was an... incident... on ConCorp grounds, something to do with a mass amount of entities causing time dilation -- and Joe was caught in the thick of it, unable to be rescued for a while.the problem is, he got out by piecing together how the time dilation worked.needless to say, Joe... has a ridiculous powerset. so he chooses largely not to use his powers anymore unless it's absolutely dire or petty enough to shrug off as a random occurrence. nobody needs to know that one of the most powerful Unaffiliated in the city is standing right in front of them... especially not ConCorp.

- doc was a former high ranking employee of concorp before he volunteered for an experiment and it went horribly wrong. since then, the company has tried to erase any evidence of his existence. doc is now seeking revenge for all that the company did to him and is determined to tear it apart

- HI ok follow up asks will be sent later when my thoughts are coherent but concept: cleo has like super messed up healing powers where she can make healing go Too Far. also i pin her as unbound, considering, like, everything - shovel-shuffle

- So, his power was meant to be super-regen, right? except things don't always quite go to plan. Someone volunteered for the powers surgeries and is arguably dead. Etho is a name shared by the many many clones that developed themselves out of the leftovers. They're not quite individuals, not quite a hivemind. Any one of them has no fear of death because the others will continue, but they all act independently around their overarching goal. (which I won't snitch about) - DragonKay

- Bdubs was a hero. Key word? Was. He climbed the ranks through the government, he was a loyal and dutiful member of society, and he used his plant manipulation powers to subdue evil-doers without hurting them. But he’s always been a friendly guy, and he couldn’t help himself—talking to the Unrestrained, especially those in custody, was interesting! ...but it’s a slippery slope to walk, being friendly with the enemy and not sympathizing to their cause. Nobody knows where he is now, but there are rumours of a vigilante with similar abilities, and his three compatriots, two of whom he helped escape from ConCorp... They call themselves the nHo. - slimetek [Bdubs deserted Concorp while helping Doc escape after his experiment went wrong]

- Concorp managed to make a device that allows animals to speak or translate their thoughts into writing. This means that the good old mayor Scar has a certain cat giving some advice on how to run the city.

- Iskall is an assasin/mercenary against their own volition. An accident they'd rather forget almost killed them, and in exchange for their freedom and free will they got to live as a cyborg. Though its hard to forget with the implant that covers their eye and the limb of cool metal hanging at their side - @ghastly-ghostie [Iskall works for Concorp off-books, bound by the debt owed to them for the life saving experimental modifications]

- so I think grians original powers could be like cloning, but something goes wrong and the clones are different people. as a result of the duplication process, some funky magic rocks are made. the clones decide to take most of the funky rocks and run off, leaving grian with one rock that gives him some new abilities and the clones' rocks give him others. also uhh mechanical wings bc yes. so grians plot is him trying to find them while also causing problems on purpose. infinity stones. update to my grian ask from earlier, I had better ideas: the rocks are old like magic things that grian finds before the cloning and ends up collecting, but his clones snatch them - simplyskipper [some of the alternate Grians are aligned with different factions in Hermitopia, while the locations of others are farther or unknown]

- Hermitopia- Impulse has solid-light powers. He has golden crystals implanted in his hands, which he can reflect light through to solidify it into all sorts of shapes. This can be used to make barriers, projectiles, and much more, though more detailed constructs take more time.- @mleemwyvern

- Hermitopia AU Poultry man is a well-known chaotic neutral leaning towards good, as a one of the unrestrained.

- I think Team ZIT should be a little be wild card-y, that's how they act after all! [they are employed by the government for standard crimefighting, but they don't always take Scar's word at its intended meaning and often play a bit on the chaotic side when given instructions]

- [Hermitopia AU] False is an antihero/vigilante type who's specialty is not defined by powers or the such, but just... the absolute skill of being able to dual wield two (more sci-fi era) short swords. Maybe someone upgrades them to be "enchanted" (electrical, fire, etc. something that tech could do well probably). She's willing to be paid-for-hire, but if you go past her moral line she's also willin' to backstab you. -- @cheshire-vex [she's a free agent who sort of drifts between Concorp, the government, and whoever else will pay her on a job-by-job basis]

- Hermitopia impulse has more connections then one may think. He has ties to people pretty much everywhere, for reasons unknown. There is a 100% someone will come and greet him wherever he goes. [the greetings are usually friendly]

- Hermitopia Au! Keralis is a hero who most people wouldn't expect to be too skilled at fighting. His power is similar to hypnosis so he has no need to get very physical. Yeah, that changed when some bastard villain decided to attack his friends shop. [that incident caused his employer Scar to realize his untapped potential for protecting people and assign him to a few more high-stakes jobs]

- Hermittopia!TFC was one of ConCorp’s first experiments and as such his powers are a bit less...refined then the others. He has geokinetic powers, allowing him to psychically control rocks and other earthen materials. He used to be one of the VEX programs top graduates, but has since parted ways with them for unknown reasons and now operates his own plans of keep crime in Hermitopia under control. -lechairpourriedegrianri [he is considered Unaffiliated and both Concorp and the government largely leave him to his own devices, since he is helping to keep the city together]

-Wels doesn't have powers. He does have a super-suit made of fire and heat resistant carbon fibre (like the material used for the space shuttle) and has a built in hologram projector. One time, he used the hologram projector to project an image of himself, which everyone thought was a clone. He didn't have the heart to tell them otherwise. (AKA everyone thinks Wels has powers but he doesn't) -Silverwolf53 [he got the suit in Project VEX]

- To follow up on the Impulse ask- Team ZIT are a space-themed superhero team. Government-aligned, at least for now.Tango has meteor-like powers, he can shoot fire from his hands and feet and often uses this to propel himself at high speeds. Zed has gravity powers! He can increase or decrease the density of any object, to the point of making small black holes. They all have space-themed costumes, and it was probably Zed's idea. - @mleemwyvern

- TFC was the first participant in project VEX

- Grian was an attempted success. It fixed some problems with Etho's unintended cloning, but at the same time created some problems of its own, seeing as the clones appeared to have a life of their own.It's fine, though. It's probably fine

- I would say Grian is unrestrained, a bit like Etho, Chaotic in his own way. Does not activily Try to hurt people, but does mostly what he wants for fun.-Ciara

- Xisuma is a civilian- he has hero friends, but despite all their teasing he’s never wanted to go through VEX training. But in the night, the unrestrained Void walks the streets [Void is a symbiotic creature made of nothingness that uses Xisuma's body as a substitute physical form]

- Bdubs was such a good man... he could be trusted to look after Doc, couldn’t he? Somebody had to oversee him, somebody who was reliable and would never, ever consider betraying the mayor and ConCorp...They let their guard down, and Bdubs got curious. Bdubs made a friend.And then they lost him.- Slimetek

- The hels hermits are considered evil by default. How do you spot these clones, how could you protect yourself? Well in the past it was a lot easier, just look for their red eyesNowadays contacts exist but that doesn't stop people trying to call the police on tango, calling him a hels. Hes netherian, they have unnatural eye colours and their iris fills the entire eye, hes not evil but if people keep doing this hes gonna be!

- Beef woke up from his brain surgery to receive telepathy powers, took one look into the mind of the overseer, and noped put of there as fast as he could go.He's on very public record. After all, the mind control he may be capable of is a very convenient explanation for anyone who turns against concorp... ~DragonKay

- Hypno can’t control minds.They say he does. It’s why he’s named Hypno, after all.In reality, he can’t control people like that... but he can control what they see.Your best friend might look like your greatest enemy. A pit of lava might look like solid ground. A 100-foot drop might look like a step down.It’s a good thing he’s a hero, and a good thing he keeps his true powers hidden beneath a guise of low-level hypnotism. There’s no telling what he could do if they let him go. [he works for Concorp, helping to protect VEX trainees from people trying to harm them before they get a chance to finish the program, as well as keeping other resources safe]

- The 9th Street Incident [referring to an earlier Impulse comment] was a friendly greeting. That particular version of Etho just thought that drawing weapons would be a friendly greeting for Impulse, but Tango and Zed seem to disagree

- They still don’t trust Bdubs. He was with the government for a long time, and things are hard out there on the run. Besides, they don’t know what he got up to there. ConCorp could have any sort of information on him, something that might scare him back.Bdubs understands this. He doesn’t want to go back. He’d hate to go back....but they think he will, and maybe there’s something he’s not telling them. An ace that ConCorp has yet to play.- Slimetek

- Mumbo works for concorp as an engineer specialising in robotics, most recently taking on the task of maintaining Iskall's cybernetics that somehow they just keep damaging. Iskall assures him they're just.. very clumsy. So far Mumbo hasn't caught on.

- Ren's power is that hes a werewolf, but he only found out when he was in his late teens with his childhood friend Iskall. He still feels guilty about it, he did kill his best friend afterall. Or so he thinks.He's lived off grid ever since, too overwhelmed with grief and guilt to rejoin society. Most assume he's dead too - @ghastly-ghostie [Ren dropped Iskall off to Concorp as a last ditch effort, running away before he could see whether they took his friend in or not. They did, starting Iskall's plotline. Iskall told Concorp about Ren's abilities, triggering a panic in the Concorp ranks at the fact that Ren is a superhuman being created by some force other than their own project]

- Where does Void come from? The same place all powers come from.Little did they know, something survived the crash and has taken a human host. Maybe it's not the only one...No, that place is not Concorp. Concorp's original goal was to develop technology by reverse-engineering from a crashed alien spaceship. These aliens did gene-editing the way some people do nose jobs, so they adapted that technology, too.~DragonKay

- i've already said a bit about it in the discord but i have hermitopia cleo brainrot. joe being there was able to save her by giving her the regen powers along with her puppeteering telekinesis power. anyways cleo is presumed dead, sent by concorp into a mission as fodder basically until zit could arrive. but now there's is one (1) bitter undead vigilante against concorp that is presumed dead

- Stress’s name has a few meanings in relation to her. Whenever she gets too angry or /stressed/, she transforms into the StressMonster, a monster that feeds off of other people’s stress to become more powerful. Luckily, the monster is rarely seen, but does terrible things when she is. She’s one of the most feared creatures in Hermitopia. Stress hates her and tries her best to hide her from her friends, but it can backfire sometimes. - @guster-animations

- to follow-up on Joe being presumed dead: remember the time dilation incident he was stuck in? ConCorp figured it was best to cut their losses and not try to send anyone in to rescue him -- it would be a pointless mission. so they abandoned him, quietly announced that he had died in the line of duty, and put the affected area under high security clearance in order to prevent any future accidents. they figured he was already dead. and Joe figures, given that they up and abandoned him, maybe it's for the best that they continue to figure just that. he changed his last name to "Hills" -- a joke about the biome containing the time anomaly -- and otherwise proceeded to stay under the radar. he still uses the time dilation area as a base of operations, sometimes; it's very useful to have a hideout that people physically cannot get into/out of without his direct assistance. is he nursing a grudge, coming up with some convoluted scheme to get back at the paramilitary group for abandoning him? or does he just want to live a relatively normal life off the grid? who knows. that's the Joe [REDACTED] Hills difference. -@betweenlands

- False has some big scary power that is almost Eldritch she just happens to prefer a sword and doesn’t really care for who she works for as long as they’re paying... (they don’t need to know of the power that had harmed the ones she loves the most)

- Keralis once encountered Void sulking around where Xisuma worked. So fearful for his friend’s safety, he used his power on Void and told him to go away. Apparently the charm is still active, because if Void spots Keralis anywhere, he’ll turn tail and run. No, it’s not because he’s scared. Absolutely not.

- Grumbot serves as a sentient supercomputer created by Mumbo for Grian. Grian is using Grumbot for... various activities, all of which harmless, but a certain evil clone [Helsknight] has reverse engineered the technology. Concorp would like for Mumbo to give them the tech, but mumbo stuck some eyes to the computer, got emotionally attached, and refuses to give up his baby boy.

- When Impulse hears his friend/colleague Bdubs has been "taken over" by the mind-controller [Beef], he wants to go on an off-the-books mission to rescue him! Just giving up like they were told to isn't in his nature.Of course the rest of ZIT are with him. Heroes save people! It's what they do!~DragonKay

- Hermitopia is a mixture of sleek futuristic and cyberpunk in terms of style. It really depends on where you live and work (ik this doesnt include any hermits but whatever) - @ghastly-ghostie

- I wonder if Cleo's overactive healing powers affect herself and if any injuries she receives immediately heal over like wolverine or deadpool

- Ren used to be friends with Cleo too, but then she died. Strangely enough, she died on the same day that Ren killed Iskall. Ren’s lost all his friends. It’s hard living in isolation when there’s no one left that even cares about you. (Unless— no, that’s impossible.)

- I was thinking about Biffa, like you do. And Biffa would totally be some robot that was created by Project VEX in its early stages, however they realised fast that it was easier to use humans and give them powers, maybe its not their strong suit with robots. But Biff went sentient and glitched and was scrapped so hes just out there doing his thing. Hes a wildcard and plays for which side he wants at the time, sometimes he'll help or sometimes hes the one causing trouble. He looks pretty similar to a android like in Detroit:Become human but hes a bit uncanny and eerie, maybe its the eyes or the blood red armour. Powerwise, he's got more strength than a human does, mainly because he isn't limited like others are. try not to get punched by him, it'll hurt! [He's convinced Concorp will destroy him if they find out he's alive and Unaffiliated] -lucodak

- Going off of my thing about hermotopia impulse having friends everywhere....this may include the nho. Okay, they beat him to a pulp on one of his solo patrols once, but theey felt bad n patched him up! He has to keep it a secret. He brings them dinner alot. And checks in on them.

- Beef is the perfect cover-up for Bdubs’ desertion. ConCorp doesn’t want any other employees getting bright ideas, now, do they? Nor do they want employees getting nosy and trying to figure out where Bdubs went. They don’t have to tell people what Beef’s powers are. They just release that he developed powers after brain surgery, and a rumour that he was spotted lurking around before Bdubs suddenly betrayed ConCorp... and people draw their own conclusions. -Slimetek

- xB is pretty sure he’s supposed to be evil.I mean, that’s what sentient AIs usually end up being, according to a quick internet search. And yet he’s... not. Or maybe he’s just on the wrong side. - Slimetek

- Yes impulse is friends with the nho....what he doesn't know? He's....easily susceptible to hypnosis. Very easily.......Of course, after impulse is basically a very tired n warm cuddle bug, so, cuddle piles tend to happen after all information is spilled. He must've fallen asleep at their apartment again! Whoops! But it's okay.....they take good care of him if he does! [Beef is using his mind reading ability on Impulse without his knowledge, to make sure that he hasn't spilled their location and to predict the government's next moves. He feels slightly bad about it but feels that it is necessary for the nHo's survival.]

- So far, Grian has only ever encountered two of his clones, NPC Grian and Robot Grian. Technically three, if one were to count Ariana Griande. Grian doesn't really, but some do. [Ariana Griande is a popular musician in Hermitopia who is building a career using the magical stone of voice enhancement she recieved through the cloning process]

- To handle the two Grumbot issue: the one working with Helsknight can be Jrumbot, a legion of robot drones meant to work as Grumbot’s physical form that ended up being hijacked by Helsknight and turned against ConCorp

- There...aren’t a lot of “normal” animals left in Hermittopia. ConCorp took one look at the animals populating the city and decided that, hey, they could make some improvements. Species after species, they modified their behavior, appearance, internal structure, whatever they could fix, tweak, or add. They were just improving their lives and the lives of the citizens of Hermittopia, after all, but the new animals quickly outcompeted the old for resources and habitats. And if it makes it easier for ConCorp to stick a camera in one or two of them, or set up robotic animals to keep a better eye on the city, no harm, no foul, right?(Bonus: there is one (1) singular cat left in Hermittopia, resulting in a spy movie-style heist where two teams of Hermits attempt to “rescue” the cat simultaneously. The cat keeps wandering away from both teams. Shenanigans ensue)- Adonis [the cat is Jellie, who orchestrated the competition between Team ZIT and Cleo and Joe for her own entertainment, getting away from both parties in the end]

- The Leak:Not all mutations are the result of controlled experiments! If some alien tech got away from the crash site, concorp never would have picked it up. It might have got into nature, not as refined as they made it in the labs but causing little changes here and there. Ren may have become a werewolf from being bitten by a mutant wolf~DragonKay

- Impulse is able to use his powers to create illusions or male things appear invisible! Sort of. After all, light dictates what we see. It takes a lot of focus, though, so it's not that practical. -@rayveewrites

- The one thing Hels wasn't able to steal was the cloning technology, hence his hostility with Concorp -- he needs the cloning device, because how else is the void going to get a body of their own? - SilverWolf53

- *glances at the hermitopia werewolf ask* okay but what if the same mystery people who made ren into a werewolf also created jevin, and maybe Etho? idk if either of them have been given any hermitopia headcanons yet lol. but im sure the same people who made a werewolf could make a sentient slime (or perhaps rescue one) or make... whatever etho is. [Since the "second organization" is an incorrect assumption believed by Concorp, Jevin was created when he came in contact with a waterway contaminated by The Leak. Concorp assumes he was created by an opposing organization and not by accident, and therefore would like to bring him in along with Ren.]

- hermitopia - mumbo and grian were friends back when cloning experiments were still happening (or . as friendly as you can be with someone who's treating you like a lab rat), but after everything went wrong and grian escaped, mumbo has his memories wiped nd thats why he's trusted w iskall's stuff? bc he inherently remembers working on high-level things without knowing where he learnt it - muscle memory, yk?anyway massive angst with grian maybe recognising mumbo, but not the other way round, and trying to rekindle their friendship? and that's where grumbot comes in? -gin [Mumbo's memory was wiped so that he would forget the deadly purpose of Iskall's cybernetics, which he was working on at the same time as the Grian project in the background. Mumbo does not remember creating Grian's mechanical wings or Iskall's arm and eye, and he has no memory of either individual previous to "meeting" Iskall as the person assigned to his repair and upkeep.]

- Etho doesn't so much have powers as he is powers. All the powers the ‘original’ had went into creating him; now he just exists, as whatever sort of being he is. Not a human one, that much is obvious. ~DragonKay [Etho has no powers beyond the hivemind and his training, due to the error in the experiment that caused the clones]

- Mumbo started the button as a joke. A nonsense social expirement to see how much people want worthless signs of status. Unfortunately things got out of hand, and violent too. But hey! It's not his fault that the five special anomalous stones were misplaced into the prize dispenser! It was just chance that they fell into the hands of the clone of the worst gremlin in the city! Don't fire him! [He was not fired, but Cub was Decidedly Unhappy with him for a good long while]

- Void mostly trashes ConCorp facilities- trying to figure out if any of his siblings survived the spaceship crash, but occasionally he’ll pilfer from a bakery, because X is a health nut and Void just wants a gods damned cookie [Void very much dislikes unseasoned chicken]

- If the Stress Monster gets too big, too dangerous, Cleo is sworn under oath to Stress to zap her with her healing powers. Cleo doesn’t like to do it, overhealing a stressed Stress makes her so calm she gets knocked out for a couple of days, but Stress can take a small comfort in the fact that at least one person out there can stop her

- Ooh with the self healing Cleo she'd be able to develop a small amount of super strength, with how the mind keeps from going full throttle because it would destroy the body once she gets over it it's hysterical strength whenever she wants [it is quite painful, but a good backup plan]

- Being a hive mind of disposable clones that can spawn new copies at will, it can sometimes be hard for the Etho Entity to remember that it is indeed a big deal for other people when they get hurt. This can make him come off as callous to those around him, placing him firmly in the "villain" category in most citizen's books, but he really doesn't intend any harm!

- Grian used to be tall, but then the cloning happened. With each clone they stole a little bit of his height making him the short man he is today. He needs to capture those clones and get his height back. [Grian isn't entirely sure how to accomplish this, but he's dead set on trying! He misses being tall!]

- While Grian was perfectly fine with Ariana Griande living her own life, he did insist on one thing.Her "older brother" getting backstage access whenever she was on tour. He's very proud and supportive of her and her music career.

- Mumbo is perfectly content working in tech, watching the other hermits get up to crazy shenanigans. Except of course, there was that one time he was out testing some new gear and accidentally saved a crowd from some villains... and there were all those times after too...But hey! It’s not his fault that people like him, and he certainly isn’t going to get caught by Concorp during his after hours activities. [Mumbo considers himself an accidental hobbyist, not thinking he has the nerve or the skill for proper hero work. Time will tell if he's right about that or not...but unfortunately, he probably is. This should be fun.]

- There’s still some people overseeing VEX, even over Cub. They’re the ones that push Cub to do certain experiments or to scrap one. They’re the ones to give Cub the decision for Iskall’s life debt. Scar was under them too for the longest time, but eventually he wanted out. Cub still wanted in. They were still in the right, right? That’s what they tell him. He’s starting to doubt it. [Cub is way too invested in everything he's built to even think about going rogue now, but he does resent and occasionally question the judgement of his superiors increasingly as his project begins to fail more and more often. He also fears that Scar's shift in career will be seen as a betrayal, rather than as a tactical attempt to gain the company influence in the government.]

- Been thinking about the impulse + nho asks and just,,, what would happen if concorp/the government found out? It cant be good with interrogation/hypnosis on both sides (incase you cant tell,, the brainrot got me as well) (apologies if this is a mess im excited) [Hypno is assigned to set up an illusionary conversation to make Impulse reveal nHo location to Concorp and government agents while thinking that he's actually talking to the nHo in a random encounter]

- The one mind Beef can't read is Etho's. Their hivemind is just too weird for him to comprehend. If he ever tries to listen in, it sounds like just a bunch of static from an old TV.

- for hermitopia au!: Out of most of the heros, the most reckless may be team zit. sure they tell themselves they'll plan out missions but it's hard when they share a braincell and tango just runs in. impulse and zed share a look everytime and have to run after him to make sure he doesn't get too hurt or overwhelmed by the enemy. in their defence its hard to plan ahead against an enemy when you dont know what they are thinking.-lucodak ["You might not have known what they were thinking, Tango, but we'd generally like you to know what you're thinking!"]

- i bet ConCorp really wants to make it out like theres some secret shady organization creating all these people with mutations, rather than their own operatives deserting and their own failure to contain dangerous chemicals... whether its malicious coverups or just ignorance to the fact they messed up, wonder what would happen if that sort of thing came to light...? [If they found out that the unintentional superhumans were a result of the poorly-contained crash site? Cub would lose his job...maybe worse. If Cub found out (and he hasn't, yet) he would do everything in his power to keep that information from his superiors.]

- (paraphrased) Impulse accidentally walks in on heroes and agents breaking down the doors of the nHo's hideout and confronting them. Scar claims that they did so on information Impulse himself provided and thanks him for his service. Impulse, feeling confused and betrayed, resists Hypno's attempts to illusion him back to Scar's side and flees the scene with the nHo, knowing very little other than the fact that he doesn't want to be manipulated by the government any more (and still not knowing that Beef has been reading his mind)

- Impulse may have been labeled a traitor. But do you really think that Impulse, secret rebel, starting to learn how dangerous and corrupted Concorp really is, wouldn't let his best friends know about the danger they might be in? I think Team ZIT is more loyal to each other than to the government. - @mleemwyvern [ Impulse's first stop after escaping with the nHo is to find a place to secretly meet Tango and Zedaph and tell them about the way he was tricked. It takes a lot of explaining and a lot of trust, but they eventually decide to believe his claims and are left with a choice: will they openly go rogue and become a target along with Impulse and the rest of the nHo, or are they better off using their established image and reputation to keep an eye on the government heros' movements from the inside?]

- (two asks combined, paraphrased) Ren runs out of supplies and decides to head back into the city, confident in his ability to stay off the grid after so many years of experience and such a long time away. Once there, he runs into Doc, and they hit it off quite quickly. However, the more Ren talks the more Doc realizes - with his ex-Concorp knowledge - that Ren matches the description of Iskall's main target exactly. He warns Ren, who is then faced with the knowledge that Iskall is alive and assigned to kill him...so many questions and so many tears to follow...

- Why did Hermitopia start needing heroes? When the Unrestrained started to appear, if course. Why did the Unrestrained start to appear? A question asked a little less. When did the VEX program start? When did they start taking more risks? When did they stop caring about certainty and safety and shift towards trying to push boundaries they weren't ready to? People can be so enamoured with the concept of superhuman abilities, something bright and glorious and good- and perhaps they could have that too- they don't ask all the right questions. It's all an elaborate game of damage control, don't let the flashy heroics fool you, they've made mistakes, terrible, terrible mistakes, and now there are villains running loose with powers they fooled ConCorp into giving them. Are they villains? Are they victims? Does it matter? They're causing problems. [Project VEX has developed into a solution to its own problems, a self perpetuating cycle...one that Cub, as a businessman, is very familiar with. It's what keeps the wheels of industry turning. It's what keeps innovation creeping forward. It wasn't intentional, not this time...but if it keeps his project alive, he'll take it.]

- One time, Jevin had narrowly dodged being captured by Concorp. He was laying low in the forest out of town, when he had a run-in with some sort of wolf creature. Thankfully, claws and teeth couldn't exactly hurt him anymore, so he just played dead until it gave up.When the moon set, the wolf-thing slowly transformed into a human being. Ren was horrified at the thought he'd lost control and hurt someone- again- but Jevin assured him he was fine. Jevin got the feeling that the werewolf needed a friend, and Jevin himself needed a place to stay for a while... -RayveeWrites [Ren and Jevin are not currently in the same location, but they each have a means of contacting each other for help if needed]

- Worm Man wasn't a well- known super, but plenty of people have noticed that he seemed to vanish at the same time Team ZIT first started active duty. Those people have also noticed that one of the members has a very similar power set to WM.Officially, that's just a coincidence. Officially.-RayveeWrites [Zedaph was trying to get some unofficial practice while still in training in the VEX program]

- A common misconception is that Bdubs conjures up his vines from nowhere. He can't.Like any plant, his vines grow from seeds. They grow unnaturally fast, when Bdubs wills it, but they have to come from seeds. Where do these seeds come from, you may ask?Well, a long time ago, Bdubs ingested some strange fruits. Somehow, in wild defiance of human biology, the seeds contained in those fruits worked their way into his muscles and germinated. Some of the roots worked their way into his brain and fused into it; the rest spread through his muscles, grew beneath his skin, coiled around his bones. Thanks to the way the vines connected to his brain, Bdubs is able to command the vines, and their magic, at will.The vines produce seeds; some stay in his body to replace the old ones when they die, and most work their way into a pair of 'seed pods' in his wrists. Bdubs provides the nutrients, the energy; the vines provide the seeds, the magic. As an extra bonus: if the vines were to be totally removed from Bdubs' body, he would be at best extremely weak, and at worst dead. The vines have grown into his muscles, to the point where they've essentially replaced them in some areas. It's fortunate that they connected with his mind so early on, otherwise he'd be dead. -RayveeWrites [Concorp developed the fruit, and the fact that Bdubs is evidence of the unlikely success of that experiment makes them all the more angry at his betrayal]

- A lot of excellent xB information (it's too long to copy but please read it it's very good)

- Iskall has exactly one (1) failed assignment. That assignment? The kill or capture of Stress. Stress and Iskall have been, or should it be were now, friends for a very long time, since before Iskall even met Ren. So one can imagine the stress this causes Iskall, to be told to kill his one remaining friend that he knows is alive. Of course, this stress is quite enough to to Stress's Stress Monster into one it's strongest yet seen forms, allowing for Stress to then get away. (1/2)(2/2) Of course, Con Corp doesn't- and can never- know the true reason that Iskall cannot kill or capture Stress. If they knew, if they subjected Stress to the same hell he's in- no, that cannot happen. So Iskall hires False to protect Stress, to interfere whenever they send him on a mission for her. Luckily, False is good at keeping secrets when she wants to, and this one she'll keep. But as far as Con Corp knows, Iskall has severe stress and trauma from being a cyborg, and that's why he fails. [This all adds up to a monumental waste of Concorp's time and money, which also results in False getting payed, so all parties involved are happy except for Concorp >:)]

- Impulse would take a bullet for his teammates, and he knows they might be about to take one for him, keeping him updated on what's going on government side of this... slander. Still, Tango and Zed are great actors, and if he didn't know better, he might be a little worried they would *actually* be hunting him down in the name of justice [Tango and Zed are now being sent on missions to retrieve Impulse, which they must pretend to lose believably. They occasionally overestimate their friend's abilities and give him a few more close calls than he'd like, but overall the ruse is holding up.]

Writing:

- Wels, Hels, TFC, and Grumbot

- Bdubs Concorp promotion and desertion

- Joe Hills in his time dilation hideout

- Etho clones, ZIT, and the nHo

- Keralis and Void

- [ALTERNATE] Reveal of Impulse's situation with the nHo

Art:

- Impulse suit design

#hermitcraft #hermitblr #hcraft #Hermitopia AU #masterpost #long post #mod Shade

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0poole · 4 years

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I LOVE No Straight Roads

Honestly it’s hard to keep me away from a game with great visuals and even greater character design. I knew from the INSTANT I saw these characters that I was going to love it. I just finished it because it’s (unfortunately) pretty short, and even though I cheesed the final boss through it’s very lenient death mechanics (Instant respawn at the cost of a good rank) I actually appreciated that it wasn’t a pure cake walk. I’ve yet to rematch all of the bosses, but since I had genuine trouble with the later ones I’ll hold off on that.

But who cares about gameplay, am I right? I sure as hell don’t. I would’ve bought the game no matter what the hell it was. I wanted the characters (and the music, although I realized that second) and that was it.

First of all, I love any world that is super fantastical but cheesy in its concept, ala a city powered by music, and battles between artists using music. Ideas like this only spawn from a mind that wants to create a fun atmosphere, if nothing else, and it was sure as hell fun. I genuinely love when someone goes so far into a crazy idea and doesn’t waste your time explaining it with real world logic. Wanna know how a city can be powered by music? Shut up and look at the cute virtual mermaid. Lord knows I did. Every once in a while, it does you good to just let the player/reader/viewer just revel in the idea without having to go out of your way to make things seem realistic. It’s not about “turning your brain off” or whatever, it’s picking your battles.

Also, I can seriously love a world with great background characters to it. Any game with the right situation to insert the random nobodies you find onto the streets into the art in the credits really played into the greatness of the world’s less important characters, and that’s always a good thing. It’s technically world building. But, since I always love to pick favorites, I’d have to say my favorite background character is easily Mia, the NSR infodesk assistant. It’s funny, because you can literally search “nsr characters” into Google and she’s the third image result. I love how jumpy she is when you first interact with her, since NSR probably spread the word about B2J suggesting they’re rock thugs who’d beat up anyone, so for all she knows she could die right then and there with a guitar lodged in her skull. She’s probably just some intern trying to pay for college. She don’t want trouble.

Also, I just realized that 90% of the characters in this game have the same body structure that I always love, that being having arms/legs that sort of fan out in width into relatively large hands/feet. It’s a kind of limb structure I fall into so much because it just really hits me right for some reason. I really can’t explain why.

Anyways, I gotta talk about the big boys individually:

Mayday and Zuke are an amazing duo. I’m always a sucker for a cute and crazy girl, but honestly Zuke hit so many of the right notes too. I will say it’s weird to pair the martian Zuke with the humanly-skinned Mayday, but honestly it doesn’t even matter because he looks so cool on his own. I love his weird blocky blue dreadlocks, and his weirdly shaped shirt which bares his chest in the weirdest way... And, oh my god, Mayday’s weird Spongebob background flower eyes? It’s little tidbits like that that really make me jealous. How could I have ever thought of that? It looks so perfect, and I don’t know why. And her little booty jig she does in her idle animation? Adorable. I played as her as much as was reasonable not only because I’m a filthy button masher with little strategy but also because she’s so damn cute. I can also appreciate how she has a tough-as-nails persona while still keeping a semi-girly attitude, like with her falling for 1010 and Sayu. Characters are so much better when they’re a perfect blend of characteristics, instead of being all one-note, like how Zuke is the quiet one but gets heated against DK West, and all.

Honestly the voice acting for every character is great, but I love when Mayday’s VA’s accent shows through. It’s a perfect twang to accent (consider this the only acknowledgement of a pun in this post) her snarkiness.

DJ Subatomic Supernova was going to be an easy favorite since he’s all space-themed. Also, I don’t know why I always end up liking the egotistic characters. Not in the sense that I like their egotistic-ness, but in the sense that I like everything else about them and they just so happen to also be egotistic. The same applied with Empoleon (maybe like my 2nd favorite Pokemon) and Rarity from MLP, probably among others. Either way, I’ll never not love space themes. Not to mention he’s got a funky disco theme, and I’m slowly starting to realize that I am in extreme love with techno-funk styles of music. The instant I heard his music he cemented his place into my playlists.

As for design, I still have no idea what the fuck he is. Clearly AI is at human levels in this world, but if he’s a robot why does he still have hairy legs? But, if he’s a human, is that weird orb his head? Is it just some sort of puppet which he controls from inside his giant jacket? I know I dissed explaining things realistically but I actually want to know with this guy. Even the wiki doesn’t say. Either way, he’s clearly the logical extreme of “being at the center of your own universe.” Even his jacket depicts a solar system, with his hood being the sun. Didn’t see that until I tried to draw him. I really wish this guy wasn’t so tied to his DJ stand so I could reasonably draw him without it. I don’t want to draw his hairy ass legs. It is a great touch for his design though (although I prefer his beta look with pants and long boots, another design trait I tend to gravitate to) since DJs could reasonably not wear pants, since they’re always behind a table.

Sayu is my favorite. It’s so plainly obvious. It’s weird to say that sometimes, because some characters like Sayu are so clearly engineered to be as adorable as possible, to the point where they’re basically a parody of whatever they’re supposed to be emulating, but then they do that so well that they are still likable for what they’re trying to parody. Also, even though I’ve never looked into any vocaloid superstars myself, the fact that they exist and are loved in real life is absolutely perfect to be used as a character design in a world like this. It’s so weird conceptually, but we all know it’s normal and realistic. But yeah, she’s a giga-cutie whom I’ve already drawn and I’ve listened to her theme on loop on many different occasions. Favorite character, favorite track, favorite weapon of choice (What did I say about Empoleon?), which, and I wouldn’t have noticed this myself, looks like the USB symbol you see above USB ports on computers. How crazy perfect is that?

Even apart from my unbridled love for cute monster robot(?) girls, her boss fight is probably the 2nd greatest of them all, at least conceptually. She’s just a hologram, so you can’t touch her, but you CAN disconnect the artists which control her in order to defeat her. It’s the kind of concept for a boss fight that could only work for this type of character. I’m a sucker for the cute girl that provides her voice, but I love how the animator (video editor? the yellow one) actually attacks you with a mouse and lowers the brightness of the setting once he appears. Also, the mocap guy being the deeply-voiced type but still providing the adorable movements of her body. It’s such a great combo of characters, and their little extra art in the credits makes me like them even more. I just wish we could interact with them individually.

DK West was probably one of the most interesting characters visually, especially since I knew of every other NSR member long before the game came out, but I only just heard of him closer to the release. I wasn’t sure where he was placed, but I definitely assumed his gig was the weird shadow demon we saw in the trailers. When I finally saw him in game, I was shocked to hear him speak an entirely different language most of the time, which was really cool. Also, finding out he was tied to Zuke and wasn’t strictly an NSR artist really made him more interesting. You know, if his fucking shadow clone magic didn’t make him crazy cool enough. Even though I suck at his game and am not especially fond of his raps, the visual of him rapping with this giant monster behind him and dozens of weird shadow wingmen by his side hyping him up was probably one of the coolest in the entire game. The dark way they were hyping him up too gave such a bizarre atmosphere, especially since it parallels his seemingly chill and smiley demeanor.

I definitely hope they’ll introduce new bosses as DLC in the future, and make them sort of in the same vein as DK West, where they aren’t the biggest artists ever, but they want to pick a fight with B2J. I’d kill for any extra content this game can provide.

Yinu is obviously special since she was the subject of the demo they put out for the game. Even though I knew all her bells and whistles, she and her mom still beat me a few times in the full game. Considering she’s semi-tied to story-ish spoilers I kinda want to go more into her in a separate section. It is worth considering playing the game first since it’s not hard (with the easy going deaths) and it’s short length.

1010 seriously grew on me as I learned more about them and interacted with them. I got their shtick when I first looked at them, but after seeing that animation of them touring the city on Youtube I was kinda falling for them. Then, I learned that they’re apparently repurposed navy war robots? I mean, maybe not them specifically, but it seems to heavily point in that direction, with the warship cars and “attention!”s and all. It took me a bit to get into their music too, but once I actually fought them and put their actions to the music I fell in love with it. I swear, Neon J’s weird dancing can has some of the smoothest moves in all of gaming. I don’t know whether they mocapped out those movements or got one of the greatest animators ever, but it looks so impossibly clean his part of the song gets me like 30x more hype than it would normally.

Also, their little art piece of them looking at fan mail in the credits is probably one of the most adorable things ever. Even if they’re just Neon J’s puppets, that piece of art really makes it seem like they love every one of their fans. I’m not gonna lie, I might swoon a bit too if they picked me out and gave me some special attention.

Oh yeah, and the fact that Mayday was super sad in her showstopper against them was adorable and hilarious at the same time. The little tweaks they made to the showstopper for each fight were great.

Eve just has to be Lady Gaga, right? Like, an even crazier Lady Gaga. DJSS is Daft Punk (or any artist with a helmet persona, you know what I’m talking about), Sayu is Hatsune Miku, DK West is Kanye West, Yinu is a generic child protege, 1010 is a KPop boyband (just pick one) and Eve is Lady Gaga. That’s just how things are. But, again, this is the kind of boss fight that only this type of character could provide. It’s not just surreal imagery, it’s ARTISTIC surreal imagery. The fight is so mesmerizing in every way, especially by how it starts off so slow and calm and progresses to insanity, as well as the increased emotional investment in the fight making you feel so much more into it than just “That’s the boy band. Let’s fight.” Not only does it get you more invested, but it makes her artistic persona go deeper than just “she looks weird.” She is genuinely conflicted about her relationship with Zuke, and naturally that leads her to literally split him and Mayday apart. That mechanic specifically was the coolest, although I do wish they made it more obvious when you needed to switch over to a different side. I was getting pulverized by her fight too, since there were so many things to pay attention to. Her fight was definitely the best one.

Tatiana and Spoilers:

Let’s be real with ourselves, the twist was so obvious. I do also think, though, that obvious twists aren’t bad if they’re just good reveals. At some point, a person just has experienced so many stories that “only pretty good” twists are easy to spot. It doesn’t mean that the twists are bad, it just means you yourself experienced.

I feel like her transition from rock to EDM was pretty understandable, even as a non-musician. She was so caught up in what she assumed was popular that it basically consumed her. It’s easy as an artist to want to forgo what you truly want to make in favor of what makes you popular, and clearly since her transition to EDM made her the CEO of the biggest company in the city (world?) that probably made her think she truly needed to change her outlook. Then, when she saw B2J try to bring it back, she sort of coined them as being as misguided as she was and knocked them down a peg. Plus, they were kinda being jerks about it.

It’s kinda like the Trolls sequel, where everyone pegs rock music fanatics as being too stuck up in their own heads to appreciate other types of music, which honestly seems more like the case than the alternative. When I first heard of the story of the game, I was seriously hoping they did put an asterisk on B2J’s ambitions because they were a bit sketchy from the start.

That’s kinda where I want to talk about Yinu, because she was the true turning point in what they were doing. She’s literally 9 and yet she’s getting dragged into all this BS. When she said “I hate you all” at the end of her fight, and played a somber tune on her broken piano after the fight destroyed it, you kinda got a kick in the face to realize you’re kinda being an asshole to some of them. Sure, they fight back, but they wouldn’t fight in the first place if they didn’t have to. They are just people who play music under a joint name that B2J just so happened to get in hot water with.

Then, of course, there’s Kliff, who also reeked of surprise villain, and who’s basically the embodiment of the bad side of B2J, where he just wanted to destroy for his own sake and not for the actual greater good. Once B2J realized their mistake, they backed off, but Kliff was so hard pressed to do what he planned on in the first place he wouldn’t stop. I kinda wish he got a bigger fight to his own since he’s clearly a big enough tech genius to divert a whole satellite into one specific building. Maybe the Elliecopter chase bit was his thing, but I do kind of wish he was there to fight against them too.

Even though Tatiana did kind of reform a bit quick, It’s still not too crazy to assume she could see that B2J was just misguided and the fact that they worked to revert their wrongdoings for her sake would make a pretty strong impressions. They clearly can hold their own, so it’s not like she wouldn’t want them to join NSR too.

Oh yeah, and her boss fight was clock/time themed. If there’s a theme under space that I love, it’s clocks/time.

And If I am to be respected by the internet, I must provide a negative opinion to balance out my positive one. I will say that the character model physics (like Mayday’s braids, DK West’s vest thing, Neon J’s fluffy neck thing, etc) got kinda funky at times. Especially DK West’s vest, which was completely messed up for every scene he was in... Also, even though the voices are mostly great, some lines felt a bit off. Just a bit. That good enough? Good.

But yeah anyway that’s another favorite game to add to the pile. Eventually I’m gonna have to compile a true list of my all-time favorite games/movies because I do kind of want to have a solid idea of what my all-time favorites are.

#nsr #no straight roads #bunk bed junction #dj subatomic supernova #sayu #yinu #dk west #spoilers #1010 #eve #tatiana #rambling #review #poole #etc #opinions #rant

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theoriginalcarnivorousmuffin · 4 years

Note

After that gorgeous sequel rant, would you be willing to share your thoughts on reylo?

Ugh.

Once again, that is the most succinct, easiest, answer I can supply. But it's so short, and that just won't do.

I mentioned in a recent post that Dramione comes in a myriad of disguises. Every fandom usually has at least one Dramione ship, you can usually guess which characters the ship will consist of, and while you might not be able to articulate exactly what about it makes it so damn similar to Dramione you will recognize it on sight.

Usually, to me, a Dramione ship features a strong, independent, female lead who may be varying levels of sexually empowered, varying levels of intelligent (Hermione loves to tell us how smart she is but it's not the heart of the ship), is strong, courageous, and noble who depending on the story du jour might slide into depravity. The real give away is her love interest, always a man, usually a young man of comparable age, who has the bad boy appeal that's not too bad boy where he often is redeemed to the good side for 'reasons' in the course of the story.

Reylo is such a Dramione pairing.

You don't believe me? Look at the authors who write it, I haven't done this too often myself, but I guarantee you that a not small majority of them will either write Draco/Hermione or will have it all over their favorites and bookmarks. It's the same damn pairing.

But worse.

Because Kylo-Ren and Rey aren't really characters.

"Whoa, hold up!", you say, "That's just slander and uncalled for!" Well, change my mind. Rey Palpatine and Kylo-Ren are a series of character tropes and archetypes thrown to us by Disney screaming "LOVE MY CHARACTERS".

Rey is our noble, very Luke like, hero who is a scrappy desert rat with overwhelming mystical powers only acknowledged when the movies feel like acknowledging them (guys, admit Rey kicked Kylo-Ren's ass every time they fought with 0 training, come on, it's not hard).

However, there is nothing underneath her surface. Her hero worship of the resistance feels dull and given to her because it's expected. Of course Rey likes the resistance! The resistance is great! Sign her up! Rey has been living in the desert at the edge of nowhere for presumably 15 years, I'm shocked she's even heard of the new republic let alone the resistance. Despite essentially starving and only having a home that's a broken down old fighter, Rey saves a random droid. We're not really given a compelling reason of why she would do this, that she has a deep respect for droids/is horrified by their use, really really really hates the random trader she sells things to, or really really really hates the empire (if she even realizes it's them behind the bounty). She does it just so that a) the plot keeps moving b) to show Rey is... noble... I guess?

Remember that even Luke (who I have some problems with as a character) started his journey with more backstory and personality than this. Luke loved the empire and desperately wanted to become a pilot. He was very put out that his aunt and uncle kept saying, "Uh, no, bad idea." Luke was ready to skip town and sign on up for flight academy, he just got distracted by pretty women, er, his sister.

So, Rey is never given a compelling reason to do any of the things she does in the series. Just vague feelings of hero worship. And, of course, the drama over her parents. Just... I feel like Disney took out a hat, put a bunch of pieces of paper with words on them, and drew out the one that said "orphan angst about parents" and said "See, now she's conflicted! What a character!"

So yeah, Rey is your cardboard generic hero who is so generic she's not even a person. She has no hopes, no dreams, no fears, just these vague things we're told as an audience she cares about but never shown in any legitimate manner. Rey likes the resistance and rando droids, Rey imprints on Han Solo as the father she never had, Rey has this thing about her parents, Rey is attracted to Kylo Ren.

And that last one, oh boy that last one. It sold me less on the attraction to Kylo Ren than... oh... I don't know... Palpatine's secret Sith planet of doom. I mean, we all saw it coming, The Last Jedi it was very clear where that was going and then Abrams went for it even harder. But what we had was a series of skype conversations where Rey went from "Gr, you killed my pseudo father!" and Kylo-Ren responding, "Yeah, well he was my real father AND HE WAS SO MEAN" to "Oh Ben, I will fly to you through space and we shall save the galaxy together!"

I am given no reason to believe Rey's change of heart. Han Solo's death just suddenly... doesn't really mean much to her anymore (the man was murdered by his son in cold blood so that his son could feel better about himself). She believes Ben Solo is good now because Luke is a dick (never mind that, no matter what a dick Luke is, Ben Solo still murdered dozens of children and then went on to gleefully massacre his way through the galaxy). We're told there's a Force Dyad, which is um... not this thing the writer's made up because they were too lazy to convince me that Kylo-Ren and Rey would end up together in any organic way.

So, yeah, why does Rey like Kylo-Ren? Because the Force told her too? Because it was somehow all Snoke's fault in a way that's never properly described? (Indeed despite us spending quite a bit of time on Kylo-Ren's decision to remain Kylo-Ren being a very internalized thing) Because we saw him shirtless in yoga pants this one time?

It's bad when that last is actually the most legitimate reason I can think of out of the whole lot.

Now let's go to Kylo-Ren. If Rey is boring and nonsensical then Kylo-Ren is a dumpster fire and non-sensical. The guy reminds me a lot of Commodus from the film "Gladiator", the man is cowardly, vile, and murders his father in despair that his father never will be capable of loving him/passes him over for the throne. Kylo-Ren's murder of Han Solo is extremely similar to the murder of Marcus Aurelius in "Gladiator". Han Solo is a flawed father, trying to make his peace with his son, who approaches him unarmed and Kylo-Ren decides to murder him in order to solidify his place in the dark side.

Only, the films never acknowledge that every action Kylo-Ren takes is horrifying.

We're told "oh, Kylo-Ren exists because evil Snoke corrupted him" but also shown repeatedly that Kylo-Ren chooses the darkest path again and again and again. He "struggles with the light" but I don't see it. His opening scene, he has massacred a village and is torturing a man for information (this is presumably a daily routine for him). In the same film he later tortures Rey for information. He serves on a Death Star which wipes out billions in an instant. He murders his father to feel good about himself. He dresses as a man who was reviled and feared throughout the galaxy, a man who murdered countless children, and a man who dressed the way he did because he was barely hanging onto life, because Kylo-Ren thinks it makes him look like a badass. Think about it, this is like if a fully abled Kylo-Ren is wheeling around in a wheel chair, perfectly capable of walking, because he thinks that Professor X is so cool. Now, replace Professor X with Hitler, this is what the movies gave us.

Yet, the films seem to take it for granted that Kylo-Ren is a redeemable character. He's just lost and misguided, he's really struggling with the light and dark side! They don't just tell us this over and over again (which they do) but also just assume we know it.

And base the entire Reylo pairing off of it. Reylo believed Kylo-Ren could be redeemed, they battle Snoke together, then Kylo-Ren stabs her in the back and continues the assault on the Resistance and asks her to be his Dark Queen (TM). Reylo is shocked and appalled, I'm just wondering what movie she thought she was watching, because that was coming a mile away.

Later, when Kylo-Ren is redeemed, we're never given a reason why it happens. Leia just gives him a nagging, one word, phone call and then Han Solo shows up to go, "Ben, are you going to do the right thing?" and Ben goes, "Mumble, grumble, fine" because there's only an hour left in the last film.

Kylo-Ren, like Rey, is the writers' desperate attempt to create a compelling anti-hero with all the anti-hero sauce we love. They just won't admit they made an overgrown genocidal toddler.

Wow, this turned into why I hate both Rey and Kylo Ren, but, uh, back to the ship. Basically, the films give me 0 reason to ever believe it, and even if I wanted to, even if I said "Alright brain, let's make these characters real people for once", I still wouldn't like it. Because the ship itself is just as flat as the characters. It's spicy but not too spicy bad boy gets together with strong female lead.

I know a lot of people enjoy this, and I won't say it's any less legitimate than any of the weirdness I ship, but I'm not one of them. And the whole thing just makes me go "ugh".

#ask #anon #anti reylo #anti kylo ren #anti rey #anti star wars sequels

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crysdrawsthings · 3 years

Note

Since they themselves are demons inhabiting a crystal body do the fuzzes have any opinions on or interesting encounters with Eldar Wraith Constructs (what with them being Eldar souls in a crystal, piloting warp reactive bone shells)

Great question!

I would imagine they find it a rather curious idea, probably kind of odd since this is not entirely how souls should work? But I bet there is a certain sense of "hey, same hat" moment about the whole thing.

Lacedrace, Lord of Change probably finds the whole thing with Eldar Spirit Stones a great field for future research, especially given how she was the one to initially coin in the idea of crystal bodies among Fuzzes. So I bet she is interested to study the whole thing, hoping as well to perfect her own work in the process and make being in real space even easier on five of them.

An'Hangra, Bloodthirster I would say, finds it really cool for the simple reason of Wraith Constructs being formidable and even legendary foes to clash with, and wanting to throw hands beyond death itself is something she can really relate to and approve.

Balthrag, Great Unclean One likely finds the idea slightly odder, as it seems to be... Very un-embracing of your decay and death, which is not something she really supports? Also, all these spaceships can really use more vegetation and bog there. I imagine she can actually find more common ground with Exodites and their very natural worlds?

Shanakay, Keeper of Secrets... Okay, l would personally assume that she, being a daemon of Slaanesh is on every "Kill on Sight" list existing between Eldar, so I feel like pretty much every encounter would be a combat encounter. Or stealth. I bet it pisses her off because she just knows that these pesky elves have some really unique skills she just must learn, but they are not sharing. Ugh.

#wh40k #wh 40k #wh 40k oc #warhammer 40k #warhammer 40k oc #chaos daemons #aeldari #craftworld eldar #of hopes and daemons #lazy fuzz #tzeentchian!fuzz #khornate!fuzz #nurglite!fuzz #slaaneshi!fuzz #crysandthings #my ramblings #my oc

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solarwonux · 4 years

Text

prince!wonwoo x witch!reader

w.c: 4.3k (I almost made it 5k but I stopped myself)

warnings: murder, death, alcohol, tarot cards, running away, witchy things if you squint, angst, smut, ropes.

note: special special thanks to my baby @starlightshua she named this beauty lmao. I re wrote this story so many times, literally the first draft of this was nothing like this and then I woke up at 5am today and rewrote the entire thing. I’m pretty proud so I hope you enjoy it. Also let me know if you want more of this, I have some ideas. Enjoy.x

Wonwoo pushes the tavern door open a little too hard. It hits the brick wall behind it, the sound erupting through the wasted and nearly wasted bodies that occupied the space. He doesn’t care, he needs a drink or many of them for that matter so he walks letting the door rattle obnoxiously behind him. The people eyeing him down like he just murdered their first born and not interrupted their nightly escapades.

He reaches the bar taking the worn out stool at the end and taps his fingers against the wooden counter. He was a regular and sadly had gotten used to the mustiness that was etched into the walls of the place and yet he still felt out of place.

“What does our royal guest of honor want tonight?” Mingyu rapped his fingers drumming in front of Wonwoo, grabbing his attention.

“Not royal, but bourbon please.”

Ever since he ran away from his Royal duties and somehow ended up in a tavern that existed harmoniously to bring two worlds together. Wonwoo had seen and witnessed things he had only grown up hearing during his mother’s bedtime stories. A secret language they shared when hidden behind the comfort of his bedroom. Away from the torturous hands of the King.

“As you wish your majesty.” Mingyu’s sarcastic drawl took him out of the spiral inside his head. He rolled his eyes obnoxiously as he watched Mingyu throw his head back in laughter, his fangs catching in the reflection of the dim light causing a chill to roll up his spine. “You’re so uptight tonight, relax a little Prince Charming.” He winked at Wonwoo before turning around and walking away from him.

No matter how hard he tried to leave the life he had behind, everyone here in this tavern that belonged neither here nor there, loved to remind him that he still had the king’s royal blood coursing through his veins. Usually, he didn’t mind, sometimes he would play into the character when he was drunk enough to earn a few laughs. But tonight on the final night of October, he didn’t want to be reminded of his true identity.

On Hallows Eve, three years ago his life had gone south. He was set to marry a princess from a neighboring kingdom and he couldn’t wait to meet her during the annual ball. He had woken up that morning with a jolt and skipped a step as he made his way to his mother and father’s private chamber. When he arrived, his heart, in his throat. He found his father the charming King beloved by his people with his hands around his mother’s throat and a murderous glimmer behind his soft eyes while she slowly turned a rough shade of blue.

Wonwoo felt his world crash onto the ground. his father didn’t stop no matter how hard he pleaded for him too. His tears fell onto the palace grounds creating tsunami’s as he witnessed his mother take her last breath.

He ran, ran to where his feet could carry him. Packed up anything that could fit in the tiny knapsack he used whenever he went to explore the forest behind the palace. And left, leaving behind the life he had only ever known.

He traveled for three days on foot without food nor rest, before he came across the tavern that smelled more like rotten feet than whiskey. He met Mingyu, who had recognized him right away and gave him the tavern’s royal treatment. Food, water and the rickety old room just above the tavern.

“It’s not satin or velvet or whatever you guys use over there, but it’s enough for you to sleep. Just pay me back by working here every odd day of the week.” Mingyu said, clapping his shoulder and leaving him behind to deal with his new reality.

That night was the night he was able to mourn his mother’s death and his own one as well. The king had come out publicly with fake tears in his eyes to say that his wife and his second born son had fallen ill to an illness and that when the royal physicians realized it, it had been too late. Though, everyone in the tavern knew the truth and he found comfort knowing that they hated the king just as much as he did.

“Penny for your thoughts my prince.” The angelic voice he had grown to love so much took him out of his thoughts. He lived in his head too much and he was thankful he had you —a witch he had met during one of his shifts over a year ago, to ground him back down onto Earth.

“Don’t call me that.” He smiled and grabbed hold of your hand and brought it up to his lips. He kissed it lightly keeping his eyes on yours as they burned holes of fire into them. You tensed up feeling the heat run up your body. It was laughable. You, a witch who could make anyone succumb and fall at her feet, was letting a runway prince pursue her and turn her into mush at his feet.

“You liked it when I said in bed once.”

“That was one time, princess.” He winked, enjoying the way your cheeks flushed. Your body reacted amorously to him and each time it bubbled an emotion deep inside of him that he wasn’t sure what it was. It scared him and excited him all at the same time.

Wonwoo stopped believing in love three years ago but every time you were nearby. He believed that he could again.

“One to many times Wonwoo.” You toyed as you took the empty seat next to him. Your hand still entrapped in his and you weren’t planning on letting go any time soon.

Mingyu rolled his eyes and placed Wonwoo’s drink in front of him, “Wonwoo has a prince kink?.” He mumbled his voice laced with disgust. “I should’ve known.” and leaned against the wooden table, shooting daggers at Wonwoo.

“Not a kink if that’s what he is Gyu.”

Wonwoo didn’t care that he still had royal blood in him, because whenever he found himself laughing at Mingyu’s poor attempts to flirt with nymphs. Or your presence next to him he forgot that he did. He wondered if his mother had led him here to this repulsive tavern in order to meet the two of you.

Although Wonwoo knew you were perfectly capable at defending yourself. He loved walking you home.

The two of you trailed down the dirt path hand in hand; chasing the blue light of the moon. Comfortable silence erupting between your bodies. Wonwoo never felt more at home then now.

“So what’s a witch like you doing with a commoner like me on Hallow’s Eve.” Wonwoo glanced at you his eyes sparkling like they held a million galaxies and you found yourself wanting to get lost in them. “Don’t you have rituals or cards to read, aren’t you the most powerful underneath a blue moon.” He edged on making you smile.

“Are you saying you want your cards read again?” You bumped your shoulder against his. His grip on your hand falters making you giggle.

Wonwoo’s eyes grew wider than the moon as he remembered the night you read his cards to him for the first time a few weeks ago and he blushed. “Last time you read my cards I ended tied up.”

“Well that’s cause you picked my sex deck Wonwoo, we’ve been over this.” You stopped walking and leaned up to kiss his cheek, leaving a plum lipstick mark behind. “Don’t act like you didn’t like it.” You whispered in his ear.

Wonwoo swallowed hard at your taunting tone. He knew you were right and he hated it. If you had asked him with that infamous bat of your eyelashes he would’ve done it again. “For once angel I want to see you tied up.” He blurted out, his cheeks turning a rough shade of red as he processed what he had said after he had said.

“Okay, but you’re going to have to catch me first.”

“Catch you, what a—.”

Before Wonwoo could finish his sentence you took off running. Wonwoo threw his head back in disbelief, his body coursing with exhaustion for a brief second before he took off as well. This is what he loved most, the adrenaline rush you brought to him. Although sometimes he thought you were too much he wouldn’t trade the moments he spent with you for anything in the world. Not even for his mother’s life and you had offered a few times, but he refused because with you he felt complete.

Your laughter rang through the howling branches of the trees surrounding the two of you. Wonwoo’s body felt like it was floating as he chased after you, the cool night air hitting his face as he ran with everything in him. It reminded him of the times he spent at the palace gardens chasing after his older brother, his mother’s voice ringing in his ears as she joined in halfway. It was these moments where he was the most carefree, that reminded him of his mother. That made him miss her with everything in his being. It was moments like these where the anger and resentment towards his father would surface and he wished he hadn’t had run away that day. But this was different because for the first time in his life he was running towards someone, a goal.

“Maybe you don’t want it enough Wonwoo. Are you even trying?” You teased, he could tell he was close from how loud your voice sounded. It only gave him motivation to run faster, so he did.

You faded into view, it felt like he was seeing you for the first time in his life. You were leaning against a tree, arms cockily crossed in front of you, waiting. He let his feet carry him like the wind around him and soon he was crashing into you like an ocean wave. You laughed silently. The impact, knocking the air out of your lungs making you feel lighter than a cloud.

Almost as if by instinct Wonwoo’s arms found their way around your body, his face morphing into one of concern. He didn’t mean to crash into you as hard as he did or at all, but sometimes when he was with you his body acted as if it were unattached to his brain. “I’m sorry are you okay?” He placed his fingers underneath your chin lifting your head up so your watery eyes locked with his.

You planted your hands on his chest, balling your fist wrinkling his starch white button down and nodded. “With-- y-you I’m always okay.” You gasped and closed the distance. Your lips were on his faster than he could blink and he felt himself melt.

In fairytales silver and water were a witches ' kryptonite. In this life you were Wonwoo’s.

Wonwoo didn’t win but he should’ve known you were going to give in to his desires. Despite your sneaky ways he knew he could always trust you but still it had caught him off guard when you had given him the onyx ropes upon entering your small cottage.

“You wanted to tie me up right? Now’s your chance.” The amount of trust that laid behind your eyes was overwhelming. And no one, not even his mother, had trusted him like you did.

He placed the ropes down on your old wooden bed and kissed you with everything in him.

When his mother would tell him the damsel in distress stories during bed time. She always described the ending kiss as if it were the most magical thing in the universe, with fireworks exploding and butterflies running mayhem in pits of stomachs. But you weren’t a damsel in distress and his mother’s description of a true love’s kiss didn’t do this kiss justice.

Wonwoo very much felt like he was thrown in the middle of space and was now dumbly floating around. His body felt lighter than air, but heavy at the same time. He didn’t feel fireworks nor the butterflies but he did feel the adrenaline dip in the mouth of his stomach and the strikes of lightning that raced through his veins. He felt brand new, and he was ready to give himself to you, just like he had many nights before but this time it felt different, important and special.

Maybe Wonwoo was finally releasing the lock he had around his heart, but if he didn’t know any better--and he didn’t. He was positive that what he was feeling for you in this moment of vulnerability was love.

“I want to take my time.” He whispered against your lips as your fingers toyed with the buttons of his shirt. “I want to be with you forever but I don’t know how.” He crushed the hem of your silk black shirt between his fingers. Your hands stopped their movements and you pulled away. They wandered up to his cheek, your index finger playing with the tiny sunspots that only you were able to see. He looked so small and scared and you were sure you mirrored his same expression because the grip he had on your shirt got tighter.

You had been in love once. Many lifetimes ago and they had been taken from you because of what you were. You promised yourself you would never love again and you spent years alone, until you found yourself in the odd old tavern.

For as long as you lived in the old supernatural town, you never once paid attention to that old tavern. Until one night during blue moon much like the one tonight, a little over a year ago you found yourself drawn to it. Your feet carried you there by themselves, your mind on autopilot and before you knew you were sitting in front of the bar, looking at a curious boy that resembled the prince you grew up hating, but that was impossible because he had been dead for years.

To your surprise he was the prince and he had spilled two strawberry margaritas on you ruining your new favorite shirt. You cursed him out, wondering why he wasn’t deader than dead as he apologized. He dropped everything before taking your hand in his and leading you up the rickety old stairs that led to the room above. Without a word he tore his poor excuse of a room apart until he found you a clean shirt and you put it on not after pushing him out of the room for some privacy.

If you had known that you would still keep that same shirt hidden deep in your closet you would’ve laughed because that was the first night you started to fall for him and every passing moment you were with him felt like you were being reborn again. Like a part of you didn’t die behind the flames of the burning fire as you watched your lover yell out for his life. That memory was buried deep in your mind and you had never told Wonwoo in fear that he would look at you differently. Like you weren’t his lifeline anymore, so, you kept it locked away inside of your heart just like the love you felt for him. One day you would tell him just not tonight. Tonight you wanted to keep your secret and instead be with him in every way possible.

“Take your time but tonight make me yours please.”

Wonwoo didn’t tie the ropes hard enough and it made you laugh at his shaking hands as they traveled down your flushed out body. You had assured him that you had suffered through worse than the burning of ropes against your skin. But he paid no attention to your statement as he finished his second and final loop on your bedpost.

He kissed his way down your body slowly, giving extra love the parts he knew would have you unraveling in no time.

This was one of the things you loved most about him, instead of getting what he wanted and leaving. He took his time getting to know your wants and needs. You’ve had many lovers in the past and none of them had felt nor treated you the way Wonwoo did.

With love.

“You feel so warm already.” He whispered against the skin of your stomach, slowly getting closer to where you wanted him most. His hands squeezed your thigh and prided them open as he kissed his way further down, hovering his mouth against your clothed core.

You whimpered, tugging at his roots in attempts to bring him closer, “Please Wonwoo please.” You let out an exasperated breath. “I need you close.”

Wonwoo smirked leaving an open mouthed kiss against your core, savoring your honeyduke sweetness that seeped through your panties. Your grip on his hair got tighter as he continued to tease you. Kissing you and humming like he was tasting his last meal. He lapped up once more groaning before hooking his thumbs against the waistband of your panties and pulled them down, sitting down on his knees and throwing them somewhere in your room, joining your already discarded clothes.

The coolness of the wind coming in from your open window made the goosebumps rise against your soft skin. Wonwoo sucked in a breath as he took in how wet you were and for him.

No matter how many times he found himself in this position, your body's reaction to him always left him floored. “Take a picture, it will last longer.” You joked, placing your leg against his shoulder and pulling him down towards you again. Catching him off guard, just like you always did.

“One day I will and then I won’t stop and by the end of it all, I’ll have my own private collection.” He winked laying down in between your legs again. He kissed up your thighs alternating between the two, taking his sweet time like he always did.

“I bet you’d like that...f-fuck.” Wonwoo lapped up your entrance and wrapped his perfect lips around your clit. He closed his eyes savoring your taste, his blunt nails digging into the skin of your thighs.

“Y-Your mouth was—ahh, your mouth was made from the h-heavens.” You arched your back, pushing his head closer with your legs entrapping him. Your hands grabbing on the ropes as you felt your orgasm approach.

A throaty groan fell out of his mouth, sending the vibration up your clit and through your body. The knot in your stomach starting to get tighter. Wonwoo’s index and middle finger swirls around in your pussy. Bathing in the wetness before he slowly inserts them. He always knew you were warm inside but today it felt like you were on fire and he couldn’t wait to devour you further.

He hums happily pulling away and sits up, your leg falling from his shoulder making you whine at the loss of his mouth. “Patience baby I’ll give you everything you want tonight.” He assures before pushing his fingers in even further, your heat entrapping him.

“Ah, f-fuck this feels better than my charms.

“You have sex charms?” He poses curiously. You were a book full of fairytales and he couldn’t wait to read you front in back until the last day of his life.

“I have charms for a lot of things.” You throw your head back in pleasure as he lets his fingers take control. “I-I can show them to you one day.” You let out a breath as you felt your orgasm nearing.

“Why not now?” He brought his thumb onto your clit and started rubbing figure eights circumoniously, while his fingers pistoned into you. If anyone were to ask him what his favorite pastime was he would cheekily answer that it was you falling apart because of him.

“Don’t need them...you make me cum.” You arched your back and pulled on your ropes as your orgasm flooded over you. You moaned Wonwoo’s name like an old incantation in your book of spells as he continued to help you ride out your orgasm.

You always looked beautiful to Wonwoo, like a goddess or an angel sent from above. But the way you looked when you fell apart underneath him, was breathtaking and he wanted to remember it forever.

“Did that feel good?” He takes his fingers out, his palm rubbing soothing circles against your thigh as he brings them up to his lips. Your spent pussy clenched over nothing as you watched him, eyes locked with yours savoring you.

You nod, “It was orgasmic.” You joked. Your weak attempt of a pun makes him laugh. You freed yourself from his poor attempt at binding you to the bed and sat up. Wonwoo watched you dreamily as you wrapped your arms around his neck planting a soft kiss to his wet lips.

“Make me cum again my prince.”

“I’ll make you cum until first light.”

Wonwoo kept true to his word, pulling four more orgasms from you. Each one more intense than the other and you found yourself craving for more, but he had stopped sensing your exhaustion.

He had been right earlier that night in the forest. You were strongest on Hallows Eve and underneath a blue moon, but when it came to Wonwoo you were weak. You didn’t mind it because it was to someone who would without a doubt catch you if you fell hard.

You had read it in his cards the first and only time you drew them for him. You didn’t voice it because his face when you had exposed his kinks was priceless. And because you feared that if you did you would lose him before you could tell him how you felt about him. You weren’t sure when you would but if he kept looking at you and holding you like you were his entire universe. You would without a doubt forget your fears and confess.

“I love you.” Wonwoo’s eyes got wide as he brought his hands up to his mouth covering it. “Sorry I—I fuck I-“

“I love you.” You copied his actions. The two of you letting the silence overcome your ragged breaths. Until he laughed, making you laugh as well. You grabbed his hand and brought it close to your body.

It was unbelievable how afraid the two of you had been when the two of you had unknowingly fallen for each other long ago. Wonwoo sat up on his elbows and moved so he was hovering over you again. “I’ve never once loved, and I’m sure I love you more than anything in this world.” He pecked your lips repeatedly before laying half of his body on yours carefully and putting his head against your chest humming happily.

“I once loved but I didn’t love them the way I love you Wonwoo.”

“That must mean I’m special princess.”

You rolled your eyes, your hands coming up to his shoulders and kneading out the tension that had formed over years of unnecessary stress. “Not a princess...but you’re more than special.”

“In my eyes you’ll always be my princess.” He left a chaste kiss against your collar bone. “But you’re more than special to me too baby, and since we’ve established that can you tell me what’s been bothering you all night.”

“Nothing’s bothering me, why are you asking?”

“You didn’t drink tonight and back when we were walking home you were spaced out half of the time.” He traced a finger up your side teasingly.

You sighed and stopped massaging his shoulders. He was right you had been distracted for half the night wondering how you should tell him the last secret you had. This one you couldn’t keep hidden away because it involved him and his biggest heartbreak.

“I drew a card from my deck this morning.”

He hummed and lifted his head, his eyebrows knitting together, “What was it, anything bad?”

You bit your lip, knitting your fingers into his hair. “The Empress, sometimes I read her as a fertility card an-“

“You’re pregnant?” Wonwoo sat up, your hand falling onto his chest. You giggled, shaking your head profusely. Your contraception charms were safer than any kind of contraception out there.

“God no Wonwoo, not now, but you told me your mom loved peonies right?”

“Yeah, the palace was always filled with them.”

“Okay well for days I’ve been seeing peonies pop up randomly around this place and I just thought it was a coincidence. When I drew my card this morning, The Empress was surrounded by peonies, but I really didn’t think anything of it. When I entered the tavern last night there were peonies in the flowerbed growing. And now that I think about it they were there too the night I met you.”

“What are you saying, that my mom is here somehow?” His voice was filled with hope and you tried hard not to cringe at the sound. The thought had crossed your mind a few times but you always had to remember that even though the supernatural existed peacefully in this world. That rule didn’t apply to the dead, they had strict rules on their side of the realm. If his mom was making an attempt to contact him he was sacrificing her chances at reincarnation.

“I’m saying that maybe your mom didn’t tell you who she really was.”

“Are you saying she was a witch like you?”

As soon as the words left his mouth, he felt comfort. Everything about his childhood made sense. The random peonies that would appear in the garden during the mid of winter. The stories that didn’t feel like stories but more like memories. And her sudden death. He wasn’t sure if his father had known or if he had found out that morning, but whatever the case was he was positive that she had sent you to him. His greatest and last gift to him from her and had never felt more at peace.

“Yes.”

#seventeen imagines #seventeen fanfiction #seventeen fanfic #seventeen x reader #seventeen x you #seventeen x y/n #seventeen smut #seventeen fluff #seventeen wonwoo #wonwoo x reader #wonwoo x you #wonwoo imagines #wonwoo smut #wonwoo fluff

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out-of-this-dimension · 3 years

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Hypothetically Rewriting Assault’s Story + Some General Assault Opinions

There’s a game my husband and I like to play when we watch a movie, play a game, or read a book that has a story that we don’t really enjoy or we enjoy certain parts of but not others. We look at things we’d keep and things we’d change and we build a story from there-- sort of like an AU but we don’t really go into the writing part, we just stick to theorizing and mapping a general story.

I decided to play that game with Star Fox. Not because I think Star Fox has a bad story but because sometimes I think the stories could have been handled better. Note: for the rewrite game, I only really look at story, even for video games, I don’t really look at gameplay mechanics, but I do understand those have a lot to do with story potential so I do take it in as a factor... I just don’t bother to “rewrite” the mechanics, if that makes any sense at all. Some of my list today will include boss encounters but I wouldn’t necessarily say those are mechanic-related... more like “event-related”.

I’ve mused a bit in the past about rewriting Adventures and Command and I do have plans to do a mock up of an Adventures remake eventually. However, today I was thinking about how I would go about handling an Assault re-write in particular. Much like Command and Adventures, I don’t have any beef with the core story but I do think there’s a few things that could’ve been better about Assault’s storyline-- like they had good ideas rolling but they didn’t quite refine them.

Under the cut because SUPER long.

My basic feelings on Assault are pretty positive. I think the game is generally just fun and I like that it feels like the natural progression from SF64. I liked getting to see planets we haven’t seen since the N64 era in better graphics and I liked seeing Star Wolf return. I also just thought the aparoids were neat enemies.

Generally speaking, though, when it comes to Assault, I think it suffers from the thing it tries to push the most-- the story. I think a lot of people get caught up in thinking the story is better than it is because it’s the first game since SF64 that really follows the same Star Fox vibe without retelling the Lylat Wars. Don’t get me wrong, the overall plot is great but the execution and pacing are... wonky. Certain characterizations also take a hit in some regards but no one really talks about that when Command exists. That’s something we’ll talk about later on with this post.

That being said, Assault really does have a lot good going for it. An absolute banger of a soundtrack, some great dialogue, a neat story synopsis, the introduction of cool characters like Panther and Beltino (who existed but was always off-screen), and just good levels.

So, here’s what I would add, I suppose, if I were to somehow have the ability to rewrite Assault. Originally I had this in paragraph form, but I’ve made it into more of a list under topic segments with main points bolded for your viewing pleasure. Some of these points might be considered nitpicky and while I do understand that yes, this is a game about space animals, I do hold the developers in high enough regard to make a game with a continuity that makes sense.

The Story Changes

- Reduce Pigma’s storyline in Assault. This is the biggest one for me because a bulk of the plotline feels like a giant chase to just get at Pigma and it feels like it derails from the actual plot with the aparoids. We only go to Sargasso because of Pigma. We only go to Fichina and then back to Meteo again, because of Pigma. That’s 3 levels in a 10 level game devoted to just tracking down Pigma and chasing him. While it makes the build up to fighting Pigma kind of nice, I personally feel like the plot could be reduced to 2 levels. If Assault overall was a longer game, I could see them making it 3 levels. Overall, though, in its current state, I feel like the side plot overstays its welcome and the aparoids promptly get shoved to the side in favor of “Oh no, we gotta get to Pigma!” And I get the main motive here is to show how the aparoids affect people and because of the build up, it does a good job at showing how utterly terrifying the aparoids are. But it’s still too long given the length of Assault’s story. The only alternative to this is make Assault longer, which... honestly, it should be.

- Revise the scene with Tricky. I’m obviously not well-versed in dinosaur biology but I’m pretty sure dinos didn’t grow that fast from what studying I HAVE done. And why is he suddenly king now? Did his parents die? He seems not affected by this at all? Like it’s a funny scene with him, Fox, and Krystal, but it’s odd if you really look at it. Give us, as players, more context because I’m still not even sure what happened to make Tricky suddenly the leader and... big. As a note, you’re gonna hear me gripe a lot about the Sauria level in this post.

- The Star Wolf + Peppy sacrifice is a low effort way to raise tension/stakes and then cop out. Oldest trick in the book, imo, is to act like you’re going to kill off important characters only for them to be alive miraculously. And let’s face it, as an audience we all know they aren’t going to kill those characters because it’s Nintendo and those characters are too beloved. I would’ve forgiven them for only doing this with Peppy or Star Wolf, but when you tack them both together and throw in the fact they make it seem like you’re going to have to kill General Pepper too... yeah, it’s just a bit much of the same trope over and over again. I wanted to put a note in here about how I’m fine with the Great Fox being “sacrificed” but overall, it needed to return to the series because of it’s icon status, but I think that’s more of a gripe at Command instead of Assault.

- Keep Pigma alive. This will conflict with a point I have later on about the game consistently having characters cheat death for easy drama points but with Pigma, I would’ve kept him fully alive... but maybe with some physical damage from the aparoids. I understand he’s semi-alive in Command and tbh I don’t know where I stand on that. Why keep Pigma alive, you might ask? I feel like his character has a lot more potential than being “just the greedy guy”. Like he’s got good potential future villain material for future games and... if I’m honest? I just don’t see Nintendo wanting to keep Pigma dead so why even bother killing him off? They couldn’t even commit to him being dead in Command anyways so it seems very moot.

- Bring Bill and Katt back. Assault is acts a bit like a big reunion of all of our SF64 favorites but our two favorite side characters are suspiciously missing. Wouldn’t Bill be out on the front lines fighting against Andrew in the beginning? Or maybe back in Katina? And wouldn’t Katt inevitably show up in the midst of the invasion, maybe to pointedly check in on Falco?

- Bring Andrew back for the final fight. I think Andrew being defeated early into the game is fine overall but I think bringing him back in for a reunion final fight against the aparoids would serve to really solidify that it’s really everyone vs the invading aparoid force. It would show that not only is Star Wolf willing to put aside their differences but so is basically everyone in the Lylat System in the name of survival. Imagine the Venomians and Cornerians working together against an aparoid fleet, giving Star Fox and Star Wolf time to attack the queen? I just think it’d be neat and it’d open up the potential for some fun banter mid-mission. I do understand that quite a few people consider Andrew canonically dead after Assault but personally, I feel that his defeat left his fate questionable (I’m a staunch believer that unless there’s a body, they’re probably alive, especially for Nintendo games because, again, they never like to kill people off) so him returning in Command never really bothered me.

- In general, reconsider some of the character portrayals. Unfortunately, when a series has a different studio for each game, character portrayals will inevitably have inconsistencies. While I give Namco a lot of credit for putting in oodles and oodles of detail into the game (particularly the levels), I think they failed in their portrayal of Fox, at the least, and Wolf is a considerable offender as well. While it’s obvious that Fox in Adventures was effectively modeled off of Sabre even in terms of personality, Rareware was at least able to justify Fox’s newfound jaded attitude with the passing of many years and a distinct lack of steady income, resulting in the team being in disarray. Assault’s Fox is a stark contrast to his cynical interpretation with seemingly no explanation other than maybe “Oh, I have more money and a gf, maybe I should behave myself”. As if the sudden change in personality wasn’t random, Fox also just seems very blah, like a blank slate stereotypical shooter game protagonist dude with little to no emotion. Wolf is less obvious but gets slated into a mentor-like role midway through the game and ends up in a respectful rivalry with Fox... which there’s nothing inherently wrong with that except for it happening abruptly (and, I mean, Peppy is right there). But I take less issue with this and more of an issue with the fact that there’s an entire level establishing that Wolf now runs a crime den with effectively what seems to be an army and no one bats an eye at this. He doesn’t even call on them to help with the aparoids. Did they all die when the aparoids attacked Meteo? Are they safe somewhere else? Where do they go? How was Sargasso able to operate without the CDF being on their doorstep with warrants for arrests?

- Don’t kill all the dinosaurs. A bit of a dramatic statement but the ending screen that showed all the damage to Sauria really bothered me. While I understand that the dinosaurs had less of a chance against the aparoids than a more technology-focused society like Corneria, I was a bit disappointed that the decision was made to just state that a lot of tribes had been wiped out. I know this could easily be retconned in a future game and I feel like it should be. “But why, Amalia? Why are you disappointed by that?” 1) It’s a little too grimdark for my tastes. 2) The fact it all happened off-screen felt very hand-wavy. And 3) It brings into question the entire point of Adventures. Why did we bother to save this planet if it was going to be reduced to rubble and ash 1 year later? Where were the Krazoa in all of this? Why did they not make an appearance at all to try to stop the invasion with their alleged powers? It just raises too many weird questions and I feel like Namco didn’t think it through too much. Which I mean, sure. Family, kiddo game. I’m not asking for bigbrain plot and lore but I’m squinting at this bit because it does feel very contrary to the lore from the previous game.

- Make the aparoids more relevant. As nice as it is to have a random bad guy from another galaxy, I feel like there was more that could be done with the aparoids in terms of their origins. Tiny things, mind you, not huge revelations. Off the top of my head, they could have been tied into Krystal’s backstory to help alleviate some of the complaints that she was too random to be added to the series’ main cast. Alternatively, they could have been a product of Andross or even a weapon prototype from Corneria that fled the lab (I actually thought the game was leaning in that direction for a bit then just Nothing Happened). I get that the vagueness of their origins leaves room for people to speculate and speculation is nice but... when you leave too many things unknown, it starts to feel less like giving fans room to interpret and more like just doing random things for the sake of it. I think a lore tidbit here or there would work wonders for the aparoids instead of leaving them as just borg/zerg clones.

Level-Based Changes

- Add either Aparoid RedEye or Aparoid General Scales as a boss to Sauria. Given that this level mysteriously lacks a boss, which is just weird compared to the other levels, I think that they had the opportunity to add something cool to go along with the cinematic feel they were going for with Assault. Assault’s cutscenes do play in a movie-like fashion and it’s clear they’re trying to make the game as epic as possible. It’s a shame they had so much fodder for a great boss here but they failed to go through with it. Alternatively: Add a Krazoa-Aparoid fusion. Why? Because Star Fox is about cool epic sci-fi and that would be cool epic sci-fi incarnate.

- Add a boss to the Aparoid Homeworld Level, aka the penultimate level. Another one I felt was personally weird that there was no “final defense system” to challenge the team. Would be cool to do an aerial battle over the aparoid planet with some giant flying aparoid.

- Be kinder to Sauria. The level had some good homages but overall was incredibly small and incredibly short. It felt like a bone tossed to Adventures fans but was not entirely true to the setting built by Rareware. I’m... not even sure where the Sauria level is supposed to take place? I presume it’s Walled City but it doesn’t really have the same color scheme or aesthetic? Also where is my revised Adventures music? Why do all the other levels get it but Sauria doesn’t?

- Put some of those funky items from the multiplayer into the main campaign. I don’t know why some of these things, items especially, were omitted unless it was purely due to time constraints. I remember having missile launchers and jetpacks in the multiplayer and was a bit sad that they were not in the main campaign. Retuning the levels and adding those in would be a nice breath of fresh air for the more tedious on-foot missions.

- More levels. Self-explanatory. Still sad we didn’t get the Zoness or Titania levels in the single-player mode.

I think all of the above changes would improve the game, though I recognize all of this is being said 16 years later after lots of time to contemplate Assault’s weaker points. I’m not entirely certain how long Star Fox Assault took to develop but given that there’s obviously quite a bit scrapped from the game (an entire arcade mode was scrapped as well), I’m going to assume that the studio felt pressured to shove the game out the door and into the hands of customers. It’s a shame, really, because I think a little bit longer in the oven would have done a lot of good. Still, the product we got was good in its own right and a game that many people look back on fondly. I haven’t gotten to replay it in years but I hope to quite soon.

You might wonder why I bothered typing this all out and I guess my point was this-- Assault was great but it wasn’t perfect, and while a lot of other games fall under a crushing amount of scrutiny, Assault seems to dodge it. And don’t get me wrong-- I adore Assault. But given that not many takes exist out there about rewriting it, I decided to give it a shot. For variety’s sake.

I do want to a mock up of a revised Assault story, which I think I will get to work on after completing this while all my ideas are still fresh in mind. So stay tuned for that sometime in the near future. I will also be doing my Adventures mock up at some point but probably not for a little bit as I do wanna focus some of my free time on actual fic-writing.

Anyways, if you stuck around this long, thank you for reading! Have any changes you’d like to see to Assault if you could time machine your way back to the early 2000s? Feel free to post in the comments, I’d love to read your ideas!

#star fox assault #starfox assault #super long #queue'd

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larrythefloridaman · 3 years

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Y'all like your deities with or without the shell?

Under the readmore is aaaaaaaaall color god observations and musings based on them, because I am studying to become the world's Premiere Chromatheologian and RGB Understander so under the cut is pretty much Oops! All Spoilers! up to the most recent episode of season 3.

Apparently Universal Color God Attributes:

Damage to their domain hurts them, but fixing the issue, or lashing out by using their powers destructively, can help them to repair the damage.

If they sustain enough damage, it can temporarily paralyze them and send them into a strengthened but 'exposed' state (chartreuse's spirit activation in the last fight of 19) and further damage after that will activate a failsafe, which is unique by domain but seemingly designed to give them the chance to balance things, but can get… very out of hand or backfire depending on circumstances. (see: cobalt’s failsafe sending mark's universe into a never-ending apocalyptic war because word of the cure for death became too widespread for the killing urge failsafe to affectively balance anything because every side could simply revive their fallen.)

Chartreuse's failsafe is something of a stopped time bubble quarantine where processes that require the passing of time cannot complete, allowing her the time to wear down the offending party to beat them to death or plan around finishing them.

Cobalt's is inciting war, the casualties serving to balance the scale. I'm not sure we know Crimson's yet- he's never taken enough direct damage without doing damage to compensate in order to trigger it, although i dont remember season one well enough to recall if any of the universe stuff in it tracks with the pattern bc season one is a bit fucky

Connected in a fashion that allows them to simply Sense the overall status of the others to some extent, although they don't know Why theyre in the state theyre in without asking (chartreuse [and by extension, folk, presumably on her information] confronting crimson via crimsonaut for pretending to be dead, Cobalt confronting both his siblings about how they are handling their duties improperly but not knowing about Folk. He knew about the constants deaths because hes a death god, duh, but he didnt use their names like crimson did, possibly implying they're erased upon death so thoroughly that only crimson and the constants can really recall a shattered constants' existence, not even the other guardians.)

Abilities of the guardians can be replicated by mortals through three apparent methods- through machines (dimensional bus, the time machine, presumably J0hn's part in Sephiroth's resurrection,) simply through advanced enough individual skill (Home MD curing death, potentially Dantoinette's universe portal travel, maybe Genwun's sped up time bubble that evolved them into Genfour? although that could very well have just been an illusion and theyre just like, a fuckin theater kid that was doing pretend character development for the Bit or something given GenFive turned out to be a zoroark) or through stealing some of the power of the relevant god (Dr. Order stealing Chartreuse's power, Dani maybe having stolen some of Crimson's when she beat his ass. Dani's one woman universal travel is like, wicked ambiguous)

Cobalt:

Can seemingly perceive or act through any living material. (The Tree. Cobalt instructed Larry to slap his hand on that tree, that shit glowed and he had a new deal tattoo without Cobalt ever having been physically present)

Can influence the resurrected by giving them a killing urge. Represented by an aberrant brainwave and a ringing in the undead's heads. This doesnt appear to be direct control- as the Grunk could clearly restrain himself from killing people that genuinely didn't deserve it (like nightly and cha cha, who WERE grunk event targets but not fatally so. Nagito was a crimson thing so it really doesn't count here. God poor grunk his life really is just a constant plaything in the hands of the gods huh) and Sephiroth very much had personal motivation to want to kill Folk. failsafe activates this ability on the scale of war.

Deals. The extent of what Cobalt can do with these is unclear but Iggy's god powers were taken from him as his part in the deal so what he can take isn't limited to physical things or things obviously related to his domain.

Weaknesses:

Deals. While this ability is impressive his preference for making deals for those that offend against his domain is potentially very exploitable- Larry's knowledge of the cure for death is, if word of it were to ever get out beyond Larry, wildly dangerous for this dimension, so technically the safest thing for the iron-fisted cobalt to do would be to nip the problem in the bud and get rid of him. But, fascinatingly, that wasn't even put on the table, the first thing Cobalt does is threaten J0hn, prompting Larry to make a deal. While Cobalt enforces death, he also doesn't like unnecessary death, and Larry demonstrably knows how to keep a secret for the good of the world even at great cost to himself and Cobalt is aware of this- easily clarifying to Larry the aberrant thing endangering the universe wasn't his timeloop business. So while he's clearly not letting his resurrection fuckery go unpunished, he's being pretty merciful when he doesn't have to be and from a strictly, brutally pragmatic perspective probably shouldn't be.

His control over the undead manifests as a ringing and an aberrant brainwave trackable by J0hn's equipment, and could probably therefore be accounted for and circumvented? J0hn has, wisely, largely sworn off fucking with people's brains after the sephiroth fiasco went So Wrong, So Very Wrong, Oh God Oh Fuck Someone Cool Almost Died, but if he hadn't, and if J0hn let his dislike for authority and keeping Larry safe outweigh reason like he let safety, spite and comedic value outweigh good ethical sense when reprogramming sephiroth, in theory Mr. 'hacked a time machine for breakfast?' could. y'know. probably do it. what is a god's authority to an anarchist, what better to challenge life and death than the cold and eternal machine, you get the point its a fun scenario

Olive Garden Breadsticks and Small Cute Dogs, apparently

Chartreuse's:

Time Clones: taps into parallel timelines to retrieve alternate versions of herself to utilize.

Time Travel: what it says on the tin. Travel to the past creates painful splits in the prime timeline, but through careful action and traveling back into the past, these can be weaved into a time loop. A split from the timeline is a wound, and a successful timeloop is the surgical scar it can become with attentive care, to use a medical metaphor. Carefully closed and healing. Keeping Folk here is essentially akin to chartreuse pulling out her stitches on the initial incision.

Time Stopping: creates a space wherein things that take time to complete cannot complete, where things can move, but everything within is in a perfect unchanging stasis until the bubble drops. This is the form her failsafe takes.

Timeline Creation: can create timelines from scratch.

Can fuse alternate timeline versions of the same individual to allow them to coexist. (Ryan's confirmed in the discord that Dantoinette experienced both failures in 20, because Chartreuse fused the two instances of her to save the post-raid instance from fading. Could... theoretically do this to Folk and save herself the pain, but while Folk and Therapuppy are the same person, there's seven years and untold amounts of difference deriving from the time and circumstance between them and the inherent cognitive dissonances that would result from attempting that would be wicked fucked up to inflict, and that's assuming there isn't some reason that it wouldn't be possible anyway. while the two Danis had like. A day or so's difference between them, so she could be safely fused with the only dissonant thing being that she remembers both being too slow to prevent order's time escape and beginning to dissipate post-raid, AND losing that fight to her pre-raid. RIP Dani, that perfectionism must be kicking her ass)

Weaknesses:

Unwilling to use her powers destructively in her pursuit of domain repair and thereby much easier to damage to the point of paralyzing her, making her particularly vulnerable to Power Theft

Morally Optimistic. At one point in 19, she briefly justifies Crimson's shitty evil actions to herself after experiencing for herself how Wack the kerfuffleverse is firsthand, ("and all he did was kill a couple people!" Chartreuse. Honey.) and when she fights Crimsonaut she seems to actually believe for a second that he's actually worried about her when Crimson asks if she's okay after he beats her. Additionally, as D+, she concerns herself with trying to understand doctor order's motive, and after Larry defeats Order, he makes a point of confirming she feels no remorse before making his request for what Chartreuse does with her, and appeals to the idea of letting Order fulfill her desire to be a god in a way which isn't a problem for anyone and Chartreuse is more than happy to oblige under these conditions after what Larry's done for everybody. Then immediately threatens to evaporate him for playfully teasing her about having a crush on folk. Fucked up a little bit

Crimson's:

Universe Shifting: Travel between universes.

Universe Correction: appears to replace an aberrant individual with the 'correct' version of themselves for that universe, presumably sending them back to their own. (Mario from super mario was universe corrected, but still seemingly exists in wario form as evidenced by smashup kerfuffle, and was simply temporarily replaced with his corrected universe counterpart. But like. The dimensional bus system is still active crimbo doing the Put That Thing Back Where It Came From Or So Help Me routine aint gonna work if they can come back with a shrug and bus fare. you're fighting the symptoms without treating the problem)

Universal Constants:

Three individuals per universe that serve as the pillars which stabilize said universe, created by absorbing red orbs Crimson creates. Becoming a constant grants power, but also makes the constant fragile, and death wipes them from the face of the multiverse, only crimson, those he's possessed and the other constants seemingly able to recall they ever existed, although some physical evidence is still left behind (Larry's record of Nagito's death, which is just as redacted as everything else relating to him but still is very much something Larry has. Kind of a Voidfish adventurezone type beat ironically enough? Taako really has seen all this shit before no wonder he peaced tf out)

To counterbalance the weaknesses the constants have, they have a sort of spidey-sense to alert them to danger, and an intrinsic bonded connection to their fellow constants, and additionally, Crimson apparently doesn't suffer any pain from the death of constants or the structural instability of a universe.

Possession: what it says on the tin! Seemingly can only be done with permission to living things- none of crimson's direct hosts seem to have entered that agreement unwillingly, Valentine lost a bet, Hamburger and Crimsonaut have been by all evidence intentional allies to Crimson- but electronics are fair game, as seen with The Guy's suit. Kinda curious how that rule applies to bitches that are half and half, like J0hn or the clonebot gang, as its unclear whether The Guy's suit was yoinkable without permission because it was mechanical or because its not sentient. could go either way but if it's the former that's potentially very frightening

Fusion: Two individuals from alternate universes can be fused into one shared body which can take on aspects of either depending on which is currently in control. (possibly allows someone who traveled into a given universe to become a fixed resident there without it being an issue for Crimson, whose job is to prevent interdimensional travel?) Monday Mark and possibly T.O.M. are our main examples.

Corruption:

Unpleasant As Hell and can even kill you instead of changing you if you cant handle it.

turns the corrupted individual into a twisted exaggeration of themself, allows them supernatural control over their shape, and makes them very difficult- if not impossible by traditional means- to kill, based on Garfield.

Subjects them to control by Crimson, but can be exorcised of this influence just like crimson's direct hosts can, although the supernatural changes to their physiology are seemingly permanent, judging from Shantae.

Notable Weaknesses:

Exorcism can be performed to free a possessed or corrupted individual of Crimson's influence. Its unclear how exorcism works/is learned in CPUK, but confirmed exorcists: dantoinette and yung papaya's snake dad, confirmed non-exorcists: folk

The universal constant orbs are physical objects so they are Very Stealable and they grant a power boost so theres literally an Incentive to beat his ass for anybody who wants to be strong and either doesnt know or doesn't care about the whole 'getting erased when you die' part

Crimson has lots of tools to create pawns, but all of them have drawbacks. Corruption could kill a potential pawn, possession generally seems to require permission, and he has no control over the constants' choices and actions

Manipulative bitch's highest stat is charisma and it shows. This motherfucker is selling snake oil. If he was mortal rather than a Whole Entire God he'd make an excellent ineffectual saturday morning cartoon supervillain and i think everyone, including him, would be happier for it, ngl

Something interesting ive realized that likely wasnt fully intentional, is that a lot of Dr. Order's creations, considering her motive, can kind of be sorted by a color god it appears to be a crude attempt at mimicking the abilities of. My Grunk is a poorly executed resurrection, the clonebot gang vs chartreuse's timeclones (this one deserves special mention because Chartreuse used this shitty attempted mimicry to her advantage with D+, very smart and ironic play, excellent job Treusy,) spirits are somewhat similar to universal constant orbs (orbs which can be absorbed to grant power, but which have physical repercussions- key differences being that spirits require activation and grow stronger while attuning to a user without being used, and having far less severe drawbacks, taking a heavy toll on the body, but only once they've worn off and without the risk of wiping yourself from the face of existence,) and she also augmented Perfect Spriteman and Larry, which kind of track as crude imitations of Crimson's corruption!

Garfield was an acerbic cat who loved food and hated mondays, now its an actively malicious ever-hungry amorphous entity whose only weakness is monday and whose only consistency in form is 'cat-like.'

Shantae was (to my extremely limited understanding of shantae,) a friendly heroic type who had to introduce herself often, and she became something akin to a biblically accurate angel that can *only* introduce herself.

The Grunks a tough but sweet and supportive single dad with stage presence and a tendency to fly off the handle when he or his family are slighted, and now he gets so hype in the audience when his son does well that he bursts into flames and ascends and we get random grunk events along with the associated murder charges when he gets mad and the target sucks enough that he doesn't hold himself back from killing them.

Perfect Spriteman and Larry fit the trend of exaggeration of already present traits- Spriteman fucking loves sprite and became something that only thinks about sprite, and Larry the Florida Man, characterized from minute one by unpredictability and who spent his first matches in the series pre-shapeshifter transformation staying alive keeping stocks for Shockingly Long even despite getting seventh, became literally physically random as well as developing the ability to regenerate, albeit with the ability to feel pain normally very much intact, unlike Garfield just... Soaking up damage like its nothing in his pursuit of Jon. The fact that Arbuckle legit defeated Garfield, even temporarily, is terrifyingly impressive honestly that dude is fucking built different for being so chronically bland

i dont think they're actually corrupted in any meaningful way we have to worry about, to be fully clear, Spriteman was cured with fucking antacids, i simply think they could be a fucked up attempt at making something that kind of seems like it from a functional standpoint, from the wannabe god doctor that brought us green clones whose only fundamental association with time was accelerated aging and who thought an actively rotting corpse thats just reanimated enough that it can throw hands was as good as curing death

#cpu kerfuffle #cpuk cobalt #cpuk chartreuse #cpuk crimson #im like. 80% all this info is correct but im not feeling up to rewatching matches to doublecheck rn ngl asdsfgfghgfhfgsdf #will probably edit with fixes if im misremembering smthn later

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