#finally i found my people

[shalaaex]

Thank you cass, your series has really created such a happy little fandom that I find is not my safe space. You have inspired thousands of artists and if it weren’t for you. A lot of people wouldn’t be where they are now. I’m excited to see what else you make, rise or not. You’re an incredible person and I’m glad I was able to follow along this comic. It truly gave me something to look forward to.

Thank you, cass

‘I’ll be grinding a conclusion animatic…

[poorly-drawn-mdzs]

ORV is about enduring the horrors in real time.

(for @everyonesfavoritebastard)

[bucephaly]

It's kinda shocking to me how few people seem to know how prevalent the 'my great grandmother was cherokee' myth is and how it's almost never actually true, especially when it comes with things like 'never signed up' or 'fell off the trail' or 'courthouse burned down destorying the documentation' etc etc.

People just don't even seem to know the history like.. when the Trail happened. My great great great grandfather was 2 years old during Removal in 1838, so peoples 'my great grandmother hid in the mountains!' is so clearly wrong. And we have rolls. From before and after removal, rolls done by cherokee nation and others by the government, rolls that were not stored in one random flammable courthouse. It's not difficult to find the actual evidence of ancestry.

And just.. there are lots of ways those family stories get started. It was a practice during the confederacy to claim cherokee ancestry to show one's family had 'deep roots in the south' that they were there before the cherokee were removed. Many people pretended to be cherokee and applied for the Guion-Miller payout just to try to steal money meant for cherokees - 2/3rds of the applicants were denied for having 0 proof of actual cherokee ancestry. [We even see lawyers advertising signing up for the Miller roll just to try to get free money.] And the myth even started in some families in the cherokee land lotteries, where the land stolen from us was raffled off, including the house and everything that was left behind when the cherokees were removed. We have seen people whose families just take these things stolen from the cherokee family and adopt them into their own family story, saying that they were cherokee themselves.

If you had some family story about being cherokee and you wanna have proof one way or the other, check out this Facebook group run by expert cherokee genealogists that do research for free. Just please read the rules fully and respect the researchers. They run thousands of people's ancestries a year and their average is only around 0.7% of lines they run actually end up having true cherokee ancestry.

[killjoy-prince]

House M.D. but it's when a character says the name of the episode

[fayzart136]

The Bifrost Incident. Any schoolchild could tell you about it. The fall of the old order; two hundred years of Asgardian hubris come together in a single epoch-defining event...

This one took Quite A While, I was relating to poor inspector Lyff by the end of it! I put the description and design process in the alt text, I apologize if it's a lot, I just have a lot of thoughts. Closeups are under the cut!

[sacchiri]

Hellsing 2002 calendar illustration.

Ein wunderliche und erschröckliche Hystori von einem großen Wüttrich genant Dracole wayda Der do so ganz unkristenliche marrter hat angelegt die mensche, als mit spissen als auch die leut zu Tod geslyffen

A wondrous and frightening story about a great berserk called Dracula the voivode who inflicted such unchristian tortures such as with stakes and also dragged people to death

[mildmayfoxe]

WORLDS GREATEST con artist / cheapskate / stud / boozer / dancer / brat / space cadet / bs'er / hypochondriac / nut / burden / losing gambler / playmate / animal / party-goer

[the-13th-battalion]

I'll be chilling and then I'll remember the way Nico Robin screamed "I want to live" and then oopsie I'm on the floor sobbing, completely overcome by hope

[tracle0]

Final dragon

[angelxd-3303]

Huh, how would DK react to teen Mario? He would be overprotective of him?

DK isn't gonna cry, what're you talking about?

Nope, definitely not gonna cry.

[ao3screenshotss]

just heard someone outside sing “oh oh, i got methamphetamine”

[polysyndetonaddictsupportgroup]

what would megumi’s life have been if he was actually raised by the zenin from day one? like either gojo lost the custody battle or they were able to scoop him up before gojo ever reached them. i doubt they would want to keep tsumiki with them so she’s not there for little baby megs.

i think it would be really cool to see a zenin raised megumi interacting with his fellow classmates when he attends the school, not to mention the contrast between him and gojo. like on paper they both should have gotten the same treatment-being pampered and spoiled rotten but we also know that the zenin think that hurting little kids makes them stronger so it would be super interesting to see megumi realise that the stuff that happened to him wasn’t normal and for gojo to have a guilt trip bc he wasn’t able to help megumi when he needed someone to help him the most.

So I have a fanfic that I’ve half written (no idea if I’ll ever finish it—I’d love to, it’s just hard to find the time) about EXACTLY THAT that I talked about in this post for an ask game.

That being said, that entire thing happens from Tsumiki’s perspective, and I agree with you—I don’t think the Zenin would have ever actually taken her too. They don’t want her. She’s not Zenin. She’s not a sorcerer. They only bought Megumi. For the most part, Megumi is absent from that post, and you asked about Megumi. So this is what I think would happen on Megumi's side of that post I linked.

It comes down to two things:

1. He is never, ever happy with the Zenin.

2. He never lets go of his sister.

Megumi’s old enough to remember Tsumiki when the Zenin take him away. He's old enough to love her. And I think that Megumi loves very quietly, but he also loves very violently. He wouldn't let his sister hold his hand on the walk to school, but he would sacrifice himself for her future.

I think the Zenin took him from his sister, and I think he kicked and screamed and wasn't strong enough. I think they thought he would forget her eventually.

And then I think he bit most of the Zenin Clan.

At the end of the day, what Megumi wanted was the one thing the Zenin were not willing to give him. They were never like the Gojo clan, they were never going to pamper him, but there are a great many things in this world that they would give the Ten Shadows finally returned to them. But they would not give him a non-sorcerer, non-Zenin sister who would only be a weakness to him. They refused to let him have any contact with his sister, and that was the source of a lot of what soured.

Any Megumi that was taken in by the Zenin would have been taken in to Naobito's household directly. He would be announced as the one who finally inherited their most cherished technique, and he would be declared heir, and the Zenin would call him beloved for it.

They would keep him in a room that was large and empty and almost always dark, and he wouldn't be allowed to decide when he slept or woke, and the door would always be locked from the outside. They would give him a wardrobe of expensive clothes that he hated, and he would never get to pick which of them he wore.

Megumi would hate them. He would hate all of them.

He's just not the type to be comfortable with or enjoy the adoration of others--especially when it's not backed up by genuine love. Megumi is someone who very much values sincerity and depth to emotion--it's one of the reasons why he seems to respect Yuuji so much. Yuuji is a good person who follows through with what he says. He's not just going to talk about wanting to save people--he's there making the sacrifices as he does it.

The Zenin do not actually love him. And he knows it. He's experienced love before, and this isn't it.

They love the idea of him. The fantasy of him that lives in their heads. He has no interest in being their little god prince to contend with the Gojo's own. He knows who he is, and it's not this. He wants to go home. He wants to find his sister again. He doesn't want to do this anymore.

And I think that's a feeling Megumi never escape: he just didn't want to do this anymore.

Megumi would feel like a bug pinned beneath glass in the Zenin compound. He would constantly have people managing him--when he ate, what he ate, what he wore, when he slept, when he woke, when he trained, what he did. Having to become a jujutsu sorcerer signified an inherent loss of control, but it's nothing compared to the sheer objectification that he goes through when the Zenin have exclusive control over him.

He has no power of what clothes he wears. How his hair is styled. His schedule, his diet, the people he speaks too--he's suffocating and the Zenin are just increasing pressure on him.

I don't think Gojo ever thought that would be Megumi's life.

We’re gonna just have this imagining exist in the same world as the Tsumiki centric fic described in the linked post, and in that, the reason why Gojo never took him in was because he didn’t know Megumi had a sister. He showed up, saw the divine dogs, realized Megumi had the Ten Shadows, and decided he couldn’t do this. He was a mess. He was grieving Suguru and Haibara. Megumi looked just like the man who killed Riko, and apparently inherited the fucking Ten Shadows of all the goddamn things. The Zenin would lose their shit, and Gojo didn’t have the energy to fight and told himself he didn’t need to, because if Megumi was the Ten Shadows he’d be cared for like a prince with the Zenin. He turned around and left and spent the rest of his life with Megumi in the back of his mind, always nagging him with whether he made the right decision. It wasn’t until Maki got there and made a few worrisome references to Megumi's standard of living that he started to really worry that he had made the wrong one, and it wasn't until he found out about Tsumiki that he knew it was the wrong decision.

It's like this: The Zenin hurt Megumi in every world.

It would be bad no matter what, but it really gets bad because Megumi refuses to stop trying to get back to Tsumiki. She's his sister. They didn't have anyone or anything in this world, but they had each other, and he couldn't let these people just take her away. He’s feral about it. He refuses to fit the mold they keep trying to cram him in. He’s trying to scale the walls to escape. He’s increasingly desperate and angry and the Zenin are getting more and more frustrated the longer he fights them. He’s the heir to the clan, and he can’t stop trying to leave it to get back to some random girl who isn’t his real sister and isn’t someone they’ll ever allow him to have.

It gets bad.

They put him under increasingly strict levels of control. He’s constantly being trained, which means he's constantly being hurt. He’s not allowed to speak to anyone without the clan head’s approval. He is under absolutely constant guard after he manages to get over the wall and halfway to his old neighborhood before they catch him again. Tsumiki’s name is not allowed to be said aloud, or his old name. He forgets his name used to be Fushiguro, but he doesn’t forget Tsumiki. He doesn’t let himself.

I think it escalates until it hits a breaking point. Megumi becomes increasingly self-destructive and non-responsive to everything they try. They push him to extremes that start risking permanent damage.

I think Megumi would try to hurt himself, eventually.

He wouldn't be in his right mind. He's in the most shit situation possible. He's undergoing pretty severe abuse. He'd be at the end of his rope from the lack of control over his own life, and he'd be spiteful as hell towards the Zenin. And the only thing he has to hurt them with is himself.

As a character, Megumi has always considered his own sacrifice as an acceptable means to the end of getting back at someone. Mahoraga, intrinsically, requires him killing himself as a way of killing someone else. He'd hurt himself if it was the only way he had of hurting them.

Naobito would cover it up. He'd never, ever want the rest of the clan to find out that it happened. It was already bad enough that Megumi openly hated them--he couldn't have the Zenin seeing any vulnerability in what was meant to be their most powerful member. He'd put Megumi in total lockdown until he could make it all go away.

Then they'd make a deal.

A binding vow. Megumi could never purposefully hurt himself again. He could never again try to leverage his own safety against the clan.

And in exchange, Tsumiki would be taken care of.

The last time Megumi saw his sister, she was on a sinking ship. They were running out of food, money, options--he doesn't know if she even has food anymore. He doesn't know if she lost the apartment or if there's still running water.

They're not letting him see her. But they are letting him take care of her. He can sacrifice another piece of control over himself, and she'll never have to worry about money again. They'll pay for her housing, her food, her education, for her every desire for as long as she lives. The trust the Zenin set up for her will be a generous one, and it will be managed meticulously by a trustee who can make sure she'll be provided for until she's old and grey. And Naobito will vow to never hurt her or send someone else to hurt her. She'll be safe. She'll be taken care of.

Megumi makes the deal.

In the end, the deal's what sort of breaks him.

Because he doesn't promise to stop looking for her, but the Zenin manage to make it a part of the terms anyway. When they approach Tsumiki's mother with the offer to be her family's beneficiary, they include a requirement that Tsumiki be moved to another city entirely with no forwarding address given. She needs to be somewhere that Megumi can never find her again.

The Zenin keep the old apartment. They pay the rent every month. And the next time Megumi manages to make it off compound, they let him make it all the way there before dragging him home. They let him see the empty apartment with all its empty rooms.

Naobito wants him to know that Tsumiki's gone. He wants him to know that he'll never find her again.

He tries to run a few more times after that, but he never makes it very far. He doesn't have anywhere to go.

In the linked post, Megumi finds Tsumiki, just once. She's on a class trip. He's on one of his very few and far between allowed excursions off the compound grounds, and he sees her in the crowd and recognizes her, and he ducks away from his escort before anyone can stop him.

She remembers him. He didn't think she would do that.

She tries to save him. He didn't think she would do that either.

She still loves him. And he was always too afraid to hope she would do that.

It goes the same way it did the first time. There's a car, and the Zenin shove him in it. She's on the outside, and he's trapped within, and he wishes she didn't scream so loudly when it happens. The sound never seems to leave his dreams.

His sister still loves him. Naoya hits him in the back of the head. He wakes up, and it was like she was never there at all.

But they hit him harder, after. Like they're trying to beat the memory of her out of him. He has even less freedom, when he already had next to none at all.

But he still has a sister. He has a place to go that isn't here. He just has to figure out where that is.

He wouldn't really have anyone in the Zenin clan. Most people are just... weird about him. Naoya's violently abusive. Naobito's weird and violently abusive. Everyone wants him to be someone he's not.

Maki would be his favorite.

He doesn't care about whether she's got cursed energy--his sister didn't have any. And she's obviously strong. She doesn't treat him like a divine blessing or try to force him to act a certain way. I think they would have genuinely liked each other, but kept each other at a distance. They're both trapped in an abusive situation and keep themselves safe by keeping everyone else at arm's length.

He would have been happy to see her get out, though. He would have told her that she could have his spot as heir or head or whatever when she came back if she wanted it. She would have told him that if he ever got out... well, fuck it. They could be something then. Family. Whatever the fuck they weren't allowed to be here.

She would have told him she's sorry, and she would have meant it. The only one she she regretted more than Megumi was Maki. He would have told her not to be, that if she dared to be sorry for getting out that he would never forgive her, and he would have meant that too.

I think his relationship with his own techinque would be very different in a world where the Zenin raised him. In canon, his issue is that he doesn't view himself as someone who could be powerful or win in the long run, but in this world, all he ever hears is how powerful he is. Pride of the fucking Zenin. The most powerful of them in centuries. Meant to rival Gojo fucking Satoru himself.

I think his real issue would be controlling it.

His technique would be a source of negative associations for him. It's the reason why the Zenin took him away. Most of his interactions with it have involved getting beaten and hurt by either his family or a high-level curse they shoved him in front of. I think he'd have a lot more firepower under his belt than at the start of canon, but he'd have less of a fine tuned control over it.

He lost control over his own life because of his shadows. It think that would manifest in struggling to control his own shikigami at times. he's not as in-sync with them as he is in canon.

Eventually, he'd go to Jujutsu High. He would be the only one in the first year class at the beginning, just like in canon. And he'd finally meet Gojo Satoru, the man he's supposed to topple.

He looks at Megumi really goddamn weird.

He's... enthusiastic. About. Teaching. He guesses. And constantly asking prying questions about the Zenin, but not in the sort of way he'd expect from a rival. In the sort of way he'd expect from someone concerned about him. Which is stupid. And annoying. And weird. He keeps a distance from everyone. They've all heard about the Zenin clan heir, and he has no interest in having to fit or break whatever mold they've already cast him in. He's better off on his own.

Maki's there. She's cordial where other people can see it, and in private, she takes care of him in a way that's terrifyingly close to familial. He's not sure if he likes it. He's not Mai, and she's not Tsumiki, and they both want someone they can't have.

She isn't sorry she left. She is sorry she left him. He can hate her for it all he goddamn pleases.

Of course, if this is in the same world as the linked post, Megumi finds Tsumiki again. He finds her in Sendai.

He gets to keep her, this time.

Gojo Satoru, of all the goddamn people, intervenes and becomes his sister's benefactor. It's super fucking weird. He won't stop looking at Megumi strangely. He won't stop insisting that he didn't know he had a sister, like that matters.

That would sort of be the first time in a long time that life actually gets better for Megumi.

I think he would ask to go by Fushiguro again, once he asks Tsumiki what his name used to be. He'd ask her if she minded it, him taking the name again, and he'd ask the rest of the school to call him Fushiguro instead of Zenin.

Predictably enough, Naobito loses his shit when he finds out, but it's not nearly as big of a pain in the ass as he thinks it is? Because Gojo intervenes.

Gojo keeps intervening.

It drives Megumi nuts, because if anyone was supposed to hate him, it was this guy. If anyone was supposed to be against him, it was this guy. This is the guy he was supposed to rival. This is the guy who killed his shitheel bio dad.

Gojo's just... good to him. He keeps him safe. He keeps him safe from his own goddamn family, and that's--no one's ever done that. No one's ever protected him from the Zenin.

The Zenin try to remove him from the Tokyo campus and move him to Kyoto the second they find out Tsumiki's there, and Gojo just... says no. It causes an uproar, and he doesn't fucking budge. It's treading dangerously close to him kidnapping the Zenin clan heir, his refusal to let them remove him from the Tokyo campus, and he doesn't care about whatever problems it causes him.

Megumi's his student. He doesn't want to leave. So Gojo won't let them take him.

He personally goes to Kyoto and collects him, the one time the Zenin force him into a car and move him when Gojo's off on a mission. He tells the higher ups to get fucked. He changes Megumi's student I.D. to read Fushiguro, and he causes problems for Yaga and the assistants until they start calling him Fushiguro as well.

Megumi's different with the other students once his sister is there.

He's more connected with them. He becomes best friends with Kugisaki and Itadori. He gets closer with the second years. He's visibly happier, and it sort of casts in sharp contrast how unhappy he was before this.

And Gojo? Gojo's so goddamn sorry. He didn't know megumi had a sister.

The thing is that now that both Tsumiki and Megumi are on campus, it sort of haunts Gojo with what could have been. They're both fantastic kids--funny, smart, resourceful. And it's painful watching them try to rebuild what was taken from them. And it could have just. never happened. Because he could have saved them both. He could have been their family.

It's sort of painfully obvious the Zenin abused Megumi, and it fucking haunts him. He doesn't even have to read into Megumi's behavior--he sees it happen, right in front of him, with how they try to control him and push him around. He wants to kill them for it. He wants to hate himself for it. He could have saved Megumi and he just. He didn't.

He wishes he did.

[killlerfang1]

I was looking at the ATSV storyboards again and-

SHE WAS CRYING

[offonaherosjourney]

I need to tell someone about how DELIGHTFULLY IRONIC it was to spend a good chunk of the last two days sourcing and formatting bibliography for a paper while watching hbomberguy's video in the background

[embarrassedwithapicketsign]

embarrassedwithapicketsign on ao3

***

dumbstruck | 7,370 words

"Mike’s thoughts are racing but really, there is only one thought that’s floating around his brain, a thousand iterations of the same thought swirling around and around: Will tried to kiss me. More than once. I almost let him."

or: Will gets doped up on pain meds after Dustin accidentally hits him with a board, and Mike is being normal. He is.

***

the part of me that can’t let go | 16,650 words

On the day every person receives a soulmark, Mike knows immediately that his soulmate is Will. The problem is, Mike has already lost him.

***

and we kissed, as though nothing could fall | 2,691 words

“Okay, well how do I do it?” Will asks, intrigued but confused.

Mike looks up at him then, eyes dark and slightly wide. “I, uh,” he coughs. “I’ll show you.”

Will watches as Mike shifts just slightly closer, angling his body towards Will.

“Do you trust me?” Mike asks, leaning his head into Will’s space even further.

Will doesn’t know what to make of the sudden spark of tension in the air, but he nods. Of course he trusts Mike. He trusts Mike with his life.

or: Mike and Will get high together on the edge of an empty motel pool.

***

a feeling like this | 3,518 words

"Mike is still flipping through the notebook when he finds a drawing that makes his breath catch in his throat.

It’s not all that different from the other drawings, featuring Mike and Will standing together as their DnD personas, Paladin and Cleric. There is one major difference, though.

In this drawing, Mike and Will’s characters are kissing.”

or: Mike stumbles upon a drawing he definitely was not meant to see.

***

you’re the one thing i can’t get enough of | 19,422 words

Dirty Dancing, but make it Byler.

***

we all will be together | 6,436

Nearly four years into his relationship with Mike, Will finally gets invited to the Wheeler family Christmas.

***

[jokest3r]

Matvey-Lukyan Volkov-Makarov ☀

or "Matthew Clarke," really depends on who you ask...

General Info -

Name: Matvey-Lukyan Volkov-Makarov(True Identity is on a need-to-know basis)

Age: 19

Issued Identity: Matthew Clarke

Issued Age: 23

Issued Rank: Specialist

Callsign: "Kid" until Further Notice

Status: Alive

Ethnicity: Tajik

Nationality: N/A(His parents kept his existence fairly quiet, only his mentors and his parent's closest associates knew he existed for quite some time before he went missing when he was older. His parents when he was young did debate that he may exist under a different name in the legal system in Tajikistan but didn't look into it after Matvey was disinterested at the prospect of meeting his biological parents.)

Height: 5' 7

Blood-Type: O+

Weight: 145 Pounds / 67 Kg(He came weighing less than that.)

Further Info -

"All things considered the kid came out far better than anyone would have expected given who his parents are."

Matvey was adopted a little over at two months old along the border crossing between Russia and Kazachstan on a cargo road that showed little action. He never really thought about the reason why he was there or the what how, just that he would've died if not for intervention (lucky or damning) you be the judge.

He had a pretty fair upbringing if you don't bring up visiting warehouses with his father or playing with guns at a young age. He was originally raised to be just that, a son, however it would become more skewed as the year's went on and his father Makarov's power grew. Then his role went past being only a son and more of a "good soldier." Of course, what Matvey would've called his first "failure" was failing his mentors and by proxy, his father. His mentors said he would never be a soldier and neither would he be strong enough to fight. It just wasn't in his cards. After that, his father's expectations seemed to slow down to a simmer, and his approach became to hold Matvey at an arm's reach away from the Ultranationalist Party and revolving plans. He would be protected, but not without getting trained to protect himself and escape at a moment's notice.

Though Makarov obviously wasn't his only father, his extended family mostly comes from Yuri's side of the family. Matvey obtained personality traits from Makarov but was much closer to Yuri. Yuri's a sensitive topic as is most of everything in his life. Yuri and Matvey both have something in common and that is "abandoning" or in Matvey's case "running away." Yuri left, without a word or notice and Matvey chased after him, and only realised he wasn't coming back "home" after two months on the road with Lobo, his loyal guard dog. Exact details on the first year of Matvey's lone days have not been found, but not without some prying. All he has to show for it is the bloodied patch the 141 found him holding along with his belongings.

Matvey was found along the Chernobyl exclusion zone by 141 squad members bleeding out in the hospital safe house he had rigged with traps, bleeding out from a wound that a mercenary had done to him in retaliation for murdering his partner, forgetting about the long-term reward of keeping him alive and sending him back to his father. And instead attempted killing him for revenge. He said he lived well off for what he had. With his father's hired mercenaries on his tail, he couldn't exactly pick a lot of areas. They caught his scent a month before the 141 had found him, sending an SOS through a makeshift antenna but getting help when they were finally able to trace it with spare time on their hands. Matvey really hadn't intended on surviving to the end if at all.

Combat-Style: Matvey plays dirty, real dirty, most "end up killing themselves" before they even see his face. He uses traps, bombs, chemical warfare (has an inclination for using gas) throwing knives and all sorts. Usually, he keeps to having a good distance with any target and avoids close combat at all costs, if any combat at all. And tends to favor using escape tactics he's learned over his previous training. He's known by most to be very slippery and sly if he wants something over with quickly.

If with a squad on something serious he fills a support role: and (jokest3r's opinion: his support role is something similar to Elizabeth in Bioshock Infinite just without all the tears.) can find materials or target objects fairly easily since slipping through vents and getting out unseen is one of his best strengths and keeps him away from any of the serious fighting while still helping the team.

Personality: Matvey is naturally combative, moody, and "explorative" if the definition meant rule-breaking. He alternates between being quiet and isolated to being playful and rather "loud." He follows orders to a T, almost too closely like he's had past experience. He's self-destructive when it comes to most people as he doesn't want to care for much of anyone since all signs seem to point to anyone he cares for or stays with long term end up dying or disappearing one way or the other. Or abandoning him. He also tends to not understand social cues and is very affectionate even if the situation around him is dire. Warning: hugs and heartfelt conversations abound.

Allegiance: Matvey made it very clear where his loyalties lied, along with his goal to reunite with his father Yuri and gain some closure beyond bottling up all his anger and mourning for a father that doesn't seem to exist anymore. He's also seemingly gotten attached to some of the members, and would like to see them alive. When asked what that exactly meant he shrugged, thinking anyone else would've known what he meant.

As time passes the 141 hope to get Matvey out of his shell and influence him to grow and make better decisions. For now, Matvey will try to grow used to Western surroundings and hopefully, meet both his father's face to face, though he knows that it won't likely end happily. (FLAT COLOUR UNDERNEATH THE TAB)