#i didn't want to draw all of the spirits so they are only kinda there

[hivvernal]

A life, a song, a taste

[mmani-e]

Hello! After all this effort, behold:

DANGANRONPA DEMIX, THH EDITION!

Dr Demix 2

Finally got the talentswap designs I have for the THH characters one and done with! You can click through the read more section for some fun design insights. I'm intending on uploading a doc containing short lore bits about them eventually.

Kyoko Kirigiri - Ultimate Affluent Progeny

So Kyoko's design was both kinda simple, kinda not, wanted to give her a very fine and regal kinda attitude to her but not arrogant as that's very much Byakuya's thing. Her story is that she loves her dad more than the family business and her grandpa so she abandons detective work and just uses her brain to help her dad out.

Makoto Naegi - Ultimate Novelist

Makoto is a wonderful guy, just great all around. He loves writing children's books and happy stories. This is his main coping mechanism so he doesn't have to process any negative emotions he gets, the rest he can't process… well they go into a murderous psychopath alter.

Aoi Asahina - Ultimate Lucky Student

Shoujo protagonist Aoi. Cute, headstrong, affective, competitive, these are all the traits that make her fight for her friends and clash with Kyoko (and more often than not Byakuya) in the killing game, even when all hope seems lost… she pushes through, unafraid to let tears spill from her eyes for all those lost, but pushing all the same.

Byakuya Togami - Ultimate Detective

This one, I wanna go into more lore territory, cause I kinda memed around his last desc I gave him so here goes:

"A disgraced heir of the Togami household, Byakuya lost the competition that would've secured his riches. Disdainful and bitter, he sought out to get to the bottom of why he lost, uncovering a rabbit hole in the process. By the end, he proved his sibling a cheater, but it didn't matter because by the end as he found the sweet satisfaction of uncovering secrets and crushing liars and cheaters under the weight of their hubris far more satisfying than any inheritance."

Sayaka Maizono - Ultimate Spirit Medium

So Sayaka isn't a clairvoyant at all like Yasuhiro, in fact her entire skillset is completely different, first of all she is like an actual psychic, and I based her design off of the japanese Itako, quite loosely. Very interesting group, look it up, also she'll never use these powers in the killing game because I dunno how to even approach these rituals or what they look like or how to write them while remaining respectful, so she won't do it in a killing game for the express reason of her not having the right tools available and not wanting to disrespect her traditions.

Leon Kuwata - Ultimate Swimmer

I really wanna draw him again, all these characters again tbh, and I wanna show off the patterns on his wetsuit. It's a whole coral reef under there, that anemone and clownfish bit is only one part of a whole reef stretching his midline.

Sakura Ogami - Ultimate Programmer

Sakura has installed chips into her body to help optimize her body processes and also cause why not. As for the muscles, she's an Assembly programmer, the programs she's made can run on calculators she loves it.

Chihiro Fujisaki - Ultimate Martial Artist

Chihiro's design here with the two belts is an explicit nod to his preferred martial art - Brazilian Jiu Jitsu, so unlike Sakura in canon who'd be easy to imagine cracking someone's skull in half with a chop, Chihiro's approach is more crawling onto someone and bringing them down to the floor with grappling like an angry halfling monk. As for the belts themselves, on his head is his final junior belt, while around his waist is his current belt, he's not a black belt yet because he's still too young for it.

Celestia Ludenberg - Ultimate Baseball Star

Celestia actually isn't a legend in this AU, Taeko is. Celestia hates that and wants to start a baseball career going international, whatever the hell that means is up to her own definition, but she wants to be remembered forever as Celestia, not Taeko. Also extra sentence, but this is the SINGLE hardest design I've ever had to deal with here, I think in the future I'll be drawing all her little accessories and I have an alt costume for her I have in mind.

Hifumi Yamada - Ultimate Pop Star

So I changed Hifumi's story as I originally outlined in the OG post with him. He was friends with Aoi all his life, pretty much his only friend at all, and ever since he was little he had an obsession with writing songs, because he was obsessed with stuff like anime openings and was content to just keep the songs to himself. It wasn't till Aoi convinced him to share some of his songs that he started his journey to success, but bc he's not traditionally attractive, his first hits were literally just… his voice being played over other more attractive singers and it wasn't until very very recently that he even performed a song of his for the first time.

Toko Fukawa - Ultimate Fanfic Writer

So while Hifumi was clearly a Doujinshi but due to weird translation, ended up as fanfic creator, Touko is straight up a FF then Wattpad then AO3 girl, who would get obsessed with this really shitty, tripe manga that she didn't even like reading. It did however have super hot dudes in it, so she wrote good stories of those characters when she got frustrated with the actual authorial content - which was always.

Yasuhiro Hagakure - Ultimate Gambler

Quite LITERALLY the never stop gambling meme personified into a guy. He can lose 3 mil on slot machines but always comes out fine because it means if he keeps gambling he'll eventually run into his 1/3 and win giga millions, what he needs to pay off his debts. It isn't just with luck though either because his personality and lack of intelligence or understanding of most the rules of the games he plays means he'll never react the way he should when getting a good hand in poker or a bad draw in blackjack, so he wins those games almost always through just… stupidity.

Mukuro Ikusaba - Ultimate Biker

She's number 16 in her gang, and is easily the most loyal enforcer and taskman of the gang. She does anything she's told, to a grim and disciplined degree not typical for hooligan bike gangers, she doesn't really desire a seat as top dog of the gang though, after all she's got school to worry about, and her sister.

Mondo Owada - Ultimate Warlord

So his relationship and Kiyotaka's is gonna be interesting, because I don't want him to be exactly like Mukuro at all, who was just sort of an all-obsessed Yandere. It's more like he's always chafing under Taka, who is less than friendly with him in this AU, really the main way he even lets Taka boss him around is because he pays incredibly well and helps keep his gang members from devolving back into the unstructured, chaotic criminal life, the same that took his brother years ago.

Oh and yeah, he still looks like Guile, as he should.

Sparkling Justice - Ultimate Killer Killer

Yeah it's a reference to Killer Killer, sue me I love the manga. He has Hajirahara's ahoge, and I thought it'd be cute to also give him a mask just like the other Makoto from a Kodaka game series (Raincode.) Also, while Genocide jack stuffs all her scissors in her skirt, Makoto keeps a truth gun with "truth bullets" as his main weapon, the gun he stores inside the big book in the chibi of just Makoto, and the bullets kept on his person as the red buttons all over his body, which he pulls out when he needs to reload.

"Kiyotaka Ishimaru" - Ultimate Fashionista

Unlike Mukuro and Junko, Mondo absolutely cannot hide the fact that he acts nothing like Kiyotaka, though this is surprisingly fine to everyone else, because unlike Junko who plastered herself onto literally everything, Mondo always obfuscated himself from the public spotlight, at most showing only his suits while he hid his face behind something conveniently placed. Which played primarily to his vision of an ultimate fashionista, who was above everyone and catered to the rich and powerful.

Junko Enoshima - Ultimate Moral Compass

This was a fun one, I decided to let her have her red hair because I believe it to be the "natural" look of her hair, while attaching little clips of dyed hair to her buns as a replacement to keep her shape sorta and keep the strawberry blonde somwehere on her. Understand that while she is the "moral compass" she is still pretty deranged, and the only reason she focuses so much on keeping everyone on their best behavior is because it's endlessly entertaining to her to make her fellow moral committee members upset when she blatantly makes a mockery of the rules while still keeping kids on their best behavior to make a point.

Kiyotaka Ishimaru - Ultimate Fashionista and Tyrant, the Iron Hand of Despair

Taka's design I wanted to sort of focus on this sort of, holier-than-thou idea, where I wanted to make him look a lot fancier and upper-class than Junko does in his standard highschool fit compared to him. I wanted him to have an upper-crust sort of look

If you're reading this after reading this all, thanks! You're a wonderful person :) Signing off...

Mani

[typing-catastrophe]

could you write a stanford pines x reader headcanon where the reader is an artist and always draws him and draws in his journals when he isnt looking? maybe he talks to the reader about the drawings and they get really flustered i dunno!!! <3

oohhh! yeesss, that's a great idea! thank you anon ^^ hope this is okay, enjoy!

1.2k words --------------------------------------------------

Your little habit started out even before Stanford came back. Dipper saw you sketching in your notebook from time to time, and asked you to draw something for him in the journal. He handed it to you and pointed next to a text he'd written about some anomaly (maybe a Manotaur or the Pterodactyl). First you were unsure, how would you feel if someone randomly decided to draw in your sketchbook? But it actually seemed really fun, an you didn't want to disappoint Dipper. Also it was in the spirit of research and preserving observations. And honestly, what were the odds the mysterious author would ever show up again?

With that attitude you began, whenever you got the chance to, to doodle yours and the twins encounters with the countless strange phenomena in gravity falls into the journal.

Well, oops? Seemed like the universe decided that not long after you started doing so, it was the right time for the author to come back.

It wasn't a big deal really, Dipper kept the journal for most of the time and Ford told him that he liked the additions he made. You weren't sure if he only meant the notes Dipper added, or if he even knew that someone else drew the newly added creatures.

It didn't take long for you and Ford to get to know each other better and spend more time together. Literally everything about him was just so fascinating. From the way he talked about his dimensional travels, anomaly hunts and research, his interest in a shared hobby of yours (dd&md), to the way he held himself. And, even if you were a bit embarrassed to admit it, his looks.

You couldn't help it, he was captivating. So to no surprise, one day you found yourself sitting the shack's porch, looking over at Ford standing in the yard, working away at something that was too bulky for the basement. You didn't even realise what you were doing, until something startled you out of your thoughts and you looked down at your sketchbook, seeing a familiar figure on the open page.

And then it happened again, in the lab. He was explaining away, deeply invested in whatever topic he was rambling about, not really taking in his surroundings. You had started out just sketching his study, but somehow he turned out to be the main focus of it.

One evening you found yourself in the living room of the shack. Ford was sitting on the floor, which was almost entirely covered in graph paper. You had joined him while he prepared the next campaign session, the tv quietly proving some background noise. While he was franticly scribbling away sheet after sheet, you propped open your notebook and began sketching some of the characters that came to your mind. Ford's, Dipper's and your characters and some npcs you encountered on your travels. But looming over all of them, half hidden behind the dm-screen, the scheming face of the man before you took his shape.

The end of the evening was rather blurry, you remembered falling asleep on the floor and being carried to bed, half asleep in someone's arms.

"hmm thank you", is all you could mumble when you felt the soft pillow under your head.

"No problem, dear", you heard a deep voice chuckle.

-

When you thought about it the next morning, a smile crept unto your face and you kinda wished, you would've been more awake, so you could've enjoyed the moment properly.

The smiled was quickly wiped off though, when you realised that you must've left your sketchbook in the living room, given that Ford probably didn't bring it with him last night. You panicked and jumped out of bed, stumbling to the door when your gaze was caught by something. Your sketchbook, laying on your desk. You exhaled, glad it didn't lay around for anyone to see. You took it into your hands and opened it to the last page you were working on. But instead of the drawing from yesterday evening, only the one before that stared back at you. Confused, you turned the pages a few times, examined it, maybe someone ripped it out? No, no remnants of a torn out page....

Then, it dawned on you. You left your notebook in your room yesterday. You didn't plan on staying or even going to the living room. God knows how you ended up there, but it definitely was without your sketchbook. Which could only mean one thing...

In record time you were out the door, down the hall and in the living room. Right in time to take in the scenery of Ford staring down at his campaign notebook, opened to the page of your drawing.

"Ahh!! No no don't look!", you jumped forward and put your hands over the drawing. Ford furrowed his eyebrows, looking quite puzzled.

"This? Oh I already saw it last night after getting you to bed. It is incredible!"

Your cheeks heated up. "Oh" was all you could utter.

"It was also you who added the depictions of the twin's adventures, right?"

"Uhmm" You didn't keep your passion for drawing a secret, but you also didn't make a big deal out of it. And honestly, the way Ford was always so indulged in his own mind, you didn't think he was paying much attention to what you were doing. Now you felt a bit stupid for believing he wouldn't connect the - admittedly - obvious dots.

"They really are marvellous. And this?", he gestured to yesterdays page "Truly phenomenal!"

You didn't know what to say. You weren't even sure if you could say anything at all. All you felt was blood rushing to the tips of your ears and a flaming hot sensation in your cheeks.

"I- well uhm, thank you", you managed to stutter "I uh, I actually didn't mean to- uhm, use your campaign book. It was a mistake, I'm sorry."

"You've got to be joking! It's the perfect addition!" Ford exclaimed. "Do you mind if I keep it?"

"Oh", his enthusiasm caught you off guard. "I-, I guess not. Actually, that would mean a lot to me." you admitted sheepishly.

"Very well then! Thank you, dear." He looked at you with a fond expression.

You were about to retreat back to your room, turning around ready to leave, when Ford spoke up again, the smile apparent in his voice. "I also liked your artistic rendition of the twins adventures. Anything else you want to show me?" You froze.

Your heart started beating ridiculously fast. Did he knew? Did he notice you staring at him while drawing? Your thoughts started racing, but came to a sudden halt when he leaned down. His lips were almost touching your ear when he started to whisper.

"Maybe another time." And with that he walked by you, leaving you to yourself.

-------------------------------------------------- thank you for reading <3 reblogs are appreciated

a/n: if you want a second part with romance and/or where ford discovers the drawings of him, let me know! Have a nice day/night!

[writingoddess1125]

Yes Buggy and his hot wife are Roger and Jessica Rabbit, but if I may submit this comparison to the council:

✨Buggy and his wife are The Grinch and Martha May Whovier✨

Oh It Is ON!

In the spirit of the Winter Holiday Spirits! We are doing a Christmas Spin on My Effect Series!

So get you a egg nog with 90% rum maybe some holiday 'cigarettes' sit back and enjoy this clusterfuck idea! 🍃 🚬

P.S IM REALLY HIGH WHILE WRITING THIS SO ITS PROBABLY ALL OVER THE PLACE! ENJOY!

The Grinch and Martha May Effect 🎄

If you like my shit, support me on Ko-Fi because recession!

Link to Main Masterlist

• This Crusty Bastard has had the heart of the most beautiful women in the world.

• And didn't even realize it-

• You had all met on Gol D Roger's ship- Buggy being a snot nosed apprentice with his gaggle of friends- While you being one of the few girls on the ship was a cup bearer for your father. Silvers Rayleigh.

• This made you incredibly off limits to all, Sheltered by a life of luxury your father provided as your only real 'job' was to fill his cup. Even Gol D Roger the famed Captian spoiled you in cute dresses and expensive bows.

• Turning you into the Doll of the Oro Jackson.

• A Princess Wrapped in Silver and Gold

• You still remembered the first day you ment him-

• Both of you 13 years old, fresh faced kids still needing the guidance of adults.

• You'd snuck off from your normal areas, wanting to explore the ship some more. That's till you saw a boy- His face covered in what seemed to be gunpowder as he filled homemade bombs with total care.

• His blue hair peaking out of the red hat and drawing you to step a big closer to get a better look.

• The Tull of your sparkling dress catching the corner of his eye as he spun around quickly holding a knife out.

• Then, Ocean eyes met Your own and time seemed to slow. Ever so slightly- Your cheeks warming as you gave a soft smile.

• "Hello" Your little voice slipped out, Buggy stating at you with unsure interest. A crooked smile on his lips as he greeting you quickly- "H-Hi!"

• "Is something wrong with your nose? It looks kinda funny" Buggy glares hard at you, making you blink in question at his reaction.

• Buggy covering his face, his ocean eyes starting to cloud with tears like a storm eyed he stared at you. "Whats so funny about my nose!? Huh!"

• "Well don't get angry- I don't mind. I think its cute. Im sorry if i offended you" You smile so sweetly, feeling bad for making his sad as Buggy felt his face start to glow.

• "You think.. My nose is cute?" He questioned, making you nod honestly. He giggled into his hands, a high pitch squeaky laugh that made you smile and your heart flutter.

• "Whats your name?" He grins at you, Hearing you actually want to know about him. "Buggy! What about you pretty girl?" Your face flushing at his words.

• "I'm-"

• "(Y/N)!" You heard your name being called before you could speak, recognizing the voice of your father.

• "(Y/N)- That's such a pretty name.. Will I see you again?" Buggy asked, his eyes sparking at such a chance. Your delicate hand reaching forward and tucking a strand of his blue hair back into his hat. "I will try"

• And try you did. For a year the two of you would meet, talking on the deck of the ship for hours till you had to sneak away again. Buggy even using his Chop Chop abilities to help you get back to your room.

• It was tragic to say, but you'd never get a chance to see Buggy for many many years after your 14th birthday- Your Father sending you to an Island to keep you safe as you entered your teens.

• The disbanding of the Roger Pirates aiding in this as well-

• The death and heartache Seeming to follow you as you found yourself handing in the hands of Sir Crocodile.

• Crocodile having had an interest to whoo you for years- as he too had met you on Gol D Roger's ship, finding you the only person more then suitable to be at his side.

• You had never truly accepted his advances, Despite his power, status and more. He didn't have your heart, and you wouldn't give him any part of yourself in compensation.

• Decades it had been like this, still the girl wrapped in silver and gold. Hoarded like treasure for everyone to admire, however nothing more.

• But it seemed the tides were beginning to change- After Crocodile time in Impel Down- as well as the formation of the Cross Guild- You would meet your blue haired friend once again. Just in a unique Flashy way

• AKA by his head being punched off by Crocodile and accidently flung into your waiting chest.

• "(Y/N)?-" He mumbled against your bust, your cheeks flaring deep crimson as he floated his head up to lock eyes with your flushed face.

• He got his ass beaten for that by Crocodile of course-

• But for you it was like your heart was Kickstart again!

• At the Cross Guild, you'd always attend. Crocodile assuming it was because you were warming up to him, But in truth it was to see Buggy-

• The two of you talking to each other constantly. He was so fascinating to you-

• Like you two were children again falling in love- Sitting out under the stars talking for hours. You tucking strands of his blue hair back into his hat, him fixing any Imperfections on yohr dresses as you sat next to him. Which often lead to Buggy giggling into his gloved hands while turning away from you

• You accepted him as he was, and adored him for it. You loved his mind, his passion, even his laziness and lewd humor.

• As time went on, you noticed the same for him. How he would ask you YOUR interest, what things YOU actually liked.

• Something no one had asked you since you were a child. Most just assuming your taste and interest.

• Hell when he came for meetings he would bring you something you'd actually want. Not just shiny things to make you look more valuable.

• "Hey (Y/N)!" Buggy cloaked towards you excited as he held out a old dirty crate to you. "I remeber you said you really liked weird plants, so I found these old books and scientist-y samples of the weirdest! Hope you like them!"

• You'd almost cried at the gift, so overfill with you you hugged Buggy. Before spending hours going through the crate and organizing it all to your liking.

• However with the sweets, came the sours...

• There had been countless times you'd walk into the Guild and see Buggys face. Beaten and bruised- How Crocodile and Mihawk kicked his ass as their own personal stress relief or just to show dominace.

• It broke your heart.. truly- Buggy humiliated like that infront of everyone time and time again... You would try to comfort him after the meetings but he would just run away- You swore you saw tears in his eyes a few times.

• You'd want to many times to have him run into your arms, so you could whisper how good of a man he is and deserving so love.

- It had been a particularly festive day in the Guild Hall, Crocodile dressing in a nicer suit as better food was served and fancy alcohol was served. You even being gifted a dress by the Desert King himself to wear today, you didn't refuse but felt rather uncomforble at how attentive he was acting with you.

And uncomfortable that he had purposely sat Buggy so far away from you..

As dinner was being served, Crocodile stood up from his seat next to you. Slapping his hand on the table to gather everyone's attention.

"I have an announcement-" Crocodile voice boomed through the room, you glancing up as the hook handed man gestured for you to stand. Which you silently did-

Oh No...

"(Y/N)- Daughter of Silvers Rayleigh. A women of greatness and deserving of only the finest of riches"

No...

"I ask for your hand- I swear I will give you all the wealth you desire"

Please No...

"From Riches, Silks and even the One Piece if your little mind wishes for it"

NO!

"Will you Marry me?"

Something inside you just snapped. Staring at Crocodile face that had the crooked cigar hanging from his lips.

Crocodile taking your silence positively as he handed you a velvet box with a massive diamond ring inside of it.

You stared at the ring box that had been placed in your glove hands and felt... nothing. Absolutely nothing...

Before A fire of rage filled your insides-

"We- We aren't even dating!-" You shouted, everyone looking to yoh in shock as you looked around wildly.

"What makes you think I want to stay by your side!? You were just ment to protect me not use me as a Scudo Girlfriend! I'm not yours nor will I ever be!-" Crocodile face starting to turn red, his eyes glancing around him before setting on you with a harsh glare.

"So I-I can't accept this" You finally hissed out, bright red in the face from both embarrassment and anger. Everyone in the Guild Hall staring at you in total shock.

"Besides My Heart... Belongs to someone else-" Crocodile eyes widen as he clenched his hands in rage. You handing the ring box back to him delicately, before turning to look at Buggy who had been picking his nose diassociating heavily at the dramatics. Only coming back to reality when he saw everyone was staring at him-

Buggy stares confused, 'Why are you all looking at me?' He looked behind himself first, Then around to see who you could be talking about, that had your heart. Realizing quickly he was alone and you actually ment HIM!

"Wait Me!?"

• After such a stunning yet shocking reveal, Crocodile cut you lose. Feeling you embarrassed him infront of everyone- Which had been the greatest day of your life!

• As you fly into Buggy's (Who got beaten senseless once again) arms. Who accepts you happily into his life-

• Frolicking away to his Circus Themed Ship in what can only be described as total Joy!

• "HAHAHAHAHA I WIN!!" He yells out, holding you in his arms as he flips off Crocodile once more and holds you in his arms.

• You adore his Flashy Crusty ways, the way he weirdly cackled and utter lack of emotional control.

• Oh How you love your Crusty Clown!

[implalazz]

Asked for some yokai fusions on reddit, this is the first batch

L-R: Frostysol, Nonoko, Venyan, Lord Lie-in, Slimatina, Whisbuzz

Some thoughts on these designs under the cut

Yayyyyyy thoughts on these because I like talking, esp about my creative process

Frostysol: I WILL SAY RIGHT NOW I KNOW I FUCKED UP THE KOSODE MASSIVELY, IT DOESN’T HAVE SLEEVES & IT’S TOO BIG….. I literally only had two ideas for this desgin, one was inspired by the yuki onna segment's backgrounds from Kwaidan & the other was inspired by the spirits from Kuro Neko. The eyes in the backgrounds of yuki onna were so striking & I had just watched the movie recently so it was still fresh in my mind. I knew I wanted her to be closer to a real yuki onna rather than just a cute snow girl spirit. And in that regard Kuro Neko helped with that. I guess subconsciously I wanted her to give off vibes of an unsuspecting girl who kills you & turns out to be a yokai. I thought a kosode would make more sense historically than a random cape, but also idk if young girls wore kosode like that or if it was just adult women. Had no ideas how to incorporate pallysol so I just used him for little details. He's more prevalent in the design intentionally than physically

Nonoko: Pretty simple what do I say. Uh I thought I could do a clover for the tail rather than a heart like Bloominoko. Wanted to make him even fatter than he is cuz he's Noko x2, also made his spots clover shaped cuz what's more lucky than a four leafed clover? An eight leafed clover! Or two four leafed clovers..... Also gave him double teeth & some little wing shaped clovers on his head kinda like Dudunsparce. This one didn't have a lot of thought go into it, I just kinda did what felt natural

Venyan: The first thing I thought about was what colour to make the fur & what colour to make the hair. I decided on red hair cuz it would pop more with dark blue fur. Also made his face pattern a part of his hair cuz he doesn’t have enough room on his face for it with Venocts bangs. I wanted him to be kind of a shitty little bastard, a real cat kinda cat. A good mix of their personalities y’know. Didn’t have much going on with this design either other than I didn’t want the scarf to be all bulky with the dragons cuz Jibanyan is very squart, so I moved them to the tails. Also just because that looks cooler. Had a hell of a time drawing them, I have experience drawing dragons but I’ve always been bad at drawing them roaring or snarling, they look okay but not great.

Lord Lie-in: Also had a bit of trouble combining these two, makes sense cuz I put this one off for more than a few weeks. Didn’t wanna give him big spiky saiyan hair so he got some stray hairs in the front. Took his face framing bangs & tied them up cuz I always like that look (They’re two different pieces tied individually then tied together, so there’s two mini ponytails instead of one. Also had to deliberate on the hair colours cuz I knew I wanted him to have white fur. One of my favourites was red hair with light blue ends but I didn’t go with that one cuz his outfit is mostly red. I also DID NOT feel like giving him a whole kimono (mostly for silhouette reasons) so I just gave him Miku-like sleeves. I originally wanted to give him split leg hakama but when looking at reference I remembered “Oh yeah these things have a lot of pleats & the crotch is pretty low so that’s not great for the silhouette I have in mind.” I gave him harem-esque pants & if you look closely at the upper thigh you can see a little slit in the side of them. Underneath his waist plate & top, the pants tie together like hakama do so I guess I got the hakama in a little bit. I didn’t have any room for his arm warmers so I made them into gloves & gave him the kind of socks that I don’t know what they’re called (Catra has them & I think they’re cool). Also gave him tengu cuz they look cooler than whatever Lie-in Heart has going on. Also cuz it makes him more like “Woah what a bold guy/character!!” And don’t ask how the sword fits in that sheath, idk magic or something he’s the king of the yokai he can do whatever he wants

Slimatina (or Frostymander): Again not much going on here it’s pretty simple. Gave the lower body muscles cuz I noticed the lower body of Slimamander kind of looked like a chest & also just cuz that makes it more creepy. I gave the main body/head some hair clips resembling the patterns on the bulbs of the other heads. Also made the openings in the head look more like a woman’s mouth cuz again, makes it creepy, but also I just thought it would fit more with the Frostina part. Also gave the main heads head eyelashes that look like the openings on the other heads. Decided to give her a cape this time cuz I’m not fuckin around with another kosode. I don’t know if it comes off in the piece but I wanted her cape to be flying up like she just summoned a harsh wind. Last thing is I gave her an eye ornament on her obi & a specially tied obijime cuz I saw one tied like that on google & I thought it looked cute

Whisbuzz: YET AGAIN SAY IT WITH ME! NOT! MUCH! GOING! ON!!!!!! Uhh gave him a frown cuz he’s depressed or whatever, made the top of his hood look like Whispers…… ahoge???? Made his wings wispy on the ends. That’s about it. Fun fact before I drew that one I had another one but I scrapped it because it looked too much like a sperm cell :]

[kiisaes]

I still think it's really crazy that Horikoshi did Midoriya so dirty by having him murder the boy he wanted to save, and, now that he's lost his Quirk, is stuck being lonely for like eight years feeling like a husk of his former self, only feeling like himself again when he gets an Iron Man suit. I'm not a big Dekuhead, but I'm asking around to see what Deku fans think of the writer's choices concerning his conclusion. I'd love to hear your thoughts!! did you like this? did you not? why? etc

as a dekuhead, i agree that killing shigaraki was confusing and i still don't know what the thought process is behind that. like, saving him has always been deku's plan and everything was pointing towards shigaraki rehabilitation but then ... we didn't get it???

so yes, shigaraki should have lived (it aligns with deku's goals and the narrative's goals) and toga also should have lived for similar reasons. i also agree that deku's conclusion should have been expanded upon more — i really wanted to see how killing shigaraki, losing his quirk, etc. truly affected deku, and we were kinda left hanging. but also i sorta just equate that with lack of time / horikoshi being rushed to finish his manga

but i fundamentally disagree with the rest of your ask. it feels like you've developed this opinion based on the 430 leaks and not the actual official chapter; it's just misleading. which i don't blame you for, because the mha leaks scene is fucking awful and has ruined an entire reader base's reading comprehension, which has consequently been perpetuated by the fandom

"is stuck being lonely for like eight years feeling like a husk of his former self"

it's not stated if he feels like a husk of his former self or not. he lost his quirk, true, but he verbally says he's ok with it (ofa was like a dream that he got to live out), and never shows that he's particularly depressed or upset about being quirkless again. i feel like this specific idea is very fandom-coded. everyone was drawing deku sad as fuck for losing his quirk but canonically he appears at most wistful, and normally just neutral. it is what it is, yknow? after all he says himself that he was originally quirkless anyway, so not much has changed.

also he mentions feeling lonely, but i hate this idea that deku has been lonely for 8 straight years. people have twisted this into meaning his friends ghosted him after high school, but like ... how would that even make sense. deku's friends love him so much, will fight at the world's end with him, and he changed their lives for the better. they would absolutely not ghost him. they just canonically don't meet up much anymore, because OBVIOUSLY, when you don't live in the same building as your high school classmates anymore you are NOT going to meet up as much as before. this is just how adulting is. you have responsibilities and jobs and lives now. people hate to hear it but it's the most realistic part of this ending.

"only feeling like himself again when he gets an Iron Man suit"

again, we have no idea if deku didn't "feel like himself" when he was just teaching. and this idea that he's not is fueled in some weird anti-teacher belief that i'm seeing a lot of, now that deku pursued education in his future. in my opinion teaching is a very fitting career for him; he's been inspiring and helping his classmates as a student, and he loves quirk analysis and gushing to others about their quirks.

he's literally training a new generation of heroes, he gets to work alongside pros (such as aizawa), he's constantly learning more about new quirks ... why is this not the deku we've known and loved? what about this feels wrong? just because he's not a stereotypical hero on the scene, he's suddenly a worse version of himself?

mha has drilled into our heads so much atp that being quirkless doesn't mean you can't be a hero. deku was quirkless his whole life but he had the spirit of a hero, and even when other heroes quit during the apocalyptic era between wars, deku was still out there, doing what he could. he didn't need the money. he didn't need the fame. he didn't need the recognition or the credit, even. he just wanted to help people. and being a teacher is one of THE most directly helpful jobs you could take.

from what i can tell, people who complained about teacher deku and "peaking during high school" and "working a dead-end minimum wage job" were all from the western fandom. i have not seen a single japanese fan complain to this degree. it's definitely a cultural difference but also i think they just read better than us. UA is a prestigious school with crazy name recognition and all teachers there are registered pro heroes. even though deku isn't technically a pro, they recognized him as one anyway, which allowed him to work there in the first place. like hello. over everything we should be grateful he didn't become a cop.

the way i interpreted him getting his suit was that

his friends love him so much they pooled their money all in secret just to give him another chance at actual hero work, even though they know deku's content with his teaching job. probably also so they can see him more, now that their schedules might align better

even though he's quirkless, he is still symbolically — and literally — a hero. turning society's preconceived opinions of quirkless people on its head

it had nothing to do with making him feel like himself again. he was doing fine. the suit is just a (very expensive, labor of love) perk.

and before anyone complains about him "receiving handouts" and that "he just lazed around for years until his friends picked him back up with the suit", SHUT THE FUCK UP. he's done so much for them that they felt it right to return the favor, especially to the one guy they know who earned it the most. also - he deserved a break from all of the shit he went through; why should it Not take him 8 years? do you KNOW how much pain he suffered? that amount of trauma lasts a lifetime. all of you SHUT UP.

as a dekuhead, i think his conclusion as a teacher who also works as a pro hero is awesome and cool and i see no qualms with that. my main concern is that we should've gotten more of a conclusion to deku's ARC and its connection to the story, but regarding his future 8 years later i'm totally fine with it. he's living out his dreams, working with heroes, studying quirks, and keeping in touch with the ones he loves. that is epic as hell

[orewing]

WIND BREAKER Original Soundtrack: Official Lyrics

These were transcribed by me directly from the CD booklet included with the OST; I reviewed them carefully to make sure there aren't any mistakes. Please enjoy!

Upheaval

High in the sky The crows are calling and their wings unfold And now, they fly in circles like they've found a prey to hold Staring cold A bell resounds A blasting welcome portrays in its sound I wonder now What kinda mighty foes will come around Zest's unbound

The curtain unveils a sight I'm unleashing the rage, igniting a fight Position I chase, will be mine Through the gate, move on with my fist I'm set to face all foes, no twist

My unshaken resolve, unwavering rock The sight I pursue's kept away for the strongest one to unlock Rise to the top

Feeling the stares and piercing gazes I'm surrounded here And I don't care I love the tension, pitch-black atmosphere, drawing near

Only might will hold its weight in our realm Are you weaklings or are you strong? Heartbeat uncontrolled, racing on I'll be so ruthless with all foes I'll face

The curtain unveils a sight I'm unleashing the rage, igniting a fight Position I chase, aim assigned Through the gate, move on with my fist I'm set to face all foes, no twist

For my goal, that is above all <<Watch out, stay on guard>> I'll face and conquer my rival <<Watch out, stay on guard>> Today's bound to an upheaval

A Starting Sign

The wind of ease would calmly blow onto days I knew nothing of A battle fought for someone else comprehension's still on pause But emotions deep inside would change as sound was heard Unimagined movement now, I cannot be conquered

There is someone needing my strength There's someone I must now protect

It's getting hotter now, this fighting spirit burns The soul would shake, and emotions turn I stand and stare into this foe in front of me Blaze in your fist every meaning of the fight

A starting sign Denounced and praised

Higher I'll Go

Every enemy in front of me I'll strike down In position for the fight, I feel the time stop Fire's burning from the soul, to the sky And that's the cue to advance, let this ignite

Shall we begin it now, our show time You wanna see how the fight ends Like I'm distorting space, speed defines Attack of the fist forming gusts of wind, now break away

This hurricane

Even in mid-day, dark interference With no choice of home and appearance This is me, what's wrong with that What you keep calling "normal," I don't know what you mean My true worth I now must feel Gotta prove it's fine to be what reveals Walking in my isolation I'll be doing this my way, no room for your disruption

Way stronger, higher I'll go I'll live the life I must know Fist clenched with this heavy load Like it's cracking open the world, here comes my blow

All denial and refusal and rejection Discontinuation of retaliation Solitude has taken feelings astray Affection for tenderness would fade away

Shout it out! So, get up!

This is my Way This is the Way

Even in mid-day, dark interference With no choice of home and appearance This is me, what's wrong with that What you keep calling "normal," I don't know what you mean My true worth I now must feel Gotta prove it's fine to be what reveals Walking in my isolation I'll be doing this my way, no room for your disruption

Way stronger, higher I'll go I'll live the life I must know Fist clenched with this heavy load Like it's cracking open the world, here comes my blow

Way stronger, higher I'll go Hey! Then I'll live the life I'm owed

Stronger

When I wanted to seize my freedom It may've already broken But I don't wanna cease Only wished I'd neared the dream my heart has spoken

Unfolding disarray I couldn't understand what I should have done The colors fade away Why does my heart keep on becoming so cold?

The rain, pouring down from the dark Didn't care, kept walking on the path embarked And focusing hard on the place I wanna reach I even broke and lost what's dear to me

It is so bleak and iced Lone, I can't suffice

To become stronger for somebody Allies together, aligned with me Always remember Protecting someone Allies together Remember that Remember that

At last, found my treasure But it's unfilled, void of what I pursued

I noticed my heart is so dried All the memories I cherish cracked inside It felt unfulfilled, like there was a missing part Although it's been so close, here from the start

It is so warm around Lone, I feel the bounds

To become stronger for somebody Allies together, aligned with me Always remember Protecting someone Allies together Remember that Remember that

The rain subsides Here come the bright skies

Call My Name

Stand clear, volatile, our faces glaring near Why do you stand here? Show what is deep inside, and rooted all throughout Your conviction, unbending, firm and loud

With determination, make your move

The way of life abiding essence Turns doubt into belief Move, show no fear This burning soul shall surface, keep focus Welcoming new strengths outnumbers Just filling in the gaps Those powers couldn't mean nothing at all Come and call my name

Screech of the bones sound, Teeth, you bite down Fist clenched, and drenched in sweat, firm-body strike down Spectators overpowered Temperatures rise in the room They collide, boom! Smirking as they fight now

Being strong, full of power, brings a certain thrill But a dose of, oh, anything uncool can bring me down with chills Carrying out intentions ain't no drill

Taking lies, repainted on with truth Let go, don't accept that impulse with no proof If you don't know how to control your stance Let's keep it going until you understand

A fist you're clenching through deception Has no meaning or use One blow with truth beats sentences Confession, no fiction In this palm resides pain and woes Find answers through what guides Crashed down, look up, receive winds in these skies

The way of life abiding essence Turns doubt into belief Move, show no fear This burning soul shall surface, keep focus Welcoming new strengths outnumbers Just filling in the gaps Those powers couldn't mean nothing at all Come and call my name

Screech of the bones sound, Teeth, you bite down Fist clenched, and drenched in sweat, firm-body strike down Spectators overpowered Temperatures rise in the room They collide, boom! Smirking as they fight now

[occasionally-victor]

some mer au sketches, this time figuring out some designs for brazilians (does. does Brazil even exist in this au-) (also kinda tweeked Richas' design to look a bit more. for water yknow) ("mer au" doesn't draw any mer)

talking about them under the cut:

!pac is aquafolk (i genuinely don't know how to call just partially fish people), he's, well, partially fish (blue fin tuna as an inspiration). He can transform from "looks human of you dont look too close" (still needs to cover fins and gills) to "40% of body is scales" (can really only happen in water). On a pic is a middle form, for when he's only with family and friends.

!mike is dryad, the three parts (just like that ribcage also has a tree spine basically) are flexible. The green stuff all over the body are not because of him being dryad, it's actually moss. That is a result of "moss disease", when basically moss starts growing on body. Unless you have been born with it or it was completely removed, it can be deadly (because the moss uhh incompatible with the host basically. however, if a person was born with it, that person will be fine, because the body was born already compatible with moss). !Mike was born with it, so it's fine, however he can't really wear clothes on top of it (it's not a requirement, it's more for a comfort of moss). Oh, and also he has a goddess wife, yeah.

!felps is a human sorcerer (or maybe enchanter idk, and he is pretty powerful). His main thing is doing potions (that's like. basically the only thing that he is actually interested in practicing). And he's like, stupidly good at it, both normal use ones and completely ridiculous ones. He carries a lot of ingredients in his ig it can be called a skirt? a 3/4 skirt's pockets. That also makes him pretty good at doing homebrew medicine, so that's neat.

both twins are human (tho for shits and giggles their very distant ancestors are catpeople, but at this point the only things left are just sharp senses) and good news they actually got to reunite again when they were just 19! slightly less trauma for them! what happened in a first place? someone just happened to accidentally dimension hop to a basically hell dimension (im actually thinking about calling it Nether fr, i think it's just a nice name tbh) when he was like 10, right on the eyes of his sister. That also led to both if them acquiring pretty powerful demons (that what basically everyone who lives in Nether called, in the same way that everyone who lives in this dimension are people) as companions.

!bagi at first thought that Jorge is her imaginary friend that appeared to help her feel less lonely after her brother was gone. She didn't question the fact that they were a bit too real sometimes (she was just 10, it didn't exactly matter to her at that point). Jorge, who is fresh out of Nether and doesn't really know how to get back anyway (the passage was closed immediately after some boy ran through it) doesn't really want to break it to a kid, so they just. Stick around and eventually become an actual friend. (a bit background for them: Jorge was a spirit, who on a way to a Rest Place (basically dimension for dead) accidentally gets stuck in Nether (it's basically normal occurrence to be stuck in some dimension on a way). Jorge basically uhhh starts consuming other spirits that were not yet found by grim reapers and by that amasses enough power to basically become a demon themselves. They do not remember any of that tho, however Jorge on themselves at this point is rather a conglomerate of spirits with og one in charge basically). When !Bagi started working as investigator (when she was 16 - she was really persistent), Jorge was actually really useful because, well, they are still a spirit, they can go through walls and all that. ig that also makes them working partners.

not going to get into how exactly the 9 years of being basically in hell went for !cellbit, but making a pact with a demon was probably the thing that saved his life the most. Rapaziada (or Chat - affectionate nickname) is a hivemind creature that manifests itself as voices in a head of host or dark evergy. At the cost of 80% of !cells memories, it's main task became to protect the host in any way possible (physical and mental). Unfortunately, surviving in Nether outside of big cities, especially for someone who is not from this dimension, requires kill or be killed mindset so. Let's just say, Chat was really good at it's job, to the point when by the time the host turned 15 the demons help wasn't really required outside of physical protection (the dark energy is pretty flexible in what is could become). When eventually !Cellbit returned to his home dimension and dare i say even got better, Chat kinda became more of a slightly annoying, but usually ignorable roommate (roommates? it is a hivemind). Also it just being there gave !cell ability to see all what considered supernatural in world (like spirits who stuck and can't move on, or demons who for one reason or another is not in Nether and all that basically), so he became a paranormal investigator? (i dont think yall know what im talking about, but he basically becomes Yashiki from Death Mark, just with a bigger field of work). He basically helps spirits move on (or destroys them if needed), help lost demons to get back to Nether (surprisingly easier than to work with spirits!) or repairs the "holes" through which others can accidentally get to another dimension.

(I'm not going to get into details now, just to set a scene: !pac, !mike and !cell first meeting was in Nether and it went as well as you would think it is (a disaster), !cell and !felps became friends a bit after !cell returned from hell and are roommates atm.) So, those 4 happened to be in the same place - a cave, that is basically right by a abandoned house on a small hill (!Tazercraft are there because they were searching for some minerals (they didn't find any). !Cell is there because he had a request from someone living in that area to check the cave because "there were some weird sounds" - the standard stuff. !Felps is there because back then he sometimes joined !cell in investigations, so that what he did that day). However, right before the reunion might have turned violent, all 4 happened to catch some barely noticeable sounds - it was however, undeniably sounds of crying. A child's crying, which kinda made them to "deal with eachother later" and go check on whoever was making the sound. What they found was a small dragon child with left leg being just. gone (now that they think about it, there was some blood on caves floor). That basically how they found Richas (and that how they went from "barely know each other with most of them wanting having nothing to do with eachother" to family)

Richas basically now has three places to live: !Tazercraft's absolutely legal laboratory they pay all taxes for, !Felps' apartment in a city nearby, !Cellbit's house right by that cave (because that cave happened to be just perfect to be somewhat of a personal office for work;) (for reference, they live pretty close to eachother, the longest distance is no more than 2 hrs by motorbike).

!Bagi, well, doesn't live over there - she lives in another city, like 8 hrs on motorbike far away. She rents an apartment with !Tina and as of recent !Mouse.

[yukkoislost]

i am BACK GODDDAMN sorry no magical girls or md omori to be seen atm 😞 i have ocs tho LMAO

listened to my heart?? and decided to draw ocs before i go absolutely insane. i mean i have three perfectly fine md ocs to work on so i might as well

i never did tell you what i had planned for asta huh

oc dump below cut that no one asked for <3

the three musketeers of my account HDJEHDHS

allow me to introduce them properly, i guess?¿ they each have their own individual posts but those posts were kinda rough around the edges,,

ASTA ✨

asta is my first (disregarding older ocs) md oc i've made. she's ridiculously smart (for the most part) but is also inherently a scaredy cat. she hates change and hates the unknown, sticking to a routine that she's used to for comfort.

like doll, she doesn't have her parents anymore and they're also partly the reason she doesn't have a courage. her parents' death had killed her curious spirit. they had always been more overprotective of her, considering they had both escaped unscathed out of the cabin fever labs situation.. (070 and 072, working on that) if asked, her strongest emotion is Fear. she's allowed it to control her life so much she doesn't know what it's like to live, despite being alive. because of this, even though she had been offered a spot with the cheerleaders, she didn't take it as it would mean a deviation from her comforting routine.

of course, her routine can't last forever. life in the bunker is boring but it was safe, and that's all she needed. (going into how she would be a part of the story? in progress though) she and uzi never knew each other personally. she sat at the back of the class while uzi was towards the front. she preferred not sitting too close to her because of her, uh, personality and actions? either way, she doesn't feel safe with uzi around because of uzi's inventive mind, and her tendency to do and create dangerous things (e.g., her sick as hell railgun. and also the whole braiden thing). asta wasn't necessarily shunned, she just had a small group of friends that she preferred sticking to (until doll killed them in the days going onto the promening)

getting the absolute solver string was NOT on her to-do list, but as mentioned, routine doesn't last forever. she hated the solver string and actively tried to ignore it, but it was difficult because if fucked with her systems and caused her to crave oil (which is a whole other thing and also the point where she finally accepted that she can't keep brushing away what she doesn't want to face). did i also mention she hears the solver's voice in the back of her head, because yeah that happens.

either way, since gaining the solver's string, she is also made aware that uzi and doll both had it but didn't try to reach out for help, still strongly controlled by her fear. my plan for asta was similar to how nori was the solver's secondary host (since cyn wasn't on copper-9 at the time), she would become puppet to the absolute solver, and in turn the third official host because of how lowkey she was and doll and uzi not knowing she had the solver. naturally, asta hated the idea of becoming a pet for the solver and constantly tries to override the solver's control on her (eventually succeeding. it leads the solver to want her death because it fears that asta will take over)

this is all canon divergence ofc :3

SERIAL DESIGNATION E 🐾

my second md oc, and first and only disassembly drone oc (for now? maybe haven't decided). serial designation E (also known as E or cerberus) is the outcast of his three-drone-squad. he had once tried to fit in better with the rest of his peers but after the first attempt, decided that it was too bothersome and they didn't deserve him anyway. or, that's how he phrased it in his lonesome.

he's the laziest of the bunch and hates any extra movement, preferring to kill prey quickly than to draw it out and have fun. he only hunts when his oil levels go down to 15% and if given the choice, he would've chosen to not need to eat at all. he isolates himself and has a small space set up away from the pod and essentially, his squad.

he didn't always used to be like this though, as mentioned whenever he tried his best to fit in with the rest, he did work hard. it wasn't enough though (nothing ever is). outcasted for his strange feature of having three nanite tails instead of one, he was always made fun of and in the beginning was also nicknamed Dog by his two other squad members since he wanted so bad to feel like he was needed and important to them, to the point he would willingly have done anything for them. but that was in the past. there's no point.

as a butler in the elliot manor, he has occasionally come across J, V, N and cyn. hard not to when they hang around the young mistress so often, especially J as her personal maid.. or something. he doesn't remember too well. much like his currently disassembly drone self, he took whatever shortcut he could find back in the mansion. he isn't a good person. he wasn't good then, and certainly isn't any better now. maybe a little. back in the manor, he hated doing work. he severely lacks motivation and seriously can't find a reason that he should be bothered other than the humans could kill him, or whatever. it didn't matter, or maybe it did? he wants to live (does he?) he doesn't remember.

anyway. that life is far behind him now. his squad was sent to copper 9 by JcJenson in spaaaaaaaaace (i forgot how many A's were in the space) to clear out the worker drones of course. he's got a chunk of missing memory somewhere in his head.. somewhere dark and somewhere fleshy. probablly not important. he remembers his quad but he can't find them, only alerted that a new pod and three new disassembly drones had landed– J, V and N (where was the other one? who was the other one? someone is not missing)

the forest breathes life into the dead landscape.

how long had he been asleep for?

OCTAVIERY 🦉

the oc that y'all would be familiar with. octaviery has more posts than asta and E combined (i think). the accidentally acquired child of N and uzi somewhere within the events of cabin fever

the good, quiet child of nuzi,, if you disregard his love for 'extreme sports' (read climbing into places he doesn't belong, and eventually getting stuck like an idiot). since his parents are both verbally loud and open, he never really had to ask for anything himself because his psuedo-parents dealt with it for him, leaving him to be the only introverted person of their small family.

he grows faster than a normal drone would, and thus reaches the age of a young teenager even while uzi is still in school. (yes, he is, in fact, taller than uzi. not taller than N though)

he doesn't know his true purpose.

AND THEN I GOT LAZY TO TYPE🤞

[sweeteaacakes]

Okay I'm so glad that you ok with WHB AU, cus I need to share this idea of mine but too coward to make a blog 🥹

Okay what I want to start is about this dynamic: incorporeal entity & the only person who can hear/see/talk to them (there is s.o on X draw about this dynamic too- so glad that it's popular 😭 https://x.com/silvsarts/status/1802270254598611090?s=46)

For example like Yami & Yugi in Yugioh (or anykind of Yu-relationships in the later version 🤌) And yes I know I not like this dynamic normally... I... obsesse... with... this 😳 (stop here cus if I say more it will be out of control 💀)

Back to the AU(s), i imagine that... Ra-on/MC/Descendant of Solomon...

1) They got haunted by demons (more specifically - the Demon Kings 👀), and only they could see the demons... uhm kinda floating around them 😐

I dun list nobles here because I think when the kings disappear (spoiler: Solomon sealed them inside his descendant's body), the nobles pretend to be humans to find their kings in the human realm

Yeah now it's a supernatural, fantasy, bonus slice of life (and horror 🤪) kind of manga 🤣

2) Ra-on has Dissociative Identity Disorder, different identities are the kings/angels/...

Okay I know this one doesn't relate to the dynamic, but I still think it's a good idea 🥹

Soooooo... What do you think about my idea 👀

(now i'm gonna wait until i gather enough courage to do it 😭)

-🎃

That's a cool AU! I'm also thirsty for incorporeal summoning entities (persona series clicks in my head). Sgahsha Anon let me brainstorm with youuuuu

Tbh, I'm not a fan of DID depictions when it comes to the media because there's a chance it may go the wrong way unless the writer has DID themselves or done proper research.

Either way, I'm all in for the first idea.

Like, if Solomon can summon the demons but as his bloodline gets further and further and his practice has been lost, especially due to his sudden disappearance, the demons have long stopped being summoned by him and got sad.

Then comes Ra-on/MC who one day summoned Satan.

Wait! Here's better part! The demon kings can also be summoned by other people whoever they feel harmony with. Kinda like a mirror version of themselves in the human world. But by doing so they got stuck in the astral realm and has been there for a while. And then there's MC who suddenly summoned the King of Wrath.

After summoning Satan, he quickly told MC that there's an ongoing war in their world so in order to gain strong they will need to find his mirror half aka the person who worship him on Earth.

Uhm, day after they woken up with Ppyong and Sitri in their home pretending to be human after Sitri felt a tug that his king have been summoned.

Anyways, this is due to Solomon's disappearance too.

Centuries later, various humans started worshipping a specific demon and handed it down to their bloodline. However, due to the misleading information and beliefs as time went by, they ended up accidentally sealing the Kings in astral realm and separating their beastly-form and human form, allowing the worshipper to only summon their beast form and can't really communicate with them making MC ✨️special✨️ woohooo! I’mma genius!

The worshippers, unaware of Solomon's bloodline, didn't know about MC's family. Their death. Or even who they are.

The kings can communicate with MC as a spirit.

In order to regain their corporeal body, they will need to be whole with their beast form so MC is tasked to find their mirror half in the human realm.

now they only have Sitri and Ppyong by their side.

The other nobles are probably wandering around the Earth

This technically leave the part ‘only one person who can’ but atleast they are the only one who can communicate with them properly!

Now I was wondering how can each Kings can be presented? Lol, like the four main kings are rambling around MC and suddenly

Belphegor's voice shut them up with "Yo, shut the fuck up I'm sleeping here"

and everyone is like SINCE WHEN YOU'VE BEEN HERE???

Belphegor: Always have been :)

Okei that's all I have for now XD

ps: i had fun brainstorming in this :3

[edge-oftheworld]

a snapshot in time of my CALM orchestral arrangement

so I just discovered that this is a thing you can do on tumblr and i've been debating putting it up here (i'm not even sure it's legal) but at this point, to me it's worth the (very slim) lawsuit risk to show you guys the inspo behind making this blog. for @bluewrite who i've been meaning to email this to for ages but never got there. for @tleeaves who i think got a slightly older version as did @ghost-of-you but this is also for all of you who've heard me rattling about music things, for people i've gotten into 5sos by talking about this project such as @thevagabondexpress (thank you for drawing the U2 link).

anyway, as you probably know i'm a classical violist. i know my instrument and i know a fair amount of music theory and i know how to play the keyboard/piano as well and at the start of this project i knew very little about building orchestral scores or anything about wind instruments at all. i'd written arrangements and original pieces before but only for strings-only orchestras, and though i'm alright at pulling out instrumentation from songs my experience is largely in the more classic 2000s pop/rock/worship with very minimal synth activity and max 3 part harmonies. to say this was a challenge is an understatement.

it's also not finished yet. i've gone back and forth on this getting feedback from a bunch of people, much of which i didn't understand and wasn't ready to implement. i've also found ashton and calum's videos explaining these songs in more detail and the acoustic version of teeth and best years with the actual chords of the songs and now, differently to the week tfofu came out but similar, i'm on it again, noticing things. noticing musical trends. most of this was done by pure sound intuition and a handful of piano scores arranged by @/keudae on youtube i bought and played to get a feel of the songs. I feel really stoked to have picked up on the whole lover of mine setting us up for lonely heart and being a bit like ghost of you and some of the themes within the album!

but there is a lot i didn't pick up on. especially in the last movement i don't truly feel like i did any of those songs justice. nor lonely heart. and there is a stark difference between the quality of the songs that were played at the RAH and the ones that i only had a studio version to work off (my strings background comes out here). i've also looked at all the 22 individual parts and realised, hey, i want to be in the 5sos spirit and make every single one of these fun to play and right now the only one that is is the cello which carries luke's main melody line but it's also kinda working too hard.

and that's the thing i know, probably apart from that one keychange into lonely heart from ghost of you, this for the most part sounds good and i want to share it here before i rejig it too much, make it too much more orchestral, so we can remember it and see it evolve. because i have a bunch of juno and guitar and percussion and harmony parts i haven't put in. general song vibes. shake up the choruses and make them a variation on themselves each time. maintain the atmosphere it's got but add more layers to it, be more true to the original songs. make something i would be proud to show 5sos if the opportunity ever arose, something that would actually astonish them and I think I can. because their musicality in this album is astounding, and something i haven't seen in heaps of other artists, and i want to recognise that and draw it out in something that can do it justice like an orchestra.

[maxwell-grant]

So, as a lover of superheroes, supervillains, super-science ETC, i've had Venture Bros on the mind recently, for reasons that should be obvious, and my mind has run into an intersting question I kinda want to pick your brain on: Why does Venture Bros work. Like, it's a show that is absurdly cynical and dark and bleak. It's comedically dark, but sitll dark. Downright mean-spirited a lot of the time. And normally, I find that kind of cynicism very dull, but...For some reason, here it feels like it works. Maybe it's just the sense of affection, of real love for classic 60s cartoons and superhero comics sprinkled throughout, but...I don't know, it feels like it should make me as angry as something like Velma does but it just doesn't. I don't know why. ANy thoughts

I said as much that a lot of that has to do with the fact that the show stuck around, and the characters were developed so vividly, that the creators had to answer the "...okay, so now what?" process, that usually stops those kinds of mean dark parodies right on their tracks when they run out of cheap shots to take. But honestly, going back and rewatching it? Venture Bros was always going to go there, the whole Jonny Quest parody thing just did not last past Season One, hell you could argue it didn't even really last past the pilot or midway through S1. By episode one of Season 2, the show had gestated into it's own thing. The show was allowed to grow, and change, and develop. It got to move past itself and say goodbye to old favorite ideas and say hello to new ones, it got to breathe new life into itself with the soft-reboot of Season 6 and keep being so much more with every new season.

The artbook goes into this quite a lot, actually, with Jackson talking about how Venture Bros started as a one-off gag observation about how Jonny Quest ripped off Tom Swift, and then became a concept when he realized he could fit all of his unused ideas for The Tick and superhero parodies and weird comic ideas. He and Doc Hammer actually specifically address how the parody element faded and why:

I like the pilot. It isn't the show that we made. but I like the pilot. The pilot was made with a different concept. I can watch it and not tie it into Venture Bros. I can go, "Okay, here are these characters in their first bid for comedy,", and it had moments when we both said, "Yes, we will perpetuate these moments. This is who these characters are." And it had moments of single-beat pilot jumps. It was fine. It was not the show that we kept writing, because we couldn't.

There's something about a straight parody that I think has a cap. Maybe I'm wrong. Maybe people can write a parody forever, but I think you can only make so many jokes on one thing for a certain amount of time before you go, "We have to develop the world that these people are in.". It needs a revolving door.

You would need to approach it like Harvey Birdman, which said, "We're going to take every character we can get a license for, bring them onto the show, and have them do their thing in our world so we can demystify all the characters you remember from your childhood". It's a great straight-up parody. But if you take Sealab 2021 - that had nothing to do with the original. They took these drawings, and they said, "These are totally different people. We're going to give them their own different world, their own language, characters", and that worked.

We were leaning towards that. Venture Bros was even weirder because we said, "Let's make this world rock solid and deep and long and have just an abundance of information. Let's have the jokes come from everywhere, and the speed is hard to keep up with. You have to watch it twice". And that was nothing that Jackson and I talked about. Let's make this smart, rich and meaningful, and hope that other people have our sensibility and eventually get it. - Doc Hammer, Go Team Venture!: The Art and Making of The Venture Bros.

There's even this quote from Jackson regarding one of the earliest attempts made in trying to figure out the show's look and design where it was supposed to be animated in CG at Will Vinton Studios, and it was intended to look gorgeous as well as outrageously expensive and within six months everyone aboard had left and Jackson's time in The Tick was up so he had to get production on the new thing moving along. And he describes what wound up being a pretty effective summation of the show post-animation bump;

"Screw the bad-on-purpose sixties Marvel thing. Screw irony. Isn't it way more subversive to do this smart-ass, darkish comedy but have every aspect of it look gorgeous?

That's what got me thinking that it's way cooler to make things well and beautiful than to try to make them crappy on purpose - Jackson Publick, Go Team Venture!: The Art and Making of The Venture Bros.

Most if not everything that makes the show work, that makes it's character work, you can trace pretty directly from that process, of where the show started versus where it ended. It's Rusty Venture becoming a more complicated character and less of a mean caricature. It's Brock Samson needing things to do besides being the action badass who kills armies of disposable henchmen, and the show needing to move past him and make him so much more as a person. It's in how the show was originally conceived in a villain-of-the-week format and The Monarch was a throwaway gag character for the pilot, but The Monarch's defined personality and shtick worked well enough that it made it much easier and more rewarding for them to just go back to him for most episodes, until he wormed his way into becoming the show's other protagonist. It's Hank and Dean growing past literally and textually interchangeable and disposable Hardy Boys pastiches into actual people, distinct people, people who can carry their own plotlines and take center stage and actually be The Venture Brothers as something more than just a throwaway gag concept.

I'm certainly not saying it works for everyone, or that it works 100% of the time, again rewatching the show is putting a lot into perspective for me and a lot of jokes kinda did just age abysmally, but the show knows what it's doing enough to skirt by and avoid a lot of catastrophic pitfalls that usually happen with similar projects.

And really I'd say the main reason it works is, and it's never really just one reason, is because it was, and is, a painstaking labor of love founded on a marriage by two geeks (I'm not even exaggerating, that's how the two described their partnership at least a few times) shooting the shit at a treefort for nights on end, getting to do all these dumb voices that you only get to do with friends, laboring extensively for years on making this thing they'd created the best that it possibly could be, something they put all of themselves into again and again. It's them making a dozen different comedy duos voiced by themselves and finding ways to make each distinct so they can fit in all these dumb and lovely little conversations and skits, it's that combination of their skills and preferences and even disagreements. It's got that Asterix thing where the work is so inseparably intertwined with the partnership that made it, that the work's growth over time is tied to.

So honestly the best way I can summarize why I think the Venture Bros works is because it was 19 years of Jackson Pollock and Doc Hammer at AstroBase doing exactly this, just replace the cartoon sound effects with deep cut pop culture riffs and in-depth earnest extrapolations of why the comic books and cartoons they love and obsess about are deeply stupid on a fundamental level and why this something great that you can spin endless stories and scenes out of, actually no keep the over-the-top battle sound effects, those are equally important.

"Jackson and I, we'd go every day and talk and laugh and get to know each other and not even talk about the show, but just find out what our sensibilites were. It was like the process of falling in love"

We played darts and made up these little skits, much of it became The Venture Bros. It was all kind of based around this idea that Aquaman and Black Manta were not who they were but people that were much chattier and more social. It's almost like what The Monarch and Dr Venture became, actual people that have these bizarre jobs: chaser and chasee. This strange bureaucratic relationship with the paradigm of villain and hero.

I'm a goofball and name shit. Of course I named my studio. We took over the place and AstroBase as this entity - a really filthy fucking painting studio - became a creative tree fort. Owning the AstroBase is one of the things that made The Venture Bros.

A place where we could go at two in the morning and scream at the top of our lungs that had nothing to do with commerce. It was a clubhouse. A pure idiot invention. And if we wanted to stay up all night making costumes or rubber swords, we just did. - Doc Hammer - Doc Hammer, Go Team Venture!: The Art and Making of The Venture Bros.

[qianqiancandyjar]

Ninjavember 2023!

Here's completed version with a bunch of explaining below each picture! Just scroll down if you don't want to see me blabbering. (I tried to go short as much as possible)

(I have a lot of AUs and headcanons that only exist in my head and my sketchbooks. Forgive me for wanting to spill them out.)

Day 2: Randy was listening to music with earphones so he didn't know Theresa was sitting next to him. Imagine how embarrassed he would get when he knows.

Day 8: Tech-Ninja AU. It's about machinist Randy being set up by Mcfist for murdering the town hero Ninja with his invention, the Tech-Ninja armor. Then the spirit of the destroyed Nomicon travelled to his armor and become an AI, choosing him to be the next Ninja. So Randy accepted it and was determined to make up for what he caused, when nobody except Howard, the boss of Weinerman industries, trusted him.

Day 10: Apocalypse AU. It's about Randy lost the battle at the end of season 2 and became the prisoner of the Sorcerer. The Nomicon was handed to Howard before that, and they later recruited survivors to form a resistance against the Sorcerer. Then Randy was stanked, but instead of turning into a monster, he was brainwashed and given the power of creating his own red and black stank. And- You know what will happen. (Inspired by the Darkness of Randy Cunningham)

Day 13: Elemental trial AU. You can say it's my take on what will happen in season 3. The Carp god was under the cover of a random carpfish as Norisville mascot. After a series of events it was awaken and gave Randy the power of Ice Rage.

Day 14: I think there's more than just the blood of First Ninja's brothers, since nobody knows how to destank people at the beginning...

Day 17: The Warrior might have been living or sleeping there, waiting for some ninjas to wake him up or consult him about his forbidden arts. (Ha, It's kinda like Eclipsa in Star vs. the forces of Evil)

Day 18: Or it can be called the New Generation AU. In the future, Randy took the place of Messager as well as the Ninja Guardian, while Brent became the new Sword Smith and Sorceress became their main villain. I am not really good at designing OCs so there's no next ninja yet.

However, I read a fanfic of another fandom in the form of CYOA, and it gave me new idea: just let the reader be the next ninja, it will be fun, too. (Also, this AU was inspired by an RC9GN fanfic titled from the past to the future, where future Randy became Ninja Guardian. But I couldn't find it on fanfiction.net any more. Has anyone read it? I didn't dream about it, right?)

Day 19: During that time I got even crazier after I read Enter the Nomicon. It's hard to believe I had a crazy period of shipping Randicon, even for myself. Especially weird for me since I now have a completely different view about Nomicon (peek at my Yokai Ninja AU comics). Time really can change a person, wow.

Day 21: Yes, a whole page just for this headcanon. I used the screenshots in the show because it's too hard to draw. The barrier thing is kinda like the one that held Bill's power in the range of Gravity Falls.

Day 23: Danny: the Walking Air-Conditioner. Inspired by a chapter of Secret Quartet. Danny phased his hand through the scarf. Just imagine your friend put a cold hand inside your scarf in winter. *shiver*

Day 25: Besides Ninja vine ball, there are also spike ball, gas ball, sonic ball, rainbow illusion ball, tear ball and so on. I just pick the most common one from my ninja balls headcanons to put in here.

Day 27: You may see I prefer using numbers to refer episodes, because that's how I track and rewatch them. To be more specific, I list some keywords here: NomiRandy, First Ninja, Debbie, Tengu. As fellow RC9GN Fans I'm sure you get it.

Day 30: It's a half-baked AU thing. The flowers I tried to draw are rosemary?

Wow! I actually finished all the prompts! Thank you for holding the big event! @evilspiritweek

(I don't mind sharing more details about my AUs or headcanons. *wink*)

[moonyasnow]

Malleus and Irina's kids

I finished drawing them all quite a while ago but had to add some actual personality to them too

There are 8 of them

Buckle up

Malina - first born - daughter -> hatched from egg -> in dragon form

Black hair and purple eyes

A little bit mischevious. Also spoiled ROTTEN. As a child she could pout a little and always get her way. As she grows up she matures, but you can still tell she's used to being spoiled.

All her siblings definitely helped make sure she didn't grow up to be a brat— she loves them all, and helping to look after them helped teach her responsibility, which her parents told her is a very valuable trait for a ruler to have. She is going to be Queen of Briar Valley some day, after all.

She's named, not only after both of her parents, but also after the Bulgarian word for 'raspberry'

She's a 'sister bear' (like mama bear but sister) and is very protective of and doting on her siblings. Though she's also a little bit selfish— she'll take a bite of their slice of cake and call it 'oldest sibling privileges' She's also noted to look quite a bit like Malleus' late mother, Maleanor Oh— and she LOVES stuffed animals.

She has an entire room dedicated to her hoard of them even. Dragons are very protective of their hoards, and she is no exception, not allowing almost anyone to even SEE her collection.

But! When each of her siblings were born, she gave them all one animal from her collection, and she gets very upset if they don't still cherish them, no matter how old they are. They're from her hoard, after all! Her siblings are the only people who are ever going to get something from there.

She's very open with her affection to the people she likes. But this affection can be a bit intense sometime, and if it bothers one of her siblings, it can take her a while to understand that, and she can end up taking it too far and crossing a boundary without meaning to.

Malachi - second born - son -> hatched from egg -> in human form -> has a dragon form

Pink hair and green eyes

Very attached to both parents. As a child he clung to one or both (preferably both) of them all the time. Though Malina is also a pretty good substitute if neither of them are present

ANXIETY

He's also a scholar

He really likes stargazing, and the stars in general. His parents both liked stargazing together, so of course they also took their children with them when they were young. It affected Malachi more so than most of the others. He quickly became intrigued with the stars, especially after he noticed that they move!

He loves the quiet of stargazing.

He's very mindful of his status as 2nd-in-line to the throne, and it brings him so much stress. He just kinda wants to run away to live in a little cottage in the mountains and like write or something and never have to deal with other people again.

But instead he has to go with Malina to all these meetings where he ends up so worried he'll say something wrong and mess things up that by the end of them his head falls down on the table and he lets out a long, high-pitched groan like his spirit is leaving his body.

This soft-boi just wants a quiet academic cottagecore life and to sit in a cozy chair by the fireplace and read, or to live in a secluded room in the castle compiling histories, or camp out in fields for years just watching how the stars move, but instead he's forced to do politics.

Mallory - third born - child -> born the human way -> has a dragon form

Pink hair, green eyes

They're the one of the siblings who has the most knowledge about how the world outside of Briar Valley really works, because they ended up leaving Briar Valley, and his life as a royal, to join a traveling circus.

The best listener, and has the best people-skills. They're sometimes a bit surprised by just how bad most of his siblings are at communicating with other people. They actually ended up having to bail them and their siblings out of trouble now and then as kids. Though weirdly, almost always trouble he himself got them all into.

Mallory loves their job at the circus, and being able to use magic to bring joy to others. This leads to him sometimes clashing with their younger brother Malcolm because Malcolm thinks they don't take magic seriously enough.

Mallory is rarely ever serious in general— though they've said that's mostly because everyone else in the family is so serious! "Someone had to bring in some levity!"

They also have a flair for the dramatic (theatre kid), though they do also like trying to be the dependable older sibling you can always talk to— especially since 'they're the only one guaranteed not to snitch on you' (their own words).

Just because they don't think the royal life is for them and they've left home doesn't mean they don't love their family a lot. They have a habit of spontaneously appearing in a flurry of fireflies in the castle now and then unannounced. When they do, they'll often have gifts with them; little trinkets or books or other stuff like that which they think their siblings would find interesting.

And lots and lots of stories, of course! They'll sit the younger ones down and then act out a dramatic story that 100% happened to them dude trust them (no, they were not really 'attacked by a panther assassin set out to avenge their sister'— a cat somehow snuck into the trailer cart they sleep in and hissed at them)

Malek - fourth born - son -> hatched from egg -> in dragon form

Black hair and green eyes Looks EXACTLY LIKE MALLEUS

Was named after Sebek. Sebek cried so hard and yelled so loudly out of happiness he was not actually allowed anywhere near the room where Malek was born OR his nursery for the first week and a half.

He has a very strong sense of duty; if he's promised to do something, he WILL do it. And if it's something that's too difficult for him, he's going to train whatever quality he'd need to complete it until he can pull it off. So yeah, he always keeps his promises, even if it takes him literal years to fulfill them.

This can end up making people laugh when his promise is to attend his younger siblings Malindt and Malissa's tea party, but he doesn't see what's so funny about it. Tea parties are important social events with a lot of etiquette involved, and he will be nothing but the perfect guest.

Is a bit of a hardass who isn't good at things like 'humor' or 'levity'. One time he tried to make a joke and his siblings all stared at him like he'd just eaten a frog alive right in front of them. He's a very serious person in general, and a perfectionist with high expectations of both himself and others. He can't always recognize when those expectations for others end up hurting them, though.

He's a bit oblivious, and is thus the one who the others most often pull pranks on, since he probably won't even notice it.

There's a pretty big gap between the first three kids and the others— so Mallory left home when Malek was only 7. Mallory sometimes jokes that's why Malek grew up to be 'such a hardass'

Maleah - fifth born - daughter -> born the human way -> does NOT have a dragon form

Black hair, one green eye and one purple eye.

She was born very close after Malek— so close they're not even an entire year older than each other.

She's the only magicless one, and she's a bit insecure about it- especially because she looks so human. Her family all love her, of course, and she loves them too, but she's always felt a little out-of-place amongst them. It's a reason why she and Irina are particularly close, since that's something they can bond over.

She's a bit shy, a bit of a wallflower, and one of the ones Malina dotes the most on.

She really likes fairytales, and stories of knights and princesses and such. She wants to be something like one of the princesses in the stories, hopefully to meet her 'prince/princess charming' one day. She's a bit of a hopeless romantic in that way, also idealizing her own parents' story of how they fell in love. Though that may have ended up leading to her setting her standards a bit too high. Her siblings have lots of stories to tell about her 'crush of the month' throughout the years.

Malcolm - sixth born - son -> hatched from egg -> in human form -> has a dragon form

Pink hair and purple eyes

The one going through the 'THIS IS WHO I AM, MOM' phase the longest If you get his name mixed up with any of his siblings he WILL breathe green fire on you

He was born a while after Maleah— she was starting to become a teenager when he was born/- and his younger siblings Malindt and Malissa wouldn't be born until he was already in his teens, so in a way, he felt a little lonely, not having siblings very close in age to him.

The most interested in magic in the family Wants to forge his own path and be considered unique

Definitely has some chuunibyo delusions

Has a bit of a temper. Irina is scared he got that from her side— from her father.

Malcolm is very close with his father, who was better at getting through to him when he was angry than his mother was. Not at all due to lack of trying— she did try her very best. But it was difficult when, as a trauma-response, her instinct was wanting to placate him.

He had a small crush on uncle Silver as a young child

Thinks Malina can be a bit full of herself sometimes

Judgy

REALLY looks up to Leona and used to follow him around at any and all family gatherings (since, Tomoe and Irina are basically family, which would of course make 'family gatherings' include both their sides of the family)

Malindt - seventh born - child -> born the human way -> does NOT have a dragon form

Black hair and purple eyes

Malindt is very quiet and introverted, and they're selectively mute.

They really like playing the violin. They also really like blueberries! In food, and just the color.

They often give people they like small stones or acorns or leaves or flowers they found and thought were pretty.

They're very curious, and love being outside in nature, just running around forests exploring. They're definitely the most in-tune with nature out of their siblings. They love the quiet, the sounds of birdsongs…they wish they could live in the forest. Sometimes, they even think they were meant to be a tree instead of a person.

But they love their family a lot, and love it when their parents or siblings give them head pats. So instead of an actual tree, they'd prefer being something like an ent or dryad, so they could still move and be close to their family.

They've always been more an observer, not really trying to join in on conversations, instead just listening. They're fine with that, though.

Malissa - eight born - daughter -> hatched from egg -> in dragon form

Pink hair and green eyes

Literal ray of sunshine

When she grows up she wants to be 'a monster' She thinks having claws and a razor-sharp tail and sharp teeth would be so cool She sometimes plays at being a big monster who stomps through terrorizing a city

She stayed in her dragon form the longest, until she was about 4, refusing to change into human form for a while She still changes back pretty often to go flying She's STUBBORN Also Lucy, her bunny, was the plush Malina gave her :)

She often asks her siblings to play with her, but especially Malina, since Malina almost always agrees But she also really likes her older sibling Malindt They're the closest to her in age, after all

It's likely she has ADHD— she hates needing to sit still for longer than 10 minutes, and even then it's very difficult to her.

Tag list: @another-random-paradise @thehollowwriter @faefum @cactus13-rolloflammesimp @beneathsakurashade

@nyx-of-night @theolivetree123 @babyghoul138 @skibidibabygirl

[sirowsky-stories]

The Old Prince

Part 12

Author's Note: For once it didn't take me two weeks to finish a new chapter! Wohoo!!

Description: Things take a steep turn for the worse after you find out what's happened to Oberyn.

Rating: Mature 18+ONLY Warnings: Monster Oberyn Martell x Female Reader, AU fic, obviously Halloween themed, reader cusses. Angst. Descriptions of assault and injuries. And Simon's starting to become a warning of his own at this point. I really hate him. Word Count: 6240 Author's Masterlist

   Your use of the light is probably what draws out the spirits, because you’ve just managed to create a perimeter of glowing soil around you when they appear, coming at you from all angles to try and trap you.    Somehow, they feel even bigger now, and maybe they are, having had another day to feed on the darkness since you last saw them.

   The glow left behind by your light-ray makes the ground impervious to the rootlike creatures from below, but while it does seem to damage their feet, or whatever part they use to transport themselves, the spirits walk over it all the same.    Ursa’s the closest so you try firing a beam at her. It hits her right in the chest and makes a lot of damage, but the moment the beam fades, the darkness heals back up. For a moment you can see the faint shine of the trapped spirit inside, through the torn exterior, but it’s gone again just as quickly.

   Still, it proves you were right. They can be saved, if you can just figure out how to maintain the beam for long enough.    Equus advances when Ursa is slowed by the damage, so you refocus on her and using both hands, throw a double beam at her which you try to maintain for as long as you can.    It takes no more than three seconds before you lose it, and while you do cause a lot of grief for the evil mass which clings to her form, you’re nowhere close to freeing her from it.

   The light comes out so concentrated that it burns you as well, every time you use it. So long as the bursts are short, you heal up fine, but as soon as you try and hold it for more than a second, it feels like the blood in your arms boil.    After three seconds your hands are so badly burned they’re charred, and you can’t move your fingers. And of course, that’s when all nine of them have closed ranks around you.

   Surrounded, you suddenly remember what Oberyn had told you about how you’d saved yourself from the spirits after they’d tried to chop you up into fish-food and dropped you in the ocean. That light hadn’t come from your hands and hadn’t seemed to damage you at all.    Doing your best not to panic at the rapidly approaching threat, you close your eyes and try to concentrate all your power towards your heart.

   It would be nearly impossible to describe exactly how you do that, though. The power isn’t like a typical weapon, where you press a button or pull a trigger to activate it. Kinda like Peter Pan and his ability to fly, it comes from happy thoughts and heartwarming memories. And while the light might appear to have the same properties as a weapon, what it actually does is contaminate the things it touches with that happiness. Which is why it doesn’t hurt anyone who isn’t infected by darkness.

   Although, that does beg the question… Why does it hurt you?

   There isn’t time to reflect on it right now, you need to keep your thoughts on the positives. And it works. The light gathers in your chest into such a massive energy that you struggle to contain it while building it further. You want to strike as big a blow as you can against the entire group of spirits, hopefully hitting them all hard enough that the light will overcome the darkness in one fell swoop.

   You can feel them closing in, and you’ve reached the limit of what you can hold back, so you open your eyes and unleash the power.    It’s so immense that from a distance, it must look like half an orb of pure white light engulfs you and everything around you, lighting up the entire eastern coast of the States for a few moments. Too bright for you to see anything at first.

   But when it fades, you can see that the spirits are almost freed. Their smaller original forms have been brought back as the blackened and evil versions of them have been partially blown away, and you smile widely through the fatigue which rapidly spreads through you.    The light continues to eat away at them, freeing more and more of their bodies, so you drop to your knees and wait, ready to defend them should something attempt to stop the transformation.

   Equus is closest to you, and when just one of her hindlegs remains trapped within the crumbling remnants of the creature, she regains her sense of self and starts snorting and stomping, itching to be free. But out of nowhere, something hits her. Hard enough that she’s hurled a hundred yards away from the group, hitting the ground hard outside of the area which has been purged by light.    The darkness immediately swallows her again, reclaiming her to Simon’s army, and before you’ve had a chance to react, there’s another swoop beside you, and another five spirits are knocked out of the safe zone.

   This time, you do catch a glimpse of what hit them. Something massive and much larger than anything your enemy has thus far thrown at you.    You trace the movement back to its source… and then all light and hope leaves your heart in a single shuddering breath.

   “Oberyn…” you whisper, unwilling to believe it could be him, but there’s no mistaking it.

   The size and overall shape alone is proof enough. He looks nothing like Tyrannus anymore, corrupted by the Darkling’s influence until his entire body has become unrecognizable. Covered not just in the same oily substance as the rest of his army, but fundamentally altered. His wings scarcely look capable of lifting him into the air anymore, turned fleshy and then torn to pieces, while his snakelike body has been reduced to little more than bones covered in what looks like strips of meat dipped in tar.    He has no eyes anymore. Just two black holes in a skull that seems filled with oozing slime. And when he uses his flame, he sets himself on fire as well.

   “No… no, please… not you,” you plead, staring in disbelief at your one ally in this war.

   Your reason for fighting in the first place.    Your everything.

   “I can’t do this alone…”

   Somewhere deep down, you know you have the entire world on your side, but right now, all you can see is that the man you love is gone, and it robs you of everything.    The spirits are once again returned to their full evil forms, and you don’t have nearly enough strength to try and free them again.    You sit there on the ground, waiting for the Earth to swallow you. For something to kill or change you. Because you don’t want to fight now. You can’t fight Oberyn.

   “I tried to tell you, sweetheart,” Simon’s smug voice reaches you from your left. “You’re not gonna beat me. Light isn’t enough to chase away darkness, your precious Oberyn is proof of that.”

   You can’t even muster the strength to answer him. Not even the disgusting tone of his voice is enough to irk you anymore.

   “And what about you? The great Day, queen of all the spirits. Your heart is no more impervious to my influence than anyone else’s.    Look at you… giving up the moment things didn’t go as planned. Some fucking champion you are!” he ends on a laugh, and then tears his leg free from the wormlike tendrils which connects him to the ground, so that he can kick you in the face.

   He hits you so hard that several bones in your head break while you’re hurled several feet sideways before you hit the ground. Your nose is all but crushed, spraying blood both out onto your face and backwards down your throat, leaving you coughing and spitting blood as you lay there on the ground, unable to find a single reason to stand up and at least protect yourself.    All you want in that moment is just for him to kill you.

   Another kick lands in your gut, and the sudden deflation of your lungs sends a red cloud into the air in front of you, as the blood in your throat and mouth is forcefully expelled, along with what seems to be some pebbles.    It takes you a couple of beats to realize that you’re missing a few molars.    Then he stomps on the side of your ribcage which is facing up towards the sky, and somehow, the pain inside your body triples.

   “Oh, sweet little Boo. Where���s your never-ending optimism now? Where is that annoying superiority you were always so ready to flaunt?    Are you really this pathetic? Really? You’re not even gonna put up a fight?”

   Clearly, he’s doing everything he can to try and rile you up, just so he can keep pounding you down and prove how superior he’s become. He wouldn’t be toying with you like this unless he’s fucking dying for you to admit he’s smarter and better than you. It’s not enough for him to beat you physically, his twisted ego needs to hear you say it.    But that’s not a privilege you would give him even if you could speak.

   You’re on your side, curled into a little ball to protect your broken ribs and probably massive internal bleeding at this point, when he walks around to your back and prepares for another kick.    But when he steps out of your view, something peculiar becomes visible behind where he just stood.

   There’s a strange light gliding over the undead vegetation. Not pure and white like your light, but misty and mysterious.    It slips effortlessly through the air, seemingly unaffected by gravity, and when it dives into the slithering vines and worm-grass, it cuts right through them like a blade, burning their detached limbs into dust.

   Realizing your vision’s blurred by spatters of blood, you blink a few times, and when the tears have cleaned your eyes, you can see that it’s Caelum.    Oberyn must not have managed to throw her out of the safe zone in time, allowing your light-bomb to have full effect on her.    And seeing her glowing wings, her sharp gaze and clear intent, sparks a small ember inside you.

   Not enough to get you back on your feet, but just enough to raise a barrier around yourself. Just enough that Simon’s next kick never reaches you. Because for all his talk about how light can’t defeat the dark, even this frail little defense is beyond his power to penetrate.    The owl is coming right at you, so you muster the strength to get to your knees and raise your hands into the air, just in time for her powerful claws to grab them midflight.

   She takes you high above the battle, aiming for the clearer atmosphere above the ash clouds, and you can see how the dragon reacts and tries to pursue.    But his body isn’t as nimble or agile as it was when he was alive, and by the time his broken wings have arduously taken him off the ground, you’re already passing through the cloud, reaching the cleansing brightness of the sun just seconds later.

   It takes you out of the worst of your despair, helping you to understand that even the landscape itself which Simon has created fosters and nurtures anything negative it finds, whether out in the world, or inside a single person’s mind.    Once back in the fresh, clear air with the sun on your face, you’re able to see what really happened back there. How Oberyn’s fears about you must’ve left him vulnerable to this evil’s influence, and that it had nothing to do with him not believing in you or not having the strength to fight the darkness beside you.

   You’d felt so alone in those few minutes. As though not just your lover had been lost, but as if the entire world had turned against you.    It’s a relief to once again know in your heart how wrong you’d been to think that, and to feel how the light you’ve poured into the population is still there, even stronger now as it’s had more time to spread.

   The Atlantic coast is closer to Simon’s castle than the Pacific, so Caelum heads due east. Her claws are deeply embedded into your hands to ensure she won’t drop you, and while it is painful, you’re easily able to ignore it since the rest of you isn’t doing much better.    She flies as fast as Oberyn did in his smaller green alter ago, so it doesn’t take her long to reach the Portuguese Acores islands, less than a thousand miles from the European coast.

   She sets down on the closest one, perhaps aware that her handling of you isn’t ideal, and you’re a bit surprised at how carefully she lowers you to the ground before prying her claws out of your wrists and palms. None of the spirits have ever shown you any kindness before, and while you’re no longer the threat they used to believe you to be, they’re still supposed to be neutral towards all living things other than Darklings.

   If you could talk, you would’ve thanked her, but your jaw is broken. And so is your cheekbone, eye-socket and nose. You’re pretty sure there’s at least one fracture in your skull as well.    As soon as you’re down, you slump into a pile on the volcanic soil. Before yesterday, you’d barely even heard of these islands. But your journey of enlightenment passed here as well, so you now know that this is Ilha Do Faial and that the outcrop you’re currently sitting on is actually the westernmost point of Portugal.    Not that it matters much, you’re just a bit fascinated to remember it.

   Caelum lands right beside you and folds her wings away against the strong winds, then she just stands there, staring out over the sea as if waiting for the dark cloud to come looming over her once more.    It will, given enough time. Especially if Simon orders the dragon to fly over the oceans and attempt to help the darkness spread faster. Although, you’re not certain that he could do that without his master present.

   You’ve gotten the impression from all this that it’s only the Darkling himself who can birth and spread his evil into new territory, no matter how many minions he might have. The army helps to feed the cloud by consuming and infecting living things, but it probably can’t go into the light at all. The most important function of the cloud must be to shield the creatures of the dark from the burning rays of the sun.    Which would mean that if you could get the dragon to chase you into the clouds and then disorient him, you should be able to get him high enough to be cleansed by the natural light.

   A longshot perhaps, considering that the creatures you and Oberyn had chased in Detroit had seemed to do just fine with the winter sun, but the thought still gives you hope. Which you’re in dire need of at the moment.    After all, those monsters had existed separate from the true evil.

   Either way, what you need now is to heal. Opening your jacket and lifting your shirt reveals a completely purple abdomen, and there’s a very uncomfortable crunching sound coming from your ribcage at every breath. Maybe not a collapsed lung, based on your breathing, but definitely at least three shattered ribs.    You can see a tower on the other side of a second rise behind this one, and you wonder if you might be able to walk there, so you try standing up.

   You have almost no stability in your frame, which means the wind damned near knocks you over as soon as you get to your feet, but you do manage to stand.    It’s slow progress with your entire left side mostly malfunctioning and having to focus so much on balancing in the rising and falling terrain, you end up worsening your pains by making rapid corrections with damaged muscles to prevent falling. But you won’t heal fast enough without food, so you soldier on, even though each step seems to take several minutes.

   The owl keeps scanning the horizon to the west, but she follows you on foot, waiting until you’ve covered a few meters before she walks or hops to your side, and then waits again.    When you’re finally outside the building, which turns out to be a lighthouse, your efforts seem in vain at first, since the building is just a remnant, not a functioning lighthouse. But on closer inspection, there seems to be an underground structure nearby which might connect to it.

   You’re lucky enough that a person is leaving that structure just as your strength fails and you lose your balance and fall to the ground. He’s likely a tourist, going by the very German accent you hear from him as he shouts for help, but he comes to your aid without hesitation.    Within moments, there are people all around you, shouting in several different languages, someone seeming to want to carry you inside while someone else insists on you remaining still. So, to settle their argument, you gather your remaining energy and clamber to your feet, swiftly aided by two gentlemen, supporting each of your sides.

   The strain on your body has left you barely conscious, but you do your best to walk however far it is they’re taking you, and before long the sunlight is replaced by lamps and the sound changes. Stone walls, you’re guessing.    It surprises you to see Caelum having followed you inside, as you would’ve expected her to stay outside and keep an eye on the advancing darkness. But it seems, for now, she finds your condition more urgent.    No one else here can see her, so she risks nothing by accompanying you.

   Then finally, someone decides to find out what language you speak, starting by asking if you know Portuguese, then French, for some inexplicable reason since you haven’t heard any French accents, until they eventually arrive at English. But you still can’t speak, so your barely coherent response consists of nodding, which unfortunately hurts your entire head badly enough that you pass out.

   When you come to, you’re on the floor but you’re not cold. There’s something soft underneath you. Pillows of some sort, but not the kind one sleeps on, more like cushions from a deckchair or something.    You’re still incredibly tired, but your jaw has healed well enough for you to try and communicate, so you locate the closest person, a woman wearing a nametag. Andreia.

   “F-food…” you half-wheeze, half cough through the dried blood in your mouth and throat.

   You’d forgotten about the missing teeth, but the effect it has on your ability to form sounds quickly reminds you.    The woman is sitting cross-legged beside you, apparently keeping an eye on you, because she reacts immediately when she hears you.

   “Food? You want to eat?” she asks in a soft voice with just a hint of a Spanish or Portuguese accent, and you nod again, very carefully this time. “Are you certain you can? Your face is very badly damaged?” she observes, and she looks truly concerned as she lets her gaze roam over your broken features.

   “Need… protein,” you croak, to which she responds by nearly leaping to her feet and leaving your field of vision.

   You can’t see anyone else, but you can hear low voices further away, although you’re too worried about causing yourself another fainting episode to lift your head and find out if it’s someone who might be able to help you.    But then Andreia returns, and she’s got a tall glass with a straw in her hand.

   “How about a protein shake?”

   Perfect.    You carefully nod your agreement, and she helps to lift your head so you can drink without choking. It’s not exactly delicious, but you can tell it’s one of the better brands because it doesn’t taste of any artificial sweeteners. It’s strawberry flavored and the natural taste of the berries is actually there, although somewhat tainted by all the supplements.    It makes all the difference in your energy levels, though. You empty the glass without pausing and within minutes you start to feel a boost.

   “Do you have more?” you ask the woman, who bewilderedly nods and then gets up to go and prepare another one.

   While she’s gone, a different person with a nametag shows up, only this one looks a bit more authoritative.

   “Boa tarde, senhorita. My name is Miguel Marques and I run this Center. We are all very concerned about what has happened to you. Can you tell us who did this or where it happened?” the man asks in a thicker accent than the younger woman.

   But you can’t answer him. He would never believe or understand any of this. He’s likely just looking to find out if he should involve the police, which you’d rather avoid, and while you’re trying to think of a plausible explanation, he continues.

   “There is an air ambulance on its way here to pick you up and take you to the hospital in Horta-…”

   “Where am I?” you cut him off, partly because you’re genuinely curious about what this place is, and partly because you have no intention of going to any hospital.

   “On Ilha Do Faial,” he unhelpfully explains, and you’re too spent to waste energy on pointless conversation, so you try to indicate your meaning by looking around the room. “Ah, this place? It is Capelinhos Volcano Interpretation Center.”

   You’ve never heard of it, or anything like it, before. But you suppose that it does explain why the place looks so unique.    It’s not terribly useful information, though, which is why you’re relieved when Andreia returns with another protein shake right then. You weren’t all that interested in the place anyway, it was just a convenient distraction.

   Just as you start drinking through the straw, there’s a loud crack in your head as your jaw realigns and reattaches itself, but it must’ve been just as loud outside of your skull because both of your temporary caretakers jump at the sound.

   “Are you okay? What was that, did something break?” the young woman asks in a mild panic, just before there’s a series of smaller cracks indicating your nose has begun to reassemble itself.

   You pause your efforts with the drink as you suddenly feel the urge to move, managing to sit up despite quite a sharp complaint from your ribs. It’s probably the internal organs repairing themselves which prompted the need to shift positions. So, once you’re up and have found a somewhat comfortable position, you continue with the drink, using it to avoid having to answer any more questions for a minute.

   “Uh… Why don’t I get you some towels and warm water to clean up some of that blood,” Andreia suggests and then leaves again without waiting for a reply, clearly rattled by what’s going on with you.

   Mr. Marques is still standing in front of you, but he looks very nervous.

   “Relax. No one on your island is responsible for this,” you reassure him just as you begin to feel new molars being formed in place of the old ones, which is an odd but also satisfying sensation.

   You finish the shake thinking about how you’re probably the only human who can re-grow teeth, while the older man just stands there awkwardly, probably thinking about how odd it is that you seem to be getting much stronger suddenly.    Andreia returns a couple of minutes later with a bright red bucket filled with water, and six small towels, unfortunately crisp white.

   Having something to busy her hands with seems to calm her, so you let her wash your blood-soaked hands and face until she abruptly stops and just stares at you.

   “How…” she starts, but then needs a moment to find the rest of the words. “It’s all gone. All the cuts and bruises… the swelling…”

   Well, there’s no way to convincingly lie your way out of this, so instead, you lift your shirt again, and see them both gasp at the sight of unbruised skin, right before there’s another loud crack followed by several strangely popping noises, as your ribs are pieced back together.    It’s not painful for you, in fact, each time the bones pop back into place or are melded again, some of your existing pain lessens. But the sound is jarring.

   “I guess I could sit here and try to convince you this isn’t what it looks like, but that would quite frankly be incredibly rude to your respective intelligences,” you say, because you’re just too exhausted to think of anything more elaborate than the truth. “I got hurt trying to stop the worst fucking evil you’ve ever imagined which is spreading from the west, but fortunately for me, my superpower is being able to heal myself.    And spread hope to all living things. Not that I’m feeling all that hopeful myself today.”

   It’s your turn to flinch, however, when Mr. Marques suddenly gasps loudly, and then excitedly starts to gesticulate while rambling in Portuguese for a while before he remembers you can’t understand a word of it.

   “Senhorita! It’s you! I saw you in the garden behind the regional offices in Horta yesterday!” he animatedly explains, recognizing you now that all the blood and visible damage has been removed. “I saw the-…” he starts, but then suddenly halts himself and his tone shifts, becoming quiet and serious before he adds: “I saw the dragon.”

   “Yeah, he’s kinda hard to miss,” you sigh, turning your gaze down to your own hands to avoid having to meet their eyes as you recall the feeling of Oberyn’s human hands touching you last night.

   Was it really just last night he’d been making love to you in that hotel room? It feels like a lifetime has passed.

   “You wouldn’t recognize him now, though. The evil got to him, just like it’s gonna get to all of you if I can’t stop it.”

   You’re not sure why you tell them that, except you feel like you need to say it. As if it’s the only way you’ll ever really believe it yourself.

   “I wasn’t there, in the garden,” Andreia says then, and while you can’t see her face since your head is still downcast, you can hear something familiar in her voice. “But I felt the same thing those people did when my mother came home and spoke to me about it.    I felt how my worries just stopped having any power over me. And if you did that… if you can do that for so many people, then I can’t imagine any evil could defeat you.”

   Wonder. That’s what you hear in her. The same wonder as you see in children before they’ve learned how hard the world is. The wonder of innocence.    Because that’s what all these people are. Against the malicious darkness, everyone is innocent.    You look up at her just as the same German from before shouts something and several people start running towards the exits.

   “What’s going on?” Andreia asks, looking to her boss, who seems just as confused.

   But you know without understanding the languages shouted around you. You can feel the change in the air, the heaviness of the oncoming storm.

   “The Darkling is coming,” you tell them, and see a shiver pass through them both at Simon’s real name, as if their very souls know how dangerous such a creature is.

   Rising to your feet, you find your body feeling strong once more, and see Caelum perched on the backrest of a lounge chair, spreading her wings and flapping them a few times in preparation, knowing the next battle is looming.

   “Whatever happens,” you say, turning back to the people who have cared for you, “don’t let your lights be taken. Don’t let despair steal your hope. I’ll need your strength to carry me against the tide and the wind.”

   With that, you too start heading for the nearest exit, emerging from the underground structure via a concrete ramp. In front of you is the massive volcano and behind it, the rapidly darkening evening sky as the sun has begun to set. But when you reach the end of the ramp and turn around towards the open ocean, it isn’t a sunset which meets your eyes.    Instead, something similar to, but infinitely more sinister and destructive than a hurricane, fills the entire horizon from north to south with shades of grey, brown and black. There’s a sense of foreboding about it, where it hangs overhead, too close and moving too fast.

   Lightning cuts through it but doesn’t manage to illuminate it, and you can’t help but think it’s Oberyn who’s flying around in there, spewing his flame into the atmosphere trying to relieve frustration.    You wonder if he remembers you now. If his fear keeps you alive somewhere in the deepest recesses of his mind.

   Something flutters behind you, up against your head, and you look up to find Caelum positioning herself with one foot on each of your shoulders, but she doesn’t lift you. Her claws sit lightly on top of your jacket, as if she’s just using you as a perch.    If she is, you don’t mind. She doesn’t weigh much of anything even though she’s got her wings folded down. But the longer she sits there, watching the approaching cloud with you, the more you begin to feel like there’s a voice inside your head.

   Not like what the dragon could do, it’s much more subtle than that, and more of a melody than an actual voice, but it’s definitely trying to tell you something.    It feels a bit like Obi-Wan telling Luke to use the force, which you dismiss without much thought because it must be some rogue interpretation error made up by your brain.    Until you realize that this is exactly what she’s saying. Whether using pop-culture to help you understand her, or if that really is just how your brain interprets the odd melody, but she is telling you to use the force.

   Which must be a reference to the power of hope you’ve put into the world, but you’re still not sure what she means, or how you’re even supposed to wield it. You spread the light as a defensive mechanism to keep the dark contained to the American continent, and give the world a chance to protect itself, but you never thought you’d be able to use that same power yourself.

   Now though, having learned of the possibility, you suddenly become aware of just how much of yourself exists within all other living things through that energy.    You’re connected to all of it, from the smallest insect to the largest whale and the tallest mountains to the deepest trenches. You can feel the accumulated strength of all their light, but you still have no clue how to turn it into a weapon.

   “What do I do?” you ask the owl, feeling tears form in the corners of your eyes from the soot and ash which is already reaching you on the wind. “It’s just you and me, Caelum. How do we stop all that?”

   “Who are you talking to?” Andreia asks from your right.

   You hadn’t noticed her coming to stand beside you, so her voice surprises you. She sounds… calm. As if the cloud of death almost hanging over her island is of no consequence.

   “There’s an owl sitting on my shoulders,” you say with a small smile, certain she won’t believe you.

   But she looks up into the air above you and you’d swear you can see her trace the contours of something large up there.

   “Assombroso…” she breathes, surprising you again.

   “You can see her?”

   “No, not exactly. I just… know she’s there… somehow. Like I can almost see how she distorts the atmosphere around her.”

   “Huh. Then the barriers between worlds must be really thin right now. You shouldn’t be aware of these beings at all, no matter what’s going on.”

   “Beings? There are more of these invisible owls?” she asks, and there is that wonder in her voice once more.

   Strangely, hearing it makes you happy, despite everything.

   “Not owls, but there are more of them. And they’re all trapped in there,” you say, nodding towards the impending darkness. “If I can’t save them, we’ll all die.”

   “Oh. How are you gonna do that?”

   You’re about to answer you don’t know yet, but just as you open your mouth to say it, there’s a literal click inside your head which distracts you.    At first you think it’s just another fracture healing, but then the wind shifts direction, heading due west towards the enemy, and you know Caelum’s doing it on purpose. Just like you somehow know that it’s because she senses a shift in you, which apparently means it’s time to go to war.

   And then it hits you.

   The Darkling’s power comes from the fact that all living things have darkness in them, while Day’s power comes from the fact that all living things also have light in them. But where his strength is limited by his need to physically infect the living, yours isn’t limited by anything.    You can exist everywhere. Absolutely everywhere. All at once. Because light can travel through almost everything.

   “I’m gonna create my own army,” you answer Andreia, with a huge smile on your lips, before turning to her to test your theory.

   Like flipping a switch, you let the part of you that’s inside of her blossom, and within a single second, her entire body starts to shine like a star in the sky.    She’s still aware of herself, you haven’t taken over her mind or her ability to control her own actions, but your light is a shield, and it was put inside her for the purpose of protecting, so that’s what she now feels compelled to do.

   Reaching out across the island, you find everything your hope has touched, and one by one, the population begins lighting up the evening from the ground, and the animals and vegetation soon follow.    Within minutes, the whole island is glowing. An oasis in the middle of the Atlantic Ocean. The first line of defense against the thundering cloud in the distance.

   Everyone turns to face the darkness without your asking or commanding them to. They all know the stakes and they all choose to fight; all you’ve done is given them a choice.    Simon’s cruelty would have consumed them, leaving no one with any choice, but because you’ve inoculated them against him, unless they decide to surrender to him, these souls will remain free until they die.    That’s their superpower. And a mighty one it is.

   It’ll be less than half an hour before the cloud reaches you, at which point, you will face the first real test of your character. And this time, you’re not gonna sit on the ground and let your enemy beat you half to death.    This time, you’re gonna teach the darkness to fear this world and the ferociousness of an army shielded by Lux herself.

   “Remember,” you tell Andreia, who’s still standing right beside you, “the evil which that cloud protects is gonna do everything it can to make you think of everything bad that’s ever happened to you. It’s gonna try to magnify every fear and insecurity within you since that’s how it’ll reach past your defenses and corrupt you.    So, no matter what it whispers to you, cling to the love and happiness you have in your life, however big or small it might be. Because those things are all you need to keep that evil out.”

   She listens intently, and then a flash of memory from her mind passes to you through the connection of your light, and in the memory, you see a face you recognize.    You’ve seen so many new faces over the past couple of days that it takes you a moment to place this one. It looks very different in the memory compared to when you met her, but there’s no doubt.

   “Daniela is your sister…” you say to Andreia, who turns her head sharply to stare incredulously at you.

   “You know her?”

   “No, but I met her today. In Antarctica.”

   “Really? Is she alright?” she asks, but still with a smile on her face and no hint of worry in her eyes.

   “She’s doing wonderful. I helped her to let go of your mother,” you add, testing to see if the mention of someone who was likely not a good influence on either sister’s life might put a crack in the shield.

   “Good. She never did manage to get past it, and she’s always refused help from everyone around her. I’m so happy to hear she’s still alive.”

   No cracks. Not even a dent. The light shines just as strongly even as she tackles this difficult subject.

   “She’s fighting with you today,” you remind Andreia, while also reminding yourself of just how vast your army is. “Everyone is fighting for each other today.”

Part 13

The Ten Spirits of the World Air - Forest - Water - Stone - Night - Autumn - Winter - Spring - Summer.

Thank you so much for reading and I hope you enjoyed it! If you wish to be notified when this story is updated, follow @sirowsky-stories and turn on notifications, or just ask nicely, and I'll tag you.

@harriedandharassed @kittenlittle24 @joelswritingmistress @pedrostories

[seventeenlovesthree]

You know, one thing about getting older, at least for me, is the realization that keeping up that whimsical spirit is hard. Very hard.

I have spent the past four years trying to maintain routines in regards to self-care and, while it worked out well for a period of time, the "noise" out there is very persistent to break your habits. By "noise", I don't just mean the world out there, the constant stream of social media providing you with news and tragedies, a ruthless algorithm that is very hard to avoid if you're seeking that little serotonin streak out there. Yes, I agree that our attention spans have been pretty much messed up and that it's VERY difficult to get back to some... Quiet.

That's why the noise basically refers to everything - your social life, family, friends, partners, acquaintances, colleagues, all the people out there, but also the things you surround yourself with. Habits, food choices and sleeping rhythms, once again, the media you consume while trying not get consumed by it...

I keep going on about how I had re-started drawing back in 2021 after a rough 10-year-break in which I simply didn't feel like drawing at all. I was occupied with other things during time - and if you're familiar with my tumblr, you know that that's been heavily related to football. I loved my clubs, I loved by NT and for the longest time, I could get by despite the set-backs and bad developments surrounding it. Right now I am staring at my PC and am slowly but steadily realizing that basically all the players that led me towards football have retired. Either just from the NT or completely. There are players, relatable figures, people I (used to) look up to, that inspired me, that brought be through the day, week, month, year. It was a fun time. But then the "noise" took over. The people I rambled with ended up just as frustrated and left. Only a few of them are left, but the majority - me included - has moved on to other things. Why? Because it had become too draining, too negative. The bubble had popped, several figures in the business had turned out to be unbelievably "bad people" (I'll keep this PG), things were so commercialized, unfamiliar and just... Opportunistic. The "whimsical spirit" was so hard to maintain and even if this Summer provided a little spark, it still feels alienating. There is still a glimpse of hope, but, again, you REALLY have to hold onto that.

The same goes for my other "fandoms" to be honest. Don't get me wrong, I still have fun sitting in my little corner and draw, write and create little things - even if it's mostly for myself, sometimes I do wonder why interactions have become so scarce. The atmosphere on social media is incredibly... Empty sometimes. I'm not just saying that because a lot of people have not grasped the reblogging system on this site. You may have heard the concept of people being overexposed by the neverending stream of art, "content" being thrown at them from all sides... It's become more of a product to consume than a thing to look at and enjoy and savour. And I feel that myself. I used to save fanart to my phone and computer and find myself looking at it countless times. I still do that with several art pieces, but... I assume it's because the brain has become somewhat tired that we cannot appreciate it like we used to.

Everything is just... Happening too fast and I feel like I need to have a detox every now and then. My brain still craves the serotonin of seeing new, beautiful art. But to get there, I have to get through a sea of things that get me anxious. Even with filters, even with blocking things I don't wanna see... It's not the same.

The same also applies to media in general - I'm currently in a fandom of a series that's kinda "walking on air". There is the possibility of a new animation being planned out there somewhere, somewhen, maybe... But a part of me isn't even sure if I want something "new". Consider myself "old" when I say this, but a lot of things that come out these days, sequels, reboots, remakes of things I used to enjoy as a kid... Simply don't hit the same way anymore. There's a reason why I find myself rewatching the old stuff over and over again and often have quite a mixed relationship with more recent things. EVA is one of the few franchises that, in my opinion, managed to get to a satisfying ending after ALL these years, but I am TERRIFIED for the new Madoka movie. I haven't even dared to look at Sailor Moon Cosmos, simply because I know my brain is tainted by how much enjoyed the 90s anime and how much of a clusterf*ck Crystal/Eternal/Cosmos has been for the past ten years... On the same note, do we really need a One Piece remake? And Digimon? I would loathe the idea of an Adventure remake... Because it would not only contradict the messages of the previous entries of the series; move on but keep the things you love close to you... It would simply not... Satisfy me. A part of me wants to see how the OG timeline goes on, but what if there'll be things to contradict it all even more? Do I want things to go on for the sake of keeping the nostalgia alive, even though the fear of mischaracterizations is very real? Do I really want the milking of the cash-cow to continue? To hunt for breadcrumbs? The commercialisation and... Opportunism? And why does it feel like I've heard that before...?

I don't want to end this post on a negative note. I'm gonna turn 34 in a few weeks, I've been into TV shows and had my hyperfocus topics basically since I was like 7 or so. I might always find things that keep the whimsical spirit alive to some degree. But I need to remind myself to not let the "noise" get too loud every once in a while.