#i need to draw the narrator soon

[lamuliz]

the white man ever

[arolesbianism]

Sigh. Why must you have died Aris, now I have to actually think abt what your abilities are instead of just sweeping it under the rug and calling it good enough

[ddejavvu]

eddie being the speaker for venom’s adoring rant he eventually goes on at the end of your date when you’re just slowly strolling through a park, taking the long way home just to draw the evening out (but also eddie filtering it because some of the points are VERY INAPPROPRIATE and so venom gets mad and eventually takes over even though you are in public)

This post is 18+, minors dni.

"You're very pretty," Eddie narrates the voice in his head, but he shakes his head and tries again, "Pret-ty. He says- He says it weird, like prit-ty."

"Pretty," You try, voice low and gruff in a poor attempt to match Venom's, "Like that?"

"Spot on," Eddie laughs, and you let your chest shake with giggles as you roam down the sidewalk, "And he says your dress makes him think of blood, which," Eddie grimaces, "I'm sure, in his mind, is a compliment."

"Hm," You hum, glancing down at the red fabric you're draped in, "Yeah, I'll choose to take that kindly."

"And he wants to- woah," Eddie's eyes go wide and his hand tightens around your own momentarily, "Uh, hold your hand."

"What?"

"He wants to hold your hand!" Eddie insists, "And- Jesus, Venom! And tuck you into bed."

"I said fuck!" A voice roars from deep inside of Eddie's chest, and before you know it black ooze is emerging from your boyfriend's skin. You panic, yanking Eddie-turned-Venom into an alleyway between two apartment buildings and praying that no one is watching you.

"I said I wanted to fuck you into the bed," Venom clarifies, towering over you in the dark alley. If you didn't know him, in any other scenario, you'd be fainting from fear. But the hulking alien doesn't bother you now, and you put a hand over his mouth full of sharp teeth to try and get him to quiet down.

"Okay," You soothe, trying to acknowledge him so that he doesn't feel so misinterpreted, "Okay Venom. That's very- uh, nice. But you can't be out right now, you know that. Please just go back inside Eddie?"

"He is lying, I cannot trust him!" Venom huffs, voice not quieted at all, merely muffled by your hand, "I did not say I wanted to hold your hand. I said I wanted you to fuck my tongue!"

"Charming," You spit, face flushed with fire matching the heat in your belly, "Really, Venom, I- I'd like to, but- but we're out now, and I need you to quiet down and go back inside."

"Eddie does not deserve to take you on dates like this. He does not tell you how good you look."

"Yes he does!" You insist, still clamping your hand desperately over Venom's mouth. It does nothing, but you can't stand the thought of letting go.

"He uses words like gorgeous and beautiful. They are true," Venom promises, "But he never says sexy or delicious. Those are true, too, and you should hear them."

"Thank you, Venom," You croon, moving your hands to his cheeks to tug them closer to your face. He accepts a kiss to the teeth, seeing as he hasn't bothered to give himself lips in this form, and it's a rather odd sensation on your own. But it quiets him down, and he's calm under your touch.

"I'm happy you think those things," You grin, and you can't deny that you're flattered, "But if you want to say those things, we have to wait until we're home. I promise, as soon as the door shuts behind us you can join Eddie and I, okay? He'll say beautiful, you can say..." You fumble for a term, inches away from Venom's face, and he offers a helpful hint.

"Hot stuff!" He roars, definitely loud enough to be heard from the street.

"Okay! Okay, hot stuff," You nod, peering horrified at the mouth of the alleyway to make sure no one is coming to investigate, "That's very nice Venom, I'd love to hear that later."

"I will go back inside now," Venom tells you, and your heart rate spikes when you hear rushed footsteps coming your way, "But I will see you later."

"Later, later!" You promise, and the symbiote can't seem to melt into Eddie fast enough. As soon as the face in front of you is tan instead of goopy, you surge for it, locking lips with Eddie in a gesture you hope looks passionate and not rushed.

The man doesn't know what you're doing, but he doesn't care. He lets you slam him against the wall behind him with a soft groan, and you shut your eyes just as the footsteps thud beside you.

"Oh-" A resident of the nearby apartments scoffs, "Gross. Get a fucking room or something, you'll get an infection out here. Perverts!"

You flip the man off for good measure, and wait until he's a safe distance away to part from Eddie. He looks dazed from the kiss, but as soon as he comes to, he's got a message from Venom.

"He wants to know if he can bite that guy's head off," Eddie drawls, and you sigh, typical.

"No," You scoff, grabbing Eddie's hand and leading him back out of the alleyway, "But we should get home, he's got lots to say to me."

"And do to you," Eddie's face scrunches as he listens to Venom's rambling, shaking his head slightly at a suggestion you don't hear, "I- I don't think that's possible, buddy."

[0crooked-arcade0]

Something about the Markiplier cinematic universe I think needs to be talked about is the fact that literally 80% of the reason it's so compelling is because it doesn't take itself seriously at all. It's just a story that's an absurdly chaotic mess, and I mean that positively.

Who Killed Markplier is a tragedy at its core, a very well done example of, even if you try to do all the right things, sometimes you still fail, and there's no way to fix what's already been said and done.

'DAMIEN' has hauntingly beautiful scenery, it's an outsiders perspective of an altercation between two unreliable narrators that gives little context to its premise, immersing us in our place as a bystander.

All that being said, it's juxtaposed by;

-The man cast ending up in space with zero explanation.

-Two men getting into a fistfight in a movie theater parking lot in borad daylight in a violently slapstick manner.

-William telling the group he once got sucked into jumanji and nobody even questioning it.

-The viewers very existence being used to play up a series of visual gags with absolutely no context, (Pocket Sand, for example.)

-Darks tendency to pull a 'draw me like one of your French girls' while speaking to us in fucking riddles

-The stunt dummy being kept in after the editing phase

-Literally 90% of the shit Actor does despite being a revenge fueled monster, he wears crocs everywhere like c'mon

-HeeHoo

Honestly I think it's great because it allows you to play with the worldbulding extensively as there's debatably no concrete facts one way or another. I'm writing at the moment and using it to my advantage and will probably post more about that soon.

[woso-dreamzzz]

Torn III

Kewis x Child!Reader

Summary: You're still sick

Mommy doesn't get you dressed properly the next day.

She lets you stay in your pyjamas because you're sick. She's sick too but not as sick as you.

Mom, of course, still has her hurt knee but she's the only one not sick in the entire house.

Your head pounds and your nose remains stuffy even as you play with your dinosaur toys, making them attack each other because they're in a war and that's what things do in a war. They fight.

"Open," Mommy says and you firmly clamp your teeth together," Chook, I'm not joking. Open."

She's got a syringe full of medicine in her hands and you refuse to open your mouth.

You've never had good tasting medicine before and you refuse to believe that Mommy's gone out and bought some.

You keep your mouth shut.

"Chook," She says sternly," This will make you feel better."

You sniff, wiping your nose on your shirt and shake your head. You know if you talk, Mommy's going to dose you up so you settle on just glaring, puffing out your cheeks to show her that you're wise to her tricks.

"Chook," She says again," We can do this the easy way or the hard way. Either way, you're taking your medicine."

"Chook," Mom says from the sofa," Come here."

Warily, you skirt around Mommy and run over to Mom, who lifts you up to sit next to her. Immediately, she attacks your sides with tickles and you can't keep your mouth closed anymore, opening it to let out peals of giggles.

Mommy squirts the medicine down your throat and Mom's ticklish hands disappear.

You glare, eyebrows drawing together in outrage. "That was mean!" You say," You cheated!"

Mommy laughs, ruffling your hair. "It was sneaky," She says," Not cheating. You'll feel better soon."

You huff but know she's right, shuffling off the sofa to return to your toys.

Helen joins you, curling up next to your side. Her ear flicks a few times as you continue your dino war. You have to blow your nose a few times because it gets clogged but Mommy is right because the churning of your stomach settles and your head no longer feels like it does when you bang it on a wall by accident.

"What do you want to watch?" Sam asks, channel surfing as she keeps one eye on you playing with Helen.

Kristie sighs. She doesn't look as bad as you did but it's still clear she's sick. She's got a bit of a fever and the end of her nose is all red. "Something that requires me to not think," She groans, massaging her temples to stem off the headache. She's only recently taken her own painkillers so she has a bit of wait until they kick in.

"So trash reality tv?" Sam teases and Kristie whacks her with a pillow.

You're playing nicely on the rug with Helen and your dinosaurs despite how ill you are.

Maybe eating all that dirt gave you a stronger immune system than Kristie thought.

"There's Love Island," Sam offers and you whip your head around.

"No!" You say," That's mine and Auntie Millie's show! You can't watch it! It'll spoil it!"

You sound adamant and Kristie manages to get out a laugh that could have been a cough.

"It's not a new episode, Chook," Sam assures you with her own laugh," It's last season. It's not going to spoil anything."

Your brow furrows for a moment before you're up on your feet. You've got two dinosaurs clutched in your hands as you wiggle yourself between your mothers.

They're sitting close enough that their legs are touching so you make sure to force them apart so you can be comfortable.

"Last season was okay," You tell Kristie very seriously," I will watch with you so you know what's going to happen. Mom, you need to put on Love Island."

Sam keeps laughing. "Oh? I need to, do I Chook?"

"Yes. That's what I just said. You need to, Mom."

With the other options being Deal or No Deal and Flog It, Sam's pretty sure that Love Island was truly her only option and changes the channel.

Clearly, the medicine has perked you up a bit because Kristie doesn't get a moment of respite the entire episode as you narrate what's going on during every single little moment.

Somehow, you manage to put yourself to sleep during it until you're lying draped over Sam and Kristie's laps.

"And we just let Millie watch this show with her?" Kristie asks, dumbstruck and Sam chuckles nervously.

"I didn't think she actually absorbed this much of it," Sam replies," It's like she studied it or something."

You shift a little in your sleep, death gripping your plastic dinosaurs so hard that Kristie can't pry them from your hands.

"Well," Kristie says," At least she's taking her nap without arguing."

"You mean, at least you can take your nap without her interrupting," Sam teases and Kristie rolls her eyes.

She lifts your limp body easily into her arms as she stands up. "Well, just for that. I don't think you can join us for naptime."

"Hey...Kristie! Kristie, wait! I'm sorry! Wait for me!"

Kristie doesn't wait for Sam though as she makes her way to their bedroom.

She settles you in the very middle of the bed but slipping in next to you.

You wiggle a little bit as Kristie tugs you closer, laying a protective hand over your belly just as Sam hobbles in, taking her own place in bed on your other side.

Helen joins in too, leaping up onto the bed and curling herself up around your feet.

"You have to get her to take medicine when we wake up," Kristie says, already half asleep.

"No fair! She's wise to my tricks now!"

"Not my problem, Sam."

[chakkll]

Worries, Worries

Mike Schmidt x gender neutral!reader

Fandom: Five Nights at Freddy’s

Synopsis: Mike’s been doing better. He hasn’t dreamed of his brother since Freddy’s and hasn’t needed sleeping pills for almost a week now. Well, at least he thought he was doing better.

Warnings: Post movie, established relationship, fluff

Word count: 1k

*please forgive how short and probably rusty it is, it’s been a minute since i’ve posted!

Everything’s been good. One might say almost too good.

Mike has been sleeping well, been happier, and been getting along with his sister better, all because of what happened at Freddy’s.

But all this goodness is making Mike nervous. You can feel it.

“You sure you don’t want me to tuck you in?” You call after Abby as she shuffles down the hall, her drawings and crayons tucked into her arm.

A soft “yeah” is all you get in return before you hear Abby’s door shut. You smile to yourself before glancing to the clock.

9:32pm. Mike will be home soon.

Mike asking you to watch over his little sister in the evenings has become part of your schedule. He has Fridays and Saturdays off, but other than that, you’re cooking Abby’s dinner and making sure she gets some sleep, and you wouldn’t have it any other way.

Some might think it an inconvenience to constantly watch over your boyfriend’s little sister and end up seeing her more than him, but you adore Abby.

Sure, she might not talk very much, but she’s a very creative girl. It’s hard not to like her.

When Mike first introduced you to each other, Abby ignored your greetings and went right back to her room to draw. At first, you were pretty sad about her initial reaction to you and Mike’s relationship, but Mike managed to convince you that her reaction was a positive one.

That was five months ago.

Now, Abby draws next to you instead of in her room and will answer questions about the drawings. Plus, if you catch her in the right mood, she’ll tell you about her friends.

You yawn as you flick through the TV channels until you land on a documentary about seals. You glance to the clock.

9:46pm. Mike will be home soon.

Your eyes drift from the clock to the floor. A rather beaten up book lays half open, a ripped page on display.

You heave yourself off the couch and over to the book. You carefully pick it up and close it to see the cover.

Dream Theory. Interesting.

You flip to the back to read the blurb while walking back to the sofa.

You flop back onto the couch and flip to the first page. The seal documentary plays in the background, the narrator now detailing the wonders of how they hunt.

You prop your head up on the armrest and lay down, reading through the book.

Just as you’re getting invested in the book, you hear the lock unlock. Turning the TV off with a click, you turn around, only to be met with the sight of your exhausted boyfriend. You smile.

“Hey,” You greet as you get up and off the couch to meet him at the door.

Mike nods and grunts a small “Hey, baby.”

“How was work?”

Mike shrugs, and his gaze drifts down to the book in your hand. He blinks.

“You’re reading my book?” He asks curiously, causing you to glance to the book.

“Oh… yeah. Sorry.” You apologize bashfully and hand him the book, resting your other arm at your side.

Mike shakes his head dismissively at your apology. “What d’you think?”

You stare at him blankly. “…What?”

“The book. What do you think of the book? The theory?”

Realization dawns on you. When you see an eager glint in Mike’s eyes, you weakly shrug.

“I mean… I’m not too far in, but it seems interesting.”

A hint of a smile graces Mike’s lips. “So it seems possible.” You nod.

You smile softly at his excitement from your words.

“Anyways…” You wrap your arms around his neck for a hug. “How was work?” You ask again.

His arms loosely wrap around your waist as he buries his head into your neck. “Fine,” He murmurs quietly. “How’s Abby? Did she eat dinner?”

You smile at his worry for his sister. “Yeah. And she drew next to me afterwords.” At your words, you can feel Mike relax.

“She’s been doing better. You’ve been doing better. I can tell.” A low chuckle rumbles from his chest.

“I don’t know about that.” He murmurs dismissively into your shoulder.

You blink, frowning at his words. “What makes you say that? You haven’t dreamt of Garrett since Freddy’s, right?” You pull away from the hug and rest your hands on his shoulders. His hands come to rest on your hips as he sighs softly.

“Well, no…”

“So why do you say that?” You frown softly, bringing a hand to cup his face.

“Just… things have been going smoothly. Almost—almost too smoothly.” Mike mumbles, leaning into your touch as his eyes flutter closed.

You sigh again. “Mike… look at me,” He reluctantly opens his eyes, but his gaze rests on your chin instead of your eyes.

“You’re okay. You have a new job that has pretty okay pay and hours, both Abby and you are happier, and you know what happened to Garrett. Right?”

Mike stubbornly stares at your chin, staying silent.

“So why do you say that, baby?”

“I just…” Mike trails off. “…I’m used to having something to worry about.”

You frown. “What, and there’s nothing to worry about now?”

Mike blinks and slowly looks to your eyes. “…Huh?”

“I don’t mean to make you feel worse, but you still have things to worry about.”

You can see panic rise in Mike’s eyes. “What… what do I have to worry about?”

You smile fondly at your boyfriend.

“You gotta think of a present for me for our six-month anniversary.”

You can practically see the gears turning in the man’s head as he stares at you quizzically. Finally, he cracks a smile.

“…Weird way to comfort me.” He looks away, smiling to himself.

“Yeah, but what else would get you to smile?” Mike rolls his eyes, causing you to chuckle. Your gaze drifts to the kitchen, reminding you that Mike almost never has dinner when he works evenings.

“You didn’t have dinner, right? I’ll make you something.” You start to head to his kitchen to quickly make him something to eat.

“…Wait.” Mike murmurs softly, lightly grabbing your sleeve.

You turn to him curiously, only to see a slightly bashful Mike staring at the floor.

“…Sleep here tonight?”

You can feel yourself smiling. “Of course.”

Mike’s shoulders visibly relax.

“Now, let’s get you something to eat.”

[xianyoon]

you cannot be serious

neuvillette x gn reader where his melusine daughters get mischievous reupload from my prev. blog @.i23kazu. domestic & romantic fluff

the minute neuvillette steps into the house, his mind is already at ease. the air is warm, a stark contrast to the chilly autumn that decorates the outside world. you’ve already had the fire started from the time you reached home — your husband is grateful, taking his gloves off and warming his hands by the fire.

“welcome home, darling,” you croon, helping him take his jacket off. “dinner will be ready in half an hour, why don’t you go and rest?”

"have i mentioned that i'm grateful for you?" neuvillette smiles, pressing a kiss to your forehead. with another stolen kiss to the cheek, the man reappears from your room quickly, freshly showered and changed into a dark turtleneck. neuvillette moves to sit on the navy loveseat, gratefully nursing the warm mug of peppermint tea that you had prepared while the sounds of his shower going had become your white noise.

as he nestles into the soft cushions of the seat, your two little ones, mela and puca, giggle and push one of the books he had bought for them into his hands.

"pleeeeaaaseeeee, daddy?" mela whines, snuggling closer into his lap.

"didn't i read that to the both of you last night?" neuvillette raises his eyebrows in confirmation, not unkindly. he couldn't quite understand your girls' attachment to this particular book... not especially after narrating it to them, every night, without fail. nevertheless, neuvillette gently plucks the book out of his lap when mela and puca nod furiously, and the father adjusts his position – making space for the two girls to nuzzle on his lap. they stay in that spot for a while.

there's nothing but the sounds of the warm fire crackling alongside them, neuvillette's soft narration breaking through the quiet silence. even the girls know not to disturb the serenity of the scene they're in.

but the serenity seems to catch up to neuvillette – especially after a long day at the opera epiclése, the warmth and hearth of the home gently cover him like a freshly-warmed duvet. his words start to slur and trail off into nothing, and the book lays down to rest on his chest as he puts it down. your husband has finally succumbed to the warm lull of sleep, gently snoring.

mela and puca exchange a glance and giggle softly, deftly leaping off his lap and trotting to the next room to grab items for their next activity. papers and markers are held with childish eagerness, and the pair sprawl themselves out on the floor to continue, drawing cute foxes and flowers.

as tranquil as the house is, energy-filled little girls never are fully entertained by the limits of marker and paper.

and sometimes, little girls need to do what little girls do best – find another outlet. unfortunately, neuvillette had become too easy of an outlet by his proximity and lack of awareness.

puca quietly tiptoes to her sleeping father, leaving behind the forgotten, strewn about pieces of drawing block – and turns her attention to a snoozing neuvillette's face. mm... daddy wouldn't be angry, right?

the markers are back in use – swirly scribbles and smiley faces decorate neuvillette's cheeks, with brushes of bright yellow under his eyes and green whiskers. mela soon joins her sister, her red marker highlighting her father's lips. with the most mischievous grins only little girls could muster, puca giggles and gathers neuvillette's hair into tiny pigtails, his white hair sticking up at odd angles.

neuvillette is turned into a masterpiece.

well, a masterpiece, in your daughters' eyes.

perhaps mela had giggled too loudly, or puca had accidentally knocked her marker against neuvillette's cheek – but the older man starts to stir, noticing a wetness on his face.

"what happened?" he mumbles groggily, moving to sweep his hair out of his face – when he realises that he can't.

puca and mela hide behind the curtains, giggling.

"dear? i think there's something on my face, could you help me to check it?" neuvillette calls, and you set down your phone to make your way to the living room. he rubs his face with more vigour, but nothing comes off. strange.

"let me see-" a quiet oh. tumbles off your lips, momentarily caught off guard by the... sudden bedazzlement of your husband. you bite back a laugh, not wanting to embarrass him – but how can you keep a straight face when your husband is quite literally the embodiment of a girl dad right now? you tremble with laughter, spotting your mischievous little ones hiding behind the curtain.

"mela, puca, did you happen to give daddy a makeover?" you laugh lightly, searching for a mirror to hand to neuvillette. finally, one with a wooden handle is found, and he chokes at his clownified appearance.

"we did! isn't he pretty?" mela positively beams. neuvillette's heart breaks, and he doesn't have the heart to wash it off at this point.

"are you.. are you angry, daddy? mela and i just wanted to have fun, and the drawing paper wasn't enough." puca nervously toes the ground, her eyes not meeting neuvillette's.

"while i am, ah.. surprised, i could never be upset at the two of you, mes petits rayons de soleil." your husband smiles, his lips still painted cherry red. your little girls snuggle back into his arms, grinning and touching his face.

oh dear. that'd take a while to come off – but you snap as many pictures as you can, because this might not happen again anytime soon. your little mela and puca are the most pleased, and neuvillette would do anything to make it stay that way – even if it meant leaving his face of artwork on for a little longer.

[stuffed-x-arts]

HEY GUYS GRINS. IVE BEEN SO OBSESSED WITH SLAY THE PRINCESS THE PAST FEW DAYS IM GONNA FUCKING EXPLODE !!!!! :D

anyways take this.

I don't see them as romantic but they are still so fun. love story !! u can interpret it all how u like though lol i enjoy it all the same and just hope u have fun <3

also below the read more im gonna dump some doodles and sketches of me tryna figure out how to draw the voices and stuff smh. none of it is set in stone also maybe some spoilers idk smh go play the game !!!

HIIII here. hands u this. silly birds.

the cold is one of my faves smh but they are AAAAALL good smh. contrarian. paranoid. hunted. broken. NARRATOR holy fuck i love timeloops and tragedies and horror and narrator characters and AAAAAARGH go play slay the princess RIGHT now smh ive mostly been watching playthroughs but trust me i need to buy it soon and play it a million times over smh

[lurkingshan]

Japanese QL Corner

This week we begin our farewell to two brilliant shows and welcome a newcomer. Of the shows airing now, all but one are streaming weekly on Gaga and the other is available via fansub.

Takara's Treasure

gif by @my-rose-tinted-glasses This was the final week for the main story (don’t despair, we get a special episode next week), and the show wrapped up our core romance arc beautifully. At its heart this is a simple story between two boys seeking connection and working up the confidence to pursue what they want without fear. We spent the first half of the show grounded in Taishin’s country mouse in the big city journey, and the second slowly peeling back Takara’s layers until we understood just how mutual their affection is. I was so impressed with the show’s steady, patient approach to revealing this character to us, and I love that through knowing and liking Taishin (perhaps even more than 100%), Takara is getting more comfortable with himself, reaching for what he wants, and having genuine moments of joy. I’m also excited for him to get to know Taishin’s family and feel some of the warmth and support he’s been missing. Looking forward to whatever glimpse of their future the show gives us next week.

Happy of the End

gif by @putterphubase

We knew this one was going to be dark, and hoo boy is it. Content warnings for the first two episodes:

Assault, child abandonment, childhood sexual slavery, domestic abuse, family violence, human trafficking, rape, sexual exploitation

We meet our main characters this week and learn the basics of their backstories (though there are still gaps that I expect will be filled in later on). Both of these men have lived hard lives, and it shows. They are not particularly good people, neither of them responds normally to the situations they find themselves in, their emotional wavelengths are often odd, and there is a recklessness to their behavior that speaks to a kind of ambivalence about survival. They recognize something in each other that draws them together, but even as they share their stories and spend time together, there are barriers between them. This story has a fairly bleak worldview, so I don’t expect it will follow the usual romance beats and I’m not counting on a happy ending. @bengiyo pointed out that the show seems to be narrated from a future perspective after the relationship ends, and @illgiveyouahint said the show feels “gently hopeless” which I think is a rather apt description of its tone.

This show is beautifully shot and feels steady and clear about its subject matter, but its themes are not for everyone. Proceed with caution, and ask for content warnings if you need them—I expect there will be difficult content in every episode. This one is dropping two episodes a week on Gaga, and there is also a fansub ongoing from @isaksbestpillow. Siiri’s subs will likely be more accurate, but I recommend at least background streaming on Gaga to make sure the show gets the official views.

I Hear the Sunspot

gif by @heretherebedork

I have already talked plenty about my current feelings of frustration with this show, so I won’t belabor the point. This week Taichi dropped out of university to go work full time at his new job despite his friends’ protests, we got a long Maya flashback and another instance of her clashing with Taichi, Kohei and Taichi continued to not say anything honest to each other as they said their goodbyes, and Kohei confessed without Taichi processing it yet again. The final episode appears to include a time skip, and then maybe they will have the conversation we’ve been waiting on for six weeks. Fingers crossed the finale makes all of this time spent in stasis feel worth it.

Note: I have to get this up early today due to my travel schedule, and at time of posting episode 7 of Mr. Mitsuya's Planned Feeding was not yet available with English subs. I imagine @isaksbestpillow will post sometime soon and I will share when it goes up and include final thoughts in next week’s round up.

Tagging @bengiyo for the anime update.

[television-overload]

fate is the handspike

(an X-Files ficlet)

[Read on AO3]

Summary:

Starting on February 23, 1964, Teena Mulder begins to worry about her young son. At first, she thinks maybe he's wishing for a little sister, a wish that will be granted very soon. But he insists the little girl he talks to is called Dana, and she's too little to play, but she likes when he reads his books to her.

(fic below the cut)

i.

At first, Teena thinks it's cute.

"She's just a baby, mommy, she can't play yet," he'd say.

"Oh, is that right?" she'd reply, indulging him in his childish fantasies. Perhaps this was his way of asking for a sister. The other moms in the neighborhood often urged her to give Fox a sibling, citing a child's need for company and social engagement, but Fox had always seemed so happy to play alone. She's not on the best of terms with her husband at the moment, either, which complicates things.

But then there's times when she sees Fox on the floor, legs splayed out before him as he recites his favorite picture books to his imaginary friend, and she wonders if she ought to be worried. Just a little.

Dr. Seuss, Curious George, Clifford the Big Red Dog... The boy has a photographic memory. Though he's too young to properly read, he has a grasp on the basic plots and recounts them in great detail, turning the pages as he goes.

"This one is called 'Where the Wild Things Are,' Dana," he says, because his friend's name—he insists—is Dana. He turns the book in his hand and shows the colorful illustration on the cover to a patch of carpet on the living room floor. "Don't worry, it's not scary," he assures her. Her. It. Whatever it is he's spent his days talking to since late February.

When he tells the story, he uses his own name, instead of 'Max.' That's how she'd always read it to him, and that's the only way he knows.

"And Fox told the monsters to be still!" he narrates with enthusiasm. "He used a magic trick and looked right in their BIG yellow eyes, and they were all scared. They said Fox is the most wild thing of all, and they made him king!"

ii.

There was one night when she'd woken to find Fox standing in the corner of his room, speaking softly to the wall.

"Shh, it's okay, Dana," he soothed in his little voice. "Here, I'll sing you a song. Twinkle twinkle little star...."

She never tells Bill what she's seen. He's always too busy to notice himself. But others know.

"He's quite an imaginative young fellow," Spender notes, taking a draw from his cigarette as Fox rolls around in the grass outside the house in Quonochontaug. Since "Dana" learned to crawl, he's been even more preoccupied than usual. He shows her all his toys, tells her the names of all his action figures. He announces to his mother one day that he's going to teach Dana how to walk. That she can only stand on her own for a little bit right now, but she doesn't cry anymore when she falls down.

Bill, if he ever catches wind of this, must think he's talking about one of the other kids from Teena's ladies' group. But there's no "Dana" in this neighborhood. Not on the Vineyard, either. She's checked.

iii.

The day she finds out she's pregnant, a part of her wonders. Though her knowledge of her husband's work is small, she knows enough to gather that things she might have thought impossible, could in fact be possible. Perhaps her son had been having visions of his baby sister, long before she was even conceived. Maybe it had simply been a sign that he would one day be a big brother. Soon.

She'd long since dispelled thoughts of ghosts and hauntings and exorcisms.

He tells Dana all about the baby in mommy's tummy. He giggles and makes silly faces, pausing in between sentences, which she gathers must mean his friend has developed the ability to speak.

"Mommy, she said my name! That's right! Fox! Fox!"

iv.

When Samantha is born, "Dana" seems to disappear overnight. This, at least, supports her theory that he had simply been preparing himself for a new sibling, and after a few years, she's completely dismissed the issue. Fox shows no other signs of strange or unusual behavior. He is nothing but a doting big brother, who occasionally gets annoyed by his freckle-faced kid sister, as any brother is wont to do. He reads to her, plays games with her, watches the television with her. They're two peas in a pod, and not once does the name "Dana" escape his lips. She is all but forgotten.

Until he's twelve years old. Samantha is gone, and Teena lacks the patience to deal with his questioning.

"Mom? Does the name 'Dana' mean anything to you?" he asks.

"What? Of course not, Fox, why would you ask such a thing?"

He looks down at his feet, shoulders slumping. "No reason. Forget I asked."

v.

When Fox lays awake at night, the bedroom next to his now dull and empty, he thinks he can hear a voice. It isn't Samantha's—though he'd thought so at first.

"By heaven, man," she reads, "we are turned round and round in this world, like yonder windlass, and Fate is the handspike. And all the time, lo! that smiling sky, and this unsounded sea!"

What does this girl know about fate? What does she know of this upside-down world?

"Read the next chapter, Dana!" he hears another girl's voice speak. The words are faint—muffled—like he's underwater. But her voice is clear.

He falls asleep, like most nights, listening to the tales of Ahab and Starbuck, and a great white whale.

-.-.-

Tag List ♡: @today-in-fic @agent-troi @baronessblixen @captainsolocide @cutemothman @deathsbestgirl @edierone @enigmaticxbee @figureofdismay @frogsmulder @hippocampouts @invidiosa @numinousmysteries @randomfoggytiger @skelavender @teenie-xf @thursdayinspace

[zooliminology]

Update/What's in the Future

[Hey guys, you probably have noticed that this is going to be likely the longest dry spell of real Zoolim content in a while. I apologize for this. Life has gotten in the way of a lot of things.

-I'm an art student in college, and last semester I didn't take any art classes so I was basically free to do whatever, but this semester I've taken three studio art classes, which are all very intensive and in honesty I would not recommend it! If you're a studio art student stick to 1-2 studio art classes a semester so you don't go insane please! I'm currently absolutely SWAMPED with work right now. -The Golbo video and the video that is imminently due this Tuesday (that i am writing this post about instead of working on) are the results of my New Media class. Considering the ten thousand million fucking art assets I have to draw for these it's been very time consuming (still want to do it though.) -A lot of life things have happened to me recently, not to be super personal but a family member of mine is sick and my living conditions are not the absolute Best, so it's been taking a heavy toll on my health.

All of these combined, especially the studio classes part because I've been bled dry of creativity energy relating to zoolim basically, has caused this dry spell basically. My hopes are that after the semester ends (which is soon) I'll be able to work on things more. I feel bad about not working on it more but I have to draw things other than zoolim to literally stay sane because it's a lot.

So I guess that leaves us with one question: what's in the future?

Well, a lot of things... maybe? I'm a little dry on entity ideas right now but i have a few, and I'd like to revisit some entities more and expand on them. And while I enjoy the videos and the non-entry ideas I have for material, I would also like to continue the 'traditional' paintings and entries. So I hope I can work on that alongside other things! I also have more ideas for videos, but considering how I have to do nearly all of the work, aside from the narration (thanks Darvinos) any video production will likely slow down dramatically after the semester is over. Until my next New Media class at least, but IDK if it will let me make the same shit.

I also have some deeper lore and a story semi-figured out, along with characters (you ever wonder who's taking the pictures? not the same person who's writing the captions!!!) but they would be hard to implement in this tumblr blog organically, so maybe they'll show up in some videos. I've thought of asking more people for help for this purpose, though I'd need to work out completely how that would work, and the moment that zoolim becomes more than some backrooms world i work on mostly by myself will become scary.

Sorry that this post is a big ramble, I hope yall understand and I swear the Longlegs video will come out pretty soon, it will be worked on again right after I post this lol. But please take care, and thank you for all the support you've shown me so far. It truly does mean a lot to me. I've said it several times but I'll say it again, I never imagined this shitty little art project about weird goobers in the backrooms would get so much attention lol.

ok end of post]

[13as07]

Weekend #1

(Neji Hyuga & Shikamaru Nara)

[Artwork is not mine! Credit to BM (?). Sorry, I couldn't find the original source but I really liked it so meh]

Requested by: xxziggy

Word Count: 3,462

Warnings and/or Pre-Notes:

First half is a lot a bit smut so be warned; not a full smut cause I wasn't feelin it for whatever reason

Love triangle (obvs)

Fingering (female receiving)

Blindfold

Temperature Play (Lighter/Ice Cubs)

Hickey

Getting called "pet"

Not me accidentally making this a nature (growing up with Shika) vs nurture (Neji taking care of you) situation

———————————————————————

     "This is such a drag," Shikamaru says as soon as I open my front door.

"If you don't want to help me pick out a swimsuit, I'm sure Ino will," I grumble, leaving the door open as I walk away.

"You always say that she 'likes anything you try on' and that 'Ino is no help' so, no. This is less of a drag than listening to you bitch for the whole weekend," he grumbles back, closing the front door before trailing after me.

Shikamaru and I are friends... a little more than friends. Fuck buddies, we're fuck buddies. We hook up from time to time but that's what friends are for, right? Hookups and opinions. And late-night snack runs.

"I think you should just stick to the yellow one you wore on last year's weekend trip."

"And I think you're stupid. I can't wear the same one I wore last year."

"Why not? I've worn the same swim trucks for the past three years," Shika groans, feet dragging as he follows me into my room, closing my door behind himself.

"Because I wore it last year! All the other girls are going to have new ones so I need a new one. I can't be the only one without a new swimsuit," I tell him, ushering him toward the bed.

"You girls have the weirdest rules about clothes," he grumbles, flopping on his back with his feet rested on the floor, and knees bent at the edge of the mattress. "Just wear the yellow one. Your titties look good in it."

"Thanks, Shik. That's what every girl wants to hear," I say sarcastically, rolling my eyes as I dig through my closet for the four or five suits I bought. He throws up a thumbs up, the promise of his eyes being closed and him being half asleep paired with it. What a lazy sass of a friend I have.

"Okay, there's four of them."

"Great," he mumbles, drawing out the word.

I ignore his sarcasm, stripping my clothes off as I decide which one to try on first. "Alright, this one is a black one-piece," I narrate, wiggling myself into the material.

"Hey, here's some crazy shit," Shika says, sitting up right now. "When I look at you, I'll be able to see the style and color of it."

"Hey Shik?" He lets out a hum, the feeling of his eyes coating my back as I check myself out in the mirror. "Stop being a douche."

He rolls my eyes at me, resting his arm on his knee, and his head on his hand. "Do a little spin," he grumbles, a finger on his free hand making a circle in the air. I do as I'm told, slowly spilling so Shikamaru can check the swimsuit out. "One-pieces are for grandmas and women without body confidence. No."

"That's a little harsh."

"Do you want me to sugarcoat it like Ino?"

I grumble out a no, tugging the suit off myself. Shika's eyes stay locked on my nudity, sights ping-ponging alongside my movements until I turn back around. "The next one is also a one-piece - "

"No."

"Shik - "

"I already told you no. You are a hot chick with a hot body. Show it off or else my weekend will be a waste."

"No, it won't be a waste. You can googly eye Ino or Tenten or Hinata or Sakura," I point out, flipping between which of the remaining two to try on next.

"Ino would pretty much be incest, Tenten scares me, Sakura has too much attitude, and Hinata doesn't have enough attitude," he explains, rolling his eyes at me again. I swear, one of these days I'm going to poke his eyes out.

"Alright, the third is a string bikini, it's powder blue and I think it makes my ass look good," I ramble, tying the strings the best I can alone. "What do you think?" I ask, doing another slow turn.

"No," he pushes out, shifting his position as he adjusts his pants. "You look..."

"Hot?"

"Easy."

"Easy?!" I yelp, crossing my arms across my chest as I glare at Shikamaru. "I'm not easy!"

"I didn't say you were! I just said that... you look easy," he mumbles the last three words, eyes locked on my chest as he adjusts himself again. "Are you easy?"

"No! What the hell, Shik?"

"You should be... easy. Like... right now. For me."

"I asked you over to pick a swimsuit, not for a fuck," I grumble, slowly walking towards him. "This isn't picking a swimsuit," I continue, using my knee to push his open before sliding between his legs.

"The... the fourth one," he mumbles, fingers curling around the thin material, sliding back and forth as his eyes drink me up.

"You haven't even seen it yet," I complain, crossing my arms over my chest again, trying to hold onto my anger that's being drained by arousal. "How do you know it'll look good?"

"You look good in everything. You look better in nothing, though," Shika tells me, eyes still jumping around as he tugs the flimsy material to the side, leaving me exposed for him to enjoy. "Though, you also look really good in this swimsuit."

"Then I'll wear this one."

"No!" He races out, eyes snapping up to my face, his face scrunched up. "I mean... no, you still look easy."

"Do I look easy or is someone getting a little jealous?" I tease, cupping his chin and forcing him to shake his head yes. "Aw, is Shika worried he's going to lose the 'fuck' benefit of being m buddy?"

"I'm not that shallow," he mumbles, rolling his eyes at me again. "We're friends cause I like being friends. Not because you let me hit it on occasion."

     "Then I'm going to wear the swimsuit."

     "Pack the goddamn swimsuit and I'll set it on fire."

     "Set it on fire and I'll go skinny dipping all weekend."

     "Or," he starts, a single finger slowly cruising through my folds, landing on my clit to rub light circles into it. "I can make you cum and in turn, you wear the fourth swimsuit."

     "Ya alright," I give in, decking down to press a kiss against his lips. Shika's finger pushes into me, lightly curling against my walls as our lips dance against each other. "I have a question." He hums in acknowledgment, sliding kisses up and down my stomach as he curls another finger in me. "Did you only agree to my fashion show so we could fuck?"

     "Oh, ya. I'm not going to get any this weekend so might as well empty out now so I have a little more control while you girls walk around half naked," he admits, a third finger added before he starts thrusting them in and out of me. Shikamaru's tongue slides out, slowly trailing from the string of my bottoms and stopping at the connection string of my top. "Take your top off."

     "Demanding, aren't we?" I mock, tugging on the skippy strings and letting the material tumble to the floor. "You're such a tit guy."

     "I'm an ass guy too," he says, squeezing my butt with his free hand before it jumps up to my breast. He toys with my nipple, rolling it between his fingers as his mouth sucks on the other one. After some time he switches his places, eyes flicker up for a moment. "You take forever," he groans, pulling his touches away from me.

"My bad, two-pump-chump," I grumble, a yelp spilling from me when Shikamaru grabs me. His arms wrap around my legs, tugging me onto the bed. "Shika!" I giggle, back landing against my mattress as he settles between my knees.

"Yes, Pet?" He murmurs, tongue sliding across my inner thigh. I toy with his hair, rubbing my nails gently across his skull, pulling a soft whimper from him. "I hate how well you know me," he groans, undoing the strings of my bikini bottoms, and dropping them on the top left on the floor.

"No, you don't," I tease, dropping my hands down to his shirt, and tugging him up my body before I start pulling it up. Once he's free from his shirt, his necklace hangs between us, dangling in my face. God I swear, I don't know what it is but it's so hot.

"You're not paying attention to me. What a drag, you're not even into it."

"I am," I hum, lifting my hand, and using a finger to toy with our clan pendent. "I'm just getting a little bored with our routine."

"The fuck am I supposed to do with that?" He grumbles, shifting his weight back and forth between the hands pressed next to my head.

"I don't know, you're the genus here, not me."

Shikamaru lets out a long, deep sigh of annoyance, his eyes falling into their 'I look pissed but I'm thinking' look. His brows are pressed together, eyes set forward and slit. "Are your parents home?"

"No."

Silence falls between us again, Shika's eyebrows shifting as the gears in his head turn. "If I blindfold you are you going to lose your shit?"

"We're known as the Shadow Clan. I think I'll be okay with a little bit of darkness."

With that, Shika climbs off of me, his focus shifting through my dresser drawers. He stays silent when he finds my Shinobi band, carefully tying it around my eyes before whispering in my ear. "I'll be right back. Just chill."

I do as I'm told, relaxing in bed as I wait for him to return. It doesn't take long for his aura to fill my room again, my curiosity sparked by what he'll do. "What do you have planned, Mr Genus?"

"If I told you," he starts, the feeling of his breath sliding over my pussy startling me a bit. "It would ruin the plan, Miss I'm Getting Bored." My thighs are gripped, being tugged further apart. "Make sure you tell me if you're not good."

"I know, Shik."

"Just making sure," he mutters, brushing kisses against my thighs again. As the kisses roll around my skin, I'm slowly lulled, the gentleness of Shikamaru threatening to put me to sleep.

The sound of a click fills my senses with the feeling of heat licking at my thighs. "What the fuck, Shikamaru!" I yelp shoving his hand away.

"Is that a 'surprised' fuck or a 'I don't like that' fuck?" His voice is followed by soft clinking. The sound is followed by something chilled pressed to the spot previously accompanied by some kind of flame.

"Surprised fuck," I murmur, shivers running up my spine as the chilliness melts, dripping down my skin. It's an ice cube, isn't it? And the click and flame combo was Shika's lighter. What a smart but bored man.

"Mmm, good," he mutters, dropping the ice cub, making them clink against each other again. His tongue slides across my leg, lapping up the water left behind. "Is this exciting enough, Miss Bored?"

"Yes, Sir."

He hums again, climbing up my body. "Alright, you needy girl. I'm going to rest in you until you're worked up enough cause you're too much work."

"Lair, you just want to feel me pulse around you," I tease, my hands crawling down his body. Shikamaru has stripped since I've been blinded, sparking my excitement even more.

His necklace taps against my skin as he moves, the feeling of his lips mapping out his slow climb. "So what if I do? We're doing this because - "

"Hey, Sweetie? Are you home?" My mother's voice rings out, pulling a disappointed sigh from the both of us.

"You need to move out," he grumbles, tugging the headband off my eyes as he crawls off of me. "For now," he starts, mouth clinging to my throat, sucking on my skin as hard as he can. "We're going to greet your mom, excuse ourselves for lunch, and then we're going to continue our new game at my place," he finishes before sucking on the same spot, promising to leave a dark bruise on my neck.

     "Shik," I whine, knotting my hands around his ponytail before I try to pull his lips off me. "You're going to leave a bruise."

     "Ya, that's the point," he grumbles, his tone not matching the smile being pressed against my skin.

     "So much for not being jealous," I tease, managing to pull Shikamaru off me, a loud pop following the loss of his suction.

———————————

     "Nara-Chan!" Neji calls, waving at me as his squad and him walk towards our squad. "You look... good," he mutters, eyes jumping over me before he gives me a closed-eyed smile, a soft pink dusting his cheeks.

It's an open secret among our generation that Neji has started forming a bit of a crush on me. With the aftermath of the war, neither one of us has had the time to move the relationship past playful flirting. Though, hopefully, after this weekend that won't be the case anymore. The soft rumor of Neji asking me out filtering around helping that.

Every year, the twelve of us have taken a weekend away from the village to go do something other than work. It usually ends up being all of us camping near a river or lake and just spending the weekend relaxing. We're doing that again this year, hence picking out a swimsuit yesterday with Shika.

"Hey, Nej," I greet, returning his wave as he settles in front of me. "Are you excited for the trip?" He hums a yes, eyes not-so-secretly climbing my form again. His eyebrows scrunch when he gets further up my body, making me a bit concerned. Is there food or something on my shirt?

"Hello," Shikamaru's voice rings out as my eyes jump down, checking for a stain or leftover crumbs from the chips Choji and I shared. "What's up, Neji?" He asks, stopping next to me as he greets our friend. Shika's hand jumps up, tapping against my neck before his focus shifts back to the pleasantries Neji and him are sharing.

My eyes flutter towards a smug Shik, cockiness waving off of him. Why the hell was Neji looking at me so weird? Why did Shikamaru tap my neck?... oh.

Heat blooms across my face as I remember the dark hickey present on my neck. The very dark and very big bruise Shikamaru left behind yesterday.

"Anyway," Neji says, tugging me out of my thoughts and embarrassment. "Do you want to walk with me, Nara-Chan?"

"Yes," I rush out quickly, the heat on my face now from being flustered instead of embarrassed. "I... um... yes, I would like to walk with you," I correct, keeping my tone soft and even this time.

"Great," Neji says, sending me another smile. "I'm going to go greet the others. I'll come find you when we're ready to go, alright?"

"Alright," I murmur, smiling back at him. My eyes trail after Neji, watching him walk away to greet the rest of my squad and his cousin's squad that just showed up.

When my eyes shift back to Shikamaru, who's gloomy, arms crossed over his chest, and a glare shot toward Neji. I swear if he was any moodier a storm cloud would form over his head. "You're walking with Neji instead of me?" He groans, the heat of his glare still stuck on the other man.

"Ya. You're walking with Choji anyway. Why do you care?"

"I don't!" He snaps out, his anger pointed toward me instead of Neji. "Okay, maybe I do," he grumbles, eyes softening as he rolls them at me. "You're pretty blind, do you know that?"

"Why? Because I have more friends than just you?" I tease, laughing at his shocked face as I walk away to greet Shino's squad.

———————————

     I nod along to the story Tenten is telling me, half paying attention as I look at the scenery. Most of the girls have switched to being carried, not because we're tired but because we're lazy and the guys all have a complex of wanting to be better than the others. So, Lee is carrying Tenten, Kiba is carrying Hinata, Shika is carrying Ino, and Neji is carrying me. Naruto offered to carry Sakura but that ended with him getting a bruise or two.

     "So ya, I packed two swimsuits cause the guys are no help," Tenten grumbles, rolling her eyes before she playfully glares at Neji.

     "If it makes you feel any better, Shikamaru wasn't much help picking out my swimsuit either," I tell her, the both of us giggling at the guys' incompetence. "I think you should go with the red one though. You always look good in red."

     "Alright! Break time!" Shino's voice rings out, paired with a hand clap. The bug shinobi - like always - has declared himself in charge because he's 'older and wiser' than the rest of us. The real reason he's in charge is because Neji doesn't want to put up with Naruto and Shikamaru is too lazy to do it, but none of us are going to tell him that.

     We all settle to the side of the path, a few of the guys decking into the forest for a pee break. "Are you ready to get down?" Neji asks, his head tilting backward to look at me.

     "Ya, I should probably stretch my legs and give you a break," I answer, wiggling around on his back. He bends down a bit, shorting my jump off him. "Alright, Nej-man," I chirp, stretching myself out. "How much longer until we're to the spot?"

     "I would say an hour. Maybe two depending on if we stop again or how many... issues Naruto has," He says, stressing the word 'issues' as his eyes bounce toward the blonde boy.

     "That's not too bad," I mumble, sinking to the ground to sit under one of the trees. I rest my head against the bark of it, my eyes falling closed to give them a break from the sun.

     "Nara-Chan?"

     "Neji?" I hum, slowly opening my eyes again.

     Since I've closed my eyes, Neji has pulled out a water bottle. The top off and wrapped up in his hand. "When was the last time you drank water?"

     "Uh..." I murmur, having to take a second to figure out the answer. "I don't know. Before we left I think."

     Neji lets out a disapproving hum, paired with an equally disapproving look. "We have been out in the sun and the heat all day. You need to be drinking water."

"It's fine. When I'm thirty I will. It's not that big of a deal."

"Yes, it is. Dehydration is a big deal and not something I want you to suffer with," he lectures, sinking to kneel in front of me. "Now, open your mouth Nara-Chan," Neji says, his hand resting under my chin, tipping my head up. Reluctantly I snap my mouth open, eyeing the barely older man. He tips his water bottle, water-falling the liquid into my mouth.

"See? Isn't that better?" He mutters, his eyes locked on my neck again as he sets the bottle down. Neji's eyes shift, locking in mine. When I try to break the staring contest, he uses his hold on my face to put it back in place. "I'm waiting for an answer."

"Oh... um, ya. That's better," I finally answer, my breathing suddenly feeling more labored. Thoughts that would turn Neji red flicker through my mind for a moment. I guess Lee wasn't lying when he said his friend was planning to focus on forming our relationship this weekend.

"Good, now please excuse me," Nej says, squeezing my face gently before dropping his hold on me. "I will be back," he mutters, packing his water bottle back in his bag before disappearing into the trees.

"What the hell was that?" Ino shrieks, her sudden presence next to startling me.

"I don't know," I answer, my voice pitched and mind running wild.

"I don't either. What I do know is that Shikamaru is pissed off again," she tells me, shrugging towards the small circle of Shika, Shino, and Kiba a couple of paces away.

Ino is right. Shikamaru's eyes are locked on me, sight intense as he stares at me, occasionally glances at the spot Neji disappeared from. His arms are crossed too, jaw locked, and the gears in his head turning again. I was kidding when I was poking fun at him for being jealous. I'm starting to think it's not a joke anymore.

Dear Lord, this weekend isn't going to play out smoothly, is it?

———————————————————————

[i23kazu]

YOU CANNOT BE SERIOUS

characters. neuvillette x gn!reader genre. romantic ; domestic fluff. an. soft dad neuvillette! where neuvillette takes a nap and wakes up dollified by his melusine daughters. | please reblog!! im getting back into writing and reblogs with tags and comments will make me want to write more :D

the minute neuvillette steps into the house, his mind is already at ease. the air is warm, a stark contrast to the chilly autumn that decorates the outside world. you’ve already had the fire started from the time you reached home — your husband is grateful, taking his gloves off and warming his hands by the fire.

“welcome home, darling,” you croon, helping him take his jacket off. “dinner will be ready in half an hour, why don’t you go and rest?”

"have i mentioned that i'm grateful for you?" neuvillette smiles, pressing a kiss to your forehead. with another stolen kiss to the cheek, the man reappears from your room quickly, freshly showered and changed into a dark turtleneck. neuvillette moves to sit on the navy loveseat, gratefully nursing the warm mug of peppermint tea that you had prepared while the sounds of his shower going had become your white noise.

as he nestles into the soft cushions of the seat, your two little ones, mela and puca, giggle and push one of the books he had bought for them into his hands.

"pleeeeaaaseeeee, daddy?" mela whines, snuggling closer into his lap.

"didn't i read that to the both of you last night?" neuvillette raises his eyebrows in confirmation, not unkindly. he couldn't quite understand your girls' attachment to this particular book... not especially after narrating it to them, every night, without fail. nevertheless, neuvillette gently plucks the book out of his lap when mela and puca nod furiously, and the father adjusts his position – making space for the two girls to nuzzle on his lap. they stay in that spot for a while.

there's nothing but the sounds of the warm fire crackling alongside them, neuvillette's soft narration breaking through the quiet silence. even the girls know not to disturb the serenity of the scene they're in.

but the serenity seems to catch up to neuvillette – especially after a long day at the opera epiclése, the warmth and hearth of the home gently cover him like a freshly-warmed duvet. his words start to slur and trail off into nothing, and the book lays down to rest on his chest as he puts it down. your husband has finally succumbed to the warm lull of sleep, gently snoring.

mela and puca exchange a glance and giggle softly, deftly leaping off his lap and trotting to the next room to grab items for their next activity. papers and markers are held with childish eagerness, and the pair sprawl themselves out on the floor to continue, drawing cute foxes and flowers.

as tranquil as the house is, energy-filled little girls never are fully entertained by the limits of marker and paper.

and sometimes, little girls need to do what little girls do best – find another outlet. unfortunately, neuvillette had become too easy of an outlet by his proximity and lack of awareness.

puca quietly tiptoes to her sleeping father, leaving behind the forgotten, strewn about pieces of drawing block – and turns her attention to a snoozing neuvillette's face. mm... daddy wouldn't be angry, right?

the markers are back in use – swirly scribbles and smiley faces decorate neuvillette's cheeks, with brushes of bright yellow under his eyes and green whiskers. mela soon joins her sister, her red marker highlighting her father's lips. with the most mischievous grins only little girls could muster, puca giggles and gathers neuvillette's hair into tiny pigtails, his white hair sticking up at odd angles.

neuvillette is turned into a masterpiece.

well, a masterpiece, in your daughters' eyes.

perhaps mela had giggled too loudly, or puca had accidentally knocked her marker against neuvillette's cheek – but the older man starts to stir, noticing a wetness on his face.

"what happened?" he mumbles groggily, moving to sweep his hair out of his face – when he realises that he can't.

puca and mela hide behind the curtains, giggling.

"dear? i think there's something on my face, could you help me to check it?" neuvillette calls, and you set down your phone to make your way to the living room. he rubs his face with more vigour, but nothing comes off. strange.

"let me see-" a quiet oh. tumbles off your lips, momentarily caught off guard by the... sudden bedazzlement of your husband. you bite back a laugh, not wanting to embarrass him – but how can you keep a straight face when your husband is quite literally the embodiment of a girl dad right now? you tremble with laughter, spotting your mischievous little ones hiding behind the curtain.

"mela, puca, did you happen to give daddy a makeover?" you laugh lightly, searching for a mirror to hand to neuvillette. finally, one with a wooden handle is found, and he chokes at his clownified appearance.

"we did! isn't he pretty?" mela positively beams. neuvillette's heart breaks, and he doesn't have the heart to wash it off at this point.

"are you.. are you angry, daddy? mela and i just wanted to have fun, and the drawing paper wasn't enough." puca nervously toes the ground, her eyes not meeting neuvillette's.

"while i am, ah.. surprised, i could never be upset at the two of you, mes petits rayons de soleil." your husband smiles, his lips still painted cherry red. your little girls snuggle back into his arms, grinning and touching his face.

oh dear. that'd take a while to come off – but you snap as many pictures as you can, because this might not happen again anytime soon. your little mela and puca are the most pleased, and neuvillette would do anything to make it stay that way – even if it meant leaving his face of artwork on for a little longer.

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mes petits rayons de soleil. – my little rays of sunshine.

reblogs w/ tags & comments help me lots !!! if you liked this, consider dropping me a follow as well :-) they all go a long way!

[ohnogodpls]

i love how you draw genshin characters, especially the body/facial variety! i wish genshin did more of that

i especially love alhaitham and neuvillette in your style!!!

btw, what are your favourite male and female characters? i personally love kazuha, kaveh, and nahida and the shogun (puppet bc ei is a girlfailure and i like to think of the puppet's personhood)

Thank you for the kind words :3

About characters, hmmmm...

For male characters Zhongli and Childe are fighting for the #1 spot. I started the game for Zhongli because I knew he would be the kind of character I really like: ancient calm veteran of time who just wants to live a simplier life despite knowing that he will forever be connected to events and powers beyond human comprehension. Childe I actually never expected to like as much as I do, but he really grew on me with his personality, his past that can come back very soon to shed some light on some really important teyvat lore, and his double sided persona. The way he loves and cares for his family and can genuinely make friends while staying loyal to tsaritsa is amazing to me, I think he is very well written in that way actually.

Well, and now I think it shows quite well that Neuvillette is in my very high regard :D

For female characters I really like Eula, I like her past and present contrast, her stand on refusing to follow her predetermined path. Her design, her animations, her moveset are just so elegant and beautiful... I just wish she was a little more releavant, I wish she had some inpact on the story, even though I understand that she is a side character.

And Nahida. I really liked Sumeru's story and undertones. Genshin overall has a flowing narration of humanity getting away from the godly influence: Mondstadt is the land of freedom, freedom from their archon as well, Liyue shows us how humans can now handle matters on their own when in need to deal with even celestial matters, Inazuma is a display of human will that will continue developing even when put in a situation it was put in, it did not need archon's approval to grow and develop even when forced not to. And then Sumeru showed the cruelty of humanity towards their archons. People of Sumeru refused Nahida, showed how they want to be independent to an extent of creating a manmade god. I think in that environment the kindness, the naivity and the softheartedness of Nahida really got to me. She is calculating while also being empathic, I find it really interesting.

[powderblueblood]

bethy on beale street

eddie tells lacy the story of how al munson and elizabeth franklin met in memphis, tennessee. or, love is a grilled cheese sandwich. (2k) cw: sickening fluff, me making shit up about beale street, al munson is a junior sleaze but is no match for elizabeth franklin and her sunshine smile. taggin @dieaverage & @fracturedarkness x

part of the hellfire & ice universe

"oh, this is pathetic."

you push your lower lip out a little further, gesturing to the blackened thing of jiffy pop with the pitiful enthusiasm of a door-to-door salesman that needs to make one last sale or else she's giving her exhaust pipe a blow job. "eddie."

"was that your dinner?" he asks, gesturing to the failed science experiment in your hand with the cigarette in his.

a couple of incinerated kernels fall out the bottom. you nod, eyes shiny. he rolls his head around on his neck, groaning with a fervor. he's such a fucking sucker.

"fine! get in here-- you're so goddamn lucky wayne's doing overtime--"

"oh, otherwise i'd starve!" you say, brightening up immediately as you hop through the door of the munson trailer.

"otherwise you'd starve."

"emaciated!"

"a dessicated corpse come monday."

and come a few moments later, you're biting into the most heavenly grilled cheese you've ever had. like, really. the cheese is plastic and gooey and dripping and a string of it clings to your chin. eddie, the chef de cuisine, points for you to clear that up. you'd really underestimated what this boy could do with a pan-- you didn't even think he owned a pan.

watching him whip up this little number with the cigarette still dangling from his mouth was... mystifying. if entirely unhygienic. but if that's what you're putting up with for how this thing tastes...

"s's very good," you say with your mouth full.

"don't they teach you not to talk with your mouth full at miss porter's finishing school for prisses?"

you pinch your brow and give him the finger.

"better be careful," eddie says, tone sauteing in warning as he reaches forward and nudges that offending finger back into your little fist, "this is exactly how my parents got together."

your eyes flare as you wipe some grease off your lower lip. eddie rarely talks about his parents, just like you rarely talk about yours-- for a bouquet of reasons. bonding over your shared daddy issues is difficult when they're criminal accomplices-turned-enemies or whatever.

or maybe it's easier. you two just hadn't tried it yet.

"really?"

"tale as old as time," eddie sighs, sitting backwards on one of the two kitchen chairs and picking up the salt and pepper shakers.

"he was a line cook." shake shake. "she was a waitress." shake shake. "he could not leave the state of tennessee. they used no discernible form of birth control and figured that was a good enough reason to say 'i do'."

"how did they end up here?"

"well, soon as i was let loose upon the world, dad decided he was a little homesick--" eddie's eyelids sag sardonically, "--read, he had to go somewhere and cool off. hawkins is as good a place as any for that, unless you're al munson and trouble draws you in like a fucking electromagnetic force."

there's a beat.

"what part of tennessee?"

he doesn't expect you to ask that. knocks him out of his facetious narration. makes him twist his ring a little, like he's debating whether to tell you or not.

"um. memphis."

you smile, all knowingly. "beale street."

he smiles back, warming back up.

because of course you wouldn't say graceland first.

because you're pretentious and you're psychic, or something, because you're the goddamn oracle of delphi and you'd know to say beale street because...

franklin's diner was on beale street. still could be, eddie doesn't know, because they left memphis when he was still a baby. what he did remember, from what he could remember of his mom and what al rarely trickled into conversation, was that franklin's diner was an institution.

franklin's was beloved. it was the kind of place that slung hash and sausage to people twenty-four hours a day. those people ranged from civilians to cops to politicians to musicians to poets to drunks to degenerates. the hierarchy broke down at franklin's-- everyone was the same. everyone took their hat off at the door and said their pleases and thank yous and ate together. and laughed together. and told stories together.

whoever you were outside of that didn't matter.

so it stood to reason that a man on probation could get a job there.

al munson avoided a stay in the federal correctional institution in good ol' shelby county by the skin of his dazzling midwestern teeth. friends (because friends come by easy for al-- look in any dark, shady corner and there's a friend) had told him to make for franklin's, because not only is there work, but there's work.

and women.

seemed as if back of house was staffed by nothing but a pirate crew of ex-(and soon-to-be)-cons (which ain't a bad transition out of the big house, if you think about it), but front of house?

some of the most dee-vine fading beauties that memphis had to offer. one-time contenders for miss tennessee, each and every one of them, were it not for... the missing teeth, the bum eye, the drinking, the swearing, the smoking, the cussing out the customers.

al, as you can imagine, flourished in this environment. plucky little upstart sleazeball who handled women like don juan by way of some shitstain in indiana no one'd ever heard of? they loved him. cherished him.

and al, a lover of women of any shape, size or moral decrepitude, cherished them right back. in every imaginable way.

("gross." "i know, but stick with me.")

that turned south one sweltering august day when poppy franklin (which is what they called the big man who owned the place) came huffing in after a five-foot-nothing spitfire with a fried blonde dye job.

"y'know what, poppy, fine!" she yelled, her accent ringing through the diner like high, fine crystal tainted by smoke. "you want me as part of the family business, then i am more than happy to oblige-- but i got conditions! if i'm workin' my shift, we are listenin' to my music!"

she grabbed each side of the jukebox like the wheels of a high powered rally car, tongue peeking out the side of her sugar pink lips, eye squinting.

"c'mon, girl," poppy gasped, clutching at the counter. "goddamn ernie ford ain't music?"

"no!" she barked, and she swung around with this megawatt smile that filled her whole face-- filled the whole diner.

"this is music!"

and that first lick of hoodoo man blues rips through the jukebox speakers and the place goes up.

("hoodoo man blues? i don't think i know that." a beat. "what? but you know everything." a lingering kind of look. "i don't know everything! only most of everything." "i'll play it for you." "i'd like that. anyway. as you were.")

so, this little chickie dipped around the back to grab an apron and ran smack bang into al, who'd been ignoring his darla-of-the-week to watch this whole flurry play out via the service window.

she knocked the wind out of him. like, clean deflation.

"he- hey." first time al munson has ever stuttered, ever, on record.

"indiana, right?" she kept on smiling, like it'd hurt to stop, and dug this prefixed name tag out of the apron. "yeah, they said you was pretty."

all al could muster was this huff, like 'heh!' because she was looking at him with these eyes, just picking him apart and putting him back together with this look on her face that felt like the first blast of sunshine out of the joint.

which he knew about, right. so that mattered.

"bethy?" he pointed to the nametag.

"holy crow, and he's literate! you're a real diamond in the rough, there, indiana!"

and she threw her head back and cackled like a hyena and al munson knew he was done for. lights out. game over. see y'all next time! y'all come back soon now!

elizabeth 'bethy' franklin had landed back in memphis after an ill-guided attempt to rebel in nashville. she made it about a month until she became incredibly homesick, because bethy franklin was raised around love and family and music and nashville had the music part and some of the love part, and as much as she wanted to do something completely independent of her family, she missed her people. wasn't her time. so she came back, with a shitty blonde dye job that made a mess of her natural red curls.

and she was as effervescent as she was when she was a kid; always had a smile for everybody, and a dirty joke for everybody she liked. and she insisted on pumping that chicago blues out of the jukebox during every shift, dancing her way around that diner. the customers didn't even give a shit when she messed up their orders-- she was that magnetic.

al spent the next three weeks trying everything he could to take her out.

"bethy, you like ribs?" "you know i do, al, and you know i know every rib joint in town." "bethy, you wanna go for a drive?" "last i saw, i was the only one of us with a car!" "bethy, i just got this record by these dudes, uh, the aces--" "you better not be tryin' to impress me with things i already know, indiana!"

she made him work harder than he'd ever worked in his life-- much to the chagrin of every other waitress in the joint, who he'd tossed by the wayside in pursuit of the heiress to the finest, dirtiest diner on beale street.

the only day that franklin's closed was new year's day. poppy had even made it a longstanding rule that they could finish up early on new year's eve, around eight o'clock, to get at least some of the night's dancin' in.

as if they weren't already sick of each other's company, the diner staff stuck together like a pack of rats, descending on downtown memphis and causing a ruckus in the bars. one favored spot of the franklin family, this little tin roof bar that dealt mostly in country music, even called on bethy by name from the stage.

"well, let's see now-- looks like the prodigal daughter has returned safe and sound from the armpit of our national nudie suit, nashville, tennessee! you goin' git up and give us a tune, miss bethy franklin?"

and again, that voice rung clear but raspy, clean through the room and al’s aching heart, "well, i would, john, but your guitar player's just been kicked out the bar!"

"i can play." and al munson stepped up to the plate, to the stage, and he held that gibson like it was excalibur and he'd just yanked the sword out of that goddamned stone.

"you can play?"

"anything you want."

bethy covered the microphone and stared al down with a challenge. "long-legged guitar pickin' man."

which sounded like an insult, but he ripped them first couple chords off like it was nothing.

("and the crowd went up?" "and the crowd went up.")

she could sing, that girl. al too, but she had a voice like a nightingale. and she had him singing that same stupid song as midnight approached, sucking down cigarettes outside the bar. then, twenty minutes to go-time, bethy materialized in front of al and said--

"i could eat."

which is a terrific thing to say to a line cook, especially one that has since decided he would sacrifice the world and its riches just for a minute alone with you.

"bethy franklin, i'm gonna make you a grilled cheese so good, you're gonna ask my father for my hand in marriage."

so they high-tailed in back to their diner, down the street, breaking in with bethy's spare set of keys. al fired up the grill with white bread and all-american cheese on hand and bethy fired up the jukebox and danced herself around the kitchen to where do you go to, my lovely.

("oh, wow." "yeah, thought that might tickle your sensibilities.")

in about ten minutes flat, al was watching bethy insistently pick her sandwich up from his spatula, even though he was insisting she'd burn those pretty hands.

"these hands are fireproof, indiana. they can survive anythin'."

"they gonna survive how good that grilled cheese is, bethy?"

and bethy didn't hold back. she let her eyes roll right back in her head, humming out her mm-mm-mm! credit where credit's due. ate the whole thing in three bites.

"it's elizabeth, by the way."

al looked confused, but something on her face told him to remember this. the eyes that were usually sparkling with light had dimmed a touch; a more intimate setting of her gaze, if you will.

"that nickname. been drivin' me crazy my whole life. kinda... whassa word, diminutive, y'know? i like my name-- it's big and solid and important, don't you think?"

al shook his head and took elizabeth in. the whole big shining beacon of her, the one he'd let himself be burned right up in. singed, to a crisp. moth, meet flame. you get the idea.

and he said, "only one way we could make that name sound better."

"how'zat?" she asked.

and he said, "if we made it elizabeth munson."

and elizabeth smiled again, because she was always goddamn smiling, and said, "what's your daddy's number?"

back in the room.

you exhale big, and eddie's watching your reaction for... he doesn't really know what. he digs around for a cigarette and offers you one.

"this what you're like in hellfire club?" you ask, leaning back in your chair and crossing your legs. "because that was a hell of a story."

"good point. not enough grilled cheese motifs in my campaigns, lacy, i really oughta write that down somewhere..."

"no, i mean it. you're good."

the compliment sort of hangs between you. eddie's not quite sure how to handle it-- he doesn't have asbestos fingers like his mom did.

you look at him for what feels like an excruciatingly long time.

"i think you're like her," is what you finally say, and it feels like when you do that thing where you play with the tension of a situation like a cat with a mouse.

eddie's chest immediately tightens. eyelids stutter. he tries his damnedest to brush it off, but he's leaning in, the way he always does with you. he can't not give. he can't resist, not when it's you.

"i think it's the smile." you say, biting at the tip of your little finger. "provided what you told me is not complete unverified bullshit."

"hold on." and he's up and out of his chair, searching around for his jeans that he'd discarded earlier (yeah, he's walking around in his own damn boxers, it's his damn trailer, grow up (you're being very grown up about it)).

he slides a photo that he keeps in his wallet toward you, leaning over you.

it's a young woman, can't be more than 21, with a little baby that has a shock of dark curly hair. her dark roots are growing out a little. she's beaming toward the camera like her life depends on it.

eddie watches you as you study it, all considered and pouty like you get when you study anything. you hold the photo up right next to his face.

"now smile."

he smiles.

"bigger."

he stretches the corners of his mouth way out.

"just as i thought. identical."

pink colors his cheeks, just a little.

"a couple of all-american cheesers."

[typellblog]

Suruga Devil - An Analysis

Something I’ve been thinking about is how even though Oshino disappeared six books ago, some way or another a specialist manages to crawl their way into every arc. Almost irregardless of the circumstances, these kids need someone to explain the problem to them. To bring them face to face with the truth they haven’t quite realised yet. 

In Hanamonogatari, though, advice might be the last thing that Kanbaru Suruga needs - despite, or perhaps because so many different people want to offer it to her. 

I’ll be riding my arc formula all the way from Bakemonogatari until the wheels fall off, so I think here I want to talk about the title again. 

Suruga Devil. Isn’t that odd? It almost sounds like we’re dealing with the exact same oddity as her first arc. Except there’s a different Devil-sama in this one, someone who has more devil parts than Suruga herself. Numachi Rouka is also an oddity, by virtue of being already dead, and by that logic Suruga must be the ‘victim’ of her haunting. 

The theory is floated here that all ghosts work similarly to Hachikuji. They hang around because of a certain regret, and people with a similar regret or issue are the only ones that can see them. What, then, is Rouka’s?

I think there’s something to be said for how obviously she wants to play basketball with Suruga again. 

Even in a series full of unreliable narrators Rouka is unique in that we don’t get to see her internal narration, just how she chooses to present her life story to Suruga. There are hints that she was spinning it a bit - Higasa mentions that ‘family issues’ Rouka hardly talked about also contributed to her suicide, not just the broken leg. 

Frankly I see in Rouka someone trying to put up a strong front to hide how severely something actually affected her. She refers to herself derisively as misfortunate, acknowledges the suffering that it caused her, but still tries to make herself seem distant from it, like it’s something she’s already dealt with. Like her misfortune-collecting has made her happy again. 

Her initial attitude is hostile, confrontational. She seems like she’s trying to upset Suruga, describing her own activities in a tone that makes it obvious how unapologetic she is about the scumminess of it all. She wants to feel powerful, in control of the situation, even if it means she has to come off as an asshole. 

In their final match Suruga leans into it, matching Rouka’s hostility and desire to compete with her rather than running away from it. I want to say it’s a way of paying her final respects.

Rouka says she didn’t feel like she ever suffered a clear loss in life. Her injury didn’t come from a dramatic final showdown. Losing her scholarship didn’t make it impossible to continue schooling. And her leg’s rehabilitation didn’t make it impossible for her to live on. But at the same time, all of these things ground her down until she didn’t know what to do. Rouka says you can run away from almost every problem, and she did. She ran away from school. She ran away from getting a job. And in the end, she ran away from life. 

Kaiki remarks to Suruga that she can’t run away from all her problems. In his case he makes it brutally literal, but in an emotional sense he’s not somebody Suruga can ignore either, this weird older dude that has a history with her mother. Koyomi and Hitagi apparently told her to run away as soon as she met him, but they must not have considered he might have no ill will towards Suruga, not do anything that justifies running away from him. 

When Rouka gets on top of Suruga and draws close enough to kiss, she could run. She knows she could run. She doesn’t. Did you want her to kiss you? Some things you can’t run away from, because deep down you don’t want to. Like the dark reverse side of a wish.

For Rouka, the Rainy Devil is a competitor. It actually does something to solve people’s problems, where her method allows these anxieties to work themselves out by having the people in question do nothing at all. Some things are only made worse by worrying about them - in the hands of the Rainy Devil these problems that may have worked themselves out over time instead get escalated into potentially life-destroying issues.  Rouka isn’t one to make use of the devil’s arm, Suruga thinks. She would simply run away from the problem, not rely on external means to solve it. She’s strong like that. Strong enough to pretend her problems don’t matter to her. 

Only to pretend, though. The phrase “It’s better to regret doing something than regret not doing it” comes up. Rouka is of course on the side of regretting not doing something. A third path between victory and defeat. It has its advantages, Suruga does acknowledge it. But it can’t resolve anything. Rouka’s problems still exist, she just isn’t facing them. What Suruga does is make Rouka confront her and in doing so symbolically confront everything. It gives her a clear reason for her loss. It lets her let go. 

I think the reason that Rouka is so confrontational with Suruga, so eager to play basketball again, is because she knew this on some level. She prefers to regret not doing something, but of course that means she still regrets not doing something. She still wants to do it, still wants to play a proper match and finish off their middle-school rivalry.

I wondered what Rouka’s specific regret was, as a ghost, and while that game is about as close as anything, it still feels like I’m missing the big picture. Rouka doesn’t just collect misfortune, she collects devil parts. The things that show up physically on your body to prove you made a wish. The things that remain so long as that wish isn’t granted. The physical manifestation of regret for a choice that still has Suruga checking the news every morning to make sure she didn’t do anything during the night without remembering. 

Hachikuji gets people lost because she is lost. Rouka frees people from the regret of doing something because she herself never did anything about the situation she found herself in. It’s why she’s so interested in hearing the stories, along with the devil parts. People who did something she could never do. People who failed and became even more unfortunate than her, thus proving her right. 

She takes the devil parts from people who don’t want them anymore. You can’t run away from something if you really do still want it, but Suruga is well over it at this point. Consider how Suruga deals with the devil’s continued presence in her life. Refusing to run out of fear that someone might be faster than her. She used the arm to pursue Hitagi to the point of destruction, but in equal measure refused to do so, and in doing so was unable to replicate Koyomi’s success. In that sense, when Kaiki says you can’t outrun everything, he’s telling her that it’s okay to lose. It’s okay to try, and then fail. It’s okay to just hand the arm over to Rouka and move on. 

Higasa remarks that Suruga seems too positive of a person to have heard the Devil-sama rumor - because that’s the type of person Suruga is seen as. Polite, enthusiastic, direct, a star athlete, a hard worker,  a rich kid, a goody two-shoes. The type of person who would take issue with Rouka’s methods. Rouka expects a fight, because in a lot of ways Suruga is Rouka’s opposite, someone who would slap her in the face upon hearing about what she’s doing. 

At the same time, Suruga is the type of person to immediately second-guess that reaction. She lets Rouka’s hand sit on her chest for an uncomfortable length of time (the symbolic gesture associated with taking her devil arm!) because she feels bad about hitting her. Of course she would. She straps her arm to the wall at night because she’s scared of hitting someone again.

In other words, contrary to expectation, she’s the exact type of person that would encounter Rouka. The correct type of person to hear the Devil-sama rumor. The type of person that’s still burdened by the regret of a wish that turned into an obsession. Exactly the type of problem that can be solved, will be solved, simply by doing nothing. 

I said I still wanted to talk about the arc formula, and here it raises an interesting question of where exactly the specialist comes in. Kaiki, of course, is prominent in this novel - but even though he helps, he hardly explains anything. He has a policy, Rouka tells us, of only sharing half his information. It’s a little like Oshino’s rule of balance, but even less helpful. He shies away from the spotlight out of what I imagine is self-preservation - running away from Koyomi and Hitagi in Karen Bee, blatantly subverting their expectations that he explain Karen’s oddity. He does it anyway, but it’s pointless. The fever disappears on its own. 

Where Meme’s balance is to make sure he doesn’t interfere too much in others’ problems, ensure his surprisingly impressive spiritual abilities don’t create further disturbances in the course of solving them, Kaiki’s balance is to make sure he always has another opportunity to mess with people in the future, to ensure his practical-minded refusal to believe in spirits entirely doesn’t end up biting him in the ass. 

Even so, we’ve come to expect someone to come and clear things up, explain that which our protagonist was too slow to grasp on their own, put a neat little tie on the end of things. Like Tooe Gaen, perhaps? Deceased but apparently no less of an authority on the supernatural. “The motivation for justice is envy of evil,” we’re told, explaining precisely what left Suruga so unsettled about Rouka. Rouka did what she could never do, just like Suruga did what Rouka couldn’t. 

It’s a nice enough explanation, putting things into the dualistic perspective that Tooe seems to prefer. “If you can’t be medicine, then be poison, otherwise you’re just plain old water.” It doesn’t matter if you help others or hurt others as long as you do something, act in accordance with your nature, don’t let yourself be bound by the restrictions of society or conscience. Those are the type of people she seems most interested in, and the type of person Suruga ought to become as a result of this arc - someone who acts, as opposed to the inactive Rouka. 

And yet neither her nor Rouka seem to fit into Tooe’s format. Rouka, despite being plain water, is still muddy. A swamp. That mud, composed of everyday misfortune, is nothing nearly so interesting as to be called poison. Suruga is even more confused. A flash-flood, capable of clearing up the dirt that Rouka collected?

Suruga didn’t envy Rouka because she was evil. The implication there is that Rouka took pleasure in shattering social boundaries that Suruga felt obligated to stick to. But Suruga has already experienced what it’s like to violently pursue one’s own wishes in disregard of the feelings of others. It’s not fun! Suruga is jealous of, if anything, Rouka’s coolness. Her ability to roll with the punches, accept what happened to her with a laugh, shamelessly use her misfortune and pitiability as weapons. 

And Rouka, despite how she presents herself, was quite clearly not evil. Her offered ‘help’ is for entirely self-centered motives, and yet she’s much more concerned with the lives of others than her own. She does act like she doesn’t care about the people asking her for help, but all the same she does redirect those with more serious issues to the correct services. She did say she genuinely wanted to help Hanadori Rouka, the girl she met with the left leg, which is surprising from the perspective of Suruga’s vague animosity towards her, but completely understandable if you just think of Rouka as a normal girl. 

Suruga is neither good nor evil, as Koyomi puts it at the end of the book. She didn’t do the right thing, or the wrong thing. Neither did Rouka. They simply couldn’t look away from one another. Looking away, like running away, is only something you can do if you don’t really want to look. Even if Suruga ran away Rouka would have kept haunting her. She had the qualifications for it. Similarly, I feel like Rouka simply couldn’t look away from people’s misfortune, from the devil parts. Oddities arise for a reason, people have to want them on some level, and perhaps that’s true from the oddity’s side as well.

Speaking of Koyomi, though, he’s the last to give advice. He encounters Suruga at her lowest point, where she doesn’t know what to do, and quite literally helps her get back on her feet. His specialist qualifications are a bit iffy, but this is a timeskip - he’s in college, he’s more or less overcome his coming of age stuff. The thing is, his advice is to ignore everyone’s advice. For Suruga to act like herself, act on her instincts. To do neither the right thing or the wrong thing. 

Ironically, characteristically, she takes the advice anyway.

She’s immediately less unsettled around Rouka, more confident in how she wants to play it. I think about her bluntly stating she’s an exhibitionist. It’s a pervy joke, something that’s been oddly absent in this book so far. One of the things we realise, looking at the world from Suruga’s benefit, is that her perversion, her exhibitionism, frankly even her queerness and interest in BL was much played up for the benefit of Koyomi. At the same time, though, I don’t think that makes it somehow false or an inaccurate representation of herself. She was able to be more overt with these things around Koyomi, because he was accepting of it, and that’s a largely positive thing. 

It’s not a coincidence that her meeting with Koyomi gives her the confidence to be more like that with Rouka, or that this line about exhibitionism actually ties into an important part of her character. You see, right after, Rouka says it must have been tough for her to conceal the devil’s arm. 

I think about the arm as representative of the stigma of queerness, as something that paints her desire for Hitagi as animal and violent (even as it’s capable of finding perfectly healthy expression on the flip side), as something that she has to conceal from others. Recall how in Suruga Monkey her being a lesbian is revealed right after the arm itself, and it’s her sexuality that Koyomi finds the more shocking. 

From that perspective, you could think about Rouka as helping the devil part bearers integrate into society by removing the outward signs of their queerness, their difference. She takes it all on herself, with her oddly dyed hair, baggy tracksuit, put-on limp. She takes it all on herself because she no longer needs to live in normal society. No longer can. 

It kind of explains more of Suruga’s hesitance to let Rouka go. It’s not like she wants to keep the arm. It’s not like it represents the truth of her sexuality in itself. She was gay before the arm and will be after. I think it moreso represents Tooe’s approach to identity and self-change. You can be whatever you want, but becoming is an inherently painful process.

We’d like to think that Tooe’s message was that you should learn to change yourself rather than relying on suspicious magical artifacts, but the fact that she exposed Suruga to that risk in the first place indicates she’s fine with danger as a teaching device. Fine with her daughter becoming poison. Maybe even fine with her killing someone.

In the end, all the arm does is give her an inferiority complex. Her admiration of Hitagi, her graceful running style, is built on the fact that Suruga herself doesn’t feel she can run like that. She’s faster, but also uglier, more desperate. Her admiration of Koyomi, his self-sacrificing nature, is built on her shame over not being able to help Hitagi more herself. She’s self-effacing, but also uglier, more jealous. 

Suruga is glad to lose the arm, but she still feels uneasy about Rouka getting it. About being saved by someone else. Aren’t people supposed to just go ahead and save themselves? In this one thing, at least, Rouka is a more helpful specialist than even Oshino Meme. 

On that topic, the last person to give Suruga advice is Rouka herself. At the end of their second meeting, Rouka tells her to live a normal life. Do all the things I couldn’t do. She’s a negative example, telling people to not end up like her. Just stay in the closet. This, too, will pass.

That, kinda sucks though. Integrate into society? Drop all visible signs of your queerness? Get a boyfriend? Rouka’s channeling old tragic yuri tropes for the last time she thinks they’ll ever meet. 

Is that really what Rouka thinks? Does she really envy Suruga’s potential to be normal? To get a job? Because the opposite is precisely what Suruga envies about her - Rouka’s ability to ignore social expectations. The thing is, after their final match, the advice changes again. Who cares about studying for exams? Just start playing basketball again. This is really the only thing I can imagine Rouka envying Suruga for. It’s the path where she gets to make use of her arm again. 

Saying that basketball is representative of Suruga’s queerness here is even more of a stretch than applying that to her arm, but there’s at least one important respect in which the analogy kinda works. 

The way she wins the game. 

Basketball is a game for more than one player. The phrasing is a little awkward - ideally it would read “Basketball is a game for two players” to make the comparison to romance even more explicit, but - that isn’t true, is it. So the fact that there are exactly two of them playing becomes a little more significant, I think. 

They have to combine their efforts to get the ball into the hoop. That’s a disingenuous way of putting it, when they’re on opposite sides, but it’s still true. Rouka, after all, couldn’t get it in alone. That wasn’t her aim in the first place. She was just trying not to lose. 

Suruga didn’t just let her lose decisively for the first time, she also let Rouka win. Rouka wasn’t passed to, much, when she used to play. This is the first time she realises that basketball can’t be played alone.

And, well, when you put it in that sense, basketball isn’t just representative of romance, it’s representative of life in general. When you look back on Rouka’s backstory, at this point, one thing stands out. She never relied on anyone else. She never had anyone to rely on. It’s so bad that she ends up in Suruga’s orbit. The anime opening portrays what it might be like if they had a closer relationship, but that’s something that had to be invented in retrospect, because they really didn’t talk much. They didn’t even properly play against each other much. But when it comes down to it, Rouka is drawn to Suruga’s family inheritance of the devil parts, Suruga’s family inheritance of an annoying conman uncle, and in the end, back to Suruga herself. 

Suruga’s not the only person who ever truly understood her, as you might expect from a school rivalry situation. Suruga is simply the only person in a position where it’s even possible to truly understand her. The only person that could have drawn that final dunk out of her. The only person who could remind Rouka that she really did enjoy basketball, enjoy life.

In doing so, it serves as a reminder to herself, as well. 

Thanks for reading, everyone! Call this the Pride Month special, even though I didn’t discuss the queer themes of this story as much as I would have liked. Next: Otori. Oh boy.