#look i love being japanese i wouldn’t change that

[john-smiths-jawline]

growing up nonwhite in america is just like *your white friends don’t do this* *your white friends have never heard of your favorite food* *your white friends think the way you celebrate this holiday is weird* *your white friends still don’t pronounce your last name right even though it’s been literal years* *your white friends

[twistyfish]

Can we get some comfort from the boys please? God especially after that last post with us being so insecure that hits me like a rock. MC’s selfish for having all of them I wanna be loved too 😭😭😭

(I love MC but jealousy is uncanny)

It doesn’t help that I read an angst no comfort a while ago and I still am not over it- help 😭

sure! i just wrote a double dose of angst so i hope this eases the pain. i don’t know why the hell sylus’s is so long, so don’t ask me.

prompt~ comfort.

content warning for brief mentions of death, periods, and detailed descriptions of blood.

𖣴 𖣴 𖣴 𖣴 𖣴 𖣴 𖣴 𖣴 𖣴 𖣴 𖣴 𖣴 𖣴 𖣴 𖣴 𖣴 𖣴 𖣴 𖣴 𖣴 𖣴

Zayne

“Please don’t leave me,” you whispered into the cool fabric of his jacket, gripping the velvety material in your fists. You were sitting on his lap facing him, your legs swung around his hips and hugging his sides.

“I would perish at your side before leaving you,” Zayne whispered back. “No entity in or outside this world could rip me apart from you.”

“I don’t want to die alone.”

“You’re not going to- why would you say that?”

“Zayne, I’m scared of dying alone, please don’t ever leave me alone.” Your voice was panicky and you weren’t making much sense.

“You’re not going to die alone, honey. I won’t leave you alone,” he reassured you softly. “Where did this fear come from?”

“I just… I’ve been alone for a long time. I don’t want to feel that way again. I don’t want nobody to remember me.”

“Sweetheart. You aren’t alone. You have family and friends who love you so much. And I love you so, so much more than I can describe. I even think about you when you get up to use the bathroom in the middle of the night. How could I not remember you?”

“I don’t know,” you whispered.

Zayne wrapped his arms around you, holding your head with one hand and rubbing your hair soothingly.

“You’re the love of my life. You keep me warm on chilly days. You nourish me. Please never think otherwise.”

𐦖 𐦖 𐦖 𐦖 𐦖 𐦖 𐦖 𐦖 𐦖 𐦖 𐦖 𐦖 𐦖 𐦖 𐦖 𐦖 𐦖 𐦖

Sylus

You were hunched over on the couch, curled up and gripping your knees. You were intensely nauseous, and it felt like a cat was clawing up all your insides. Your periods were notoriously brutal.

You were being extra cautious not to leak on Sylus’s leather couch, placing two towels beneath you and doubling them up. You flipped through channels on the TV miserably, pulling your fluffy blanket higher up around you.

It was all politics and sports. You shut off the TV and closed your eyes, trying to just marinate in the warmth of the blanket.

You were somewhat peaceful, until you realized the seat of your pants felt warmer than usual. Wide eyed, you scrambled up and checked the towels. The top one looked like the Japanese flag. You lifted it, and the bottom one mirrored it. Praying, you lifted the bottom towel.

The leather couch had a thick blotch of red on it, and you groaned aloud. You stood up and tossed the blanket to the side, ignoring the shooting pains in your back and stomach. Upon standing, you felt yourself leak down your leg. There was now a small red puddle on the floor that you were dripping into.

You seethed. Deciding against retrieving paper towels and potentially leaving a trail behind you, you took off your stained pajama pants and wiped the floor with them.

It wasn’t very effective, as you were bent over cleaning the blood and simultaneously dripping onto the floor at the same time. You were too embarrassed to call any of Sylus’s staff, so you ended up giving up and putting your pajama pants in a heap on the floor and sitting on top of them so you wouldn’t do any more damage.

You sat like that for a solid twenty minutes before Sylus came home. You heard his steps as he entered the room and turned your head, both dreading and being relieved at his arrival. His expression changed from suave to confused as he saw you on the floor sitting on your pants.

And then he saw the bloody towels and stain on the couch. “Oh, shit.”

“I’m so sorry,” you started.

“That’s a lot of blood. Are you okay?” His voice was soft and concerned.”

“Yeah, it’s just my period. Aren’t you mad about the couch?”

“Me? Mad about a couch? I can replace this a thousand times over. I’m more concerned-,” he bent down next to you, “-about the amount of blood coming out of you.”

You looked at him, both weary and confused. “I told you, it’s just my period. It’s pretty standard to bleed a lot.”

He shook his head. “Not that much. Get up.” You complied and stood up, revealing your pajamas which were soaked through by now. His scarlet eyes widened. “What the hell? That’s not normal.”

“It is normal. It happens every month.”

He shook his head, picking up your soiled pajamas and towels in one hand and wrapping his other hand around your bloody thighs. He hoisted you up like you were weightless, ignoring your protests.

“Sylus! I’m covered in blood, stop touching me!”

“You act as though I haven’t seen bodies doused in blood.”

“That’s different. This is blood from my literal va-“

“I’m plenty familiar with that orifice of yours, my love.”

“Oh my god.”

𓆝 𓆝 𓆝 𓆝 𓆝 𓆝 𓆝 𓆝 𓆝 𓆝 𓆝 𓆝 𓆝 𓆝

Rafayel

Your cheeks were flushed, and you were hacking up what felt like several lungs. After much harassing from Xavier, you had taken a sick day and were now taking the hottest shower of your life in an attempt to steam out all the muck in your throat.

You blew your nose one last time before exiting the shower, getting dressed with a heavy head. The air in the bathroom was hot and damp from your shower, and you felt like you were swimming as you walked to your bedroom. You ended up clumsily turning the fan on and collapsing on your bed.

And then the doorbell rang. Of course it did, because you and Rafayel had made plans for a movie night that you’d forgotten to cancel. You groaned into the mattress and forced yourself to get up. You answered the door with what must have still been a very pink face, because Rafayel immediately said, “You’re all red. Are you that nervous to see me?”

“I’m sick.”

He immediately pulled away and lifted his shirt over his mouth. “You’re sick? Why didn’t you say so earlier?”

“I was busy being sick, genius.” You were too tired to banter. You sneezed, to which Rafayel made a face. “You need some TLC, Ms. Bodyguard. I’ll be happy to assist. From a distance, of course.”

You didn’t feel like arguing, so you allowed him to lead you inside and prepare you some stew and hot chocolate. It was surprisingly comforting, and Rafayel didn’t pretend to be disgusted when you coughed up mucus. He rubbed your back while you coughed and attacked you with kisses when you sat quietly with a throbbing head.

Even when you pushed him away, reminding him that he would likely get sick from all his close contact, he waved away your worries.

“I need you to recover as quickly as possible so you can protect me. When I’m sick, you can just pay me back.”

✰ ✰ ✰ ✰ ✰ ✰ ✰ ✰ ✰ ✰ ✰ ✰ ✰ ✰ ✰ ✰ ✰ ✰ ✰

Xavier

You fell out of a tree. That was the short version of it. You and Xavier were having a climbing contest, and the branch you’d been holding onto wasn’t very stable. Well, the branch itself was stable, but the bark you were gripping wasn’t. It ripped off in your hands and took you with it.

You let out a squeaky noise when you hit the ground, almost like a dog toy. You would have laughed at yourself if you weren’t in so much pain.

“__! Shit, shit, shit!” Xavier was down the tree in an instant, like a rodent that spotted a snake. He sprinted to your side and hovered over you frantically while you laid on your back and tried to regain your breath. He ended up refraining from calling an ambulance because you had enough life in you to beg him not to. So, he drove you to urgent care instead.

Thankfully you weren’t hurt too badly, but you did end up with a bruised tailbone and a fractured rib, so now you were in the middle of the healing process with Xavier asking you questions every twenty minutes or so.

He’d ask, “Are you in pain?” to which you’d respond, “Yes.” And then he’d ask “Where?” And you’d angrily say “My butt.”

“I’m so sorry.”

“I know. It’s okay, it was my fault.”

“But climbing the trees was my idea.”

“That doesn’t matter.”

“Do you need a butt massage?”

“No, idiot.”

Xavier was very apologetic for the next couple of weeks, sleeping over at your house every other day and bringing you burnt baked goods to tide you over. He took care of you in his own sweet way.

[blondehya]

GIRL I NEED MIZU BEING A BULLY IN COLLEGE (she actually isn't, it's just rumors because of her aura, people are kinda scared of her) she's like tall, arm with tattoos, rides a motorcycle, sunglasses, leather jacket, WHO WOULDN’T BE SCARED????

So she has a secret crush on reader (who is also a little bit afraid of her based on the rumors) who is the complete opposite of her. So Mizu tries to be kind (even though it's hard and she's a nervous mess)

⊹₊｡ꕤ˚₊⊹ 𝐮𝐧𝐞𝐱𝐩𝐞𝐜𝐭𝐞𝐝 𝐛𝐮𝐭 𝐝𝐞𝐬𝐞𝐫𝐯𝐞𝐝

𝐩𝐚𝐢𝐫𝐢𝐧𝐠: mizu x fem!reader

𝐧𝐨𝐭𝐞𝐬: OMG BEST REQUEST I’VE EVER RECEIVED I LOVE YOU SO MUCH 😭

you were at that school long enough to know the single most important thing: stay away from mizu, always, that girl means problem.

many people believe that she is respected a lot, but she is just feared. being a tall girl, tattooed arms, and driving a motorcycle is enough to make people’s head going down while she passes. who wouldn't be afraid?

“hi, excuse me. i’m here to bring my absence certificate from friday.”

“hello sweetie! give me a minute.”

you wait patiently for the inspector to sort things out, and before leaving he calls you.

“wait, your geography teacher had to leave, so you should go to the history class right now. hush, it already started.”

you thank him and run in a clumsy way to the history classroom, and calmly open the door.

“please, come in. you can sit with mizu right there.”

everything seemed to go in slow motion. the slightly laugh of some students, and the pitying faces of others. of course, the chair with her had to be the only one free! you approach and sit down, apprehensive.

the thought of looking at her flashes through.

come on, say hi or make a sign so you don't get into trouble with her later!

you move your head towards her, smile and nods trying to say hello. she just looks at you and returns her attention to the teacher seconds later. what if she didn’t liked you?!

oh, for sure i am in trouble… what if that sign means something rude in her country?!

the teacher starts to speak again.

“since this material is over, let's ask some review questions to see if everyone understood.” she pauses for a second. “you know what? i will pick according to the numbers on the attendance list.”

several students sigh in sadness. you feel relieved in fact, you studied a good part of the content. you quickly look at mizu, she looks like a statue... wow!

“who is number… eighteen?”

“me, miss.”

the boy stands up in his chair and waits for the questions. he responds clearly and satisfies the teacher.

“number seven?”

being taken out of my thoughts, i stand up confident and i look at the teacher smiling.

“paleolithic japanese incorporates the oldest known polished stone tools in the world. this technology is associated with the beginning of the neolithic, which takes place in what time?”

fuck you, fuck me, fuck everyone! what kinda of quest is that?!

“ah… it’s b.c right?” her expression changes. several students start whispering and laughing at you.

my heart starts racing and i feel like i'm going to fall ov—

huh?

did mizu just pushed her leg against mine?

she wants me to get distracted and fail at everything! i’m just gonna ignore it.

but why is she placing both hands clearly open on her thighs…

it couldn’t be…

“ten thousand before christ…?”

“yes! correctly lady!”

you sit in the chair again but in disbelief, happy with the teacher’s smile. your gratitude hides all the thoughts that previously hovered in your mind, so you get close to mizu and whispers:

“thank you so much, i owe you one for saving me.”

for the first time she looks at you and... and smiles... mizu can actually smile, and what a beautiful vision you think.

“it’s nothing. no need to thank me.”

her voice is actually so pretty… it has nothing scary. why would people call her scary?

you think to yourself.

the class continues without worries and finally comes to an end.

“bye, mizu!” you say in a joyful tone. you were proud to know now that she wasn’t that scary bully monster everyone calls her.

“ah, wait a minute, please. you were the only person who talked with me in ages. so… you don’t find me weird or anything…?”

“i was a fool influenced by rumors. you are a good person, mizu. i am sorry for everything.”

ah…

why is she BLUSHING?!

“haha… good to know...” she scratches her head nervously. “so, do you want my number? like, so we can talk more, not that i want to ask you out. in fact, i want to! but not now.”

you look at her surprised, she is a real mess.

“i’m so sorry… you were the only one who talked to me without that strange scared face. i thought we could at least extend it more.”

“of course we can!” you smile brightly to her.

you two exchange numbers and start to get close, very close to a level where she picks you up and drops you off at home every single day.

“hello dove, it’s cold today. hold on tight.”

you do as she says. mizu’s body is bigger and of course more warm, it’s like your own big plushie to squeeze and hug. also… it’s no longer a secret anymore! everyone at school knows you two are inseparable forever.

“taigen asked me if we are dating…” you declare this, lying on her chest on the lawn.

“how could he?” she puts her leg over yours.

[genoskissors]

Principal Monokuma’s Room Check!

Trigger Happy Havoc Girls

THH Boys Rooms

Again, there are a few notes throughout to explain some things I thought most would not know or just to clarify things changed in localization. Also, if you are disappointed by the three nearly empty rooms, the girls’ cottages in 2 will hopefully make up for it.

Maizono-san's Room Edition

Popular idols say that they have such a harsh schedule that they can’t even get a good night’s sleep. The bleak room Maizono-san has makes me think about that a little.

Checkpoints: A: It’s a bed with pink sheets, which are common in girls’ rooms. The fact she makes her bed after waking up shows she has a methodical personality.

B: I thoughtfully placed a sewing set in the drawer! Wouldn’t you like to see the girls try at least one kind of needlework?

C: I am a gentlemanly bear, so I don’t look into girls’ trash cans, rummage through them, open them up, sniff them, or put them in my mouth, that's correct.

D: The girls’ shower rooms are locked! No matter how much fun the girls are having in the dorm life, as long as I’m alive I will not tolerate any insolence!

Kirigiri-san's Room Edition

Ah, this again. Following Maizono-san, Kirigiri-san is also plain and simple. Hey, hey, you’re a girl, aren’t you? Wouldn’t it be better if you had a bit more girly flair?

Checkpoints: A: Kirigiri-san’s bed looks like it would smell nice. Imagining a prickly girl like her sleeping defenseless makes me feel protective.

B: It’s a desk for studying, just like everyone else’s. Including Kirigiri-san, I can’t imagine most of the students sitting here.

C: A surveillance camera is common for all rooms. But, to the cool Kirigiri-san, my gaze seems to have no more value than a bug.

D: Oh! Sorry, I forgot to prepare a trash can for you! But beautiful girls don’t blow their noses, so it’s okay!

Asahina-san's Room Edition

This room gives the impression that someone loves exercising, whether awake or asleep. With all these training items, it’s like a small gym. I’d like to see Asahina-san use it too. Upupu.

Checkpoints: A: A stepper for training the lower body and a roller for abdominal muscles. The roller particularly is inexpensive but highly effective. It’s okay to kneel at first.

B: It's a balance ball that helps you train your core body on a daily basis. It's pretty fun, isn't it? Oh, and you can't miss the school swimsuits hanging out to dry!

C: Unfortunately, There’s nothing as simple and effective as a training tube! I can’t use it because my arms and legs aren’t long enough...

D: Bottles for hydration and a first aid kit. She’s so well prepared and considerate in case of emergencies, I bet she’ll be a great wife with lots of children. Note: Anytime someone makes a joke about the bad ending, an angel loses its wings.

Fukawa-san's Room Edition

As expected of someone called a literary girl, she has an incredible amount of books. With the books being piled up around the bed and desk, you can tell what kind of reading she does. Note: Toko’s Japanese talent is “Literary Girl”.

Checkpoints: A: As you can see, this desk is a built-in piece of furniture with a fairly thin top, so I wonder if it will be able to withstand the weight of all these things piled up...

B: The windows are bolted down securely! ...but that doesn’t seem to concern Fukawa-san. She has manuscript papers pasted all over the window. Boo hoo. Note: Monokuma uses the word “しょぼーん” which is commonly associated with the kaomoji  (´・ω・`).

C: Placing books in front of the shower room means you can read during toilet time! You’re addicted to always learning. Note: I think there's a pun here but I don't know if it's intended. The word for reading is “dokusho” and the word for addict is “chuudokusha”.

D: At first glance, it may look like a rose in a vase, but it is actually an air freshener stick. She’s confessed to hating baths, so she has to be careful about the smell.

Genocider Sho’s Room Check!

Fukawa-san's Room Edition

This is the room of the woman I share my body with! A pungent smell of no libido! Perfect for a sullen faced, nail-biting, gloomy introvert! Kyehahaha!!

Checkpoints: A: There are so many books at my feet... It will get in the way when Byakuya-sama is brought over! Clean it up a bit!

B: I must be nearsighted, writing all these small letters little by little in such a dark place. As I thought, this woman is weird! I need to bathe in the light of passionate love!

C: Wait! There’s no sign of it being used recently! I could end up in bed with Byakuya-sama at any moment, so I have to at least take a bath!

D: Ah! A green and white bouquet. It’s specifically for weddings! Wait for me, Byakuya-sama! I’ll grab this now and dive into your body!

(Back to Monokuma)

Oogami-san's Room Check

The strongest primate is the ogre... this is Oogami-san’s room. It makes it clear if you end up killing each other, she won’t let you get away with it. But please don’t destroy the room.

Checkpoints: A: For tile splitting demonstrations, usually they use tiles that are easier to break. But Oogami-san’s tiles are the real deal. Note: Tile splitting is the same thing as board breaking in martial arts.

B: Excuse me... Of course, it’s okay to do training in your room, but there’s no need to drill holes in the floor!? Someone will have to repair it.

C: This is Ogami-san’s uniform. I don’t really get a chance to see her wearing this. How about we go hand-to-hand again? Upupupu.

D: Seriously, this area is littered with broken tile debris too. This may cause the floor to collapse or leak, I don’t know!

Celesomething-san's Room Check (This is how Monokuma refers to Celeste)

The dark interior gives off a sense of immorality and makes me super thrilled! Since all students received a private room, it would be pointless to not enjoy it this much.

Checkpoints: A: The dresses on the mannequin torsos are changes of clothes. The short-sleeved frilled one and the bustier style look good together, don’t you think?

B: Umm... is Celesomething-san planning to sleep here forever? Of course, I have no intention of interfering with personal hobbies and preferences.

C: Oh my! A goth lolita costume’s cat! It is cute, but you can’t compete with me, who is both cute and a little mean.

D: The desk is full of makeup supplies. The brush size and type, how to use different sprays, these are things boys don’t understand.

Enoshima-san's (Mukuro’s) Room Check

Ah, what a shame! Enoshima-san is a charismatic high school girl! Even if you aren’t interested, just play a character! Seriously, what a shame!

Checkpoints: A: Oops, I forgot to bring pink sheets for this girls’ room. She doesn’t seem to mind though.

B: Everyone is treated equally, so the windows in Enoshima-san’s room are completely blocked off too. I hope you enjoy your killing game school life to the fullest.

C: Saying you can’t sleep if you change your pillow is what a coward who is completely immersed in a comfortable life would say. You have to live in the environment you’re given. Note: "I can't sleep when the pillow changes" just means that you can't do something if it's not to your liking. It's not usually a metaphor but here it is used like one, while also being literal.

D: You guys all agreed to meet in the dining hall, but it’s okay if you seclude yourself here and eat, you know? Eating alone isn’t that bad, right?

[telvess]

I was hanging out with a little girl who fucking coughed on me and now I'm sick...

Usually I'll drink a shot of vinegar, ginger honey, cinnamon and cayenne pepper... but i don't have access to than rn...

And in my sick/ half sleep haze I was thinking about how our diverse cast of hot men would take care of sick s/o using natural remedies

So Shiva, jataka, Buddha, (it might be the same because India idk, I guess Thai for Buddha)

Loki (Celtic/Greek idk)

Kojiro (Japanese)

I need some ror men..

medicine!

Need medicine...

I hope your sickness was short!

I THINK I'M IN LOVE WITH SASAKI BECAUSE OF YOU!

RoR: How do they take care of sick s/o (Shiva, Jataka, Buddha, Loki, Sasaki Kojirō)

Shiva

Shiva has never been sick in his life, so he freaks out a bit when you get sick. Not the most helpful companion you can find. At first he asks what to do, but if you are too weak to speak, then… oh well.

Shiva doesn’t leave his realm, so he doesn't know any natural, human remedies that could help you. He keeps you warm and sits next to you the entire time. He remains vigilant. Even he pretends it’s nothing, his wives can tell he genuinely worries.

Once the worst is over and you start to look more alive, Shiva does his best to keep you in a good mood. Say a word and he will even dance for you.

What’s surprising, no matter how hard you try, you can’t infect Shiva. He basically cuddles you, feeds you, and helps you change clothes all the time, and yet all the germs seem to ignore him.

Jataka

Jataka was sick himself, he knows it all too well. As soon as he notices the first symptoms, he is very caring. Even if it’s just a flu, he doesn't downplay it.

He prepares for you an ayurvedic drink. Depending on your symptoms, he will choose the right recipe. He makes sure you drink all of it, so don’t even try to argue. It’s a waste of time, this man is too stubborn.

Jataka provides everything you need, he even brings you a book to read or he reads to you himself. He is cautious and keeps his distance, but that doesn’t stop him from being very strict: he makes sure you drink enough water and that you’re warm.

Every time he checks if you have a fever, he caresses your cheek with his finger before moving away. It's the only physical thing he can do right now to show you his affection.

Buddha

His first reaction is to tell you to lie down. It doesn't seem to bother him, because it’s just the flu. He had it when he was human, it’s not a big deal, especially if you have everything you need right under your nose. But secretly it eats him up inside, to the point where he can no longer eat sweets. So he shows up on your doorstep with his very casual attitude and starts asking questions. He checks if you’re hydrated, if you have a fever, if you need anything.

Buddha was born in present-day Nepal, so he follows ayurvedic… a little. He knows it’s not 100% effective, but he still finds some methods solid. He would make you brew containing honey, tusi leaves and lemon juice, and force you to drink it. It’s the best for the flu in his opinion.

He sits at the proper distance, eats his sweets and talks to you. He isn’t the worst companion you can get. Isn’t the best either… Do you know how good this candy is? Oh, right, you don’t, because you can’t taste *smirk* Don’t waste your pillow trying to hit him…

Loki

Let’s be honest, Loki probably isn’t the best person to take care of a sick person. At first, he acts annoyed when you announce your condition to him, but after awhile when he sees you struggling with the easiest tasks, he begins to worry. Seeing you in such weak shape makes Loki a little, a bit… soft.

From what I’ve researched, the Nords believed that sickness was an attack of malignant spirits (often ancestors) on the body. Loki obviously knows better what’s going on with you, but I wouldn’t be surprise if he mentions this fun fact to you. He was probably the one who sold people this nonsense in the first place. Let's just hope you're not hallucinating…

Loki prepares you tea with honey and entertains you with his new diabolical plans of how to mess with humans. He doesn’t even need you to be active in the conversation, but it's nice to see you smile or snort from time to time.

Loki doesn't follow any rules (i.e. keeps his distance, washes hands) and he will probably end up sick as well. Guess whose fault it is? And guess will have to take care of him? AND guess who won’t lie in bed and rest but spread germs everywhere? That’s right…

Kojirō Sasaki

He is the sweetest guy you could have by your side right now. A little clumsy, but he has got a spirit.

Considering how observant Kojirō is, he'll probably be the first to notice the symptoms. Even if you deny it, he will prepare for the possibilities ahead.

Sasaki would prepare for you hachimitsu-daikon - it’s Japanese form of cough and throat syrup, made from honey and Japanese radish. Kojirō would make it for you just like his mother did when he was a child.

Kojirō doesn’t mind missing a few days of training, you’re his priority. He is with you as long as you need and entertains you with stories from his life. He can read you something until you fall asleep.

He makes sure you’re hydrated, always brining you fresh water or preparing ginger tea called shoga-yu. He doesn’t try to make you anything else, because he is terrible at picking herbs and might accidentally poison you.

[literary-motif]

honeymoon in Tokyo or Bali (?) as a nsfw pt 2 to bittersweet? 🤍

Bittersweet II (NSFW)

Isaac Rhoades x Reader

“I still can’t believe our flight was canceled,” Isaac huffed, opening the door to your hotel room with a swipe of the keycard. 

It was just your luck, and despite immediately getting a call from Asirel with the offer to use his private plane — which you gratefully but vehemently rejected — you got the idea to scrap your trip to Italy and fly to Japan instead.

Tokyo was beautiful and seeing Isaac’s eyes light up as he gazed at the city lights made you all the more grateful for the honeymoon. This trip was another way to connect to his heritage and you loved seeing him try to hide his smile as he spoke Japanese again. 

“Isaac,” you said in awe, slowly walking towards the wall of glass revealing the shining city landscape to you, “look at the view.” You were breathless, gazing at the sea of lights before you and pointing to the Tokyo Tower. “Look, we can see it from—”

Isaac cut you off with a kiss, wrapping his arms tightly around you and cradling your head until you were breathless for a different reason. “You’re the only view I want to see tonight,” he murmured, leading you to the bed and falling down next to you. “We can go all over the city tomorrow and the day after that. There is no rush,” he reminded you, kissing your neck.

You held onto his suit jacket, gently taking it off his shoulders and putting it aside. “I suppose it’s good we didn’t tell anyone when we would be back,” you said, shrugging out of your clothes. “We could spend years here and never run out of things to explore.”

“I wouldn’t be opposed to it,” he said with a laugh, “Not that Asirel couldn’t find us here if he wanted to. I have a few acquaintances in Tokyo as well.” 

Isaac rested his head on your chest, looking deeply into your eyes. There was a sudden shift in the atmosphere, changing from the giddy happiness at your honeymoon properly beginning into something more fragile. 

“I want to take you to the Imperial Palace, it’s not far from here,” he said, smiling gently at you, “I want to take you to the art museums and kiss you as we look at the Rainbow Bridge. I want to take you to Mount Fuji and walk across the city with you until we have seen every shrine there.”

You chuckled, gently caressing his cheek. “That is going to take years.”

“I don’t care,” he said, leaning in to kiss you. “I want to do everything with you while we are away from the reality of our lives.”

“I want to take you to that Meiji garden,” you whispered, watching as Isaac’s gaze softened, “and to Yoyogi Park.”

“Meiji Jingu Gyoen,” he said, surprised at himself that the thought of being in a garden with you did not give him the feeling of overwhelming dread. In truth, he looked forward to it, walking over the Sacred Bridge with you and kissing you under the Sakura. “I’d like that.”

You smiled, pulling him into another kiss and fiddling with his belt. “Should we shower first?” you asked, hesitating before freeing the bulge in his dress pants. 

“We can do it together after,” he said, brushing his hands over your naked hips and caressing the insides of your thighs. “Unless you want to?”

“No, it’s fine,” you said, relaxing into the soft mattress as Isaac shrugged off his remaining clothes. “I’ve been waiting for this,” you muttered, spreading your legs with a moan as he pushed himself against you.

“Me too,” he said, smiling warmly at you and brushing strands of hair out of your face. “May I?”

“Please,” you breathed, arching your back as he slowly pushed inside. You wound your arms around his neck, doing your best to relax into his gentle thrusts and threading your fingers through his hair, gripping it tightly as he shifted, changing the angle. 

This felt like a dream, having Isaac here with you, being on your honeymoon with the beautiful scenery outside and the person you loved most in the world right in front of you. It made your heart clench in gratitude. Never in your life had you thought that you would get this lucky — that you would be this happy.

You wrapped your legs around his hips, digging your heels into his lower back and deepening his thrusts. “Are you alright?” you asked, nibbling on his neck and holding onto him tightly as you blinked the tears of happiness from your eyes. 

“Yes,” Isaac panted, continuing to roll his hips faster and exhaling shakily. He was trying to keep his thrusts steady, but the feeling of you around him and your lips on his neck made it hard for him to concentrate. “You feel— ah— so good.” 

He made your breath hitch as he brushed against your sweet spot, and you muffled your moan with a kiss against his neck. 

“Isaac—” you breathed, feeling your pleasure rising as he kept thrusting into you. “Isaac—” you whined, grip tightening as your high crashed over you and you clenched around him, causing a low groan to escape him as he came as well.

“Thank you for this, Pickle,” he said as you lay snuggled together afterward, waiting for the bathtub to fill. “Thank you for making me this happy.”

[midnight-in-town]

Frances Midford : The Mentor, a summary

To follow with my post about fighting against misinformation, here’s a first topic. 

Ciel’s remaining aunt is often viewed by the fandom as a mean lady who doesn’t care, because of a) all the mysteries around the family that Ciel doesn’t know about and b) the use of comic relief in Kuroshitsuji often used to hide some relevant clues, as previously demonstrated in this post. This is actually far from what her character really is about and I intend to demonstrate it now with a (long) recap post. 

I have talked about Frances a lot in the past, about her caring about our!Ciel and about her possibly knowing, like Tanaka, that he was lying about his identity. While the former is undeniably true, the latter is still up for debate. [X][X][X][X] However, with the upcoming adaptation of the Weston arc (probably) in 2024, I don’t want the old discourse to come back, so without further ado...

What Yana has said about Frances’ character

Besides our!Ciel, Frances is the last remaining Phantomhive (not counting real!Ciel as a BD). She’s Vincent’s younger sister, they both have the same parents (that is to say Claudia P and Cedric K. Ros) and she married out of the family (implying that maybe the Phantomhives have distant relatives still alive), becoming Lady Midford. 

According to Yana, Frances takes after their dad while Vincent takes after their mom and the same is true for her kids, meaning Ed takes after her (thus takes after his maternal grandfather) while Liz takes after Alexis. 

As far as her relationship with our!Ciel is concerned, here’s what Yana said in the guidebook : “Frances' strength of character is why Sebastian chose her as a role model Ciel should follow”. Since her relationship with Lizzie is sometimes also viewed negatively, I’d like to add that both in the guidebook and on twitter, Yana said that “Liz thinks her mom is kind and strong so she looks up to her mom as a role model she aspires to become”, hence the similar hair style.

TL;DR Yana’s overall description of Frances is that a) she’s kind and strong which is why b) she’s Lizzie’s role model, as well as the role model Sebastian thinks our!Ciel should follow.

Now that this is established, here’s what the canon story gives us, to illustrate Yana’s words. Spoilers for the entire manga series and long read below the cut.

Frances’ introduction

Frances is introduced in ch14 and, boy, what a generally misunderstood chapter by some parts of the fandom. xDD

Contextually, ch14 is Ciel’s birthday, meaning it is also the anniversary of the massacre of the previous household and Madam Red just died, after trying to kill him. For those who might wonder, the guidebook confirmed that our!Ciel was quite saddened by Ann’s death (obviously), so really, what a fun 13th birthday in perspective. Cue Liz and Frances. 

The comments on her strength aside, Frances’ introduction is otherwise often misread as her nagging being inappropriate but I beg to differ. As mentioned by @akumadeenglish​ and @chibimyumi​, Yana is Japanese author who likes to explore writing tropes in depth. Though it’s also important to remember that, before the curry arc, Yana didn’t know how long the series would run so everything had less intent, because the story was initially supposed to end quickly.

In other words, Frances’ introduction really is initially to be read as the severe mother-in-law (based on Japanese comical stereotypes) coming to check on how he handles his household, which is why Seb is so stressed out when everything goes bonkers. But that’s only the surface. 

Most importantly though, Frances showed up because it is Ciel’s birthday and, as said above, there’s a lot of negative and dreadful memories associated with this day. So...

...let’s change his mind, shall we? 

Phantomhives love games and Frances is a Phantomhive too, the last one besides our!Ciel, so she knows her nephew and chooses an activity she knew he wouldn’t be able to resist. 

Ch14 also introduces two important facts that are still relevant as plot points, especially as far as the Blue Revenge arc is concerned. The first one is that our!Ciel protected Lizzie from that bear, so Frances said she owes him. 

Secondly, as stated by Frances herself, she knows the ropes of the “game” (aka acting as the Watchdog) better than our!Ciel (”you’ve still got a decade to go before you can even think of winning against me”). 

In fact, like our!Ciel with real!Ciel, Frances was probably raised as Vincent’s spare [X][X], but compared to our!Ciel who knew next to nothing about his father’s real job until 3 years ago (at the time of ch14), Frances is an experienced veteran...

And that’s why Seb chose her as a role model for our!Ciel.

Therefore it is my opinion that ch14, despite being written back when Sensei didn’t know how long the series would be published, is still relevant as heck when it comes to Frances’ role in the series, aka acting as a mentor for our!Ciel (and for Lizzie, as Yana also stated). Kuroshitsuji is a slow story though, with a lot of build up and it’s why some fans still fail to see how significant Frances is to the plot and to our!Ciel’s development. 

Campania arc

Liz is the one who comes to ask our!Ciel to come with her whole family (thus introducing Alexis and Edward) on a cruise, but it’s also very important to note that she conveyed that Frances thought that our!Ciel should take time off of work:

This led some of us fans to theorize that maybe Tanaka used to send updates to Frances about our!Ciel’s wellbeing and how he fared as the Watchdog: the timing of the cruise works well with Frances’ remark, considering that the Queen just sent Charles Grey as a merry punishment for Ciel’s deeds during the Circus arc. 

This arc mostly highlights Frances’ bravery and strength : she didn’t hesitate to fight for countless of passengers unrelated to her (something that UT said isn’t very typical of Phantomhives, during Weston)...

More importantly, we finally get into Lizzie’s personal motivations and we indeed have the confirmation that...

...Frances is a big key to Lizzie’s strength, confirming the role model/mentor position that she holds in Lizzie’s eyes. I’d like to also point out that Frances completely trusts in her daughter’s abilities, which highlights a very positive mother/daughter dynamic.

Lizzie’s flashback gives us this very important bit...

...a part that’s unfortunately often overlooked by the fans complaining that Frances is too severe with our!Ciel and Lizzie. This scene however makes way more sense once we find out, after the Weston arc, that Frances lost her mother Claudia (the Watchdog before Vincent) when she was probably about 12 or 13 years old (Vincent being 15 years old then). 

To me, this is a big explanation as to why Frances is as serious about training as she is:

Indeed, she lost at least her mom (and later her brother) so, since her daughter is betrothed to the future Watchdog, she wants Liz to be strong enough to survive. All I see in the former panel is a mother saddened by the burden on her child’s shoulder and desperate to imagine that she will be exposed to a lot of danger as an adult. 

Side point there, but it’s likely there’s a very relevant reason Frances’ only daughter was betrothed to Vincent’s heir when they were young kids. We’ll dive into it later, but I believe the answer is tied to the Phantomhive lineage introduced in ch103. 

Lastly, our!Ciel’s flashback also gave us another important bit to explore...

...which is that our!Ciel directly applies what Frances once told him to his current path for revenge: 

Also note the allusion again to Vincent “losing the game”, creating a parallel with Frances telling our!Ciel in ch14 that “he still has a decade to go before he can even think of winning against her”, because he has a lot to learn from her, especially since even he admits that he knows next to nothing about his own family.

The previous spare teaching the spare. How fitting. :D

Weston arc

Even if Frances only appears in this arc during the cricket game, I think there is a lot to be deduced from it. First, I’ve said it long ago and I’ll say it again: I strongly believe Frances played a part into Vincent’s victory during the first blue miracle.

Mind you, Tanaka basically confirmed that Vincent cheated to win (since he knew what Seb and Ciel were up to) and I could totally see Vincent asking his strong little sister to crossdress in order to destroy the Green team. xDD Besides, she certainly seems uneasy whenever the topic is brought up and she also wasn’t fooled by Ciel’s act when he won, haha!

This is silly, but this shows (imo) that Frances and Vincent had a good sibling dynamic, with Frances supporting her brother as the Watchdog as much as she could, which is heartwarming because this means Frances would have no reason not to support her brother’s sons after his death. 

Tanaka (who, according to Yana, was already in the household taking care of Vincent and Frances as children) and Frances happily dancing together at the end of the tournament also confirms this. Vincent and Frances having a strong sibling bond would also explain why, despite Claudia’s death, Frances would agree to the betrothal between Lizzie and Vincent’s heir (and would keep it that way, even after Vincent’s death).

All that to say, I’m sure the cricket game confirmed to Frances how similar our!Ciel is to Vincent on some aspects (the second blue miracle attests to that), which probably makes him somewhat predictable (and reassuring?) to her.

One thing that I also believe is important is Ed’s mini flashback during the game. On this topic, Yana has said that she couldn’t draw his backstory in detail, so she’ll probably expand on that in the future, which makes me think that there is some foreshadowing in there. 

TBH I think it’s ironic that Ed would consider himself as “ordinary”, considering the whole lineage thing introduced one arc later. xDD But also, if we consider that the tale of Vincent’s first blue miracle is supposed to hint that Vincent and Frances were close as siblings, it’s nice that Ed, who takes after his mom the most, would also have his own flashback about loving and looking up to his sister a lot, despite his small inferiority complex. Considering that Liz sees their mom as her role model though, I guess that means Ed also sees his mom as a role model (though the Campania arc already made that pretty clear). 

During the Weston arc, Frances also managed to surprise Sebastian, both by recognizing him (lol) and by stopping him despite his intent to leave, which is, according to the demon himself, no small feat: 

Like the usual nagging she does towards Seb though, it’s played for laugh, but as introduced in this post, I believe overused comic relief is a way to foreshadow some hints and we’ll dive into it with the next arc. 

Last but not least, during this arc UT commented that our!Ciel was different from his ancestors when he willingly put himself in danger to save Joanne...

...but as presented during the Campania arc, it seems it’s a trait he shares at least with his aunt, furthering the parallels between them and the fact that she would definitely make a good mentor for our!Ciel, because they’re quite alike and can probably understand each other. 

Green Witch arc

The only relevant part of this arc with Frances’ character is the introduction of a special lineage in the Phantomhive family by German Shinigamis...

...something that might explain why our!Ciel was able to notice them, when even Seb didn’t. So this begs the question: who else in his family shares this lineage? And obviously, Frances and her kids might !

My personal opinion is that the lineage thing is old and is probably why the Phantomhive family became the Watchdogs, many generations ago. But also, if our!Ciel can notice Shinigamis thanks to it, could it explain why Frances was able to detect and catch Seb during opening ceremony before the cricket game at Weston? And why she always nags him about his appearance (both hair and face)? That remains to be confirmed, but...

...at the very least Bravat in the recent arc confirmed that some gifted people like himself can “sense” that demons are different. Just like animals [x][x], apparently. Bravat is irrelevant besides being a small scale villain though, so I take it as a hint for a more plot significant character, such as Frances, whose nagging behavior towards Seb is way too overused as comic relief anyway. 

The lineage thing is yet one more family topic on which Frances probably has answers to give to our!Ciel (the only other people who might know about it being Tanaka and UT). 

Bonus : if what Vincent said below about strong-willed women in the family line (from a side story “With Father”) is a hint towards the lineage thing...

...then it’s probably why Vincent wanted Lizzie to be betrothed to his heir in the first place and why Frances agreed. 

Blue sect & blue revenge arcs

I already mentioned that Bravat’s innate ability to recognize Seb as a demon was a hint that other characters, like Frances, might be able to guess that Seb is a demon as well, so moving on to ch151 :

This chapter confirms that UT has known Frances since she was very young (which is a hint to the UT = Cedric theory of course), which also explains why, knowing about her strength, UT went on with the whole BD massacre on the Campania despite the presence of our!Ciel and the Midfords on board. 

Also, while this chapter neither confirms nor denies if Frances knew about our!Ciel lying about his identity (like Tanaka and UT did), she didn’t show anger nor disbelief about the situation, just her incomprehension.  

More than anything, this chapter strongly hints that our!Ciel will at some point seek his aunt for a talk before the final confrontation with UT and real!Ciel, because both are seeking answers to their different questions (our!Ciel needs to find out about UT & his grandmother and the lineage thing, while Frances will want to know what’s the deal between the twins). Speaking of which, a talk between Lizzie and Frances is probably also in order, before Lizzie can choose our!Ciel’s side again.

Lastly, ch151 hinted that Frances doesn’t fully believe that real!Ciel’s return is “natural”...

...and, i mean, why would she? She faced the Bizarre Dolls on the Campania and, for all we know, Edward told her how the Weston arc ended so ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ considering that UT has been involved every time, the Midfords probably aren’t far from connecting the dots about real!Ciel being already dead. 

To sum up !

Outside of the narrative, Yana said that Frances was Lizzie’s role model and that Seb also wanted her to be the model our!Ciel should follow. And, in my opinion, the entire series so far (as I tried to present in this post) is slowly building up to that because :

our!Ciel and Frances are very similar: both the spares & both survived their parents’ and brothers’ death 

both saved folks unrelated to them despite being Phantomhives, meaning that they are a bit alike and can understand each other

our!Ciel literally built his path of revenge following the advice Frances told him about how to counterattack an opponent

Again, to understand who targeted his family, our!Ciel needs to find out about his grandmother, about the lineage and about why his dad had to be killed amongst other things. The only people who can answer him are UT, Tanaka and Frances. 

I believe UT and Tanaka are more connected to Claudia, but also both are by real!Ciel’s side for now, making them less accessible for a talk. This leaves Frances for the time being and, as Vincent’s sister and Claudia’s daughter, it seems appropriate that answers would be coming from her. 

Also, in shonen series, usually the hero(es) have a mentor figure who will help them “unlock their potential” through training. Kuroshitsuji is not your usual shonen and I doubt our!Ciel can become better at fighting lmao, but Frances can certainly help him better appreciate the massive scale he’s bound to face when seeking his revenge. Especially if it all goes back to events from 3 generations ago and a worldbuilding full of supernatural elements, as well as a world war he doesn’t entirely comprehend yet. 

Frances acting as a mentor/role model for her own kids also foreshadows that they’ll follow our!Ciel on his journey and, like him, they’ll definitely need her wisdom/knowledge to be able to reach the necessary level for survival by his side.

As to when all that is going to happen, well, I’d say Frances will probably take on a more active role in the plot when, to quote Seb in ch14, "[our!Ciel] will overconfidently believe that he cannot lose and that it will be necessary for him to carry himself with humility while striving for his goal". Because by then, "an adult who will be firm with him is what he'll need". 

If that doesn’t foreshadow the current conflict between the twins, I don’t know what does. xD

Thanks for reading!! As always, let me know if I’ve forgotten anything !

[spadesolace]

the idea of yoo - 1.1. alone with yoo (half-written)

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words: 1.5k

warnings: a bit of homophobia, discussion about religion, implied cheating

the sun shining through a small window, your eyes twitch as the sunlight hits you perfectly. in your line of sight, sight adjusting through the bright yet also dim room. it smells a bit rugged, similar to yeonjun’s perfume he had made you and rei smell before his date, bed is a bit harder than your usual one at home, and you’re still wearing yesterday’s clothes. in the corner of your eye, was the table tennis - you’re at the choi household.

slowly sitting up, looking for your phone that yeonjun had placed on his bedside table, along with some medicine, water, and hangover drink. underneath was a note with messy handwriting.

hey, when you wake up i would be at rehearsals for tomorrow’s dance battle. left some medicine so drink it right away. yeonie

as you hastily drank the medicine and pick up the hangover drink, ready to leave and get some proper meal. the sound of footsteps and chatter was making its way towards your destination. vaguely, you could make up yeonjun’s mom’s voice and yoo jimin.

“yeonjun is at rehearsal, but you can leave that here on his-” his mom sees you by the bed, wearing your coat and getting your stuff, along with hiding some of the letters that you’ve written for yeonjun’s recipe to food critics to try, and letters from jimin.

“yeonjun’s japanese friend, didn’t hear you come in.”

“just dropping off some notes.”

“jimin is also drop-” the faint breaking of glass was heard upstairs, making yeonjun’s mom rush back upstairs.

the last time you were alone with jimin was when you bumped into her in the hallway, the start of it all. it’s a bit awkward, looking like you spent the night - in which you did - but also it seemed like you’re dating yeonjun. deep inside, you’re thinking how pretty jimin is despite it being so early in the morning.

“hi.” she breaks the tension, a small smile plastered on her face.

“hi.” your breath is taken away; standing in front of a girl who you considered could have been sculpted by aphrodite.

“are you and paul-” then you remember, she’s not here for you.

“OH GOSH NO! he is totally 100 percent into you.”

“you know about… us?”

“that’s what the notes and books are for, he wanted to do some extra reading.” jimin seemed amused by it, partially because no one has been that thoughtful to learn more about their interests and hobbies.

the awkward silence slowly crept back, part of you wanted to leave, no longer wishing to take part in this. the girl you developed feelings for is talking to a guy who you helped in writing the letters for, making an image of him in her mind. 

you deceived jimin.

you deceived yeonjun.

they fell in love with the image you had made to deceive both of them.

all you could hear coming out of jimin’s mouth was self-deprecating words regarding her first impression during their first date. nothing made sense anymore, nothing held you back.

“you could never be an idiot. yeonjun wouldn’t think of you that way.” you still held back, not wanting to expose yourself. there is the desire to leave and run away, forget this entire thing happened.

“i should probably get back home.” picking your bag up, noticing jimin was holding onto a piece of paper.

“this- its- its nothing really, something i made during the trip.” still she handed it over to you, lyrics; you assume it to be lyrics of a new song she wrote.

“i like one of the lines from the second verse… lonely yet hopeful.” giving it back to jimin, smiling shyly about to leave her in this man cave that is yeonjun’s room.

“he’ll love it.” i love it.

“yeah…”

“i should get going.”

“can i come with?”

you don’t know how it happened, how you’re walking in the middle of an abandoned train track kicking a stone as you pass by the abandoned cart, no longer filled with writings. there’s another one, not that far off that you and rei go to when you need a change in your routine.

“you’re not scared?” stopping in your tracks, slight confusion evident in your face.

“no, i’m used to this route. a change in scenery.” jimin hummed as the stone you were kicking seemed to have merged with the rest of the pebbles.

“you wanna get out of here?”

it feels surreal, you’re in jimin’s car, listening to the radio mostly 90’s music playing, windows down and the wind blowing your hair. months ago, you couldn’t believe that jimin knew who you were, yet here you are.

“where we going?”

“my favorite secret place.”

you stopped in the middle of a forest, a part of you sort of feared where this was going because who would bring someone to a forest if not to kill them? or maybe you’ve been watching too much true crime that rei has been so adamant in you watching it with her. when you saw the clearing, maybe it wouldn’t be that bad to be killed by the girl you like. it’s just a hot spring, and it worried you when jimin started unpacking her duffel bag, only to pull out a small radio. you’re just stuck in this place with her, turning your back at her when she started removing her sundress. you’re not sure if she removed her undergarments but just the idea that she’s probably skinny dipping makes your face heat up.

jimin turns around as your gaze looks everywhere except for her. you looked at her back for a bit, toned, smooth, and her hair despite being wet already it stil remained smooth and silky. so, you stripped, not fully. she only turned back to face you when she heard a bit of water splashing. an embarrassed smile was evident as jimin takes in what you’re wearing.

“oh i almost forgot.” you thought it was from the heat from the hot spring that made you feel this way but confirming that jimin is indeed naked walking around the area and setting up the small radio. you submerged yourself underwater.

“there’s no cell service here, nothing could reach us here.”

“so if you kill me, completely leave me here to decompose and scream, no one would come to rescue me?”

it was a lighthearted joke, one that made jimin laugh as she dipped back into the spring and you still avoided looking at her body. things were going well, talking about interests, family, religion, everything under the sun as you played around in the water.

“i don’t think i’ve hanged out with a girl and not talk about boys before.”

“oh… sorry.”

“no, no… it’s nice, actually.” you nod to her statement, maybe this could be a way to help yeonjun out.

“yeonjun’s nice.” jimin looks at you, pondering. she can’t put a finger on it but she tries to explain her emotions.

“he’s... confusing.” 

“how?”

”when i’m with him, i feel... safe. he’s a sweet guy, don’t get me wrong. then he writes these things that feel... not so safe.” you tilt your head as you process everything, you wrote those things, the letters, the messages, everything - you wrote it.

“not safe?”

“makes me wonder, think about things - all this time i was set on this idea of marrying jeno but then here comes yeonjun when i asked god for a sign. god doesn’t know either or he’s not telling.”

“i don’t believe in god.”

“that must be so nice.”

“it’s not…” you slowly submerged yourself into the water, jimin still observing you, everything feels weird. “it’s lonely.”

“i wished i knew what i believed in.” you tune everything out, listening to jimin’s rant about jeno already planning their future wedding, her asking a sign to god if that was what love is. simply accept it and be grateful. but the letter appeared the following day, the letter you wrote and what started this whole thing.

“silly, right?” you shake your head as you swim closer to her.

“no, its not.”

“but you know what’s silly?” everything moved so fast that your oversized shirt was removed from you, a triumphant smile but easily replaced by her laughing.

“did you layer?” now, you’re left with your undergarment and a black tank top.

time went by so slowly, you’re talking to her about life, love, religion, while floating on your back next to her listening to a radio playing old songs. the current song playing was your mom’s favorite song, waiting for the best part, the climax as she would say.

“my mom also told us that every song, movie, story has a best part.” patiently waiting, letting it pass and enjoy each other’s presence and the song you heavily associated with your mom. a part of you wants to reach out to jimin and hold her hand as the song continues on. 

“was that it?”

“you asking or stating?”

the best part - is when you actually hold onto jimin’s hand as you float like otters. the song playing in the background as the lyrics perfectly encapsulate what you feel for her. words can’t express your feelings - pain from knowing the girl you like is straight and seeing your only friend but also happiness from getting such a small moment together that you’ll cherish till you leave this little place called kwangya.

you may not believe in god, but if falling in love with yoo jimin is a sin. call me a sinner, then.

taglist [CLOSED]:

@1luvkarina @beawolfbealionbeyou @pandafuriosa60 @txtbrainrot @rinapomu @limbforalimb @yoontoonwhs @noascats @thefckghost @petruchiosstuff

[ageofzero]

Yuna is the antagonist of a potential Final Fantasy X-3, thank you for coming to my TED Talk

edit: okay I'll put it under a read more since it'll be a long post (but not as long as my entire conversation was), but what's promised is due.

Now that I have to make the post for real I had to do some wiki reading on what the actual Things going on in the novella were, and… well, a lot of my theorycrafting was based on incomplete and kinda inaccurate information. BUT I can’t read Japanese, the book was never released here, and I am going to go with rule of cool for a little bit of this even as I keep the stuff that sounds kinda dumb on the surface. I’ll be the first to say that Tidus exploding from a bomb he thinks is a blitzball is dumb (true), and Chuami thinking she’s Auron’s daughter is a dumb plot beat (petty), but I’m weaving this bridge and I’m not going to rewrite those. I am going to change some contexts and make them exist in a narrative that I hope is compelling. That’s my disclaimer, now I’m gonna get into it.

SO.

The scenario from the novella and audio drama is thus: Tidus died again in an accident, and Yuna brings him back. But he’s not back in the same way that the Fayth gave this dream a real living body at the end of X-2. The official term for it is “beckoned”, but I probably won’t use that to describe him based on my previous understanding. No matter if he’s beckoned or not, or whatever terminology you want to use, the thing is that Yuna summoned him back. She’s holding him to life, and he can never know. It’s been a year since the moment Tidus died, and Yuna has seemingly regressed into patterns that put her into what was once Yevon’s circle. Tidus is looking injured/weakened (“Chuami: It wasn’t just [Tidus’s] words that felt hollow. When I shook his hand, his grip felt weak and lifeless... I think he’s injured. Or maybe he’s sick or something.”), and people are looking to Yuna for help or information regarding the strange not-quite Unsent (the beckoned) that are appearing in places in Spira. Help she is not capable of giving. Wakka and Lulu are protecting her as she prays in Besaid Temple. The world is seemingly acting out, with a second shoopuf appearing in the Moonflow and its energies overflowing and drawing more illusions into reality. (“Yuna: The Moonflow energy is responding to the will of the living. It’s as if… we’re in the Farplane.”) And it’s more vivid than what the Farplane is capable of, even breaking the rules of “beckoning”. This is something new, something worse. Something worse enough to bring back Sin (which I thought was just me extrapolating a potential, but they actually mention it in the audio drama that it happens). Yuna promises the people that she will defeat Sin, but Wakka tries to keep her from being made to promise such a thing at first, which is an interesting choice (“Wakka: Yuna, let’s go back to Besaid. They’ll push this all on you… Sin is for summoners, in their minds.”).

Where does the world go in this present circumstances? Why IS Yuna seemingly content to do what chafed her in the Eternal Calm short movie and stay praying in Besaid and helping the elders who are lost now that Yevon as they knew it is in shambles? Why are Lulu and Wakka enabling and protecting her in that? Why is Tidus looking injured and weak and why is Yuna keeping him at arm’s length? Why does she tell him that she’s fallen in love with someone else?

I know the typical story beat interpretation is “Yuna told him that and pushed him away so he wouldn’t be in danger for what she needs to do, bc defeating Sin caused his death last time”. But hear me out. Yuna knows Tidus isn’t alive. She knows that revealing that information to him will cause him to disappear again. She’s actively summoning him back to life and he has no idea (but he must suspect something is wrong, even before Yuna formally pulls away from him, he’s weakening and he probably doesn’t feel right in his own skin). I posit that her maintaining Tidus’s life is what she’s really doing praying in the Besaid Temple. She doesn’t want to get involved with the Moonflow situation, the shoopuf or the overflowing energy of the Moonflow itself. She doesn’t even really act when seeing all the ghosts in the crowd, and actively stops Kurgum from acting (plausible deniability: she and everyone else decide that sending them in that moment would be the wrong call and riots would break out, but that density of ghosts means that’s a significant amount of pyreflies that could become fiends at any moment).

I posit that Yuna’s powers are working, that people close to her think her powers aren’t working (Lulu and Wakka), and she’s hiding it from everyone else. That her powers aren’t working because she’s currently using them to maintain Tidus’s existence. And this maintaining is breaking the Farplane in half, because she’s powerful but has no idea what she’s doing. (Why would she really know what she’s doing or the consequences? Who has any information of what she’s doing and what will happen if she does it?) I posit that Yuna’s love for Tidus is so strong that it corrupts her sense of right and wrong. X-2 is Yuna largely going on a personal quest, and incidentally helping people but separating herself from the title of High Summoner and doing something she wants to do. Rikku encourages her to do something for herself for a change right before she agrees and runs off to become a sphere hunter. She still saves the world, this time from an ancient danger Old Yevon buried and an Unsent is threatening to use (for love, notably), but she did it in the course of looking for Tidus. Who the Fayth return to life, who she hugs and is so so relieved to have in her arms again.

She’s not going to let him go, she couldn’t let him die again so much that she called him back to life.

(side note: I never truly knew how this happened so I had to consult the wiki page on the novella, and I suspect what original information I was working with was misrepresented and misinterpreted. I openly admit that the wiki page doesn’t really help me fully understand what happened, aside from explaining how Tidus ended up in proximity to a bomb. My understanding from someone’s explanation was that an Unsent summoner on the island Yuna and Tidus got washed up on after a storm told her she could call back the dead if she wanted, as a summoner. They’re all made of pyreflies, Aeons and Fiends and People and Unsent alike, and summoners are in the business of manipulating pyreflies. Either calling them from the Fayth to form an Aeon, or Sending them to the Farplane so they do not become Fiends. A summoner with enough power could summon someone back from the dead, could they not? And this Unsent summoner knew how it worked, and told Yuna how to do it. But I don’t know how real that scene could be, or how accurate it is to what’s written in the book. It’s my rule of cool moment, though, and I worked with that as my understanding when I made this theory. We have to make our peace with that, if you’ll allow me this extrapolation of Spira’s rules and a summoner’s powers.)

(The meme is Tidus kicking a blitzball and it turned out it was a bomb and his head gets blown off, but wiki says they ended up on a vision of a Besaid from 1000 years ago, and the bomb was something neither Tidus or Yuna had seen before and to them it looked like a blitzball. So, Tidus approached what he thought was a blitzball, wondering who’s ball it was, and it exploded as he reached it. I still think that’s really dumb but I’m not editing it out bc Tidus’s death creates very interesting consequences.)

So, if Yuna is summoning Tidus back to life, and she desperately doesn’t want him to find this out so she avoids him and pushes him away through any means necessary, but he’s still weakening and fading enough to be noticeable by people… perhaps also himself… Yuna returning to Yevon in some capacity could just as likely be her looking for a means to keep feeding power to this summoning she’s doing so she doesn’t lose him. And what kind of consequences does it have to do this? He’s being summoned, but he’s not actually an Aeon. He’s not an Unsent, he’s not just being beckoned. He wasn’t even real, he was a dream in a summon held together by the raw power of Yu Yevon turning into Sin. The Moonflow overflowing and seeing a long-dead shoopuf is the least of the consequences. The Farplane is delicate, it requires careful maintenance, and here Yuna is shoving her foot in the door and holding it open for a solid year! And no one knows she’s doing this! Spira’s past is full of history, some of that long-buried secrets that no one was supposed to find again. Sin wasn’t supposed to be able to come back, but the ghosts aren’t staying ghosts anymore (“Lulu: I mean Sin came back, right? What’s to stop anything else from coming back?”).

Even people who only know her by reputation seem to think she’s acting strangely (“Kurgum: I thought Lady Yuna was… a righteous person.”), because something is wrong and no one can put their finger on what. Who would have the pieces to put any of this together, and who would even suspect Yuna in the first place? She’s actively not getting involved in politics, she’s locked herself in Besaid, she seems reluctant to answer someone she worked with and should be amicable with now (Baralai).

I think the story should follow down this path, I think it should find Yuna at the end of it, once savior and now destroyer. She’s willing to let the world rip apart in order to keep Tidus, and I think that’s a compelling premise for X-3. The past surging forward like ghosts, vengeful and lost and wanted and terrifying. Who sides with Yuna (Wakka, Lulu) and covers up the problem? Who bands together to face down the High Summoner (Tidus, Rikku)? Who doesn’t know where to place their allegiance, or who changes sides when they realize the extent of what Yuna’s hiding? What does she do when she’s faced with her friends, and the person she loves so much, telling her to stop?

There’s a line in Eternal Calm where Yaibal (named in X-2 but not in the movie itself), after asking about whether or not she’d be joining one of the factions, if she’d be making a faction of her own. And I think in this potential X-3, she’s making her own faction through the actions of becoming antagonist. She’s made Wakka cover for her, she acts in a way that make Lulu and Wakka both protect her regardless of whether or not they know what she’s doing. I think it would be so fascinating to make this a conscious decision on her part. Things have broken so utterly, and she’s desperate to hold them together, and becomes the antagonist in the process.

Squeenix would never do it, they’d never be so bold as to make Yuna the antagonist and follow through on this trajectory of her lying to people to hide that she’s the one breaking the world in half (up to returning the ghost of Sin itself to terrorize Spira). Sin isn’t the final boss in this one, it’d have to be Yuna, we have to stop her and fix what went wrong. It’s not ever gonna happen, but I still think Yuna should be the antagonist of X-3.

[bnhaobservation]

Was Rei a bad mother or not?

Maybe I’ve bad luck but I often happen to stumble into this debate. Some want to paint her like a saint, some want to paint her like a monster, some have more moderate opinions.

Credits when it’s due, Todoroki Rei is clearly the least explored Todoroki in the manga. She doesn't even have a profile yet!

While part of the reason clearly rest on how this is well, a story about Heroes aimed to male Japanese teenagers in which even the main character’s mother hardly get some digging so it’s kind of to be expected she wouldn’t get much digging as well, there are likely other reasons at play, which are important because they influence the way the facts are presented to us.

The first is that likely originally she wasn’t planned to have a big role, part of it is likely because some things about Rei are related to stereotypes well known in Japan who don’t need to be explained to Japanese readers (but the same can’t be said to westerns), part of it is because.

So, before answering to the starting question let’s dig into those two reasons.

Which was meant to be Rei’s role in the story originally?

Likely solely to be the source of Shouto’s drama.

In the prototype Shouto was meant to go so far as to hate her (and long for his father’s love)...

...then things were turned over and he ended up hating his father and loving his mother but Rei’s role didn’t change much, Shouto suffers for her condition and mainly feels anger toward his father DUE TO WHAT HE DID TO HIS MOTHER, which means Rei is still the source of Shouto’s drama (along with Enji, of course). Even as the story will go on, Shouto will claim his main reason for having troubles to forgive him is what Rei suffered… and he feels confuse on what to do when he discovers his mother instead wants to forgive his father, leaving him at loss on what to do.

At the time of the U.A. sport festival, when Shouto’s past was shown, the Touya/Dabi plot either wasn’t planned at all or it was just an embryo.

That’s why there seems to be a clash in how in chap. 39 she claims she can’t take care of the children and single out Shouto’s specifically for how his left side reminds her of Enji...

...when in chap. 302 it was Touya’s gaze what freaked her out...

...while Shouto was the only one in the family trying to protect her.

The whole chap 302 didn’t exist yet in Horikoshi’s mind when chap 39 was planned, possibly the whole Touya/Dabi plotline wasn’t planned yet, so everything ends up on circling around Shouto.

Later on, when the Touya/Dabi plotline was more or less set, it was still likely that Horikoshi didn’t plan to involve Rei much in it, as in chap 250 Fuyumi said her mother was hospitalized BEFORE Touya burned himself.

This would have made possible a plotline in which Rei supported both Shouto and Touya and her being hospitalized and therefore being absent could have contributed to the Touya tragedy.

However, when creating chap 301/302 for the magazine, Horikoshi decided that Rei would still be around when Touya died, so that Enji’s escalation toward her and Shouto could be blamed to the loss of his son…

...only to go back to the first plan when someone pointed the retcon out, so that in the volume version Rei gets hospitalized BEFORE Touya’s assumed death.

All those changes ends up conflicting with previously established facts, making them confusing if we try to look at them all at the same time, which can make harder for some readers to understand Rei’s role.

To understand which kind of mother Horikoshi wanted to portray we’ve to look at her story in blocks, not as a single, streamlined narration.

We can, of course, try to connect each fact and work out a Watsonian explanation for what doesn’t work, but this might lead us astray on understanding which kind of characterization Horikoshi was aiming to give her in each sector and add to them some info about Japanese culture which might help us to get a better picture of how he meant for us to read Rei.

So how I’m going to tackle Rei?

I’ll try to list and analyze each single accusation I saw being moved at her, looking at what the narrative says but also looking at the cultural contest in which her actions are meant to be read. While it’s likely not going to be a perfect analysis for the reasons mentioned above, I still hope people will get a better picture of Rei.

I’ll also make a premise about the ‘timeline’ in this, aka more or less when facts happens. Yeah, the info I’ll give you are canon (according to the manga volume version, anime and magazine version follow different timelines), I won’t quote the sources so as not to make the post unnecessarily loaded.

Enji married after he turned 20 and prior to turning 22.

Touya was conceived around April in the year in which Enji would turn 22 and had birth in January in the following year. Fuyumi was conceived in the same year in which Touya had birth, around March and was born always in that same year in December.

Touya’s Quirk started to burn him when he was 3, likely in summer, meaning he started training at 3 or younger. That’s because Natsuo is conceived AFTER Touya started to burn himself, when Touya  still 3, around October, and has birth the following year, in July when Tōya is 4, Fuyumi would turn 4 and Enji would turn 27.

Shouto is conceived April, in the year in which Tōya has turned 7, Fuyumi would turn 7, Natsuo would turn 3 and Enji would turn 30 and has birth the following year in January, some days before Touya would turn 8. Short after Shouto is born, his siblings are forbidden to interact with him.

Rei snaps in winter, when Touya is 13, Shouto is 5, Natsuo has turned 9 and Fuyumi has just turned 13 and Enji is 36. By the volume version canon, Touya dies short after, while he’s still 13 (though he should have been close to turn 14).

Shouto will visit his mother in May when he’s 15. By then Touya is 23, Natsuo is 18 but about to turn 19 and Fuyumi is 22 but about to turn 23. Enji is 45 about to turn 46.

So let’s start with the list.

REI IS A BAD MOTHER BECAUSE SHE ACCEPTED TO MARRY ENJI DESPITE KNOWING HE WANTED TO USE HER CHILDREN TO FULFILL HIS GOALS GOING SO FAR AS CHOSING HER TO TRY TO CREATE THE PERFECT MIX OF QUIRKS.

So, let’s start with something important culturally.

Before deciding if Rei is or not a good mother, let’s accept Rei was a ‘good daughter’.

Why good daughter is between quotation marks? I’ll get at it.

Even though her father and family head didn’t force her, she sacrificed herself for the well being of her birth family. As it was expected of her being the daughter of a traditional Japanese family. No one likely found what she did admirable or exceptionally good. Doing that was part of the standard expectations traditional Japanese families like the Himuras had for their children.

Let me introduce you to ‘Oyakoko’ (親孝行 “filial piety”), an important Buddhist virtue of respecting and caring for one’s parents and that therefore requires the children ‘to be good’ to their parents, often through acts of great respect, kindness and support. It might sound nice but, although things are changing currently, in the past this meant doing what the parents wanted, including marrying who they were to pick up for you, continuing the family business or fulfilling their dreams.

Also let me talk to you about ‘Sanjū Shitoku’ (三従四徳 “The three obediences and four virtues”), a set of moral principles and social code of behavior for maidens and married women in East Asian Confucianism. In specific the three obediences instruct that a woman is obligated not to act on her own initiative and, at home, she must submissively obey or follow her father’s orders before getting married, her husband’s after getting married, and her sons’ after her husband’s death.

When Touya, in chap 302, says Rei had no choices, he’s likely not referring to the fact someone pointed a gun to her head or that she was dragged to the altar kicking and screaming. He’s referring to the fact that even if Rei, as she’ll say, was given ‘options’, the only option socially acceptable for her was to marry the guy who would fix her family’s economical troubles. As a good daughter she HAD to pick up the option that was best not for herself but for her birth family.

The result of Rei being educated into this being what a ‘good daughter’ would do, is that she likely expected her children to also be ‘good children’.

In short, she wasn’t educated to think that Enji wanting them for a specific purpose should have been a sign that should have caused warning bells to ring in her head but something totally socially acceptable, and that she was expected to raise ‘good kids’ who would want to do this for Enji the same way she had done this for her parents.

Things are changing in Japan too, but still, to Rei to hear a man claiming he wanted her to sire kids for his own goal wasn’t meant to sound creepy. It was a normal part of an Omiai marriage, a marriage that’s not based on love (in the past in Japan it was believed marriages based on love were meant to fail) but on how beneficial the marriage would be to the families of the two spouses, a marriage that still exists in Japan (even if it’s slowly disappearing). And yes, Omiai marriages include checking the genetic pool of the wanna be spouse, even if normally one looks for genetic illness (physical and psychological), for lack of blood purity (the person isn’t purely Japanese) or for relations with people that are considered outcasts in Japan (like the burakumin).

So Horikoshi doesn’t mean to portray her as a bad mother because she merely followed social conventions, he just points out the downsides of said social conventions.

REI IS A BAD MOTHER BECAUSE KEPT ON SIRING CHILDREN WHEN TOUYA TURNED OUT NOT BEING ABLE TO FULFILL ENJI’S DREAM

Back to the ‘Sanjū Shitoku’ (三従四徳 “The three obediences and four virtues”) we go.

Rei was meant to follow Enji’s wishes, to keep the harmony in the house, the fact she actually argues against them, saying it would be “too cruel” and tries to change his mind speaks volumes for how she actually cared about Touya.

In reply Enji says they’re doing this for Touya, claiming this will make him stop training himself. This corners Rei as, not only she shouldn’t question her husband’s decisions and yet she’s questioning them but she’s also called to choose between her son’s psychological well being and her son’s physical well being. If this work Touya will stop burning himself. This is a good thing.

At the same time though, Rei was likely also put pressure by how she seems to realize Enji too, like Touya, won’t stop wishing for someone to beat All Might. Enji’s words aren’t completely selfless, he thinks by having another child he’ll kill two birds with one stone, he’ll have a heir who’ll surpass All Might, and this will put him to rest, and Touya will also be forced to quit. Now a friendly reminder this is not a post about Enji, it’s about Rei, so I won’t discuss Enji’s actions more than necessary as they’ll deserve their own post.

We see at this point Rei doesn’t question him anymore. She likely slips into the role of the ‘obedient wife’ and does what her husband asks of her even if she’s not fully persuaded it’s a good choice.

REI IS A BAD MOTHER BECAUSE SHE DIDN’T LOOK AT TOUYA, WHO KEEPS ON BURNING HIMSELF

Yes and no.

In Japan is believed looking after the children is solely a mother’s job, so yes, she wasn’t looking after Touya well enough.

However she had another child to look at who’s smaller than Touya and Japan doesn’t believe in the need to supervise small children (they had recently rejected a law which proposed to make mandatory for parents not to leave unsupervised kids of 8 and younger).

Look at the opening of the manga/anime.

Midoriya, Bakugou and their friends are alone at the park. There’s no adult supervising them, which allows Bakugou and his friends to beat up Midoriya without anyone stopping them. The playground isn’t far from Midoriya’s home but not close to it either (we can see Midoriya’s home in the distance). Inko is a housewife so it’s not like she’s at work yet, same as all the mothers of all those kids, she’s not under any obligation to look at her 4-year-old child.

In my country it would be a crime, we can’t leave 4 years old unattended. In Japan it’s okay.

This translates in 3-year-old Touya saying he’ll go play at some park in the neighborhood and Rei not feeling compelled to go with him to make sure he won’t instead go somewhere else to train himself and remaining at home to look after Fuyumi, who’s 11 months younger.

Rei getting pregnant again and then having to take care to a newborn only makes things more complicate. Natsuo has birth when Touya is 4

For general knowledge I’ll tell you it’s a terrible choice to have another child when you’ve troubles looking after the ones you have, because adding another child to the family means diverting a lot of energies and attentions on the new child, who’s a newborn with plenty of needs, depleting the resources you previously had to use solely for the children you previous had.

Pregnancy is already energy consuming and the more you advance in it, the less you’ll be comfortable moving around, never mentioning the appointments to the doctors that take time.

Childbirth can put a mother out of commission for some days, as many deliver in hospital and spend there the first days and, once they’re back home, not only they often aren’t back in full strength but they’ve an extremely needy infant to look after, an infant who needs to be feed, changed, lulled to sleep often and regularly and that can decide to keep you up at night.

If Rei had troubles looking after Touya when she only had to split her attentions between Touya and Fuyumi, who are young and would need plenty of attentions even if Touya weren’t having troubles copying with the situation, try to picture how things become messy when Natsuo is thrown in the mix.

And then, 3 years and a half later, Shouto is also thrown in the mix. Rinse and repeat what I’ve said above only now with more kids to look after and with Touya’s psychological health in an even worse place.

As if this wasn’t bad enough, Enji decides Shouto should be kept apart from his other siblings. Meaning Rei can’t anymore gather all her children in a single room and look at them there, but she has to keep them in two different rooms and since she doesn’t have the gift of ubiquity and Shouto is smaller and more needy she’ll have to spend more time with him than with her other children… which is exactly what Natsuo in “School Briefs” reports.

All of sudden his mother had no time for him anymore as she’s busy taking care of Shouto. If she had no time for 3-year-old Natsuo, it’s hard she could find the time for 8-year-old Touya, even though Enji insisted on how she should look at Touya.

The situation worsen further when Enji starts training Shouto and the training turns out to be too much for a child of 5.

In an attempt to protect Shouto she argues with Enji, gets hit, her psychological health start to deteriorate, things start becoming too much for her.

Her situation is one in which she’s constantly asked to choose which child she should prioritize as she can’t keep them together and she can’t be in different places at the same time.

She prioritizes Shouto, who’s younger. It doesn’t mean she didn’t care anymore for all her other children. In Touya’s case she’s specifically shown trying to persuade Touya not to go training, so it’s not like she had completely given up on looking after him. We also learn Touya now trained with body parts he could easily cover with his clothes, so that his parents couldn’t realize he was training so while she could guess the situation still wasn’t good, she had not a clear grasp of how bad it was.

Touya needed more, Fuyumi needed more, Natsuo needed more, even Shouto needed more, that’s true but the real question is ‘could she give more?’

What’s more she had chosen to prioritize Shouto’s well being over Touya when Enji basically told her to do the opposite (get out of his way when he was training Shouto and keep her eyes on Touya) so she ultimately disobeyed her husband, failing her duties as a wife.

Ultimately Rei snaps because she couldn’t bear giving any longer. The pressure, combined with the physical abuse, had turned too much for her. Society won’t be kind with her if it were to know as in Japan people are expected to endure and if they snap they’re only weak and have themselves to blame, an idea which likely added to the pressure she was already feeling.

So yes, by Japanese society’s standards she didn’t do enough.

Her children though, all view her as a loving mother. Even Touya regrets snapping at her.

Her failing to handle the situation correctly it’s more because the situation is for her too big to handle than due to a lack of will.

REI IS A BAD MOTHER BECAUSE SHE DIDN’T ASK FOR PSYCHOLOGICAL HELP FOR HERSELF OR FOR TOUYA

In Japan there’s a strong stigma on therapy and psychological help which carries along a connotation of shame as it’s generally seen as something only ‘crazy people go’. Remember when we were talking about the Omiai? Having a family member who had/had had psychological problems is one of the reasons that can make you unsuitable as a spouse in an Omiai.

Long story short, even if it’s possible to get psychological help, people don’t want it.

Parents are lead to think it’s up to them care for their children and, if they’re in troubles they ask for counseling from school or their elders or read self-help books (啓発本 ‘Keihatsu hon’ or, for full 自己啓発書 ‘jiko keihatsu-sho’)… like Touya said Rei was doing.

This was the acceptable way to get psychological help, Rei reading self-help books and trying to put them into practice to help herself and her children.

When things become too much she’s also shown asking her own mother for help and advices… though by then it was too late.

REI IS A BAD MOTHER BECAUSE SHE DIDN’T DIVORCE FROM ENJI AND TAKE HER CHILDREN AWAY FROM HIM

In Japan divorcing from the other party is rather hard if your spouse doesn’t give you permission, and it’s extremely shameful for the woman, regardless of who’s at fault, and even for the children. Plus, in case your spouse agree to it, only one parent can be the children’s guardian.

If divorcing from Rei meant to give up on the custody of the children, especially Shouto, so that Enji wouldn’t be able to train him anymore, well, you can easily guess he wouldn’t agree to it.

At the very best the most Rei would accomplish would be take Touya, Fuyumi and Natsuo with herself, toss on herself and her children shame and leave behind Shouto.

Yes, if the woman is abused by the husband it can help her get a divorce even if he doesn’t agree with it. However from when BNHA has started things have improved in Japan (both in terms of divorce and support in case of abuse) and Japanese women still lament how hard it is for them to prove they were abused and to get help to leave their husband (a protection order is generally issued solely if they can prove they fear for their own life).

It’s not because Enji is a rich Hero who knows people in the police that Rei doesn’t divorce from him. It’s because he’s a Japanese male and she’s a Japanese female and this makes her chances to get a divorce extremely slim.

REI IS A BAD MOTHER BECAUSE SHE DIDN’T REPORT THE ABUSE HER CHILDREN RECEIVED

Remember when I said for a woman is hard to prove she was abused?

To prove the children were abused is HARDER.

First of all, in Japan there’s the general belief a father doesn’t have to get involved in raising his children, so if Enji says he has no time to look after Touya, Fuyumi and Natsuo… well, he’s not to blame, it’s up to the mother to take care of them. Enji is doing his part by working and paying for what they need. Things are changing but you get the drill. No one will scold him for working till late and not having time to look after his kids when that should be Rei’s job in the first place.

Okay but what about Shouto?

The law that forbids parents from hitting children is recent, when BNHA started it wasn’t yet in place and, while back then too you couldn’t abuse your kid, exactly because you could hit him it was hard to prove when you’ve crossed the line or when you were just administering educative punishment. That’s why a law now ban physical punishment, because kids died due to it.

But that’s not the core of the problem.

While abuse of children is prohibited in Japan, there are no laws that explicitly extend this prohibition to training.

Human Rights Watch interviewed and surveyed more than 800 former child athletes from Japan for a 2020 report. Athletes from 50 sports described sexual violence, and being beaten, deprived of water, choked, and whipped with whistles or racquets. Athletes spoke of the “normalization” of these abuses, the lack of systems to report or seek remedies, and the absence of accountability throughout Japanese schools, federations, and elite sports. By the way, plenty of kids had been driven to suicide due to it.

While Enji’s training isn’t related to sport, we see that BNHA compares Hero training to sport training, right from Shouto’s first day at U.A. high. Very likely they’re meant to be viewed as equivalent.

Long story short, it doesn’t matter what Enji does to Shouto during training. It will be likely waved off as training.

In the end there’s little Rei could report that would have helped her to protect her children.

REI IS A BAD MOTHER BECAUSE SHE DIDN’T CARE ABOUT TOUYA

It’s true we don’t get cute scenes between Touya and Rei like we get for her and Shouto. She’s not shown soothing him as he cries, she’s not shown watching TV with him behind Enji’s back, she’s not shown telling him he can be a hero.

She’s however shown caring about him.

Enji wanted to have Fuyumi because he wanted a child with a dual Quirk, but she was in favor of having her because she thought she would support Touya (and he would support her).

As mentioned before she was against having other children after it turned out Touya’s Quirk hurt him, because she thought it would be cruel toward Touya and argued with Enji about it (remember? She’s supposed to obey, not argue).

When Touya argues with Enji, she’s worried Touya is overheating and would want to cool him down.

After Touya attacked Shouto, to Enji’s solution to just keep the children parted, she insists Touya just wants for him to look at him, basically defending her son’s side. As he refuses she basically accuses him of cowardice (and here she’s taking her son’s side over her husband’s side).

Much later she tried to stop Touya from going to Sekoto Peak and tried to encourage him to play with his classmates.

She likely reads ‘self-help books’ also to try and find a way to help him.

She tries to talk with him and encourage him to become something different that’s not a Hero, fundamentally telling him it’s okay if he doesn’t fulfill his social role as Enji’s firstborn.

When, at the hospital, she hears he died she gets even worse.

When Touya tried to nuke Japan she apologized to him, tried to cool him down so as to save him or else die with him and later, went to visit him and told him she wanted to talk with him.

I’ll say all of the above are pretty good signs she cared for him and loved him.

REI IS A BAD MOTHER BECAUSE SHE DIDN’T UNDERSTAND TOUYA

Yeah, she didn’t understand him.

She didn’t encourage his dream to become a Hero, thinking only it would be bad for his health.

She wants him to socialize when instead he only wants to train.

She also made it look as if it would be easy for him to give up on social conventions when she herself ended up where she was due to social conventions.

She knows he’s suffering due to Enji’s neglect but doesn’t admit it to his face, as if this wasn’t part of the problem, as if he could just ignore this.

Ironically part of this comes from her wish to help him.

Protecting his physical health is important, but prioritizing it over his psychological health ends up equally damning.

She wants him to socialize, which is important for a child’s growth, not understanding what Touya had told Enji when he was 8, all the children in his class want to be Heroes, while it can be Touya isn’t as bullied as Midoriya was because he’s not Quirkless, he likely feels like an outcast just the same. Differently from what his parents hope, other children won’t distract him from his dream of being a Hero when they too want to become Heroes, they likely expect Endeavor’s firstborn to become one, accidentally pressuring him more, and if he were to reveal he can he likely feels they would shun him out as defective the same way his father did so he shun them out first. Probably when Enji and Rei were young there wasn’t all this wish to become Heroes but now it exists and Touya has to deal with it and they don’t understand it.

She likely though she was being supportive in encouraging him to give up on social conventions the way she couldn’t do, not realizing (or better not wanting to realize) instead not only how hard it would be for him to do it but how that’s not his only motivator.

She blames his dream on Enji, on social conventions, hoping to make easier for him to drop it, basically denying him agency in what he wants.

So, while she tells to both Touya and Shouto they shouldn’t feel tied by Enji’s blood, her speech to Touya is a big fail because although it’s moved by the same wish to help him same as Shouto, her goal here wasn’t to encourage Touya to do what he truly wanted but what she thought it would be better for him.

She doesn’t want to believe he wants to be a Hero despite Touya spending years saying he wants to be one, because she doesn’t believe he can become one. Hence she wants him to find for himself another way. When she talks with Shouto instead, she encouraged him to become a Hero on his terms, which was exactly what Shouto wanted to do. She didn’t question his wish to become a Hero, even if Shouto is 5.

In a way Rei is like Inko before Midoriya got One for All.

They both gave up on their children’s dream and didn’t support them. Inko will get the chance to change her mind. Rei won’t be given such opportunity. Both mothers though weren’t moved by ill will toward their children but by genuine belief their dream couldn’t be fulfilled so they wanted their children to just move on instead than keep on focusing on such dreams.

REI IS A BAD MOTHER BECAUSE SHE WANTED TO LEAVE HER KIDS

Yes, she wants to leave them because she has started to realize she’s becoming unstable and could become dangerous for them. As said before in Japan there’s a stigma on getting psychological help so she’s trying to get help from a more acceptable source, her mother.

Still she wants to leave her children to protect them, not to hurt them, even though Shouto is clearly hurt when he hears her saying so.

REI IS A BAD MOTHER BECAUSE SHE HURT SHOUTO

Yes, Rei threw boiling water at Shouto but the point is… she didn’t know she was throwing boiling water at Shouto. She was getting paranoid and seeing Enji in her children, Enji who physically abused of her. From her absolutely panicked face we can tell she thinks she’s throwing the water at Enji in self defense because he might have heard her conversation with her mother and might be angry.

The moment she realize the one she burned was Shouto she broke down in sobs, apologized multiple times and tried to soothe the burn.

She never meant to attack her child, in a way it was an accident she ended up scarring Shouto.

REI IS A BAD MOTHER BECAUSE SHE DIDN’T TAKE THE BLAME FOR HURTING SHOUTO

Hum… actually she did.

As said above the moment she realized she hurt him she started crying and apologizing (yes the anime doesn’t show the scene but it allows you to hear the audio of it).

Much later, when Shouto went to visit her to the hospital planning to apologize to her, she apologized to him again, crying.

She also acknowledges having been the one who hurt Shouto when Hawks asked about the scar.

Shouto blames Enji for the scar he has because he understands if Enji didn’t corner and abuse Rei she wouldn’t have snapped, panicked and hurt him by mistake, because he understands in normal conditions Rei wouldn’t have hurt him. It’s not like he does so because his mother told him to.

And, with this, we’re at the end.

So was Rei a saint or a monster?

In media stat virtus.

She clearly wasn’t a perfect mother, she made mistakes, some of them pretty big, partly because social conventions taught her the wrong way to react to something, partly because the situation was too big and difficult for her to handle and she just failed to do so.

However she loved her children, she wanted the best for them and she tried to prioritize them over herself even if sometimes she didn’t know what was the best for them.

She was a single woman forced to bear too much, so in the end she broke and made matters worse. Way before Midoriya went through the Dark Hero arc, Rei tried at it but since no Class A came to support her she broke and failed.

It’s part of the BNHA message, there are things we can’t handle alone, we need a helping hand or we’ll break.

It’s absolutely fair to say she made mistakes, that she took bad choices, that she failed to understand some important things, that in deciding Shouto was the one who needed more protection, she ended up on neglecting her other children. But I also think it’s important to acknowledge that said mistakes weren’t done because she was evil or selfish or didn’t love her kids. In the end she was just a lone woman in a situation too difficult for her to handle, so difficult she ultimately failed handling it and the consequences she had to face for her failure were horrible and ended up affecting her children as well.

Horikoshi didn’t want to portray an evil woman or a saint, just a woman making mistakes and cracking in a difficult situation.

If you still think it would have been easy for her to get psychological help, divorce or protect her children, I encourage you to research on Japanese laws, especially the ones around the time in which her story was being written (as said before some laws have been improved recently). It might help you get a better perspective of how hard things were for her and how much she still tried.

[finalfrontierpublishing]

undefined

Vaster Than Empires by Ayezur - bound by myself. 

Bookbinding spammage under the cut.

So I fell in love with japanese stab binding and decided to do a faux stab pattern atop a case binding for this particular bind! 

I love Rurouni Kenshin, and i love how timeless the story is. This fic is very dear and close to my heart, and I am so proud to have an opportunity to hold this fic in my hands. 

Statistics:

163848 words || 452 pages 

Body text: Garamond

Chapter headers: Nipponica

This typeset was made fairly early in my binding journey hence my adherence (and passion) for Garamond font. What i was insistent on was sticking to the sakura border that surrounded the body of text, despite my printer telling me there would definitely be a white border around that. It was rather unsightly, so i decided to try to use a guillotine to remove it. Oh boy. One textblock was sacrificed to the bookbinding gods because the guillotine hates me and doesn’t like cutting square. this particular textblock is not square but i am pretending it is, for reasons. As you can see - it is also my virgin rounding attempt and it is mostly acceptable. 

I changed cover design at least 3 times - vacillating between using a shiny HTV design, using chiyogami paper and ultimately i committed to the stitchery after great indecision (and realizing my chiyogami paper wouldn’t match my bookcloth). i owe muchly to @teleportbooks​ for showing me it could be done, who did a lovely faux stab binding and i was very envious and decided i had to try to make one of my own. 

 my first try was rather ghastly - the bookcloth i chose from a mystery bookcloth pack was this awful brown that just looked hella washed out with the burgundy thread under lights (see below). I like browns but this is just --- eugh. 

i am easily convinced to redo something from scratch (I hate cutting boards with a passion) when i find something absolutely hideous. 

Moved on to using Burgundy Italian bookcloth from Hollanders with gold linen thread and voila. I am not that much of a fan of bright red and gold (it just feels FESTIVE AF to me, being an Asian in Asia) but i won’t fight what works. Endpapers came from a Mineral-themed paper pack - the endpaper is rather lumpy from the threads of the stitching but i have zero regret. 

I also applied HTV (Siser Metallic) for the title - thought about putting the title on the spine (decided against it as was trying to keep the theme of stab binding), and did the title on the front instead. Lack of foresight while i was designing - if given half a chance i would have done the title right to left instead. i also overcooked the HTV a little because it didn’t want to adhere right off the bat (this is odd, because ??? duo cloth usually hates htv more than anything, and this hated HTV more than duo). 

Completed with simple white (due to indecision, stuck to neutral colour) ribbon bookmark and cherry blossom charm. 

How much do i like doing some form of stitchery? Very much. Would like to try some embroidered spines - i’ve seen some fucking exquisite examples and i’m in an aspirational mood. 

Resources: https://beccamakingfaces.com/2013/10/05/japanese-stab-binding-tutorial-maple-leaves/ was an excellent reference for a stab binding tutorial for this pattern which i modified a little along the way. 

[mamashenanigans]

Okay. I’ve had time to process the spoilers for chapter 407: Paranormal Orphan.

Here are my thoughts:

-WTF?! They are twins?! What is it with Japanese mangaka and having unhinged twin relationships?! I’m looking at you, Nightow.

-AFO was born with his Quirk activated. Stealing nutrients from his mother then desperately feeding off of her corpse. Stole her Quirk too and seems to have some sentimental value in it as he still uses it often to this day.

-Low-key, I think there’s a hint here that the genetic change in babies and pre-pubescent kids started as some sort of STD that evolved considering their mom was a prostitute and “contracted” an illness. That’s just me, though.

-The first person he ever had was Yoichi and he held his hand right after birth. Also: JFC THAT’S A BIG BOY

-AFO is a victim of his Quirk like the other villains(Toga, Touya, Tenko). He was born wanting to possess things. I don’t like the whole “he was born evil” narrative. Yeah, he looks like a crazy ass Omen baby, but it makes sense he’d think the way he does.

-AFO is also an unreliable narrator here as this is all from his POV

-He says something to the effect of (we’ll know more once we get the scanlations) how, even though Yoichi can’t give him anything like he wants from everyone else, he’s still “his”.

-So, did he just get up and start walking and taking care of his brother out of sheer will when he was still a baby or did someone pick them up and raise them to the point when AFO wanted something from them and killed them when he didn’t get it?

-Yoichi still believes there is some good in his brother because he held his hand as a baby. 😭 Poor kid

-Poor wittle Yoichi getting kicked because he threw something at AFO. For how they’ve had to live, it makes sense AFO would react that way…in a manner of speaking.

-Yoichi learning to read from comics he finds in rubble/a dump. AFO takes notice and sits next to him. He then likes the part where the author says “One for All, All for One.” He should have had a name prior that he must have given himself as Yoichi has one. Though it would make sense that AFO named Yoichi himself as “first gift” since he was the first thing he ever had.

-AFO being jealous of the Glowing Baby is pretty spot on. All of this seems to hint that AFO and Yoichi were the first to have powers considering how AFO talks about the Glowing Baby and the 50 kids born in India.

-The last page is quite a cliffhanger and it sucks we have to wait 2 weeks for the next part(there’s no way this isn’t a two parter).

-How AFO is thinking about Yoichi leaving him is intensely possessive and reminds me of how Vader choked Padme when he thought she was betraying/leaving him. This also ties into how AFO didn’t know he had killed Yoichi.

-My guess is that AFO lashed out and sliced off Yoichi’s hand in a possessive rage. He was so startled by his own action that it gave the 3rd user time to grab Kudo and Yoichi then speed out of there.

-Is it just me or does anyone else hope AFO kept Yoichi’s hand? Parallel to Tomura having all of his family’s hands. I sure hope he did because I need even more twisted twin obsession.

-It’s most likely Yoichi lived long enough after this(and maybe with his blood) transferred OFA to Kudo. He then died from his blood loss and that’s why AFO didn’t know he had killed him.

-AFO crying over Yoichi’s death maybe the first and only time he’s ever cried. Yoichi did mean something to him, maybe even more than a “thing”, but he didn’t realize it until that one moment. He blames Kudo for his death because of the mental gymnastics he has to go through to convince himself that there’s no way he would have hurt the only person he’s ever actually loved—possessive as it may be. If Kudo hadn’t have taken him from the vault, he wouldn’t have reacted and cut off Yoichi’s hand, and therefore, Yoichi would still be alive.

-If he takes OFA with Yoichi’s soul in it, then Yoichi will be his again and “I totally didn’t kill him. See! He’s still alive!”

-The internet’s hot-takes that AFO is homophobic because he went full possessive Vader over Yoichi is weird. I said it.

-A part of me wants there to be a cliffhanger where we think Bakugo may have defeated AFO. We then get the intense fight between Tomura and Deku. Deku is about to win, however that’s going to happen, but then AFO shows up around the age he was when he kicked Yoichi, and he’s holding Bakugo as a threat, demanding Deku give him his brother back. But that’s just me. Again.

Anyway, I can admit when I’m wrong about a villain’s backstory. It wouldn’t be the first time and I honestly should have expected something like this considering Horikoshi going full on horror during this Final War arc. However, I don’t think AFO being born with his Quirk activated and “wanting to take” necessarily makes him “born evil.” The twins still had to survive on the streets as orphans, anti-meta people believing AFO is a diseased heathen and never wanting to help either of them. So, he took on exactly what they thought of him. It’s actually quite sad when you stop to think about it.

I’m going to be frothing at the mouth for the next two weeks to see how this backstory ends. Since it started with AFO going nuts and thinking Bakugo is Kudo, I’m assuming we’ll get further context of AFO’s thoughts when he’s crying.

[x0401x]

No, but… that was a really good one, actually.

I might as well let this out. A lot of people are still losing their minds over episode 12, and I’m not even gonna try to pretend this isn’t to be expected. It’s not happening only on this side of the fandom—the Japanese one was also torn about it, although I’d argue they were much quicker to understand what KyoAni was going for with it.

Y’all know me. That goddamn studio owns my soul, but I’m not joining the “KyoAni did it again (even when they actually did not)” club in this lifetime or the next. If the changes made during the adaptation ruin the intention of the original work, no matter how good the animation is, a spade is still a spade and I address it at length when people ask my opinion. But that’s not what happened this time.

And guys, hear me out: it’s not as painful as everyone is making it to be. I’m dead-serious about that. Stick with me here.

Firstly, there’s a couple of conversations going on that we need to put to sleep. One of them, the one bothering me the most, is that Reina “chose Taki’s way of doing things over Kumiko”. Or worse, that she “chose winning at the nationals over Kumiko”. The episode itself debunks this in several ways, mainly by showing that flashback of S1. If Reina had chosen Kumiko despite thinking Mayu’s performance was better, Kumiko would’ve known, and it could very well have been the end of their friendship. She would’ve been outraged. In no universe would this scenario ever make her happy. More importantly, the flashback implies that Reina wants to choose Kumiko in spite of everything. What stops her from doing so is the fact that it would mean betraying Kumiko, which is worse than not being able to play with her on national stage one last time. Reina didn’t choose Kumiko… but she did.

None of this was about victory—it truly was a matter of meritocracy. Choosing the best members doesn’t guarantee they would win at the nationals, especially given that Mayu isn’t superior to Kumiko by a wide margin. They’re almost tied. And neither was any of it a Taki vs. Kumiko thing for Reina. She’s abrasive when it comes to defending his policies, but her belief in him isn’t blind. The fandom tends to underestimate Reina a lot because of her romantic feelings and mistakes her faith for stubbornness, even though both the novels and the anime are adamant about her good judgement. It’s not that she trusts him because she’s in love with him—she’s in love with him because he is worth her trust. Then again, this had nothing to do with him. It was all about Kumiko. She was the only thing in Reina’s mind the whole time. Taki wasn’t mentioned even in passing.

The other is that Kumiko’s loss was for shock value because the novel’s outcome was too obvious and KyoAni wanted to surprise the viewers. I’m not gonna lie, this decision was definitely meant to give the anime a so-called “plus alpha” in comparison to the original, but that’s not all there is to it. The main reason is obviously to have it be more grounded and mature, not so much your usual music anime, as well as make the whole debate about fairness actually convincing. The original is not only predictable, it’s also questionable. It’s easy for something to look like Deus Ex Machina even when that’s clearly not the intention, and KyoAni didn’t want Eupho to be that anime. By extension, they shot down every suspicion that could’ve possibly been raised about Kumiko’s win in the original work.

Of course Reina would’ve recognized Kumiko’s sound, so although most readers would know that she wouldn’t choose Kumiko for any reason other than her performance, it still leaves room for doubt. The anime slaps this doubt into outer space by constructing a situation where Reina deemed Mayu’s playing as superior, although by a hair’s breadth. It effectively answers the question of “what would she have done if that was the case?”. With the author having approved of this, it’s safe to say that, yes, that’s what Reina would have done in canon as well. And it would be the right choice, which then means that her choice in the original was also undebatably the right one. That Kumiko earned her win in the novel.

This may or may not have been intended, but either way, the anime has elevated the original work’s outcome by going for that route. After all, the original was predictable, sure, but that doesn’t mean it was unrealistic. These two things are being confused and conflated with one another a lot in many comments that I’ve been seeing out there. Realism doesn’t always have to be negative. Kumiko and Mayu had equal chances of winning. That’s what the audition was all about. The novel portrays what would’ve happened if Kumiko had won, while the anime portrays what would’ve happened if she had lost. Both are valid and the existence of one further validates the other, not the contrary.

What the author wanted to show was that, although Kumiko can’t follow Reina or her more talented senpais, she’s still an excellent player, enough to perform the solo on national competitions, and she wouldn’t let this get the better of her. It also seems like there was an element of “be careful with what you wish” as one of the morals behind Mayu’s arc, where she finally accepts her true feelings through regret rather than joy. Meanwhile, what KyoAni wanted to show is that, even if Kumiko is surpassed, she’s still an exceptional leader and has the makings of a fine teacher. In a way, the anime affirms that both Kumiko and Mayu play a special role in guiding Kitauji through the final tournament. Above all, both routes assert that Reina wouldn’t lie under any circumstances and that Kumiko (as well as Mayu) would indeed accept either result with utmost grace and understanding, no matter how frustrating it might be.

Another thing that the anime elevated is Kumiko and Reina’s bond. In my honest opinion, KumiRei has become the best female relationship in animation and one of the absolute best female relationships in fiction thanks to this episode. It’s transcended friendship, transcended gay, transcended fucking everything.

Alternative endings aren’t dead and they don’t always suck. Eupho continues to be one of the most amazing slice-of-life franchises ever.

[jojikawa]

Beg.

Satoru Gojo x black! Reader

Summary: Satoru wants to be your boyfriend so badly.

suggestive/lewd but no smut • Spoiler free • reader is sexualized by Gojo a little.

Art by Nay__bb

I don’t really see too many fanfics where the reader is black so I wanted to make a self indulgent fanficion with all the attention on Gojo rn ❤️

Satoru wanted to do something special for his students. He wanted his lesson to be taught by someone else. A person who was strong in her own right, teeming with strength and beauty.

You.

Your cursed technique was extremely unique and rare, kinda like his own. For that reason, he always gravitated towards you in school. He would flirt and tease you but your relationship never grew beyond being just “friends.”

It killed him inside that neither gained up the courage to confess. He was a little a afraid of rejection. He had his charisma and power at his side but you didn’t seem phased by any of that.

But as adults, he was basically head over heels for you! He made it his day to pester you to go on date with him or at least some kind of quality time so that you could finally see how good a guy he could be.

Even then, you didn’t wanna give him your time.

One day, he showed up at your door, uninvited, of course. No calls. No texts. He only brought himself.

“May I help you…?” You rubbed the sleep out of your eyes, looking rather annoyed at a grinning Satoru Gojo leaning against your doorframe.

“Hey, Sleeping Beauty, can I come in?” But before you could reply, he walked passed you and into your apartment. “Why even ask?” You rolled your eyes and closed the door behind him.

“Why are you here so early, Satoru?”

It was like he didn’t even hear you speaking. He was too busy focusing on how cute you looked when you first woke up. He didn’t even give you time to take off your bonnet and change into your pajamas. He was thankful he came early just to see that.

“Huh? Oh, I wanted to take you out for breakfast. My treat.” He smirked, expecting you to become flushed at his forwardness but—

“Sorry, not interested.”

“Of course you are. I’ll buy you whatever you want.”

When he would initially reject him, money was always his “go-to.”

“I’ll buy you whatever you want.”

Did he really think that would work?

“I don’t usually eat this early but I do have plans to have brunch with Nanami, so get lost.” You shooed him away and in the blink of an eye, he was back outside you apartment.

“Ugh, no way she teleported me out.” He chuckled to himself before knocking on your door again.

Sooner or later, random visits from Satoru didn’t become so random. He even began giving you texts and calls as well.

Whenever Satoru found himself bored, he’s call you just to flirt or make small talk. The thing is, the idea of you being a teacher at Jujustu Tech was on the table. So, he needed to make this phone call good.

When the phone rang, he thought of the millions of things he could say to make you fall in love with him.

“Hello?”

“Aww, (y/n)~! I was beginning to think you wouldn’t pick up.”

“I didn’t want to but I thought it was something important. What is it, Satoru?”

“I was thinking, you and me—”

“No.”

“Aw, come on. You don’t even know what I’m gonna say.”

“I do. And I know because you say the same thing every time. I have more important things to do than go on a date with you.”

“Then how can I make it worth your while?”

“Mmm. I don’t think you can, sorry.”

Satoru felt his pants tighten a little at your attitude. He liked when you played hard to get. He would be you, sooner or later. His brain flooded with ideas to bride you for just a bit of your time. He would be a good man for you, he just knew it.

“I mean, I could help you get better at Japanese if you want. You look like you could use a sexy tutor. You could even wear a cute uniform if that suits your fancy.”

Satoru tore his phone from his ear when you suddenly erupted with laughter.

“Wow, Satoru, you don’t even really try anymore, do you? No, thank you.”

Ugh, the sexual tension was killing him. Every time you spoke he wanted to bend you over and prove you wrong.

“Okay, fine. How about I take you to get your nails done?”

“Oh, I just got them done with Mei Mei the other day but I appreciate the offer.”

“I’ll pay for your next hair appointment.”

“Sigh, you really do like flaunting your money.”

You heard him groan over the phone but his confident persona didn’t falter.

“Alright, alright. Do you think you can come by and help my students with some training? I’d love for them to meet you.”

“If you mean Megumi and his friends then of course. I would love to.”

Today was the day. Satoru was banking on you wearing something thin and tight. His favorite outfit was the one where you would wear a dress that would show off your thighs. Or when you would wear something that exposed your cleavage and a short skirt at the same time!

He was met with more than a treat when he saw you too.

Satoru came to pick you up on the scheduled day and, my god, he was amazed. Despite you dressing the way you always would, he found himself falling in love with you all over again.

“Damn, you're pretty. You wearin' all that just for me? I'm flattered.” Even though his eye were covered, you could see him staring at your breasts and ass like you were an object.

“No.” Your lips curled into a smile. “What I wear is for me only. You think I dress up for you?”

He ignored your statement. “You wearing make-up? You look really good right now.”

You rolled your eyes. “I’d like it better if you kept things more professional between us. I haven’t been able to get any dates ‘cause of you.”

“Even better.” He replied. “Ya know, a nice ‘thank you, Satoru Gojo’ would make my day.”

“I have nothing to be thankful for from you.”

“I just wanted to hear you say my name. I can make you say my name if you really want.” He leaned down, so close that he could’ve stolen a kiss if he wanted to. “Have I ever told you that you have a cute nose.”

You felt your face heat up. “Can you leave me alone!?” You pushed his face away. “Now, take me to the school.”

“Heh.” A weird sound emitted from his mouth. His face turned red and he instantly backed away from you. You raised an eyebrow. “Are we teleporting or are we taking a car or something.”

He didn’t reply. Only…stood their awkwardly.

Oh. So it’s like that.

You pinched the bridge of your nose. “You actually lied. Okay.”

“I’m sorry!” Satoru blurred out. “It was the only way I could get you to free your schedule for me.” He took a step towards you, grabbing your hands gently. “Come on, give me a chance. I promise you won’t regret it.”

“I don’t want to be your token black girlfriend, Satoru.”

“You won’t be! I swear. I’ve been chasing you since we were kids. I like you for you! Not because you’re…” he trailed off when you snatched your hands away.

“Oh really? If you want a date with me, you’ll have to beg for it.”

Satoru blinked. “Beg…?”

You smirked before nodding. “Yes. I want to know how sincere you are.”

The two of you stood in silence for a moment.

“I’m waiting.” You crossed your arms.

“I bet you want to step on me too.”

You giggled a bit. “No, but I can.”

He couldn’t help but get oddly turned on by your proportion. “So, if I beg for you, you’ll be mine?”

“I’ll give you one chance to prove yourself to me.”

And so he did it. Without any further hesitation, he got on his knees and begged for you. He begged for your mind, body and soul. He begged for his hungry lips to be on yours.

And you gave him what he wanted. You kissed him and let him grope you the way he’s been dreaming of. He touched your body the way he’s always imagined. His hands rubbed your body when he slipped them underneath.

He knew he would get you.

[baileypie-writes]

~Responding to Sayings Glitter Force Stans Use~

~~~🎀~~~🎀~~~🎀~~~

When in conversation or arguement about Smile Precure and Glitter Force, Glitter Force stans tend to use the same sayings/excuses. These are my responses to them. Feel free to use them!

Also, if I missed one, let me know and I’ll add it!

~~~🎀~~~🎀~~~🎀~~~

“They’re the same shows.”

No, they are not.

If you did your research, you’d find that Glitter Force changed and cut out many things. Here’s a brief list:

- Names were changed to English ones

- Most Japanese culture was removed

- Any scenes/episodes that were deemed “too emotional” were removed.

- Any scenes that could imply romantic interest between two girls were removed.

- All music was changed, including background music

- More CGI endings were made for Glitter Force/Smile Precure, though they’re very poor quality compared to the originals. They learned their lesson for Doki Doki though; only using the original 2.

Due to all these changes, many episodes were cut; 8 in Glitter Force, and 19 in Doki Doki. This left the shows with many plot holes and ruined character development.

~~~~

“But it was my childhood.”

I understand that. It was mine too. But you have to understand that it doesn’t change a thing about Glitter Force. It’s still problematic, and it always will be.

You can still watch Smile Precure though. It can give you the same feeling of nostalgia as well.

Choosing to support a show you know is problematic, simply because it was your childhood is a very immature thing to do. Especially when the original can be easily found.

~~~~

“They made it easier for English kids to understand.”

While this may be true, they still would’ve understood just fine if it was dubbed accurately. Kids understand that people all around the world are different. And it’s important to teach them about different cultures anyway.

Besides, many popular children’s media explores different cultures. Take a look at Disney, for example. Most of their movies are not set in English speaking countries, but children still love them regardless. They genuinely could not care less if a character has a name they’ve never heard of before.

~~~~

“You expected me to know that at 8 years old?”

No.

I am fully aware that you had no clue it was problematic. You just saw a show with cute and colorful characters, and watched it. So that’s why I’m informing you now.

~~~~

“It’s not whitewashed, it’s westernized/Americanized.”

Westernizing/Americanizing does not mean erasing culture.

The definition of whitewashing is:

“To alter something in a way that caters to white people.”

Sound familiar? Because that’s exactly what Glitter Force did.

~~~~

“It’s just a show. Calm down.”

The fact that it’s a show doesn’t make racism any less serious.

~~~~

“You Precure fans are always so intense and quick to correct!”

I can assure you, most of us are not. We’re just trying to inform you that Glitter Force is problematic.

Also, this is the internet. If you say something even slightly wrong, you’re gonna get corrected. So it’s not purely a Precure fan thing.

~~~~

“But Pokémon did the same thing.”

Yes, you are correct.

However, Pokémon first came out in the 90s, so practically nobody in America understood Japanese culture, or knew what anime was. It’s still whitewashing, of course. But that’s what was done back then.

To my knowledge, Pokémon doesn’t remove all culture anymore. They just change the names. Which, for this specific situation, is definitely needed. For the Pokémon, a lot of their names wouldn’t make sense in English; their names in Japanese literally being English words like “thunder”(Jolteon) and “Ghost”(Gengar). So changing the names is alright in this instance. And for the people, it was too late to give them their original names, since they’ve had the same English one for over 20 years. So that’s fine.

Glitter Force, however, had no excuse. It was made in 2015. At that time, anime was receiving a huge spike in popularity. Also, Japanese culture was way more understood. So there was no need to whitewash it.

~~~~

“You can watch a show without supporting it.”

That is correct. However, this situation is different. It’s not like you have no other option. You can just watch the original instead. So choosing to watch the whitewashed version is supporting it.

~~~~

“It’s not my problem.”

Knowing a show is whitewashed, and continuing to watch it when you can just watch the original instead is your problem.

~~~~

“I don’t care.”

Ok? It’s not my fault you don’t care about racism. Sounds like something you should work on yourself.

~~~~

“But I don’t want to read subtitles.”

There are a few fandubs of Smile Precure out there that are way more accurate than Glitter Force. The voice acting may not be as good, and the mic qualities can be subpar, but it’s really not that bad!

~~~~

“But I’m too scared to go on pirating sites.”

I get it. Thankfully, as mentioned above, there are a few, legal fandubs available!

~~~~

“And the world keeps spinning/Womp womp.”

Please shut up, and find a new and creative response.

~~~🎀~~~🎀~~~🎀~~~

~~baileypie-writes

[thefourthwifeoftengenuzui]

I saw that your requests were open so I was wondering if you could do Asahi x reader? Maybe relationship headcannons? You can have creative liberty with everything else though.

Thank you ^^

ofc Anon, happy to help ya out! This is my first time writing for Asahi, but honestly it should be pretty easy, because I’m an asahi Kinnie. Love y’all sm, if you liked this, make sure to like, follow, and if you curios, just ask

warnings: Swearing, crack, fluff? Mentions of vagina? Has one section implying a AFAB reader, but is only one paragraph. If you aren’t a pussy owner, pretend it’s a papercut it literally the same results. I tried to make it as gender neutral as possible.

status: edited, but at like 3am so read at your own risk

💜Asahi Azumane💜

💜Boyfriend Headcannons💜

First things first, Man is so freaking shy. Like goodness, he wouldn’t be able to talk to you when he has a crush on you. So, if you want results, you have to A) Be confident, and B) be in a place he’s comfortable interacting in. Like at volleyball practice (Gia- Joden shut your ass up, your AsaNoya is showing.) So, for this let’s just imagine you’re a second year, helping Kiyoko manage the team. Yeah that sounds a lil familiar but shhhhhhhhh, let me have this.

Once we get over the hurdle of him actually asking you out (AKA Tanaka bullying him into doing with some, if you don’t do it, I will,) Be gotta be the biggest sweetie ever. Like I’m used to writing for assholes, but I physically cannot with this man, this pure sweet chipotle bowl of a man. The most shit I can say is that he’s a pussy.

Please. For the love of God (Gia- You called?) Play with his hair. He will literally melt like butter into a blushy slushy mess it’s so freaking adorable.

The literal epitome of pit bull energy. Like so freaking terrifying on the outside but inside? Literally the softest thing since Japanese pancakes. And because of this, mfs be terrified to talk to you. Like even if he’s so polite, things don’t change. What he says- “Hi, I’m sure you didn’t know, but that’s my partner , and it looks like you’re making them very uncomfortable, could you please leave them alone.? Thank you! 🌸☺️🌸” What people hear- “Aye yo, what ya doing with my girl buddy? You tryna start something, I’ll fucking kick your ass *insert Tanaka face*”. Yeah, it’s a common occurrence for people to tell you to blink twice if you need help.

Even though he’s canonically not planning on going to college, he’s still above average in school work. Not really in terms of analysis and problem solving, so his best subjects are stuff he can just memorize like science or History. If you happen to be weak in either of those, he would be more than happy to help after practice or during weekends. He’s super patient with you and often suggests snack breaks and other things whenever it gets to much. (Because of that he’s also really good at helping you through panic attacks, more on that if I do a part 2.)

In terms of cringe, the cringiest thing y’all do would be like seriously basic couples costumes. And I ain’t talking joker and Harley Quinn type bs (that fr can be cute sometimes,) I’m talking moth and lamp type shit. I know it’s probably adorable to some of yall but it gives me the serious ick.

Speaking of the Ick, man uses the most horrendous nicknames unironocally. He doesn’t do it all the time (especially after Tanaka nearly pissed himself after hearing him trying to be tender.) like I can just hear him saying, “Hey muffin, can you grab my bag from the club room? I have to help clean up.” (Gia- joden ewwwwww stop it that’s literally so gross.)

reads you the Bible

Yall know that one comic where it’s like killer croc and his girlfriend walking around and she tells him how much she loves him and how safe he makes her feel? Yeah that’s literally yall and it’s so precious. Like just imagine walking anywhere and everywhere holding pinkies (my gay lol heart is melting) while he’s just being a blushy mess.

Noya is the main wingman, but still doesn’t know on how how you got together. His idea of friendly advice is, “QUICK BEING W PUSS AND ASK THEM OUT LIKE A MAN ASAHI😤.”

Regardless of if you are a titty owner or not, please don’t take your shirt off around him, he will literally malfunction.He will literally have an aneurysm. Like mans nosebleeds will rock him like a rocket. Like man will be in the morgue from blood loss. And we still need this man for cuddles, so no. Kill the spike not your boyfriend, can i get an amen 🙏?

He is the most precious fluffy boyfriend possible. Like he’s the sweetest of all beans. Like you could ask him to murder someone and he’lll just be like, “Yes Sweetie anything you say dear 🌸🥰🌸.” Kinda like Gojo in that one jjk scene (the I’ll murder you one)

he loves restaurant dates, but like don’t take him anywhere who only has spicy food. I love this man with all my might, but he is a serious pussy. Like my goodness has the gracious. And he won’t even say anything about it. My poor baby will just suffer in silence. So please don’t, he’s a poor baby.

This one’s for all my long hair honeys. One word. Hairties. Hairties Galore. He never has enough. And he always has them at the ready. But on the unlikely chance he doesn’t, he has no problem using your scrunchies during a game, and it’s seriously the softest marshmallow man move ever. I can not emphasize it enough.

ok this man if the favorite of all of his younger cousins. Like the little dudes love just climbing on them. He physically cannot say no to them. So, what’s something they force him to do? Watch Disney princess movies with them. He knows all their names trust. His top three definitely Jasmine, Belle and Cinderella, trust me on this.(Gia- fuck sukuna, Asahi x Cinderella for life lol) He gives the most insane Disney adult energy it’s insane. (Gia- joden, chill with the slander mate).

He is a living random fact generator. No I will not elaborate. He watches that kind of YouTube shorts. He’s so boring I swear to fuck.

(I had to Make Gia write this lol) This one is for all my pussy people. He gotta be the most worried individual on this side of the nuthouse whenever you’re bleeding. Like the second he hears your on the cycle it’s, “OMG ARE YOU OK, ARE YOU DYING? OMG MY GIRLFRIENDS DYING, HELP WE NEED TO GET YOU TO THE DOCTORS! PLEASE DONT DIE ON ME BABY! DO YOU NEED PADS, HEATING PADS, IBUPROFEN, CHOCOLATE!?ILL GET YOU THAT, THE VERY BEST BEST QUALITY-” please shut him tf up. He’s gonna have a panic attack, please calm him down,

for us non pussy personas, just imagine you got a paper-cut. He literally acts the same way.

For my final big thing, ima just give ya’ll little addicts exactly what yall came here for: Crack. (Also yes a changed some lyrics, I ain’t about to whitewash no characters)

Tanaka- EVERYBODY SAY SAUSAGE KEEP IT GOING, EGGS BACON GRITS

all- Sausage!

Noya- IMA SKINNY BITCH BUT I STILL TAKE

all- Sausage!

Bokuto- GOT A FAT ASS BUT I STILL TAKE

all- Sausage!

Oikawa- GOT A FLAT ASS BUT I STILL TAKE

all- Sausage!

Y/N- WAKE UP IN THE MORNING GOTTA EAT THAT-

all- Sausage!

Hinata- IMA RED HEAD BUT I STILL TAKE

all- Sausage!

*Literally everyone is gay in this show so I’m not including this verse*

Yachi- CUTE GIRL SWAG BUT ILL TAKE YOUR MANS

all- Sausage!

Asahi- hagsaggecgedhurdgiitg

all- Sausage!

Saiko- Big tits, and I’m thick so you know I take

all- Sausage!

Kuroo- Yeah I read but but they’re all about

All- Sausage! Sa-Sa-Sa-Sausage, Sausage

kiyoko- I like girls, can I still take sausage?

All- AYEEEEEEE

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

bro I ain’t gon lie, I had so much fun writing this, but I’m sorry I took so long Anon, I love all of yall so much, but I also am smack in the middle of exam season, and you’re boy needs his degree. If y’all love this, then feel free to ask for more, it’s free, and like and follow me. Love y’all lil freaks,

Joden (edited by Gia)