#premise may or may not be based off personal experience

[visiosatanae]

When getting yourself off doesn't work out, there's only one person you can think of to help ease the ache.

Rating: Explicit

Words: 2.3k

Pairing: Papa Emeritus III x Reader (Sister of Sin)

Ao3 Link

So close, so close, so close…

You were tangled in your sheets, having been at it for nearly an hour now. The vibe between your legs rubbed against your slick folds and tired clit. All you wanted was to cum, to end the needless frustration you had been feeling all evening and pass out peacefully in a state of bliss. But release still seemed to be just out of reach as your aching fingers worked the toy in just about every way you knew to be effective. When you finally felt that you were reaching the edge, you nearly wanted to sob with relief. 

Right there, almost, almost…

And then.

It stopped. 

Your eyes flew open in horror, realization dawning on you that your savior now rested dead in your hand. You felt yourself throb at the loss, little wracks of fleeting pleasure beginning to dissipate. 

"No, no, no," you groaned, pressing the button  repeatedly even though you knew damn well that it was no use. With a frustrated sigh, you tossed the vibe back into your open bedside drawer and slammed it shut. In a final act of desperation, you slipped your hand back down between your legs, rubbing frantically at your aching clit. But your fingers were already tired and cramping, fatigue settling into your joints.

With a huff you withdrew your hand, deciding that it was best to give up for the night and at least try to sleep. Rearranging yourself amongst the covers, you tried your best to even out your breathing and shut your eyes… for all of maybe two minutes.

It was no use. You were too wound up now that sleep seemed impossible. Your brain began flipping through possibilities at a rapid fire pace. You didn't have any other working toys at the moment, something you had been meaning to remedy, but hadn't had the time or money to shop for new ones. Fingers were too useless at this point, and you always had the hardest time getting off that way anyway. You would ask someone for… assistance, but it was the middle of the night. Most everyone was asleep or already entwined with a chosen partner until morning. But perhaps…

You laid in bed, suffering in thought. It's possible that a certain Papa would be willing to help with your predicament. But the problem was whether or not he already had another Sibling in his chamber. Sighing, you sat up and put on a robe. You figured it wouldn't hurt to at least try, especially with how your core still ached for release. 

Opening your door as quietly as you could, you slipped into the hallway and made your way towards the Papal chambers. The Ministry at this time was silent, making even the soft padding of your feet upon the marble floors sound louder than usual. Because of this, you felt the need to keep to the shadows cast by the wall sconces. You never knew if a ghoul or Sister Imperator could be patrolling the halls. 

Finally, you found yourself in front of Papa III's room. You stared at the plaque above the door with dread, trying to find the courage to knock. Papa had always encouraged Siblings to call on him for anything they needed, but what you needed felt so arbitrary you felt that even if he did answer you would be dismissed back to your room in shame. You stood there frozen until another pang of arousal shot through you, urging you to finally knock on the solid wood door, which felt deafening within the silent corridor. 

You held your breath, anxiously waiting for any sound from the room beyond, but you heard nothing. You listened for a few seconds, but it felt like minutes within the stillness around you. After a few moments you weren't even sure you wanted him to answer. What would you even say? He was a Papa! And your silly request probably wasn’t worth his time. 

With a sigh, you turned to leave. But then-

“Entra per favore.”

His words came softly from the room beyond and you stiffened, realizing that now you had to go through with this. Taking a deep breath to steel yourself, you gently opened the door. You had never been inside the papal bed chambers before, but it was exactly as you expected them to look. A large canopied bed brought your eyes directly to, obviously meant to be the focal point of the room. Papa had opted for black silk sheets and velvet curtains, with an assortment of pillows to match. The bed had a dark oak frame that matched the rest of the furniture, including a chaise lounge at the foot of the bed. A fireplace crackled softly off to the left, the flame low and log mostly embers now with how late into the night it was. Your eyes finally came to rest on Papa seated in a high backed chair, book in his hands as he read by lamplight. He was dressed in a dark velvety smoking jacket, his face devoid of his paints. But if anything, the lack of paint made his white eye stand out even more against his otherwise orthodox face. 

He smiled when he looked up, seeing your face poking in. “Ah, Sorella!” His voice was soft but no less animated. The smile lines on his face deepened as he met your eyes. “What can I be doing for you?” 

Your face reddened as you realized you had been staring. “Forgive me, Papa!” you squeaked. “I wasn’t expecting you’d still be awake.”

His expression is gentle. “It seems we are both having a sleepless night, eh?” He beckoned you further into the room after your small nod. You shuffled closer, closing the door softly behind you. "Now, tell me. How can your Papa help you?" 

You averted your gaze, still unsure about following through with your request. How exactly were you supposed to go about telling Papa your sex toy broke and you needed to climax or else you'd go insane? 

"I was um… partaking in the sins of the flesh and my… aiding device died on me." Sathanas, that sounded stupid. 

But Terzo nodded sagely, completely understanding your situation despite your convoluted way of describing it. "You are not the first," he confided, which made you breathe a sigh of relief. "But I have just the remedy." He opened his arms, coaxing you further still. "On my lap, Sorella." 

Face beet red, you did as he asked, awkwardly kneeling on either side of his thighs on the chair. He wrapped an arm around you, pulling you closer to him until your chest was flush with his. He gazed up at you, a hint of mischief hiding behind his kind expression. "No need to be shy now. It's easier if you relax, dolcezza." 

You nodded, still feeling a little wobbly on your knees. Your hands made their way to Terzo's shoulders for balance, lowering yourself more onto his lap. He looked pleased with your willingness to comply, tucking a loose hair behind your ear. 

"Come sei bella," he murmured, igniting a flame inside you. Ever so slowly and delicately, you felt his hands drift lower to fiddle with the tie on your robe. "May I?" He breathed. You nodded, biting your lip as he pulled it loose with ease. The silky material fell from your shoulders, exposing your torso to his searching gaze. He sucked in a breath at the sight of you, hands immediately coming to gently cup your breasts. You bit harder onto your lip at his touch, but a soft whimper still managed to escape. Suddenly his thumb was brushing your lower lip and pulling it from between your teeth. He tutted, "No need to hide those pretty noises from me." 

Your stomach flipped as he resumed, leaning forward to ghost his breath over your quickly hardening nipple - a kiss placed on the blushing bud. You shivered in anticipation as his tenderness sent small ripples throughout your body. His arm pressed against your lower back, pulling you against his awaiting mouth. You gasped as he sucked, tongue laving over the sensitive peak. 

Terzo then pulled off of you with a small pop before kissing again at the flushed skin. Soft whimpers and hums escaped through your nose along with your quickening breaths. Something about his tongue and mouth was driving you crazy, your hips bucking in his lap. His hands met with your hips and helped guide you. You realized with a whimper that you were already making a mess on his pants beneath you. 

"That's it, bella, just like that." His praises were quiet and calm despite his firm grip and hardening cock. He helped you rut down against his clothed erection, your dripping core already soaking through the material. Your head fell against his shoulder, panting and groaning into his neck as you focused on the growing arousal deep inside you. 

"Papa," you whined, clutching at the velvet of his jacket. 

Terzo knew exactly what you needed. Normally he would tease and make you tell him, but it was obvious to him that you had already suffered enough tonight. He reached down between your bodies, fingers running through the slick of your folds. He let out a gasp that faded into a groan. "So wet, Sorella. Cazzo. You like how your Papa touches you, hm?" 

You nodded aggressively into his shoulder, attempting to grind down onto his fingers. You gasped loudly as he finally added pressure to your clit. His strokes were varied as he figured out what you liked. He was extremely attentive to each noise you made, finally deciding on one when you moaned out a string of "yes" and "please". 

He kept at it, letting you grind and buck into his hand however you needed all while whispering praises into your ear. You never thought you'd be able to be with Papa like this. It was even better than you could have imagined, you thought as he brought you teetering to the edge. 

"Come for me, dolcezza. Make your Papa proud," he practically purred next to you. 

It was too much. You felt yourself falling off the edge, cumming hard on his fingers which never stopped working you through your orgasm. Your cries were muffled by his jacket as your body shuddered through waves of pleasure. Tears pricked your eyes as you finally brought yourself to look back at Terzo. He was smiling up at you, his eyes heady from the scent of sex in the air. 

"Can you do one more, tesoro mio?" he breathed, looking like he would beg if he needed to. Flustered, you nodded and watched as he quickly worked to pull out his aching erection. He was more than ready, the skin flushed and head already leaking for you. 

You steadied yourself as best you could on your still wobbly legs. You both sucked in a breath as the head of his cock rubbed against your folds, easily coating itself in your juices. He guided himself towards your entrance, and once he was positioned perfectly you allowed yourself to finally sink down onto him. Groans broke out from both of you in tandem as you slowly seated yourself again in his lap, thighs trembling from the feeling of taking all of him at once. 

It took some time to adjust to his size, the both of you panting as you looked each other in the eyes. You felt yourself gravitating towards him, lips seeking out his. He made no complaints, moaning into your mouth and gripping at your hips again. Once you felt ready, you began to move, rising up until Papa was still barely inside you before lowering back down again. 

He helped you find a rhythm and before long you were bouncing in his lap. His cock filled you deeply with every thrust and you couldn't help but cling to him. If he wasn't wearing the smoking jacket you were sure your nails would have left marks along his back. Terzo's hands were everywhere; gripping your hips to help you ride him, moving up to your breasts and teasing your nipples, gripping into your hair and pulling it back to expose your throat to his eager lips. You relinquished control to him, your only focus was on keeping rhythm as best you could. 

You felt that buildup deep in your gut again, and he could feel it too as you tightened around him. "Brava ragazza, you're doing so well," he cooed, nipping at your collar bones. "Much better to have the real thing, hm?" Your movements faltered, startled by his words. You tried to hide it, but nothing was missed by Terzo and you could tell by his sly smile. "It's okay, dolcezza, you can think of me when you touch yourself." He leaned closer to whisper in your ear. "I'm honored that you've already cum to the thought of me." 

You choked back a cry as your thighs shook, his filthy words having pushed you over the edge once again. He hissed as you came around him, grabbing your hips roughly to thrust one, two, three more times before spilling into you. You collapsed against his chest, his hot seed already leaking between your legs. 

You clung to each other as the rolling pleasure ebbed and flowed from you. Sathanas, you couldn't believe he could see through you that easily but… the fact he just knew was incredibly arousing. You would have jumped him again if you weren't so tired and it was already getting close to morning. 

Papa helped you up from the chair, directing you towards the bed. You looked up at him confused so he said, "I am not so cruel as to force you back to your room on such unsteady legs." Your face would've gone red again if you'd had the energy. 

He helped you into the bed and pulled you close, your back against his front. You briefly wondered what waking up with Papa would be like before finally letting yourself succumb to sleep, the dead vibrator back in your room completely forgotten about. 

[remidepointedulac]

remaking this post because I originally wrote it as a reply on someone’s post about how tme/tma are intersexist and I want to link to it without drawing attention to their blog.

The theory of trans-misogyny is actually already inclusive of intersex people. Julia Serano, the coiner of the term trans-misogyny, said this when going in depth about the term

As the term has caught on, transmisogyny has increasingly been used as shorthand for any prejudice expressed toward trans women, regardless of content. However, while trans women are certainly targets of transmisogyny, any person who is perceived as, or presumed to be, a feminine or feminized "male" may be subjected to these same derogatory, pathologizing, and sexualizing attitudes (albeit to varying extents). - (Source)

she also said

In the years since Whipping Girl was published, the term "trans-misogyny" has taken on a life of its own, and people now use it in ways that I never intended. Specifically, I used the term to describe how the existence of societal misogyny/traditional sexism greatly informs how people perceive, interpret, or treat gender-variant people who seemingly "want to be female" or "want to be feminine" (regardless of their actual identity). However, many people nowadays use the word "trans-misogyny" in an identity-based manner to refer to any and all forms of discrimination targeting trans women. According to this latter usage, some would argue that people who identify as men, or male crossdressers, or drag queens, cannot possibly experience trans-misogyny—a close reading of Whipping Girl will reveal that I very much disagree with this premise. (See Chapter 48 of this book for a detailed explanation regarding why identity-based views of marginalization tend to be inaccurate and exclusive.) - (Source)

Basically, the popular definition of the terms TMA and TME would be fully inclusive of intersex people if the definition of trans-misogyny TMA/TME went off of was the same as the original definition, instead of adding on the criteria that to experience transmisogyny you have to be AMAB and a trans woman/transfeminine person (although i’ve seen people say transfems who don’t ID as women are tme as well). I believe this is why Julia Serano herself doesn’t use the terms TME/TMA, the way most people use the terms are too different from her theory of trans-misogyny.

[genericpuff]

hello! ik this is a pretty weird question but regarding lore rekindled, do you plan on keeping the elements of sexual trauma, or are they removed entirely? just a genuine question ^^ feel free to ignore and i hope u have a good day!!!

Rekindled will not be including the SA plotline from LO. This is for a variety of reasons:

1.) The SA plotline wasn't originally present in the pilot version of LO and, throughout the comic, feels like a tacked on plotline that wasn't ever intended to be progressed or resolved properly. And that's a shame because the people who loved the premise of that plotline in the beginning (myself included) deserved better than that, which I'm sure is contradictory to my own reasoning to not try and do it better in LR, but that brings us to-

2.) I don't want to try and "fix" a plotline that could be very intrinsic to Rachel's own experiences. Though she's claimed in her interviews that her situation is "not the same as Persephone's", she has alluded to having her own experiences that she's had to identify and cope with and if the SA plotline in LO is meant to be a reflection of that, I want to respect that as something that just should not be touched.

3.) To go hand-in-hand with #2, that leaves my own personal reasoning beyond the objective: as an SA victim myself, LR doesn't feel like a story that I would want to write about such an experience through. I tackle those themes in my original work enough as it is and Rekindled has, by and large, been a wonderful break from writing through such a personal lens.

All that said, LR will involve plot beats regarding loss of autonomy that intersects with commonalities of SA trauma, they're just not exclusive or related to the SA plotline in LO. Persephone will still undergo her own character arc that may share elements with those of assault victims, it just won't be with Apollo as a perpetrator.

I hope that answers your question!!! I know there are mixed feelings regarding my decision to remove the SA plotline, but ultimately I did what I felt necessary to make for a better overall story, while still retaining themes and topics that we'll be tackling later that aim to better reflect the original source material - the myths themselves - off which both Rekindled and LO are based. Sorry if that's vague, I just don't want to spoil LMAO but rest assured, anything that broaches into more serious / mature / potentially triggering territory will be provided with content warnings ( ´ ▽ ` )

[indigosabyss]

not to go on another crossover brainrot. but consider. dr stone x jujutsu kaisen crossover, w the base premise of ryuusui and kento being cousins.

ikik nanami is a very common surname. but they also both have blond hair, brown(-ish) eyes, and pale skin. Nanami (Kento; sorry im more used to calling him Nanami 😭) also thinks a lot about money once he quits being a sorcerer. Which is obvs meant to talk about real world issues, but also would be in line with Nanami upbringing.

ok this got way longer than i thought, so read more for a major yap session.

Kento is also a really disciplined guy, which fits into the ideals of what the Nanami household wanted Ryuusui to be. Makes him fit perfectly into the Dr Stone world. (also we know ryuusui canonically has a bunch of cousins/siblings he doesn't talk about at all so there's precedent for the family connection too)

On the flipside, Ryuusui has learnt, through real world experience, that he can get anything he wants with enough hard work and money to pave the way. Except jujutsu sorcery. He'll never be capable of that, no matter how much he wants it.

In my mind, the two universes first intersect when Ryuusui sneaks into Jujutsu Tech to see Kento, some time in the guy's second year. Since both universes use the real world calendar, its easy to pinpoint Ryuusui as being eight years younger than Kento.

Nanami Conglomerate isn't a Jujutsu clan. They really are just a regular rich-ass family company, who had a sorcerer randomly. There's some discussion about that. A lot of "damn, nanami's loaded??? why tf can't he get a better hairstylist then" type of shenaniganry.

[Side plot: At that point, Ryuusui isn't the heir at all. (I think if you refuse to let your child into family photographs out of shame, then you are not leaving a trillion-yen company to him) so there's going to be some politicking about on Francois' end to make him heir, with the two cutting a deal for Francois to be his main assistant in everything if they get it done.]

Kento and Ryuusui's relationship is strained, bc Kento has been raised to keep his distance from the black sheep of the family - even tho all Ryuusui has done so far is mess around with the stock market a little bit, so Kento doesn't really get it and talks to him anyway sometimes.

To Ryuusui, however, Kento is like his third-favorite person. (First is Sai, second is Francois) bc his 7-3 ratio technique is very useful for model building and this boy has a talent for sniffing out gifts he can exploit.

So anyway, Sai is off being tutored in economics, moving up several grade levels above his age, and Ryuusui was stuck at the Naval Academy, so he sneaks out to get to Kento, who does not speak about his school and is understandably confused when Ryuusui sneaks in and is discovered by the students.

Gojo in particular is entertained bc at that age he hasn't interacted with many young children before, and he is considering adopting the Fushiguro kid, so he kinda wants to see what he's getting himself into.

Ryuusui is having the time of his life. Everyone treats him so nice! They listen to his stories about his regular life. And then have to take Nanami to the side and break it to him that the entire family was kind of purposefully neglecting these two kids. Which makes him rethink some things about his life and the structures he upholds.

Ryuusui really wants to be a sorcerer. But he can't. So of course he finds an S-tier scientist who may or may not be called Ishigami Senku to science out a solution for him.

Francois - even though I love them with my heart and soul - will also be non-sorcerer here. But armed with cursed tools to defend Ryuusui in case something goes bad on his adventures.

And on top of all that, in the horizon, there looms a Special Grade curse, almost primordial in its age and strength, capable of affecting the entire world in one fell swoop. The Medusa.

[ineffable-opinions]

Omegaverse BL - Japan (Part 1)

[This is a summary of these posts 1 , 2. Corrections and critiques are welcome.]

mibu no tsugai

Omegaverse, which was born in 2015, has become a large [BL sub-]genre with over 1000 works as of 2023.

Omegaverse basics

α/β/Ω settings – a setting wherein beings [usually humans] are divided primarily into male and female and secondarily into α, β, and Ω genders which has huge impacts on their lives. Secondary gender is determined through blood tests taken at school during childhood or adolescence. [While this is the basic premise, there is only one rule – every rule is to be bend and broken.]

α (Alpha) – occupies the highest echelon of this fictional setting. Comprised of talented elites. Male alphas [depending on the work may] have knot at the base of their penis.

β (Beta) – Ordinary. Largest in number. Doesn’t experience heats, release pheromones or have knot. Usually born of β parents.

Ω (Omega) - experience heats, release pheromones that seduces alpha and beta automatically. Both men and women can become pregnant during the heat cycle. Occupies lowest strata of society - below α or β.

Roots

Born in the west – from furry moe culuture that incorporated a now discarded theory of ranking in wolf packs.

Became popular in Japan around 2014. First appeared in derivative works, then in self-published works and finally in commercial BL.

commercial BL debut

“Omegaverse Project” published in March 2015 by Fusion Productions - a BL anthology specializing in Omegaverse.

terminology

pair – A setting-specific bonding established when α bites Ω's nape during coitus during omega’s heat period. Henceforth, paired Ω’s pheromones can only be smelt by his α. Usually lasting till death but if an α unilateral breaks it off, Ω’s health and life itself could be threatened. Sometime, Ω covers their nape with a choker to avoid unintentional pair. In some works, forming pair bond is viewed as destiny and in some others destined pairs exist.

heat - begins in the late teens. Roughly once every few months. Involves strong pheromones secretion and intense lust and desire to breed with heightened fertility almost guaranteeing pregnancy if contraceptives aren’t used. Fated encounters such as those of destined pairs can trigger heat.

heat suppressant – drugs to suppress heat/heat cycles. Some works involves inhibitors that offer complete or partial immunity for alphas from getting pulled into whirlpool of lust. There are individual differences when it comes to compatibility of drugs, and strong side effects may occur.

rut – (sometimes extreme) heats of α. Could be triggered by Ω pheromones and heat. Could be characterized by additional features such as aggression, heightened physical abilities and protectiveness especially towards Ω.

nesting - The act of unconsciously bringing the personal belongings of someone or someone you like into your bed to create your own nest.

bitching - gender change to Ω. Could be triggered by (prolonged) exposure to α pheromones, etc. Converting to α = studding; Converting to β = neutraling.

α or β→Ω: Bitching ビッチング

Ω or β→α: Studding スタディング

α or Ω→β: Neutering ニュータリング

(To read more about gender changes)

Everything associated with omegaverse vary from work to work.

-

α (seme) x Ω (uke) – royal road progression (odo) of omegaverse

Kono Te wo Hanasanai de by Sakimoto Saki

Kamisama Nanka Shinjinai Bokura no Eden by Ichinose Yuma

unconventional – works that overturn the premise

α・β×Ω Romantic Joutou by Moriyo

Ω×α Boku no High Spec Kareshi-sama by Yotsuashi

β×Ω City ​​Lights Birthday by Hongou Chika

α×α Bokura wa Unmei Janai by Binzoko Keima

α×? Kowamote no Rinjin ga Ω datta Toki no Taishohou by Nikuya Inui

(source)

Looking at popular works and what made them popular

Commercial BL manga - works listed in chil-chil.net

Commercial BL novel - works listed in chil-chil.net

2015 Dawn of the Commercial BL Omegaverse

Omegaverse Project – omegaverse as niche [sub-]genre. Therefore, what got published was also content did not conform to the mainstream:

 Romantic Joutou by Moriyo - β×Ω pairing

Sayonara Koibito, Mata Kite Tomodachi by Yoha – disturbing content including a violent r4pe.

Paradigm Shift by Pii - β becomes Ω

Content catering towards a niche audience.

The popularity of these three works mark a big turning point for omegaverse which from the onset was willing to go beyond the framework.

2016 Birth of popular series, popularization of Omegaverse

Kashikomarimashita, Destiny by Sachimo

Another masterpiece that not only soared to popularity but also became gateway for may new fans. Characteristics – setting akin to medieval Europe, α×β, fighting fate and instinct.

Tadaima Okaeri by Ichikawa Ichi

A slice of life BL that tipped its toe into severe social circumstances such as familiar disapproval surrounding marriage and discrimination based on secondary gender which probably struck too close to home for some reader’s comfort. In the same vein, Kurui Naku no wa Boku no Ban by Kusabi Keri depicted omega sacrificing his body for the sake of promotion. Another popular manga that catered to niche interest was Pendulum: Kemonohito Omegaverse by Hasumi Hana.

2017 the Year of KUSEGATSUYOI!

(クセが強い = unique)

The three highest rated works from this year are unique and pushes a bunch of boundaries.

Sayonara Alpha by Ichinashi Kimi – shota α in a fated mates/destined pair narrative

 Ai to Makoto by Moriyo – α・Ω×Ω 3P with twins (α & Ω). Moreover, Ω twin is riba.

Shounen no Kyoukai by Akabeko – looks like odo but is far from it.

Omegaverse seem to make a lot of unsual plotlines palatable – at least better than regular settings.

2018 Light-hearted comedic works trend

2018 witnessed a 180 degree turn in terms of what got really famous. It was a year of lighter works. Even the covers are lighter.

Kekkon Shite Kudasai! by Tsurugi Ichiro – unique Ω

Megumi to Tsugumi by SI Mitsuru

Both of them are comedies that would appeal even to those who are not necessarily into omegaverse.

Okusama wa Alpha by Natsushita Fuyu - α×α romantic comedy involving α uke struggling with gender roles while seeking professional help along with his husband and α pregnancy.

Gender doesn’t matter, what matters is you!

Omegaverse is finally a popular BL sub-genre.

2019 Finally! A Odo Work is the most popular

[I too am frankly surprised by how long it took for an odo omegaverse to become the most popular.] This is probably due to the expansion in readership base – as it is no longer a niche interest, expanded readership is probably most comfortable with works that are easy-to-understand odo omegaverse.

Kiraide Isasete by Hijiki

Anti Alpha by Okuda Waku

Both these works featured odo

Yukyu Omega by Fujimine Shiki – broke away from the popular imagination of a pitable Ω

2020 Speedy & Business Relationships

Meppou Yatara to Yowaki ni Kiss by Koshino – destined pair but not the type they are into

Unmei no Tsugai ga Omae da Nante by Haruta – mate finding service, a reflection of IRL dating apps

Maku ga Oritara Bokura wa Tsugai by Zarame Same

Are you really into me or just my body?

2021 Omegaverse as a habit of living things

Kamisama Nanka Shinjinai Bokura no Eden by Ichinose Yuma – depicts [what-if] first α and Ω characters ever.

Gochisou Ω wa Chuu to Naku by Hanasawa Namio – funny and heartwarming depiction of apex predator behavior paired with beastman omegaverse

2022 Omegaverse + A New World View

While in 2021 works that viewed α, Ω, and β as from a new perspective became popular, 2022 saw popularity moving to works with unique worldviews.

Ruby Red wo Kamikudaku by Saku Hiro – Ω can see pheromones.

Aijitsu to Hanayome by Nagisa Ayumu – sweet romance between God α x villager Ω in the backdrop of a setting wherein Ω are offered as sacrifice to God due to their lust-inducing nature.

Kono Te wo Hanasanai de by Sakimoto Saki – α×Ω odo omegaverse that depicts the burden associated with each [secondary] gender.

Omegaverse BL works that are popular range from those with classic progession (odo; royal road) to those with unique worldviews. This sub-genre with a premise rife with rigid class system and reinforced discriminations has become a sanctuary for narratives that emphasizes looking beyond gender.

(source)

PART 1 (you are here)

PART 2

[trulybetty]

Sunday | Week In Review VI

A bit of a slow week this week - nothing much really happened. Got some writing done, announced some things I'm working on and worked on my TBR list. Odd week as my notifications just disappeared and felt a little disconnected. Things seem to be back on track *fingers crossed* - so lets get on with this weeks review...

Truly Betty Updates This Week…

Strings Part V Mood Board

Salt Water Soft Launch

Autumnal Offerings

Fics I Enjoyed This Week…

How Good It Is (Benny Miller) by @wildemaven Fully on the Benny train, this scratched the itch this week with this delightfully wonderful piece of fluff with a delightful touch of spice and I can't wait to get more insights to this couple's relationship.

A Safe Haven Drabble (Joel Miller) by @darkroastjoel You don’t have to have read the series to appreciate the angst in this small little drabble that packs a punch. Explores Joel’s feelings on the impending arrival of Tommy’s child with the grief of missing Sarah and it manages to do it all in less than 600 words beautifully. 

Your Hand In Mine (Joel Miller) by @thelightsandtheroses This is a great opening to a new series and it's such a great opening premise that will have you wanting to find out what happens next and in eager anticipation of what is to come next.

Open Mic Night (Marcus Pike) by @secretelephanttattoo No denying it anymore, I’m ankle-deep in this Pike Puddle and this is an excellent example of what keeps me content with damp *ahem* feet… Are you one of those who forgot it's canon that Marcus was a part of a band? This one-shot is here to remind you with a bang!

Clouds (Joel Miller) by @softlyspector This is incredibly soft with a few hard edges - allusions to events from TLOU2, but no spoilers and no golfing. Highly recommend a read of this.

Little Monsters (Dieter Bravo) by @chronically-ghosted Dad Dieter was not the trope I thought I needed, but here we are and I can’t get enough. This is all what I picture Dieter as a father being like. This is equal parts fluff with equal parts spice which makes for a delightful read! 

For the Night (Agent Ortega) by @ladamedusoif I think the pilot hit the web for all of a couple of hours before we were blessed with this delight. As far as I am concerned this is what the pilot should have been, it’s deliciously raunchy and I may have read it several times. 

Delta Landscaping | Chapter 5 (Triple Frontier Boys) by @rhoorl I don’t know if I still have words for my thots feelings on this update to this series. So please accept this gif and go get caught up, and if you've not read it? What are you waiting for?

Spinning in the Rain (Frankie Morales) by @frenchiereading This is like the best kind of fluff, it's atmospheric, it's indulgent, it's sweet and it's Frankie - what more can you ask for? Oh, and it's based off a song that I already adored and this makes for one to go back to for re-read.

All I Need (Frankie Morales) by @frenchiereading Mel has such a way with these perfect snippets of fluff and romance that make your heart swell and this is another example of this. I can't do it justice, you just need to read it to experience it!

Exposed (Ezra) by @maggiemayhemnj This was a delightful debut and a great read that flowed just as well as Ezra's poetic prose, which Maggie manages to capture perfectly. If you are a fan of Prospect and Ezra, you will not be disappointed!

Personal Day (Marcus Pike) by @sin-djarin If I'm staying in the puddle, I'm going to make sure it's in good company with fanfics like this one! If Marcus Pike is going to ask me to come back to bed for five more minutes, who am I to deny the man?

Shared Breaths | Chapter 9 (Frankie Morales) by @frenchiereading It's a triple header here for @frenchiereading! The slow burn of the first eight chapters pays off with a bang here and, it does not disappoint! If you're late to the game like I am on this excellent story, I very much recommend jumping in because it does not disappoint!

Posts I Enjoyed This Week…

The thots were truly alive and well on this Narcos gifset. I don't think the image of this post is burned into the back of my eyelids. Also, might have prompted some non-Narcos writing somewhere in the WIP pile...

Thoughts on the contents of the Delta Landscaping Yelp page? We got you here!

@goodwithcheese's book recommendations! I'm off this week and hoping to get some reading done between parental activities.

Things I’ve Enjoyed This Week…

I got four episodes deep on Wrestlers, a Netflix original docu-series on OVW, a Wrestling farm out of Florida that was once where the WWE sent its superstars to cut their teeth before making their debut. I once upon a time was a big WWE fan, so this has been an interesting watch. I'd recommend it too even if you're not a wrestling fan as there are some interesting stories from both those who run it and those who live it.

This Week’s Song…

On a N'Sync kick this week with the rumours that they're going to be reuniting for more than just the Trolls 3 soundtrack/movie. I will be feral if the rumour of a reunion tour materializes!

Happy Sunday all! Here's to a great week ahead!

B 💕 x

[spontaneousglitterbees]

It's been mentioned that Kokichi has some phantom pains and he has clear mobility issues (love that btw as someone who uses a cane), so I was curious how the rest of the class is doing in that regard. Does Kaito ever struggle to breathe or have coughing fits? Do Rantaro and Angie get migraines?

[Talent Acquisition Pilot Program AU Masterpost]

This one. This one got away from me.

tl;dr: Absolutely, Anon, we are on very similar pages! This ask really got me thinking about how the whole TAPP!cast is doing fresh out of the Killing Game. Every student in Class 79 is going through something, about now, be it physical or mental; in fact, it’s usually both.

Also: for sure, I want to try and be relatively true-to-life with their struggles, especially Kokichi’s. I write from personal experience living with chronic pain, but haven’t used a cane before. Apologies if I miss the mark at any point.

Obligatory disclaimer: I am not a healthcare professional of any kind and the AU’s premise is largely sci-fi, so there may be inaccuracies. That said, I am fascinated with biomechanics and always looking to learn, so I’m trying to keep things at least semi-plausible.

Full spoilers for Danganronpa V3 (and some for the end of SDR2) ahead!

Very Long Loredump (~6.2k words) under the cut:

HOW COULD THIS HAPPEN?

Everyone is traumatized. That much is obvious, sure, but the Talent Acquisition Pilot Program (TAPP) is a virtual reality simulator based on the bones of the Neo World Program (NWP). In much the way SDR2’s NWP is purported to replicate death in the simulation in the players’ real bodies, the TAPP simulation is built to alter the brain chemistry of its participants. TAPP builds muscle memory and ‘burns’ new neural pathways to a participant’s Default Mode Network (DMN), a collective term for parts of the brain responsible for letting us “autopilot” common tasks like riding a bike or typing on a keyboard. The V3 cast’s experiences in the simulation impact their real bodies in a very literal sense to ‘speedrun’ them through orientation at Hope’s Peak and mainstream them in the curriculum as quickly as possible so its researchers can start collecting useful data on the merits of HPA for investors.

The problem is, nobody programming TAPP anticipated they would start killing each other.

Class 79 were the first human test subjects for the program with zero peer review or board approval, of course, because HPA is morally dubious and can pass off “dude, trust me” as genuine credentials to several world governments. Even if this massive oversight was not noticed until after the fact, V1 of TAPP did at least include one quasi-safety feature: if any player became “significantly injured”, that player would be ejected from the simulation. Everyone else would be locked in the simulation (in case one of them was involved and tried to evade consequences) until an administrator could come and manually assess the situation. In theory, the physically-unharmed student could rejoin the simulation once the conflict was resolved.

But TAPP was built to write data to the brain. It was not built to identify what data it’s actually writing, and cannot differentiate between playing the piano and getting smashed in a hydraulic press. Data is data.

It does not help that Team Danganronpa (the group of Reserve Course kids, including Tsumugi) are foolish teenagers entirely unaware of this, assuming that “none of it is real, so none of it will actually matter! we’re just scaring them!” While skimming through the code and thoroughly Knowing Not What They Do, they manage to remove any defined cap for what constitutes ‘significant injury’ before player ejection. The only flag that can set it off is a lack of any other player flags. Virtual death.

This is where Rantaro earns the title of “Ultimate Survivor”. The shotput ball put him down too quickly for the damage to be fully reflected in his physical body, so he managed to get ejected with post-concussive symptoms, short-term memory issues, and persistent migraines instead of fully dying. Were his method of death much slower, he’d likely have been screwed (and wouldn’t have Komaeda’s luck cycle to save him).

Time scales differently in TAPP than in the physical world; while Rantaro’s been at the virtual Academy for several days, the students have been strapped in their pods for a few hours at most. Between the Responsible Older Sibling Energy seared over the person he may have been before and an extant knack for escape room puzzles, Amami is The Man with the skills and motivation to call in backup.

It’s a good thing he did, too! Their “observer”, having tired of watching a bunch of students play the piano and run around outside, only figures out something has gone horribly wrong the moment Rantaro practically busts down the door. The next tense hour-plus is spent doing damage control and imposing limits on the code of the simulation to prevent TAPP from letting the students actually die. Unfortunately, the TDR kids and their takeover took a sizeable chunk out of the spaghetti code holding the whole thing together in their haste. TDR, with proposed talents like Ultimate Cosplayer on their side, are primarily concerned with artistry and are only competent-enough programmers. As a result, there is no obvious way to manually override the lock completely and just let the students out without significant defragging, even as TDR members are still actively messing with the code, and who knows how long that will take. (About 6-ish chapters)

Instead, for now, they’ll have to settle for putting as many programming-adjacent talents as possible on the case and exploit a loophole that panicking overseer managed to write: if the remaining students are systematically ejected, the program will bypass the lock and let them out. During the rescue operation, the main objective is first to minimize the physical damage TAPP can inflict by lowering the tolerance required to eject the students (which is easier said than done) and by dampening its neural-carving functions, then to get everyone left out of there.

It is a very good thing they sprung into action as quickly as they did, as it doesn’t take long for Kaede to arrive.

KAEDE

The first thing Kaede notices coming out of the simulation is that she can’t hum the notes to get back on-pitch after the worst rendition of Der Flohwalzer she has ever heard. The second thing she notices, because it is far easier to be angry about something trivial than face the slow-dawning realization you are having, is that she can only barely speak. It hurts.

I think Kaede learns to sign early on, but still finds herself trying to speak aloud anyway since she’s so used to having her hands busy already playing piano. Shuichi often reminds her to take it easy, treat it like a vocal rest, and steadily she begins to improve. She is as exuberant as ever, with determination fitting of our protagonist. Kaede is the Class 79 representative, though with his renewed confidence Shuichi often accompanies her. Not only are they best friends (though it is strange, at first, to see her alive after spending so long grieving. Kaede last saw him, like, yesterday.) and Kaede will inevitably tell Shuichi all about the meeting anyway so why not cut out the middle man,  but Shuichi initially came specifically to speak at meetings so Kaede wouldn’t strain her voice. She is immensely proud.

RANTARO (PT. 2)

Rantaro doesn’t hold the shotput ball against her; desperate times, and all. It made sense her proactive attitude would make her first to act for the ‘greater good’. She aimed to end the whole thing, not just comply. Even if she swung and missed, he (an older brother with faint recollections of failing to protect the people depending on him and guilt knowing he doesn’t have the stomach to take a victim and thus will be failing people in need of protection again) can’t fault her for swinging. She is confused when he asks her how she launched the ball that hard, though. Odd.

TENKO

Tenko has neck pain issues like Kaede, but hers are more acute. The seesaw effect was heinous but relatively precise; as the magnum opus of TDR’s homebrewed serial killer, they un/fortunately made him pretty good at it when he has a plan. Tenko has some of the least devastating lingering physical injuries of the class. Given the severity of her classmates’ injuries, though, that still leaves her with minor vocal strain, susceptibility to sore throats, and severe neck pain, among other things.

A lot of Tenko’s lingering trauma is mental: she isn’t quite as willing to immediately throw herself into the fray to help her friends, and certainly doesn’t want to leave her back exposed (a tendency she shares with Kokichi, of all people). While it did numbers on her perception of men again for a while, hearing about the trial left her with a lot to reconcile. In a ‘cool-motive-still-murder’ way, she does not forgive Kiyo (nor is she obligated to) but doesn’t hate him as much as she expected, either. Processing the idea that a girl could be horribly abusive, especially to a guy, and catalyze a cycle of violence… gets to her. She’s more wrapped up in the tragedy of the entire situation than the righteous indignation that’d fueled her for so long. Everybody lost that day.

She’s pleasantly surprised to see Himiko trying to lift her spirits now. Those two have a lot to talk about and boundaries to set, yes, but Tenko is still touched Himiko took her words to heart and seems to be benefiting from it.

ANGIE

Angie had bit more complicated situation than Tenko, getting KO’d before the fatal blow. Her migraines come on more often than Rantaro’s with high light, which is a special kind of awful for the SHSL Artist, but they’re generally closer to a dull ache. Once she gets going on a project she sets out to grin and bear it; Tenko and Himiko often check up on her. She does her best to stay just as upbeat as in the simulation, and if anything it seems more genuine now. She can actually relax, rather than mind-game her way to relative (unsteady) peace under duress.

(Angie is really interesting to me for many adjacent reasons to Kokichi, since they’re both willing to get morally gray and manipulative if it’ll keep everyone from killing each other. Angie-Kokichi compare contrast essay when?)

She hasn’t “forgiven” Kiyo either, but isn’t hostile while she evaluates whether or not his conviction in getting help and being better is genuine. She was pretty heavily affected by TDR’s “character rewrites” as well, after all, and empathizes with the feeling you’ve been used as a glorified dress-up doll. To some unknowable extent, she is a different person now, and it is frightening.

She’s trying to step back and re-analyze her sense of spirituality, particularly how it relates to her art. It’s existentially harrowing, having been made to toe the line between faith and fronting to either get people to either listen to her or not see her as a threat. She’s not even positive “Kami-sama” (not going with the localization here, my understanding is the Japanese version was deliberately more generic and at least a bit less disrespectful towards real people and their beliefs) is the same deity she’d believed in before TAPP, but it’s difficult to try and reconnect with your roots when none of you have any information on your previous lives.

They do, at least, have a resident anthropologist that might have a clue how to even start looking.

Hah. They sure do, huh.

I think Angie is the type to nominally forgive and never, ever forget. She holds the kind of grudge that lives beyond logic as all the compartmentalized emotions you don’t want to admit you have. A grudge that co-exists with an active desire to move on and seeps into her art.

KOREKIYO

Kiyo got burned.

Alive.

Also dead, somehow, an extension of the Ultimate Placebo Effect we have going on in the simulation; Kiyo was so certain ghosts were real and he’d be one that, through earnest conviction, the simulation made it so. I think this is how Komaeda’s luck works in SDR2 as well; the original Neo World Program was developed for therapy, and in doing so assesses whether or not it would be completely devastating (do more harm than good) to actively disprove something about the patient’s worldview at that time and adapts the environment accordingly. Hence you get a reality-warping luck cycle and ghosts are Definitely Real. Is either true in the outside world? No idea! Komaru talks to a ghost in UDG, once, but considering it’s unclear if Kiyo’s sister was ever a living person to begin with there are bigger fish to fry.

Or not. He’s pretty damn-well aware much that hurts. Or at least being boiled and seasoned does. Going by that kind of simulator-logic, I think in a technical sense it was the salt that killed him, not the torture. There’s probably something to unpack there I haven’t fully explored yet.

Rumors start going around campus that Kiyo is a vampire. It makes enough sense for watercooler gossip, the mask covering up fangs and an aversion to lingering out in the sun; Class 79 knows it’s actually because sunburn, for him, is a new brand of Unfun. He prefers to hole up in the library or his lab anyway, so it could be worse. He’s honestly kind of into becoming a school cryptid. It helps transition him from “avoiding my classmates and other people because they hate me, i also hate me, and we are all correct to do so. i am an extension of her so it does not matter what i want” towards “i am not my past, i cannot make up for what ive done but i can move forward and be better, i am forging a new self and it is mine this time and it always should have been”.

(Kokichi is particularly proud of having kickstarted the cryptid thing. Of course Shinguji would love to watch the evolution of new local lore in real time! Now he doesn’t mope in the corner half as much. He’s still in the corner, granted, but its probably reading while Rantaro sits next to him on his phone instead of moping!)

Kiyo’s also in therapy now. They all have therapy scheduled into their school weeks, but Kiyo has a session besides. Fabrication or not, everyone’s backstories are functionally now ‘real’ and need to be dealt with. Kiyo, Maki, and Kokichi got hit particularly hard on that front. Those scars run deep, but are starting to heal.

Of the students with whole-body injuries, Kiyo probably has the most manageable physical symptoms at this stage. He has to have long sleeves and generally keep as covered as he can so that he can subdue the part of his mind that expects the skin is still raw and flaking (it isn’t, but phantom sensations suck). Overheating pushes him toward a panic state like the end of his trial, which doesn’t exactly gel with the first point, but he’s working on it. Rantaro and Kokichi, occasionally Shuichi, tend to notice and start to defuse the situation. Part of me wonders if he’d have a black lace parasol on sunny days to lean in to the ‘mystery’ around him, plus for the sheer Aesthetic of it.

KIRUMI

Speaking of full-body injuries: Kirumi. She has similar ‘got-to-keep-covered’ issues to Kiyo, particularly wearing heavier work gloves now just to minimize any potential for cuts (and, in the back of her mind, ropeburn). Breaking several bones on impact was rough, though fast enough that she’s had remarkable improvement in a relatively short period of time. She started out on crutches, which made it difficult for her to keep up with her workaholic inclinations, but unlike some of the other students she has at least an idea of “when to quit” as not to make things worse. She’s still genuinely lost some bone density resulting from her treatment and coping methods, finding that she really does need to lean on her friends on occasion, but she is still resolute she is a care-giver, damn it. On both physical and mental fronts she’s dealing with reclaiming her agency and independence.

Kirumi is one of the few, with Maki, whose talent courses actively discourage the kinds of behavior they need for personal growth and mental health maintenance. Kirumi is still reconciling her “rewrite”, the encoded passivity in her and clash of her “selfless devotion” against her own will to live and thrive, a nightmarish reminder that You Are Not Your Own. The “Ultimate” maid needs to be agreeable, to follow orders, and hasn’t the tampering just improved her proficiency at her craft? Why be so upset? Never mind having to reconstruct her proper ability to tell people “no”, having to re-learn it’s okay to do things for yourself; according to her programmed instinct, her classes, those very things are antithetical to her talent. And everything relies on that talent, doesn’t it?

Kirumi and Kokichi are the two in Class 79 who were discharged with mobility devices that got students in the other classes… more than mildly concerned about what the hell happened to all of these freshmen (well, first year at HPA anyway), but luckily for HPA administration they’re also probably the two people least likely to offer details.

THE RIBS

There are enough students who have chest pain and associated issues that they made a club about it. It started out as Miu, Ryoma, and Kaito all independently concluding there was no way in hell they were making it through a mile run and sitting on the bleachers. Once they’d had an opportunity to gather themselves again, they do as teens are wont to do and started talking to each other. Hypoxia is an oddly effective experience to bond over. They call themselves the RIBs, standing for “Respiratory-Issue Beleaguered” (students), mostly because it made Miu laugh and for as irritating as the sound could be they’d missed it.

Kaede, Tenko, Gonta, and Kokichi also stop by from time-to-time, meaning precisely half of the 14 active Class 79 students revolving-door through this unofficial student group. HPA took notice. Class 79 has its own gym class, now, taking into account the state of everyone. One could argue that should have been the case from the onset. They would be correct.

RYOMA

Ryoma is fairly elusive. He generally keeps to himself and remains a Fairly Chill Guy with a cool temperament everyone wants to emulate (he doesn’t see what they see in him) and some Complicated Feelings now knowing he hasn’t killed anyone in the certified Real World and, by logic, should not have to have the memories of a hardened prisoner. He still does.  The persistent rasp in his voice now surprises nobody, but it took a few days for everyone in the class to stop flinching a little hearing it. He frequently hangs out in the animal shed with Gonta, Gundham, and Peko to take care of the cats.

MIU

We’ve seen quite a bit of Miu in the AU so far, but to recap a lot of her deal:

She loathes having to “take it easy” but will do so reluctantly

She tries to talk less to stretch out her working time as much as she can (even if she can’t resist just a little banter when Kokichi swings by)

She’s trying to approach her death with a sense of humor. A choker with a huge heart-shaped buckle replaces her usual necklaces with full awareness of the irony. Ha-ha, a choker. It’s a dare for anybody to bring it up, ‘I’ve said it before anyone else could’. The first thing she did waking up was try and make an autoerotic asphyxiation joke. It did not make her feel better like she thought it would.

Miu spends most of her time in her lab, now. Granted, she did that already, but she’s particularly fixated on re-creating a certain Ultimate Robot, ground-up if she has to. Fortunately, she has a team assembled (re: two upperclassmen and the Ultimate Supreme Shit-for-brains). We’ll see how this pans out soon enough.

When not re-building Kiibo outright, she ““takes a break”” innovating in other areas (re: prototyping potential features for kIIbo, usually testing them on a bored Kokichi. He usually complies because Miu is one of the few who doesn’t look at him with a patronizing amount of pity she’s Not boring. Mm-hmm. All there is to it.)

Miu does not resent Gonta (or Kokichi, for that matter) for killing her. There's a small extent to which she's a little relieved she was stopped from going through with her plan to kill Kokichi, and a much bigger disconnect between her idea of reality and her memory of Chapter 4. Miu died in a VR game within another VR game. Having messed around with the programming and guts of the nested simulation personally, it still seems fake. She didn't really die, no matter how real it felt; they were in a simulation. Logically, she's well aware of how it works and the consequences, but it doesn't feel like it was more than a glorified fever dream on an emotional level. Both Gonta and Kokichi are more outwardly traumatized by her death than Miu as a byproduct of how she's processing it. She's not "better off" or "less impacted" so much as "disassociated from the whole thing and very much wanting to put it behind them before it catches up with her", thus burying herself in work and trying as hard as she can to bring back the one person she wants to comfort her.

Kiibo's absence is not great for her abandonment issues. It is hard to blame him when he never had a physical body to begin with, though. 

GONTA

Gonta is also with the RIBs, and reeling from it the most visibly of everyone on account of just how. Much, his death was. An allergic reaction blocking off the air, puncturing at least one lung for certain, and living long enough to feel the shrapnel of the laptop lodge into the wound alongside the scythe, the fire quickly eating away any oxygen, any hope of gasping another breath… yeah no he acts as much the gentleman as ever but he is not okay. As Resident Buff Nature Boy Gonta tanked it better than anyone else in the class could have, but the sheer excess of the thing gets to him. Fond memories of setting a campfire in the woods with his adoptive family are overwritten, vespidae in general… hitting differently. But Gonta is kind, to a fault. More resolute than ever to make himself into a kind of person not perceived as ‘too intimidating’ to be friends with, acknowledging the capacity he has for violence is difficult. Somewhere deep down he knows that everybody does, especially in their circumstances, but still acts as though his case is exceptionally bad (nobody else does. This does not deter him, becoming a little less gullible when its least helpful).

He is also not as disconcerted by the occasional spontaneous sensation that your insides are going to lose structural integrity, even with no stitches to pop, that with only the damaged wake and no piercing sharp pain to focus on and blame for the mess could potentially be perceived as a bizarre, abstracted kind of crawling feeling from the inside-out. Things in motion, displaced from where they are meant to be. He knows it isn’t bugs, isn’t glass and metal and plastic, that it isn’t anything but himself. A teeny-tiny part of him wishes it were. At least being shelter for a hive of some sort would be helpful. Aren’t gentlemen helpful, they improve life for people, make things better and how could anyone even look at you again knowing what you’re capable of, who in their right mind would talk to you, you’re going to end up alone again talking to stray cats in the alley since not even the wolves would stay—

Gonta also has extra therapy. He already had to work out self-worth issues, but the game pushed them to interfere too much in daily life not to actively work on.

KAITO

Kaito has made several background and supporting appearances without much central attention just yet. It's not that I don't like him or anything (I do!) but I guess because it seems like well-worn territory in V3 fic to me? Kaito is endlessly proud of Maki and Shuichi (Himiko too, less personally) for "winning" in the face of the killing game, and the training trio of them meet back up again regularly. Only.

It's different, now. 

He's no longer sick and dying, but his lungs 'top out' at a certain level of activity and refuse to take in more air, this burning sensation that leaves him only able to huff and wheeze and brings his training regiment to a dead stop. He treasures those last moments in his failed execution where he got to see the stars, because a lingering anxiety in the back of his mind won't let him forget that he never will again. Not the way he'd dreamed of, the way he'd planned to, the way he'd centered his identity around. There is no way, as things are, that he will pass all the physical exams to become a proper astronaut. 

The drawn-out deterioration of his health during the simulation chipped away at his physical lungs at a rate too gradual for the countermeasures the rescue team implemented; TAPP did more overt physical damage to Kaito than anyone else. It could certainly be worse and he is gradually improving, but some degree of it is permanent. It haunts him. He's trying not to think about it.

It does, though, drive a wedge between him and his sidekicks; the survivors are planning their futures, and Kaito is not too far from a slight tailspin without any idea what his might look like for the first time he can recall. Space has been the dream since he was a kid (as has getting there in this specific role) and it almost feels like a rejection. Like he got too cocky, and the cosmos decided it didn't want him. 

It starts to make a little more sense, then, that he starts willingly hanging out with Kokichi. They went through the hangar together, of course, but even besides the traumabond (and a need to, after he woke from his coma, make sure the little brat is still alive, damn it, you can't run away anymore it counts now) but. If anyone else gets having such drastically shifted circumstances that life as you'd imagined it no longer makes logistical sense, it's probably the leader without an organization. There's no need to explain the feelings of inadequacy, or the aimlessness, going through the motions of classes and formal education because what the hell else am I going to do, right now? It's familiar. 

Kokichi needs someone willing to chase him, no matter how circuitous the route becomes. Kaito needs someone willing to shake him by the shoulders and snap him out of his own head, so sure it's all-or-nothing and that if he can't be the Luminary as he'd dreamed of it whatever happens next is immaterial in comparison. Kaito needs to adapt and roll with the punches, Kokichi needs to double back from his logical leaps from point A to point Q and articulate his thoughts clearly to other people (at least some of the time.) The two of them concoct little daily and weekly rituals, like Kokichi stealing Kaito's notebook and drawing in it, just because the consistency of company reminds them both that they aren't the only one going through this. 

None of the other students quite get it, but have come to accept it.

KOKICHI

Then there’s Kokichi.

Ah, Kokichi, whose whole deal in this scenario inspired me to write about this AU at all (and who manages to weasel his way into every comic and a other entries in these notes) . I’m biased, I know, but there are also a few reasons he’s singled out in-universe as well:

A) So a hydraulic press does not slam down quickly. The pause-and-play of the video deliberately makes it look much faster than it was; watching enough of the hydraulic press channel makes it abundantly clear that it was not instant. Kokichi was impaled with two crossbow bolts (the one in the back being bad enough already), poisoned by those bolts, and then pressed. He had to have felt non-zero of the Pressing, which, considering it already had to be agony before bones started breaking… the rest of the class might not have been fond of him, sure, but he’s right there with Gonta on “sheer level of excess.” Not even Maki is at a point of wishing that on him. Not after finding out how drawn out and excruciating it was. Veering into headcanon, I’m going to add “sleep deprivation” on the pile as exacerbating the whole thing, given his conspiracy whiteboard and everything after the concussion, honestly.

Combined with the World’s Worst Placebo Effect, King Horse takes the crown for top “my entire body hurts most of the time” severity. It’s not a desirable one, but when your previous life is all but erased there is exactly one choice available between Big and Home. Let it be said Kokichi Ouma has never half-assed anything he’s set his mind to, ever.

B) Ouma is paranoid and distrusting, which adds the psychological angle of “you literally shot me in the back” to a poison-laced crossbow bolt in his mind. TAPP will very literally never let him forget the bolt burying itself in the muscle of his back, barely kept from severing his spinal cord; he won’t forget the shivering and shaking from the poison, or the bile rising in the back of his throat handing Kaito the antidote. (He still wanted to live. He forfeit the right, he thought, after getting Gonta and Miu killed, but he still wanted to. That was all the more reason to quadruple-down on the press idea and making their three deaths mean something, damn it. Three, because Kaito could live. If the killing game ends there is no execution. It’ll be over. Can’t take back the past, but at least one of the pair of you has to walk out of this forsaken place!)

(… Can you really believe that? Or is it just another lie.

A lie you want, with all the heart they’re so sure you do not have, to blithely believe. There has to be a cure for whatever the hell has gotten into Kaito once the game ends and they can look for it, it might even stop cold the moment the game ends. That dumbass space cadet can go back to his sidekicks and he better appreciate it, the comradery you’ll never have, because he is the designated Hero and Heroes get happy endings. You want-want-want-want to trust in that lie, to trust him with the collected thoughts and notes and pieces of you spilled across reams of paper that have been so pointlessly important for you to keep secret this whole time. For once in your life, you want to believe you will not be betrayed. You want to believe in the closest thing you have left to a friend.

It will, in fact, be the last thing you do.)

C) Ouma is paranoid and distrusting. Again. Only this flavor has more to do with his persistent denial anything is wrong, in turn making things a lot worse for himself. Mental trauma and impressions of physical sensations can have physical effects. Clinging to his persona and trying to keep bouncing around like nothing ever happened turned a very difficult but potentially manageable condition into small amounts of permanent nerve damage within the first day of waking up. It screws with his coordination; just what he needed at a school that prizes talent above all else, when he is a leader with no organization and proficiencies in sleight of hand, forgery, lockpicking, and generally evading anything that might threaten him because he can’t take very many hits.

Whoops.

D) Kokichi was last of the class to wake up from the simulation, even after the survivors. They thought he was actually dead for a bit. Just when they were thinking of  giving up on him Kokichi Ouma, SHSL Stubborn Son of a Bitch, refuses to stay down for the count.

HPA already knew Class 79 would need accommodations on account of their negligence, but it became much harder to sweep things under the rug when they thought they’d actually killed a student. Even worse, thirteen witnesses have been actively fraternizing and scaled the flashback-gaslighting required to cover it up to easily exceed what their current technology is capable of.

Half the class was positive Ouma was playing dead specifically to fuck with them and light the fire under them to act. He and Kaito are the only ones to know without a shred of doubt that he was not. He still gladly takes the credit, though.

E) Class 79 as a whole already adapted to Ouma Being Ouma, so when the definition of ‘Being Ouma’ expanded he’s still pretty distinct. He hangs out around the people closest to him often, particularly Miu, Kaito, and Rantaro, but the entire class knows now that he’s pretty much beyond the point of perfidy. Even if he were to lie about being in more pain than he is at a given moment, there’s constantly enough underlying truth in how vulnerable he is that it’s not strategically worth trying to use as a manipulative tactic. It’s too real. Plus, he knows better than to boy-that-cried-wolf his way out of help from his classmates after getting lost on campus once and fainting before he found his way back.

K1-B0

K1-B0, as far as has been established, is being re/built. Miu is spearheading the project. Presumably, he is currently hanging out on at least one computer in the school, somewhere. Per the AU, though, Chapter 6 did go a bit differently than canon, so we’ll catch up with him soon.

TSUMUGI

Nobody is exactly certain what happened to Shirogane. Or, at the very least, nobody in the class knows. Admin is certainly not about to tell them. Wouldn’t it be just like the Ultimate Cosplayer to Theseus her way back into their lives following a single loose thread…

THE SURVIVORS

Shuichi, Maki, and Himiko each emerged from the simulation minimally physically harmed in a lasting sense beyond initial fatigue from being hooked up for so long. Each is still moving forward on their established character arc: Himiko is finding her motivation, Maki is learning to open up, and Shuichi is becoming more sure of himself and his detective abilities.

I think Himiko begins embracing the 'stage' side of her magic, considering that TAPP was blocking my mana, and you know what? I survived a killing game, and I didn't even need it. What else can I do without my mana? As time goes on, she'll likely value her own practical skills more rather than relying on her want of more fantastical powers. Not to say she'd disown them, but more that she could admit to herself it's more for fun than a need to affix something exceptional to her identity. She is enough as she is.

Maki enters HPA and immediately requests transfer out of 'Ultimate Assassin' classes. She hates fighting, per canon, and after going through the simulation she is no longer afraid of any authority figure that may deny her because she has certifiably seen worse. She initially tries to pivot and become the Ultimate Child Caregiver, for Real This Time; she is genuinely pretty good with kids. After a little incident nearly choking Kokichi, though? It confirms what she'd been afraid of all along: her patience is too thin, her instinct to defend too heavy on the trigger. She talks to Peko about it, among other people, Mukuro and Sakura chief among the other classes. She'd made their acquaintances during combat training in the first few days at HPA. She especially confides in Kaede, who carries a more-domestic-less-battlescorn perspective on it she can't help but appreciate. Kaede takes her to not-Claire's, playing with accessories and make-up and generally reclaiming some of the girlhood Maki has effectively never been allowed to have. In the whole process, Maki realizes she wants more than anything to protect the ability to have that kind of frivolity, that freedom: she changes tracks again, to become a SHSL Bodyguard.

Shuichi is a difficult one to place for me, exactly. He's in a state of becoming significantly more confident in the wake of the simulation, but the deviation from canon has turned the main conflict away from ending a destructive cycle and towards fighting the idea of predetermination by an external force. Shirogane was predetermined to stay in the Reserve Course despite her skills and aspirations, and railed against it; Kiibo was predetermined to be an AI helper and not a person, but embraced the role so hard he developed a soul of his own; Maki denies her talent and changes her destiny, Himiko embraces hers.

I suppose Saihara must fall somewhere in the middle, then. An observer steadfastly declaring that yes, there were aspects of life shaped for them beyond their control (entry into the simulation if they wanted a taste of success, the killing game, the "character rewrites" overriding the people they were before...) and yes they cannot control everything. What happened has happened. There are always going to be things you can't control (like how severely you burn in the sun, or whether you get headaches with the lights up too high, or even if your dream life rockets away too fast for you to catch unless you want to lose what you still have) but you can adapt to it. It's tempting to give in, to consider it all a lost cause, to submit to the forces you feel are puppeting you, but see. You keep living anyway, because you have to. The only way forward is through. Even if you were a puppet, you're still an independent you, and that means something. Maybe you can't snap your strings, but you can sure as hell stretch them out and bend them in a way you like better than this one.

Not having total control doesn't mean the control you do have doesn't matter.

So Shuichi is taking up cases as a detective, now. Seeing how he likes it. If not? Well. Skills are transferable. 

He'll be okay.

They all will.

----

(The first screenshot I took of this ask to begin drafting vs. the last one:

I'm sorry I am bad at timely responses but I hope they are Good.)

[ihonestlydunnowhattocallmyself]

A recommendation of Undead Unluck

I'll be completely frank with you. By binge reading all of the manga I have come to the conclusion that it is my fourth favorite manga. Yet, for all the good will I hold for it, I can't earnestly recommend the first few chapters to anyone. Not because of its weird premise or that its just my trash taste that has made me love it. No.

The starting chapters are just very problematic with just this weird sexual undertone between the two main characters, the titular Undead Unluck. It makes it just extremely hard to get into if you don't know what it becomes. It may start out as such but in a very short time-span it metamorphosis into something completely different and completely different. This change is comparable to a persons complete personality shifting from something that just feels off at a lot of times to something I can say wholeheartedly is beautiful. Which is what makes the initial chapters so sad in contrast with the rest of the story. It is what keeps this series from getting a 10/10 for me.

With this I conclude my initial disclaimer.

And if you have read so far,

I WHOLEHEARTEDLY RECOMMEND IT THE REST OF IT.

While its beginning is definitely problematic it really drops those undertones quick which lets the story keep chugging along. I would however completely recommending skipping the problematic beginning. While it has a lot of vital info I do feel like you can read ahead since it still changes massively enough to the point where it isn't really needed and you can simply understand whats going on from starting at that point. The chapter I suggest you start at is chapter 9.

I can also give a summary if you wish. It is in the following paragraph

So basically in this world that can negate a specific concept. This ability is based around their interpretation of said negated concept. This gives it a specific condition for activation. The simplest way to explain this is an ability that is based around the characters interpretation of it that is molded by their experiences with it. The current user of the ability Unluck is Fuuko. As implied the ability lets her give people bad luck. This is activated when people come into contact with her. This leads her to accidentally killing her parents. This leads to her becoming a NEET who's scared of touching literally anyone. This leads her to try to commit suicide by jumping onto an oncoming train from above a bridge. That's when Andy, the user of Undead comes in. As implied by the name he literally can't die and can regenerate from anything. Think Wolverine but able to use the fact that he ca practically regenerate as a weapon in of itself. He tries to die with her unluck. He escapes because of his regenerative abilities. Then there are a few shenanigans before he cuts her hair as he was once a barber. However there touching moment is interrupted when a seemingly evil organization called UNION attacks. They are able to of course beat them back. Andy explains that they've been chasing them for a long time and even trapped and experimented on him 50 years ago. Of course he broke out and he has been pursued ever since. Then they are once again found by Union. 2 of its top brass are sent after them. They kill one of the guys while the other guy, Shen says that he can recommend them in. They only need two empty seats to fill. By killing the other guy they've successfully emptied one and just need to kill another member. He gives them the place where they can find said member. So they go and kill her too.

This is an extreme over simplification of what happens and I'd say at a certain point you should probably come back to read these chapters as they are somewhat re-contextualized later on. You likely will know when to read them but if you want a hint there are two major turns in the middle portion. Probably go back when the second turn happens.

Now with the summary and disclaimer out of the way I think I may start of with the main appeal of the story.

For one I love how it develops the main duo as you often don't see much romance in shounen. And usually it is a side-plot. And while I've never been a fan of romance myself I do thing with the exception of the first few chapters, Undead Unluck handles that aspect of it pretty exceptionally. I feel like Fuuko and Andy gain more chemistry as the story goes on. It in my opinion happens very naturally and is shown to be mutually beneficial. While they certainly can operate individually and be effective, by working together their power is bolstered and they are more effective.

Beyond just this main pairing love is a recurring theme within the cast. So even if you don't like the main characters there are always other pairings for you to ship.

Beyond just this its just really fun from start to finish. It has a really nice adventure aspect where it can feel monster of the week at times. And even then the plot is able to progress. This helps make even less consequential arcs feel engaging as its always going somewhere.

I also really like how specific arcs can pay attention and really help develop the specific characters that become the focus in them. It really helps make the cast feel more well rounded and likeable. I think this aspect of the manga really shines in the sixth arc as it in my opinion gracefully shifts focus to a completely new character and fleshes them out to a great extent. I also like how with each re-appearance we learn more and more about the villains and their motivations.

If there was anything I didn't particularly like about Undead Unluck I'd have to say that its fast pace is a double edged sword as I wished some arcs took some more time to develop the characters as they are all just so interesting. But the plot is always progressing so it feels like no time is lost.

In all, I think its a series worth reading.

[fish-bowl-2]

Hiya! B F I M P R (:

hiii >:3

B. Any of your stories inspired by personal experience? A LOT lol. I am super super guilty of projecting with these guys. I do it with a lot of my writing though, both fan work and original. I think it is kind of unavoidable. To give a specific example, in YKISBLS, the whole section where Edd starts to blame himself for making Eddy upset with him, and this snowballs into him feeling like he's ruined their friendship, is based off of very similar situations I've experienced when I was around the same age. Social interaction, even among friends, was really difficult for me, and I regularly pointed fingers at myself for being the problem even if it was not necessarily the case. I was one of those annoying kids who would ask my friends "do you hate me? Ok, but what are things you don't like about me so I can fix them." I don't think it is far-fetched to think Edd would be guilty of this as well.

F. Share a snippet from one of your favorite dialogue scenes you’ve written and explain why you’re proud of it.

Edd came to a sputtering halt as he considered the statement. “I couldn’t do that. It would be so rude.” He said. “Besides, I mean, you called me a pussy.” the last word fell off in an inaudible whisper.

“So?”

“So, I don’t think anyone appreciates being called that!” 

“You’re such a drama queen.” 

“Whatever, this is not about that. This is about you forcing me, yet again, to come to the rescue when you can’t do something yourself. You’re always doing that to me and Ed.”

“I do not,” said Eddy. 

“You do too! You drag us into things all the time and then refuse to take accountability.”

“Would you drop it? I’m trying to watch.” 

“There you go again! You never want to talk about it.” 

“‘Cause you’re so annoying about everything!” 

Edd flinched at the term, speaking through gritted teeth. “I am not!” 

“Yeah you are.” 

“You’re just saying that because you know I’m right.” 

“See, that’s what I mean,” Eddy pointed defiantly, “acting all ‘high and mighty’ about everything. You do that all the time now and it’s so annoying! Can’t you just go back to being good at shutting up?” 

Edd stared motionless, arms crossed tightly. Eddy glared back, daring him to go on another exhaustive speech. Edd knew he was waiting, and he hated that even more.

“Fine. So I guess I’m annoying now, according to you.” 

--

I really like how I structured the back and forth here. I always worry about striking a balance between dialogue and description in my writing, and I think this displayed it in a really natural and easy-to-digest way. Also, if I may be self-indulgent, I like how the whole conflict being expressed comes from both directions. Edd (rightfully) is upset with Eddy for deflecting and going too far in teasing him. Meanwhile, Eddy is (rightfully) upset with Edd for not reading the room. I had fun touching on Edd's discomfort with being called "annoying". Much to unpack.

I. Do you have a guilty pleasure in fic (reading or writing)? Bad explicit smut is kind of funny to read. 🙏

M. Got any premises on the back burner that you’d care to share? A few! I'll avoid going in too much detail (for the sake of keeping my motivation to start them), but I have one idea for a fic involving Edd and his parents, and another taking place in high school with the Eds at a town carnival. Those are at least the ones I have the clearest ideas for.

P. Are you what George R. R. Martin would call an “architect” or a “gardener”? (How much do you plan in advance, versus letting the story unfold as you go?) I guess I would be more of an "architect", in the sense that I need to have the beginning, middle, end, and all the details planned out before I start writing. I usually make a bullet-point outline for each event I want to happen and the details I wish to express before starting a story. I don't always do this with quick, shorter things, but for the longer stories with lots of details and elements to read into, it just makes things so much easier. I feel less guilty about potentially forgetting something. In the process of building these outlines though, I do think there is an element of a "gardener". When I am stumped on a specific plot-element or missing detail, I try not to stress about it, and instead find ways to let it to naturally "take bloom". Sometimes this means I have to wait a while, but I think it is worth it in the end when I get something that I never expected. Granted, sometimes you just have to "pull it out" in order to realize what needs to be done.

R. Are there any writers (fanfic or otherwise) you consider an influence? Man, I honestly think I pull a little bit out of everyone's whose work I enjoy >_< Specifically for EEnE, with a fandom as intimate as this one, I think it is somewhat difficult NOT to be inspired by those around you. Off the top of my head: I'd say your work, as well as those done by @eddbedandeddy, @doubledyke, @mysticbeaver, @bookworm116, as well as @gettingfrilly and @vhvrs most recently, are on my mind a lot. Actual books, films, and music influence me a lot too. I always pull little elements and bits of things I like and try to implement it in what I do.

[acanvasofabillionsuns]

pride flag au !!

the premise for this 'verse is that pride flags appear on people's skin on their twenty fifth birthday, usually somewhere on the bust (so face, shoulders, neck, etc.) flags will appear, disappear, or change as people figure themselves out and/or learn new terms, and it's very dependent on how each person views themself and their identity.

for example, someone may initially get the ace flag, and then later learn the term 'aceflux' and decide that that fits them and to use that label, and the ace flag would shift to the aceflux flag. someone else might have the exact same experience, but decide they're fine sticking with "ace" over the more precise "aceflux," and so their flag would stay the ace flag. another example would be someone spending the first few decades of their life (ie past 25) as cis, and then realizing in their forties that they're nonbinary - only once they have that realization would the nonbinary flag appear on them.

(note: this idea is not original to me - i was inspired by my friend's fic which was in turn evidently inspired by tiktok. the main fic for this au is based off of said fic!)

the second premise for this 'verse is that the sides also get flags, but they don't all get them on thomas's 25th birthday...

[shoujomangathoughts]

Shoujo Thoughts - Hana Kimi

So for my first post outside of Chihayafuru, I thought I'd talk about Hana Kimi (aka Hanazakari no Kimitachi e), which I believe is considered a classic shoujo (quickly looking at the sales I'd assume it was). Even though there's several live action adaptations (as a fan of SHINee and f(x) it surprised me that the drama Minho and Sulli were in was based on this manga), my experience is solely the manga. I finished reading this a couple months ago so if I remember something wrong, I apologize in advance. I won't really talk about any spoilers until the character section.

For these posts, I'll just go over some impressions I had (very casually "review") and talk about my favorite arc and/or character.

Hana Kimi's premise is pretty interesting; Ashiya transfers to an all-boys school in Japan because she looks up to Sano and his ability in the high jump. So we've got this setup of a girl infiltrating an all boys school and the manga essentially focuses on the shenanigans that come about because of that, as well as some more coming of age and some familial themes. I specifically thought Sano's issues with his family were handled pretty well and tied into his character and the overall narrative in a satisfying way (I also liked his brother's character). This series doesn't go super deep into more serious topics or handle them with the most nuance, but that's probably because at its core, this series is more lighthearted. It has a lot of scenarios typical of a high school series (sports events, school dances, etc.).

Of course, there's also romance. The romance in this series, or at least the acknowledgement of it, moves very slow. There are moments where it's very clear something is going on, but it's played off as characters being dense/misunderstanding/etc. It's a series that's tagged with "love polygon", but there's never any doubt about who the romantic conclusion lies with, so if that sways you one way or another, there's that. The romantic plots are pretty typical of the high school series you may have read or watched before but the cast is still enjoyable enough to continue (for me at least).

Overall, I actually really enjoyed this series. The cast has a large amount of different personalities and they lend themselves to a variety of situations. Some of my favorites were Dr. Umeda, Kayashima and Nanba. I've seen the art of this series be described as dated but I really like it for the most part (I enjoy a lot of the art from series from this time). It's a solid slice of life rom-com series even if some of the little arcs felt unnecessary (the arc with the boy from America and the ghost/spirit boy are scenarios that come to mind) and the ending felt a bit abrupt. I suppose some of the comedy might have aged, but I don't remember anything glaring (Akiha was a bit weird when it came to Umeda though if I recall). I haven't read a lot of slice of life series like this, let alone many from this far back, so I'm not sure how it stacks up to other series but I'd still recommend giving it a look.

Favorite character : Nakatsu

I don't think I really have second lead syndrome, but sometimes I find the character that won't "win" ship-wise to be more interesting. Nakatsu here is the one in the group with a sunny disposition and generally is upbeat. He has an interesting personal arc where he mulls over the fact that he's into Ashiya (despite believing her to be a guy) and he eventually decides that he'd rather accept his feelings than worry about sexuality. The manga has a weird way of "justifying" this (I believe that Umeda said something about Nakatsu being able to tell she wasn't a guy because of pheromones or something), but I liked the conclusion that he came to and how he freely expressed his interest in her. The arcs centered around Nakatsu were also entertaining to me because they focused on more serious situations that forced his upbeat personality to be broken down a bit. This was also interesting, as the group could typically tell when something was wrong with him because he was a pillar of the group's energy. I also appreciated his conversations with Sano and Ashiya about his feelings, the fact that Ashiya actually gave him a rejection instead of brushing him off, and just the general friendship dynamic. However it was really clear that Ashiya wasn't into him romantically (she's only at this school because of Sano and the way she gets involved with him is sometimes borderline obsessive, but hey, it's fiction). He was a character that suited both lighthearted and more serious situations in the series well which probably contributed to why he stuck out to me. I did feel for him when he was hurting about his one sided love but I also knew he lowkey never had a chance.

Well, if you read all this, thanks! I haven't done any posts about other series until now and this is a lot more casual since I'm not analyzing anything, but I've got a couple other series that I read somewhat recently or am currently reading that I'd like to do this with. Give Hana Kimi a shot if you haven't read or heard of it before!

[nya-vivi]

those posts about your ocs made me really interested so would you like to tell me a thing or two about some of them? :>

HIII LEN ꉂ(ˊᗜˋ*)♡ Sorry for the late reply, I have been kidnapped and subjected to academical torture but here I am again!!

Lolol I have a bunch of ocs!! Mostly of them are fandom ocs (so if there's a fandom you are interested in, do tell! I might have something, I love talking about ocs) and a few non-fandom ocs, I wasn't sure which one do you want to know about so I'm just going to ramble a bit (๑'ᴗ')ゞ

I think I will begin with my main two Genshin ocs and a secret third I'm currently working on 🤭, Lore (travelersona), Vivi (self-insert) and Qinxi (Liyue oc I'm working on, provisional name), because they may be the closest to my heart due to the heavy editing I have done to them!!

More under the cut to not clog the dash!!

The premise is like this: she is an adventurer who is searching for her lost sister, and found Aether (since I choose him at the beginning because pretty boys) and ended up forming a tag-team, since they knew both of them wouldn't distract themselves from their individual goal.

◇

So the first one of them is Lore/Lorena! She is an oc I created based on how I used my traveler and what I did with them. She is under very heavy editing, which she needed, because I have a need of being correct about the lore labdmsdl.

She loves climbing and uses a claymore. Her vision was going to be anemo, but that may be put under revision. She also loves gliding and jumping off a cliff only to open the glider last second hehe <33 she's kinda an adrenaline junkie.

In the end, the lore I thought for her was that she and her sister were children who ended up living in Khaenri'ah and was saved by Gold from a disease (under the exchange of letting her doing experiments on her) so she ended up having a artificial heart (this is a classic for me ♡) and living far more than an average person. For the fall of Khaenri'ah I had thought of having her sleep (as in, making it seem like the operation was close to that event) so her sister (alongside Lumine, because I stan Abyss Lumine so much, they are girlfriends) saved her somehow. Now the details have to be carefully thought more. But that is the general premise I wanted her to have.

But because of the recent lore, I'm afraid I will have to put her on hold, since they touched quite a lot about Khaenri'ah.

◇

And now, my darling, mi joya de la corona, the character I have most thought of and the one I probably love the most.

Vivi is a self-insert that was born due to the question: okay, but realistically, what would I do if I ended up in Teyvat? The answer was to try to work in the Knights of Favonius' Library. And it just, snowballed from there.

Mind you, this story is also completely self-indulgent and I'm proud about it. But I also wanted angst, so I had to balance both. And since I know myself and I know I would not get involved in the plot whatsoever if I knew where I was, I decided to give her a 'reincarnated villainess'-que type of beginning but making it spicy.

(She's a geo catalyst)

She's the adopted daughter of a mechanic from Fontaine and she learned a lot from him, but decided her call in life was learning ancient languages (she didn't know where she was getting into truly 💔) and got into the Akademiya. And here is where the plot thickens!

She was roped into trying to connect with the Irminsul (since a lot of people can't at first time, she was like 'why not, once and last') aand ended up connecting with the Irminsul. With that, she got her memories from her previous life (this will be expanded about if I ever get to write a fic lol) and was like 'shit'. In the end it was too late for her to withdraw from the Akademiya because she already knew canon characters (aka Kaveh and Alhaitham) and the students' debt was going to be incommensurable. So she graduated and took a job as archivist in the Akademiya.

And as soon as she could, she asked for a transfer and booked it off to Mondstadt.

She's obsessively afraid of Celestia and about knowing things (since I am a lore player) and about being persecuted by them, so she didn't want to get a vision nor have anything to do with any canon event if she could help it. So she gets a vision and let me tell you she's excited (not). She legit threw it out of her window when she saw it.

And now rightfully afraid since Celestia is aware of her, she lives her life as if she didn't know anything in Springvale.

Okay this is messy but I have a lot of lore about her, so I might expand on a different post if only for archive purposes.

For now, I am brainstorming about Sumeru's archon quest, because she will not be spared of it and her relationship with Nahida and Wanderer. It's getting pretty interesting to say the least, but still a work in process.

◇

The last one of my ocs is Qinxi (沁汐 to seep; night tides; still working on the name and having to fact-check ;-;). She still doesn't have an assigned vision or weapon, but I'm inclined towards hydro.

She was going to be a pharmacologist or a collector of medicinal plants and work with Baizhu, but the idea quickly evolved into her being a make up maker. Like, the very expensive type of make up.

She's not quite developed yet, but I have a bit of her backstory: she wanted to be an artist but her family wanted her to follow their steps (they are all make up makers). It wasn't like she didn't want to be a make up maker but wanted a bit more of life. Now she fulfills both of her dreams, making make up and hand-painting the boxes.

Both of then are so finely done that Ningguang has a full-time contract with her so she gets priority in her orders (and who's going to complain??).

She definitely deserves to have more brainstorming but a lad does as she can ಥ‿ಥ

◇

That's it, at least. All of them still need a lot of developing process and tie down details, but they are all my darlings who I love. If you have any questions I'm happy to answer them (timely this time I promise 🥲) either in comments or asks! I hope this wasn't too boring ajdbkabska I try to make things interesting and I know some people don't like to know the whole process of creating an OC, so I tried to keep things simple, short and sweet.

[patemi-pk]

1961: A Trans Person 🏳️‍⚧️ on Topolino?

Transgender people and Disney comics, certainly a pairing not very foreseeable, especially if the year we are considering is 1961.

Crossdressing and gender promiscuity has always been present in animation and comics, but as the pun of the joke, engaging in mockering and belittlement of the misunderstood and discriminated minorities. So, dressing as a woman has been a pervasive trope in many children-oriented media. As a result of this transgender people have never been portrayed in a un-ridiculing way.

[I will skip the eventual reclaim of some of these problematic portrayals by the LGBTQ+ community that happened later on.]

However, if we want to focus on actual trandgender people, avoiding any confusion with crossdressing and generic gender non conformity, it's safe to state that no member of this community has appeared in any form of Disney media prior to 1961.

In 1961 on Topolino "Topolino e il gigante della pubblicità" was published. Written and drawn by Romano Scarpa, it's a story centered around the endeavour of Mickey Mouse in the advertisement industry, where he ends up working side by side with an apparently redeemed Peg-leg Pete.

The character we should focus on is Mac Faxtor, the boss of a cosmetic company, who reveals to have an original backstory. Mac is an AFAB person who decided to live their life as a man, to overcome some gender-based disadvantages of the female life. They were an ugly woman who mastered beauty care, but their tecniques had no effect on themselves. So, to avoid a bad prejudicial reputation, they decided to transition into a man. It's self-evident how this backstory renders their identification with the transgender community problematic.

First and foremost there is no explicit identification with a different gender than the one assigned at birth as, in fact, Mac uses male pronouns only in public, but in private and with Mickey, after he has discovered their secret, they use female pronouns. Thus it seems that despite presenting male in public, Mac still identifies as a woman. On the other hand, although the premise for the gender reassignment seems disconnected from their gender identity, Mac decides to transition to escape the prison that the stereotypical depiction of the feminine gender imposes on women: the unfair weight of socially constructed beauty standards that women suffer, compared with men, who have a more nuanced relationship with beauty and aren't expected to care about it as much as women (we all know how this impacts the different experience that men and women have with aging).

If we can't talk about gender dysphoria for the case of Mac, a level of body dysmorphia should be taken into account.

Mac's experience relates to the concept of outing too. The entire story revolves around the blackmail carried out by Peg-leg Pete to extort money from Faxtor in exchange for keeping the truth about them a secret. Mickey's intervention succeeds in exposing Pete's crimes, while protecting Mac's life in stealth, as we see at the end Faxtor in their villa, presenting female, but being addressed as a man.

We may assume that they have continued their life as a genderfluid individual, seemingly not detransitioning, nor completely blending in as a man.

Although the character's backstory may be off putting compared to modern understanding of the transgender experience, it is interesting to highlight that the element of mockery is severely undertoned, compared to contemporary depictions of the situation, and indeed replaced, by some extent, with a more tragic overview of the life of a transgender person.

Adding to this, any moral insertion is expunged, as the author appears uninterested with the social implications of such a gender non conformity. At that time we would have expected a more bigoted approach to the matter, but bigotry is nearly absent (albeit some comedic misoginy about women being afraid of mice) and the hero of the story works to preserve the life in stealth of the gender non conforming individual. Very progressive, considering the conservative timeframe and country (probably even author) and the fact that this story was produced for mass market.

[my-excellent-bicycle]

So I finished reading Mark Watson's latest novel, Contacts, which is the second book of his I've read, following Eleven (which I now consider to be one of my favorite novels). I've decided to write down a few thoughts on the novel, light spoilers and very, very long ramblings ahead:

TW: suicide, depression

You could tell Mark drew from personal experience while writing this. If you follow his standup and interviews he's done over the years, you could draw parallels between himself and the book's main character, James. Both have family in Bristol, they both have a sister living somewhere down under (James' sister lives in Australia, while I'm 90% sure Mark's sister lives in New Zealand), and both experienced the dissolution of a years-long relationship. It's not immediately clear where Mark's own experiences and that of James, a character plotting his own suicide, necessarily begin and end, but the latter's characterization felt incredibly real and lived-in.

Overall I really enjoyed how Mark handled mental health and depression in this book. The sadness and hopelessness that comes with depression is talked about lots in media, and it pops up plenty in Contacts as well, but what's also discussed is the shame that comes with it: not even wanting to think the word "suicide," or feeling a certain way while also skirting around the language associated with it. James has these internal struggles at some points throughout the novel, and while it isn't something central to the plot itself, it added an extra layer of humanity to his character.

Circling back to my previous point, I came across an interview he did in promotion of the book, published by the Mirror (I wish I found a better source, sorry), where he said,

"There were stretches of life in which it felt as if it would just be good to be able to get away from it all, to turn things off."

This is fairly similar to how James' suicidal ideations were described in Contacts, in which he sought ending his life as a means of escape, or as a means of relief. I'll be absolutely clear and say I'm so glad Mark seems to be doing much better now, and that he's able to speak on this experience with clarity and in the past tense. But reading that wasn't the most pleasant revelation.

Another thing I loved about Contacts, and Eleven as well, is how Mark likes to write from the perspectives of several different characters, and weave them together to reveal overarching themes. I told my mom about Eleven when I finished reading it, and she went "oh, so it's like Crash?" I'll admit I've never seen Crash, and don't intend to based on all the think pieces telling me how it aged poorly and it was terrible Oscar bait, but I have heard that it deals with the same premise of how everyone's lives are more interconnected than they realize. With Contacts, Mark definitely takes from the same playbook, as with each chapter and switched perspective, he slowly reveals the emotional effects each character may have had on each other, and how every action can have its averse consequences.

Mark also does this thing that I love, where he hints at some catalytic event that happened in a character's life that forced them to act a certain way, but he doesn't quite reveal what that might be until near the end, which gives the reader a much fuller understanding to the character. Several questions are immediately asked near the beginning of the book: why does James want to do this? Why does his sister resent him? How come James and his ex broke up? Why did he and his best friend have a falling out? I enjoy that Mark doesn't insult the reader's intelligence by answering all these questions near the beginning, but instead letting the reader understand where they are emotionally first, in order to further contextualize what may have led them to that point.

Now, this is one thing I did struggle with -- the ending. I'll admit I went on Goodreads before picking up the book, and saw people complaining about the ending, or just finding it weak in general. Upon finishing the book, I was absolutely floored by the resolution at the end, but whether I think it's incredible or just plain confusing is something I'm yet to fully decide on. It was definitely a bold decision, and in the oft chance I'll ever get to ask Mark about it myself (which will probably never happen but a man can dream), I'd want to know his thought process behind it. Not that I want every author to explain the endings to their books to me all the time, but I feel he'd have a very thoughtful response.

Last night after finishing the novel, I went on Google to find any interviews he'd done about the book, and came across this appearance he did on the Writer's Routine podcast from 2020. It's an extremely refreshing listen, as Mark talks at length about his writing process, how he finds inspiration to write, and even his preferences in fonts. Most of the interviews I've consumed of his understandably deal with his comedy, which is of course how he pays the bills, but it was nice to hear from Mark Watson the author, and I wish the interview was longer than its 45-minute runtime. I learned Mark is a Grizzly Bear fan, which makes him cooler than he already was, and that even if he wasn't paid to write, he'd still be doing it anyway. The interviewer pointed out how unusual that was, as many writers he'd spoken to often say how laborious writing can be, but Mark's genuine passion and continuing enjoyment of writing felt inspiring to hear, and maybe it's why I made this giant post about one of his books.

Mark was asked about any advice he'd give to aspiring writers, and in true Mark fashion, he said something to the effect of "I normally don't give advice cause, honestly, I generally don't know what I'm doing," but he urged people to just keep writing and keep things on the page, even if it's shit or not your best work, just to keep the juices flowing.

The entire interview I linked below. It's something I highly recommend, and it doesn't spoil anything about Contacts in case you wanted to pick it up. I'm looking forward to reading whatever novel of Mark's ends up in my lap next, and I'm open to recommendations.

[small-screen-superman]

I love My Adventures with Superman, but I decided to write some thoughts about the one thing about it that bugs me most. Spoilers for episodes 4-6! The best way to read it is my non-Tumblr blog, but I'll include the text below too.

About a month ago, it finally happened. My Adventures with Superman came out. I’ve been looking forward to this for a long time; I wrote a blog post when it was first announced over 2 years ago. Based on what little was known about the show back then, it seemed like exactly what I wanted: a show focusing on Clark’s humanity and his life at the Daily Planet, and especially his friendship with fellow Planet employees Lois and Jimmy. That is indeed what the show is about. So do I like it? You bet I do! It’s charming, fun and exciting. It is indeed very focused on characters and relationships, but that does not mean it skimps out on the action. It’s also pretty humorous.

If any of this sounds like a good show to you, I recommend watching it. It’s available on Max (formerly HBO Max). At the time of this post’s writing, the show is up to its seventh episode. This post contains spoilers for episodes 4-6, so if you want a “fresh” experience of the show, you should stop reading. But if you do decide to finish this post instead of running off to watch the show, that doesn’t mean you shouldn’t watch the show – I don’t think learning the information found in this post will ruin your experience at all.

At any rate, this is your last warning for spoilers.

When MAWS was newly announced, I thought its premise sounded so promising that it might end up being basically exactly what I’d want a new Superman cartoon to be. That might’ve been a little too optimistic. I didn’t fully realize how nontraditional MAWS was going to be. That’s not a bad thing in and of itself, of course, but as a fan of the traditional Superman setup, I don’t necessarily consider it ideal either.

The first big change that’s obvious from the very first episode is that Lois reciprocates Clark’s interest in her from the start. Many villains are also massively re-imagined. But in this article, I want to focus on what I consider the most radical change and the one that I’m least on board with: by episode 6, both Lois and Jimmy know Clark is Superman. Or, in in-universe terms, they both learn Clark is Superman shortly after Superman first appears.

Wasted Potential

It took some effort for me to fully understand why this idea bothers me, so it will take a bit of time for me to convey it too. The first and most obvious issue is that it closes off a lot of potential stories that could be told. Of course, it also opens up possibilities for other stories to be told, so the real issue is that it means stories, plot points, and ideas that I personally want to see are closed off.

I’m sure after decades and decades of superhero media, a lot of people are tired of seeing superheroes constantly keeping their identities secret from even their close friends. But in all honesty, I just am not. I think this setup, tried-and-true as it may be, is full of potential.

Some of that potential is for humor. MAWS is pretty humorous, so it would fit right in. What’s a bigger deal is that I enjoy the irony and tragedy of this premise. In the 1950s Adventures of Superman live-action show, the friendship between Clark, Lois, and Jimmy is also important, but they don’t know that he’s Superman, and to me, there’s something about that which is just so interesting and sad in a way: having a strong, almost family-like bond with others, and yet not willing to let them know something so fundamental about yourself. It just seems poignant to me. I guess I always like for Superman to have at least a touch of sadness to his character.

Not being able to open up to others, even others we care about, is something that I think almost everyone has experienced at one point or another. There’s something strangely satisfying about seeing Superman represent such a basic human struggle in an extreme way. I guess technically, MAWS also depicts this struggle since Lois and Jimmy found out Clark was Superman, rather than being told by him…but it happening so fast means there’s no time to dwell on this struggle or really appreciate it.

MAWS could’ve still been fairly revolutionary by making Lois and Jimmy learning about Clark’s identity happen relatively early, but not within the first couple of episodes – at the end of the first season, for example. This way, they would’ve had time to actually use the potential of the “classic” setup.

However, as I thought more about my dissatisfaction with MAWS’ choice, I’ve come to realize there’s an even more fundamental reason why it bothers me.

I Want a Contrast Between Clark & Superman, and Now That’s Much Harder

There are a lot of foundational aspects of Superman that contribute to his appeal as a character. Which aspects are more appealing or important is highly variable from one person to another. As I’ve thought about why MAWS’ decision and its consequences don’t feel right to me, it’s brought to mind how important a certain aspect actually is to me. That aspect is simply the contrast between Clark and Superman.

Now, Clark and Superman’s apparent personalities have varied greatly over the years, both in general and in relation to each other. Sometimes, Clark and Superman act extremely differently – Clark acts cowardly, mild-mannered, and clumsy, while Superman is bold and headstrong – that sort of thing. I’m not necessarily talking about that. Some versions of Clark don’t seem to act much differently from Superman (especially in Adventures of Superman and many Post-Crisis depictions), and I actually like these versions better a lot of the time.

Even without a big personality change, there’s still a big contrast between Clark and Superman. Clark, as an identity and persona, is a human being with no powers who lives a human life and is in effect limited in many of the ways humans are, since he has to hide his powers and chooses to live the same kind of life humans live. And while we, the audience, know Clark is Superman, we still see him acting as a normal person and being treated as a normal person by most people he interacts with. This causes the idea of Clark the Human to be firm in our mind…and that, in my experience, makes it more powerful and compelling when we see Clark and Superman “meet”: when we’re reminded that they’re one and the same. It can lead us to contemplate how unusual it really is that a man who appears normal is actually, well…Superman.

I’ll give a couple of TV examples of seeing Clark and Superman “meet” that gives me a certain sense of wonder. In the 5th episode of Lois & Clark (Requiem for a Superhero), while Clark and Lois are investigating, in order to hinder the people who are about to discover them, Clark creates a mini-earthquake, pretending it’s an actual earthquake. In a way, this gives me a sense of awe because Clark had been acting as a normal human around Lois, and in a sense it’s almost as if I had fallen for the illusion of Clark being human. To suddenly see such a display of his powers gives me a sense of amazement that such a powerful being would practically “be” a normal human. I don’t think I’d have had this sensation at all if Lois just…knew Clark was Superman. Of course, Lois does eventually learn Clark is Superman in this show, but there’s still plenty of time giving to establishing the illusion of Clark being human.

An “opposite” example (seeing the Clark-ness of Superman, rather than the Superman-ness of Clark) is in the 6th episode of Superman: The Animated Series (Feeding Time). Parasite finds out Superman’s secret identity (due to being able to gain knowledge from people whose energy and powers he’s absorbed) and kidnaps him. As Parasite explains his plan to keep Superman there indefinitely, Superman says that his co-workers will look for him when they realize he hasn’t come into work for a while. Seeing this be one of the first things Superman says makes me think that he doesn’t see himself that differently from how we see ourselves. To the viewer, there’s something a bit shocking about Superman suddenly having to rely on normal humans, but this doesn’t seem to be the case from his perspective. In a way, it makes me amazed to contemplate how Superman can be one of us despite being, well, Superman. A powerful contrast like this would be hard to create if Superman talking with someone who knows he’s Clark is something that happened extremely frequently.

Do you see what I’m getting at? I enjoy being amazed at the fact that Superman and Clark are one and the same. I enjoy seeing that contrast and then being reminded that it’s all an illusion. It really makes you think about who Clark/Superman is, and how his humanity and, well, “Supermanity” can coexist – how for him, it might be natural, but for us, it’s remarkable. I like finding it amazing that he’s both man and Superman – both human and “god”. If Clark is constantly interacting with people who know his secret identity, it’s very hard for something like that to ever happen.

I have a feeling this might have been a deliberate choice, but in MAWS, the two personas of Clark and Superman feel…a bit insignificant. After all, since he spends so much time interacting just with people who know his secret already, he’s free to openly use his powers even when he’s not in his Superman persona. Heck, in episode 6, Clark doesn’t change into his Superman outfit at all, and it barely seems to matter.

I don’t like the fact that it doesn’t matter. I like that Superman has 2 different identities that are perceived very differently. It’s a pretty important factor as to why I like the character. I love to see that contrast and to remember that it’s just an illusion. It makes me think about who Superman is in a deeper way – about how there are realities about himself that he keeps separate in the views of others via his two identities, and how that dual identity both conceals and reveals who he is, in a sense. It’s really interesting stuff that I feel like I can’t encapsulate in this article without going off on a tangent, but the point is, if you don’t really get to see Superman “doing” his dual identity that much, it’s hard to get much out of it.

An Aside: MAWS Could Still Make a Contrast Between Clark and Superman…But They Don’t

OK, this is somewhat tangential, but I think it needs to be addressed or this article will feel a little incomplete.

I established that there being a contrast between Clark and Superman is not dependent on Clark and Superman acting as though they have noticeably different personalities. Obviously, though, them having different personalities is still a big way for them to have a contrast between each other. If MAWS actually employed this method of having a contrast between them, perhaps it would bother me a little less that another huge method (him mostly interacting with people who think Clark is a normal human) wasn’t present. However, MAWS…definitely doesn’t do this.

The two most common ways to depict Superman and Clark is to have Superman be bold and for Clark to be “wimpy” in some way (with the “wimpiness” being a fake personality to fool people into thinking he’s not Superman), or for them to both be bold. MAWS takes a road less traveled and makes Clark being awkward and nervous (though not to an extreme degree) be his actual personality. It would then make perfect sense for Superman to have a fake personality of boldness, but they don’t really go in that direction, except maybe very subtly. I guess Superman isn’t that openly insecure, but he’s certainly not as confident as you’d expect him to be. It feels…very wrong. Heck, even if they didn’t make Lois and Jimmy learn the truth so fast, it would still probably bother me that Superman acts in such a nontraditional way. But the fact that they did makes it worse, because it makes seeing a contrast between Clark and Superman basically impossible.

An Additional Aside: It Might Not Hurt MAWS, But It Sets a Precedent

I do wonder if I’m overreacting about this. MAWS is still a great show and Lois and Jimmy knowing the secret from early on is a part of it, and the show wouldn’t be the same without it. So maybe it doesn’t really matter. It’s not like MAWS has to be the ultimate version of Superman that contains everything that makes the character appealing.

But a popular show making a big change could very easily influence future interpretations, so the very fact that MAWS is doing this could have ramifications for future versions of Superman. I’m not meaning to say adaptations should be afraid of changing things just because other people might copy them. I’m just saying, it wouldn’t be surprising if other media took cues from MAWS in this area, and I think that could be unfortunate.

Maybe this is paranoid, but I think it’s at least worth mentioning. It’s normal for adaptations to influence other adaptations and even the comics themselves, and this change traveling to other media is not a happy prospect for me. (Though I’m keeping in mind that this change can be used for interesting and quality stories, of course. But it becoming widespread and making its way to very important and/or high-profile media would be quite disappointing to me.)

So yeah – I think I did an okay job articulating why I’m unsatisfied with MAWS’ decision to have Lois and Jimmy learn the truth so early. I can’t say there’s anything inherently wrong with it from a storytelling perspective or in terms of what the writers want to accomplish. And it certainly doesn’t mean I can’t enjoy the show – it doesn’t even mean I can’t enjoy the parts of the show that are direct consequences of this decision.

Essentially, all that it means is that MAWS will never feel anywhere close to a “definitive” version of Superman to me. It will always feel more like “Superman with a twist” or something like that. That’s not a horrible fate to be consigned to at all…it’s just not as good as what I was hoping for from MAWS.

[foodesoftt]

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