#see prev post for my drs

[sacrificialmutt]

ask me about my drs, talk to me about ur drs. PLEASE.

[dfortrafalgar]

I'm Losing You

Having a family isn't always as easy as fairy tales make it seem.

I'm going to say this on every chapter i post here LOL, but GO TO CHAPTER 1 AND READ!!!!! MY!!!!!!! WARNINGS!!!!!!!!!!!

Chapter 3

[Prev] [Next]

You loved your office, you really did.  Two of your coworkers were your best friends from high school, the work-life balance was ideal, your bosses were super understanding and encouraging of all their employees endeavors, and the weekly catered lunches truly felt like a luxury.

The only qualm was the noise.

The office had an open layout, and while everyone had their own desk, it was very easy to move around the space and talk to everyone while on and off the job.  This meant any personal phone calls had to be taken out of the entire vicinity.  And in your case, into an unlocked broom closet across the industrial building’s hallway, in front of another agency’s door.

You were sitting on a plastic box containing something you weren’t sure of, anxiously bouncing your feet as your heart hammered in your chest.  Each time the ringback tone exited your speakers caused another cold wave of anxiety to flood from your head to the soles of your feet.  You swallowed a thick glob of spit as you struggled to maintain your breathing.  You were sure your blouse was going to have armpit stains when you returned to your desk.

Finally, a voice picked up the other line.

[Thank you for calling Grand Line Gynecology and Obstetrics, how can I help you today?]

The sweet, welcoming voice of the receptionist on the other end of the line made you breathe a sigh of relief, though you weren’t out of the woods just yet.  Far from it.  “Hi, uhm, I’m a patient with Dr. Robin, and I was wondering if I would be able to get an appointment as soon as possible.”

A few keyboard clicking noises followed your request.

[Can I have your name and date of birth?]

You quietly relayed your information, biting your lip impatiently.  More typing sounds could be heard.

[Alright, Mrs. Trafalgar, and do you mind if I ask the purpose of your visit?]

You knew it was important information for your doctor to know prior to seeing you, but the thought still made a heavy pit develop in your stomach.  “Uhm… f-fertility consultation…?  I guess.”

More clicking.

[Of course, I’m looking up Dr. Robin’s availability right now, hold on just a moment, please!]

You’ve dealt with crappy phone receptionists in the past, but whoever was usually on the receiving end of your calls to your gynecologist was always so pleasant.  You could never quite recognise her voice in person, but her bubbly and patient speech was always greatly appreciated during your otherwise anxious phone calls.  Finally, she came back onto the line.

[Dr. Robin’s next available appointment isn’t for three months, unfortunately, but I can still fit you into that time slot if you would like!  I can also write your name down, so if any appointments open up sooner, we will give you a call.]

You breathed another sigh of relief.  “That would be amazing, thank you.”

[Alright, Mrs. Trafalgar, I have you marked down for Thursday, May 1st at 10:00 AM.  We’ll give you a call if anything changes and you can always call us if you develop other concerns, okay?]

You smiled at the broom closet floor.  “I appreciate it, thank you very much.”  The phone clicked off after trading goodbyes, your arm falling onto your lap.  You hadn’t realized how tight you were gripping your phone until then, your hand trembling with how harsh your hold was on the device.  With a sigh, you opened your text conversation with Law.

Hi baby, I just called the obgyn, they cant fit me in until may 1st but she said if anything opens up theyll call me back.  Fingers crossed something opens up sooner, hopefully you dont have to wait as long!  I’ll see you later, i love youuuuu ^3^

You put your phone to sleep and stuffed it into the pocket of your trousers as you finally exited the broom closet.  An employee of the agency across from yours was entering his office and tossed you a very confused glance at you leaving the innocuous room, but you paid him no mind as you walked back into your office to continue your work.

“There you are, I was wondering where you went!”  Ikkaku was waiting for you at your desk with her work laptop in hand.  “I wanted to go over a few designs with you, but when I went to find you, you were just, POOF!  Gone like the wind!”

You laughed at her excited talking, finally sitting at your desk again and grabbing an unoccupied chair for your friend to sit in.  “Sorry to make you wait, I had to take a phone call.”

Ikkaku brushed off having to wait with a cheery, “It’s fine!  No biggie!” before opening her laptop and inputting her passcode.  You felt your phone buzz in your pocket.  While Ikkaku was opening her files, you slipped out your device and tapped the screen.

Baby~~<3

Hopefully something opens up, but it’s good that you at least got an appointment.  I got my appointment with urology on my lunch break today.  We’re making steps.  I love you, see you later.

You smiled at the text.

“Why does Law need to see a urologist?” Ikkaku whispered beside you, making you jump and hide your screen.  She was looking at you with curiosity in her big, brown eyes.

“It’s nothing, really.”  You quickly shoved your phone back into your pocket.  Ikkaku was your best friend, she really was, but the last thing you wanted to do was bring up your potential infertility issues while on the clock, and especially while your anxieties were still fresh and raw at the forefront of your brain.

Ikkaku must have sensed your profound fear, as she shrugged and turned her attention back to her laptop.  “So here’s what I was drafting…”

—

While you had to wait around three months for your appointment, Law’s was scheduled shockingly quick.  Almost too quick for his liking.  The following week.  Which, to Law’s mutual discomfort and relief, came much quicker than he thought it would.  

He was thanking the heavens above that he had the day off for once.

Law followed all the rules to a T before the appointment.  No ejaculation 2-3 days prior, but no longer than 5.  He’d jerk off into a sterile cup in the clinic, hand that to the doctor, and wait a few hours.  While waiting, he’d get his hormone blood work collected.  Easy as pie.  He walked into the clinic feeling oddly confident in himself and his abilities to follow pre-procedure protocol, as a doctor himself.  The brief moment of cocky joy was interrupted as soon as the fertility doctor entered the examination room Law was sitting in.

“Alriiiight!  Mr. Trafalgar Law!”  The doctor was shouting his name before even closing the door, making the black-haired man cringe.  The nametag on the open laboratory-style coat he wore read ‘Dr. Franky.’  Next to the name tag was a little enamel pin of a robot.  The door was closed with a moderate slam.  “You’re that cardiologist from New World Hospital, right?  You’re crazy popular, so cool to see you in the clinic!  So we’re here to check on your little swimmers, huh?”  Dr. Franky, who was shockingly tall and very broad in the shoulders, plopped into his seat and placed his laptop on the counter in front of him.  

The force of him sitting on the stool caused the pneumatic tube to compress forcefully downwards.  Law had a mental image in his head of the tube exploding and propelling the spring upward into the doctor’s ass.  He barely even registered the fact that his reputation as the city’s leading cardiothoracic surgeon seemed to have followed him to his semen analysis appointment.  He shook his head quickly before nodding.  “Uh, yeah, semen analysis.”

Dr. Franky was rapidly typing in whatever patient portal he was using.  “Semen analysis is such an uppity thing to call it, I personally like calling it the Super Swimming Meet!”  He laughed, the voice echoing around the small room and making Law wince.  He finally finished typing, slamming his laptop closed.  It was then Law noticed a few pieces of scotch tape holding the laptop’s hinges together.  (What kind of clinic is this?)  Franky’s booming voice interrupted Law’s thoughts.  “All you have to do is wank off into this cup here.  Cap it tightly and bring it to the nurse’s station when you’re done and it’ll get sent off into the lab!”

Law carefully took the cup from the doctor, his face heating up in embarrassment.  “Uhm… thank you.”

“Is there anything else I can help you with before I leave you to it?”

Law wanted to ask if there was a different room he should be doing this in, or if handing the cup to a random nurse was proper protocol, but he honestly wanted nothing more than to get out of there as quickly as possible.  He was starting to regret his colleagues at the hospital giving him clinic recommendations.  “Uhh… no thank you, I think that’s everything.”

“Alright, Mr. Trafalgar, I’ll let you get to it!”  Dr. Franky left fairly quickly, much to Law’s relief.  His ears were still ringing with the volume of the doctor’s voice.

Law was now left alone, sitting in the uncomfortable plastic chair, holding the empty sterile plastic cup.  After that interaction, the last thing he was thinking of doing was masturbating, but he needed to get it over with.  For your sake, and his.

He awkwardly stood and undid his belt, letting his pants and boxers fall to the floor before placing a few napkins onto the plastic chair and sitting back down.  He shivered at the cold feeling of the napkin-covered chair against his bare ass.  This was the least erotic situation he could’ve ever experienced.  He figured it would be far from the norm, but this was beyond any expectation he could’ve developed.  He shivered.

Grabbing the cup again, Law unscrewed the cap just enough so that he’d be able to pop it open as soon as he needed to.  When he stared at his flaccid dick, however, he uttered a defeated sigh.

‘Think of something to get you hard, man, think of your wife,’ he told himself.  Even his inner voice was desperate.

The sterile doctor’s office was completely inhibiting any thoughts of you to remain permanent in his head.  Every time he tried to think of your smell, your taste, the feeling of your bare flesh against his fingers, he would inhale and take in the bland stench of sterile alcohol and plastic.  He groaned.

Reaching into his pants pocket on the floor, he procured his phone.  Opening an incognito window on his web browser, he inwardly apologized to you (and double checked that the door was locked) before opening up a porn website for the first time since he was an undergrad in college.

—

Law came home a few hours after you.  You were standing at the stove setting the oven preheat temperature, a loaf pan of uncooked banana bread sitting on the stove top waiting to bake.  You turned to ask how his appointments went, but kept your mouth shut when you saw Law kick his shoes off and sit at the bar counter in your kitchen, placing his head in his hands.

“What happened?” you hurried over to him, immediately growing anxious that he had received bad news.  Your stomach turned.

He lifted his head.  “I… I had to watch porn today.”

[pyjamacryptid]

I don’t think they liked it…

Turns out Teleparty had just kicked Kit out (with impeccable timing) but Mac and I didn’t know this for a good five minutes lol

BBC Merlin + live commentary by @macaritaville @1kitwonder and I from our Merlin watch party

first | prev | next | masterpost

Click on Keep reading for an afterword!

Afterword TL; DR: Thank you for joining us three on our live commentary journey! And this isn't the end: I have sooo many outtakes and plan to start posting some! :D

WE FINALLY MADE IT!!!!

You know, I had to go check when I posted the first of our live commentary and gawked when it said January 2022. Two years! Incredible. Couldn't believe it for a hot second lol.

I loved being able to rewatch one of my most beloved shows with two of my beloved friends. One of which was experiencing it for the first time! That makes it more exciting, honestly. Watching a show, in general, with friends makes it a whole lot more fun. And I had so much fun!

I'm also so glad I got over my initial shyness and posted that first post. The reception we've received, since the beginning, has been amazing. Genuinely, it makes our day to see so many people enjoy our silly little commentary.

However, this isn't the end! I have A LOT of outtakes and I plan to start posting them at some point, so please stay tuned!

Whether you've laughed at just one post or you've made it this far, thank you!!! 💕

Ren, Mac & Kit

[snickerdoodlles]

fake omegaverse??? im sold tell me more hehe 👀

went to the ren faire and spent yesterday in a recovery fuzz, time to catch up on these!! :D

but oh man okay, fake omegaverse AU my BELOVED ❤ i have some notes on the idea posted here, and i've posted some of the story here. but the tl;dr of it is that i think the omegaverse trope would massively appeal to Kim and his kinks and i think Kim would be mortified over how seen he feels by it, and i love nothing more than putting him thru that ordeal <333 an incomplete list of things that i think would massively appeal to him:

scenting and the uh. claiming bite/mark/bond thing i just forgot the name of (i don't read this trope 😂). i will always see KimChay as being extremely grabby and clingy with each other and loving every second of it, and Kim esp would be wild over the thought of having what's more or less a permanent wedding ring. the scent thing is just more of the same, he absolutely wants every pore of himself to be screaming "CHAY'S!!!" in a way no one could doubt or easily cover oh yes please 👀

the pheromone thing. is that how pheromones work in nature? not in the slightest. does Kim desperately wish he could just emit a sex pollen scent that tells Chay "am horny, FUCK PLEASE" and puts Chay immediately in the mood without Kim having to admit to wanting such things with words? MHMM MHMM.

the marathon sex. he's young and horny and his boyfriend is hot, yes please ravish him all night.

breeding kink! i actually don't see Kim or Chay as wanting a child, it's not really something i see for any of the kp boys, but i think Kim would really like the fantasy of another permanent tie to Chay. Chay's like "yeah, you'd be hot pregnant" as a joke or something but Kim instantaneously zips through six fantasies of domestic bliss and Chay guaranteed to stay with him at least until all their children are grown and them growing old together and hello, legs spread, ass out, please Chay-

anyways, it's mostly just humorous scenarios of Kim discovering new kinks and then making him admit how badly he wants them, because making Kim self-discover via kink is SO much fun <33 case in point, these are my notes for the first story in the series:

i was also about to say this was going to be a short thing except i just checked my wordcount and somehow have 2.5k written even tho i haven't even hinted at any clothes coming off yet. if this winds up long like most of my other things, i'm going to fling myself into a pool.

[ WIP game ]

[ prev asks ]

[coconoct]

my whb progress 2

as of apr 7, 2024

since whb's half anni has passed, i thought i'd do a progress check to reflect on how much has happened btwn now and this post

general info

lvl: 47

status: 🤨 mostly f2p

i say mostly cause i just recently broke the f2p status and bought bp for ppyong

i refuse to buy packs and in the future i'll prob be very selective over who i pick for bp (aka i wont buy every bp), so for the most part i'll just be having the f2p experience

when i started: launch (10/03 my timezone)

ver: erolabs

team setup

i finally have levi now lmao

sometimes i'll switch out one of the levis for attacker satan but this is what i use generally

everyone's lvls and artifacts

skill lvls (normal atk-ult-passive)

attacker mammon: 1-3-1

selfie mammon: 4-5-4

selfie satan: 4-4-1

selfie beel: 4-4-4

bloodshed levi: 3-3-1

selfie levi: 3-3-1

secret club

i only work on completing mammon's unholy board

stuck on needing attacker mammon's sig atm :'))

materials

too lazy to screenshot it all but im basically broke on pies, tears, pretzels (tbf i dont play the minigame whatsoever), red keys, yellow keys, and seals

everything else im either ok in supply or overflowing w it

overall thoughts / reflection

this section is for me to look back on in the future when i do progress posts. i'll break down this section into multiple parts similar to my prev post for consistency

STORY

honestly, its interesting in concept. since sadly only 1 chapter has released btwn now and my last post so thoughts havent really drastically changed

ch5 imo wasnt really a full on hades chapter. yes, it takes place in hades and yes we get some intro abt hades, but i think this was supposed to act more like a bridge to tartaros, which is prob why we didnt have any h scenes w any hades chars aside from levi. ofc we'll get back to it being hades-focused eventually, but the story for a while is most likely gonna pivot to tartaros bc of that big lore drop abt mammon at the end

i assume we'll prob be introduced to the cherubs in tartaros bc of selaphiel txting us near the end + it being mentioned at the end that theres a hub of angels in the lab, and hopefully part 2 of mammon's h scene. it was strange at first for mammon to only have 1 h scene, compared to satan or levi that had 2, but w him implying theres probably gonna be a part 2 in his h scene + we'll most likely see him again in ch6 (or however many chapters tartaros will be played out), we'll prob experience part 2 in his home country. tbh that prob just me inhaling MASSIVE hopium since mammon isnt rlly that popular but i can dream ok-

i hope us being in tartaros doesnt last for just 1 chapter. you cant condense the experiments tartaros went through to create a clone of mammon only for them to fail + bring up the fact that the seed is prob also in tartaros in just 1 chapter. well— technically you can, but not at the pace chapters are at atm. chapters have roughly 15 parts of story on the main branch, and imo that much info abt tartaros cant be condensed into 1 chapter unless if they make the story bits like WAY longer than what they normally do

GAMEPLAY

tl;dr as an endgame player, its too easy 💀

working on the spreadsheet ever since the games 1st month of release and now just recently testing multiple team comps, the "meta" is so monkos HSHFJDJ

this game is INSANELY dependent on you having more than 1 dps/tank light card. light is also just an unstoppable element and i wish the game was balanced a bit more to let other elements shine

enemies are now way too easy to defeat. ik i prob shouldnt be complaining abt this but pls im a pgr and neural cloud player at heart I NEED SOME CHALLENGE

ch3 and ch4 were prob the most tedious and awful chapters, but at least they actually made me think when it comes to battles. now i just place down chars and let it play in the bg while i go do smth else. ofc this may just be bc i have a team that im comfortable w using everywhere, but id like to see at least a bit more "challenge" outside of holy coin portal

also, for weekly achievements, lvling artifacts is not a great requirement

i only pull when theres a new s rank or when mammon is moved to standard, so its very, VERY rare compared to avg users. having the artifact req is essentially forcing me to pull during those gaps just so i could fulfill a weekly req which sucks. i also dont need to lvl anymore artifacts in general for my team comp. lvl 15 is the bare minimum i need to get through all content w ease, anything after that is just a small boost tbh

on the note of daily/weekly requirements, there needs to be more of them

i mean in a sense of theres still gonna be 9 daily achievements, but you get more options on HOW you get to the 9 daily achievement req. most gachas that ive played always have more options than necessary to fulfill the overall requirement to get all rewards, so having this strict number w strict reqs is rlly not that great tbh

RESOURCES

thoughts from last time still havent rlly changed. pies and candies especially are still rng dependent which sucks, and now there gonna revamp pancakes while also keeping the old pancakes ???? theres way too many currencies (w some even having very little to no use) atp which can and will get overwhelming for new players

GACHA

i hate solomon seals. you can tell that red keys were supposed to be the main gacha currency if you ever look at old packs, but smth happened along the way and now we have seals

pity is also way too high for what we're earning atm. based off of f2p earnings, every week we get roughly 1 pull of red keys, maybe 2 pulls of yellow keys (red and yellow keys are more dependent on the key boxes which again, dependent on rng), and 1 pull of solomon seals. this doesnt include the stuff earned outside of dailies/weeklies, and i think there should be more ways to earn said currency through dailies/weeklies and not be so dependent on either paying or pulling chars

speaking of pity, i wish we had pity for both of the standard banners

i also wish theyd separate char and artifacts into their own banners. that way, if someone has a char but needs their sig, they can just pull in the artifact-only banner and try to get said sig

tl;dr in general i wish everything wasnt so strict and rng dependent, also wish numbers made sense like why do we get at least 5 red keys a week when 1 pull is 3, JUST GIVE ME 6 KEYS ATP

so yeah thats all for now lmao. im pretty sure i have a lot more to say abt this game but my minds at a blank atm, so ig thatll be saved for the next progress post which will be around 1st anni

[discar]

HZD Terraforming Base-001 Text Communications Network

Chapter 7 | Prev chapter | Next chapter Chapter Index

Marshall Kotallo: [DisapprovingDogDisapproves.png]

FlameHairSavior: Uh... what's that?

Marshall Kotallo: We have been having trouble expressing our emotions through text. However, Erend's incessant spamming of clips has reminded me that this not merely a text channel. We can use images to express ourselves.

ForgeLordAleMaster: WHAT'S SPAMMING?

Marshall Kotallo: To post, send, or otherwise display something repeatedly and annoyingly. I knew the Old Ones had to have a word for your behavior.

ForgeLordAleMaster: I TAKE OFFENSE TO THAT.

ForgeLordAleMaster: ...OKAY, NO, I GUESS IT'S FAIR.

FlameHairSavior: And the image you chose to demonstrate your emotions was... some sort of tall fox thing glaring at us?

β: dog specifically german shepherd one of the most common breeds for police for decades

FlameHairSavior: Oh, THAT'S a dog.

GranolaGirl: They are referenced quite often in the archives, but it took me quite some time to find an image. The ones I found all looked very different from each other and this one, though.

β: dogs were domesticated for thousands of years there were more recognized breeds than there were peopleto breed them

β: people to breed them

β: also that is an exagerration

β: exaggeration

β: many thousands if not millions of people bred dogs and there were anywhere from 200 to 500 recognized breeds depending on who was doing the counting

ForgeLordAleMaster: WHY DON'T WE HAVE ANY?

ADMIN [GAIA]: Most domesticated animal species were designated stage 2 organisms, intended to be re-introduced into the wild by humans operating the terraforming system with the ARTEMIS subfunction.

FlameHairSavior: Erend, you really need to read the intro packet GAIA gave you.

Marshall Kotallo: [DisapprovingDogDisapproves.png]

FlameHairSavior: Okay, I can see the value in using images now.

ForgeLordAleMaster: NO, I DID READ IT! BUT MOST STAGE 2 ANIMALS WERE REALLY BIG, RIGHT? LIKE THOSE BULLCOW THINGS. BUT DOGS ARE SMALL. I'VE SEEN BIGGER PIGS. SO WHY DIDN'T ARTEMIS INTRODUCE THEM ON ITS OWN?

FlameHairSavior: Oh. That's actually a good question.

HIMBO: You don't have to sound so suppressed.

ForgeLordAleMaster: THANK YOU.

ForgeLordAleMaster: WAIT, YOU MEANT SURPRISED, RIGHT?

HIMBO: Yes.

ForgeLordAleMaster: THEN THANK YOU.

ADMIN [GAIA]: Dogs, cats, and most other domesticated animal species were deemed to not be necessary to the initial creation of the biosphere. Neither dogs nor cats serve irreplaceable roles in the ecosystem, and they do not provide meat or any other animal product to humans.

β: both were domesticated for their services not their meat

β: dogs helped hunt and cats killed rats and pests

ADMIN [GAIA]: Correct. However, those are primarily beneficial to primitive, tribal societies. With the help of APOLLO, humanity should have been well into the modern age by the end of their first generation on the surface. Hunting dogs and mouser cats were not deemed a high priority.

HIMBO: Dogs can help hunt? That sounds useful.

ForgeLordAleMaster: AND YOU WOULDN'T BELIEVE HOW OFTEN I'VE HEARD AVAD COMPLAIN ABOUT RATS IN THE GRANARIES.

ADMIN [GAIA]: Unfortunately, by the time APOLLO was destroyed, all the stage 2 stocks were sealed away where my predecessor could not access them. Furthermore, Dr. Ronson believed that the possibility of bringing back dogs and cats would be an extra incentive for the new generation of humanity to do their duty to take control of the terraforming system and re-introduce stage 2 organisms.

Marshall Kotallo: Why would it be extra incentive if they were not expected to need to hunt or keep out rats?

ADMIN [GAIA]: I believe these clips might help illuminate the matter. Dr. Ronson was quite fond of them.

ADMIN [GAIA]: [TheGoodestBoy.mp9]

ADMIN [GAIA]: [MurderFluffPlaysWithString.mp9]

β: oh ive seen those

β: wait i had some on my old implant

β: [PuppiesFrolickingWithExtraFrolick.mp9]

β: [KittyCryingForMilk.mp9]

Zo: This is what Ted Faro stole from us?

ForgeLordAleMaster: I NEED TO FIND HIS GRAVE SO I CAN PISS ON IT.

Chapter 7 | Prev chapter | Next chapter Chapter Index

[izukuwus]

Edible Arrangements 39

First - Prev - Next - M.list - Read on Ao3

A/N: howdy folks and strokes it took literally all my strength not to post this chapter early yeehaw

if you're interested in a spicy little oneshot, please direct your attention over to Legs Spreadable Arrangements for all your smutty spinoff chapter needs!

please note that this chapter is more than twice the length of recent chapters before settling in to read. please enjoy with responsibility to your sleep schedule! <3

Summary: You're making amazing strides. So is the hunt.

Warnings: oh man haha let's think uhh some talk of death, food mentions including some gross shit, mind fuckery things, implied parental abuse

Word count: 5000+

The students in the day ahead of him are fresh-faced, not yet tainted by the drag of the semester ahead of them. [name] sits at the farthest seat in the back of the room, Ochako sitting with two seats of space between them. Ochako is flashing sweet, pleasant smiles at the other students as they enter. Like this, Izuku almost forgets that Ochako is their aide, here to get them through this class. He wishes he had that privilege. Every time he thinks he can handle this, surreptitiously glancing up from papers to scan the room, he sees their face and feels his heart shatter into powder.

Already his regrets have dragged on for a month. They were, by everyone's judgment, prepared for this, and yet, he doesn't feel like it now. He's not prepared for it, either.

He inhales. Exhales. Checks his watch. Twenty-five students in the course, twenty-one bodies in the room, one of them extra seeing as Ochako isn't technically on the roster. He’d had to remember to add her to the list so no one notices when he calls roll that she's not on it.

Class start time in two minutes. Five no-shows, but they still have time.

He hates this. He hates teaching in-person classes. He hates the moments before the class starts, casing the students out for who he can rely on, who may need to rely on him. Connections to make, or, more likely, to inevitably fall apart as his words tumble, rather than slip, from his mouth.

Class start time in one minute. Two stragglers, running into the room last-minute and skidding into seats at the back, filling the spots between Ochako and [name].

Oh. That won't be good.

They cast a panicked glance Ochako's way, but neither of the two appear to say anything.

Why did they sit apart to begin with? Is [name] less comfortable with being around people now? Is that enough to leave the risk that two stragglers—that he's now growing increasingly angry with—would fill the seats between them?

Class start time is now.

He stands up, clears his throat. Waits for the few surprised looks that are inevitable when he says he's Dr. Midoriya, the professor, and not a TA or a student making a power play.

He's somewhere over fifty years old, thank you very much. How old? Hell if he knows.

So he squares his shoulders, reaches for his list.

"A-alright, I think that's everyone who's showing up, so without waiting any further, hello everyone! I-I'm Dr. Midoriya, I took over this course from Dr. Hakamada in light of his... untimely circumstances." His eyes come to rest on [name], staring blank at their desk. He hesitates. "I know things aren't—things aren't what everyone expected right now, but I expect that all of you will be able to make it through this course if you're willing to keep working and come to me if you have any issues! Before we get into the syllabus for this course, I'm going to give us all a chance to, uh, to break the ice."

Some attentive stares. Some blank. The expected anguished looks from students who don't want to speak up for any reason, let alone to introduce themselves.

"Now, I know some of us are more socially-inclined than others, so I'll let all of you take this at your own pace. Feel free to decide the order you go in, but let's all take a moment to introduce ourselves. How about... name, major, year, and a fun fact about you? I-I'll start!"

Dammit. Stop stuttering.

"My name is Dr. Izuku Midoriya, I teach in several different areas, but specialize in Quirk Theory. A fun fact about me is that, judging by the way most of you assumed I was a TA or another student, I actually have the worst babyface on the planet!"

A few students let out polite laughs. He gives them nods of appreciation in reply.

"Wait, so how old are you?" a girl in the front row asks. She has her chin resting in her hand. "No offense, Professor, but you look younger than nearly everyone in this room."

He laughs at that. It's becoming easier, so long as he doesn't look at [name] in the back. So long as he doesn't acknowledge the heartbreak in the room. "I stopped counting after I hit my fifties."

"Oh, there is no way you're actually in your fifties."

He smiles, nods to her. "Alright then, it sounds like you're volunteering to go next!"

She rolls her eyes with a smile. "I guess I am." She rattles off her introduction—well-practiced, as many are, after several years of several classes all requiring her to rattle off the very same information. Quick, dirty, easy.

He checks off her name and scans the room for the next volunteer.

And his eyes land on [name].

Staring right at him.

With that very same look that tells him they're confused and definitely caught information with their quirk that he didn't think about communicating to them.

He chooses the next lazily raised hand and tries to brush it off as they tap something on their phone—not too discreet, [name], but he'll let it slide—and Ochako reaches for hers moments later.

Oh, to know what information they were exchanging now.

"Good to have you!" he says and checks off the next name to introduce themselves, searches for his next victim. "Next, how about..."

He pauses, tries not to freeze.

"You, in the back."

"[full name]. I'm told I'm in my senior year, and I'm a quirk theory major." A pause. "I like to read, and I don't like to talk."

He laughs softly, more dumbfounded than anything. "Same here. You'll be happy to know that I offer options to turn in papers instead of present in front of the class for every relevant assignment, and that goes for all of you. Now, who's next?"

He eases into it. Tries not to bubble over with relief and maybe excitement at seeing [name] make such a stride in his class. Gets through the icebreakers, goes over the syllabus in detail. He even manages to completely stop stuttering by the end. It's never been about the actually teaching the class, anyway, just the anticipation of where it could go wrong in the moments leading up. And nothing goes wrong!

At least, not until the end of class. He watches his students filter out, watches [name] and Ochako wait. Ochako appears to be chatting with them, ostensibly to make it less obvious that they're waiting to talk to him. He goes through the motions, answers the questions of a stray student, and watches as the pair approach him from the back of the room.

"[name], you did great!" he gushes when he's sure the others have left the room. "I'm glad to see you making an effort to speak up!"

They give a little half-shrug, favoring their unstabbed arm. "I had to ask Ochako what year I was in. I didn't remember."

"Well, that's understandable. I forget my own age, after all!"

Ochako pulls a tight smile. He has the sense that she does a lot of customer-service smiling around him. "[name] had something to ask you?"

They blink in confusion, tilting their head at Ochako. "I thought you did?"

"No, remember? You texted and asked what year you were in, then asked if we could stop after class to ask Dr. Midoriya a question."

She holds up her phone, shows [name] the texts.

"Oh," they say after a moment. "I don't remember, so it probably wasn't important. Sorry."

Oh. He knows what that’s about, doesn’t he?

The look on their face as he joked about his age. The way they can’t process it now.

Another wrench of guilt. He smiles anyway. “Well, if you do remember, you know how to find me! Good work today, both of you.”

A flash of pink at the door. Mina is there, arms crossed, glaring him down while waiting for her friend. When Ochako and [name] leave, Mina lingers a moment longer, just glaring.

He shrugs it off and packs up his things. Class is over. He can handle the rest. Not without issue, of course. The issue was always him.

Besides, soon enough, this will be over. He’s gotten his affairs in order. [name] may never understand it, but they’ll understand the money, the house. They’ll understand Sbeve. If they’re smart—and he knows they are—they can live the rest of their normal life on his dime and never know why. He doesn’t need forgiveness. It won’t do him any good where he’s going.

~

[name] sits on the edge of the couch, listless as the others chat over pizza. In total, there’s five people in the living room, aside from [name]. Whatever they’re talking about, [name] hasn’t been listening, and they’re still not listening when a plate with a slice of pizza is balanced atop their knee.

They eat, mindless.

“[name], honey, are you listening?” Mina elbows their side gently. “Do you remember Tenya? We’re really worried about him right now.”

A flash of recognition. It fades away, slips away from their mind in real time.

“Is Tenya important?”

They don’t miss the looks of pity they receive, though they don’t understand why they receive them. As their attention falls back away, the others turn on to other topics that don’t matter.

None of it does, really.

~

“Thanks for coming on such short notice.”

“You’re sure of it?” Tenya spurns his pleasantries with little more than a look.

He sits across from Izuku, looking entirely out of place sitting peacefully in Izuku’s admittedly drafty living room. He really should get that door fixed before [name] inherits it.

“Yes. The Death Adder has been staying in the area. It has to be because we’re here, though I’m not sure he knows we’re working together or even know each other.”

“After he attacked [name], I admit that he knows you’re here. You were probably his target that night.”

“I know. But, look. I was reading the paper—“

“Really?” He raises an eyebrow. “I didn’t think anyone still got paper copies in this day and age.”

“I’m fifty years old, so sue me. Anyways!” He lays out the classifieds in front of Tenya, tapping a circled paragraph.

I know where you are, my children. I’d like to see you again someday. DA.

“DA for Death Adder. We’d be his children, in a sick way that makes me even more geared up to do this. But that alone isn’t why I asked you to come here.” He spreads out another paper, this one more recently dated, and taps the circled section on this sheet. “I replied.”

DA - You made me into myself, so many years ago. I’d like to return the favor. If you truly want to see me, you know where to find me. If we meet again, I’ll happily pass on the message you taught me. IM

“That was two days ago. Now, I’ve been getting the paper daily. There was nothing yesterday, but in today’s paper, we have this.”

IM - You will see me again, a week from today. DA.

Tenya looks up from the paper with hardened eyes. “So we have a week.”

“Get your affairs in order, just in case. I’ve already established everything to pass on to [name] once I’m gone. I suggest you figure out where all you have will go.”

Tenya nods. “Do you still have our weapon?”

“[name] secured a bottle of holy water for me, before all this happened. We’ll have to be careful with it, obviously.”

“A week to get my affairs in order and take down a serial killer.”

“No going back?”

“No going back.”

~

When they open their eyes, it is morning. Normal morning, not some obscenely late-in-the-day morning like the ones they’ve been waking up in. The clock reads 9:09 AM, and because it is a weekend, their alarm has not gone off. They sit up in a haze.

This is their bedroom, but this is not the apartment.

No, wherever they are, it is so familiar and so unfamiliar but it is theirs.

Their phone buzzes. It is atop their eight-drawer, fine-wooded dresser. The piece of furniture is more expensive than anything in the apartment. The sight of the mirror attached to it fills them with a strange dread, but they must answer the phone. It’s important. It isn’t important. It’s so, so unimportant. It is Nothing.

They slide out of bed.

What doesn’t matter is how large the bed is. What doesn’t matter is how empty it felt to sit alone on its edge. What doesn’t matter is that it is not the bed they fell asleep in. What doesn’t matter is the depression beside them, where someone laid not long ago.

Who decides what is important and what is not, except for them? Who decides for them?

Bare feet sink into a plush rug. The sensation is familiar, soothing. Lazy mornings before the world stopped making sense and began making change.

Bare feet pad across the room, to the dresser. The phone has stopped buzzing, but they still know they must reach it.

Was the mirror covered before? They can’t remember, but the sight soothes them. They can’t see themselves. Not now.

Beside the phone is an arrangement of fruit skewers in a vase. The card attached to the vase with a simple green ribbon is blank. Nothing is written there. The fruit is rotten, and its heady, alcoholic scent draws them in even as the scent warns of danger and disgust forgotten. Somewhere behind them.

Behind them.

behind you

They turn. Nothing is behind them. There is Nothing in the bed.

Nothing behind them. What is behind them in life? There cannot ever be nothing, not really, but the past must not have been important, if they lose hold on it so easily.

The past, too, must be Nothing behind them.

The buzzing of their phone, once again, but once they turn, it falls away to Nothing.

There is Nothing covering the mirror now, the sheet Nowhere to be seen.

There is a skewer of rotten fruit held to their lips. When did they pick one up?

Their phone is at their ear. They don’t remember answering it.

“Hey. What’s wrong?” They do not know this voice.

“What do you mean? Nothing’s wrong.”

“Are you sure? You’re crying.” They know this voice.

What? No. They can’t be. Why would they be crying?

They put down the phone. The fruit in their mouth squelches as they bite into it, the flesh giving beneath their teeth with the faintest pop. Beyond the skin it is liquid. The flavor is sour and burns their nose as they chew, although there’s no need to do so. Their teeth are sharp, their jaw strong, and the flesh sludge. It leaves them drunk as it melds past their teeth. Although their body protests, they swallow it without a thought and take another bite. It leaves a metallic-tasting burn in its wake.

They look in the mirror, now that they know they can. They shouldn’t be crying. Why would they be crying?

It is now that they realize what is wrong.

The thing about Nothing is that it matters. It matters so, so much. When there is Nothing where there should not be, there is a problem.

They look in the mirror to inspect their tears, and Nothing is there.

~

When they open their eyes, it is morning. Normal morning, not some obscenely late-in-the-day morning like the ones they’ve been waking up in. The clock reads 10:08 AM, and because it is a weekend, their alarm has not gone off. They sit up in a haze.

This is their bedroom. This is the apartment.

This is familiar, and it is theirs.

The knowledge feels good, that there is something that is theirs and cannot be taken from them for at least the year. They feel good, that they have slept well and made it through a week of classes and classwork and physical therapy and worked hard at getting better. Their memories aren’t returning, but their soul is, and that, in itself, feels good. They don’t remember when last they were truly in their body.

They dreamed, they’re pretty sure. Of what, they’re not sure, but phantom aches linger about their throat in pinpricks and bruises, and when they check their reflection in their bathroom, they find no source.

They think back to last week. They had been rude, hadn’t they? They’d completely ignored those questions about Tenya. Their friends were worried, they think. Their friends have been so good to them, and they were rude. They need to do better.

They pad out of the room in their pajamas, not bothering to change, and find Mina and Tsuyu commiserating over breakfast, scrolling their phones in silence.

“Mina? Tsuyu?”

The girls look up in tandem. “[name]. Sleep okay?”

“I’m sorry about last week. You guys were talking about Tenya. You were worried. What’s wrong with Tenya? Can I help?”

“It’s… a lot.” The girls share a look before Mina continues. “We can get into it, but it’ll take a lot out of you, and we’ll need to invite the others back over. The guys, at least. Itsuka isn’t really involved.”

“I feel good today. I think there’s a lot of me to take.”

“If you’re sure, there’s no backing out, okay?”

“O…kay?”

Tsuyu nods, adjusting her posture to focus on the phone in her hand. “I’ll call the boys.”

~

Their friends sit around them in a rough imitation of a circle. They are sat in the center, turning their head nervously as the others settle in.

“Tenya can’t come,” Mina sighs, pocketing her phone, “he says he has plans, but at least you guys are here. Neito, did you bring the stuff?”

“Of course I did. We’re really doing this?”

“Look at them. Their eyes are brighter than I’ve seen them in months. I think we can get them.”

“So how are we doing this?”

“We rely on their quirk,” Neito declares. He’s got a box with him. He reaches in, pulls out an old journal that has something scratching on [name]’s memory. “[name]. This belonged to you. Do you remember it?”

They shake their head. “That isn’t mine.”

“Look at it. Tenya was holding onto it for you for all this time. Will you read it?”

“I don’t—I thought this was about Tenya.”

“It is about Tenya,” he says simply, and it isn’t a lie.

They take the journal. They open it to the first page.

In younger, scratchier handwriting than theirs today, the first page details their name, a phone number that was once theirs, and an address they almost remember writing. They trace a fingertip over the letters. They didn’t write them, but it is undeniably their handwriting, so long ago now.

“This isn’t mine.”

“It is.”

“It’s not!”

“[name], listen to me. You used to be in love with Tenya. The two of you dated for years. You lived with him after cutting ties with your parents.”

“No,” you reply firmly. “That didn’t happen. I don’t remember it.”

“You don’t remember anything.”

“You’re just—you’re just saying things, but that didn’t happen. I don’t know Tenya that well.”

“You did. You used to be inseparable. He still hasn’t gotten over what happened to you and your memories.”

“You’re lying.”

“Look at any of us and tell us whether we’re lying.”

You look. You slip away into them again. “Then you’re wrong.”

Tsuyu slides several photos toward them. [name] picks them up blankly.

They were younger, when these photos were taken. They see themselves, leaned against Tenya’s chest, and they don’t remember ever seeing Tenya, but they know it is him, looking at them with soft eyes.

It is you and him.

Your head hurts.

“Can… can we stop this? I don’t wanna help anymore. This doesn’t—this isn’t important.”

“I’m sorry,” Hitoshi says. “We have to keep going.”

“It’s not just that you used to date,” Neito insists. He has produced a folder that they do not recognize, and their head aches sharply. “We want to give you this to read. A few years back, you were attacked just like you were all those weeks ago. Do you remember? Tenya lost his brother, and you changed. Do you recall what happened?”

They don’t open the folder. “Nothing happened. Nothing.”

“You know that isn’t true.”

“If it isn’t, then—“

“It isn’t. Look at them. It’s notes from your therapy sessions with Dr. Fuyumi. Why would you lie to her in therapy, if all of that was untrue?”

They lift their hand, but can’t open the folder. They’re frozen, stuck in the headlights.

“No.”

“No?”

“No!”

The folder is flung, papers fluttering around the room as they bolt for their bedroom. Hitoshi is up and after them, grabbing at them a bit too harshly. “[name]! Didn’t you want to help Tenya?”

“Not anymore!” They bite back. In the next moment, they slip away and stop struggling in his hold.

“Sit back down in the middle of the circle,” he orders, and they obey.

The papers are collected and placed in their lap, roughly back in their same order.

“Speak if you want to. Read the papers you’re holding.”

They tilt their neck downward, eyes roaming over the pages. “These are real?”

“They’re real. We got them from Dr. Fuyumi herself.”

The words ring true. Even without being able to turn to see them, no glow edges at your vision. No evidence of lies.

Your head hurts. Worse and worse it hurts.

The more evidence they pile on, the worse it feels. Unable to look away or run, they whimper out protests. Old texts talking about Tenya. Social media posts long since forgotten, tagging Tenya or talking about a boyfriend or their parents. Another old photo. [name] with a slice of cake, sat next to Tenya.

They—you—keep returning to the notes. “How do you know these notes are real?”

“We stole them from Dr. Fuyumi’s office.”

He isn’t lying.

The words on the page are the truth.

You were attacked by whoever killed Tenya’s brother. Tenya had been acting distant in a way that didn’t seem like grief. You wanted to understand it better and help your boyfriend through a difficult time.

Your boyfriend.

Ex? Boyfriend?

“Hitoshi,” you say, voice hoarse. “Let me go.”

“Are you going to run?”

“No. Let me go.”

He lets you go.

You hunch over, letting the folder and the photos slide off your lap as something strikes. A match against damp sandpaper.

What is he now? Who are you now?

When it comes together at last, the pieces snap into place. You would swear that there was an audible click, or perhaps a cracking like a bone, snapped from crashing your bike into a tree while chasing your dear neighborhood friend.

something is creaking something is bending something is straining under the weight and you cannot understand you will not understand you are not to understand you are to look away you are to forget but you cannot

forget

it is Nothing but the thing about nothing is that Nothing Matters and it is nothing and so it matters

what are you looking away from why are you looking away look at it look at him look at your past look at it look at it LOOK AT IT

~

…are you looking?

~

…are you looking.

~

…do you see it?

they come back to you in fragments. your own wrist, blurry. faint scars there. a soft shade against your skin. a pattern of bite marks.

do you remember who put those there?

it was tenya, wasn’t it? you asked him to. he only fed from you once. something went wrong.

something?

what went wrong?

what’s wrong?

nothing’s wrong.

You’re crying.

The fragments slip from your grasp as you come back into the moment. Mina is holding you as you thrash, holding you as you sob. Your vision is white, and you are screaming, and it is normal, and you are staring at a photo on the floor of you with Tenya and remembering the day it was taken.

He had planned a surprise party for you. It was your first birthday away from your parents. He’d declared it a necessity for a proper birthday party to be held, and so it was, with cake at his parents’ dining room table and all kinds of gifts and an innocuous sheet of paper declaring you officially emancipated from your parents.

The headache is blinding, less so as you latch onto the memory and find more attached.

The fragments come up like a system of roots and fungus, a mycelial network of all the things you’d forgotten you’d forgotten.

Tenya, chasing off bullies for you with nothing but a glare and his size, being an older kid. Tenya, never raising a hand and yet protecting you all the same. Tenya on one side of you, Tensei on the other, explaining in dire words the situation you were in and couldn’t you stay for a while? Tenya’s mother, smiling and nodding and saying she’d speak to their father but they have an extra guest bedroom in the meantime if you’d like to spend the night.

“How long?” You whisper, and it is you, but it is not. All of the things you remember as though they were yesterday, and yet, you cannot find Yesterday among your memories. There is a gap, or more like a ravine, stretching between you. When was Yesterday? Where are You?

“Years.”

“But that isn’t everything, is it? There’s more. More than just that my… boyfriend? Ex? Best friend? Fuck, I don’t know, that he’s a vampire? That vampires exist? The lifetime of tragedy I couldn’t save him from?”

“No. There’s more. It’ll take more pain, but we’ll be there for you every step of the way.”

There isn’t a moment’s hesitation, only a question. “Tenya was never coming for this, was he?”

“No. He doesn’t know we’re doing this, and he’s off doing god knows what.”

“…I don’t know if I want to know what it is I forgot.”

“You do.” Tsuyu’s voice is firm. “You just can’t know you want it.”

“Don’t you want to know why you’ve been so despondent? Don’t you want to remember what you’ve done? The months leading up to your stab wound? Me and Hitoshi?” Neito’s voice is low.

You don’t want to know. You don’t want to know.

You don’t—

“Unlock your phone.”

You listen, though you don’t have to, and wait for further instruction.

“Have you been without your phone at all since you woke up without your memories?”

You shake your head.

“Look back at your old texts. What do you notice?”

You look. There are ones where your eyes glaze over, where you just can’t focus on the words or the photos. They must be talking about other texts, anyways—

“Look at the ones you don’t want to look at. There’s someone you’ve forgotten. Not me or Neito, but someone else. There, stop scrolling.”

You stop on a photo of you. It’s a selfie. Someone is beside you—a man with a cute face and fluffy green hair and freckles. “I know him,” you mumble. There is a flicker of hope as they gather around you. “He’s my professor.”

The hope flickers but does not extinguish.

“He’s more than that. Don’t look away. When did you meet him?”

“Dr. Midoriya and I met a month or two ago, I think. Ochako took me to meet him so I would be able to get ready for the summer semester.”

“No,” Hitoshi starts to say, but Mina cuts him off.

“What do you remember about that meeting?”

“Um… I don’t know. Dr. Midoriya was lying about it being nice to meet me?”

“Why would he lie about that?”

“Because I’m a pain in the ass with a lot of accommodations…?”

Mina coos with pity, then shakes her head. “Remember, there are usually other explanations that don’t involve self-deprecation. Why else might he lie about it being nice to meet you?”

You pause for a long time, staring at the photo even as your headache rears its hideous head once again. “It wasn’t nice.”

“Or…?”

“He wasn’t meeting me?”

“There you go. That wasn’t your first meeting. Look at the date on that photo.”

October 31st, 2050. During the Yesterday you’re missing.

You put down the phone. You look away, rubbing your eyes. Your head is split.

“Come on, [name], don’t look away now. Just a little further and you’ll remember. If you can’t look at the photo, look at me. All you have to do is verify whether or not I’m telling you the truth.”

A whimper. You open one eye to look at Tsuyu as she speaks. “You were in love with Izuku. You lived with him for months. You kissed him on New Year’s and you had a cat together named Sbeve.”

“I’ve met Sbeve,” you manage. “He was sweet. I guessed his name right.”

“You named him. When you stopped living with Izuku, you had been sleeping with him for months.”

They’re telling the truth. Why are they telling the truth? Would it kill them to lie to you? Would it kill them? Won’t this kill them?

the bending the creaking the snapping of the pressure in your head but it isn’t enough it won’t be enough

“Do me a favor and look at this.”

you are looking.

there is a phone in front of you. the camera is on. the screen shows not your face. the screen shows your neck. someone guides your hand to touch the throat. you watch the hand move, reflected in the camera image on the screen. something changes. you must not understand. you are beginning to understand. you cannot look away. something changes.

your neck is littered in bite marks

and

you

snap.

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[tauon07]

i always see reblog from posts that r like "reblog to tell prev u wanna kiss them and hug them and comfort them" and i always see prev was fucking dr-mcskeetles-shlong who is a poopy head, but not my beloved little oomfie eebybeebys-left-ovary

[goshdangronpa]

Even with a sizable cast of huge personalities, the stories of Danganronpa eventually center around a cluster of major supporting characters alongside the protagonist. Stalwart allies, staunch rivals, the hearts of the team, the pains in the neck. "I DISAGREE: An Ibuki Mioda SDR2 Protag Swap AU" is no different.

These Hands are Meant to Hold: The Major Side Characters

With that said, the characters who fills those slots in this AU are very different from the ones in the real SDR2. That’s on purpose: I prioritized those who don’t stick around for much of the story. As I promised in that first post, this story will see different victims, different killers, and different survivors. More fun that way, right? Here are my ideas:

The Ultimate Imposter: Every DR game needs that one character who basically carries the early class trials. The Ultimate Imposter - or rather, the Ultimate Affluent Progeny - is a big help, using keen observation skills in the investigations and handily shutting down irrelevant tangents (including from Ibuki) during the trials. Ibuki’s creativity helps piece together the evidence they gather, making them a formidable duo for any blackened. Already fast friends in the game, this AU would see the girl trying to solve the mysteries of this authoritative and snobby yet tenderhearted and protective person. Yet she can’t help thinking that there’s an even deeper mystery to “Byakuya Togami” - a secret that, once revealed, will test the fire-forged strength of their relationship.

Hiyoko Saionji: If Imposter is the Kyoko to Ibuki’s Makoto, then Hiyoko is the Byakuya (not to be confused with the Imposter pretending to be Byakuya …). She needs little provocation, if any, to insult and belittle her peers. Even the revelation of once being besties with Ibuki and Mikan won’t convince her to be any kinder - though it vindicates her close connection with Mahiru. As the bodies pile up, though, the Twilight Syndrome Girls come together as they should’ve in SDR2 (seriously, how was there no follow-up to that discovery after Chapter 2?!). Moreover, Hiyoko discovers that she can channel her aggressiveness to more selfless and self-sacrificing ends.

Hajime Hinata: Yep, you gotta make room for good ol’ Jimmy - whether he wants it or not. He’s the odd man out among the gang specifically for not being so odd. WIth arguably the game’s flashiest character stealing his lead role, he serves the thankless duty as her suffering straight man. This just takes the derisiveness he already shows toward his classmates in-game and really brings it out. Once he starts getting to know everyone, though, he does warm up to them. The challenge, then, is whether he can stifle his envy of his peers’ Ultimate talents. And later on, even his status as “the only normal person in the group” will be shaken to its core.

Mikan Tsumiki: After foaming at the mouth and passing out at the beach, Ibuki awakens to see the Ultimate Nurse treating her, making Mikan the first person Ibuki meets one-on-one. The timid girl and the loudmouth rock star make a strange pair, but they stick together as this strange situation unfolds. When a murder most foul takes place, Mikan’s medical expertise comes in clutch. Even as other loud voices try to drown her out, Ibuki’s perfect hearing can pick up her whimpers and make her words heard. There’s more I want to say about this … but I’m saving all that for a separate post. Same for tsumioda.

In fact, same for all these people. Same for Nagito Komaeda as well - I haven’t forgotten him, don’t worry. Maybe the same for a few others, though I may save the breakdowns of everyone else’s roles for other posts about individual murders, investigations, and trials. Suffice to say that in my current conception, the above four are the most important people in the Protagonist Ibuki story - and I take that straight from the original SDR2. The real question, to which even I’m not sure of the answer, is, “But are they the survivors?”

PREV: Ibuki in the Trials

NEXT: Starting the Game with Despair Disease

[rou-en]

lmfao the fuck are you on, a tesla is still very much a symbol of being rich as fuck. shut up and listen to actual poor people for a minute and maybe you'll gain some critical thinking skills. or maybe you'll just go back to being a bootlicker. who knows?

Oh wow another first - anon hate!

Also welcome, it’s very weird to be interacting with people on this hell site after so long, but hello!! To me this is all very hilarious to come about from just venting in tags about Watcher drama but I guess that’s this place for you eh?

I could just have not swiped and answered this one, and tbh I hesitated a bit on the first anon as well, but it does feel exhilarating to be speaking to the void and getting a voice back (any voice in fact!)

But first to this second anon (coz I’d guess from the tone that you’re not the first), I hope you’re doing alright in the real world - that as frustrated and angry as you might be about my take on Teslas (very much a shitty car), you are alright and safe,

Since I seem to have a captive audience (of at least two that I can tell of so far, how novel!), I guess let me soliloquy about thoughts on wealth and the complex nature sometimes of the whole “poor vs rich” dynamic, which is also a bit of why I even waded a little into responding to you amidst watcher drama,

Second anon, I recommend dl;dr (don’t like don’t read) -

I come from a generation where that’s what we did for things we didn’t like. For all I’ve said you’re a captive audience, you’re actually not (again, this is all very funny to me right now I can’t believe this is over ghoul boi drama still jfc) - one person’s opinion will always be just that, an opinion.

I think anon, we might be in different areas of the world, but at least where I live (please check prev tags on the post you were referring to, I’m also too internet-old not to hide in tags as much as I like) it’s become an increasingly common sight to see even soccer moms drive a Tesla, their bloody SUV model is the bane of my existence,

Does that mean everyone can afford them? No. Does it mean a middle-class family could afford them? If they wanted it enough, yes. Does it mean there still aren’t people suffering here from poverty in my part of the world? Sadly, no.

And therein lies an interesting problem (well at least to me as a former economics student) about signalling and truly knowing where in the whole class wars business you’re on, because it does make a difference if you ever have to figure out which rich to eat,

Is the 1% who get to fly on private chartered space flights and book out the whole of Disneyland for themselves (I’m looking at a shitty Amazon CEO there) the first to the guillotine? Oh yes.

But what about everyone else? Are we going to burn everyone who has multiple iPhones? God forbid anyone ever treats themselves to a seven-course degustation? Would not recommend, but I don’t think it guillotine-perfect, and I don’t think everyone that drives a Tesla where I am in the world can begin to count as that,

Those people live a daily life here, second anon, it’s so middle-class here it’s almost funny and why saying to me “Steven owns a Tesla” makes me shrug and go “would not recommend but you do you”,

I understand that can be different to you, because oh, turns out my own thoughts and circumstances can be very different to yours indeed.

Fun fact, I grew up first in a developing country, and had the privilege to move to a “first-world” country because my family was dedicated and sacrificed to make sure I could live the “better life” so to speak,

So I know there’s an inequality in the world when an exchange rate could mean the difference between something being a “rich” vs “normal” thing - I buy a Switch here for about 450 bucks (I saved and then got it on sale) as an achievable treat; for my sister who still lives in my home country, it’s almost two grand and definitely ridiculous to spend on for any normal family,

On one level, where is the fairness in that? But I live with it, and I have to choose some treats or if not what’s the point in life,

What does this all mean in the face of the original ghoul boys/watcher drama that’s occurring now? If anyone has read this for long enough is probably wondering at this point,

(I hope you’re both with me still my two anons, I’ll cherish this even if nothing else ever happens to me on this hell site)

I guess I wanted to try and say: life is complicated, and everyone makes complicated decisions, even your favourite comfort YouTubers,

It means I can only see the exacting vitriol at Steven for liking nice things but not Shane for also liking nice things and wonder whether people are barking up the wrong trees, very racist trees in fact,

It means that I keep thinking of shitposts about when the time comes, we’d likely just start offing our neighbours for being “rich” then anyone actually rich, because we seem to not understand the difference between nice things and things no nice person should have (holding also the complicated element of environment and geopolitics to account),

In the process of writing my first response to anon #1, I did have a moment where I wondered, “what if the Watcher boys did think about this? What if they did have some level of number crunching and still looked into their souls and decided that it wasn’t what they wanted? That they knew they could keep doing what they’re doing now and be financially stable, or risk it because of what they believe?”

I and you or anyone can wonder, can or cannot understand, but I sure as hell wish the Watcher team the best of luck, and like you anon, their days will be safe, content and filled with nice things, because why else would I want anything else for anyone,

That’s my one opinion at least, take that as you will anon on the bootlicking quotient for that - if being someone that would just like us all to take a chill pill is being one, then meh - you’re welcome to your opinion too,

But thanks to anyone that’s somehow come to my Tedtalk that started with my random thoughts on Watcher drama and ended with me finding people are still around (it’s not just all bots huzzah!)

[harocat]

(prev anon here. First of all, thank you very much for their sources! It definitely made a bit more at peace. Second, I am very sorry if this goes very long, or if it makes you uncomfortable (feel free to ignore this if it does, I am just kind of venting))

Okay so basically. I finished yoi like a couple of weeks ago and I was so giddy with happiness! (Though there were a few things I could have wished went differently, overall it was such a pleasant, feel good show) HOWEVER I made the mistake of searching for meta on tumblr because I wanted to see what other interpretations were. Because I came across a lot (and I mean A Lot) of posts form when the show aired (2016-18) about people either being disappointed by it being a queerbait/ multiple posts saying it was y//a/o/i fetishizing everything/about how it was just a generally shitty/mediocre show and that it's fandom was delusional or whatever and like. On one hand I do understand that the rep isn't perfect, and that there were various fandom drama that resulted in the wank (namely the crunchyroll award thingy, kubo's confusing interviews(?)) But also it's just. I was obviously not there so I still do not know the full context and it was all OVER years ago and presently, the show is mostly remembered by people with love and nostalgia. But now, I guess I just read too many negative comments about it and I just. Am very upset since I feel like I've lost the happiness the show gave me when I first watched it? I just don't know how to or what to do to like. Not take them seriously?? Obviously people have different opinions, they HAD different opinions but it also feels very draining to read something very, very negative about something you are emotionally connected to. On my first watch, I was almost 100% sure victuuri were canon? (Especially with Yuuri saying he's going to show his love to the world multiple times, and just. The whole show with every episode) and on one hand I get that people wished they could get explicit confirmation, an on screen kiss without it being hidden and everything but I just. I feel so confused and low-key stressed about this, especially since I KNOW all of this discourse is in the past and the fandom doesn't really have any of it now?? And it's been seven years since everything happened and it's over!! But. I just. I saw you've been here right form the start and I really wanted to know if you really had any advice (in lack of a better word) on how to just get over all of this? (Again: please ignore this ask if this is kind of out of nowhere because I am *this* close to chickening out and not sending it fjdgd. But I think I really need to talk about this and put it down because it's bothering me too much:( )

OKAY this is super long. tl;dr corporations and some fans are evil and homophobic, Kubo and Sayo are queens, and YOI is and always will be 100% canon gay.

First and foremost the main reason that the show is remembered largely fondly now and that all those meta about it being queerbait and all are ignored now is because 90% of them were bad faith criticism. There were a fair amount of people who REALLY hated this show, and most of their reasons were pretty petty (seriously I remember them calling themselves the YOI salt squad? lmao)! And they wrote really disingenuous meta that has not stood the test of time because of that. So I know it may be hard and some of their posts might get to you, but do your best to ignore them. They're not done in good faith. They're not done because these people legitimately care about representation. Most of them were done because a show they didn't like was popular and was being heralded as very special. There was actually even a big anti-Kubo movement on 2chan Japan that aimed to basically destroy the popularity of her work and of YOI by doctoring fake tweets, making accusations of plagiarism, etc. Mind, this was not just because of YOI. Before YOI, Kubo did a popular radio show with her best friend, who is one of the most famous trans women in Japan, Mineko Nomachi. She also occasionally discussed lgbtq+ rights in the workplace. You can imagine this annoyed the very conservative users of 2chan.

Secondly, one thing that caused issues in the fandom was mistranslations. There were two translators famous for taking interviews with the creators and basically 'no homo-ing' them. If you ever see translations floating around from Tora on Ice or K@rice, please just ignore them. Even the translations they did that weren't inaccurate, it's not worth digging through the mistranslations to find them. The problem with this ended up being that their mistranslations upset A LOT of people. People ended up really heartbroken over them because YOI and Victuuri meant a lot to them, and though it's mostly ebbed by now, there's still some damage caused by their homophobia.

Just to give perspective, K@rice said that if Victuuri were ever 'confirmed canon' (because according to her, despite making out and getting engaged they weren't canon), she would sell her blu-rays and leave the fandom. Well, I don't know if she sold her blu-rays, but when Otsuka said that quote I linked in the previous ask, where he used the indisputably romantic word 'renai', she did make a post about how 'disappointed' she was and never talked about YOI again. Both of them had a history of doing this in canonically lgbtq+ fandoms before, and have continued to do it in other fandoms since. But yeah, they caused a lot of damage.

Next up, CENSORSHIP.

When Sayo Yamamoto pitched YOI, she couldn't find a studio to take the project on. Although she was considered somewhat of an auteur, neither of the anime she'd made before were hits, and she was trying to sell a show that no one thought that would be popular. Studios that were interested in the project suggested she make it about teenagers in a high school club, which she refused to do. She brought Kubo on to help, and eventually they were able to get Mappa to take the project. At the time Mappa was considered an experimental studio that took on really creative, inventive projects that other studios might consider too risky. Otsuka (Mappa's second in command) at the time thought the show could be a hit, but probably not many other people felt the same. Indeed, there was almost zero buzz for the show before it aired in Japan. They always do big polls for most anticipated anime of the season, and YOI didn't even rank in fall 2016.

So Sayo and Kubo wanted it to be a romance, but Avex (the parent company above Mappa) didn't want this. She had to push for it, and she said that 'all parties' tried to stop her from putting the kiss in, but she insisted. To note, as a woman in the anime industry without any popular shows under her belt, this is hugely badass of her. She and Kubo both could have lost their jobs and lost control of the show they wanted to make so easily. She would NOT compromise. It was amazing of her.

YOI comes out and ends up being like... the biggest hit ever in both Japan and internationally, but while Mappa is pretty happy to embrace the gay (which you see with all the merchandise they directly produce; it's very overtly romantic), Avex gets cold feet (I'm assuming BECAUSE it's so popular). They want this to be a super marketable franchise, but because they are stupid they don't grasp that the romance is part of what makes it that. They stop doing a bunch of magazine spreads of just Victor and Yuuri looking romantic, and start shoving Yurio in there as an awkward third wheel. They try to market the series as a cast of bishounen where you 'pick your fave boy' instead of focusing on what fans are wanting. It's all very messy.

And then, this might not be Avex's fault, but magazine publishers get in on the censorship. In order for YOI art to be accepted in these magazines, they force Mappa artists to remove the rings from Victor and Yuuri's fingers. Although this at first is excused by fans because 'well the rings are spoilers', by a few months post series, fans begin to outcry, and even Japanese fans are growing very angry. One Mappa artist comes forward after the spread she drew is criticized for lack of rings, and says 'she never would have left them off, and that they were there when she submitted the art.' And this is how fans find out what's happening. This happens again when YOI animation director Noriko Ito expresses surprise that the design page for the rings is not included in the YOI setting book released by a publisher, because she knows it was supposed to be in there. The publisher removed it. Later art, as in post 2018, has more often featured the rings, but there's so little of that art that it's hard to know if it would be a permanent thing if YOI ever continued. Plus, that art has been specifically for YOI collabs and merch as opposed to magazine spreads.

After that we find out that Kubo and Sayo are being censored in interviews. Please don't criticize Kubo for being 'vague.' She did the best she could in a situation where she wasn't allowed to talk super explicitly about the romance. We know for a fact that when Kubo and Sayo were interviewed, Avex SPECIFICALLY told interviewers that they were 'not allowed to be asked questions about lgbtq+ aspects of the series.' I know! It's so upsetting. We also found out that Kubo and Sayo brought character designer Tadashi Hiramatsu on the project because they did not think they were being taken seriously as a team of two women (no hate on Hiramatsu though, he's amazing and he totally loves YOI). Avex didn't believe in YOI as a romance, even after it proved so successful. It's the saddest thing on earth.

So the end conclusion is that Kubo, Sayo, and yes Mappa (though I have plenty of criticisms of them now) were pretty cool about YOI. Kubo and Sayo pushed for and wrote a gay romance into a sports anime, something that had never been done before, at constant risk of losing their job and status in the industry. They were badasses and they're both writing heroes of mine because of that, and it actually makes me love YOI more knowing how much they cared and how much they were willing to risk to tell the story they wanted to tell, that of a romance between Victor and Yuuri. And it is a romance, indisputably so, and anyone who disagrees is frankly giving them a slap in the face.

[littleholmes]

Hi, I'm Monique 🌸 I do a lot of writing and rambling about manga and anime! To make it easy to find my posts, I've included links to my analysis posts, writings, and my AO3 below!

Note: This blog and these posts are not spoiler-free. Please do not repost or post on other websites, tiktok, etc. Sometimes there's a tag glitch so just be sure to please remove my tags first, or write ‘prev tags’ if you agree with my tags, before rbing (this includes specialty sorting tags)

-> weekly/monthly manga & manhua I read: Jujutsu Kaisen, Bungou Stray Dogs, Spy x Family, 19 Days, My Hero Academia, Kuroshitsuji, Astro Royale, Chainsaw Man. Series Ended/Complete: Dr. Stone (main & 4D Science ended), Tokyo Revengers (main ended), MHA: Vigilantes, Demon Slayer, Haikyuu!!

☆ I keep this navigation post and all lists regularly updated so check in weekly! For Viz titles, I read the official translation via the Shonen Jump app.

🌸 My Analysis/Ramblings Main Tags

A small note that my longer posts are my analysis & typically delve into actual meta/analysis and are tagged as analysis. My shorter posts are random thoughts that come to mind as I read instead of a deeper analysis, they’re light and I will elaborate in the tags if I have more to add. In my thoughts tags, you will find a mixture of both thoughts and analysis.

• weekly/monthly manga thoughts tags (newest!-> 3 June 2024): bnha thoughts* || jjk thoughts* || sxf thoughts* || 19 days thoughts* || bungo stray thoughts* || dcst thoughts*|| csm thoughts* (still read but no longer posting thoughts)|| [next new sxf viz: June 9] • long analysis/rambling main tag: idk I'm rambling* (<-new! 25 May) || Monique answers things* || see each series navigation list below for more posts and tags

🌸 My Analysis by Series

I've organized my analysis & thoughts posts in lists for each series below, and I also update each series link regularly! Also, reblogging my posts helps more fans find them, so consider rbing if you enjoy!

• Jujutsu Kaisen analysis posts (new-> 26 May/Ch 261)|| thoughts + analysis about Yuji, Megumi, Toji, Nanamin, Gojo, the current manga arcs, & more [next new ch: 9 June] • Bungou Stray Dogs analysis posts (newest-> 3 June/ Ch 114.5) || thoughts + analysis about Chuuya's corruption, Dazai, the aftermath of Odasaku, Akutagawa's health, the current manga arcs, & more [next new ch: ~3 July] • BNHA analysis posts (newest!-> (2 June / Ch 424)|| thoughts + analysis posts including recent arcs, villains, the Todoroki fam, & more [next new ch: 9 June ] Dr. Stone || Tokyo Revengers || Sk8 the Infinity || Yuri!! on Ice

🌸 More Thoughts/Ramblings by Series

A Sign of Affection x || Atarashii Joushi/My New Boss is Goofy x || The Yuzuki Family’s Four Sons x || Link Click/Shiguang Daili Ren x || Blue Lock x || Buddy Daddies x || Food Wars + some Toonami x || Life Lessons with Uramichi Oniisan x || Haikyuu!! x

🌸 Gifs I made x || Rather read a fic? My AO3

[nebulaleaf]

prev post is so real. persona 5 fandom feels like the twitter of my personal fandoms if u understand that

like when i wrote for dr id get so many comments; even small ones. sweet bookmarks, dms on my linked socials etc etc etc. it was a really nice community at times despite the source material.

p5? it, funnily enough, feels so fucking corperate and sanitized. no comments no interaction. just dead silence even in bookmarks. for p5 im solely writing for myself but man 😭 it really is disheartening sometimes like. i see everyone excitedly talking in artist's notes on tumblr and twitter and i get a lil jealous. like yeah its way easier to comment in art but ... 🥺 sniffle sop

[darsynia]

I Know No Other Way Than This | Ch 5

(Bruce Banner/OFC, Tony Stark & Bruce Banner Friendship, post-Avengers 1 Soulmate AU multichapter)

gif by @scottxlogan

MCU Masterlist | Tony Stark Masterlist | Prev | Next

Summary: Bruce tried to forget he had soulmate words entirely, but on the day of the Chitauri attack, he returned from his stint as the Hulk to find that his black words had turned silver. His soulmate must have watched him shift from the Other Guy into himself and said them while he was unconscious… Length: 2,159 Note: if I’d have found this chapter title before I started this, the entire story would be named Parallel Postulate, instead. Basically, Euclid’s Fifth Postulate is describing a line that falls across two other lines. It says that if the angle created by each ‘corner’ that the joins make are less than 90%, then the other two lines will eventually meet at a single point. Tony is the line that falls, and Cicely and Bruce are the two lines that will eventually meet! Tags: @starryeyes2000 @arrthurpendragon @ronearoundblindly @themaradaniels

Excerpt:

“How’s it going, Aris-Toss-All? Whatcha thinking?”

“Hulk was trying to warn you I think. The thing that set me off was finding out her stalker wasn’t a stalker at all. He was being paid to watch her, referred to a ‘them’ that had missed a payment.” 

There was a minute or two delay in hearing Tony’s next response.

“All right, JARVIS is on the case, thanks to what you already told him and some enhanced directives from me. But Bruce? I think you’re going to have to really watch those videos and see what you can see. AI is one thing, but--”

“No, I agree,” Bruce sighed.

“Don’t fret. Your impulsive instinct got us the jump on the guy.”

“My existence is harmful to her, Tony.”

Chapter Five: Euclid’s Fifth Postulate

Bruce’s left side was still a bit bruised when he woke up, despite the healing factor of the Hulk. He could feel it, tender and unfamiliar, as he rolled over onto his back on the springy floor of the room Tony had built for him. It had been a long time since he had felt a true serious injury; Bruce wondered exactly how long. Years, that was for sure. All of those injuries, even the one where he’d actually shot himself, had resulted in the Other Guy taking over and his body repairing the damage. For it not to have been fully repaired by the time Bruce was back in control of himself must have meant an extensive injury.

He looked up at the ceiling above him and found the answer.

There was a circular metal collection of slabs, not quite over his head, but close. They were clustered and angled, looking a lot like something he’d seen in the science fiction show Stargate, called the Iris. There it had been used to cover up the titular gate to prevent anything from moving through it without permission. Had Tony built a shaft through his tower to this room? Had he dropped Bruce all that way?

“Dr. Banner, Sir has requested that I monitor your condition and inform him when you are prepared to speak with him over the comm. Shall I give you some more time to adjust or are you ready now?”

He was used to JARVIS, but there was something strange about hearing the AI speaking so casually here, of all places.

“Go on, but I’d like you to do a welfare check on Cicely Besnard. The information I learned that set me off directly relates to her safety.”

“Certainly, Dr. Banner.”

It stood to reason that Tony had a protocol in place to make sure that simply telling him what had brought forth the Hulk wouldn’t do it again, but Bruce remembered what it was, and that information was still relevant. At least, he hoped it was.

“If it isn’t the Jaw-y Green Giant! How much do you hate watching videos of yourself as your chartreuse creature?”

“It’s not my favorite thing, Tony. Why?”

“He was really chatty during the flight. Seemed like what he was trying to say was important, but I couldn’t figure it out.”

Bruce was genuinely surprised. He sat up, resting his forearms on his knees, frowning. “Is there audio?”

“Sure. Here, ignore the wind noise:”

He understood what Tony meant as an audio file started to play. The sound of the wind whipping was distracting, but then the Hulk started talking.

“BRUCE’S ANN. ANN DANGER. NEW ROSS HIRE NEW EMIL WATCH BRUCE’S ANN.”

He recognized some of the names, but not their context.

“Bruce?”

“Give me a few minutes!” Bruce yelled at Tony. He scrubbed a hand through his hair and added, “I’m not that angry, I just need to think, okay?” He was on edge, and if he wasn’t careful, he’d lose it again and Cicely would be in even more danger. Waiting to hear back from Stark’s AI was making him antsy.

“There’s clothes through a human-sized door activated by your fingerprint, light it up, will you JARVIS?”

Bruce stood and looked around until he saw a (green, of course) blinking light above a door-shaped indent in the padding of the walls. He walked over and activated the controls, opening it up to find a few outfits hanging on the wall. One of them was a t-shirt with Oscar the Grouch on it, which had Bruce laughing despite the serious moment.

“Dr. Banner? I can report that Cicely Besnard is currently at home. The man who has been seen following her around was not visible on any of the surveillance taken from her journey.”

“That’s less encouraging than it sounds, JARVIS. Someone’s hiring people to tail her, that’s what made me lose it. We need to tell her, and either move her somewhere safe or arrange for some kind of security until we can find out why. And it sure as hell better not be because of me.”

“Shall I inform Mr. Stark about this development?”

“Please.”

Bruce dressed quickly, his mind on the names that Hulk had used. He’d sounded upset, in as much as the Other Guy could have variations in demeanor. Ross was obvious, and so was Emil, for that matter, but calling them new was throwing Bruce. And ‘Ann?’ He couldn’t think of any--

Wait.

Betty had told him about a nurse who had been particularly kind to her in the hospital after his initial rampage as the Hulk. The woman had changed shifts, altered her schedule, so she could be there for Betty. That nurse’s name had been Ann.

He stumbled out of the changing room, finding the light switch and turning it off with a weak hand. Did Hulk remember that? The creature’s thought processes were primitive, he knew, but were they associative?

‘New’ Ross. ‘New’ Emil. ‘Bruce’s Ann.’ Bruce’s nurse. A bad guy called in an accomplice to watch Bruce’s nurse?

“How’s it going, Aris-Toss-All? Whatcha thinking?”

“Hulk was trying to warn you I think. The thing that set me off was finding out her stalker wasn’t a stalker at all. He was being paid to watch her, referred to a ‘them’ that had missed a payment.” 

There was a minute or two delay in hearing Tony’s next response.

“All right, JARVIS is on the case, thanks to what you already told him and some enhanced directives from me. But Bruce? I think you’re going to have to really watch those videos and see what you can see. AI is one thing, but--”

“No, I agree,” Bruce sighed.

“Don’t fret. Your impulsive instinct got us the jump on the guy.”

“My existence is harmful to her, Tony.”

Just saying it out loud hurt. He’d been looking forward to seeing her in person, after warning the stalker off, even though he wouldn’t have approached her. The Hulk’s determination to pass along Bruce’s message in the only way he could think of was very worrisome to Bruce. It meant that Cicely was more important to him than he’d thought she was, which was already too much.

“Seems to me it’s too late to worry about that. If there’s no way to avoid complicating her life, shouldn’t you both at least benefit from it?”

“You got an old laptop you can put on your internal network so I can watch from in here? I don’t think I’m ready to head out just yet,” Bruce asked, ignoring Tony’s question entirely.

“Man, you have no idea how tempted I am to try to set up something on one of those PlaySkool tablets. I won’t, though. I know you’re taking this seriously.”

“Yes, I am.”

Bruce had been looking through files and sorting them into various folders for about five hours when Tony showed up in his Iron Man suit with a person-sized cot, and some blankets. 

“Sorry, sorry,” Bruce said, standing up and holding his hands to the small of his back like a man thirty years his senior. “Got carried away.”

“Hey, I’m the last person to chastise a good work binge. Getting any headway?”

“There are at least two of them. The guy I scared away and another man,” Bruce said grimly. “JARVIS did some background, and I’d just like to say that if I weren’t pretty sure this was about the Hulk, I’d be seriously concerned about your access to resources that cross ethics boundaries.”

He was being mild. It seemed like JARVIS had the ability to do things that if the US Government did them, they’d be hearing about UN violations for spying on its own citizens. Intellectually, he knew that private citizens were held to a lesser standard, but when it came to some of the things that he’d been involved in over the course of his life, Bruce didn’t see much difference in the kinds of people who were willing to cross those lines. That Tony Stark was one of them was concerning. It wouldn’t take much to nudge him over into the category of people whose well-meaning concepts were twisted into something horrible.

Bruce would have hoped that the things he’d read about at the Stark Expo a few years back would have taught the man something.

“Bottom line?” Tony asked.

“You’re going to need to send someone to approach her. Maybe Romanoff?” he sighed and once again pushed back the protective urgency he’d been feeling all evening.

“Why wouldn’t you be the one--”

“Okay, you’re Cicely, you recognize me as the person you said something innocuous to only for it to turn out to be a soulmark on my body. You ran away, but I’ve found you, and uh oh, here I am to warn you that someone other than me is stalking you, and it’s probably my fault. How will you react? Favorably, do you think?” Bruce shook his head.

“You watched her do research on you, Bruce. She knows you’re a scientist. The woman’s smart, she can figure out that it’s only logical that you tracked her down. It’s not like you picked her out of a list of women.” Tony flew up to the iris-looking metal door in the ceiling. “JARVIS says you still have some bruising. Should I fit this with some sort of net?”

“Focus, Tony!” Bruce said, irritated. His own comfort was far from a priority right now. “Ideally we set up someone to speak to her as she leaves for work in the morning. Whoever is tracking her was almost certainly warned that we’re onto them.”

“I can send Clint to watch the entrance now, if it would make you feel better,” Tony said, flying back down and landing near Bruce.

“It would.”

“I’ve got at least five empty apartments here, you know. The commute wouldn’t be too bad, and--”

Bruce’s frustration exploded into a tirade. “I can’t get close to this woman, Stark! Look what happened when she vaguely said something in my direction!”

“Wow, you actually do get green around the ears. I thought that was a euphemism!”

Bruce leaned over with his palms on his knees and started doing his breathing. Whether or not there was some kind of genetic imperative to caring for and/or protecting one’s soulmate, he felt responsible for the woman’s safety. She’d come into contact with him, and shortly afterwards, she’d become a target. Tony’s insistence that he remain involved with trying to get her into a safer situation was quite literally driving him insane.

“I’d kick you out of the tower to put her in instead but you’re kind of the one guy who should stick around,” Tony pointed out.

“We neutralize the threat, let her get on with her life. It’s that simple,” Bruce said.

“That’s right up there with ‘create world peace, everyone is happy,’ but okay.” Tony was hovering over Bruce in a way that would look nonchalant except for the way he lifted higher every time Bruce looked up at him. “I’ll send Clint to watch out for her overnight, and in the morning, Nat will drop by for a friendly chat. She’s good at undercover bullshit. Maybe something like a routine sweep of suspicious persons caught two men that had been subsequently seen on surveillance footage following her.”

Bruce let out a breath. “That could work,” he allowed. “Especially if Natasha questions her gently about whether she knows the guys. It could come across like a sting on them, not an operation to protect her.”

“Okay, it’s settled. Do you want me to read you a bedtime story?” Tony asked, sounding entirely too excited at the prospect.

“I already know about the book Go The Fuck To Sleep, Tony, but nice try,” Bruce laughed.

“Damn. I bought it to swap out for one of the books Cap takes to Children’s to read to the sick kids every month, but it turns out he actually does his due diligence and checks the books before he leaves. Knew it was me, too,” Tony lamented.

“Get out of here before your soulmate blames me for your absence. Good night,” Bruce ordered.

“Yes, Dad,” Tony said.

“Wow, no snarky nickname?” Bruce couldn’t resist.

“All I came up with on the fly was ‘Father Throws Best,’” Tony shrugged.

Next chapter, Bruce does his best not to get attached as he seeks to make life better for his soulmate-- but comes to the realization that his life got better after the attack on New York.

[everythingsinred]

Let's Talk About NatsuMikan: Mikan (pt. 9)

Mikan's feelings are officially romantic now which will make this essay much more fun. Hopefully you will think so too. Today we'll chat about how her new crush clashes with Natsume's sudden coldness, as well as further discuss her difficulty confronting him.

I use the TokyoPop versions that I own for these essays. After the 15th volume I'll be left to my own devices, but for now, TokyoPop is what I turn to. If there's differences in translation or something, then I'm sorry. It happens from time to time but I promise I'm not just making stuff up. There might be inconsistencies between versions, that's all.

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Chapter Twenty-Six

You might ask yourself "huh???" But, yes, we did just analyze 26 yesterday. But I was stupid back then. I left out a key detail and I have to talk about it or else I'll combust. It's not a huge thing on the surface, but it's important to me. I couldn't edit the post because by the time I'd realized my mistake, people had already read it! And I couldn't reblog with the new information because then it could be easily missed in the future. This is just the easiest way.

Who is "people," Mikan?

I have to talk about this, the specific way she says this. "Mikan, why is your face red?" And her explanation, even just internal, is "Well, he suddenly started being all serious and using people's actual name." An easily dismissed line, but it shouldn't be!

Obviously, she realizes that she's affected by the fact that he called her by her name. She knows that she's blushing and that it's because of him. But Mikan struggles a lot with actually admitting feelings for Natsume. This explanation is internal, which means she's just thinking it. Of course she'd never say to Anna or Nonoko out loud, "Oh, yeah, I'm blushing because of something Natsume said," But she also can't admit it to herself, either. She distances herself, instead saying, even in her own head, that he surprised her by "using people's actual name." It's not about her, specifically, it's about people.

But Mikan wouldn't be affected like this if he had said someone else's name. It's only because he said her name that she's blushing. She just can't actually admit it because if she did, then she'd have to ask herself why it matters that he said her name, and she doesn't want to do that.

Mikan's obliviousness about her feelings stem from multiple causes.

She has little to no romantic experience. She's never liked a boy before and she doesn't really understand why Natsume is different from her other friends.

Natsume is confusing. We will later see that Ruka, who is much more consistent and straight-forward is able to get his feelings across to Mikan with way more ease than Natsume. Natsume is wishy-washy, hot-and-cold, unpredictable and mysterious. It makes sense that Mikan wouldn't understand that many of his actions are motivated by romance because he does nothing to suggest it.

She doesn't want to think about it. I had mentioned previously that Higuchi Tachibana said once that Mikan was supposed to be a cheerful girl who forgot her issues quickly. Part of that is that she's easily distracted, another part is that she prefers to think positively about things. But she also sometimes simply refuses to think hard about confusing or unpleasant feelings.

Here, it's pretty clear that she doesn't want to think too hard about why Natsume made her blush. She's eager to forget about it. I think her feelings for him make her uncomfortable, so she distances herself from them. She can't come to understand how she feels if she refuses to contemplate the feelings in the first place. So she says that Natsume is using "people's name" to create a space between the event and her consequent feelings.

Well, she can try to ignore her feelings all she wants, but that won't stop them from growing.

Chapter Twenty-Seven

For the Natsume essay, I could immediately start talking about dramatic things like sacrifice and protection as soon as his feelings changed. This essay will be a little slower of a burn. Mikan may have feelings for him, but she’s not entirely aware of that and won’t be for a while, so pretty, fanciful language has little place here at the moment.

It’s time for exams! So Mikan has bigger fish to fry than whatever weird two-syllable names occasionally come from Natsume’s mouth (because she doesn't actually want to think about it anyway). Mikan is stupid and usually doesn’t do well on tests, but Yuu informs her that if she gets the best grade, there’s a chance she could qualify for the Best Student Award, the award Hotaru had previously been coveting. It’s still up for grabs and the exams are going to be the deciding factor.

Since getting his letter from Narumi, Mikan is jazzed over even the smallest chance she’ll see her Jii-chan again, so she throws herself into studying, even though it isn’t exactly fruitful. She struggles a lot with most of the concepts she’s reviewing, so she gets teased by her friends, and the chaos leads her to run into Natsume. He doesn’t say anything, but Mikan, insecure as always and used to him being a jerk, is sure he is judging her harshest of all. 

He didn't say that. He probably wasn't even thinking it. Mikan's just incredibly nervous and vulnerable around him, especially now.

Ruka tries to comfort her that Natsume wouldn’t be so cruel, ever the apologist, but she struggles to believe him. Mikan is still very affected by what Natsume said to her at the after-party. She’s more uncomfortable around him than ever because she still doesn’t understand what he was trying to say. He’s always been a conundrum, but he’s outdone himself this time. Additionally, the way he makes her feel is even more confusing, and she's insistent on not analyzing her feelings too closely. She doesn’t want to dwell on it, but she can’t look at him without thinking about it. She doesn’t linger on that topic forever, mainly because her bigger fish have yet to be fried. Maybe that's part of the reason (but the certainly not the only reason) that she focuses so much on studying: this way she doesn't have time to dwell on Natsume.

Because Mikan is determined. It doesn’t matter that her chances are low. It doesn’t matter that the odds are stacked against her. What matters is that she wants to try, so she does. Her incessant refusal to give up or slack off inspires the rest of the class, and by the time exams roll around, nearly everyone is in study mode. Even Natsume is helping some classmates out. Her tenacity is contagious. Class B gets slowly drawn closer together, especially because of Mikan’s insistence on the matter. In the anime, Mikan demonstrates selflessness by sacrificing her own study night to help Sumire out with the home ec exam. Though those moments are missing from the manga, there’s still an emphasis on the entire class getting along for once.

:) Height difference. :)

But ultimately Mikan doesn’t do well. In fact, she does terribly. She tries her hardest and she still fails. Hotaru jokes that the outcome had been obvious from the beginning, but what mattered was that she tried. I think it’s a lovely message to promote trying even in unlikely or difficult situations. Failing when you’ve put your all into something can’t really be a failure, because you still did all you could. Real failure is not even trying. Mikan might not have come even remotely close to qualifying for the Best Student Award, but she still succeeded in amping up her classmates, in connecting with them, in trying her hardest. Award or no, she still studied hard and learned things. That is enough for now. There’s always next year (*stifled screaming*).

Chapter Twenty-Eight

Who is Persona? Mikan isn’t familiar.

Turns out that not only did Mikan do more poorly than she’d like, she earned the lowest grade in class, even after all that studying. She’s feeling down on herself, and it doesn’t help that Natsume is randomly acting even meaner than usual for no good reason. Things are not going well for her.

Was she asking him if he wanted to play Othello with her? I'm gonna cry. It's a 2-player game ;-;

Then she meets Kaname, a charming and handsome middle schooler who is Tsubasa’s best friend and Mr. Bear’s creator. Mikan quickly gets attached to him because he is kind and she is starved for positive affection after being teased by Class B and treated coldly by Natsume. He reminds her of the ideal prince she and Hotaru put together--an image of the perfect boy who is beautiful, kind, delicate, and rich. Naturally, he should also be sickly, Hotaru adds. And that fits, because Kaname--in addition to being the perfect guy on paper--has the life-shortening alice.

I’m gonna ramble about something unimportant for a moment because in the panel where Mikan describes her and Hotaru’s “ideal prince,” Hotaru is the one drawing and listing out all his qualities while Mikan watches in awe. To be honest, I always kind of took that to be Hotaru’s high standard for an ideal man, an almost impossible standard for a normal person to meet. Mikan, who has never had a crush on a boy before and is entirely naive to romance and even the fantasy of it, simply sits and takes the information in. (After all, when Mikan does fall in love, the boy she loves has very little in common with the prince drawing.) Regardless of whether or not Mikan helped form the sketch Hotaru drew, though, that princely form is not based in reality. 

But... Hotaru's description also fits Ruka... I'm just saying.

Not even Kaname fits it as perfectly as Mikan imagines. 

In the anime, he might be close to perfect. The corresponding episode doesn’t imply that there’s much more to him beyond what Mikan sees at first glance: kind, sickly, handsome, popular. But the manga challenges this. He is all of those things, but he’s more than that too.

Mikan is not the only one to see Kaname as a perfect prince. He has a lot of fans, many of which have commissioned him for a stuffed animal at some point. He knows that he’s attractive and can use those assets to his advantage. His manipulation skills lead to Bear’s cabin being entirely modernized and remodeled by his devoted admirers. I guess my point here is that Kaname is just an example of how perfection can’t exist. He’s as close as it gets, and even he has facets to his personality that could be classified as flaws (like being manipulative, though I think people shouldn’t be punished for objectively funny character flaws).

This aspect of Kaname's personality is so underrated. He's so funny to me.

Tsubasa is a little different in the manga than in the corresponding anime episode as well. In the anime, he’s eaten up inside about Kaname’s alice shape. He struggles with Kaname’s insistence on using his alice, but reluctantly resigns himself to being helpless in the matter. Ultimately, it’s not his alice and not his call, and he can’t force Kaname to give up something that makes him happy. In the manga, Tsubasa is casual. He tells Mikan about Kaname’s alice shape and that he’s in and out of the hospital all the time. She worries about him, naturally, but the focus is more on Kaname than on Mikan’s struggling with the revelation about the fourth form or Tsubasa’s conflicted feelings watching his best friend die. 

She gets angry at first, but the truth is that she's hurt! Poor Mikan!

At some point, while she’s concerned about Kaname in class, she makes eye contact with Natsume, who quickly and dismissively looks away. Mikan is initially pissed, because she hates being ignored and she doesn’t understand what his problem is. But then her expression saddens. After the Reo incident, Mikan had been carrying hope that she could stay true to Narumi’s advice and make friends with unlikeable people. She was successful with Sumire, and she’s currently making progress with Bear, but Natsume is still untouchable, almost as if she did something to gravely offend him. She’s hurt, because she catches glimpses of him that she likes and for some reason he refuses to let her see more. It’s not just that he has walls, it’s that the walls have spikes specifically designed to poke her in a way they don’t poke anybody else. It feels personal, and now that she likes him, it hurts even more.

In any case, Mikan and Hotaru--sent on a mission to trap a rumored spirit--stumble upon Bear bringing Kaname anonymous flowers, only to get caught. Kaname tells him that he worries about him, because he doesn’t let people in and might actually be all on his own once Kaname is gone.

(And of all of Kaname’s creations, Bear is the most his. While the other toys seem to be created for commissions, Bear was created for Kaname. All the stuffed toys love him, but Bear is the only one who seems to fully understand him. He is the only one who would bring Kaname his favorite flowers, the only one who worries about him the way he does. And of all the toys, Bear is the one Kaname seems to have the strongest connection with. Not relevant, but something that still makes me cry because their relationship is more than I could ever cope with.)

He finishes off by apologizing to Bear that they won’t always be together.

And Mikan takes that personally. We know from the omake about Mikan’s childhood that she has always felt a yearning for what she never had, that the yearning was strongly connected with the stars and with her complicated feelings about ghosts. She wonders if her parents felt the same way: concerned about her because they were apart, sorry that they couldn’t be together. It’s bittersweet, because Mikan lost out on a love she should have always had. But she never felt unloved, abandoned, left behind. Mikan is sure that her parents loved her, that they wished they could’ve stayed with her. That connection we’ve discussed before is exactly what gives her that certainty. She could feel her father’s presence in the omake and feels connections to the mysterious people brought up from time to time in regards to her nullification (“that woman” and the other person with the nullification alice).

"When I think that [my parents want to hug me from heaven] and look at the starry sky, my heart feels almost like it could break." Yeah, mine too, Mikan.

Over the chapter, Mikan has learned a sad sort of acceptance. Death is scary. But the sadness doesn’t just come from life ending; it’s about leaving behind the people you love. It’s inevitable, and it will always hurt, but that means making sure that the people you love know that they are loved. So she won’t help Kaname use up his alice and his lifespan. Instead, she will try to be friends with Bear, so that when Kaname inevitably can’t be around for him anymore, someone will be. 

Even if she can’t stand Bear, she will try to befriend him anyway, because even Bear deserves to have somebody care about him. After all, she was able to overcome her dislike of Natsume, so she has some experience in this sort of thing. (And it’s important to note that her dislike of Natsume is past tense. Even if he is still acting like a jerk to her, she still likes him.)

Chapter Twenty-Nine

I've chosen to be really kind and generous and include two more chapters of analysis here for you, even though it is the start of a new arc.

At this point in the Natsume essay, I had just reached 22k words. In this essay we’ve passed 35k. Mikan is the main character after all. In the earlier chapters, Natsume is hardly present, only to occasionally act as an antagonist before he’s firmly transitioned into a member of the lead cast after the Reo arc. And even then, he sometimes doesn't appear for a few chapters. Meanwhile, Mikan is present and central in nearly every chapter.

It's very sad but we won’t be talking about comparisons to the anime from now on. I've compared all I could for the time being. By now, we get it: anime!NatsuMikan is different from manga!NatsuMikan. Time to move on. Let’s get into the Z arc.

It’s November at Gakuen Alice. Fall is in full flush (keep in mind that seasons are important!) and something amazing has happened: Yuu won the best student award and as a result will be visiting his family in Fukuoka for a week. Everyone is excited for him, even if they are a bit jealous of his prizes. He’s especially excited to see his younger sister, who he has never met. 

Mikan is a rarity, finding her alice and attending the school later than most of her classmates, who have been here for almost their whole lives. The academy steals childhoods and lives and families from these kids, though that’s not something Mikan is piecing together quite yet. Knowing your family shouldn’t be a privilege awarded to one smart child each year; it should be something these kids all take for granted. But Yuu has waited three years to meet his sister. The Alice kids are all nine/ten/eleven years old now, which means that most of them will either have to lose their alice or wait another decade before they can go home. Not all the kids are like Natsume or Mikan, being singled out in atrocious ways; but they are all abused and neglected, treated like commodities and experiments, ways to make profit and gather power, rather than being treated like children. Not all the kids are treated like child soldiers, but they are mistreated nonetheless, pitted against each other for privileges they should have anyway.

I mention this because we’ll be discussing the idea of “going home,” family, and potential loss of alice in this arc, a subject that is sensitive for each kid in Class B (not just the ones with the life-shortening alice).

That aside, Mikan is visibly happy for Yuu. All the kids are jealous, of course, because they all want to see their families, but none of them resent Yuu for winning. There’s genuine happiness for him, from everybody, but specifically Mikan. Watching a close friend win feels like a win for her too.

She and Hotaru look so genuinely happy for him. I'm gonna cry.

In any case, it’s been a week, so Class B is eagerly awaiting Yuu’s return to school, but other news is circulating around the academy too, particularly about a few “loss of alice” incidents in Japan. Because kids are starting to freak out about it, the staff are addressing their concerns and reassuring everyone that these incidents are only affecting adults outside the academy. These occurrences are odd because they have nothing to do with alice shapes, but the real cause is unclear. 

The kids freak out more, but seem to be somewhat calmed by the fact that kids don’t seem to be affected. 

They bring up the fact that losing your alice means you can go home, a sore spot for any Alice student. Losing an alice is the only way these kids will see their families again while they are still children. Kids who aren’t academically inclined, like Mikan or Koko, don’t have a good shot at winning the best student award, and other kids like Natsume would never be allowed to leave the school, even if he applied himself enough to win (though that’s not something they bring up). The only chance they have is by losing their alice, either due to the alice shape or these incidents. So even though it seems frightening to lose it, there’s also a clear silver lining.

Sumire, leader of the Alice-supremacy movement, is appalled by her classmates’ discussion. Nonoko chimes in to share that although she misses her family, her alice feels like a part of her, like something precious that she doesn’t want to part with. On top of that, leaving the school means leaving all the people she grew up with, most of whom she only recently started being friends with. 

He's ignoring her and she's hurt about it, but he's still one of the most important people to her, still a person she doesn't want to lose.

This prompts Mikan to think of all the people she’s come to know and care for at the academy, and the one person she came here for in the first place. Losing these new (and renewed) bonds would be crushing and lonely. So they all start crying and freaking out again. This is why I had previously mentioned the school’s exploitation of the children and how it takes advantage of them by withholding from them things they are entitled to (like communication with their families). In a better school, this wouldn’t be a debate at all. They’d be able to see and talk to their parents and siblings whenever they wanted and wouldn’t want to lose a part of themselves and all the friends they’ve made in order to do it. But because Alice Academy is a monstrous institution, the children face this terrible catch-22 and have to decide for themselves which is worse: losing your friends or losing your family. It just shouldn’t even be a thing they have to discuss in the first place.

Class is about to start and Natsume just walks right out in the middle of their conversation, with Ruka running after him. Mikan is reminded of what Ruka told her, that Natsume doesn’t want his alice, that she could never understand how he feels. She can understand that, if that’s true, the conversation they were having doesn’t hit him the same way as it hits the others. She doesn’t understand all the nuances of his feelings, but she can see that he’s bothered, which only makes her concerned.

Oh no, he's definitely avoiding you. But it's nice, because you're so busy wondering why he's avoiding you that you're not thinking about why he makes you blush anymore! A victory!

Mikan is in the Special classroom, waiting for class to start, preoccupied with thoughts of her partner. But they’re not all about how bothered he must have been; they’re about how she’s bothered. Natsume seems to be avoiding her and she doesn’t know why. She doesn’t seem angry, just hurt, because she doesn’t know if she did something to hurt him. Mikan has just started to like him, after all, even though she isn’t yet aware of the complexity of her feelings. Having him shut the whole relationship down just as soon as her feelings started to turn around is emotional whiplash and it’s hard for her to understand any of her emotions if she can’t even understand what he’s trying to pull. Though she’s been upbeat and cheerful just like always, it’s obvious that this issue has been plaguing her for a while, something she only lets herself dwell on when she’s given a moment alone.

Which is why her spirits instantly rise when she meets the elusive SA class representative, Tono, who is creepy and uncomfortable to read but generally a good guy. He has the amplification alice, the opposite of Mikan’s, which creates a feeling of connection between them. He, like everyone who meets Mikan, is interested in the fact that she’s Natsume’s partner. Being his partner makes her famous because Natsume is famous, and if Natsume, who is special, got shackled to a partner, that must mean his partner is also special. 

Tono asks about Natsume’s health, referencing rumors about him going to the hospital a lot recently. Mikan is instantly concerned again. He’s been avoiding her, so she has no idea what he’s up to, hospital or no, and so she wonders if hospitalization might be why he’s acting so weird. She again connects this news with Noda’s lesson on alice shapes, wondering if perhaps Natsume has the life-shortening alice like Kaname.

She thinks, “Not Natsume,” obviously disturbed by the idea that he could be like Kaname in this way. Of course nobody wants a classmate to die, but the fact that she thinks so much about him despite the fact that they aren’t really on awesome terms makes her concern a little more telling. It’s not just that she doesn’t want a classmate to have the fourth shape; it’s that she doesn’t want Natsume in particular to have it. “Not Natsume.” I'll talk more about this concept later.

The TokyoPop says "Not Natsume!" instead of "It can't be!" I like "Not Natsume!" better. It feels more specific. Because it's the same basic premise, and because I'll mention this sort of thing again later, I'm just going with "Not Natsume!"

She’s thought of him three times in relation to the fourth shape so far, exhibiting that stellar intuition she has. But she shakes the thought off, once again. It’s unpleasant, so she doesn’t want to think about it. She dismisses the thoughts as being residual from her encounters with Kaname and changes the subject to the issue of alice loss incidents.

Tono and the SA class discuss the issue for a bit, but because neither Tono nor Noda can say much without starting a panic, there’s no real information gained, other than that students are being kept on lockdown in the school to prevent alice loss incidents within the academy.

Chapter Thirty

The last chapter was chock-full of info-dumping and set-up for the arc. There was some touch on personal interactions as well, and Higuchi Tachibana is a master at plot threads like these. Especially early in the story, arcs are built, not just around plot points, but character and relationships. In Natsume’s essay, the fact that somebody was stealing alices was vital to his character, where his disdain for his own alice came head to head with his desire to protect his loved ones. There’s also the issue of Mikan’s mother, and his tortured love for Mikan, having no choice but to shut her out. Mikan has threads in this arc as well, things that will be central as we move forward. This arc in particular is incredibly well-thought out, with each central character getting their fair share of development.

Yuu is finally back, having brought back stories and souvenirs for everyone. We meet Pengy as well, Hotaru’s commissioned invention who missed her so much its owner sent it back. It’s established straight away that Mikan and Pengy are like souls, and they get along very well (this will be important). 

"Whatever our souls are made of, his and mine are the same." -Emily Brontë

The mood of the day is ruined very quickly when we discover that Yuu’s alice isn’t working. The scary stories have come to claim a victim, and no reassurances about them being kids apply anymore. Yuu is a kid, and his alice seems to be gone. He is put into quarantine for a couple days and there’s no more fun and games. Nobody in Class B knows what’s going on and the teachers aren’t sharing. Mikan pleads with Narumi to let her see Yuu, just for a visit, since they’d established that whatever’s wrong with Yuu is not contagious. Narumi refuses, so Hotaru steps in, manipulating him through an invention of hers into leading them to Yuu. 

Though Mikan is antsy about doing something like this, that might get them into trouble, Hotaru shuts her concerns down. Yuu is all by himself. He must be scared. Mikan was already worried about her friend, but seeing Hotaru display this care as well means the situation must be dire. Even Hotaru is worried, but even more than that: we (and Mikan) can see just how much Hotaru cares for Yuu, how much of an important friend he is to her. 

They reunite with Yuu, who starts to cry, both touched that they’d come to see him and scared that he won’t ever see his friends again. Yuu, who is always concerned for others, is now scared for himself. A character who is so defined by his desire to help others and keep the peace being isolated by himself is a key to tragedy. No child should have to deal with being locked up in a room, quarantined on his own even though he isn’t even contagious, with nobody to talk to. It would be scary for anyone, let alone a little kid.

He's only little!!!! Let him out!!!!

So Mikan and Hotaru go back and start a campaign to fold paper cranes in the hopes that their prayers will make him better. Some sticklers start to berate Mikan for going to see him in the first place, accusing her of infecting the classroom and trying to spray her with disinfectant. Mikan is angered by their words, but it’s Sumire who punches one of the bullies. She is Alice-supremacist number one, but that means that they should all be cooperating. 

It’s interesting how Sumire was introduced as a villain character, as nothing more than a bully with a superficial crush on Natsume. But once Mikan started to see the goodness in her, more and more instances of her as an ally started to occur. And it’s not as simple as seeing new traits that redeem her. Instead, the traits that made her so terrible at first (her stubbornness, control over the classroom, busybody nature, and Alice-supremacy) were developed as double-sided, as being beneficial too. Characters aren’t black and white. The things that make Sumire insufferable one moment make her kind the next. And part of Mikan’s journey in befriending Sumire is realizing that.

Yuu is finally released from his prison, even though his alice is still gone. There’s a moment of happiness at the reunion, at the hope that he might get his alice back just by going back to his normal routine. But Yuu goes on to detail the questions he was asked, and how he had encountered a woman while outside of the academy who might have the stealing alice and who might be part of Z. All the kids involved with the Reo incident freeze at the name. The loss of alice incidents seemed like scary aberrations before, just random and terrifying events that could take one of their classmates away. But now it’s more insidious, like there’s some conspiracy. Less random, more orchestrated.

Mikan might have gone back to her normal cheery self after the Reo incident, but she was still traumatized by the events, so the idea that it might not be entirely over scares her. It apparently bothers Natsume too, so he leaves the room and once again Ruka chases after him. But this time, Mikan decides to follow him too. She remembers that Natsume, the Black Cat, had been propositioned into joining Z, so maybe he knows something more than she does. Besides, they were both kidnapped together. Natsume is one of the few people who really understands what it was like, so maybe they can talk more about it.

She calls out to him, trying to start a conversation. But he just ignores her, like he’s been doing, so Mikan loses her patience. She’s been putting up with him acting like this for long enough. It’s time for some explanations. So she blows up, demanding to know what his problem is. 

She never makes it personal with him. 'Tis too scary!

I find it so interesting that she says he’s been “ignoring people forever” or "disregarding everyone" instead of saying “ignoring me.” Mikan is visibly angry, but she doesn’t want him to know that she’s hurt too. By making it some general thing, instead of something personal, she can distance herself from the situation. He’s mistreating people, hurting people, not necessarily her. It was sudden and without reason, which only makes her more hurt.

But the thing is that he’s not ignoring people. If he were ignoring everyone, she might think there’s something wrong with him, that something is causing himself to turn away. But he’s not withdrawing from anybody (any more than usual) other than her. It seems pointed and intentional and all about her. And she doesn’t want to believe he has a problem with her, which is why she says “ignoring people.” It would be one thing if he had a problem with her and it pissed her off just like before, when they were enemies; it’s another if he doesn’t like her and is somehow also aware that the fact he doesn't like her hurts her feelings because she likes him now. Mikan is an outgoing girl who doesn’t fixate a lot on conflict, but Natsume is different. He’s an enigma and she doesn’t get him, even though she likes him now and she wants to. He keeps himself shut off from her, sure, but the interesting thing is that Mikan shuts herself off from him too. He makes her feel vulnerable, insecure, uncomfortable. She doesn't know why and doesn't really wanna know why. (Do you see why I absolutely had to cover 26 again?)

So she asks him, even though he’s been “ignoring people,” if there’s something he doesn’t like about her, and if there is, then he should just spit it out. 

When he finally speaks to her for the first time in weeks, it’s to tell her that he hates everything about her. “Stay away from me.”

Then he just turns around and leaves, like it doesn’t matter.

Mikan freezes for a moment, and there’s two interesting panels of her reacting before she says anything: there’s her hearing the words, just her eyes pictured, shocked but not betraying any particular emotion; and then there’s her lower face, with no eyes, but the beginning of an internal thought, “You…?”

We had “Not Natsume,” before, a refusal to accept that Natsume in particular, not just a classmate, could have the fourth shape. And now we have “You…?” An unfinished thought. Now who knows what that means? It could mean anything! “You suck?” “You’re a jerk?” “You really hate me?” or maybe just “You?” Not just a classmate, but Natsume in particular, hates her?

She screams back after he’s already started leaving that she hates him too, just as much. For a moment, she acts like it’s just another fight, but we can see (and so can Ruka) that it’s more than that. She’s hurt, not just because somebody hates her--because he’s hated her before and it didn’t hurt--but because Natsume in particular still hates her, even though she stopped hating him a while ago, no matter what she says. That pain she was trying to avoid, by saying he was “ignoring people” and not just her, is in full force now. It is just about her. It’s not a misunderstanding; he hates her.

It's one thing when your crush doesn't reciprocate romantic feelings; it's a whole other thing when he tells you to your face that he hates literally everything about you and doesn't want you ever coming near him again.

A moment of silence passes, where we can see a very small panel of Mikan actually crying, before they’re all interrupted by an alarm sounding, signaling that all kids are on lockdown now because intruders from Z have snuck onto campus.

He made her cry!!! Evil!

Ohoho it is such nonsense that Natsume loves Mikan and that she only thinks she reciprocates because she feels guilt. I will destroy that premise, believe me.

Conclusion

Mikan's crush doesn't seem to change things overnight the way Natsume's does. The thing is that she's crushing on a boy who feels he has no choice but to distance himself from her to protect her. That sucks because her affection for him is pretty solid at this point. From her point of view, he's wishy-washy. He was so serious and different at the afterparty and now he's downright cruel. It feels inconsistent. Natsume is never nice, per se, but she's spent enough time with him to be able to discern between Chapter 2 evil!Natsume and Chapter 26 soft!Natsume.

Her feelings are already at crush level! She can't take it back at the drop of a hat! Especially because she doesn't even know she has a crush! It must hurt.

Our next post will discuss the aftermath of this encounter as well as Mikan's inward struggle with her emotions and the expectation that she should always be smiling.

I have been referencing the Z Arc for a long time so I'm sure it's a relief to finally get here. But don't be fooled! I'm still gonna ceaselessly reference future arcs forever until the essay ends. I'm a self-hype machine.

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[kae-karo]

Biggest hype moment in the new livestream?

ASLKDFJLJSDFLKJ okay i'm using this as an excuse to give the play by play of the stream that nobody asked for thank u nadej here we GO

tl;dr: biggest hype is for the potentially unsettling nature of sumeru's story + hopefully more lore!

half a second into the trailer: irminsul tree mention !!!!! i am DEEPLY in love with how eerie this is all set up, with very wholesome commentary placed over very unsettling imagery/music. i hope that's the exact vibe we're getting in sumeru generally - i feel like mond had an upbeat vibe and kept it through the whole mond story, liyue had an elegant but historical vibe, inazuma was troubled but up front about it in the way it was presented...i'm legit hoping we're gonna get a 'there is no war in ba sing se' feeling through sumeru

i'm intrigued by the sages "finding" the newly born dendro archon and what that might entail lore-wise - i'm inclined to mistrust, based on what we've seen so far, but if that gives us more lore about how archons are chosen/decided/etc that could be very interesting too

i'm already a big fan of the environments they've showcased, they feel unique and hopefully will manifest that way in-game. i'm also hyped for the new charas - collei has a special place in my heart lmao but tighnari and dori both look cute as well. ultimatley i'm more hyped for cyno, dehya, and alhaitham as characters but i'm patient :) lmao

i am VERY intrigued by the prospect of the akasha terminal both from a lore perspective and worldbuilding perspective. i suspect it has some nefarious intentions and implications and i am VERY hyped to see it in action >:}

me, screaming quietly at "mark my words, our god shall return" (idk who exactly said it in the trailer but i am 👀👀 greater lord rukkhadevata perhaps??)

honestly what's intriguing me most so far is the glitchy effects...i was really caught off guard by them during the end of the inazuma archon quests post-signora fight, so to see that again....i am hype for possible implications there lmao

and!!! i'm very intrigued by the concept behind the withering and the implications of it being caused by something below the earth. my brain is spinning with possible theories lmaoooo

i'm also already a bit more than just a bit suspicious of the akademiya specifically cause they seem to be devout followers of rukkhadevata - are they possibly the ones suggesting that "their god shall return"? or refusing to recognize the authority of kusanali? also thrilled to see that rukkhadevata was a woman, if the rumors/lore abt the tsaritsa being in love with the prev dendro archon are true lmao

i'm really pleased to hear the devs say that they feel that this is a new stage in the journey, both for them and for us - i'm hoping this will start to really crack open some of the big lore questions and speculations that've only been hinted at in the past

i've mostly steered clear of how all the new reactions work not out of any disinterest but bc i think i'll understand better by seeing it in action and working on it myself lmao but i think it'll be interesting for sure

the subject of the little forest spirits is actually pretty interesting? it reminds me a bit of the koroks in botw, i'm interested to see how they function in the environment of sumeru and the story itself

unrelated to the events but it bears mentioning: i absolutely ADORE the efforts of the set designers??? like, they don't have to go that hard in building out the sets for the program but it's very wholesome and adorable that they do and i am very appreciative of the efforts involved

OH i am also hyped for the addition of so many artifacts to the mystic offering list!! now i can speedrun blizzard strayer and viridescent disappointment :) lmao

okay i THINK that's the main stuff lmaoooo tyty for asking nadej !!!!! 💜🙏