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hollie-san · 1 month ago

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[O'SEA] Osomatsu x Tea - Yumeship Acc

Note: I interact with sharers btw!!! :3c

Trope Appeal:

Friends to lovers, new old flame, childhood friends, the power of love, "just friends", everyone sees it but them, red string of fate, physical touch, acts of service, slow burn, birds of a feather, playboy settles down, sweethearts

If you care to ask any questions... Please do!! ❤️ I've also included

More Info Down Below!!! ↓

Tea Rose ティローズ | They / Any | 20's | 5'2 ft (158 cm)

Previously a financially irresponsible codependent alcoholic hikkikomori NEET, Mx. Rose now lives on the grounds of a graveyard at the edge of the district. Moving on from the mistakes of their past, Tea's adamant on making the right choices from now on. They're a sweet-hearted worrywart, flirty, shy, and optimistic. Tea is humble, caring, and follows a strict moral code. They love being creative and all forms of art & expression. They tend to believe they're always second-choice but they're an adept emotional regulator. They're private, and struggle to open up. They strive for perfection and hold themselves to those standards unfairly- it takes someone just as stubborn or simply reasonable to lower their walls.

Common attributes/symbols: roses, crosses, black nail polish, graveyard, frills / ruffles, v-neck, collar / chokers, worried face, smug face, blushing face, sky blue, black, red, mustard yellow, white

Common activities/hobbies: hanging out with Osomatsu, eating food, painting traditionally / digitally, & enjoying nature, dancing, reading, gardening, playing video / board games

Setting: graveyard where they live / work at is surrounded by a thick forest of oak and pine trees, Akatsuka is a prefecture in Tokyo, and any canon locations

You can draw them with:

Osomatsu Matsuno (friend -> lover) - Oso is 5'7 and Tea is 5'2. They're both physically affectionate and love food and lazing around. They often fall asleep on accident.

Matsuno Household (platonic / familial) - The brothers are also 5'7. Matsuyo & Matsuzo are taller than Tea.

Your OC/SI (platonic) - Tea is friendly and outgoing! They're a doer and prefer to be active during social outtings.

Additional stuff to keep in mind: Tea has a tattoo on their inner left wrist, their inner left forearm, on both outer ankles, on their inner upper right thigh, and on the back of their neck. They have a birthmark by their bellybutton in the shape of a heart and a surgery scar on their upper right arm.

Osomatsu Matsuno おそ松松の | He / Him | 20's | 5'7 ft (170 cm)

Osomatsu is laid-back, foolish, and has low ambitions. He feels that he has the responsibility of being the eldest brother. He is not a fan of losing. He is a lech with a good heart. He's thought of as a bland, shitty face with nothing special in characteristics about him and has identity issues. One of his favorite phrases is one spoken by his own creator, "This is how things should be!". This all transforms with Tea, as he realizes what's comfortable for him is at stake, but he's willing to brave that pressuring territory and do things proper with them. He finds value in things he previously deemed hassles or wastes of time, including his self worth. He's challenged by Tea's entropy but drawn to it.

Common attributes/symbols: beer, money, mahjong, kissy face, bedhead, horse racing tickets, red, pine family crest, pervy face, relaxed face, tired face, red, black, rust, brown, cream

Common activities/hobbies: day drinking, gambling, smoking, lounging, fishing, eating food, flirting with Tea, drawing and crafting, being included, reading (mostly manga), watching videos / TV

Setting: same as Tea including the graveyard area since he visits so often he basically lives there

Additional stuff to keep in mind: My Osomatsu has a chronic bedhead on the back of his head, the hairs point downward. Tea has a strict sobriety so he doesn't drink around them too often since he's willing to sober up to be with them.

Other things to keep in mind: They both go back and forth of who is more forward and who is more shy. They're in a spot where they flirt exclusively but avoid confessing- they're still honest with each other about how much they care. Their arc is about maturing together and living life proper.

Dynamic Examples:

Setting Ideas:

Content Warning Tags (to filter):

#cw // alcoholism, #cw // alcohol

#cw // suggestive

#cw // graphic violence, #cw // blood, #cw // death

#cw // sex work

O'Sea / Tea Related Tags:

#oc: tea, #oc: rosetiel (religion), #oc: rose (girlymatsu), #oc: barahime (edo empress)

#osomatsu, #lucifer (religion), #osoko (girlymatsu)

#oc: osoma, #oc: tiro

#ship: o'sea, #ship: ros'oko, #ship: jiang'sea, #ship: xiao'sea

#duo: ka'rose, #duo: keropea, #duo: ich'ea, #duo: jyush'ea, #duo: tot'tea

#trio: wo ai ni family, #trio: silly crew

You may see other tags like friend oc tags, friend/ships, and less commonly engaged AU's that I don't care to mention on this post.

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sandsorghum · 3 months ago

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Casual Wear

wc: 4k

tags: Higuruma Hiromi x Reader | Humour | Character Study

synopsis: What that mouth do?

Higuruma Hiromi’s mouth is magic.

No, not for its purposes in his legal profession nor even in the leisure of his licentious pursuits, but it’s impressive for a far more fundamental reason - the act of eating, and more aptly, it’s an act which really warrants the description of a Performance.

You’re convinced meals with Higuruma Hiromi have both enough drama and tragicomedy to rival vaudevillian theatrics or Cirque du Soleil spectacles.

With him, menus transformed into playbills and lunches became matinées.

Currently, you’re savouring your front row seat as he launches into a Shakespearan treatise on a hamburger and some crinkle-cut fries. He is in fact delivering some diatribe about his latest case, but you find your attention rather riveted by the single tomato slice half hovering between the buns, waiting in the wings of the thoroughly wrinkled wrapper clutched in Higuruma’s hand.

All of his neatly pressed suit is a stage and these formerly sturdily assembled ingredients, merely players.

“And now I’m going to have to file an extradition request to the headquarters in Setagaya which will take weeks…” he scowls, practically glowering at his food as he takes a large chomp of it.

You’ve perfected a perfunctory yet sympathetic hum, which you deploy now, patting Higuruma’s free hand so it doesn’t come up to restore order to his rapidly dilapidating burger. It’s not so much eating as it is an exercise in embracing entropy; with his Jenga tower of trembly lettuce leaves, melty cheese, slabs of streaky bacon, a double patty and the obnoxiously outsized hula hoops of grilled onions. And naturally, Higuruma had the hubris to include pickles.

You keenly watch the egg wash bronzed dome and fluffy foundations of the brioche buns slipping and squeezing through the crevices of Higuruma’s fingers, somehow disappearing faster and shrinking back to further destabilize the stack as the layers jostle and jut ahead of each other at higgly-piggly angles. With each increasingly aggressive bite, Higuruma liberates rich rivulets of meat juices to dribble all over his knuckles, until inevitably, a dollop of sriracha mayo prematurely splodges a thick wad over his tendons.

Oh, this was going to be good.

Without skipping a beat in the monologue bemoaning his chosen vocation, you watch Higuruma start to crane his head forward to lick his wrist but then he stops himself and you’re disappointed, resigned to the assumption that this fully grown man will resort to the much more sensible option of the serviettes, which have after all, been sitting on the tray by his elbows, untouched since the start of the meal.

But Higuruma doesn’t go for the tissues - and what happens next is so much better than you could have anticipated.

Realising his cuffs are in the way, Higuruma in a singular motion instead raises both his arm and the dishevelled burger ascending aloft his head, and then proceeds to lave his tongue across his wrist. He’s quite successfully, if unconventionally, mopped away most of the offending sauce when the magic happens.

Sschhhloorpplbt.

With slow-mo melodrama and grace, the tomato slops out of the burger, landing with a watery splat! on Higuruma’s face, before skidding across the starched collars of his shirt, then careens into its final resting place - his lap.

“Drat. Knew I should have gotten the wrap,” Higuruma mutters.

You attempt to drown your snort in the last shallow dregs of your strawberry milkshake but Higuruma looks up sharply at you, as he pinches the offending vegetable off his pants and tosses it onto the plate.

Your eyes are glimmering as he futilely crumples a tissue against his shirt, sweeping over the stretched cotton canvas where he’s also made a tribute to Jackson Pollock in mustard and ketchup blots.

“You’re such an artist, Higuruma.”

“What?”

You only grin at him, licking your thumb and swabbing it along the tomatoey streak on his handsome cheek, leaving a different reddish tint in your wake.

You didn’t always think his mouth was magic — frankly it had given you the ick in the initial stages of this courtship.

Or perhaps, grotesque fascination was the correct terminology. It was perplexing, how his clothes sustained that much collateral damage during meals.

You had to see it to believe it, otherwise it was simply too baffling, just how much debris accompanied his approach to dining; although ‘approach’ implied that Higuruma had some sort of strategy or logic in manufacturing these messes, and it just wasn’t conceivable that anyone could structure this level of disaster.

But even if you didn’t witness the havoc of Higuruma’s eating habits in real time, the aftermath sometimes stuck around, goading you to reverse-engineer the chaos. There was a litany of clues you got skilled at deciphering, piecing together the (quite often literal) trail of breadcrumbs to figure out what he’d eaten that day, and with what degree of ravenous recklessness, from shoyu speckled sleeves to smears of mayonnaise on his collar — courtesy of the cup ramen he’d scalded his tongue on, or his even more hastily consumed ‘lunch’ of two takoyaki sticks.

Of course, there was still an unanswered question at the crux of these guessing games, a mystery underpinning the habitual volatility of appeasing his hunger. Because despite all of these tendencies towards frenetic feasting, there was still a certain aura of poise to Higuruma Hiromi.

Admittedly, it’s an assessment compromised by your aesthetic attraction to him; you could readily confess there was a certain case to be made for your bias, perhaps a subconscious conflation of the merits of his wit and style, both imbued with an effortless sharpness, each enhancing the overall effect; the innate elevating the deliberate.

He dressed smart, in well fitting suits that were rarely rumpled, as unruffled and unflappable as his own presence. For a man for whom an adherence to dining etiquette seemed strictly conceptual, practically he still presented himself well, keeping his attire if not pristine, then still remarkably sleek and clean, considering the tribulations he subjected it to at least three times daily.

How this was possible perpetually intrigued and mystified you, until the day you learned Higuruma’s secret.

It had been an accidental discovery, on an afternoon when you’d made a lunch hour visit.

The occasion was already nominally noteworthy, as you’d finally persuaded him to try a salad, after months of gentle chastisements about his diet.

Your triumph however, left a scattering of sunflower seeds along his chin and when he was done stabbing through the arugula, his countenance more closely resembled a truculent teen who had raced face first through a hedge maze.

“Do I really have to finish these lawn clippings?” Higuruma whined, prodding at the greenery with his prongs.

“I don’t remember signing up to date a man-child,” you tut, even as you swipe a napkin along his cheeks, while Higuruma tucks his grin against your wrist. Before those lips can detect and further elicit the pitter-patter of your pulse, you move to scrunch the serviette against his tie where quite unfortunately yet predictably, there are several sizable splatters of balsamic vinaigrette dressing.

“The smell is probably going to seep through this silk,” you say with a slight frown.

“It’s not a problem,” Higuruma shrugs, starting to loosen his tie, sliding two digits into the triangular knot and tugging it open. The fabric seemed to practically melt around his fingers, parting without resistance till it slipped down his chest. You try not to track the motion too overtly, but there’s little else qualifying as worthy contenders for your attention.

So you watch as Higuruma smoothly, almost automatically, pulls open a drawer to reveal row after row of neatly rolled black ties, as well as a stack of white Oxford shirts. He picks out the corner-most tie, and feels your gaze shift as he uncoils it around his palms and starts to loop it around his neck.

Mistaking your quizzical, fascinated focus for judgment, he states, “They’re for emergencies.”

“A dozen tie-related emergencies?” you clarify, with that tilt to your tone which Higuruma finds himself wanting, increasingly often, to see mirrored in your lips - even if it’s at his expense.

“Yes, but would you believe it’s got space for 14.”

“I do believe that, Higuruma. I’m surprised you haven’t fit a tuxedo in there.”

Higuruma shuts the drawer before you can scythe your eye over their contents again, hoping the sound of its rolling snap eclipses the death throes of the mollified whimper tickling the back of his throat. (It doesn’t.)

“The drawer does leave me with one question though.”

Higuruma glances up from making the final adjustments on his Windsor knot. The serenity in your expression belies the innocence of your inquiry.

“What if you have pants-related emergencies?”

Higuruma suddenly finds his tie too tight around his throat, scarcely providing a barrier to the sickle of your mouth which he thinks must be pressed to his jugular, that arresting curve he traces up to your eyes with their wicked gleam, the one he’s only seen so far in his dreams.

Be careful what you wish for...

He responds, rather raspily, “Well, I had to be economical with the space. Could hardly turn this cube into a walk-in closet.”

“No I suppose not,” you say, brushing your fingers against his discarded vinaigrette stained tie. “So you chose to prioritise the shirts and ties, which are likelier to be scrutinised.”

“Yes,” Higuruma says, grateful for the familiarity of your shrewd common sense, “Not many people pay attention to the lower half of my suit.”

Too late he catches the glimmer in your gaze flickering downwards, and he’s incapacitated by the mere dip in your voice when you reply, ever so off-handedly, “Well, perhaps such neglect ought to be rectified.”

And Higuruma realises, right then and there with a mild throb of panic, maybe he really ought to invest in a separate drawer for briefs (of the non-legal kind.)

It might be magic, or it might merely be beyond the scope of scientific explanation.

The way Higuruma’s mouth operates is a phenomenon to be studied, a riddle of the universe, its mystique obdurate against your observations.

It didn’t matter what the texture of the food was - boiled, baked, fried, sautéed or steamed. Carnage reigned. It was the second law of thermodynamics, mandated by Higuruma’s mouth; Entropy will always increase over time.

Or over the course of dinner and dessert.

Soba noodles dangled and tangled off his chopsticks like the most amateurish marionette attempts, sorbets slunk off of cones at strange angles despite his best efforts to corral them with his otherwise reflexively dexterous tongue (lightning quick with quips but not licks, in this situation) and at the movies, the first thing to emerge from the gloom of the cinemas were usually the puffy white popcorn kernels adorned to his collar. By the time you’d brushed them off Higuruma, on average you’d refilled nearly a third of the bucket.

Once, at a carnival, you found corndog crumbs clinging to his cheeks even after taking the roller coaster (which had two loop de loops) and wisps of cotton candy in his hair, their pink tufts tangling with his ink-jet fringe. And later, in the shrieking whirlwind glee of the teacups, he’d swept right into you, chuckling and clutching your hips in a spun-sugar collision of your mouths and you’d tasted the sweet detritus of his off-kilter caramel-apple kisses, crackling saccharine on your tongue.

You ride the pleasant ebb and surge of this new romance over the next months, Higuruma’s presence both thrilling and soothing, intoxicating and relaxing. You cannot help but succumb to the allure of his juxtapositions, all that remains unsolved about him - typified by that first mystery around his table manners (or lack thereof); How could a man so put together, so composed in his speech and thoughts still leave such a trail of devastation in his wake? On occasion, you are tempted to wonder if it portends some secret character defect.

Yet you dismiss this as paranoia, even knowing paradise won’t last.

After all, you and Higuruma were trying to keep things casual. You were both savouring that phase where ambiguity embellishes and relishes an amorous atmosphere, in all its tremulous, temerarious pacing. Dancing around definitions, sidestepping expectations; simply discovering a routine tenderness, and exploring the natural rhythm of fitting into each other’s lives.

That was easier said than done, however.

That first infraction comes when Higuruma has to cancel your weekend date, after two weeks of absence and only intermittent text exchanges.

The call comes just as you’re donning your platform sandals and heading out the door.

“I am so so sorry I am so so swamped-” There’s the Shinkansen swoosh of his apologies over the speakers, far more profuse than the excuses, sounding more wretched than frantic. For a few minutes, you let Higuruma rattle on with that barely sheathed saber-edged vexation to his tone, venting about some idiot who’d “only gone and committed perjury”, resulting in the decimation of an alibi and the implosion of a plea deal, while you glance at your wristwatch, letting the second hand slip past the 12 for a third time before you firmly interrupt.

“And then the other intern quit because they wanted to summer in the bloody Bahamas while I’m in the office on a Sunday...”

“Higu-”

“...trying to stop this damn injunction which makes zero sense-”

“Higuruma.”

“Huh?”

“I said, it’s 2pm. Did you remember to have lunch?”

“Oh.” Higuruma responds, as if the concept of midday meals was a novelty - telling you everything you needed to know.

“I’ll bring you something.”

“You don’t have to bother yourself, I’ll grab a bite from the vending machine.”

“Except I already have gone to the trouble. I’m all dressed up, you see I was supposed to catch up with some cute guy this afternoon.”

You can practically hear his blush through the phone, and even though you aren’t face to face, Higuruma’s voice still turns gruff as if to disguise the rush of blood to his cheeks.

“Some cute guy?”

“Yeah, he operates a kushikatsu yatai in my neighbourhood. Always gives me a couple extra sticks for free.”

“Oh, that place has been around for what, three decades now? And you’re referring to Kazuya-dono who refuses to retire, aren’t you? The balding guy in his 60s.”

“The tycoon in his 60s, yep. And he’s considering investing in a toupee I hear.”

Higuruma feels the fuchsia spreading to the shell of his ears, your smirk pressing close against them, even through the phone. Higuruma clears his throat.

“I see. Well, if those exciting prospects as a golddigger don’t pan out for you, could you include some shishito peppers?”

“I’ll think about it.”

“I’ll see you soon? In half an hour?” You can’t help but smile at the tender inflection of optimism in his clarification.

“Of course. The queue shouldn’t be too long at this time of day.”

“Thanks for your generosity, Mrs Kazuya-dono.”

“Goodbye, Mr Higuruma.”

In the privacy of his office, Higuruma grins, lingering with his ear pressed to the screen even as the call tapers to its end, reluctant to hang up without hearing your chuckle fully reverberate over his name.

At this hour, when the final stretch of a weekend is lurching towards another interminable five day cycle of labour, the office is cloaked in a kind of velvet darkness, draping heavily over the afternoon. There’s a stifling stillness even as you stride past the empty cubicles, which makes the stubborn fluorescent buzzing coming from Higuruma’s office sound even louder in this oppressive atmosphere.

His door is ajar so you walk right in to see him barricaded behind towers of folders, the tousled strands of his crow’s nest upsweep barely jutting above the turrets of the piled high case files, as he fastidiously scribbles something in a leather-bound notebook, not noticing your entrance.

“Delivery for Mr Higuruma,” you announce, closing the distance between you and his desk.

Higuruma’s head jerks up as if he’s startled, blinking owlishly as he registers your presence.

“You’re here,” he says, gaze softening and his shoulders sagging back into some semblance of relief, the pen drooping from his hand. He reaches towards you, then notices his biro-blue polka dotted palms and sheepishly starts to retract them, but you catch his fingers in time, scattering a kiss across his knuckles.

“Yes, in the flesh. Shishito peppers and all,” you say with a smile, setting the take-away bag on the side of his table.

“Well. Damn,” he exhales, reclining against his chair for a fuller angle, all the better to drink in the sight of you. You had assembled a cute, casual outfit; light-washed denim pants paired with a cream ribbed knit top, layered over with a V-neckline sage sweater vest and accessorised with a delicate, silver flat chain. But the way Higuruma is staring at you makes you feel like you’ve just sauntered fresh off a runway.

“Need me to do a spin?” you tease, subconsciously taking a half-step back as he stands, gaze hungrily tracking over your figure and slowly approaching as if concerned the vision before him was delicate as a dandelion in its second, spectral bloom.

“Only a fool would object,” he responds and you laugh, obliging him with a quick twirl, but before you can even fully turn back around, Higuruma has pulled you into his arms, locking them around your hips and lodging his nose in the crook of your neck.

“This is getting ridiculous,” he mouths along your nape, fingers twitching at the small of your back.

“Hm?”

“You, coming here looking like this and I- I just tumbled out of the house,” Higuruma mutters, hands notching warmly at your waist to prevent you from moving away. But you push at his chest and his hold slackens, ever so slightly, so you can tip your head back to scan over him.

Well, it was true, Higuruma did not look dressed for a date, let alone the office. His attire looked more appropriate as the prized exhibit at a museum dedicated to the ancient history of textiles; a tatty maroon sweater, the brand logo emblazoned across the chest now faded and indecipherable as stone tablet etchings from an archaeological dig site, paired with crooked half-frame glasses. Plus, the piece de resistance, a pair of charcoal grey joggers with their drawstrings missing, patchy at the knees from only god knows how many spin cycles and planetary revolutions around the sun.

And were those, were those crocs? You make a mental note to give Higuruma an evangelical spiel about Birkenstocks at least.

“Well, you certainly look…comfy.”

A small groan escapes Higuruma, as he tucks his warm face against your neck, all the better to hear and feel your laughter ripple over him.

“I swear I only meant to pick up some documents this morning but then…”

“But then,” you echo mockingly, gently tweaking Higuruma’s face.

“Time just…keeps getting away.” He gazes up at you with those pits for eyes, shadowed by despair. You know he isn’t just talking about this date, or this case.

“There’ll be other flea markets,” you shrug, “But there’s only one workaholic I’m willing to put up with.”

You card your fingers through his raven-dark plumage, feeling Higuruma’s sigh settle over your shoulders as he leans into your touch.

“You’re an angel,” he whispers, pulling you into him and starting to graze his lips along your nape. “You’re all I need-”

It’s at this point his stomach chooses to interject with a loud, rumbly burble of bLRRRggccLHHhh.

Snickering at his belly’s betrayal, you peel yourself away from Higuruma’s peach-tinted cheeks and fuss at him to sit back down, opening the take-away bag for him.

“I forgot how good these smell,” Higuruma remarks, eyes lighting up as he tackles the plastic lid on the sauce, its tangy-sweet and savory aroma wafting into the air.

He wolfs through five, six, seven sticks of shisamo and tsukune and so on, it’s not long before flecks of the rich, glossy dipping sauce paint his lips and chin, whilst a spray of panko scatters like shrapnel over his shirt, landing on the drawer where you knew Higuruma kept extra sets of his corporate attire.

You had contended with what that easily accessible work-wardrobe implied, what his so-called closet of contingencies represented. All those spare shirts and jackets and even boxers were really evidence of someone who rarely returned to his own lodgings, who regularly spent the nights at the office, slogging on till dawn.

He was a man who was married to his job, to Lady Justice. You had no illusions or qualms about being the paramour in that equation. But these were early days, and while you aren’t entirely certain how permanent this addition to your life called Higuruma Hiromi would be, what’s indisputable is the undivided attention he gives you, when he is with you.

He brings that intense devotion, that focus to everything he does, mind and mouth in perfect exacting synchronicity, across all his feats of adoration, articulation and now of course, mastication.

You settle back into your chair nibbling on some suginamo, prepared to enjoy the show Higuruma always unwittingly put on.

What you’re not expecting is your epiphany, the stunning scientific breakthrough at last.

Sitting across from Higuruma, you study the way he hoovers through a dozen (and counting) kushikatsu skewers, and abruptly, you realise he must have his own gravitational field, one that flouted all principles of physics, of astrophysics.

You lean forward, eagerly examining the evidence before you: the glistening contrails of oil, the constellation of crumbs, all being yanked towards that relentless black hole which is his mouth, hinting at the white dwarf core in his belly, depleted of its own nuclear energy, all-consuming to avoid its own collapse.

You couldn’t help it, being dragged into his orbit, being drawn to this voraciousness you’d witnessed in other aspects of his life, singular unto the entity that was Higuruma Hiromi: A homunculus in fractious fraternity with his humanity - Someone who couldn’t stomach unfairness, which made him a glutton for punishment. His dedication was a whetstone whittling its own blade away.

Just one of Higuruma’s many alluring contradictions.

There are others you’ve discovered, chipping and chiselling the hours out of one another’s calendars till the days gave way to a more natural erosion of the edges around your selves, marble ceding to limestone: His words are deliberate, his quietness intuitive. Quick-witted, yet with long simmering ire. A sort of brazen self-deprecation. Brilliant arguments, stupid punchlines. An empiricist’s approach to empathy, a heart siphoning off its own sentimentality.

You behold your lover shoveling in skewer after skewer, operating on some internal combustion engine, mere mortal with a mechanic’s approach to morality, an automaton chugging on and on as if he were indefatigable.

(He wasn’t, he’d told you one evening, half an hour late to the fifth date. Too exhausted even for guilt it seemed, the confession was almost in confidence. But maybe you can do better than a Mr Perfect, he’d snarked with his trademark wry smile which, to an untrained eye, could just about pass for invulnerability. You had stared him down, your silence dredging the apology out of him with a sincerity you could tell surprised the both of you.

You didn’t expect to hear something like that from the mouth of your Tin Man, whose shine was so often eclipsed by that mind like a steel trap, in lieu of a heart of gold - so he professed to everyone else.

But that inadvertently coerced admission of his burnished cavity stirred a flutter in your heart. You’d always known Higuruma was made of rarer stuff than gold, even if he didn’t.)

“You want the last of the okra? It’s your favourite.”

You blink, dispersing the reverie you’d been indulging in, to focus instead on Higuruma holding out the tray to you. You shake your head with a smile, noticing his spectacles already spectacularly smudged with a slick of grease.

He happily polishes off the remaining skewers while he works, baggy sweater incrementally hoarding more and more morsels of food. He rolls his sleeves up, utterly oblivious to the avalanche of cumulative detritus, disappearing down the canyon of his lap.

And as you observe Higuruma, sat in his plush leather office seat, practically dressed in pajamas but somehow hardly out of place, intermittently cramming a kushikatsu stick in his mouth, and another annotation into the margins of a file, you feel that same tug towards him again.

And you suspect you will, over and over, regardless of how frayed or unraveled Higuruma’s threads become.

#higuruma hiromi #SFWhgrm2025 #higuruma #higuruma hiromi x reader #higuruma hiromi x you #higuruma x gn reader #higuruma x reader #higuruma x you #higuruma x y/n #hiromi x you #hiromi x reader #hiromi x y/n #hiromi higuruma #sandsorghum

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floweycidal · 7 months ago

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do you think when flowey was a wee weed and just got into calling himself flowey that he had a kind of embarrassing stage he does not want to talk or even think about where he tried too hard to be the opposite of asriel and it was so obvious everyone could tell it was asriel

BAHAHAHAHA, YOU BET I DO! this is probably going to be as headcanon-y as it gets (kinda), sorry in advance. but really, making him a total sopping wet soggy loser is the best part of writing him. it's my favorite angle, no doubt.

the first month of being "flowey" was an exercise in second-hand embarrassment, except the person you're embarrassed for is yourself. and you can't even leave the room to escape it, because surprise! you are the room. you're a flower. stuck there. living it.

he had it all planned out. goodbye asriel dreemurr, the prince of crying-at-literally-everything, hello to... whatever cool and clever thing he was supposed to become. the details were fuzzy, but he figured being soulless meant the whole "evil" thing would come naturally.

it did not come naturally.

the cracks showed almost immediately. everything he tried just came out wrong. his threats sounded more like worried suggestions. his evil schemes kept accidentally making things better. his idea of entropy was essentially community service with attitude.

he couldn't even get the basics right. he'd tried tossing out sick burns, but they'd just hit with all the impact of a wet napkin. they weren't even insults half the time—just weirdly specific observations that petered off awkwardly.

he sucked at it. no way around it. he sucked ass.

so, he worked harder. determined to sound edgy, bad to the stem—whatever that meant—but it didn’t seem to take. every affront felt more like an accident than an attack.

and the laugh. god, the laugh. he practiced it, forced it, tried every variation. dry chuckles, derisive cackles, even an exaggerated villain’s howl. none of them worked. what kept slipping out instead was the exact same dorky laugh that used to bubble up when #she would do silly voices during storytime.

this was the worst. he was the worst at being the worst.

his own body double-crossed him at every turn, still running on years of ingrained kindness his mind was trying to stamp out. he'd be right in the middle of his most "menacing" speech yet, really getting into the whole eternal suffering thing, when someone would sneeze.

"bless you!"

every. time.

the number of “villainy” monologues ruined by his automatic politeness was actually impressive. really, it was almost a talent.

it was a drawn-out process, this transformation. no guidebooks or cheat sheets. however... i’d argue the closest thing he had to a mentor here was toriel.

she didn't know it was him. obviously. somehow that made it worse, because she kept almost-recognizing things. little stuff he hadn't managed to burn away yet.

a familiar turn of phrase. how he'd end sentences. that godawful giggle that still sounded too much like pillow forts and frolicking in the mud. how he’d fill glasses, just enough to make them brim above the edge. the efficient way.

each time her eyes would catch on these moments, these tiny betrayals of self, he'd slam that reset button with all six petals. nu-uh, no buckaroo.

her reactions were the compass he followed, pointing to what needed to be carved away. reset after reset, he got better at it. harsher. finer. a little less like the kid who used to run up to her with flower crowns and scraped knees.

the kindnesses got rarer; the callousness came easier.

never easy enough, though.

she'd still tilt her head sometimes, something glittering in her eyes like she was hearing the first few notes of a song she’d once known by heart. and he'd realize he'd effed up again, let some stupid little piece of asriel show through.

she’d never know she was teaching him how to stop being her son. to her, he was just some weird flower guy that occasionally felt eerily familiar, though she couldn’t quite put her finger on why.

every time she almost intuited something in him, he'd reload, desperate to finally become someone she wouldn't know at all.

ahhhhh. and so it came full circle. in his frenzied bid to unlearn being her child, he was still (by the most bruisingly contorted logic) turning to her for guidance. still just a kid, looking to his mom for answers. just… not in the way either of them would’ve wanted.

#flowey undertale #flowey the flower #flowey #toriel undertale #flowey ut #toriel dreemurr #sillyposting #not-so-silly #ask #i love toriel #half of me just wanted to write something for her #and him ig. he's there too

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novantinuum · 6 months ago

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Reformation ref sheet for an AU Steven (named "Astra") who's been invading my brain since like,, April. It's VERY wide, apologies. There's a lot going on here because this man is incredibly old and has poofed way too many times for varying reasons. (See This post for how I headcanon that Steven can poof and still be considered a hybrid being.)

While I will not talk in huge length about certain aspects of his AU on this blog due to some of it involving strong NSFW themes, there is a ridiculous amount of other lore I've developed over time for Astra, and I love him to death. He is my sad, lonely mans who I metaphorically hurl against the wall like a sticky hand when I need to feel something.

This version of Steven will likely never have any kind of full ass fic or comic made about him. Despite that, I do enjoy sharing some art and fun character lore for him from time to time. So, I might as well finally give followers like... literally ANY context for him. I've had this ref sheet for a while and just have never gotten around to throwing it on here, LOL.

Ridiculously long dump about my guy under the cut.

Subnote, this was supposed to be a quick post but I can't help myself and wrote you a fucking BOOK under the cut because I love my guy so much UWU

(Content warning I guess for like, extremely vague mentions of Steven/Steven later on.)

The huge tl;dr of Astra is as follows: he's a version of Steven who exists for SO long that he basically transforms into something of an ancient, lonely god.

He's outlived every single person he once knew as a child, and so as a result is starved for affection. At the same time, being vulnerable is the absolute scariest thing for him and he's really shit at navigating relationships, F.

The guy is THE most powerful living creature in his entire universe by the end, and yet remains a soft-spoken, (generally) benevolent soul. He dedicates himself to acting as caretaker for the vast, populous world he exists within, and to maintain the continuing legacy of Gemkind. A big discovery that occurs in this AU is that Gems are in fact susceptible to entropy over the span of millions of years and will eventually fall "inert," (but not him because of weird hybrid biology stuff he honestly sees as more of a curse than a blessing) so a huge plotline early on in Astra's lifespan is trying to either find a "cure" for this issue or to develop a means by which new generations of Gems can be created without the reinstatement of Kindergartens so Gemkind doesn't overtly go extinct.

But, to start... this Steven diverges off a point in canon- this is the timeline where he actually takes up the Diamonds on their offer of the throne in the movie, believing he may have a better chance of heralding true societal change working from the INSIDE rather than stepping away. Because he pours himself so thoroughly into his role on Homeworld and his mind is continuously occupied by this purpose, he never experiences the events SU: Future, nor does he develop his "pink mode" (yet...) or corrupt at all.

However, he's also so engrossed in his work that he's... kind of a shit boyfriend to Connie as years go on. (In that he's not terribly attentive... always super busy... their visits are often cut short, or few and far between.) Their relationship never really goes anywhere as a result, though Connie wants it to. To be fair so does Steven, but he's so scared that everything he's worked so hard to organize and set up in this new era will fall apart if he steps aside from his role for even a moment that he can't allow himself to follow that want.

At some point here he learns he can poof through a complete freak accident, and that's where things really begin to change in this timeline.

It takes a good few months for him to reform, but once he does he's back at it with all his work on Homeworld pretty quick.

The thing is... he doesn't have an innate physical need to eat or drink or sleep anymore, because he now consists of entirely hard light. It mimics human biology to an insane degree, so he COULD do all those things, but he doesn't need them to persist. So... he kinda takes this as an excuse to cut those activities out of his schedule entirely so he can spend more time focused on his duties as a diamond.

Connie is NOT a fan of this, and this leads to some debate and tension within their relationship. That being said, they remain an item...

Up until out of nowhere, Connie dies in an accident on Earth while Steven is off planet in a place where he doesn't have any contact with them for a few days. By the time the Gems are able to get in touch with him, it's far too late to resurrect her.

The kicker? In the autopsy it's discovered that she was a few weeks pregnant when she died.

Steven is emotionally gutted by this... and the thought of what could have been... and poofs.

The guy is understandably destroyed when he comes back in his next form, and his form reflects that- his gem flips as a sort of metaphorical severing from his own humanity.

He spends a long while in a deep depression at the loss of his childhood sweetheart... at the loss of any potential for (as far as he sees) a "normal" human life. There's a part of him that resents the choices he's made to end up in this present, but like, there's still work to be done.

And as the years move on, a LOT of that work is mitigating the growing relations (for better or for worse) between Gems and humans as humanity stretches their legs and reaches out into the stars. Humans kinda get... really aggressive in their expansion though, and quite territorial, and it leads towards some inevitable conflict between them and Gemkind. This time, with them more at fault. Things get so spicy that some groups of humans and Gems go to war.

Steven tries to mitigate one of these situations at the front lines- and gets poofed by a disgruntled Gem, speared straight through the back because she (kinda wrongly) assumed he would take the humans' side due to his ancestral ties to them.

When he reforms this time, he is glowing a perpetual pink. The Gems don't really know what to make of this, but he seems to be in perfectly fine health otherwise, so they assume it's just a normal aspect of this new neutral form.

And while this isn't something Steven has context to figure out until like... billions of years later, what's actually happened is that he's entered a permanent pink mode, pretty much. Guy's just got that much bottled up, unaddressed trauma.

He spends a long time in this form, and over all these thousands of years oversees the slow return to peace between Gems and humans... their marriage as a space age federation... and their deeper exploration of the galaxy. Beyond their home solar systems exist a bounty of alien species they've yet to meet... some friendly, some less so. There's definitely some conflict that crops up amidst the local galactic neighborhood when Gems and humans show up on the playing field here, lol.

But all-in-all, Steven develops a fairly peaceful and predictable routine during this reformation- living more like a Gem than ever before. He's still got the Crystal Gems at his side through all of this, and they are some of his greatest confidants.

And then... without any warning... Gems begin to go inert. Amethyst is among them.

Some of them simply stop reforming after they poof... especially those who were older Gems, or who have been cracked before. Steven and the other Diamonds using their powers together are able to "fix" this at first and "jumpstart" their reformation, but it's just a bandaid of a fix- these Gems will fall inert again pretty soon. And the longer they persist without poofing from alternate causes, the more unstable their form, power, and memory becomes. (Think of this as Gem dementia at its late stages,,, oof.)

The bottom line? Just like organics, Gems aren't immune to the forces of entropy. Sooner or later, their gemstones will decay from the inside out. Stubborn to find a way to save the ones he loves as he watches them slowly deteriorate all around him, Steven dedicates himself to trying to find a cure. But deep down, a part of him recognizes the futility of this. What he believes Gemkind actually needs to do is to develop a means of rebooting Gem incubation that doesn't destroy planets, so they can rebuild their quickly dwindling population and keep their legacy alive.

The big problem with this is that Gems take a SHIT load of energy and resources to properly incubate, so that puzzle will take a long ass time to sort out. There's kinda a lot of chaos that happens during this time. The reality of their own blunt mortality freaks out a bunch of Gems, and Steven has to do damage control with the heads of state for a lot of other alien species.

In the interim, all the Crystal Gems and some of the Diamonds (White is still in the picture, though) end up falling inert. Pearl is the last of the CGs to do so.

Steven is understandably SUPER gutted about this, and poofs yet again. (Lol notice a theme? Poor mans keeps poofing from friggin' anguish. Help him.)

After reforming with barely any changes, it's right back to work for this guy. He and the rest of his team of researchers are unable to find any cure for Gems decaying and falling inert, but they do end up making huge leaps and bounds in other kinds of tech. One of these advances allows Steven to finally deep-scan his own gemstone down to the atomic level to check for decay- this was previously a process that was very invasive, and came at the risk of irreparably damaging a Gem, but not anymore.

He expects to find evidence of the same micro decay that's been slowly eating away at the rest of Gemkind within his OWN diamond, but the thing is...

He just... ISN'T decaying at all? Even though the sheer age of this gemstone itself should suggest otherwise? As it turns out though, his existence as a hybridized being makes him kind of... an anomaly. When he first reformed all those thousands of years ago, all the data within his gem- data that would otherwise be susceptible to decay- was translated into genetic material. DNA that's woven entirely out of hard-light... but, DNA that has also been constantly regenerating itself thanks to a combination of all the intricate biochemistry surrounding the human telomere and his healing powers.

In other words, he is incapable of falling inert from natural causes, like micro decay. He's functionally immortal. Unless someone shatters him (or... heaven forbid... he shatters himself) he simply can't die.

Which, all of a sudden, makes his race to save Gemkind from their quickly approaching extinction all the more personal. Because if he FAILS- then he'll be the very last of Gemkind. There will be no one else left in this world who is even remotely like him. (Humanity has mixed and mingled with the galactic locals so much by now that they're very much unrecognizable from what they once were.)

His spirit is very nearly broken by this discovery, and he is severely tempted to throw all his own principles out the window and just sanction the construction of new Kindergartens again, if only to keep the dwindling Gem populations up and birth new generations. Perhaps surprisingly, it's White Diamond- the last Gem left who Steven actually knew since the very beginning- who urges him to reconsider. To not give up on his own morality, to not revert all the miraculous changes he's worked for these long few million years.

The big shift in the tides is when he discovers the means to jump to alternate timelines, and thus the existence of the greater multiverse. This allows him to gather intel and ideas from a far greater spectrum of sources.

And eventually... it's with the aid of many alt versions of himself from other lines across the multiverse that leads to him finding a suitable, eco-friendly solution to his Gem incubation problem. (This is the aspect of this AU I cannot discuss in length for discretion's sake. Use your imagination. Or don't, I don't care.)

The following two sections, I'll be talking more about the broad thematics than anything else. At this point, know that there are now new batches of Gems being created all the time. Gemkind is no longer at risk of any extinction, but now- like any stable organic species- new Gems are made at the same rate that they fall inert.

So, the BIGGEST thing here with this reformation is that this is overtly where this guy picks up the name "Astra." Why a name change? Well, after White finally went inert, leaving him the last Diamond in existence within this line, it basically just felt... upsetting to him, to continue to go by a name that every person he ever loved used for him. Thus, the new name is overtly a means to distance himself from that past, and from that pain. (It's also a name he chooses while thinking back to a meaningful conversation he had with White, back before she went inert, oOF. I'll probably yell about that at some point in another post.)

So, too, is the lack of any tangible facial features. He HAS a face, but others just can't see it. He subconsciously obscures it from almost everyone's sight as a means of avoiding vulnerability. One might also have noticed by now that this guy's proportions have gotten like, really strange and sorta "stretched out" over time the larger he becomes... and this is intentional, as it's yet another way he's just becoming more inhuman in form, yet another way he's internally separating himself from those humble human origins of his.

But here's the thing, though.

Deep, deep down, to be human and to live a simple human life is basically all he's ever craved. It's everything he feels he's lost forever, with the death of his Connie. And instead, he's kinda stuck in a hellish sunk cost fallacy of his own making, acting as eternal caretaker for this world that- no matter what he does to try and make it a better place- will never quite be PERFECT. Thus, in his mind, even though he's literally fixed Gemkind's BIGGEST problem, he can't Stop. He can't Rest. He simply can't allow himself himself to lay down and Sink Away into the unknown.

And even if he could allow himself to do so, he is so, so scared of walking that path alone.

If he's going to die... he wants that end to be at a lover's side.

How, though, is someone who's basically a god supposed to find anyone in this multiverse with experiences they can remotely relate to?

Well... ultimately, Astra finds that it's far, far easier to build up a close relationship with varying versions of himself than anyone else. He's... kinda trash at it, though. This guy has so much bottled up Gunk in his head and is so starved for any form of affection that he has a habit of throwing WAY too much of himself into the relationships he engages in, and expecting that same level of commitment in return. There's one relationship with an alt Steven he's in for a while that ends up pretty unhealthily co-dependent before it fizzles out, and then another where he assumes the individual is committing to this partnership for the long run, but then no... actually Astra was always pouring more into this dynamic than he was receiving in return.

This second relationship, when it ends, is pretty devastating to him- since it was one that lasted for like, a LONG ass time. Unimaginably long. We're talking billions of years, here.

Uh-oh! And now he's even more distanced from other people. Folks can't even parse his actual chosen name at this point- except he isn't really consciously aware of this for a while?? It's yet another silent cry for help, yet another internal defense mechanism specially intended to keep others from truly getting to know him. Because every time he does... stars. No matter what he does, he keeps getting hurt. Almost everyone he knows and loves is torn from his life eventually... if not by death, then by some form of tragedy... and he's just so, so tired.

He wants literally ANYTHING to change in his life. He craves some new form of purpose. He craves the attention of someone who might love him as passionately as he loves them.

For a while, he almost believes he's found that- in yet another close relationship he forges with an alt version of himself- but while this other Steven does care for him immensely, it's only as a friend. Which kinda kills Astra, because he's like, lost in the sauce levels of In Love with this guy. There's a LOOOOOOT of story I have here with this, oh my god. If I am thinking about this AU I am usually thinking about this Old Man Yaoi. The great bulk of it is very NSFW themed though, so y'all getting the cliff notes.

The MOST important thing to know though, is that Astra both makes intense leaps and strides in once again allowing himself to be vulnerable with this man, and ALSO kinda intensely fucks their whole mutually agreed situationship up. It's messy. I am crying and wailing at these two old dumbasses. Jesus fucking christ.

But then, it's in the aftermath of this whole deal that an individual named Orion comes into the picture.

Orion quite literally falls into Astra's world by complete accident, but it's a very lucky accident- because she is a diamond hybrid version of Connie from another universe who- beyond a few differences- has a strikingly similar history to his. The big difference, though? She never found a means to create new Gems without Kindergartens, so she was the last of just a few thousand Gems who existed in her entire line. Part of a deeply endangered species.

This version of Connie arrives in some very deep mental turmoil, and so Astra does his best to give them a stable home and a place to heal. And while a past version of him might've been tempted to throw way too much of himself into the slow building rapport they have, he's blessedly Learned a thing or two from the past few major relationship experiences he's had... and chooses to like, ease up. Just offer himself as a friend first and foremost, should they care for one. Man learns restraint, lol.

And it's a damn GOOD thing that he does, because out of the genuine friendship they foster, Orion is the one who ultimately falls in love with him first. The relationship that's established here is one that's balanced, a true partnership where they simply make each other better people. It's through Orion's encouragement that Astra eventually reconnects and makes up with that last person he had an intense relationship with, even.

In time, Astra truly grows to thrive with Orion in his life. He becomes a far more open, vulnerable person, someone who feels safe to truly exist as who he is, to bare every complicated, battered facet of his past to those he trusts. While he may have taken the LONG road to get here, he too heals. And as a result...

One day, Astra simply stops glowing entirely. Shrinks down to more reasonable proportions. He stops hovering around on automatic, stops subconsciously scrubbing the memory of his face or name from people's minds. He stops denying his truest, deepest self- the reality that he was born an organic being, and raised as a human.

The burred reality that all he's ever truly wanted since the day his first lover died is to be a parent.

To live a quiet, simple life with the people he loves.

For so long it was a mirage of a future he thought he'd never chase down, but for how much he made all the wrong choices the first time around, now he has a second chance.

And so in my brain, that's exactly what happens. Astra and Orion start a family together and continue to act as guardians over this universe for many years to come, until- after they are satisfied with the long life they've lived together, and their children have moved on to start forging their own paths- they eventually pass Beyond at their own will in each other's arms, ending their impossibly long godhood at peace.

I really don't know how to end this post lmafo, so I will simply say: if you somehow read all of this, holy shit you are so brave. Thank you for engaging with my insane ramblings. Have a nice day LOL FUIHSNUFSJG

This man haunts my brain so much I missed two off ramp turns on the highway the other day while thinking about him. Help me.

(EDIT: 6/10/25)

Oh and also by the end she's trans, that's also important to know. That's like, ENDGAME-endgame level stuff though, so lol. She's the one who bore the pregnancy for her and Orion's child and that experience kinda Fully Awakened some feelings that had been there for a long while but had never fully been Acknowledged and given a name until then, lol.

#su #su future #steven universe #su fanart #my art stuff #astra #nova rambles #i am going Insane please help #i will never write a full fic but i DO have like a ridiculous amount of outlined lore for him #yeah sure why NOT make a three am post. i am insane and this man is the object of my insanity. this is all you need to know.#i am so Tired help me

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12thbiologist · 8 months ago

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Introduction by N. K. Jemisin, from 10th anniversary Authority reprint

"To my own shame, I've become a jaded reader in recent years. By this, I mean that my enthusiasm and curiosity, my drive to experience new worlds, have all been damaged by a persistent disjunct between reality and the speculative fiction I most enjoy.

"Is it any wonder? Given the horrors of Trump's first regime, the looming threat of another, a global plague allowed to run rampant, and a billionaire backed culture war on the rest of us. I'm more jaded about everything now. Escapism at this juncture feels like a way to temporarily pretend that everything is fine. And while there's value in taking a break from Hell, it also feels dangerous. Like drinking to drown my sorrows. Nothing wrong with alcohol now and again, but nobody needs a steady diet of oblivion.

"What I've found myself seeking instead are philosophies of entropy and survival. That is, fiction that addresses multifaceted decay and the psychology needed to survive it. At this point, to mangle Audre Lorde, the master has handed his tools out freely after designing them to break at first usage, buying out the only shop that could fix them and the only newspaper that tried to report on the scam, and charging all customers a subscription fee. And these days, it's no longer just us marginalized folks who need our media to acknowledge the slow motion apocalypse we're all trapped in.

"Enter, The Southern Reach books. When I first read Annihilation during the run-up to the 2016 election, it was a welcome breath of fungal, fetid air. Other fiction of the time seemed determined to suggest there was no need for alarm. Things couldn't be so bad. Anything broken could be fixed.

"Could it though? As I watched my country embrace a stupid, incompetent, and blatantly criminal fascist while insisting his spiteful, privileged sycophants somehow had a point—Well, when you're already queasy, sweet smells make the feeling worse. It helped to read instead about the smells and sights and horrors and haunting beauty of Area X. It helped me to imagine that creeping transformative infection warping body and mind and environment and institution. Because that was the world I was living in. It helped to meet the 12th expedition's nameless women who were simultaneously individuals, with selfish motivations, and archetypes, trapped in their roles. The biologist, driven by the loss of her mate and the need to integrate into a new ecosystem. The psychologist, a human subjects ethics violation in human flesh. We are dropped into danger with these women, immediately forced to confront an existential threat with courage and perseverance. And this? This was what I needed from my fiction.

"The second book, Authority, was even more what I needed. As we watch Control slowly realize he's never been in control, and that things are a lot worse than his complacency allowed him to see—it just resonated so powerfully. His over reliance on procedure and the assumed wisdom of his predecessor. His dogged refusal to see the undying plant in his office as a sign of something wrong. There was nothing of 2014's politics overtly visible in the book. And yet, they were all over it like mold.

"I've read and written reviews of these books and it seems to me that there's a common misreading that applies. Namely, that they are "climate fiction," or "cli-fi." This clunky label fits superficially, in that climate change occurs during the course of the book.

"However, Area X, with it's inexplicable reality warping power, is a poor metaphor for human caused destruction. Or even for the surreality of climate denial- talk about reality warping. I think a better analytic is to view the books as postcolonial fiction. Per Caribbean Canadian writer Nalo Hopkinson, postcolonial stories take the adventurous repertoire of science fiction—such as traveling to a distant realm and taming the exotic flora, fauna, and people who live there—and from the experience of the colonizee, critique it, pervert it, fuck with it. The characters of The Southern Reach books are only obliquely marginalized. Their races, ethnicities, class distinctions, and other markers of identity are deliberately downplayed, down to the lack of personal names. But they are all women, which is atypical of pretty much any US government agency. Two of them, the Asian biologist and the half-Indigenous psychologist, are racialized. Biology and psychology and anthropology are often dismissed as "soft sciences," in large part because too many women thrive in them. Or because they've done too good a job of reconsidering racial/cultural/ethnic equity and updating practices and personnel to suit.

"As the 12th expedition proceeds into Area X, on the surface it seems they are reenacting a thousand science fiction novels: going forth as intrepid strangers into a strange land. But for any reader who's familiar with those classic narratives, Annihilation's version feels like a setup. Our marginalized protagonists lacking the privileges and power of stalwart square-jawed white men seem doomed from pretty much the moment they enter Area X.

"So, they are the colonizees in this situation and Area X is definitely fucking with them. But as the story proceeds, it becomes clear that they are themselves fucking with that classic adventure dynamic. The psychologist has wholly focused her skills on taming her fellow adventurers, and perhaps herself. The biologist is trying to solve a mystery of identity: something unquantifiable and scientifically immeasurable, more felt than known, and deeply personal. The anthropologist has no one to study, save her fellow expedition members, and only the surveyor seems wholly focused on Area X at all. Perhaps this is why she later tries to kill the biologist. We see the irony of this setup most clearly with Control in Authority. He is the stalwart square jawed man that traditional science fiction has primed us to expect, even hope for, because he'll have the power to solve the situation, right? But Control becomes the proof that no colonizee can ever tame Area X. At best, they might manage to tame themselves.

"By the end of book one, the 12th expedition becomes the first successful one by a colonizer's rubric, in that they manage to share new understandings of Area X with those outside it and in that at least one member of the team survives with her mind and form somewhat intact. The beginning of book two seems to confirm this, as the story shifts to explore the Kafkaesque bureaucracy of the Southern Reach itself. But the expedition members' choices have become the choices of the colonized. Survive or not? Internalize or not? Assimilate or not? They bring these choices to Control, who adds his own familiar, horrifying existential questions. When change seems inevitable and irreversible, can it be controlled to some degree? Can the self remain intact after the mind and body have been "Ship of Theseus"-ed into something unrecognizable?

"This is not to say that climate focused readings are irrelevant to The Southern Reach series. I mean that climate issues are also colonization issues. In that, the worst effects of climate change fall hardest upon the most marginalized. We observe the breakdown of the 12th expedition, an invasive species to this new biome, even as we observe the breakdown of recognizable life within Area X. New configurations of life emerge from this collapse of old structures. Hybridizations, commensalisms, wholesale assimilations. Even our bureaucracies, as evidenced in Authority, form a kind of natural order that can be deconstructed and readapated. Control fails to contain Area X because of another key understanding that the colonized eventually develop: you cannot fight that with which you have become complicit. The best you can do is realize what's happening and hope its not too late by the time you do. Never fear, Area X reassures. Colonization and its associated harms, terrifying and painful as they might be, are not the end—however much traditional science fiction stories might suggest otherwise. Survival is possible if one is lucky, brave, and clever, but it might require a transformation far more nuanced and complex than mere death. And this is a reassurance. Speculative fiction has historically framed colonization as a contest with winners and losers, but its never been that simple. Human beings are syncretic, some element of who and what we were will always remain in what we become. Entropy cannot be stopped but new energy can be added to the system. And those who are caught up in the transformation can claim a degree of that power for themselves. And, ultimately, syncretism means that we are carried forwards regardless, if only in part. Still better than nothing.

"As I write these words, multiple genocides are in progress. I feel no certainty for the future. Half my nation is so enthralled to it's own bigoted fantasies that I neither expect nor particularly want the United States to survive. I do not fear the singularity, sentient AI, or any technological boogeyman. I fear the confluence of greed and shortsightedness and spite that human rights and human consciouses cannot survive intact.

"But new systems emerge, inevitably. After a climate extinction or a natural disaster, ecologies adapt, new entities eventually fill old empty niches, power changes hands, and stories can be deconstructed. Even when the situation is most terrifying, least stable, there will always be those who embrace the change, and perhaps gain new strength from it. It's a bittersweet understanding, but the change is upon us. We're all in Area X, now. If we are lucky, clever, and courageous, we might still recognize ourselves when its all said and done."

-N. K. Jemisin, Authority

#REALLY really excellent piece of writing and im kind of in awe of it #eye opening especially wrt authority and its place in the series. kind of changed my whole perspective on the series tbh #this is painstakingly transcribed from the audiobook so formatting is just me guessing. boo.#i love n k jemisins writing so i hope it isnt too fucked up #authority #annihilation #acceptance #n k jemisin #nk jemisin #southern reach trilogy #jeff vandermeer

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