do you have any arthur whump fic recs? np if not :)

Thank you very much and sorry to get back to you so late!

Hmmm Arthur whump fic recs, you say? There are a few that come to mind.

Bought and Sold by PeaceHeather - a wonderful fic in which Arthur is captured and enslaved and Merlin sets out to find and rescue him.

It Was One Kingdom Once by queerofthedagger - Merthur, a rare Royal Merlin (in that I'm usually not fond of it and don't read it), includes Hanahaki Disease... :3c

Scorchmarks and Embers by southfarthing - not purely Arthur whump in that Merlin suffers quite a lot as well, but a wonderful read all around and definitely one of the main fics I always recommend :)

Lacuna by amithia - Merthur again, and more emotional whump than physical (which is arguably also true for S&E come to think of it...), but still great and another one of my favorites

Pull You Into Me by Tossuka - Merthur. Possibly more Hurt/Comfort than full-on whump, but still a great read and an awesome treat ^^

There’re technically two scenes that fit that description, but I’m going to assume the one you mean is this one (the other being when he’s asking if it’s alright, rather than actually calling Tsukauchi that):

Oooh boy, this is a heavy one. So, for those who don’t remember, this is during the Sports Festival and specifically the tail end of it. Mikumo was about to leave with Tsukauchi because of Stain’s attack on Ingenium when Katsuki used his Quirk in his fight with Kirishima to attack him directly and had a bit of a meltdown as a result. Mikumo feels torn between going to him as the friend Katsuki will no doubt need and leaving as he was about to to enact his plan of getting the League’s eyes off U.A. and focused solely on himself.

I do admit this scene was rather difficult to write, not so much because of an attempt to depict Mikumo’s feelings (I’d like to think I managed well enough) but because of everything else this scene represents. It’s as much a set-up for things to come as it is a representation of Mikumo’s own ‘growth’ in a way, as much as a warning of things to come - and particularly the inevitable doom.

Mikumo’s plan is a sound one. If he really distanced himself from U.A. and from Katsuki, the League would eventually lose interest in them as potential targets/bait and focus on Mikumo instead, since he’s currently the ‘important pawn’ Shigaraki wants to nab. However, as this scene clearly shows, Mikumo will not be able to do that. He cannot, in good conscience, distance himself from Katsuki as much as he should in order for it to have any lasting effect. In essence, he’s setting himself up to fail no matter what he does. If he goes through with it, he’ll hurt Katsuki immensely, probably more than he can ever make up for. If he doesn’t, he’ll keep putting Katsuki in danger by association and put him at risk of being even more traumatized than he already is. Both of those are things to be avoided but he cannot and will not be able to avoid both.

However, at this stage, Mikumo is not willing to accept that he has to choose ‘the lesser evil’. He wants to accomplish both his goals and is agonizing over how to achieve the virtually impossible. Tsukauchi can see as much, which is part of why he tells him to go to Katsuki anyway. The question of the ‘lesser evil’ here is very complicated, because it’s not just about ‘in which scenario less people will get hurt’. It’s a scenario focusing mostly on two people, one of which is bound to be hurt in both scenarios. Between the risk of death and/or injury and a heavy emotional blow due to perceived abandonment, when taking his health into consideration, it’s incredibly difficult to really say which path is the better one. So Tsukauchi points Mikumo towards the path he believes he’ll be able to live with himself for choosing and tells him to go to his friend. Because Mikumo might feel guilty (and he does) when Katsuki gets kidnapped, but in that scenario, Katsuki can at least be saved and Mikumo can continue helping him. In the other one, Katsuki remains safe, but Mikumo can never approach him again, ever help, never undo the hurt he’s caused. And that is assuming the worst case scenario doesn’t happen, because while Mikumo’s distancing plan is sound, it’s not fool-proof. What if he distances himself and then Katsuki is kidnapped and hurt anyway? What then?

There’s also the fact that Tsukauchi has gotten immensely attached to this kid. He considers him his own at this point. And Katsuki is just about the only friend Mikumo has. So of course, for Mikumo’s own (emotional) well-being, Tsukauchi tries to guide him onto the path that will allow him to keep that friend, rather than losing him due to his own actions. At the end of the day, the danger the League represents, while very real, is the easier one to handle than the emotional fallout of Mikumo pulling away from Katsuki would be. In Tsukauchi’s mind, there’s basically two ‘what’s the lesser evil?’ questions to consider: the ‘lesser evil’ regarding Katsuki between the danger from the League and the perceived abandonment and what that would entail, and the ‘lesser evil’ regarding Mikumo between putting a friend at risk, but getting to keep him, and hurting and losing that friend in order to protect him. Particularly since emotionally speaking, Mikumo is far more a child than even Katsuki. He’s still developing his personality and as such he’s still impressionable. So the decision he makes in this very moment is likely to become one of the major building stones of who he is as a person. Is he someone who’s willing to take risks in order to be there for the people who need him, the people he cares about, even if the risk doesn’t involve just him? Or is he someone who’d abandon his loved ones in their time of need due to a perceived need to protect them from a threat that may or may not strike at a later time because of a skewered ‘maybe they’re suffering, but at least they’re alive and safe’ thought process?

I think we can all agree Tsukauchi is right to prefer and guide Mikumo more towards the former.

There’s also the fact that from a story-telling standpoint, Mikumo is the ‘side of logic’ far more than ‘emotion’. He’s not a character ruled by his feelings, quite the opposite. Or at least he used to be, because this scene here is the first time his emotions actually get the better of him quite to this extent. He doesn’t know what to do, he’s lost, he can’t rely on his sturdy logic to find the best course of action because he cannot think. This is the first time that happens and it marks his growth as a person in the sense that he’s truly feeling things now. That’s not to say he’s been emotionless before (though he kinda was at the very beginning), but this is the first time he actually acts like a human being in terms of letting emotions overwhelm him instead of just ‘vaguely feeling something, acknowledging it, but then proceeding as dictated by logic anyway’.

I remember wondering as I wrote this scene how many people would really catch on to that change, to that new ‘humanity’, that Mikumo shows here, and how many would later connect the dots when the truth about him was revealed. It was also part of what made this scene equally fun and horrible to write, because I wanted to leave hints and pointers for my readers to pay attention to some stuff, but at the same time wanted to avoid being too obvious and spoon-feeding them. It was also one of the rare times in TbF where I felt a bit constricted by the one-person PoV, I’ll admit. Because the thing is, while Mikumo himself acknowledges that he’s torn and that he doesn’t know what to do, it’s a feeling he’s been coming to terms with for a while now. It’s not new to him. As a result, he doesn’t actually realize how much he’s grown and changed, how much more like an actual person he is now. So there was no real way for me to hint at that without breaking character. That was a bit frustrating, admittedly, but I hoped the readers would catch on anyway, so I stuck to his PoV rather than doing the rare ‘outsider PoV’ TbF sometimes did. The fact that the only other possibility was Tsukauchi and he already had a PoV elsewhere was another reason, as these ‘outsider PoVs’ were always meant to be restricted to once per character, just to give a glimpse at what’s going on with Katsuki or Mikumo through someone else’s eyes than just these two.

Awww, thank you so much! I’m glad my writing can be like that for someone :) I’m not sure where the hate mail comment comes from, though...? (^.^)> If it’s that one ask post I reblogged some time ago, that ask wasn’t directed at me. I hardly get any asks and I got so used to my ask box being woefully empty that I only check it very rarely... hence why it took me so long to reply to you :’3 Apologies for that.

My general consensus is 'you do you’. If I don’t like your ship, I avoid it. If you don’t like my ship, I expect you to do the same. If someone likes a “problematic” ship, I don’t judge them for it and I’d hope to be given the same courtesy.

The thing is, many people seem to think that liking a problematic or controversial ship means you condone the problematic side of it in real life or that you willfully ignore the fact it's “problematic”. That is not the case. The thing with fandom is that it gives you a safe way to enjoy and/or explore stuff you cannot in real life for various reasons, one of them (and the one that often applies to “problematic” ships) being that you wouldn’t ever do or condone in real life something you may like to read/write/whatever about in fiction. Which is why rather than judge the ships themselves (or the people who sail these ships, so to speak), I tend to judge how a ship is handled.

Let me illustrate on an example that admittedly hits close to home thematically: Character A used to bully Character B and so far, in canon, there's no indication they'll ever be involved romantically. People ship them anyway. I see two fanfics.

Fic 1: Character A is still an asshole, but isn't a literal bully anymore. Still, the past they have with character B never gets addressed or called out as problematic or anything. It's not even implied, like it never happened. There's no remorse from A and no apology, much less anything more than that. B either forgives A anyway or doesn't really think the past matters or is an issue at this point. The entire thing is ignored and/or portrayed as a 'shit happens, it doesn’t matter anymore, let's move on with our lives' kind of normal.

Fic 2: Character A actually realizes their previus behavior was shitty and unacceptable. They're shown to feel genuine remorse and to want to atone for their actions, even if they may still display asshole-y behavior because that’s what they’re like. They and Character B have talked about things, be it on- or off-screen. Stuff that's fucked up and wrong gets called out as fucked up and wrong and character B's choice to forgive is just that: a choice, with both options (to forgive or not to forgive) being valid. There’s redemption, there’s healing, there’s moving on together.

Both these hypothetical fics show the same ‘problematic’ ship of BullyXBullied. But while fic 1 basically ignores all the problematic stuff and pretends it’s not there, fic 2 addresses it and tries to deal with it. Issues aren’t swept under the rug, bullshit that should be called out gets called out and stuff that’s just plain wrong is said to be plain wrong and that it shouldn’t happen. In such a situation, I would be extremely against the portrayal of the ship in fic 1, because it just isn’t right to sweep everything under the rug like that. It did happen to these fictional characters and you can’t just pretend it didn’t without any consequences or closure or anything. But I would have nothing against the portrayal of the ship in fic 2, which takes all the problematic sides, acknowledges them and tries to work around them. And to me, in fandom, that’s ultimately the only thing you can judge others for. Not for what they ship, but how they’re shipping it.

And there’s also the question of what you consider ‘problematic’ in some cases. Like the age gap you mentioned, Anon. To me personally, an age gap in and off itself isn’t problematic or controversial. Couples who have 5, 7 or even more years difference between them aren’t something I see a problem with most of the time. The defining factor would be the age of the younger character (if they’re around 10, then they’re definitely too young to be shipped with anyone in the first place) and how the older character deals with that age gap. In most cases, the only real issue portrayed in fics (and it seems to be the main issue IRL as well, though I can’t say I would have a way of knowing) is the issue of the younger character not being ‘legal’, which considering that minors doing ‘certain adult activities’ (*coughcough*) isn’t a new thing at all is utter BS. So long as both characters make an informed decision on what they’re getting into, there’s no issue. It’s all about understanding and consent, more than it is the actual age. But then we can hit the hard limit of a taboo topic if the age gap is too big, with one character being a literal child and the other an adult. We all know what the adult being attracted to a child is called and we all know that it’s considered disgusting and unacceptable.

If I see a fic with that kind of ship and it utterly ignores those issues, I’m going to be horified and disgusted, but I’ll still judge the how of the ship, rather than the ship itself. But if I see a fic in which an adult character feels attraction towards a child and that character or another one (repeatedly) point out it’s wrong? If it’s a story about an adult giving in to his desires while the people around them judge them for it because of how immoral it is? Or a story about an adult feeling attraction to a child and fighting themself on it because it’s wrong? But they still want to be with the child and they constantly fight themself on it because they know they shouldn’t do shit without proper understanding and consent from the child, which they won’t have a chance of getting until the child is older? And they keep struggling between perverse desires they can’t help and the logical knowledge that they must not act on them, must not take advantage of the child’s inno8cence just to get what they want? Well, I’d still cringe at the general theme of it (because ultimately my first reaction is and always will be ‘EW!’), but I’d definitely give the author a big round of applause for having the guts to write such a thing and for handling it that way. (Though seriously, can you imagine such a story evry being written? I can’t, it would blow up faster than the destiel shit today did.) Liking problematic/controversial ships (or any other kind of problematic/controversial content, really) is fine. What really matters is what about it actually draws your interest and what you do with it all.

OMG Thank you Daily! 🥺 <3

Bakugou Katsuki

Favorite thing: His determination and sheer drive. When this boy decides to get something done, he gets it done. When he has a goal, he does anything and everything that can help him reach it. And yet despite that, he doesn’t forget self-care (most of the time), like eating well, sleeping enough, having hobbys outside of heroics... honestly, he’s kind of what I want to be like in this particular aspect ^^’

Least favorite thing: His tendency to misinterpret other people and be so sure of his (faulty) conclusions that he can’t even consider that it might just be him miunderstanding things, let alone dealing with being proven wrong. He’s working on it, I know, but still...

Favorite line: "If all you ever do is look down on people, you won't be able to recognize your own weaknesses."

brOTP: Basically all of the BakuSquad, though Kirishima gets a special mention.

OTP: BakuDeku. Though I’m also partial to BakuOcha if the build-up to it is satisfactory to my tastes and BakuToga is a dynamic I’ve been thinking about *a lot* lately...

nOTP: Any of the teachers, Shigaraki, basically most of the villains

Random headcanon: The reason he wears the U.A. uniform ‘delinquent style’ and categorically refuses to wear a tie is because of trauma from the sludge villain incident, later made worse by being restrained and muzled at the Sports Festival and then again when he was kidnapped from the summer camp.

Unpopular opinion: He’s badass and no one can say otherwise, yet he’s also a complete damsel in distress. He’s Mr. Gets-Saved-All-The-Time. There’s the obvious stuff like the sludge villain and the kidnapping, but there’s also the ‘smaller’ stuff that doesn’t seem as serious but definitely chipps away at his self-confidence (and the image of him as someone undefeatable) like the time during the provisional licence exam when Kirishima pushed him out of the way of the ‘meat ball Quirk’ (though it only saved him temporarily). In fact, out of everyone in 1-A, he’s the person who got hurt the least not matter what kind of shit hit the fan and while that’s partly due to his combat skills and stuff, it’s also because, compared to any other character (and especially among 1-A) he gets saved the most while others have to get out of trouble by themselves more often than not. No wonder his superiority-inferiority complex nuked if you think about it :’3

Song I associate with him: The Final Countdown by Europe

Favorite picture of him: Hard to pick just one, but if I have to... it’s gotta be the winter costume reveal :3c

All Might

Favorite thing: His character developpment. He started off as a great hero, but an awful character for me due to his one-dimensional portrayal (hero first... and basically nothing else. Read further down for more on this). He’s come so far since then as a man, as a teacher, as a father figure, as a mentor... I love this developpment :’3

Least favorite thing: His absolute idiocy when it comes to teaching, especially about stuff pertaining Izuku and OfA (and AfO). He’s half the reason Izuku thinks his breaking his bones is just ‘a price he needs to pay’ if he’s not ‘strong enough to win without taking that risk’ in a given moment (-_-)

Favorite line: "If you can learn to respect each other and lift each other up you can become the ultimate heroes. Ones who save by winning and win by saving.”

brOTP: Sir Nighteye.

OTP: I don’t really ship him with anyone, but I guess I’m not against YagInko

nOTP: AfO

Random headcanon: Until he looses OfA once and for all (and even long afterwards), he doesn’t see himself as ‘Yagi Toshinori’, but just as ‘All Might’. The Symbol of Peace. The number one hero. He who always smiles, always wins and never fails. Yagi Toshinori, the normal person? He might as well be dead. Until he’s forced to the forefront because All Might needs to retire and suddenly he needs to live but All Might has no idea how to live as ‘Yagi Toshinori’, as a normal person, anymore :(

Unpopular opinion: He’s very strong and a very capable hero, obviously... but he’s also atrocious at his job at the same time. Look at how he neglected to call the ambulance after Izuku nearly drowned with the sludge villain! Or how he was about to leave just after he woke up! How he woke him up in the first place by slapping him on the cheek instead of, you know, checking his vitals! And only after he collected the sludge villain into a bottle and signed his notebook. All Might, you’re a great hero. You really are. But fucking Hell, read up on your ‘first aid response in case of crisis’ at least one or ten more times, won’t you?

Song I associate with him: The Sound of Silence by Simon&Grafunkel (for the melancholy side of his character connected to my headcanon :’3)

Favorite picture of him: The first time we saw him really pissed

Kirishima Eijirou

Favorite thing: His dedication and loyalty to his friends, particularly Katsuki. ‘Nuff said.

Least favorite thing: His self-confidence issues and the way he puts his Quirk down as ‘boring’ in the beginning of the manga. Mostly because it’s so damn relatable but I just want to smack him across the head and tell him to stop being an idiot because he’s awesome already, he just has to see it for himself :’3

Favorite line: "When I heard that they were after my buddy, I couldn’t do anything! I didn’t do anything! If I don’t act now, forget being a hero, I’M NOT EVEN A MAN!!!”

brOTP: With Katsuki.

OTP: KiriMina, definitely. Although KiriDeku is cute, too :3

nOTP: Overhaul. And generally truly evil villains. Also all of the teachers.

Random headcanon: He didn’t originally intent to actually become Katsuki’s friend (because he’s ‘not cool enough’), he just wanted to observe him from afar, learn from his confidence, maybe emulate him a bit. But then USJ happened (it was the first time they’ve really properly interacted if you recall and Eijirou saw the first short glimpse of something beyond the anger and vitriol Katsuki spewed on the regular and not becoming friends with him has been a lost cause from there.

Unpopular opinion: Beware the Nice Ones is a big thing with him. Much like Deku, you do not want to piss this cinnamon roll off, not unless you want him to turn very feral very fast. (Though I’m admittedly not sure it counts as an ‘unpopular opinion’ LOL)

Song I associate with him: The Eye of the Tiger by Survivor

Favorite picture of him: Definitely Kiri’s Big Bad Hero moment :’3

I would:

- push Su-Won off a cliff.

- kiss Yona

- marry Jirou

- set Katsuki on fire (I mean... I already kind of did in TbF, so... only fair to be honest  ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ )

- wrap a blanket around Jaehe

- be roommates with Izuku

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

Honestly, a bit of a hard one since I’m rarely truly “proud” of my own writing ^^’ But if I had to pick, I suppose it would be this scene from my FFXV fic ‘Of Friendship and Duty’:

“Forgive me, Your Highness,” he whispered, though the address felt wrong on his tongue. He’d never called Noct that. He had never wanted to call Noct that. Sure, his friend was a prince, but still, at the end of the day, they were friends and that was what mattered most. What was supposed to matter most. “I plead innocent.”

“You are aware the evidence speaking against you is irrefutable, are you not?” Noctis asked after a moment of silence. Prompto kept his head down. He didn’t dare look up again.

“Yes.”

“Yet you still plead innocent?”

“Yes. I didn’t do it,” Prompto insisted. He raised his head then despite not wanting to, meeting Noctis’s cold eyes with his own, pleading ones. “I didn’t kill anyone. I swear it on whatever you want me to,” he said, inwardly begging Noct to believe him. “Your Highness,” he tacked on hastily, catching his own blunder before he could be called out on it again. Noctis regarded him for a moment longer, then leaned back in his chair slightly. But the look in his eyes still remained cold, impassive and distant. He was still looking down on Prompto like he might at a bug on the sole of his shoe. Prompto shivered and lowered his head again, swallowing.

“Tell Us what you were doing on the evening of the crime,” Noctis commanded, the words causing a wave of quiet whispers to pass through the present people. One of the council members shifted and turned to look at the prince carefully.

“Your Highness, with all due respect, surely there is no need? The other accounts and the evidence speak for themselves. There is no need to listen to an account of what happened that is sure to contain nothing but lies,” he said, his words carefully respectful, but his voice hard. It was like he expected Noct to fold, to listen to him. Which was odd. Noct was the prince and, right now, in this room, the supreme authority, wasn’t he?

“That is true,” Noctis agreed calmly and the council member smirked in satisfaction. The expression slipped right off his face, however, when Noctis continued. “However, the accused still pleads innocent. Thus We believe he has a right to defend himself. He shall give Us his own account.” He looked at Prompto then and the blond bowed his head again, unable to meet that cold, distant gaze. “Speak, Argentum.”

The reason I’m admittedly a little proud of this one is the way I think I managed to nail the formality and lack of genuinity of the scene. For context, the two characters doing most of the talking (Prompto and Noct) are eighteen-year-old high school students and best friends. Noct is also the prince of his country and, in the setting of the fic, the prince regent since his father is sick and can’t lead while Noct is already of age. Prompto is being accused of having killed two people working directly for the Crown in cold blood and so Noct is basically being forced to judge his best friend and, as most expect, to sentence him to death for murder. As you can probably guess, that’s not exactly an easy situation to deal with, particularly since he wants to give his friend the benefit of the doubt. So here we have two best friends who have always been casual as can be with each other thrust into a situation in which Noct’s duty and station comes before their friendship, forcing them to act like strangers. Plus the fact that the Council is trying to pressure Noct into listening to them rather than thinking and deciding for himself like a proper leader, so he has to fight them while also trying to think of a passable way to prove his friend’s innocence.

This leads to the entire scene feeling awfully tense and artificial and wrong. But at the same time, Noct is acting so well that Prompto fears it might not be an act and worries on and off if their friendship truly means anything at all and he can’t stad to even meet Noct’s eyes when he’s looking at him like that. And I think I actually managed to convey that wrongness and insecurity pretty well.

K - “What’s the angstiest idea you’ve ever come up with?”

Ooh boy, a juicy one. Unfortunately, I cannot go into too much detail about it, as it’s a WIP I intend to post as one of my whumptober fills >:3c But let’s just say it involves Bakugou Katsuki, a very creepy Quirk, and will fill the prompt ‘sensory deprivation’ (among others).

O - “How do you begin a story - with the plot or the characters?”

With the plot, or rather singular plot points. More often than not, my stories are born from me imagining a single scene (mostly at the beginning of the story) and then one by one putting characters into the void silhouettes enactig it. For fanfics, since I make use of source material I enjoy, there’s no other way to really begin, as everyone (myself included) already knows the characters. But even for original stories, I tend to imagine what’s going on first and then get to know the characters as I think more about them. It’s the same when actually writing. I’m more likely to throw my readers right into the middle of the action and indtroduce the characters little by little as I go than starting with a character introduction before kicking off the plot.

Do you really know the answer to X? Really? Are you sure? >:3c

🍌- You're fun to talk to!

🍇 - I wish we were better friends.

🍈 - I live your sense of humor