Another Silly Request

“Only you and this flower…can touch me here”

Still not over this myth, it rips my heart out every time 😭 This took me so long to finish, but I managed to pull through, so enjoy some Sylus x MC :)

women want you and are blowing up your phone!!!

i didn't have "i'm broken" teenage asexual angst i had "i'm literally being the only reasonable one about this concept and the rest of you are behaving like fucking freaks" perception issues

it's very clear why aphobia is one of the gateways to wider queer exclusionism when you have to witness these types like, make up a guy to get mad at. "what if there was a guy that was straight in every way except he was ace/aro/demi/whatever" yeah man what if? who cares? then you realize the real question being asked is "are queer people still valid if I can't tell they're queer by observing them and need to be told directly?" and it's like yeah I see why you also have weird ideas about bi/pan people and anyone else that doesn't fit your mental image of what a queer person should look like. if your basis for queerness is whether someone appears sufficiently queer to others, you cannot construct a meaningful definition of queerness that doesn't exclude some queer people. no wonder you have to keep throwing more and more people overboard to keep your narrow definition of the queer community afloat in your mind. is the next discourse going to be that happily single lesbians with boring gender-conforming taste in fashion aren't really queer? come off it

"Old friend" is a gayass thing to call someone

Dungeon Meshi - Izutsumi Futon Ratings

Got soukoku on the mind. More specifically, their abilities naturally making them crave each other. Let me explain.

I love the idea that No Longer Human inherently feels cold. When Dazai touches someone and deactivates their ability, it feels like a wave of ice water running through their veins. It might unsettle some people and make them more reluctant to touch Dazai, subconsciously avoiding that feeling of all the warmth being sucked out of them as well as the feeling of being powerless without their ability.

I also think it's an interesting idea that Dazai also feels that icy sensation. He naturally runs cold (perhaps because of No Longer Human always being active), but whenever he nullifies an ability, he feels that chill run through his body as well. Depending on how powerful a skill is, the colder he feels, some even leaving him shivering, which he tries to hide.

I think Chuuya would be the opposite with his ability. Whenever he uses For The Tainted Sorrow, it feels like a rush of strength in his veins, hot and powerful. He also just runs hot, which is why he often sleeps without a shirt. It was very helpful when he was living on the streets and all of the Sheep cuddled up with him for his warmth. He knew they were only doing it to stay warm, but it felt like being loved, so he didn't care.

When Dazai meets Chuuya, he is very much drawn to his natural heat. He tries to touch Chuuya a lot, deactivating his gift and keeping his hand pressed against his skin just to feel the warmth it brings. Sure, that feeling of cold might wash over his body after deactivating Tainted, but his hand feels hot against Chuuya's flesh, so he keeps it there until it's smacked away. Chuuya doesn't want to admit that the cold feels nice because he thinks that Dazai is just doing this to be annoying. It's the first time he's ever felt this cooled off, and it feels strangely good, even if he doesn't admit it.

Anyway, when Chuuya uses Corruption, I imagine that it takes that hot sensation and turns it up to 1000. As a singularity, it keeps building on itself, burning hotter and hotter the longer he uses it until it feels like he's burning alive. That is until No Longer Human washes over him, squashing the flames and putting an icy chill on his wounds. It feels nice, like when someone places an ice pack on a swollen injury. To Chuuya, it feels like care and protection. He's safe from Corruption, and now, someone is tending to him. He doesn't have to worry anymore.

To Dazai, nullfying Corruption leaves him feeling colder than ever before, shivering like he's caught in a snowstorm with dripping wet clothes due to the sheer amount of power that he has to nullify. Because of this, Dazai craves the warmth that Chuuya naturally produces, touching him to try and warm up. When Chuuya is knocked out, Dazai reaches out to hold his hand for a little while. Presses a hand against his cheek. Lays him in his lap. Anything to soak up that addictive heat to combat the chill he feels from his ability.

Chuuya gets tense when he's too hot, the feeling too close to Corruption. Dazai feels that the icy sensation that his ability naturally possesses makes others reluctant to touch him, possibly making him feel more inhuman. But they naturally reach out for each other and take comfort in what the other might not like about himself. I love it.

something @pacificpikachu said got me on a train of thought that led to this, but i wanted to sort of sketch this idea out: mariya ise’s confident and casual, immediate confirmation that killua is in love with gon is surprising in one way, but in another, to me, it’s not surprising at all.

hunter x hunter has always been very different from other shonen with queer stuff.

think about how niuya was posting her killugon ship art on twitter openly during production and faced no consequences. the staff has always been open about “shipping” them. it’s no a coincidence. there’s literally a drama cd from 1999 of leopika called moody restaurant that’s literally just leorio and kurapika fucking while roleplaying as a waiter and customer at a restaurant. that’s real.

there’s a huge difference in staff/official attitude toward all of it from something like…….. sorry im just trying to think of a random example here not trying to shit on anyone. idk narusasu or something like that. you know? it’s really openly noooot the same thing

and another thing iseven aside from the fact that’s always had lgbt characters in his work, togashi has been open about being a fudanshi since the early 90s, people just didn’t talk about it then. he first cited patalliro as an influence in an author’s note about yyh. he’s cited mineo maya. mineo maya was one of the only male BL authors from the first wave of shoujo BL back in the 1970s. like togashi, he is now happily married and has a biological daughter, but he frequently expresses himself through drag and takes photos, and is open about how much he enjoys exploring gay love and gender nonconformity through fiction. he doesn’t identify as gay, but he sure as fuck isn’t cishet!!

like togashi has always been open about the impression maya’s work made on him and it confuses and shocks western fans because of the cultural difference. western fans approach hxh from a very post-2010s queer rep perspective. but togashi has never included queer characters out of the western conception of representation. he has always included them because he likes writing queer characters and he wants to. that’s it.

and once you realize that, you also realize how a character like hisoka and killua can coexist. if you think that the only reason a writer would include a queer character would be to perform A Social Good, it makes no sense that you can have a character like hisoka, who some fans see as reinforcing negative stereotypes, and this hugely empowering and affirming character like killua at the same time. the answer is simply that togashi wasn’t thinking about only creating positive queer characters when he wrote hisoka, because he wasn’t doing it as a social good or as a chore. he is influenced by old BL and he writes queer men into his work because he likes writing them. that’s it.

god. big fucking rambling post. i guess my point is that hxh has always been an openly queer series and it just doesn’t go about it the same way we expect openly queer series to do today.

I have one obsession and it's Dazai and Chuuya's dog being petty

Scene from @whathorselegs' Kuma, His Human and the Other One!

(previous doodles and comic of the same fic)