(324) Your name is Escapement. You picked it yourself, because when there's nobody else to assign significance to your existence, you might as well do it yourself.
You are a Decepticon vehicon.
You don't know much, but, contrary to what your commanding officer reckons, even vehicons do know some stuff. For instance, here's a list of vital information you knew this morning:
Life is not fair.
Extenuating circumstances, second chances and begging for your life are privileges for officers only. You're a grunt, so failure means death. The end.
Any mission to destroy Optimus Prime is a suicide mission from the start.
The Decepticon war machine doesn't pay you to ask questions or backtalk. (They don't pay you at all.)
And by midnight, you also know some totally new but equally vital information:
When Megatron assigns you a mission to kill Optimus Prime, you are absolutely, categorically, not actually meant to kill Optimus Prime.
But it's too late to be learning new information now, isn't it? Even your CO looks pitying when he tells you to report to Megatron for your reward...
Snake Fruit Cookie backstory headcanon
My friends and I once made a theory that Snake Fruit Cookie was the child of Affogato, who he «conjured» with the help of magic and a piece broken off from Dark Cacao. I know this sounds crazy, but listen.
Snake Fruit always dreamed of becoming a dragon, like those they were forced to bow before their entire life. Actually, this is probably why they went to serve Longan in the first place. But when they eventually managed to turn into a dragon, their appearance looked differently: Ananas, Lotus and Pitaya (I couldn't find Lychee, but I think they looked the same) were built, more or less, as we are used to seeing them in Western folklore – like lizards.
Snake Fruit, on the other hand, seemed to look more like a snake, they didn't have the wings or even the body of a dinosaur, and, nevertheless, they were signed as «Snake Fruit Dragon».
What does it mean?
Well, if you look closely, you'll see that they are depicted as a stereotypical Oreo dragon from the Dark Cacao Kingdom. I don’t think that if it had depended on them, they wouldn't have taken on the appearance that they saw in the faces of their masters – which means that they acquired such an appearance due to circumstances beyond their control. I'm making the simplest bet possible: they already were like this, it was in their nature to become a dragon that looked like this.
Because Snake Fruit themselves are not from this region. They are from a place where serpentine dragons are reflected in culture (tapestry and statues) and folklore (the tale of dragons that king Dark Cacao cut down, creating a cycle of day and night).
Now what does their supposed kinship has to do with it? Well, eh, I just wanted to somehow connect these two restless souls with too similar destinies, but different ages (I always presumed Affogato is old for some reason): both Affogato and Snake Fruit managed to achieve their goals, but failed to keep them. I can’t say anything about their external resemblance to any of them – based on their appearance, I can rather assume that this is Affogato who's the second parent of Dark Choco, but that’s not the point.
Based on some joking Twitter posts, we've concluded that most likely Choco's mother is White Lily, who created him based on her designs and research (with some help from Dark Cacao, of course), but what happened to her notes when she left to Beast Yeast? They didn't just disappear, did they? So, I came to the conclusion that no, they didn't – which Affogato could have taken advantage of.
Affogato couldn't have been unaware of the circumstances under which Prince Dark Choco was exiled: it might have occurred to him at some point to curry favor with the king by using Lily's notes to create a new heir (possibly even secretly taking a piece from him, resulting in unequal parts). No relations are implied here though: in Cookie Run, one of the semi-«official» methods of reproduction involves breaking off two pieces of dough from the parents to, when combined, create a new cookie.
He didn't take into account, though, that his half ended up disproportionately larger than Cacao's: baby Snake Fruit turned out to be almost a copy of Affogato, and he began to fear that the king simply wouldn't believe him. Add to that Cacao's deteriorating condition due to Affogato's control magic, and we have a deadlock situation: the resulting child needed to be protected.
Affogato could have known that the dragon gene might reveal in Snake Fruit one day. Considering that he himself was a mixture of Coffee Tribe and Milk Tribe residents, and the resulting child clearly reflected his Milk ancestors, it was safe to assume that Dark Cacao's ancestors would eventually manifest themselves too. Keeping this in mind, the idea came to him to send the child far away to Longan, the Dragon Master, to keep them away from harm. They would raise them, nurture them in their home, and perhaps something worthwhile would come out of them, while Affogato figured out how to explain their existence to the king.
Well, along with the genes of Affogato's ancestors, Snake Fruit inherited his nasty character and penchant for intrigue – unwittingly following in the footsteps of one of their parents, becoming an advisor and being cast down for it into the abyss. Hopefully, their body will wash up on the shores of the continent, where their newfound majesties can be picked up by kind people: someone must ultimately look after the king while Caramel Arrow is busy defending the kingdom, and Dark Choco hasn't come to his senses yet.
Literally the only thing that doesn't fit into this theory is Longan themselves: firstly, their dragon appearance somewhat resembles Snake Fruit's dragon form. There's no reason to assume that Longan has any connection to the Dark Cacao Kingdom (unless Snake Fruit hadn't seen their dragon form before). And secondly, Longan... well, they're chauvinist – they wouldn't accept a regular cookie into their service, even if kings were to ask them to. In that case, Affogato would have to persuade the dragons that the child is a hundred percent dragon, just not awakened yet (and by the time it became clear that it's more cookie than dragon, they would have gotten used to their service and simply mockingly called them «Snake»).
Thank you for coming to my Ted Talk again.
Sire issues my favourite (I love ur art)
issac & ash
Doomed Love.
CW: Minor blood and eye injury.
The faerie monarch sobbed softly, holding his lover close as he was tethering between life and death, as the corruption slowly overtook his cooling person once more.
"I'm sorry... I'm sorry I'm sorry I'm so sorry...! I'll- I'll fix this somehow! I'll save you! I'll save your friends I-"
He was cut off by a pained chuckle from the jester.
"Silly.. Monarch... You... You know...this would happen..."
Ahahahahah yes that's right The Beasts are a thing in this AU too. (Just in case yall missed out those crumbs of details in my refs post of DE and Matcha)
Keep in mind that there will be NOTHING like canon. But rest assured, I won't remove the fun stuff. Like Shadow Milk's theater show that looked like a divorce between him and Faerie, and Mystic Flour psychologically torturing Cacao.
Trust me :}
Also this drawing is like,,, months old
My friends cringed so bad at what I'm about to say, and idk if anybody said it before, but please, hear me out:
Madeleine and Espresso look like Achilles and Patroclus, I'm sorry-
sorry pal but no teenagers are clammering to play this dinosaur-age obscure game. the people posting about lacroix being a studmuffin have careers and are 40
No shade to daddy Stoker but I find it sad that now every story about vampires set in Slavoland is doomed be a Dracula rip-off regardless of whether you actually are from the region or not and because of what? Because of some dudes from Hollywood across the ocean who probably think ussr is still a thing god forbid and that Romanians and Polish are the same
(bad English and long text)
I understand that I'm probably far from the first person to say this, but one of the few things that genuinely touched me in MP100 was the moment in the "Claw" organization at the end of season 1, where Reigen told Mob to run away. I understand that he was most likely just broadcasting his self-preservation style – "flight" – but personally, I saw something different in it and my heart still aches with joy here. Reigen told him "you don’t need to take this all on yourself, let the adults handle everything."
As the oldest sister myself, I understand what it’s like when parents leave their other children to you, giving birth to them with the default thought that you have already grown up as a helper, while you, for example, are 11 years old. Mob's situation is different – there is only a year difference between him and Ritsu, but judging by the way Ritsu reaches out to him, takes his example not only as an esper, constantly emphasizes that Shigeo is his older brother (I can't speak for everyone, but I still don’t really perceive my older cousins, who are ~4 years older than me, as an elders, but as peers), and also from the apparent complete absence of parents in the boys' lives, I can assume that all his life Shigeo has been left to his own devices at best, and with Ritsu in his care at worst.
I don’t think that their parents are completely indifferent to them – they attended their school race after all – and I haven't read the manga, so I can't judge with certainty, however they have catastrophically few appearances in the anime, besides the standard dinner scenes together (my friends even joked while watching that "these NPCs at the table have one script about spoons"💀 lol).
Mob's whole story is about how he gradually develops his personality, learning to express emotions. But I don't believe he suppressed them solely out of fear of harming someone with his magical outbursts.
I know how children mature beyond their years behave, because I was one. Mob always acted like he was too burdened for his age, having restraint uncommon for kids. He himself disliked this fact, and it was a hard-fought battle to loosen the internal grip. All because this is the consequence of too much of a burden that good-natured but absent parents could've placed on him (I mean, come on, your child – the most powerful esper in the universe – disappears for days and sometimes nights, occasionally even with his brother, and not only do you not know this, but you also keep repeating your spoon script?).
This is where Reigen comes in. Little Mob needed guidance, advice from at least someone who could understand what to do with his gift and his life – and Reigen, not yet knowing about his abilities, gave him this advice, which he listened to with his mouth open. It was clear from that scene how much Shigeo needed support and guidance, and frankly, a parental figure. Real parents, as I wrote above, don't seem to care at all that their son easily comes home late at night or even in the morning, nor did they show any interest in his studies or hobbies. Maybe I'm wrong, please correct me on that, but it's really so little of them in the series.
Reigen, be he thrice a manipulator and swindle, saw a child with a truly divine gift, and his first instinct was "I can make something out of this." Mostly money. But as it turned out later – a good person too.
And Reigen's parenting abilities can be judged by the fact that Mob not only turned out to be a good person himself but also was able to guide others by his example – for instance, Teruki.
Even if we take into account the fact that Reigen never failed to use Mob’s abilities, relying too much on him, he still took care of him: he always treated him to food, never smoked around him, came to pick him when he had problems, stood up for him (in the episode where Mob was almost scammed in the vase incident by con artists, who did he call first? Not his parents, no. Reigen).
And finally that scene in the "Claw". Reigen told Mob to run away because the problem he was getting himself into was an adult problem, as he himself said. He literally said that Mob shouldn't act against his own morals, because he is still a child, he hasn't grown up to make such decisions (and it was clear how difficult it was for Mob to decide to harm someone from those espers, because it went against everything, what Reigen taught him). That's why he freed Shigeo from this responsibility: run away, leave it to me, kid, I'm an adult and you shouldn't risk anything and challenge anything in your heart.
Reigen may be a scammer, but he could put a lot of parents to shame. Including mine (in our translation he even literally said in that episode that he is Mob's "acting guardian", my gooood 😭😭😭). I wish having someone like him growing up, someone who can willingly take responsibility when it's necessary.
Thanks for coming to my Ted Talk.
can you imagine being a priest like oh put on this collar to show that you’re god’s special little boy. slut
Finally somebody who treats him like it's supposed to
lacroix.png
*Putting him in my pocket* *Putting him in a dollhouse of the Venture Tower* *Feeding him little snacks (my Santino and Michael PNGs)* *Picking him up and putting him back where he started every time he runs towards the Ankaran Sarcophagus, like I’m trying to stop my cat from eating a piece of plastic off the floor*