Kurodai | 30k | E | Horror | Angst
For Kurodai Week Day 4: Supernatural @kurodaievents
Two years after an unlikely event took the love of his life away from him, Daichi is hopeful that leaving the city behind and starting over in a peaceful village up in the mountains will be the thing he needs to heal his wounded heart. Out amongst the trees and rolling, pastoral beauty of the country, he seeks release from his misery and the courage to let go.
But sometimes a heart is too broken to mend. Sometimes grief is the only thing it has to hold on to.
And that kind of grief? Well, that kind of grief will eat you alive.
It is so humbling trying to step into a new fandom. Nobody knows you, so they don't care. You don't get the built in mutual / friend hype up. You put your creations out there on the sidewalk and people walk by without making eye contact. Maybe one kinda nods at you. You try to not seem too excited when you nod back, lest you appear overeager to make friends and put them off.
I know I complain about lack of engagement in the fandoms I'm sat in, but I forgot what it was like to be totally new.
There are many people who don’t share this sentiment, but I have an appreciation for when a fanfic is so separated from canon that it could’ve easily been its own original novel, and yet the author was only ever going to put that much energy into it if their favourite characters got to be there
I think there’s a difference between “the author stripped the media of everything it had to replace it with something easy” and “the author thought up a concept they really really like and are bestowing it upon the character like a medal”
TRYING to find my inspiration to pick A Song in the Dark back up again by doodling;;; We've got our main boys, Suga and Daichi, as well as two of their party (eventually) Bokuto and Kuroo.
Kuroo is a (supposedly) neutral dragonkin cleric, sent by the dragons of Nekoma to observe & guide the party towards a solution that promotes balance.
Bokuto is the warrior-prince of Fukurodani, currently defecting to assist the party in their world-saving endeavors. (He can shift into an owl.)
Daisuga | Western | Monster Hunter Suga | Shapeshifter Daichi
Rated E
COMPLETE | 15 Chapters | 184k
A shifter's a cruel, evil thing. It ain't human, and it ain't fit to draw breath. Only thing good for a shifter's a round of silver, right betwixt the eyes.
That's what Sugawara Koushi knows, and that's what's driven him ever since he watched one tear his family apart when he was just a boy. He didn't think he'd ever forget the terror he felt that day, but fear has a way of becoming anger... and anger has a way of turning to hate. Bent on revenge and with only his horse to call friend, he became a hunter with a path of blood a mile wide stretching out behind him.
Now, he's been given an assignment to pick off any stragglers from a pack of shifters his posse recently cleared off a lonely mountain. For him, it should have been an easy winter. What he discovered up there amongst the pines, however, would shake his beliefs and leave him questioning himself... and everything he's ever done in the name of revenge.
Read it on AO3 >
“It’s just how it is. We’re made to die alone,” he said, heart catching as more words tumbled out before he could stop them, “I’m sorry.”
Those big, brown eyes just kept looking at him. Maybe it was the tension of the moment or maybe Suga really was losing his mind, but the thing’s face seemed to soften as it dipped its snout in something like a nod. All right then , it seemed to say, go on . Its head fell back into the snow, its eyes closed in surrender.
Chapter 1 on AO3 >
Suga sighed, opening his mouth to tell him to stop that, for the love of god, but he closed it again before another sound could be made. Something about the angle of the shifter’s head as he looked mournfully down at the fabric that was confining and constricting him, and the way the light, soft and silvery through the clouds, was streaming down on him from the small window above struck him, silencing his tongue. Ephemeral and delicate, the winter sun lit him from behind, surrounding him like a damned halo glowing against his deep, rich skintone and the contrasting darkness of his corner.
Chapter 2 on AO3 >
"Why Suka chain Daichi?”
The fucked up thing was that for a minute there, I almost said I don’t know. Because sometimes, I look at him, and I cannot see danger. Sometimes, I look at him, and my mind refuses to connect the dots between that smile he gets when he’s learned something new or likes his dinner or plays with Percy to what happened to my family and so many other people along the way.
Chapter 3 on AO3 >
He remembered thinking he’d been quite magnanimous, allowing a shifter to stay inside next to a warm stove and giving him pillows and blankets to rest on, but without Daichi there to add life, he could see it for what it was… just a pile of bedding on a cold, hard floor.
I made him live in that. Like that.
Chapter 4 on AO3 >
“This ok?” Daichi asked, that same need rumbling around the edges of his voice, but there was concern there now, too. “Talk to me, Suka.”
“Daichi, I…” Suga started, responding to the command to speak but not knowing what to say.
Chapter 5 on AO3 >
“Wish I talk your talk better. Then you listen… understand me, maybe. But this,” he said, gesturing to the wall in front of him, “This show you… I am not stupid, shifter not stupid. And I am not human, but I am a person. Person is family, pack, friend. Person is story. I have that. Wanted you to… see.”
He stopped speaking and turned, pivoting so he was facing Suga.
“Wanted you to see… me.”
Chapter 6 on AO3 >
The horror was large, looming. It stole the air right out of his lungs - but fuck his lungs, he’d breathe when Daichi was safe.
“Shut the hell up and shoot,” he hissed at himself as he fell to his knees, shouldering his rifle in one smooth motion.
Chapter 7 on AO3 >
He thinks we’re at the happy ending of our fairy tale… but I know we’re just at the part where the wolf throws off the disguise and pounces.
Chapter 8 on AO3 >
"So the way I see it… this is your chance.”
“To what?”
“Start over. Find your place. Be who you want to be."
Chapter 9 on AO3 >
There were smaller deaths that happened all the time - of spirit, mind, heart - and he’d suffered each one throughout his life. But this one didn’t seem nearly as bad as all of those.
Chapter 10 on AO3 >
“Another problem, then,” he said.
“What problem?”
“Can you forgive yourself?"
Chapter 11 on AO3 >
The volume in the cave rose with it, rejection reverberating from every wall. Monster, killer, leave... words he knew, bouncing all around him as his body burned with fever and shame.
Say something, he thought. Anything. This ain’t the time to be a coward, just cuz you feel puny and scared.
Chapter 12 on AO3 >
“I need to say something,” Daichi said, and Koushi didn’t miss the sudden shake in his voice or the way he was twisting his hands. “Was going to wait more, but… I am tired of not saying it. Starting to hurt, not saying it.”
Chapter 13 on AO3 >
“Me for you,” Daichi murmured, “And you for me.”
“Us,” Koushi answered to complete the thought.
Chapter 14: After, and Always on AO3 >
Epilogue: Courage
The feelings washing over him were at odds with each other, pulling him every which way. There was the rough scrape of grief in his heart, but right next to it, a little pearl of happiness for the memory.
Epilogue: Courage on AO3 >
______________
Asides and One-Offs
Read after Chapter 11
Heart hurts. Everything heavy and bad because no Suga.
But it bad to miss Suga, I think. It bad to want someone who hurt my pack, kill my pack, trick me, lie to me.
Daichi's Journal on AO3 >
Read after Chapter 13
He just hadn’t expected to walk into his den that summer evening to see Koushi curled up in his nest, sleeping the afternoon away without a care in the world.
Hualian sketchy I've been poking at on and off for a couple of days now. I might decide to really clean it up and wreck it with color later, but for now... here you go. <3
Most people I know had that one movie as a kid; that one movie that they would watch over and over and over to the resigned acceptance of their parents. I’ve always thought that movie says something about a person. What was your movie?
These are all very good and valid points, but this also kinda feels like it could be a pissing on the poor situation where someone grabbed a neutral statement, shared it without context, and everyone ran off on a rant with it.
It's possible they meant something like "the author is 31 (so of course they have better writing/organizational skills)" (which isn't necessarily a true assumption lol, but could have been intended in a more complimentary way.)
this came across my feed so i want to say as the original writer who received this comment / shared it on twitter, it was not meant in a positive way whatsoever lol. it was someone who took offense to something i said about people being able to write whatever kind of fic they want (even if it’s unpalatable to you personally) and took that to ao3 to imply that i’m a loser for still writing fanfiction at the age of 31. the user that left this comment was targeting me as part of a larger pile-on that led to me having to private all of my work for a month! people are interpreting their words as they intended.
Ushisuga gift for wordlesslywriting on AO3 for the Haikyuu Summer of Rarepairs exchange. I'm not sure pirate Ushi *meant* to fall in, or if he truly thought the merfolk were real, but he's learning something today.
And my treat for Ninjaspaz as part of the Haikyuu Summer of Rarepairs Exchange... the rarest of pairs... the crack crossover! Oikawa Tooru and Ryomen Sukuna, kings of their own respective realms, getting up to no good as yakuza assassin types.
Ushisuga gift for wordlesslywriting on AO3 for the Haikyuu Summer of Rarepairs exchange. I'm not sure pirate Ushi *meant* to fall in, or if he truly thought the merfolk were real, but he's learning something today.
