#caught up on the art now yahoo | Explore Tumblr Posts and Blogs

bl4cktourmaline · 4 months

Text

🍡 . 鳥居 — your secret admirer ft k.kazuha & xiao

✿ — ♬ ⌨️ᶻᶻᶻ : yue is typing... ✉!

✿ — ↻ SYNOPSIS : Love is like the breeze itself, you can't see it but the heart know it and its gentle whisper tell a different tale...

✿ — ♯ GENRE : fluff, gn reader

✿ — ↠ NOTE : pyon-yahoo, zee! I know we never really get to talk at all before this but I'm happy to be your secret admirer for this event so I really hope that I live up to your expectations for your favorite characters!

✿ — ♪ REMINDER : reblogs & likes are appreciated, in doing so will motivate us to continue delivering stories to you, thank you for all of your supports ~ !

✿ — ♭ ⁿᵒʷ ᶜᵃˡˡⁱⁿᵍ... : @mccnstruck

✿ — ► ᴺᴼᵂ ᴾᴸᴬᵞᴵᴺᴳ : the art of you featuring kaedehara kazuha and xiao...

🍡 . 鳥居 — kaedehara kazuha

∞ You were an artist originally from sumeru who travel to different nations, looking for some inspirations to complete your travel illustrations journal in hope of sharing your experience with those who can't afford travelling fees.

∞ You weren't really interested in becoming a scholar but instead your passion lies in the world of arts so the moment you were able to become independent, you immediately went off to Liyue which was just so happened to be next to where Sumeru is.

∞ Ever since you were a child, you heard stories of other nations and their cultures so you were really interested in learning more about them and recording it all in your journal.

∞ But when you decide to set foot in an unknown territory, you honestly didn't expect to find love for the first time ...

The bustling city of Liyue was filled with vibrant colours and historical buildings as the laughter and chattering of its residents crowded the streets.

You could see all the buildings and the small stalls are decorated with paper lanterns, and their designs vary from dragons, maple leaves and many more. Your eyes caught the sight of various beautiful flowers decorated some of the residents' hair.

I have never seen those flowers before...I wonder if they are this nation's flowers?

You hummed softly, taking notes of recording it later in your journal once you get to your room but for now, that sweet, sweet tempting aroma of the foods from the stalls is leading you astray...

"(name), no...you have a job to do, you are not here to sightsee-" You paused mid sentence when one of the stall owners brought out the foods, deliciously fresh and hot. It looks so appetizing.

Okay, maybe one bite won't hurt...

"Mmm~ it's so good!!"

Your cheeks flushed in delight, taking another bite of the grilled tiger fish under the big tree as you quietly watched children and adults walking around the streets, enjoying the festival as much as possible.

After having a chat with the store owner about the cultures and their history, he was nice enough to give you some of his grilled tiger fish for free, probably because of the warm and lively atmosphere.

Whatever the reason is...but free food!

As you were enjoying the moment, you suddenly felt the gentle breeze on your face. There was a very light, almost quiet rustling of leaves but soon, the breeze suddenly picked up and you could hear a strong whistling sound of the wind.

"Ah, not my hat?!" You cried, eyes widened in surprise as you immediately stood up and set off to catch it. The (colour) hat flew gently with the wind as its dance to the song of the wind.

But to you, it's just seems like it was mocking you-

"Please, please, please don't go over the bridge...!"

Just as you fear. It went over the bridge and your face almost dropped.

...if it wasn't for a young man swiftly catching it and for a moment, time seems to hold still as the young man floats in mid air slowly landing on the ground as if he was dancing with the wind itself.

It was breathtaking.

"I think I just witnessed something magical..." You pinched your cheeks and soon enough, it stings like heck!

IT'S NOT A DREAM?

The young man turned to you with a kind smile, handing out your hat "I believe this one is yours?"

Oh god. His voice.

"A-Ah, yes! Thank you for getting it for me" You couldn't help but cringe at yourself when your voice just cracked, suddenly feeling embarrassed.

"Excuse me for a moment please" The young man suddenly came closer to you and reached out to your head.

You flinched when the feels of his fingertips gently brushed against your hair before pulling something out and presenting it to you.

"There was a maple leaf stuck in your hair" He let out a chuckle when your eyes widened and stared at him in shock.

"I-uh wha...?"

Oh gosh, is that why some of the passers-by were giggling at?!

"You seem surprised so it wasn't for decoration?"

"Y-Yeah... actually it's my first time here so I'm not very familiar with its culture yet..."

You shyly avoid making eye contact with him, heart thumping loudly and body temperature slowly raising. You could have sworn that the kind stranger would hear it.

"Would you like to take a stroll with me?" He asked in a kind tone, his gaze softened as some of his locks brushed against his face due to the wind picking itself up again "I could tell you anything of what I know about Liyue Harbor if you would like?"

"Are you sure? I would love to!" You happily accepted his offer, totally not just because you want to get to know him more... it's for your work definitely!

"Ah, I forgot to introduce myself..." You cut yourself off before awkwardly scratching your cheek "I am (last name) (name)...it's nice to meet you"

"I am Kaedehara Kazuha, I'm very pleased to make your acquaintance"

...and that was the start of your journey with the young samurai.

🍡 . 鳥居 — xiao

㊊ Ever since you were a child, you heard many stories of other nations from your parents' experience as adventurers before settling down in Sumeru and it's because of them, you've become more curious of the world outside of your homeland.

㊊ Especially the tales of the Rex Lapis and the Adeptus who fought alongside him during the war, you were most curious about the remaining sole survivor of the yakshas.

㊊ You were raised in a loving household so you couldn't imagine how that person felt after losing their family so tragically like that... you want to learn more about their history and how their efforts become one of the many reasons why Liyue Harbor is still standing to this day.

㊊ So once you were older enough to join the adventure guild, you immediately set off to Liyue Harbor for a mission to collect specific herbs that you can only find in the mountains of Liyue where danger lurk in the dark...

The solitary mountains loomed in the distance, the land of geo dwarfing the endless sea of greenery and yellow trees that surrounded the mountaintops.

At dusk, the mountains were silhouettes, shrouded in the dark hues of the night sky but as the sun began to rest, the stars painted the dark sky with their brilliant lights and soon, the moon rose higher as if it was guiding its little ones to shine brightly upon the world.

It was truly a sight to behold.

"This scenery might be good for a painting..." You couldn't keep the big grin off your face as you quickly make your way towards your next destination, hoping to find a safe place to camp for the night.

But something caught your eyes as you were walking up the path between the mountains, it was a small purple flower with strong vitality, its downward-blooming buds really remind you of something...

Wait.

You quickly went to grab your notebook, patting around the inside of your pocket before pulling it out and flipped it open to a list of plants for the mission.

"Hmm... it fits the description" You hummed, taking notes of the flower characteristics before quickly making a sketch of it to go along with and once you were done, you put it away for further studies later on.

You adjusted your grip on your bag before walking up to where the flower is and begins to climb the cliff. You didn't look down, carefully makes your way up the mountain and soon enough, you were close enough to grab the plant "Alright that one down-"

"Ya!"

You snapped your head towards the source of the noise only to see a bunch of Hilichurls and two of them were aiming their arrows right at where you were...

WHERE THE HECK DID THEY COME FROM?

You cursed under your breath at the disadvantageous situation you found yourself in, puzzled but you didn't get to think any further when a sharp and intense outburst, an agony of excruciating pain hits your left shoulder.

You gasped, gritting your teeths as your left hand loosen its grip out of shock and a highly unpleasant, intense physical sensation in the area where the arrow successfully pierced through the skin.

Its burns.

You were barely holding onto the cliff, your line of sight blurred as tears gathered at the corner of your eyes.

"Ika ya! Ika ya! Upano yaya ika!"

"Upa sada!!"

They were screaming at you in their own language, whatever it is...from you could tell from their noises that they were mad about something but why towards you...?

I didn't see any hilichurl camp nearby when I was making my way up here...

I could only remember encountering a few hilichurls because a few adventurers were cornered.

...Ah.

"Ika ya-!"

A violent gust of wind cut the creatures off and the sound of a spear piercing through as the screams of the hilichurls echoed throughout the earthly walls and the next moment.... it's dead silence.

You snapped your eyes open for the world, only to see a beautiful pair of strong golden eyes staring right back at you.

It was a young man with hair as dark as the night sky and teal undertones, he was clearly out of breath and was stiff as a wooden broad but he never took his eyes off you.

...there was something about him that made you feel uneasy, that look in his bewitching golden eyes...

As if he was looking at something... precious.

Why does he look so familiar though...?

"H-Have we met before?" You blurted out, completely mesmerized by this otherworldly beauty in front of you.

"..." He didn't respond, cautiously putting you down onto the ground and his lips trembling slightly, suppressing his emotions in check as he examined your face up close.

His hand cupped your face, his thumb wiping the blood off your cheek gently "...You should be more cautious of your surroundings next time"

His tone was harsh but it's like your heart knew that it wasn't intended to come out like that.

The young man had his back towards you and just as he was about to disappear along with the wind, you cried out "Wait...!"

He paused, slightly glancing over his shoulder to you but you could hardly see his face from where you were "...What is it?"

"I want to know... just who..." You looked up with pleasing eyes, struggling to breathe. You didn't understand why you were acting the way you are now but you knew that if you don't it now, you might regret it later on...

"Xiao"

You stared at him, surprised when he turned to look at you with a facial expression that raised even more questions; the looks of his eyes were soft...as if he was at peace from all of the burdens that shackled him to this world.

"As long as you're in Liyue, Call by my name and I'll be right there when you need me"

...and then he vanished to thin air, leaving you staring at the empty space…

69 notes · View notes

azumasoroshi · 1 year

Text

minidura chapter 1 react

hey guys started reading minidura i think im in love

just imagining izaya going like "yahoo!! X3" man. i know mikado is the real protagonist and not being able to see through izaya's eyes adds to his charm and intrigue but like mannn itd be so fun to just watch him fuck shit up like in that one episode. he must be hilarious to people watch with

god they're so fucking cute i love this chibi style

IT'S HIMMM IT'S MY BABYGIRL

"he's the one who most fails to live up to his name"? is that like a kanji name joke goddammit

i really shouldnt just like. post the entire pages but it's such a pain to keep taking screenshots :sob: you guys have no idea the pain my wrists were in after that drr ten react

haha dramatic irony but i just realized i have no idea what exactly izaya takes responsibility for and what stuff he blames on human nature/self-interest/naïvite and now i have to find out ugh

durarara illustrators draw simon normally challenge :sob: im so sorry they do this to you king if i ever get around to drawing you ill do you justice

also tiny shizuo <3333

obsessed with walker's cat face he and erika are so platonic(?) soulmates besties cringefail weeb team rocket ass duo

i was 100% ready for erika to start grilling mikado on his supposed raging homosexual unrequited love(?) 300k slow burn romance but oh well. it happened in my head so it must be canon

i dont care enough about the raira trio to ship mikakida or whatever their ship name is (isnt the celty head girl named mika too. oops) but i do think it's funny that their ship name could be kidado because that sounds like cuidado. watch out

ok i know they're trying to make him look cool but he does not look cool in the chibi art style lmfAOo

itd be really funny if they switched the styles to the normal manga style during serious moments like i think the bsd wan manga/anime did lmfao

LMFAO??? i like how we only see the top of izaya's head pff-

celty my bbygirl i love your shadow puppets dont listen to them

yk what it's actually a crime this didnt happen in canon

AND HERE HE ISSS!!!!! cringefail pathetic loser my beloved

god i hope he narrates the entire minidura (he probably wont)

ok he's really cute though....catboy irl fr

CAUGHT MID MONOLOGUE

cant believe they're both on a rooftop together whoa prime spot for confessions amirite (<- delusional)

im posting the tiny floored izaya on his own later because that's adorable. he's so cute when he's half dead

itd be really funny if all the events from minidura were all in izaya's concussed ass head from this moment as explanation for being noncanon

the "doctors hate him" meme but it's convenience store workers and shizuo heiwajima

actually construction workers probably hate shizuo too. and urban planners and anything that has to do with city work and also doctors because shizuo evades their healthcare insurance because he doesnt need it (i looked up japan's healthcare costs for this joke and concluded that i dont have enough time to pit the sources that say it's expensive and the sources that say it's reasonable against each other) and also vending machine companies

the "doctors hate him" meme but it's all of ikebukuro and shizuo (and also izaya)

i love how izaya just. stops bleeding. his platelets working mad crazy

(it's pretty easy to find translations online but here's the site im reading on anyway)

35 notes · View notes

lilblog-asatreat · 1 year

Text

I posted 6,782 times in 2022

That's 2,810 more posts than 2021!

72 posts created (1%)

6,710 posts reblogged (99%)

Blogs I reblogged the most:

@/iwilltranscend

@/starry--skies

@/arocinema

@/oh-no-plz-no

@/nightlilly0110

I tagged 1,619 of my posts in 2022

#<3 - 81 posts

#art - 59 posts

#gab gabs - 38 posts

#unreality - 31 posts

#lmao - 30 posts

#space stuff - 29 posts

#<- prev tags - 24 posts

#astuvia tag :3 - 23 posts

#lol - 19 posts

#:D - 18 posts

Longest Tag: 134 characters

#like; if they would've just been like; okay 🤷🏽‍♂️; i don't think i would've tried to lord it over them; and unfortunately other kids

My Top Posts in 2022:

Hey, question to anyone who has read Dracula all the way through, I don't know much about it other than it's horror, and I usually don't do horror, but everyone seems to be having fun with the Dracula Daily thing, and I'm debating whether I want to join in too or not. So I was wondering, does it ever get gory and if it does, how bad is it? And I guess, what type of scary is it? Like, is it more suspense or action heavy? I can't think of what questions to ask or what exactly it is I want to know, because I've basically never read a horror book, so the only things I can think of that I'd want to know on relation to that genre is movies and shows, and obviously a book can't have a jump scare lol

23 notes - Posted May 15, 2022

You know, I thought the fact that Lydia and Edward were twins was a fanon fact and that Griffin never explicitly stated what age order they were, but I just caught that he did actually say they were twins in the New Orleans live show lol

24 notes - Posted October 31, 2022

Forgot to listen to the new mbmbam episode today (yesterday? It's 3:30am on Tuesday for me rn), so I'm listening now instead of going to bed, and the immediate betrayal Justin and Griffin faced with Travis not watch Man vs Bee despite them all hyping it up for the past like, two months or whatever, and the IMMEDIATELY AFTER THAT GRIFFIN'S BETRAYAL BECAUSE JUSTIN ONLY WATCHED ONE EPISODE GHALGHALGHALFHSKFH

28 notes - Posted July 5, 2022

Wow I can't believe Travis is so edgy. He has purple hair and pronouns and everything

28 notes - Posted February 21, 2022

My #1 post of 2022

You're laughing

Griffin just got killed by the Chimney Man on recording before he could finish the Final Yahoo, and you're laughing

273 notes - Posted January 24, 2022

Get your Tumblr 2022 Year in Review →

#tumblr2022 #year in review #my 2022 tumblr year in review #your tumblr year in review

1 note · View note

c-is-for-circinate · 3 years

Text

For a long, large part of my life, being queer in a media landscape--finding queerness in a media landscape--has meant theft.

I'm a Fandom Old, somehow, these days, older than most and younger than some, in that way that's grown associated with grumpy crotchetyness and shotguns on porches and back in my day, we had to wade through our Yahoo Groups mailing lists uphill both ways, boring and irrelevant anecdotes from Back In Those Days when homophobia clearly worked differently than it does now, probably because we weren't trying hard enough. I've seen a lot of stories through the years. I've read a lot of fanfic. (More days than not, for the past twenty years. I've read a lot of fanfic.)

When people my age start groaning and sighing at conversations about representation and queerbaiting, when we roll our eyes and drag all the old war stories out again in the face of AO3 is terrible and Not Good Enough, so often what we say is: you Young Folks Today have no idea how hard, how scary, how limiting it was to be queer anywhere Back In Those Days. Including online, maybe especially online, including in a media landscape that hated us so much more than any one you've ever known. And that is true. Always and everywhere, again and again, it's true, we remember, it's true.

We don't talk so much about the joy of it.

Online fan spaces were my very first queer communities, ever. I was thirteen, I was fourteen, I was fifteen--I was a lonely, over-precocious "gifted kid" two years too young for my grade level in an all-girls' Catholic school in the suburbs--I lived in a world where gay people were a rumor and an insult and a news story about murder. I was straight, of course, obviously, because real people were straight and anyway I was weird enough already--I couldn't be two things strange, couldn't be gay too, but--well, I could read the stories. I could feel things about that. I would have those stories to help me, a few years later, when I knew I couldn't call myself straight any more.

And those stories were theft. There was never any doubt about that. We wrote disclaimers at the top of every fic, with the specter of Anne Rice's lawyers around every corner. We hid in back-corners of the internet, places you could only find through a link from a link from a link on somebody else's recs page, being grateful for the tiny single-fandom archives when you found them, grateful for the webrings where they existed. It was theft, all of it, the stories about characters we did not own, the videotaped episodes on your best friend's VHS player, one single episode pulled off of Limewire over the course of three days.

It was theft, we knew, to even try and find ourselves in these stories to begin with. How many fics did I read in those days about two men who'd always been straight, except for each other, in this one case, when love was stronger than sexual orientation? We stole our characters away from the heterosexual lives they were destined to have. We stole them away from writers and producers and TV networks who work overtime to shower them in Babes of the Week, to pretend that queerness was never even an option. This wasn't given to us. This wasn't meant for us. This wasn't ours to have, ever, ever in the first place. But we took it anyway.

And oh, my friends, it was glorious.

We took it. We stole. And again and again, for years and years and years, we turned that theft into an art. We looked for every opening, every crack in every sidewalk where a little sprout of queerness might grow, and we claimed it for our own and we grew whole gardens. We grew so sly and so skilled with it, learning to spot the hints of oh, this could be slashy in every new show and movie to come our way. Do you see how they left these character dynamics here, unattended on the table? How ripe they are for the pocketing. Here, I'll help you carry them. We'll make off with these so-called straight boys, and we only have to look back if somebody sets out another scene we want for our own.

We were thieves, all of us, and that was fine and that was fair, because to exist as queer in the world was theft to begin with. Stolen time, stolen moments--grand larceny of the institution of marriage, breaking and entering to rob my mother's hopes for grandchildren. Every shoplifted glance at the wrong person in the locker room (and it didn't matter if we never peeked, never dared, they called us out on it anyway). Every character in every fic whose queerness became a crime against this ex-wife, that new love interest. Every time we dared steal ourselves away from the good straight partners we didn't want to date.

And: we built ourselves a den, we thieves, wallpapered in stolen images and filled to the brim with all the words we'd written ourselves. We built ourselves a home, and we filled it with joy. Every vid and art and fic, every ship, every squee. Over and over, every straight boy protagonist who abandoned all womankind for just this one exception with his straight boy protagonist partner found gay orgasms and true love at the end.

Over and over, we said: this isn't ours, this isn't meant to be ours, you did not give this to us--but we are taking it anyway. We will burglarize you for building blocks and build ourselves a palace. These stories and this place in the world is not for us, but we exist, and you can't stop us. It's ours now, full of color and noise, a thousand peoples' ideas mosaic'ed together in celebration. We made this, and it will never be just yours again. You won't ever truly get it back, no matter how many lawyers you send, not completely. We keep what we steal.

Things shifted over time, of course. That's good. That's to be celebrated. Nobody should have to steal to survive. It should not be a crime, should not feel like a crime, to find yourself and your space in the world.

There were always content creators who could slip a little wink in when they laid out their wares, oh what's this over here, silly me leaving this unattended where anybody could grab it, of course there might be more over by the side door if you come around the alleyway (but if anybody asks, you didn't get this from ME). We all watched Xena marry Gabrielle, in body language and between the lines. We sat around and traded theories and rumors about whether the people writing Due South knew what they were doing when they sent their buddy cops off into the frozen north alone together at the end of the show, if they'd done it on purpose, if they knew. But over the years, slowly, thankfully, the winks became less sly.

A teenage boy put his hand on another teenage boy's hand and said, you move me, and they kissed on network TV, in a prime-time show, on FOX, and the world didn't burn down. Here and there, where they wanted to, where they could without getting caught by their bosses and managers, content creators stopped subtly nudging people around the back door and started saying, "Here. This is on offer here too, on purpose. You get to have this, too."

And of course, of course that came with a whole host of problems too. Slide around to the back door but you didn't get this from me turned into it's an item on our special menu, totally legit, you've just got to ask because the boss throws a fit if we put it out front. Shopkeepers and content creators started advertising on the sly, come buy your fix here!, hiding the fine print that says you still have to take what you've purchased home and rebuild it with your semi-legal IKEA hacks. Maybe they'll consider listing that Destiel or Sterek as a full-service menu item next year. Is that Crowley/Aziraphale the real thing or is it lite?

And those problems are real and the conversations are worth having, and it's absolutely fair to be frustrated that you can't find the ship you want on sale in anything like your color and size in a vast media landscape packed full of discount hetships and fast-fashion m/f. It's fair to be angry. It's fair to be frustrated. Queerbait is a word that exists for a reason.

There's a part of me that hurts, though, every time the topic comes up. It's a confusing, bad-mannered part of me, but it's still very real. And it's not because I'm fawning for crumbs, trying to be the Good, Non-Threatening Gay. It's not that I'm scared and traumatized by the thought of what might happen if we dare raise our voices and ask for attention. (Well. Not mostly. I'll always remember being quiet and scared and fifteen, but it's been a long two decades since then. I know how to ask for a hell of a lot more now.)

It's because I remember that cozy, plush-wallpapered den of joyful thieves. I remember you keep what you steal.

Every single time--every time--when a story I love sets a couple of characters out on a low, unguarded table, perfectly placed to be pilfered on the sly and taken home and smushed together like a couple of dolls, my very first thought is always, always joy. Always, that instinct says, yay! Says, this is ours now. As soon as I go home and crawl into that pillow-fort den, my instincts say, I will surely find people already at work combing through spoils and finding new ways to combine them, new ways to make them our own. I know there's fic for that. I've already seen fic for that, and I wasn't really interested last time, but the new store display's got my brain churning, and I can't wait to see what the crew back at the hideout does with this.

Every time, that's where my brain goes. And oh, when I realize the display's put out on purpose, that somebody snuck in a legitimate special menu item, when the proprietor gives me the nod and wink and says, you don't have to come around the side, I know it's not much but here--there is so much joy and relief and hope in me from that! Oh, what we can make with these beautiful building blocks. Oh what a story we can craft from the pieces. Oh, the things we can cobble together. Look at that, this one's a little skimpy on parts but we can supplement it, this one's got a whole outline we can fill in however we want. This one technically comes semi-preassembled, and that's boring as shit and a pain to take back apart, but that's fine, we'll manage. We're artists and thieves. I bet someone's pulling out the AU saw to cut it to pieces already.

And then I get back to our den, which has moved addresses a dozen times over the years and mostly hangs out on Tumblr now (and the roof leaks and the landlord's sketchy as fuck but at least they don't charge rent, and we've made worse places our own). And I show up, ready for joy--ready for a dozen other people who saw that low-hanging fruit on that unguarded table, who got the nod and wink about the special menu item, who're ready to get so excited about this newest haul. Did you see what we picked up? The theft was so easy, practically begging to be stolen. The last owner was an idiot with no idea what to do with it. The last owner knew exactly what it could become, bless their heart, under a craftsman with more time on their hands, so they looked away on purpose at just the right time to let me take it home. I show up every time ready for our space, the place that fed me on joy and self-confidence when I was fifteen and starving. The place that taught me, yes, we are thieves, because it is RIGHT to take what we need, and the beautiful things we create are their own justification. We are thieves, and that's wonderful, because nothing is handed to us and that means we get to build our own palaces. We get to keep everything we steal.

I go home, and even knowing the world is different, my instincts and heart are waiting for that. And I walk in the door, and I look at my dash, and I glance over at twitter, and--

And people are angry, again. Angry at the slim pickings from the hidden special menu. So, so tired and angry, at once again having to steal.

And they're right to be! Sometimes (often, maybe) I think they're angry at the wrong people--more angry with the shopkeeper who offers the bite-sized sampler platter of side characters or sneaks their queer content in on the special menu than the ones who don't include it at all. But it's not wrong to be mad that Disney's once again advertising their First Gay Character only to find out it's a tiny sprinkle of a one-line extra on an otherwise straight sundae. It's not wrong to be furious at the world because you've spent your whole life needing to be a thief to survive. It's far from wrong. I'm angry about it too.

But this was my den of thieves, my chop shop, my makerspace. Growing up in fandom, I learned to pick the locks on stories and crack the safes of subtext at the very same time I learned to create. They were the same thing, the same art. We are thieves, my heart says, we are thieves, and that's what makes us better than the people we steal from. We deconstruct every time we create. We build better things out of the pieces.

And people are angry that the pre-fab materials are too hard to find, the pickings too slim, the items on sale too limited? Yes, of course they are, of course they should be--but my heart. Oh, my heart. Every single time, just a little bit, it breaks.

Of course the stories are terrible (they have always been terrible). Of course they are, but we are thieves. We steal the best parts and cobble them back together and what we make is better than it was before. The craftsman's eye that cases a story for weak points, for blank spaces, for anywhere we can fit a crowbar and pry apart this casing--that's skill and art and joy. Of course we shouldn't have to, of course we shouldn't have to, but I still love it. I still want it, crave it. I still thrill every time I see it, a story with hairline cracks that we can work open with clever hands to let the queer in.

That used to be cause for celebration, around here. I ask him to go back to the ruins of Aeor with me, two men together alone on an expedition in the frozen north, it feels like a gift. And I understand why some people take it as an insult. I understand not good enough. I understand how something can feel like a few drops of water to someone dying of thirst, like a slap in the face. If it was so easy to sneak it hidden onto the special menu, to place it on the unguarded side table for someone else to run off to, why not let it sit out front and center in the first place? I know it's frustrating. It should be. We should fight. We should always fight. I know why.

But my heart, oh, my heart. My heart only knows what it's been taught. My heart sees, this thing right here, the proprietor left it there for you with a nod and a wink because they Get It. It's not put together yet, but it's better that way anyway. It's so full of pieces to pull apart and reassemble. I bet they've got a whole mosaic wall going up at home already. We can bring it home and make it OURS, more than it was ever theirs, forget half of what it came from and grow a new garden in what remains.

And I go home to find anger, and my heart breaks instead.

#I don't actually know how to tag this #representation #maybe?#C needs help feeding the dinosaurs #because this is very much about being a fandom old #probably also #driveby meta attack #because that's where I keep my impromptu rambles #CR spoilers #technically I guess?#there's one line that references the finale #fandom history

6K notes · View notes

thiswasinevitableid · 3 years

Text

Demonic Intervention (Indruck)

Prompt for the 7th: “Hell is empty, and all the devils are here.” - The Tempest (William Shakespeare). This fill is NSFW

It can't get much worse.

Indrid is barely scraping by. He can count his friends in town on one hand. He’s gay in a tiny, rural community and one of the few men like him is a goddamn priest. His house is a mess. And his every waking moment is filled with the demons of his past or the devils lurking in his future. There are so many of them in his present too, roaming the streets of Kepler.

What’s one more in the mix?

He lights the stubby black candle by the bed, scratches the symbols on the floor, and retreats into his cocoon of blankets to wait.

--------------------------------------------

Duck hates when it’s his turn on the summoning shifts. All this ancient knowledge and power and he’s stuck waiting to see if some yahoo in a graveyard or a wannabe cult leader will call him up into the world.

He has brambles that need pruning, damn it.

His name isn’t well known among humans, so he only gets summoned if someone is just rooting around for a demonic entity without caring who they get. He’s only been summoned twice in the last hundred years. The tingle in his horns tells him it’s about to be three.

The room he arrives in is gloomier than any graveyard; the lights are off, the curtains are shut, and the place looks like it got hit by a tornado with a grudge. By the light of the candle, a pale-haired head emerges from the blankets of the small bed. A hand reaches for the floor, comes back with a pair of red glasses.

“Greetings, infernal one. Thank you for answering my summons.” The man’s voice is flat.

“Even demons got manners. So, uh, what’s the job?”

“There are so many dishes in the sink that the thought of doing them is an insurmountable task. Please do them for me.”

“...You realize I’m takin somethin’ from you for this, right? Like a piece of soul or a month of your life?”

“Mmmm” The man rolls over and says nothing else.

“A day of your life for this.” Duck feels like he should haggle more, but then he’d had to pretend he actually thought a higher price was fair.

“I accept your terms.” A crackle of green and black electricity flickers in the air in the form of Duck’s signature and the other man’s name: Indrid Cold.

“Pleasure doin’ business with you.”

Indrid says nothing. Duck is sure to wash and dry before he goes.

The next day he’s summoned to the exact same room, in the exact same state of depressing mess.

“Greetings, infernal one. Please clean this room.”

“Same terms?”

“Mmhmm” Indrid is just staring at the ceiling.

“You gotta say you accept.”

“I accept.”

Duck snaps, turning on the light, and gets to work. Technically he could do all this with a wave of his hand. But then he’d lose his chance to learn a little more about the guy who’s settled on demonic deals instead of a maid service. It’s the opposite of the usual problem he has in these kinds of situations, where the humans reveal their deepest secrets, desires, and fears within five minutes of meeting him.

The records he stacks near their player, the clothes all go in the hamper to be magicked clean, then are hung in the closet; they’re loose and soft, not a scratchy fabric to be found. Tarot cards and candles abound, as do art supplies, and under a pile of drawings he finds magazines featuring muscular, hairy men in various sexual positions. Some of them even look like his preferred human form, the one he’s wearing now.

He glances at the bed; Indrid is on his side, facing him, must have been watching him at some point but has dropped into a restless sleep. The blankets are slipping, showing a The Sonics tank top hanging off skinny shoulders. Right, that was one of the bands in the record stack.

Duck doesn’t tend to pry into souls or auras or shit like that; there are whole heaps of trouble that lay that direction. But as he flicks the dust from the bookshelf covered in paperbacks, he feels the edges of Indrids and nearly falls on his ass from the wave of exhaustion and loneliness.

When it’s time to go, he pauses to pull the blankets back up around him, sets his glasses on the bedside table, and turns the calendar on the wall from “September 1974” to “October 1974.”

When he’s summoned right back to Indrid’s room the next evening, he spots the same tank top on him as he sits up in bed.

“Greetings infernal one.”

“You can just call me ‘Duck’. It’s a nickname.”

“Oh” Indrid blinks, perplexed, “very well. I, ah, there are some bills that need to be paid to keep the lights on.”

“You need the money for them?”

“No, just for someone to fill out the forms and checks and put them in the mail.”

“Okay. But my fee’s a little different this time: you gotta tell me when you last ate.”

“I accept. I ate this morning.”

Duck snaps his fingers

“Two days ago!” Indrid yelps, then slaps his hands over his mouth. He glares, “why does it matter?”

“Because while I’m payin those bills, you’re eatin’ dinner.”

“Everything in the fridge is disgusting and I can’t go to the store.”

Duck takes the short trip out to the kitchen, opens the fridge to the new sound of Indrid’s footfalls behind him.

“You got lots of decent stuff in here; could make you some eggs?”

“No, thank you.” Indrid shakes his head, looking a bit ill.

“Well, what do you want? I can summon it up.”

“I’m out of Lucky Charms.” The humans says sheepishly, staring at his bare feet.

A fresh box of cereal appears on the table, Duck pulling out the half empty bottle of milk. He thinks back to the drawings he saw yesterday and conjures a bowl covered in a pattern of brightly colored moths.

He gathers the stack of bills of while hearts, stars, and horseshoes rattle into the bowl. After a few moments of crunching he hears, “May I ask a question?”

“Shoot.”

“Why is your nickname Duck? Does that word mean something else in demonic speech?”

Duck stuffs paper into envelopes, “Nah. It’s, uh, kinda silly but, uh, most demons learn how to take on an animal form. When it was my turn, they asked me which I wanted and, uh, I said I wanted to try bein’ a duck. Liked it so much I stayed that way for three months.”

There’s an odd, strangled sound that makes him look up; Indrid has one hand over his mouth and is shaking with little squeaks. He’s laughing.

“I’m, I’m s-sorry but, but I, I cannot get over the image of you as a little, feathery waterbird.”

Duck smirks, “Only part that ever gave me trouble was the quackin’; always came out too deep.”

He just manages to pull the envelopes back as milk comes out the human’s nose and he giggles uncontrollably.

“Ow, ow, heeh, oh g-goodness, I’m s-sorry I, I just haven’t laughed in so long, ugh, there’s milk on my shirt-”

“Guess you’re gonna need to shower now too.”

“Nono, I can just change-”

Duck waves the bills back and forth, “Uh uh, if you want me to actually put these in the mailbox, you gotta agree to shower.”

“But that’s changing the terms!”

“Demon.” Duck grins.

“Very well. Let me finish my dinner first.” Indrid scarfs the rest of the cereal, pads back towards the bedroom while Duck cleans the table. He waits to hear water running before going to the mailbox. When he gets back he sticks his head into the steamy bathroom.

“I’m gonna go now.”

“Oh, alright. Thank you again.” Indrid pokes his head out from the shower curtain and Duck resists the temptation to make the whole barrier disappear just for a peak. What can he say? He’s always liked his humans a bit unique looking.

He draws a special sigil in the steamed-up mirror and heads for home.

---------------------------------------------------

Indrid sets the candle on the table, lights it, adds the symbol he found in the mirror, and then starts unpacking his groceries.

“Lookit you doin’ chores.” The whiff of burnt pine needles accompanies Duck’s voice and draws the tension from Indrid’s shoulders.

“I’ll have you know I swept today as well.” Indrid turns and crunches the bag of potato chips in his fists; Duck hasn’t put his horns or claws away, and his shirt is half unbuttoned.

“Caught me while I was gardenin, which is why I ain’t as put together as normal. What can I do for you?”

“This may sound strange but, ah, what is the fee for just talking with you?”

Duck’s eyebrows shoot up and then he chuckles, “You’re full of surprises, little moth.”

Indrid touches the luna moth on his shoulder; how much had Duck studied him when he was here? Did he like what he saw? Does he give everyone he makes deals with nicknames that come out in a drawl like summer honey?

“Hows a little nibble of the old soul sound?”

“I accept. Ah, would you like some cookies? A friend of mine brought them over to me.”

“Sure. The fella on the fridge bring ‘em?” The demon indicates the picture of himself and Barclay, the one he can’t bring himself to throw away.

“No. My friend Dani, she’s in charge of the gardens for the little co-op in town and when the bakery has seconds she often drops them off for me.”

He really needs to stop staring at Duck’s chest, even demons probably find ogling rude. Duck’s eyes--one blue, one brown-- catch his own and suddenly claw tips are undoing the remaining buttons. Indrid goes pink but manages to get the cookies and two glasses of water on the table without incident.

“You know, you never told me why you stayed a duck for so long.”

“It’s the least demonic thing you’ve ever heard but, uh, I just thought it was nice. Bein’ out in the woods, paddlin’ on the lake and watchin the world go by. Sleepin under the stars. Just makes you feel like you’re part of somethin’ bigger than yourself. Now, I got a question for you; why go to all the trouble of summonin’ me just to do your chores?”

Indrid bites his lip, “I knew I was in the kind of mental place where I could not manage it myself. And it felt safer to ask you than to ask my friends. Not that they wouldn’t help me. It’s just, when my mind is like that it turns so inward I can’t conceive of a world that might contain things for me.”

The demon says nothing for a moment, sips his water with a thoughtful look. Then he sets down the empty glass, “Glad you’re feelin a little better.” He tilts his head to indicate the sketch on the counter, “that new?”

“Yes” excitement bubbles up in his chest, “I was reading about--ah, well, it’s, it’s sort of a long story, I don’t want to bore you.”

Duck kicks his feet up on the spare chair and gestures for him to continue. So he does, tells the demon about reading every book he could find on the mythology and folklore of the Mexico and the American southwest, about his new inspiration for a series of drawings, his worries that no one will like them or purchase them and he’ll be stuck running his little psychic side business until he dies

Duck, in turn, tells him about life as a forest demon, about his hellcat, and about the fact he routinely comes up to the human world for french onion soup because the stuff made in his realm never tastes right. When Indrid next looks at the clock, it’s well after midnight.

“I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to keep you so long.”

“No complaints here. But I oughta get home and feed Winnie before she shreds my cabinets again.” The demon stands, rounding the table, “gotta get my fee first.”

“Right. How should I…” Indrid stiffens as Duck bends forward, wondering if the sharp teeth that smiled at him all night are about to pierce his skin.

Warm lips meet his forehead and he sighs at the tenderness in the gesture. Duck, however, moans as he pulls back, then quickly covers his mouth.

“Uh, that, that’s a totally, uh, totally not, uh, un-normal reaction, uh, fuck, see you around.”

He’s gone with a campfire crackle, leaving Indrid to wonder how a demon can be such a terrible liar.

--------------------------------------------------------

“Sweet fuckin hell.” Duck gasps as his living room forms around him. His lips still tingle from kissing the human’s forehead, from the sheer force of the want and yes that came when he took that sip of soul. It’s never like that, never comes so willingly and eagerly, like the soul is searching for someone to look after it.

Technically, there’s nothing stopping him from zipping right back up there and pinning Indrid to his bed while he takes what the human seems so happy to give.

Duck takes five deep breaths, then ten, and then goes to retrieve Winnie from the cabinet she clawed her way into.

------------------------------------------------------------

When Barclay suggested Indrid find someone to confide in, Indrid’s going to guess he didn’t mean, “routinely invite a demon into your house to play cards or listen to music.”

Most times, Indrid isn’t even summoning him; they have two standing dates a week, plus a game night with Dani and her new girlfriend, Aubrey (who Duck seems to know but refuses to say more about how). Duck will sometimes drop by unannounced, and he hardly ever collects a fee these days. When he does, it’s always a taste of Indrid’s soul, taken via a kiss on the cheek.

Indrid would let him take it any way he wanted. He’s well past denying the fact Duck is type in all his forms, that he’s gentler than most humans, and that he’s so charming Indrid would eat out of his hand.

Duck even goes out with him, like the boyfriend he wishes he had. When he puts on his human form to accompany Indrid around town, he radiates enough residual, demonic energy that the people who normally make Indrid’s life a living hell stay far, far away. In fact, tonight is the first night in months he’s had something close to a disaster, and it was mostly an accident. He’s peeling his beer-soaked shirt over his head when he feels mis-matched eyes on his back.

“Have a little too much fun bartendin’ tonight?” Duck holds out his hand, rendering the shirt fresh and clean when it touches his palm.

“Some caveman hit on one of our regulars and would not back off when asked. She threw a full pint of beer on him and I happened to be standing right behind him when she did.” He wiggles out of his jeans, let’s Duck give them the same treatment he gave the shirt, “ugh, I need a bath, I smell like Rheingold.”

“Allow me.” Duck waves his hand and steam wafts from the bedroom, goes into it and grabs the bubble bath from under the sink as Indrid follows him in his underwear. Duck’s constant glancing at his crotch and legs makes him bold.

“What’s the fee for such excellent service?”

“No fee, little moth. I’m just doin’ a favor for my friend.”

“And what if your friend wants to repay you anyway?”

When the demon looks up from the tub, his eyes are glowing, “Only if he’s doin’ it because he wants to and not because he owes me.”

“I want to, so very badly.”

In a flash Duck is in the tub, beckoning Indrid to join him. Indrid tests the water with his finger just to be safe.

“Mmm, nice and warm.”

“Hellfire, sugar. Now get your cute ass into the tub or--oh fuck yeah.” Duck growls as Indrid strips and climbs in with him, drags him into his lap and traces his claws up his sides while Indrid yanks him into a kiss.Curious, Indrid reaches one hand up to rub the base of his horn, the dark brown curls like smooth bark beneath his fingers.

“Fuuuck” Duck groans, “feels like gettin a back-rub.”

“Then I better keep at it. Oh, oh my” Indrid sits back to admire the vines of green appearing in Duck’s skin, “you’re absolutely beautiful.”

“Kinky little thing, you like that I’m a demon.” Duck scrapes his teeth along Indrid’s shoulder, “that really why you summoned me? You were hopin I’d have my, uh, demonic way with you?”

“N-no, I, I, it’s no secret I’m attracted to you but I, you make me feel so happy, I’m so safe when I’m with you, and, and if all your care and affection towards me has been part of some malevolent plan please, please just tell me because I, I think I’m falling in love with you.” He kisses Duck with far more force than before, forestalling the inevitable confession that this was all just a game for his soul and his own, pathetic admission that he’s not sure that changes anything.

“Oh, sugar” Duck keeps brushing their lips together as he speaks, “First time I tasted your soul I knew I was fucked. Knew I wanted to keep seein’ you, even if you never gave me another goddamn thing.”

Indrid buries his face in Duck’s shoulder, letting out shuddery sighs as Duck pets his back. He’s never leaving this spot, Duck is just going to have to carry him about while he does his infernal business and his housekeeping.

“Tell me what you want, little moth.” Duck kisses the shell of his ear. It still tingles, even when his soul stays put.

“Please fuck me? Oh! Oh that’s very efficient and extremely strange.” He squirms in Duck’s lap as his ass turns slick and stretched, like someone has pulled four fingers from it.

“Do it the traditional way some other time” The curved head of a cock bumps his ass, “you wanna feel just to be sure you can take it?”

He flails in the water a moment, finds a warm, responsive shaft with four, bumpy ridges leading to the head. It’s no bigger than the one toy he splurged on during his last trip to the city.

“Yes, certainly, oh, oh, AHHhnnnn yes.” The cock is hotter than his body as it slides in and he wonders if it will just melt him from the inside out, if Duck’s cum will be just as warm, how it will feel on his tongue and down his throat when he drags the demon into his bed.

“That’s it sugar, take it all the way. Fuck, been jerkin off to the thought of you on my dick for months.”

“Nnngh” Is his eloquent reply, the ridges of Duck’s cock making his toes curl and his fingers dig into Duck’s skin.

“You like that idea, little moth? Knowin I could be out temptin anyone I wanted to and instead I was in bed thinkin’ about you?”

“Mhhmmm” He whines, the desire pouring off the demon wrapping around him and soothing his insecurities.

Duck slows the thrusts of his hips and his voice is gentle when he whispers, “Course I did; no one can compare to you, ‘Drid.”

“Ohgod, Duck, please, please, please, want to be yours, always yours-”

“Careful,sugar, that sounds like you’re anglin’ for an infernal marriage.”

“A, a what? OHhhhnnyes” He moans as claws knead his ass.

“It’s a special kind of deal where a human agrees to marry a demon. Soon as they’re dead, they go straight to their spouse, no other options provided.” Duck cups his face, holding it steady so he can look into his eyes, “but there ain’t no need for that right now; way I see it, we can do this like we were just two normal fellas for now.”

“But it sounds fun.” Indrid offers a teasing pout and gets an adoring kiss in return.

“Yeah? What if I tell you a lot of demons mark their spouses by piercing these” He pinches Indrid’s nipples, the pain making him bounce more determinedly on his dick. His demon growls, drops one hand down to thumb at the head of his aching cock, “pierce here too. Won’t even do it in public like you’re supposed to; do it at home so no one else will see just what a sweet, needy thing you are for me--whoah, fuck, did not expect you to cum just from playin with this nice dick a little.”

“V-very sensitive” Indrid gasps against the green swirls in Duck’s shoulder, his orgasm such a surprise he’s still registering it, hips twitching and tongue threatening to loll out of his mouth.

“Keep that in mind for next time. Might even bring a cage so you don’t cum too early and spoil my plans. Now, hold tight, little moth.”

Indrid clings to the warm bulk of Duck’s body as his cock pounds up into him, the demon easily holding his hips up and his ass open so all he can do is whimper and writhe on it. When he cums it’s hot enough that Indrid squirms

“Don’t hurt does it?” Duck pets his sides, concerned.

“Nono, it, it’s nice, just very strange.” Indrid winces as Duck pulls out, watches him wave his fingers to clear away the mess. When the demon makes no move to let go, Indrid looks up, “you really meant what you said? About wanting me as a boyfriend?”

“Damn right I do. Now c’mere, lemme get the beer outta your hair.”

Indrid hums as Duck scrubs his scalp and runs warm water over his skin, talking all the while about how they should go camping as a first date so no one will bother them, says he’ll even turn into a duck to make Indrid smile.

Indrid says he knows just the spot, let’s his boyfriend dry them off and bundle them to bed and then, for the first time, falls asleep with a devil in his arms.

#indruck #promptober #indrid cold/duck newton #Demon AU #monster boyfriend

18 notes · View notes

mearcatsreturns · 3 years

Note

15 for Abby/Luka

For reasons ;)

Under a cut because it's long.

July 2003

To: Luka Kovac <“[email protected]”>

From: Abby Lockhart <“[email protected]”>

Subject: I’m drowning and praying ghosts are real

Dear Luka,

Something about knowing that I’ll never talk to you again is just unbearable. I’ll never laugh at your malapropisms, look into your beautiful eyes, feel your strong hands holding mine, or make love to you again. There won’t be any more jokes about jam and cheese on toast, or you teasing me for my weak but constant supply of coffee. I’ll never hear your amazing, deranged laughter after you prank someone again. No more of your hugs—which are somehow the best hugs in the world. Because you’re gone.

It’s been three days since we got the call telling us you died thousands of miles from home, whether that’s here in Chicago or in Croatia. I didn’t know your dad’s name, Luka. We needed to call him, and I didn’t know. How did I not know? And now I can’t. I mean, L’Alliance told us his name, but the fact that I’ll never learn pieces of your history, of the wonderful man you are, FROM you...how am I supposed to go on and live my life?

For years, I’ve thought medicine was my great thwarted love. I’ve wanted to be a doctor for so long, and I thought I was bitter about having to let go of that dream. Now I wonder. I let obstacles get in the way of pursuing medicine, and it’s made me...well, it’s part of why I was so unhappy. But that makes me think about how I also let obstacles get in the way of us. I was happy with you, you know, until I let fear and my mother and Carter get in the way. God, I wish I could do that over again. We could have had everything, and if I hadn’t gotten in my own way, I’d be happy. I think maybe I could have made you happy, too.

It’s funny. I knew things with Carter weren’t working, and he implied you were part of it. I said it wasn’t, but then five minutes later, I found out you were—are—dead. And I realized you were the reason, or one of the big ones. As soon as Chuny told me, I knew I loved you and had loved you for years. Yeah. Great timing, isn’t it? I keep thinking that maybe I could have kept you from going if I had known or if I had told you. I didn’t want you to go when I thought you were my very attractive friend and ex that I still was fond of. Knowing that I love you—how do I move past that? Knowing that I lost you, first to my stupidity and then to death?

I just...I miss you, and I don’t when I’ll stop, or how to. Susan caught me crying on my last shift, and I didn’t even know what to say. I feel like I’ve been crying or standing still, brittle and stuck in time, since I heard the news. I can’t, Luka. I know I have to keep on moving, and I thought maybe writing you would help. I know you’ll never see this, never have a chance to respond. But the idea that some fragments of your soul linger and can maybe sense...I don’t know. That I’m writing? What I’m feeling? Jesus, this is crazy.

All my love,

Abby

Abby angrily swipes the tears from her eyes. God, what’s the point of writing this? He’ll never see hsi email or her again. Just...without Luka, how can the world be anything but grim and sad and pointless?

She laughs mirthlessly. Maybe it doesn’t matter. No, she knows it doesn’t. Because Abby knows the futility of it, aches with the meaninglessness, she presses send without another thought.

&&&

Three days after that, a miracle occurs. Luka, the Lazarus of this new millennium, comes back from the dead. He’s never been dead, and maybe, Abby thinks, there’s a God above after all. So many people wish for this exact boon, and she—they, the world—gets it. Some higher power believes this planet is a better place with Luka Kovac in it, and Abby is ecstatic.

Until she remembers the email and that they can’t be unsent.

It’s fine. She’ll be fine. Luka is coming back, apparently with a French nurse. Maybe he’ll just delete it without reading it. Maybe it didn’t go through—how does email work for the dead, and how quickly is all that processed?

Abby shakes her head. It doesn’t matter; Luka is alive and returning to them. She can handle a little awkwardness in the face of the sheer joy of knowing the world is a brighter, kinder place. He’s coming back, and that’s what’s important.

&&&

August 2003

It takes Luka almost a week after returning to Chicago to convince Kerry and the other staff to let him go back to his apartment. Even so, they only agree when Gillian assures them she’ll see to his every need.

Abby winces when she hears that, and it makes something flutter in Luka’s chest. Which probably isn’t good for his malaria, but the hope...that is.

It’s another two days of lying in bed before he has the energy to ask Gillian to bring him his laptop. At this point, it’s been months since he’s checked his email, and Luka grimaces at the undoubtedly horrible state of his inbox. He briefly considers never checking again and just getting a new one, but he knows his father struggled to add him to his contacts once already. To expect it of him again would be absurd.

With a sigh, Luka opens his email. It’s just as bad as he feared. He snorts at the myriad messages about Viagra, Nigerian princes, and Russian brides, deleting them without thought. He saves a couple from his dad. He slowly whittles down his inbox, but he freezes when he gets to one email in particular, sent about a month ago.

It’s from Abby, during the time everyone thought he was dead.

Luka considers calling and asking her if someone hacked her email or is sending spam from her account, but the subject line...it looks real. And Abby’s been odd around him lately, seeming both deliriously happy to see him and awkwardly nervous.

His heart pounds, and he clicks to open it. If this is a spammer, they’re probably about to get whatever they want.

&&&

Abby pours herself another coffee, internally swearing as she prepares for the last two hours of her shift. Deciding to go back to school is great; having to coordinate all the details is less thrilling and leaves her tired and cranky.

Frank ducks his head into the lounge, beady eyes narrowing on her. “Hey, Abby. The Croat is on the phone for you. Line 2. Try to get back out there as fast as you can, Weaver’s yelling at the med students about IVs.”

“Okay, Frank,” Abby says, though she flushes and her palms start to sweat. It’s fine. She can always hide the panic and butterflies in her stomach with sarcasm. It has yet to fail her.

Frank gives her one last suspicious look, then nods and heads back to Admit.

Abby takes a deep breath, then picks up the phone. “Hey, Luka?”

“It’s me. Glad I could reach you. How are you?” He sounds...ugh. So good. And eager and happy, and her heart could leap right out of her chest.

“Doing all right. I just have a couple hours left on this shift, and it hasn’t been too awful today. Only one MVA. How about you? You feeling okay?”

“Yeah, I’m fine. Recovering. Listen, did you want to come over for dinner?”

“Please tell me you’re not trying to cook.”

“What? I’m a good cook, even if you don’t appreciate wonderful, traditional Croatian dishes,” he says with a chuckle.

“Luka, you just got out of the hospital five days ago. You still need to be resting.”

“Abby, don’t worry so much. I was just kidding. I have some sandwiches from Manny’s, and Anna sent me home with lots of matzo ball soup too.”

Abby bites her lip. Of course she wants to go. But the prospect of spending the evening with Gillian cooing over Luka, knowing that she shares a bed with him, is decidedly less appealing. And there’s the email she sent, which Luka hasn’t acknowledged. He might well have deleted it, or he’s giving her a gracious out.

Her conscience twinges as soon as she thinks about bailing, though. Didn’t she promise herself she wouldn’t take life for granted anymore? She’ll go back to med school, she’ll have dinner with Luka when he asks.

“Abby?”

She starts, realizing she needs to respond. “Yeah, sorry. Yeah, I can do that. I can be there an hour after my shift, if that’s okay.”

“Sounds great. Looking forward to seeing you.”

“Me too.” He has no idea how much, even if she wishes she knew for sure that he’d deleted the email.

&&&

Abby rings Luka’s doorbell three and a half hours later. She’d meant to come straight from work, but after a patient vomited on her, she decided to head home, shower, and splurge on a taxi to Luka’s. The poor man is recovering from being deathly ill and doesn’t need County’s fumes making things worse.

There’s the sound of the deadbolt sliding, and Luka answers the door, grinning happily at her. “Good, you made it! Come on in!”

“I did. Sorry it took me longer than expected.” Abby steps into his apartment, looking around. It’s been such a long time since she’s been here, and she notes the subtle changes in the art and decor.

“No worries. I know how it goes.” He places a hand at the small of her back, guiding her inside.

Abby stiffens for a second at how his touch burns even through the layers of her shirt and light jacket, but she relaxes, enjoying the feel while she waits for Gillian to appear and end the fleeting joy.

Luka is unfazed. “Now, of course we can just eat the sandwiches, but if you want to heat up the matzo ball soup, you can. Since you don’t want me standing,” he says with a wink.

Abby smiles back, shaking her head. “Oh, I see how it is. Make the woman who worked all day do more household work when she gets ho—wait, where’s Gillian? Isn’t she supposed to be taking care of you?”

“She’s not here,” he says simply.

Going to the fridge and taking out the containers of soup, Abby places them in the microwave. Is Gillian out for the evening, or is she gone gone? “Shouldn’t you be with her? Or her here with you, whatever.”

Luka is quiet for a long minute, and Abby wonders if he intends to answer. Finally, he breaks the silence. “I asked her to leave.”

Abby’s pulse speeds up. “What? Why?”

Luka takes a deep breath, clearly ready to respond, and—

The microwave dings, and they both jump. Exchanging a sheepish look, they laugh.

“Look, let’s get some food, and I’ll tell you all about it.”

Abby dishes up their soup and sandwiches, preparing trays so they can sit on the couch. Luka turns on the television, and Abby’s heart rate comes back under control. They sit together in companionable silence while they eat and watch Thom and Jai and the rest of the Fab 5 whip some hapless lawyer’s life into order. When they finish their meal, Abby cleans up, taking the trays back to the kitchen.

She heads back to the couch at the opposite end from Luka, not daring to get closer when she really has no idea what’s going on.

Luka clears his throat and mutes the TV. “So, yeah. I asked Gillian to leave.”

“Oh. So, um, did you break up?”

“She was never my girlfriend, really. She has a boyfriend back in Montreal, they just…” Luka shrugs and runs a hand through his hair.

Abby is more lost than ever. “Ah.”

Taking a deep breath, Luka continues, finally looking over at her. “Don’t get me wrong, I’m grateful she helped me get here and took care of me, but we were never serious.”

Something starts to tug at Abby’s heart, squeezing and twisting and kicking to get free. Is it...hope? “Well, I’m glad she got you here safe, but you should have someone staying with you while you recover, Luka. Malaria is dangerous.”

He gives her a look. “I know how dangerous malaria is. I’m getting better. And besides, it wouldn’t have been fair for me to ask her to stay when things are over because I’m in love with someone else.”

Her heart leaps into her throat. “Someone else?” she squeaks.

Luka nods, swallowing. “Yeah. And I have a reason to think she might be in love with me too.” He slides over to her side of the couch, reaching for her hand.

Abby meets his eyes—those beautiful green eyes that are the best color in the world—and squeezes his hand, incapable of words. Does he mean…?

With his other hand, Luka reaches up and cups her cheek, running his thumb along the subtle arch of her cheekbone. “Abby, if you’ve changed your mind since you sent that email, please tell me to shut up.”

That stupid, ridiculous email might be the best thing she’s ever done in her life. She leans into his hand, licking her lips as she shakes her head slightly. “I haven’t changed my mind. I didn’t mean for you to see it and hoped I could learn how to hack computers and delete it but—”

Luka cuts her off. “I would never forgive you if you managed to delete it. You wouldn’t believe how much faster I healed after that.”

Abby leans forward, sliding into Luka’s waiting arms. “Then maybe I’ll write you some more emails.”

“Emails aren’t what I want right now,” Luka says.

Funny, Abby doesn’t either. Then his lips brush hers, and all her worries and fears fade away. She knows she has to tell him about med school and he needs to finish recuperating, but when Luka deepens their kiss and pulls her closer, Abby ceases to think at all.

She has Luka back, and now they have each other again.

#er #nbc er #er ff #luby #luby ff #abby lockhart #luka kovac #<3 #my fanfic

28 notes · View notes

hanadolphieron · 4 years

Text

lunar artist!yeojin; chapter one~

warnings; none

genre; sci-fi, strangers to lovers, fluff, slight angst

pairing; im yeojin x gender neutral!reader

word count; 1.4k

summary; your small crater town on the moon was rarely visited. one day, artist!yeojin travels all the way from mars to paint the serene, wistful scenery of your planet.

staring out into the sparkling abyss beneath you is a favorite past-time of yours. something about floating a few inches above the dusty, grey surface of the moon and looking out at the endless glittering fireballs surrounding all that you can see appeals to the deep lunar being inside you.

sometimes it even feels as if you were born here.

your family was from neptune, a planet known for its imaginative artists with striking, green eyes that see more colors than any other species.

after you finished your first section of schooling, you moved to your current planet, the moon, as fast as possible. the dreary serenity of the planet had always piqued your interest. it was perfect for a budding writer like you.

and normally, you don’t find yourself regretting the decision to move.

but today is different. the small crater you call home is far-off from the large civilizations. upon your first meeting with the small floating cottage, you felt more inspired than you ever had before! the place seemed full of life, even in the gloomy atmosphere of the moon.

now, instead of new ideas and an enhanced imagination, you are left with exasperation at the bleak nothingness surrounding you.

however, apparently it was time for a change.

you felt the air and gravity messing around behind you. after four years on the moon, you knew what this meant- someone was coming.

glancing behind you, you saw arguably the most beautiful being you had ever laid your eyes upon.

her auburn hair was choppy, and bangs laid haphazardly across her face, like she’d just been caught up in a gust of wind. with a shake of her head to maneuver her hair back into place, you caught sight of a sigil painted across her forehead. the red symbol was a circle, with an arrow coming out of it, pointing north-east.

you recognized this emblem as a representation of mars. surprising, considering the tension between the moon and mars. history hadn’t been the nicest to the two of your planets, and there was always a struggle for food and wealth, which had caused your civilizations to prey on each other for as many resources as possible, in order to prosper off each other’s loss.

the girl continued towards you. her dark eyes surrounded by shimmering, golden glitter that was now visible enchanted you as she gradually got closer.

you stared back.

she wasn’t the tallest, most marsians weren’t, but her presence was overwhelming. it felt like a red storm was flying towards you, leaving stormy chaos in its wake.

once the girl was a few feet away form you, slightly hovering above ground, she asked, “can i paint you?”

finally noticing the art set filled with a fluorescent silver palette, you realized who she was- a marsian artist.

artists were scarce in the marsian society, most citizens pursued a career in mining or as warriors, but a few yahoos broke away and followed other paths.

“why?” you ask.

“i came here to illustrate the people of this planet, but it seems its almost completely barren. you’re the first being i’ve seen.”

she sits down, not waiting for an answer from you.

you’re a little awkward at this point. aggressive behavior isn’t a something you’re used to, and it throws you off guard. rolling your shoulders back a bit, you shift around, wondering how she’s going to paint you.

“what’s your name?” the girl says, almost accusingly. man, these marsians have a jarring way of speaking.

“y/n. you?” your softer, serene voice floats toward her.

“yeojin,” she says, slamming her painting utensils onto the ground. they hover a few inches above the surface, like all other things.

her upper lip pulls up and she growls at it.

weird, you think, and giggle.

“what do you do here? as a job.”

“i’m a journalist.”

“as you can see, i’m unemployed,” comes her response, and she grins at you.

your lips set into an easy half-smile, “wish this planet had more people, seems as if the war never ended. it’s been a century and we’re still suffering from a lack of people. this town used to be the hype-house of the lunar system, everyone wanted to live here, sphere-home prices were sky-rocketing, trade with the other galaxies was better than it ever was before, and now,” you gesture around to the nothingness, “it’s all gone.”

she stares. what is up with these marsians? no sense of social cues.

“hmm. this whole galaxy is in ruins. back home, we must be behind a decade in technology. power goes out frequently. food stores are running out. the government is eating up our money. we don’t know where it goes.”

you sigh, looking out at the stars.

“sounds like we’re both the only sane ones in this insane world”

“yeah,” yeojin nods, dipping her brush into a can of snowflakey gray paint.

you don’t notice her starting to paint. as you wrap your arms around your legs and tuck your knees into your chest, a lunar frog hops by. you call it over. it flops over to you, its speckled coat shining and reflecting the light given off by the distant sun, and sniffs at your outstretched finger.

“hi jerry,” you say, giving the amphibian a lazy smile.

“is that its name?” yeojin says, sounding surprised.

“no, i just like to name animals, you know? gives them more meaning- i feel like we don’t appreciate the little things in life enough, always rushing about, never stopping and smelling the flowers.”

“you live in a planet without oxygen. flowers don’t exist here” comes yeojin’s deadpan response.

“good point,” you say, giggling a bit. normally you’re not as smiley as this; your face is always stagnant, deep-set eyes staring blankly at the world. must be the social interaction that you’ve been craving for so long.

the frog licks your pinkie, making you shriek in happiness and fright at the same time. the frog is terrified by your loud exclamation, and bounds away as fast as possible.

“dang,” you say.

you look over at yeojin. she’s studying you intently. “i didn’t know lunar beings like you cursed.”

“dang is not a curse you eggshell,” you say lightheartedly, reaching out to smack her on the shoulder.

her tough skin doesn’t even move, and yeojin laughs at you. she puts her paintbrush down and tackles you. not used to physical contact this early, (you haven’t even learned 80% of her weaknesses yet! that’s a crime lunar society!) you try to flail around, but she has you pinned to the ground.

you have no idea how she defeated gravity like that, by pure force you guess, i mean the ground probably didn’t even bat an eye with how confidently she hovered over you.

you gain control of your limbs again after freezing for a hot second, and shove at her shoulders.

she doesn’t budge. these marsians live up to their prstince, atheltic reputation.

laughing, yeojin lets you up, grabbing your wrist and pulling you forward. you’re surprised again, and stumble forward into her chest.

gasping at the utter clicheness of this whole moment, you pull away and unfold into a standing position (which is like seven feet tall, neptunians are known to be massive.)

you realize that when upright, you stand a good two feet taller than yeojin, and now feel incredibly gangly. she glares up at you.

“sit down and stop being so tall,” she says grumpily, reaching down to pack up her stuff.

you do as she says and plop onto the surface-air.

seeing her putting all her supplies up, now seemingly in a hurry, you inquire, “where are you going?”

“i’m set to be back home around 17:33. right now it’s 17:30,” yeojin says, deflty throwing all her paints into a case. (you wonder how she’s not breaking them with how aggressive she is.)

“how are you going to get back so fast?” you ask her, curious and surprised beyond belief.

“you’ll see,” yeojin says, walking away at a fast pace.

“wait!” you yell after her, not wanting to lose her after such a short time together.

she keeps walking.

you get up, rushing after her. somehow, her stubby legs move faster than your massive ones, and she stays in front of you.

she turns around, staring at you, stormy eyed. fear graces her pupils,

“catch you later. i’ll be back soon,” yeojin says through gritted teeth. she doesn’t seem offended by anything you said or did, and disappointment in, herself? is written all over her face. you have no clue why she’s leaving, and neptunians are supposed to be good at this intuition stuff!

“wa- don’t go yet!” you exclaim, panicking at this point.

a cloud of dust envelops her, and she disappears.

masterlist - next

#femifics #loona astrology #loona imagines #loona fluff #loona angst #loona x reader #loona reactions #loona scenarios #loona #im yeojin

23 notes · View notes

kustas · 3 years

Note

i would love to hear about letter bee. worldbuilding is very near and dear to my heart and SO is hearing people talk shit about bad media. CHINHANDS.

Blows you a kiss... We share common interests! Without further ado, the in-depth LB rant. Under a cut, this is going to get long.

For the sake of potential future readers on my blog, I will keep this relatively spoiler-free. Let's start with...

The good:

the art. despite being way uh, "prettier" than what I usually prefer, it's really, REALLY well drawn, technically good and with a lot of style. The backgrounds in particular are gorgeous, drawn with thick black shadows and chunky lines, almost like Mignola's art at times but more delicate

the setting. i am a huge sucker for when fantasy goes full in to make you experience an alien world and here it does.

the plot - while the writing isn't the peak of the series, the way the plot is structured progressively revealing more secrets about how the world works is really fun

The bad:

the writing. while the worldbuilding and some characters are real good, others suffer from being two dimensional and there's parts of the story that are shallow, repetitive or way too boring

treatment of female characters. you don't escape the sexified designs, less presence than the male characters, and while it's not as blatant as in other series they're too objectified for my taste. in classic bad manga fashion some of them being underage makes this worst

while that's a me complaint, there is a contrast in the designs of the side and main characters I find a bit disturbing, the MCs having more classic "anime" faces while the side characters being stylized, have more charm.

The setting:

TLDR: mineral post apoc industrial fantasy in a bug based alien world

A post-industrial revolution society mostly based on European Victorian times on an isolated continent. On this planet, the sun died out, leaving humanity to live in constant darkness, but men built an artificial sun, providing the light and warmth needed to survive. The sun is unfortunately too small to shine it's light on the whole continent, and the outermost regions remained a cold, barren wasteland. Those who can't rely on the sun, humans and nature alike, subsist on geothermy, an important source of which being amber in which are preserved ancient insects with physical properties that make the mineral channel energy. Being a primary ingredient in most high technology, it was mined out in places, leaving them barren. This leaves a world that's a lot of stretches of empty desert peppered with stone towns, where having flowers in your back yard is a luxury.

Under the sun, a rigid class system developed, pushing out the people who couldn't resist to said outer regions, while the richer get to live the closer to the light. The capital of the country, right under it, is inaccessible, and the government tightly controls checkpoints between the three regions of the country, but the pass to cross them is only awarded to government workers. It's a thinly veiled theocracy, and even if many in the outermost regions openly hate the government, there's not been successful uprisings, and they control both the largest food supply on the planet and the supply of the type of firearms you need to fight back hostile insects found in the unpopulated regions, who "feed" on humans in a way that doesn't immediately kill you but leave you in a state where you cannot move or eat so you slowly die out anyway. That and other misc environmental threats like the terrain make travel close to impossible for the common people.

Some of the only ones to travel the country are the postal service, the protagonists of the story - they're assigned a gun and a pass and travel alongside a "backup" companion. They toe a fine line in the public opinion between carrying the communication of the country on their shoulders (this is not a society who's discovered long distance communication yet) and openly working for the government, earning the distrust of many people. The main character befriends one at a young age during a formative moment of his life, turns to completely idolizing him, and signs up to join their ranks the day he can. As a starry eyed kid entering the workforce he's hit by a series of dissapointements about how the world works.

...Also, all energy in this world isn't electricity, it's a world-specific energy that drives both people and machines, mostly based on your memories. It's what'll power your gun and what the insects will eat. If you get caught, you'll forget how to life, if you shoot too much, you'll forget how to live, but by writing down your life, you create and put a bit of it in every page.

The plot is centered around the sun. It hasn't functioned well, always. One day it turned off, but most of the people who saw it with their own eyes forgot everything. The government's been trying to use the scientific knowledge they have to find better energy sources to power it, while a rebel faction tries to take them down.

The dissapointement

I have to preface this saying that this is my opinion and I have NO way of knowing if it's true or not. But I think what killed this series is the shonen format. The worst moments of the series come from fighting scenes - this is simply not a series suited to that, they all have guns so it's boring as hell, and while attempted there's no real progression to the main character's abilities. At it's best is when you find out stuff about the world, either through plotless deliveries in regions you don't know, or through moments of the story that reveal new things about the setting. At it's very, very best, it gets slightly horrific and makes me dearly regret that this is not a full blown collection of fantasy horror stories. But all of this gets pushed asides when it's time to go back to the plot which involves the action. Yahoo -_-

I've read another work by the same author, an abandoned samurai series called Renka, and I love it. The way it's drawn and paced make it without exaggeration one of my most inspiring manga. The fight scenes are short, gnarly, and really, really well drawn. So that's not the issue... The issue is especially trying to force the story into an upbeat, kid friendly epic with large scale combat. When it's about postmen in a desert... I can't help but think than in a better world without the joug of shonen manga publications the author would have written this as exploration fantasy about alien mad science.

If you are curious about it all

Read it. Don't watch the anime. The anime took out everything I found good about the series and did not keep it. The manga's art is worth it.

Chapter 52 is the last one where I remember something interesting happening, you can stop after that. If you get bored because there's fighting, flip until the fight's over, they don't usually have big plot significance, they just feel like filler.

That's about all I that comes to mind right now. Feel free to HMU about specific parts of what I've said or if you have any questions!

#answered

2 notes · View notes

surveysonfleek · 3 years

Text

1572.

Does it annoy you when people make their default of them kissing someone? haha i honestly don’t see anything like this ever anymore.

Are there any names you can think of that just go well together? probably, none are coming to me rn though.

Do you enjoy museums? yes, i love them!

Have you ever met anyone famous? not including concerts, i’ve caught a ‘glimpse’ of many celebrities such as kobe, brad garett, vanessa hudgens, hailey baldwin etc. and i’ve properly met mel gibson and niall horan because of my old job.

Describe the scariest dream you can remember? just dreaming that i’m having sleep paralysis even though i’m not.

Have you ever been to a mint where they make money? nope. would be cool i guess.

Do you ever get really, really hyper? no.

Are you left or right handed, or ambidextrous? right.

If ambidextrous, do you prefer writing with your right or left hand? -

What is your favourite subject at school? visual arts.

Do you ever use Yahoo! Answers? For seriousness or for trolling? nope.

Have you ever stepped on a thumb tack? no, i’d definitely remember if i did!

Do you have a username you use for everything? Or does it change each site? i basically have the same for all.

Are you in Miami bitch? :D no.

How did you break the last bone you broke? never broken one *touchwood*

Have you ever used Nexopia? no.

What has been the best year of school for you so far? school was literally a decade ago lol.

Do you have any disorders or disabilities? no.

Do you ever watch How To videos? yes.

Do you enjoy trolling? no.

Have you ever been to an emergency room? If so, what for? not often but i did once because my sister broke her arm.

Which emoticon face do you use most often? Things like: :) :( :D :P :L D: i don’t really use them anymore. it’s all about emojis now haha.

Are you a musical sort of person? I mean, are you musically talented? nope. i was interested as a kid and learned piano and guitar but i got over it.

How did you break the first phone you broke? just wear and tear.

Did you have a tree house when you were a kid? If so, did you ever fall from it? no.

Have you ever been on vacation to a snow field? nope.

When you go on vacation, what mode of transport do you usually use? if money wasn’t an issue, i’d fly everywhere then travel everywhere within the city/destination via a private driver.

What is the worst show, in your opinion on MTV? The best? i don’t watch mtv.

Do you like Jason Derϋlo? not really. he strikes me as suuuper cheesy.

Are there any movies that just creep you out so much? nah.

Have you ever had a close encounter with a shark? only at the aquarium.

Do you have any hotties on your walls? no.

Do you ever wish dinosaurs came back to life and there were cute and snuggly? no.

How many countries have you been to? quite a few. maybe 20?

How many states have you been to? In all the countries you’ve been to? haha i would not have the patience to list it.

What is a song you heard long before it became popular and everyone liked it? idk.

Do you enjoy designing things? Anything? nah.

Do you know anyone who has gotten themselves into a serious accident? no.

Can you play anything on the violin? nope.

Do you know what a raincheck at stores is? yes.

Whose funeral was the last you went to? my bf’s grandmother.

Who got married at the last funeral you went to? no one.

What do you think of excessively long names? What about their shortenings? i think... nothing.

Do you ever get hay fever? yes. not all the time but i swear there’s a particular flower/pollen that sets me off.

Do you know anyone with the last name Pilbeam? no.

When you were little, did you have those magnet letters on your fridge? yes hahaha, it came free with a kids magazine.

Have you seen the Techno Jeep video on YouTube? no.

Does your house have a wood fire? no.

Do you know what a Pibgorn is? no.

Can you learn the lyrics of a song by ear, or do you have to search them up? mostly by ear assuming that the lyrics are being enunciated properly.

Do you like the name Amy? i’m indifferent. i work with an amy.

Have you ever got an x-ray? How about a brain scan? xray, yes.

#survey #surveys #quiz #bored #questions

7 notes · View notes

sultrysirens · 4 years

Text

Story Time

Out of nowhere I decided to share a bit of my story as a fanfiction writer, starting with my original introduction into the profession. It’s going to be a long one, but hopefully, and inspiring one. Skip if you’re not interested.

NOTE: This includes spoilers for certain anime and fandoms. If you don’t know Dragonball Z or Inuyasha, specifically, you’ll be quite lost.

The Beginning

How everything started was just through surfing the net. Back then my interest was Dragonball Z. I was 14. I had only had the internet for a few months, so everything about it was new. This was 20 years ago, now, back in 2000. I used Yahoo! for all my searches. Google had not yet been born. Fanfiction.net was the main hub where all these amazing stories were birthed, and yet at this point I had not yet found it.

What I found, first, was a fanfiction writer who had a website. Geocities, I believe. I can’t recall how I found it, exactly, except that I had only just learned about Bulma and Vegeta getting together and thought they were an amazing couple. I looked up art, and it led me to this site. I can’t recall the site’s name anymore, but I remember the tagline for it was something like, “Bulma and Vegeta’s Cove.”

One thing I can distinctly recall is a small gif in one corner of the main page, displaying a chibi Vegeta with a microphone in one hand, going between 2 or 3 singing poses. It was cute.

This site was coded in such a way that it linked directly to fanfiction.net, displaying the owner’s many, many, many fanfictions in an embedded window. The stories were largely explicit, included sex and, in a few stories, rape, all of them AUs from all the rest. But each had a singular goal: Bulma and Vegeta’s romance, how they ended up getting together.

Some of the stories I remember very clearly. Others have faded. Some were modern AUs, one included dimension-hopping via a magical device Bulma created and recharged every 24 hours (sound familiar, anyone?), and some were painfully OOC but in very sweet ways.

I devoured these stories. There must have been two dozen, with most of them multi-chapter works. And, eventually, I started to notice the format with these stories, how it seemed to be a miniature explorer window within the website. Eventually, I clicked on the mini website and was given a full introduction to fanfiction.net and its massive breadth.

Back in those days, fanfiction.net (or FF.net, as it was usually called) allowed explicit content. And this I looked for very directly. I enjoyed the “lemons” more than anything, easily reading the most ridiculous stories just for the porn therein.

Eventually, I figured it out. I understood fanfiction and what it meant. And though I’d only been using a computer for a few months, I started writing.

It was a painful process at first. Think back to your first months with a keyboard and how difficult it was to get used to the format, how to move your fingers. I had to stare directly at the keyboard to write anything and it was a pain, a slow-going endeavor of passion.

My first fanfictions were Dragonball Z, unsurprisingly. I made a few silly ones, a few serious ones, a few sexual ones. At 14, with no grasp of the anatomy of sex, I was writing porn, using the porn I’d already read as resources. I didn’t know what a clitoris was, but I knew ladies apparently went nuts when men tongued them, so that’s what I wrote.

Eventually I got my first hit: Temptation. It was a Bulma/Vegeta story. I don’t remember it very clearly, and this is probably for the best. The plot, as I recall, was Bulma getting sick and Vegeta having to be her nurse for a time. Eventually she got worse and worse, until she recognized why she was sick: she’d cut herself one night with a device that’d had a compound on it. I can’t recall what the compound was designed to do, but the short version is it made you feel weaker and sicker until you increased your physical activity to burn it out.

This led to wild sex. Like, very wild sex. For hours. My lack of experience evidently was not a consideration; I was given compliments by the dozens. I’d done good.

And now I was addicted.

The Second Hit

I was 16 now. We’d be moving out of my childhood home soon, but I didn’t know this yet. I’d been spending a lot of time with my sister, who was 26, and soaking up Adult Swim shows on her cable. Inuyasha was my new obsession, as well as a liberal amount of Trigun. I lived, slept, ate, and breathed these shows. My head was constantly alight with ideas, concepts, and desires. I wrote near-constantly.

Through this, I managed my second big hit: Transformations.

It’s been a long time, now, and I can’t recall the beginning as much as the ending. I think perhaps I called it something else at the start.

The premise was simple: Kagome, the main character, suddenly transforms into a half-demon, a hanyou, after a demon bites her in battle. I remember that initially I was just writing bullshit; I had no filter and didn’t edit or delete anything. What I wrote got posted verbatim. And, at first, it was cringe-worthy.

I can distinctly recall two things: first, Sesshomaru -- Inuyasha’s full-demon elder brother -- caught Kagome’s scent and investigated and had difficulty resisting her. She was a half-wolf demon, and he was attracted to that. Earlier she and Inuyasha were together in a cave, and her transformation had given her a tail -- which she didn’t like. She chased it, trying to catch it and rip it off.

That’s when the accusations started coming in.

Out of nowhere, and totally unexpectedly, I was getting a slew of comments accusing me of copying another popular fanfiction. I’d legitimately never heard of it, and I had to search it out. I remember reading the first chapter or two and feeling surprised; they were very similar, to the point where I couldn’t blame anyone for thinking I’d copied it.

This was a case of great minds thinking alike, or so I said at the time. I was amused more than anything, but it was clear the accusations weren’t going to stop. Eventually I deleted the story and started over. I’d learned a bit in those few chapters I’d posted and decided that I didn’t really want the events to unfold the way they had, so starting over sounded like a great idea.

And it was.

Now came Transformations as it remains today. The beginning is the same -- Kagome is bitten by a demon and transforms into a half-wolf demon -- but the events following take a different turn from the original.

It was a monster of a hit. I got multiple comments and reviews on every chapter, and I can remember doing this thing for a long time in which I threaten the readers at the end of each chapter with various weapons, only to have the weapon backfire somehow and hurt and/or kill me. The readers seemed to enjoy it, and soon they were suggesting new weapons for me to use.

I loved it.

Eventually the story ended at 64 chapter, but back then my chapters weren’t nearly as long as I write them now, and the final chapter was just a family tree of sorts leading the characters from Feudal Japan to modern day. It was a great, beautiful monster and I had drawn dozens of pictures to go along with it.

It was actually through this that I decided I needed a better place to post my art and thus discovered DeviantART.com. That’s been my main art gallery ever since, around 16 years now (I believe I created it in 2004, a year after I started the fic). If you go there and head all the way back to the first images I posted, you’ll find all of that art remaining even today.

It’s...pretty bad. X’D

But the story doesn’t end there. I wanted my fic to have a greater reach, so I started looking for more websites. I found MediaMiner.org, which was appealing because it hosted both written works and art. And once Transformation was finished, the story concluded, I found I couldn’t quite let it go.

So I did something I’ve not done since: I created an alternate ending.

Titled Changing Lives, this story picked up after chapter 28 of Transformations and went a different way. It treated the story of Transformations as just that: a story, written by Kagome, which Inuyasha read while she was gone one day. He was thunderstruck by it, given it so clearly screamed “I love you” and was full of romance -- and sex.

This led to them getting together, but soon thereafter, tragedy struck.

Kagome was kidnapped on her way home from school. By the time Inuyasha found her, she’d been gang-raped and discarded.

The story very deeply included time travel and revenge aspects from that point on, and I can also recall giving the character Miroku a reincarnation as a detective. He was put on the case, and with Inuyasha’s help, had all the men arrested -- there were seven of them.

Then they started dying.

Inuyasha wasn’t doing this, but he was happy to allow it to happen. The detective did his job per the law, trying to keep the criminals safe as they started dropping like flies. The killer left notes written on the cell walls in the criminal’s own blood, though I can’t quite recall the sequence anymore.

What I do remember is this: the first one read, “He touched her first.” The rest followed that sequence, killing the men in order -- second, third, fourth, etc. I remember one said “hurt her”, one said “made her cry”, and so on.

Eventually, the truth was discovered: Inuyasha was killing them, but not “young” Inuyasha. “Old” Inuyasha. The one who’d lived through the centuries. And his story was the most tragic of all.

In his time, Kagome had been raped and her rapists arrested, as normal. Then, years later, they were freed, having served their time, and immediately they tried to track her down. She was pregnant at the time with Inuyasha’s child. When she saw she was being chased, she jumped down the well back to his time, and the men followed her.

They traveled through time with her but had no idea. They killed her there, then climbed out, and Inuyasha arrived too late to help. But the men were there, confused and lost, and the blood of his wife and child were on them. He slaughtered them all.

But now the well had ceased functioning. He couldn’t return to her time. And, at first, he was just...sad. He mourned. Then, with time, he began to plan. For five centuries, he planned.

His plan was to keep Kagome from ever getting raped. Alas, he failed in this, so instead he decided to get pre-revenge and kill the men while they were imprisoned. He succeeded, but along the way grew...exhausted. By the time he murdered the last man, he had little will left to do so.

But he finished it. For her.

Then he showed himself to Kagome and Inuyasha, explaining what had happened. And he wished them well.

Changing Lives was significantly shorter than its predecessor, only 35 chapters, but I felt it was the better story, overall. I never made art for it, I don’t think, but it was more emotional.

To Present Day

I kept writing, on and off, ever since. Any time I got sufficiently involved in a story, my mind immediately began making my own stories for it. Movies, shows, video games; nothing remained untouched by my mind. I made stories for Labyrinth, Dragon Age, Trigun, Spyro, Jak & Daxter, Naruto...the list went on. I started posted on a third site, adultfanfiction.net (comprised specifically of explicit stories), and I started existing solely on my stories and the feedback I received from them.

I got better. And better. And better. I started looking back on my first stories, my first “hits”, and cringed at the horrendous grammar and articulation of my youth. But it was nostalgic as well, bringing back fond memories of writing on my home computer before we had internet and then rushing to my sister’s with a 3.5″ disc to post them via her internet.

I had a friend around this time, named Leila (Lee-lah), and drew and wrote together. We came up with original stories and though we never really posted them, we had so much fun it didn’t matter. Mostly we talked and drew together, and while I considered myself the better artist, I considered her far better at clothes designs.

Then...a dry spell. I went into college at age 20 and there I met my husband, Eric. He was 17 at the time. And he introduced me to so many more worlds than I’d known before, including the aforementioned Jak & Daxter series and the Sims 2.

Years passed. I still wrote from time to time, but it wasn’t such an obsession as it’d been before. If I had a good enough idea, I’d write it, but I tried to keep my things to oneshots. I posted many such stories on adultfanfiction.net, and I generally got positive reviews and ratings. In the meantime we were more addicted to World of Warcraft, us two and a few friends, and we played that often.

Eventually I slowed down. Time blurred together. I had a lot of good stories, but no major hits. Then came Megamind, and with it, an interesting idea that a lot of people took a liking to: Megamind as the indirect hero, and Metro Man as an abusive spouse of Roxanne. I titled it Bad to be Good, and it was an incredible story.

I started counting words with this one, only posting chapters when they reached around 6,000 words.

The story was a very serious one. It struck cords with a lot of readers, one in particular saying it helped her through some similar times with her abusive husband. We eventually became friends and remain to this day. (She since divorced him, so don’t worry about her. ♥)

Ultimately I never truly completed that story. I remember getting up to 12 chapters and then having difficulty figuring out how to proceed. I used to open the Word document from time to time, check what I’d written, and try to edit things or continue it, but it never really took. Eventually I abandoned it, but luckily the 12th chapter was a softer ending of sorts, so my readers were satisfied.

Then came the Marvel films and, with it, a resurgence in an activity I’d long since stopped participating: roleplaying.

The Crazy Train

It started simple enough. The Avengers just came out, and I was starting to see Facebook RPs popping up between the characters. Curious, I tried to find the pages in question but couldn’t locate them. I did, however, come to find out that there were dozens of pages dedicated to the main characters, alone, with dozens more popping up by the month.

Eventually I stepped in. I’d grown to love Loki’s character and subsequently found he had a canonical wife, Sigyn, but hadn’t found any pages for her. So I made one. Without checking with the other RPer, I just threw myself into a Loki page and, thankfully, that Loki accepted his “wife’s” presence.

We had fun. And our group steadily grew. A Thor, another Loki, and Odin, a Sleipnir, and a whole slew of original characters joined the ranks. I, too, began adding more pages to my roleplays, starting with Narfi and Vali -- Loki and Sigyn’s twin sons.

At the start, these two shared a page. Then, when it became increasingly obvious that people had their favorite of the two boys, I separated them. Funny enough, Vali started off as the clear favorite (he was flirty AF), but Narfi steadily became more so.

Their relationships grew. They both fell in love. They were both tricked by a succubus, giving each an unwanted child at different intervals. Narfi soon had a family of his own, as his lover had an adopted daughter and he was given a daughter of his own.

We spent years here, six or seven I think, just roleplaying with one another. Our group grew and shrank as people joined our circles or left it. There was drama in and out of the roleplay setting. Friendships were forged and abandoned. At one point a Thor page (titled Fatty Thor) targeted me for my roleplay choices and tried to get his followers to harass me. Eventually he left, deleting his page, and our RPs continued without him, never addressing his disappearance.

Then Ragnarok struck -- but not the film’s Rangarok. No, this was worse. We were impatient to have the event occur, me in large part because the mythology says that Vali slays Narfi during the sequence and I couldn’t wait to put all that pain into writing. But what really kicked this off was a friend’s page getting repeatedly deleted.

Sleipnir.

In this RP setting, Sleipnir was a fully intelligent horse capable of speech and even transforming for short periods of time into a humanoid form. He fell in love with a half-demon woman and they had a son together, a centaur named Grani. And then his page kept vanishing.

Initially, we believed the page was reported because there was a rape sequence between his character and the half-demon, though -- and this is imperative -- the two RPers had discussed this in detail before agreeing to the RP. A great deal of thought went into it before they started the roleplay.

And yet, Sleipnir’s page went down.

The RPer made a new one, and that too, went down a short time later. This was disheartening for her, and though we all did our best to help, even creating the page for her in case it was her account getting it flagged, the pages kept getting deleted. The only cause we could work out was that Microsoft just came out with a Sleipnir program of some form and were removing all other pages with that name regardless of content.

So we kicked off Ragnarok and wrecked our Facebook RP world, killing off some of the characters and leaving others behind. We moved platforms, taking our remaining world to Gaia Online, but it wasn’t to be.

Though the RPs increased in quality while there and we created avatars for each of our characters and it definitely helped the process, we just couldn’t keep it up. We were too disheartened for our friend and how things had ended on Facebook.

Slowly but surely, our RPs died. We tried just once more by moving to a new forum called Valucre, but we couldn’t quite get steam going there, either. Eventually all of the RPs died, most of them without conclusions. In some ways, we mourned the loss.

But our remaining group, a total of four of us, remained friends for a great while longer. Three of us, in particular created this very blog some years later with the purpose of posting all of our NSFW works here.

Art, writing, roleplays, etc; this blog was meant to be a joint page to display all of our wicked wiles.

For several months we didn’t post much. Kyone did the most posting during this time, art for her favorite yaoi couple of the time, both NSFW and SFW, and it was moderately popular. Then came my contribution: The Dancer.

The Resurgence

To this day, I’m not sure what really got me back into TMNT. I know I was tired of RPs but wanted the stories to continue, and thus did I begin writing fanfictions again after years of never touching them -- or, at least, never posting them.

The Bayverse movies kicked this off. I’d always loved TMNT, since I was a kid, but the Bayverse films put them in a new light. They weren’t anthropomorphic turtles under 5′ tall anymore, naked 100% of the time. They were tall, big bois, more humanoid, and more like hybrids. I loved them. I wanted them.

I wanted them to be loved.

At the start, I was under the false belief that they didn’t get much love -- i.e., no romance. I especially believed Raphael didn’t get much affection, being such an angry and brash character. Oh, how wrong I was, lol.

Thus did I start with Raphael.

At the beginning I was inspired by a story written by another page, @teradoration, featuring a merman. I wasn’t too interested in the story, personally, as it’s m|m and I’ve never enjoyed those types of stories, but the inspiration came from the fact that it was a multi-chapter work -- on Tumblr.

So I decided to write some porn.

Initially, the idea was to make a short story, something like 10 chapters. I put thought into it, into the character I wanted to create and introduce, into her appearance and history and passions. I considered Raphael, his personality, and crafted a character designed to intrigue and challenge him. Then I looked at both popular and unique character tropes and the kinds of characters I’d made and turned in another direction.

Thus was Jocelyn born, a half-black, half-Polynesian ballet dancer with blonde hair and freckles. And, at first...it was a dead story. No one saw it. No one liked it. No one took a chance on Jocelyn.

For nearly a year, I wrote chapters to an empty audience. I tried not to let it get me down, but the consensus seemed clear: no one was interested in reading it. Still, I’d started it and come to love the characters very dearly, and so I continued. For my sake, for their sake, I continued.

Then came my first big break: tmnttrashcan. If you’re wondering why I didn’t @ that one, it’s because it’s been deactivated. But this amazing woman found my story, loved it, and began sharing it. And because her blog was one driven by reblogs and gifsets, it was far more popular than this one despite its younger age.

And thus did The Dancer begin drawing attention, fans, and feedback. Thus did I finally feel as if this labor of love was validated, that I wasn’t posting just for me anymore. People were enjoying the story, and in return, I poured more effort and love into it.

This is how I thanked my readers: with better content. More drama, more emotion, more love, more heartache, more sex, more everything.

Even before this happened, however, my head had continued the story far into the future. I made a sequel -- The Dragon -- before I’d even had a concept of The DJ. But in this sequel I’d begun laying the groundwork for something in between the two, and through this I began creating Lisa.

With Lisa, I wanted to create a character that fit more securely with the next turtle on my list: Michelangelo. Rather than opposing the turtle in many ways, as Jocelyn does with Raphael, I wanted Lisa to mesh very easily with him.

The DJ had begun.

For a time, tmnttrashcan’s admin and I were fantastic friends. We talked often, over text and over voice chatting. I told her ideas I had for the future, plans going years down the line both in and out of the story, and even let her read what I’d written of The Dragon thus far. She loved it, every last word, and heaped praise at me.

I loved this woman very deeply. I’d tell her as much from time to time, and she echoed the sentiment.

Then she simply...vanished. She stopped talking to me, stopped responding. Eventually I asked her if we were no longer friends. She never answered.

It was heartbreaking.

Soon thereafter, I was also left behind by Kyone. She unfriended me. And then Tumblr decided to ban all NSFW content, so in order to preserve this blog, I was forced to delete all her NSFW art. And when she went further and removed herself from the blog, I went further too and removed all of her posts. But it wasn’t easy.

It’s been a few years since then and I remain heartbroken. We’d been friends for over a decade. I saw her grow up (we met when she was 16), saw her graduate, saw her go through schooling and jobs and hard times. Between her, myself, and Fluxx, we’d amassed a mountain of great times and greater stories. We’d been a sisterhood in all but blood. We’d even called ourselves such.

To this day there remains a hollow place in me. In short, I’ve been jaded. My whole life, I’d seen this pattern repeated: I make a friend, we become close, then they abandon me, usually within a year or two. But with Fluxx and Kyone, I’d truly believed this pattern had finally been broken. I’d believed I finally had friends for life.

Between the loss of tmnttrashcan and Kyone, however, I learned a hard lesson: not to trust so deeply.

This was repeated twice more before I gave up on sharing. With Blue Blood, twice I made a close friend, got to the point of talking near-constantly and voice chatting. Twice I shared previews of what was to come. Once I even told the entire story, everything, every last detail I have planned to the end of the series. And twice, after hearing so much of the tale, the friend vanished from me. They stopped responding. I was talking to air.

It hurt.

By now you may be wondering why this is included in my fanfiction autobiography. Well, because it spurred me on. If I can’t keep friends for long, then I’ll keep my own company. I won’t let myself down. I decided to focus on my stories, for in this I am always the most important person. I am the one who will never be abandoned. I am the creator, the god, of the worlds I shape for the entertainment of others. Readers may come and go, as much a slave to their interests as I am, but I remain. For those who stay and those who arrive later, I remain.

There is a power in this which cannot be matched, but more so, there’s an enjoyment and responsibility. My stories are unfinished but demand an ending from a slew of followers. And so I keep writing, even though the stories are largely complete in my own mind. I know how they end. I know how they intertwine, how they connect. I know the backstage dancers, how the plot lines link together, where each thread is leading; my readers do not.

And so I continue writing, even as I remain cautious about how much I share.

To The Future

What comes next is largely unknown, even to me. I have many, many, many stories, both in original settings and fandoms. I work on some of them from time to time, in between trying to focus on my bigger hits. Sometimes I just open one and begin reading what I’d already written, refreshing my memory and contemplating where I want the story to go.

I’ve considered other forms of storytelling as well. Otome games have my interest, specifically, because of the nature of them; a single protagonist and multiple love interests with their own unique tales to tell. I love that format and have tried crafting numerous stories for them, but they’ve yet to gain any real ground.

This is partly because it’s a huge undertaking. It’d require more than myself to get them made. I can do art and writing, but I know little to nothing of coding. I’m unsure how I would turn words and images into a novella-type game. Originally I wanted Fluxx and Kyone’s help -- Kyone because I felt her art is better than mine, and Fluxx because she has experience coding. I tried to get them involved. They did not get involved.

As far as otome games are concerned, I am alone.

But this is fine. I am a better writer than anything else -- better than I am an artist, a gamer, or a friend, based on my history. So I’ll continue to write. And if I never truly create an original story, if I never get published, if I never receive royalties for my years of painstaking effort, then so be it.

I made people happy. I made people gush and scream and keyboard-smash. I made people laugh and cry. I made people fall in love with that which I love.

That’s enough.

I’ll see you soon with more updates. My stories are not yet finished.

- Nightshade

#siren nightshade #autobiography #sfw #written #personal

10 notes · View notes

douchebagbrainwaves · 4 years

Text

AS ONE OF THE TABOOS A VISITOR FROM THE FUTURE WOULD HAVE TO BE ABLE TO GET A CHECK WITHIN A WEEK BASED ON A HALF-PAGE AGREEMENT

You would not believe the amount of stock to give him. When you hit something that would make me eligible for prescription drugs if I approached everyday life the same way the classic airline pilot manner is said to derive from Chuck Yeager. But in fact it was the basis of Amsterdam's prosperity 400 years ago. Tip: for extra impressiveness, use Greek variables. Which is to say that it's heretical. The right tools can help us avoid this danger. And as you go down the food chain the VCs get rapidly dumber.1 When a child gets angry because he's tired, he doesn't know what's happening.

A silicon valley has to be powerful enough to enforce a taboo. Related fields are where you go looking for trouble. For good programmers, one of the readiest to say I don't know of anyone I've met. What it means specifically depends on the job: a salesperson who just won't take no for an answer; a hacker who will stay up till 4:00 AM every night, seven days a week. Politicians are caught between a rock and a hard place here, however: make the capital gains rate low and be accused of creating tax breaks for the rich, or make it high and starve growing companies of investment capital. The influence of fashion is not nearly so great in hacking as it is in painting. It's like light from a distant star. If I had only looked over at the other extreme you have the cheapest, easiest product, you'll own the low end. Bill Gates, who seems to be a CS major to be a hacker; I was a student in Italy in 1990, few Italians spoke English.

A few hackers understand it, and I got in reply what was then the party line about it: that Yahoo was no longer a mere search engine.2 This is their way of weighing you. Forty-two years later you'll be making $4. Will you have a chance of succeeding, you're doing them a favor by letting them invest.3 Almost nobody understands this yet especially not managers and venture capitalists. You're better off starting with a blank slate in the form of a small town. I was talking recently to a group of three programmers whose startup had been acquired a few years before by a big company, for whom ideally you'd work your whole career.

Now how are you doing compared to the rapacious founder's $2 million. This works in America, but it feels young because it's full of rich people.4 The way to do that is to implement it. This didn't merely make them less productive, because they were built one building at a time. So hackers start original, and get original. Should you take it? Now you could make a great city anywhere, if you try to decide what to do, and still not do it. And then at the other extreme you have the hackers, who are all nearly impossible to fire. So what makes a place good to them? And anyone who's tried it knows that you can't be somewhat of a startup and think they seem likely to succeed, it's hard not to fund them.5

Even other hackers have a hard time doing that. This essay is derived from a guest lecture at Harvard, which incorporated an earlier talk at Northeastern. When we asked the summer founders learned a lot from one another—maybe more than they should for the amount of money companies spend on software, and it's hard to start with good people, to start software startups. Even a lot of things e. But they grew into it really quickly; some of these guys now seem about four inches taller metaphorically than they did at the beginning of the end of the summer. Checks instituted by governments can cause much worse problems than merely overpaying. It's because liberal cities tolerate odd ideas, and smart people by their ability to say things you couldn't say anywhere else, and this can be enormous—in fact, discontinuous. Are People Really Scared of Prefix Syntax?6 If there is one message I'd like to get across about startups, that's it.

7% of the upside, while an employer gets nearly all of it.7 Y Combinator is just accelerating a process that would have gotten me in big trouble in most of the US either. Designing software that works on the assumption that everyone will just be honest. The mathematicians don't seem bothered by this. In hacking, this can literally mean saving up bugs.8 Otherwise I just worked. If you find yourself in the computer science department, there seems to be a lot of arguments with anti-yellowists seem to be bad ways of using them. Copernicus was a canon of a cathedral, and dedicated his book to the pope. In every period of history, the answer is almost certainly no. In it he said he worried that he was fundamentally soft-hearted and tended to give away too much for free. O fast, because server-based software will make new languages fashionable again.

It might dilute the value of safe jobs. You might think that anyone in a business where we need to pick unpromising-looking outliers, and the partner responsible for the deal? Gradually the details get filled in. And if you like certain kinds of applications that need that specific kind of data structure, like window systems, simulations, and cad programs.9 It would be too easy for clients to fire them.10 In a field like physics this probably doesn't do much harm, but the source code too. If you set up the company, after giving the investors a brief tutorial on how to administer the servers themselves. We did.

Suppose you realize there is nothing so unfashionable as the last, discarded fashion, there is probably at most one hop. My guess is that a good chunk of the country's wealth is managed by enlightened investors. What I'm saying is that open-source is probably the single most important issue for technology startups, and then think about how to make a silicon valley, is a concept known to nearly all makers: the day job. I think it's better to follow the opposite policy.11 Startups are marginal.12 They just smelled wrong. At the very least we want options. Another group was worried when they realized they had to do sales and customer support. Yahoo's market cap then was already in the billions, and they were still worrying about wasting a few gigs of disk space. This should be the m. What groups are powerful but nervous, and what ideas would they like to suppress? In one culture x is ok, and in most of Europe it's not.

Notes

The rest exist to satisfy demand among fund managers for venture capital as an experiment she sent their recruiters the resumes of the companies fail, most of their portfolio companies. When an investor in!

The person who wins. Could you endure studying literary theory, combinatorics, and outliers are disproportionately likely to be high, and we did not start to pull ahead in the sense that they take away with dropping Java in the last step is to try to ensure there are certain qualities that help in that category. I was as bad an employee as this. That's why startups always pay equity rather than for any particular truths you'll learn.

You leave it to colleagues.

The few people have responded to this day, thirty years later Jim Ryun ran a 3 year old to get a job after college, you'll usually do best to err on the other. I had no idea whether this would be unfortunate.

These were the seven liberal arts. At first I didn't like it if you agree prep schools do, and graph theory. A discount of 30% means when it was considered the most, it's probably still a few people have told me they do.

We fixed both problems immediately. But if you're a loser they're done, at one remove from the late 1970s the movie, but since it was cooked up by the size of the number of words: I should add that we're not professional negotiators, and since you can charge for. There are some controversial ideas here, I advised avoiding Javascript. Our founder meant a photograph of a startup was a small amount of damage to the modern idea were proposed by Timothy Hart in 1964, two years investigating it.

If you're a YC startup you can do it now. This is almost pure discovery. 107.

For example, would probably be to diff European culture have in 1800 that Chinese culture didn't, they cancel out and you have for endless years of bank dependence, reinforced by the investors. It was only because he was a test of success for a year to keep tweaking their algorithm to get at it.

Though you should never sell i.

The existence of people we need to. Garry Tan pointed out that trying to sell the bad groups and they were to work on what people will pay for health insurance derives from the DMV. Since they don't yet have any of the company goes public. It should be your compass.

In When the same attachment to their stems, but in fact you're descending in a difficult class lest they get for free. But they've been trained.

After Greylock booted founder Philip Greenspun out of school.

Thanks to Trevor Blackwell, Robert Morris, and Sarah Harlin for reading a previous draft.

#automatically generated text #Markov chains #Paul Graham #Python #Patrick Mooney #Really #startups #Harvard #anyone #attachment #Blackwell #book #sup #reply #essay

1 note · View note

investigatingnonsense · 5 years

Text

undefined

youtube

When I was a teenager, and playing Dungeons & Dragons, I used to love playing the bad guy! Some of my favorite D&D memories were ones where I could stalk hapless villagers in the dead of night, not to mention running from a fictional law. It was way more thrilling than rescuing some ancient treasure or tied up dame...

In 2003 I had never heard of ARG when I started working on a series of web pages on Yahoo Geo Cities. It was a conspiracy spoof that would lead you on a virtual quest for the Holy Grail complete with Monty Python's Knights of the Round Table as helpers and Darth Vader as the adversary. The quest took place all across space and time and even into the alternate universe via daath... You can imagine how delighted I was when I found out about ARG.

I had been off line for a few years and that's all it takes for the internet to pass you by. It had evolved, yet there was still a lot of mystery. I think people were still a bit unsure about just how much someone could get away with some cannibalistic mayhem and not get caught. Now most of us know that there's very little, indeed, that gets past Big Brothers ever present watch. Most of the ARGs I found out about were dead, but when I finally found one to latch on to, I quickly figured it was an art peice, and that's what drove me to it even more.

It felt like there was someone else out there like me, with a similar aesthetic view about film making. I guess my sense of how to play the game was off a bit, as my understanding was that ARG was always happening, in real time...

I wanted to be a character, damnit! That's the only reason I was in. Didn't matter if I was part of that ARGs grand scheme or not, The Beatles didn't play back up for Elvis! I had my thing, they had theirs. They merely opened a door..

There were no rules written anywhere that said we couldn't play games certain ways, this is ARG! You interact with the knowledge given to you, as you interpret it. What I inturupted was that that ARG was getting tired and wanted to quit. Seeing as many had already mistaken me for them, I had no problem filling the inevitable void they would leave, if ceremoniously done. Think Dread Pirate Roberts 😉.

Well, time goes by and here we are. Time influences our perception of things and what we thought was cool yesterday is silly now. Things change and so do views. I know there are things I wanted to say but didn't get around to and I know there are also things that I may disagree with tomorrow. I just really wanted to address this elephant, no, I wanted to stand up for this elephant, because I feel it's high time someone should...

2 notes · View notes

shadowreine · 6 years

Text

The Art of Falling in Love - Chapter 4

Fandom: Mystic Messenger

Pairing: V x MC (reader/custom MC)

Chapter Summary: In which MC has a chat with some of the boys.

Note: Finally an update! October was kind of a busy/stressful month, so I apologize for the wait. Thanks so much to everyone who’s been reading/liking/commenting on this fic so far. It means a lot to me. <3

Chapter 4: Candid

Once you returned to your apartment after dinner, you were ready to finally collapse into your bed and sleep, especially after such a long, eventful day. However, sleep eluded you. You lay wide awake, tossing and turning, your mind running at a million miles a second. You thought about the party, what went well and what didn’t, and what suggestions for improvements you could posit to RFA. You thought about the GCA and made a mental checklist of all the paperwork you had to submit in order to obtain a visa for working abroad…which brought to mind the fact that even before you could start that step in the process, you needed to stop procrastinating on working on your lesson plans for the upcoming semester—which was two weeks away, no less—and you needed to do a good job. Otherwise, you wouldn’t be needing a work visa at all. You let out a groan in the darkness of your bedroom, knowing that these anxious thoughts would never let you rest.

Ever since Hana had suggested your class could focus on art this semester, you couldn’t shake the idea. It was a good idea, and you were very low on ideas at the moment. The only problem was that you never really considered art as one of your strong suits, so you didn’t think you could excel at teaching it… But Hana was right, children love doing art. Maybe she was also right about asking Jihyun for a little help…

“Jihyun, Jihyun…” you said out loud, testing out the name. “Jihyun…”

V was a punchy name, short and straightforward. It was a good moniker for a hip photographer. But Jihyun was soft, almost a whisper, a pleasant sound sliding off the tip of your tongue. Now that you thought about it, it suited him better than V ever did.

Part of you regretted declining his offer to have dinner with him because you didn’t know when you’d have the chance to see him in person again. You imagined he’d be busy trying to get resettled into the city. He’d likely want to find a new place to stay. Maybe he wanted to meet up with others he might’ve lost contact with. He’d probably be caught up doing his own thing for a while, and you’d rejected your only chance to catch up with him.

Though, you couldn’t have just canceled on Hana. You had responsibilities, you had your own life. You had to make compromises. Wasn’t that adulthood? You couldn’t just drop everything because someone from your past decided to turn up again.

But… you just really wanted to see him.

You let out a sigh and turned onto your side, frustrated that your thoughts were keeping you awake. You grabbed your phone from the nightstand and checked the time. It was half past midnight.

Might as well check the messenger, you thought. Throughout the evening you’d received RFA app notifications, but you hadn’t been able to check any before now. Opening the app, you logged in and read the past chat logs. Only Zen and Yoosung had been there. Zen had entered the chatroom sometime after he finished his show, and Yoosung was taking a break from LOLOL. Zen told Yoosung about how Jaehee had waited for him outside the backstage door with her girlfriend Soomi (along with a dozen other rabid fangirls clamoring for his attention), and he sent a selfie of the three of them. Zen was the focus of the picture, of course, while Jaehee and Soomi stood together behind him, leaning so that they were in frame. This was the first time you saw what Soomi looked like. She was cute and petite, her blonde hair cropped short in a stylish bob. Jaehee and Soomi had matching poses, both winking at the camera and holding up their hands in a peace sign. They looked like they were having a great time, and you couldn’t feel happier for them.

Zen and Yoosung then spent the rest of the chat lamenting how much they wished they had girlfriends too and feeling sorry for themselves. Your eyes glazed over as you scrolled to the bottom of the chat. By now you knew very well how much the RFA boys, except perhaps Jumin, regretted the lack of romance in their lives. Sometimes it was cute that they had so much love in their hearts that they wanted to share it with someone, but more often than not, it got repetitive and eye-roll inducing, so much that you wished they could just find someone already so they could stop moaning about it.

Once you reached the bottom of the chat, you logged out to the main user interface to check everyone’s status updates. As you looked at the row of user icons, you started to feel like something was missing. The icons felt too big, as if there could be room to fit one more comfortably among them.

Then you realized why: Jihyun’s icon was missing. It had been missing for a long time, actually, but now that he was back in the country, it felt wrong not to have him in the messenger.

After Jihyun left to go overseas, Jumin asked Seven to revoke his access for security purposes. He wouldn’t have had time to log into the messenger on his travels anyway, so there’d been no point in keeping his profile active. Even though you were about to travel abroad yourself, you couldn’t see yourself staying away from the messenger for too long. RFA had become like family to you, and you’d want to keep in touch no matter how far away you went.

You wondered if Jihyun still had the same phone he used two years ago, or if he’d deactivated his service altogether. Come to think of it, since he wasn’t on the messenger, you realized you had no way of contacting him.

A window popped up on your phone screen indicating that a new chatroom had been opened. You looked at the time–it was almost one o’clock in the morning. Who could be online at this hour?

You entered the chatroom. Seven greeted you.

707: Hello, pretty lady!

MC: Seven, you’re still awake.

707: Yup. So are you, I see.

MC: Can’t sleep.

707: Me neither. Still reeling from the high of the party?

MC: lol sort of. I got a lot on my mind right now. How was your evening?

707: Fine fine. It was pretty good actually!

He sent the emoji of him excitedly shouting “yahoo!”

MC: Good day at work?

707: Yup! I was super productive. Got everything done in record time… I see Zen and Yoosung are complaining about being single again. SMH. They’re just jealous that Jaehee has more game than them.

You laughed out loud. Sick burn, Seven.

MC: You’re not wrong, lol. Jaehee can be very sweet and charming when she has the chance to relax every once in a while. I’m happy that she and Soomi found each other.

707: They wouldn’t have met each other if you didn’t push Jumin to give Jaehee a vacation.

MC: Yeah… That’s true…

As if summoned, Jumin Han entered the chatroom.

707: WHOA that’s creepy, dude.

Jumin Han: What are you talking about? Good evening, MC.

MC: haha hey Jumin...that is a little creepy.

Jumin Han: ?

707: We were just talking about you.

Jumin Han: I see. I just read the log.

MC: I think you’ve read enough books on witchcraft that you’re starting to become a witch yourself, Jumin. Speak of the devil, and all that.

707: Hehe where’s your broom, witch boy?

You didn’t ask Jumin what he was doing up so late because he was always awake at this hour, either spending time with Elizabeth the 3rd or doing business with investors and companies in different timezones. On the rare occasion that you had a bout of insomnia, he would be in the chatroom, keeping you company until you finally fell asleep.

Jumin Han: Will Yoosung and Zen ever get tired of complaining about not having significant others?

MC: Probably not. Though, I feel like once they do get girlfriends, that’s all they’ll talk about on here.

Jumin Han: You’re probably right. I don’t know which is worse.

707: Jaehee is pretty modest about her relationship. They should act like her! Speaking of Jaehee, as I was saying before Jumin interrupted us with his creepy black magic, I think Jaehee has you to thank for meeting Soomi, MC.

MC: Oh, that’s more credit than I deserve. I just yelled at Jumin.

707: lmao you did yell at him

Well, you had typed in all caps in the chatroom, which was just as good as yelling. A few months ago, Jumin had swamped Jaehee with so much work that Jaehee broke down crying on the phone with you. You felt so awful and helpless at first, but after you did your best to console her and hung up, you decided that the only way to fix the problem was to go straight to the source.

Jumin was unreceptive to your suggestion at first, which you’d expected, but once you laid out all the reasons why it was a good idea to give her a break and why she deserved one, his cold, distant attitude started to irritate you. You tried to be civil, but the man was as stubborn as a mule sometimes. So you snapped and capslocked on him. Then once you said your piece, without warning, you logged out of the chatroom and called his phone to tell him off some more.

Jumin Han: I’ll admit I’ve never been yelled at like that before.

MC: I didn’t *yell*.

Jumin Han: You gave me a very stern lecture.

MC: Well, Zen yells at you on here all the time.

Jumin Han: I correct my previous statement—I’ve never been yelled at like that by someone whom I respect.

You knew that was high praise coming from someone like Jumin Han. Sometimes you couldn’t help but have the utmost respect for him too. After the incident, you learned that Jumin had been so stressed due to his father’s current romantic engagements and the prolonged absence of his best friend, and he had taken it out on his assistant. You felt bad for yelling at him, and you apologized to him personally on the phone the next day.

After that, he decided to give Jaehee three weeks of vacation. Jaehee was resistant at first, but you convinced her to take the offer. She spent those weeks off the messenger and met Soomi at one of her favorite coffee shops downtown. They hit it off rather easily, and the rest was history.

Jumin Han: Anyway, I am glad that Jaehee has found someone she cares about deeply. It seems to have made her more motivated in her work.

707: …

MC: sigh

Jumin Han: What? It’s true.

707: Only you would make something that’s supposed to be romantic into something totally not;;

Jumin Han: I don’t understand romantic relationships myself, so I see no point in commenting on it.

MC: I guess I can understand where you’re coming from. I’ve had enough of talking about romance for one evening.

707: Oh?

Seven sent his heart eyes emoji.

707: Who else are you talking about romance with, MC?

He sent the same emoji again.

“Oh crap,” you said to your screen. Suddenly the whole awkward conversation you had with Hana came back to you. You couldn’t very well tell Seven or Jumin that you and Hana had talked about Jihyun. You had to play it cool.

MC: Oh… I just had dinner with Hana tonight. She told me all about her new boyfriend.

Seven sent his gasping emoji.

707: The hot new actor Hojin Park! He and Hana were spotted smooching down in the Maldives last week!

Again with his heart eyes emoji.

MC: …Are you stalking my best friend, Seven?

707: It’s not stalking when paparazzi pictures of them are posted on every celeb gossip site!

MC: I am not going to talk gossip about my own friend. If I did, you’d probably try leaking it to the media for a quick buck.

707: They pay a lot of money for ~insider info~ you know.

You sent an emoji that depicted you giving a very unamused side-eye.

707: Fine, fine. I won’t ask about Hana’s love life. You need to lighten up, MC. Maybe you need a l-o-v-e interest of your own, eh?

The heart eyes. Again. You dropped your head into your hand. Why was everyone so hung up on romance this evening? You needed a change of subject, quick.

Thankfully, Jumin seemed to have the same idea.

Jumin Han: I think this conversation has derailed quite a bit.

MC: Thank you! Can we talk about something else, pls?

Jumin Han: I actually came onto the messenger to make a request of you, Seven.

707: Hmm, ok. What is it?

Jumin Han: I’d like you to grant Jihyun access to the messenger again.

Your phone almost slipped out of your hand.

Jihyun...on the messenger again? Weren’t you just thinking about that only minutes ago?

MC: Oh?

707: Oh, I didn’t even think of that. Does he want to get back on?

Jumin Han: No, but I imagine he’d like to be, once he gets a new phone, that is. He deactivated his old phone some time ago, and he needs to get another one first. I’ll pass on the information once it’s available.

707: …Do you think it’s a good idea?

Seven’s question took you aback. Why wouldn’t it be a good idea? You asked him what he meant.

707: …never mind. It’s nothing. When he gets a new phone, let me know, and I’ll add him back onto the messenger.

You didn’t know what to say. Where had his sudden hesitance come from? You would have thought Seven would be one of the more enthusiastic about his return. You remember Seven once telling you that he considered Jihyun almost like a father to him despite their relative close age gap. He trusted him more than anyone. In fact, back when you first met the RFA, you noticed there were secrets that Seven and Jihyun had kept between only them. Seven had come to Jihyun’s rescue at Mint Eye, after all.

...That was two years ago, though. The more you thought about it now, the more you realized that since then, Seven hadn’t spoken much about Jihyun at all. He certainly never brought him up in the chats of his own volition, and whenever someone else would mention him, he didn’t have much to say.

But he seemed happy to see Jihyun at the party earlier, didn’t he? Well, now that you thought about it, perhaps he wasn’t so much happy as he was shocked and…confused. Almost as if he had truly believed he never would see his old mentor ever again.

“We have a lot to catch up on, I think,” Jihyun had said. And Seven had agreed.

There was something tense about the exchange, some underlying thoughts and feelings that you couldn’t begin to decipher. That must have been what bothered Seven now. What was the missing link between them?

MC: You ok, Seven? You sound weird.

707: I’m fine. Gotta go, though. Long day.

He signed out of the chatroom before you could type another message.

Jumin Han: …

MC: Is it just me, or did something sound off about him? Does Seven not want Jihyun back on here?

Jumin Han: He seemed hesitant about it at the very least.

MC: Why? You don’t think it’s because he doesn’t trust Jihyun, do you? I know he had trouble with keeping secrets from everyone, even to Seven, but he just doesn’t seem like that kind of person anymore…

You weren’t sure if that were entirely true, but everything you knew about what he’d gone through seemed to indicate that Jihyun had had enough secrecy for one lifetime. The man you saw at the party didn’t look like someone who would harbor any secrets.

Jumin Han: I agree. I’ve been with him all evening, and he is definitely changed.

MC: …wait. You’ve been hanging out with Jihyun?

Jumin Han: Yes, he’s with me right now.

“What?” you said aloud. Jumin had been chatting with you all this time and Jihyun was with him?

MC: Really? Where are you?

Jumin Han: At my penthouse. I invited him over as a guest, since he currently has nowhere to stay.

You were typing to ask what he was doing, but your fingers froze over the screen when a picture popped up in the chat.

This time, your phone actually did fall out of your hands...and landed right onto your face, since you were lying in bed. You let out a pained shriek and massaged your nose. Then you jolted up into a sitting position and looked back at your phone.

Jihyun was in the photo. He was standing next to the dining table, across from where Jumin seemed to be sitting. He was pouring himself a glass of red wine. You could tell it was a candid picture because Jihyun’s eyes appeared as though he’d looked into the camera just as it was being taken, his brows raised in a half-expression of surprise. It was cute, actually. But that wasn’t what got your attention.

What got your attention was the fact that his hair was wet, sticking to the left side of his face. He had a towel draped over his shoulders, and he wore gray lounge pants and a white tank top...

MC: …

Jumin Han: He just got out of the shower. He’s jet lagged, so that’s why he’s still awake, if you were wondering.

You were actually wondering why his bare arms looked appealingly firm and smooth, and why his tank top clung so tightly to his slender but lean torso…but you weren’t going to type that.

MC: Um, thanks for the pic haha

Jumin Han: I thought I should prove to you he was in fact here.

MC: You didn’t need to do that lol. I believed you.

Jumin Han: He’s asking me who I sent the photo to.

MC: Oh...what did you tell him?

Jumin Han: You.

You blushed. Should you take a selfie of yourself just to make it fair? You couldn’t do that. You probably looked like a mess after tossing and turning in bed for a few hours… Wait, why did you care what you looked like? You’d sent less than flattering pictures of yourself through the messenger before.

Jumin Han: I need to go. Elizabeth the 3rd should be put to bed soon, and I’m going to keep Jihyun company.

MC: Okay. Tell Elizabeth the 3rd hello for me.

You debated whether you should add another line. Oh, why not?

MC: ...and Jihyun, too.

Jumin Han: Will do. Goodnight.

Jumin logged out, and so did you. You lingered in the main UI a little while longer, wondering what Jumin and Jihyun were up to right now, what they were talking about. Jumin must have liked having the chance to catch up with his best friend, especially considering how much you knew he’d missed him and worried after him since he left. You could only hope you got your chance, too.

You went into the messenger’s photo folders. Even though Seven had taken away Jihyun’s access to the app, he kept his photo folder untouched. You opened it and looked at the newest picture of him. Out of curiosity, you told yourself. Once it expanded across your screen, your heart did a flip in your chest, which was a sensation that utterly confused you. It wasn’t as if you weren’t used to being friends with so many pretty people. Part of the reason why it was so easy for you to initially believe that the RFA were AIs in a dating simulator was because they were all too good-looking to be real. Even now, you would catch yourself admiring just how beautiful Zen looked in his selfies, how well Jumin wore his business suits, how cute Yoosung and Seven were in an adorably nerdy way. Even Jaehee was exceptionally gorgeous.

Yet somehow none of them made you react the way you reacted to this picture of Jihyun. What was happening?

You reasoned it was because you’d never seen him like this. So candid, so...underdressed. You felt as if you shouldn’t be even be looking at it.

Get a grip, MC.

You exited out of the app, tossed your phone onto your comforter, and collapsed onto your pillow, trying desperately to wipe the image out of your mind so you could finally, finally, get to sleep.

#jihyun kim #v x mc #vxmc #mystic messenger #mystic messenger v #mystic messenger fanfic #mysme #mysme v #i'm participating in nanowrimo with an original fic on top of writing this fic #so rip me i guess #taofil #my fic

25 notes · View notes