#he’s literally unrea

[macallisters]

unreal

[funny-fella-fantrolls]

Anything interesting, you say?

Well, Vex, heard about this from sometime ago that you (not seriously/literally) 'interrogated' Shudao simply for holding hands with another troll (one you don't know, like, at all)

Before I proceed, is that information correct? And also, may I get your thoughts on that alone? 👀

[]h yeah, that's true. And bef[]re y'all get t[] call][n' me unreas[]nable []r anyth][n', ][ []nly d][d that 'cause just the n][ght bef[]re, he, []fu, and myself ended up talk][n' quad stuff, and he sa][d he wasn't see][n' any[]ne. S[] ][mag][ne my c[]nfus][[]n when ][ see what l[][]ks l][ke h][m g[]][n' []ut w][th s[]me[]ne.

And yeah, hav][n' heard h][m try to expla][n, seems l][ke they had a w[]nderful t][me.

But y[]u g[]t me ][nterested n[]w. C[]ns][der][n' y[]ur last ask, makes me th][nk there's s[]meth][n' happen][n' there. 'm ][ r][ght t[] th][nk that?

[clinicalmiddlechildsyndrome]

Jason Todd and Comic Book Morality

I’ve been thinking lately that there are a few things about existing in comic books specifically that make Jason Todd killing less morally suspect than it would be if looked at realistically. (I mean if some asshole was going around killing people based on his morals with impunity irl I’m sure we could all agree that’s a bad situation)

First off certainty of guilt: One of the foremost arguments against the death penalty in real life is the fact that we can never be completely certain that the person we’re putting to death is guilty. The death penalty in real life will kill innocent people, regardless of how small of a percentage of those killed it is, it will and has done so. In comics there exists a total certainty that the people batman pursues and the people Jason kills are guilty. One aspect of that is the gross invasions of privacy that vigilantes and especially Batman and his associates take part in that are illegal for law enforcement. But DC comics has already asked us to accept that as morally neutral for the sake of Batman so we must do the same for Jason. Because Batman and co. don’t have powers (and because Batman is constructed primarily out of plot armor, male fantasies and spit) they make up for this by basically never being wrong. If one of the bat cohorts is wrong it becomes an entire plot point. They’re never wrong incidentally or make mistakes. Because it’s never be specified that Jason made a mistake we can basically guarantee that he hasn’t. Everyone that Jason has ever killed has been guilty (at least per the standards of Jason’s moral code).

Second redemption: Comics are an extremely long form medium where popular characters are basically guaranteed to reappear and remain static. In real life it is possible for people to change and grow and become better people and for people who are mentally unwell to seek help and recover (not that mentally ill people are dangerous etc etc I don’t have time to open that can of worms). That will never ever happen in comic books. They can tease Two Face’s recovery again and again, but he will never get better in the main continuity. Joker will never become a functioning member of society. Gotham needs to remain a wretched hive of scum and villainy for Batman to fight. Criminals don’t get redeemed in Gotham full stop. We might get an arc or two where they’re reformed, but a return to form is inevitable.

Next incarceration: Even if they never became better people you wouldn’t have to kill them if you could jail them--but wait! You literally can’t. One of the key features of Gotham that has never and will never change is that it’s corrupt top to bottom and the jails and Arkham are constructed fully out of tissue paper. Beating a criminal up and turning them over to the police will not stop them, it will not prevent people from being hurt in the future. Locking criminals/villains up is worthless in terms of actually stopping them.

Finally extrajudicial action: Having an independent entity run around the city acting out their own personal sense of justice with no oversight or consequence would be exceedingly bad in real life but comic books have already asked us to accept it wholesale. The problem with Red Hood is not that he has no oversight, it’s not that he’s invading people privacy, or assaulting them, or punishing people without trial, or even that his work is effected by his emotions. All of these things are true of Batman. I mean you can say that Batman turns people over to the police all you like but there is no such thing as legally beating the tar out of someone as punishment for a crime. Batman does extra judicially punish criminals full stop. The only part of what Jason does that we can question is how far he goes in what he does, not what he does.

Jason Todd exists in a reality where he knows which people are guilty of heinous crimes and he knows that jail/Arkham will never stop them and he knows that they’ll never change. In these circumstances is it really unreasonable to act like killing is the only way to stop criminals? Obviously comics don’t admit that jail/Arkham will never be effective and that villains will never change, but as readers it feels disingenuous (at least to me) to act like Jason is the crazy one for acting like these things are true because we all know they are.

tldr; Existing in a comic book (and all the things that come along with it) erases a number of factors that would normally make Jason’s brand of killing inexcusably wrong.

[askyourwritergrandma]

Do you happen to have any tips for rounding out a character’s personality and making them feel more authentic and real? I love your blog <3

Hello! Thanks for your patience.

Let's jump straight into the advice:

There are countless (and I mean this literally) character guides out there on the internet. They will ask you everything from hair color to opinions on hot topics to favorite drink order. I have never been able to answer these questionnaires because it's just so much information that I just don't know?

Some things you simply don't need to know about your character because it's not relevant to their world/their development/your story and knowing those things will do nothing for you. But a few things that every character needs in order to feel like a person:

Relationships. This isn't exclusively romantic. Friends, coworkers, family members. Positive and negative, people are almost never solitary. Even when they are loners/excluded/what have you they will still develop relationships/attachments to animals/objects/voices in their heads.

Flaws. Some of these, you decide before you get started and some of these you discover as you go along.

Goals, both things they know they want and things they do not know they want. Almost everyone has a conscious goal and/or dream. It might be heavily buried, but it's still there.

Personality Type - you can do one of those quizzes as your character and find out if they're an introverted thinker or an extroverted party animal if you want to. Or you can assign them a base emotion, like this person was born angry. This person is motivated by spite, by generosity. Etc, etc.

A childhood - regardless of how old you are and how much you've moved on, your childhood is where you became a person. Having an idea of the type of childhood your character had will help you develop them. Was it happy? Plentiful? Abusive? Lonely? Was there strife? Parents together? Divorced? Should have divorced? Siblings? No siblings?

Now, how do we go about creating these things for our characters?

For relationships:

Start with the obvious, if your character is alive and in a sexually reproducing species he has parents. How does he feel about his parents? If he grows up in a community he almost certainly had friends, how does he feel about them? Did he have a lot? A few? You can literally just give him a random friend named Fred and in your first draft/first daydreams just make Fred a stand in for the story needs. The more familiar you get with Fred the more he becomes a voice of his own and a relationship will blossom. But your character also has teachers? Coworkers? fellow students? etc. Think about which relationship is strongest for the character, this probably says a lot about him.

For Flaws:

Ah yes, the horror of coming up with flaws for a character. You really have two good options here: randomly assign one from a list of character flaws (I'm sure one exists) and make it work. OR think about what your story needs/the focus of your story and make your flaw match your theme. So, if you're writing a romance where their love saves the world, than your character's flaw can be that they are selfish? Stuck up? Uptight? Something that prevents them from having generosity or love in their heart. They have to overcome that internally the same the pair of lovers have to overcome the obstacles of the world to save it. If you're writing a sci-fi where a group of explorers are trying to stay alive on a broken space ship while slowly being consumed by space bugs, then the character's flaw could be fear or recklessness. Maybe they have never considered the implications of their actions or how they hurt others? Or maybe they have always been too cautious and never really had a chance to enjoy life. Either can be used to further the idea of your story. (Or you can have one character for each.)

For Goals:

Goals is almost exactly the same as flaws. OR you can give your character an unreachable or nonsensical goal that is an echo of their flaws, like they desperately want to be wealthy regardless of the cost so they become self-centered, reckless, selfish and cruel but through the course of your story, no matter how close they get to their goal it's always just out of reach. That's because their idea of wealth is always a little bit more than what they have. They eventually have to accept that what they truly want is security and they cannot get it until they confront themselves and their past and etc, etc. You can give them a goal that's so easy to attain that it's hilarious (a Starbucks Frap) but they prevent themselves from getting it by a series of cascading personal failures. (It's too expensive/it's too sweet/it's a waste of money/I don't evne know how to order one/I'm not that type of person/etc, etc.) Your goals and flaws work best when they match what your story is about/the theme of your story, BUT, you don't have to know the theme before you start. That's second draft business. Pick a flaw and a goal that you feel like you're capable of writing a story about. It's like picking a topic for a school essay, you wouldn't pick Elections in Ancient Greece if you know nothing about it and literally couldn't physically care less. You pick a topic you have a passing knowledge of so the research is easier and you start with a little bit of confidence you can succeed.

For Personality Type:

If you're writing fanfic characters, you pick the interpretation of the character's actions that make the most sense to you. Is he a little shit out of greed? fear? hunger? rage? fear of failure? It could be any of those, so pick the one you like best. For original characters that you haven't written any words for yet, you start with your best guess. The truth is, I've written a lot of characters that I thought were going to be motivated by one thing but two chapters later I'm writing a passionate, three page monologue about how all their life they've only ever longed for a Hot Pocket. You aren't bound to where you start. Explore your characters and let them breathe, if you hate it you can always c/p it out of the story.

For childhood:

I'm not advocating that you create an entire birth to adulthood backstory for your character. Think of how you view your childhood. Were you mostly happy? Did you play sports? Win games? Long for the best electronics? Get picked on? Were you mortified by something in middle school so hard that there are scars on your soul? Did everyone love you? Did you lose a best friend you thought you would have forever? Did you get a soccer ball kicked into your face and lose a tooth? A bad and/or good nickname? Were your parents present? Absent? Split up? Did you have sleepovers at your house? Away? Did you get an allowance? No allowance? Were you shy? ashamed? embarrassed? Pick a generic childhood memory for the BEST moment, a perfect birthday and/or a hard-fought sports win and pick a worst moment, a failed test or being left out of a big class party. Maybe there's other relevant things from the childhood, or maybe there's not. When your character reacts to not being invited to the company holiday party it's because his best friend in ninth grade humiliated him by refusing to invite him and his anger and embarrassment is a little irrational for an adult but old wounds are hard to heal.

I hope some of these helped! If you have any follow up questions I'd love to answer them!

Thanks again.

[sansofhumor]

i wish you would write a scene where papyrus dabs and frisk is just 'you have that here???' and sans is like 'that's my bro, he's so cool' (and then they fortnite dance)

I took some creative liberties because the last time I wrote crack was literally a decade ago and I'm out of practice. Gomen if this is.... unreadable

The snow hurls outside the window of the skeleton brothers' home. It looks cold and windy, but Frisk is cozy inside the house. They're standing on the ugly green couch in the living room, listening to it jingle as they try to keep their balance.

The floor is lava, they tell Papyrus and Sans, giggling.

"WHAT? WHERE? WE MOVED TO SNOWDIN TO GET AWAY FROM THE LAVA!"

Frisk laughs and jumps on the couch, telling Papyrus that it's invisible lava. Quick! Frisk yells, you can't touch the floor!

"AHA! HOW SNEAKY! NEVER FEAR, PAPYRUS HAS NEVER BEEN BEATEN BY MERE SUPERHEATED ROCK AND HE NEVER WILL!! NYEH HEH HEH!" He scoops his brother up into his arms as he jumps onto the side table with Sans' pet rock.

"nice lavatating bro."

"I WILL DROP YOU!"

Frisk climbs up onto the back of the couch and walks along it. Balancing on the edge, they call for the brothers to watch them, and then they jump onto the coffee table.

"INCREDIBLY AGILE OF YOU, HUMAN! NOW WATCH THIS!" Papyrus does a spinning leap onto the stairway banister, delicately sliding to a stop. Sans hangs limply in Papyrus' hold, giving a mild thumbs up. Frisk laughs, claps, and excitedly gives a double thumbs up to Papyrus.

In the kitchen a sharp whistle starts blowing; the water for the cocoa finished boiling at last.

"oh no, how will we ever get to the kitchen," sans says, muffled by Papyrus' ribcage.

Frisk tell them not to worry, because they have ice powers now. They do a youth roll X2 combo and land, perfectly in a three-point pose. The lava has been vanquished.

"WOWIE, HUMAN, AMAZING!!" Payrus exclaims. Frisk gestures for Papyrus to join them on the ground.

With an unparalleled enthusiasm Papyrus dismounts the banister in a perfect pirouette, tossing sans in the air as he goes. Executing his spin perfectly, Papyrus lands en pointe, waiting a beat before dabbing.

Frisk raises a their fingers to give him a 10/10 score while asking how Papyrus knows how to dab.

"he's just so cool," sans says, "he's applaudably commendable and awardable at descendable activities." sans says, holding two mugs of cocoa and exiting the kitchen.

"SANS!!"

Frisk laughs and tugs on Papyrus' gloved hand.

"OH, YOU WANT ME TO COPY YOUR FRESH DANCE MOVES IN A MEMEABLE MANNER??? OF COURSE!! SANS! JOIN US!"

"i can't, got my hands full."

"IT'S UNFORTUNATE THEN, THAT THE DANCING IS ENTIRELY.... UNAVOIDABLE!!!"

Needless to say, they all danced.

[seoulscenarios]

Domestic Life with Hwang Hyunjin

Aaaaaaaaand I'm back!!!! I just got a new keyboard for my iPad so expect me to be writing a whole lot more bc I can write on it so much easier!! It's only a few days until I fly out to Korea so if you notice me going awol for a few days you know why!! 

-Now this boy

-He’s literally perfect, in all senses of the word; talent, visuals, dancing, modelling you name it hyunjin can do it

-It also means he is the perfect boyfriend

-Would 10/10 be the one to just lean his head in his hand whilst you’re at a coffee shop or eating dinner and just smile at you like you’re the most important person in the world

-(Which, in Hyunjin’s eyes, you most certainly are)

-Honestly,,, every time you’d catch him staring you’d expect him to get embarrassed but this boy,,,, never does he just smiles even wider and looks you deeply in the eyes

-Well guess who’s the flustered one now

-Hint: it’s you

-But lbr who wouldn’t be flustered if Hyunjin smiled at you

-He’s so beautiful and his smile is to DIE for so you’d most certainly be extremely flustered

-Hyunjin also happens to be a bit of a tease so he KNOWS you get flustered all the time so ofc he plays this to his advantage

-Literally just out of nowhere he’d call you over and you’d like be like sure babe what’s up and he’d just grab your hands and smile at you 

-“Nothing I just wanted to see you” OKAY BOY CALM DOWN

-Well that gets you extremely flustered and Hyunjin would think it’s the most adorable thing in the world bc you’d try to pull your hands from his so you could bury your face in them but he keeps a grip on them and refuses to let go

-He just keeps smiling at you and ur like BOY STOP MY POOR HEART CAN ONLY TAKE SO MUCH

-He definitely pulls you into a hug which flusters you even more by he’s so warm and his arms feel so protective and ur chin rests on his shoulder n honestly it’s the cutest thing

-All the boys wonder how you fall for this trick every damn time bc Hyunjin is about as subtle as brick wall

-Like,,, they know his game plan yet you somehow keep falling for it and keep getting flustered and they swear he pulls this trick on you at least once a day yet,,,, you still FALL FOR IT

-It’s bc ur whipped for him

-There’s no other explanation 

-And whipped for him you are, and he is for you

-You’re so in love with each other and it’s unrea;

-Definitely the type of couple to have couple outfits and matching jewellery

-Hyunjin definitely picks you up a bracelet or ring whenever he goes to another country and it’s your new couple thing

-ALSO

-You’ve seen this boys’ selcas right??

-Would 100000000% take aesthetic photos of the two of you and set them as his phone background

-(Yes he does smile every time he sees it and yes changbin hyung I do love them what are you going to do about it)

-Can we take a moment to appreciate you wearing his clothes when you stay over the night because if there’s one thing that can make him flustered is you wearing his oversized shirts 

-The first time this happened it was late be you n Hyunjin were having a movie night and it ended way later so he was like hey you can stay the night and naturally so, you didn’t have any clothes to change into and Hyunjin was like it’s fine!!! You can wear some of my stuff

-Hyunjin was, in fact, not fine

-He definitely stopped working for a hot minute by he was extremely FLUSTERED at how cute you looked in his oversized tee and a pair of his shorts

-Ever since that day, Hyunjin is OBSESSED with how you look in his clothes and definitely invites you over to stay the night just so he can see you in his shirts

-Honestly it’s adorable be gets so flustered every time

-Also,,, he doesn’t keep his hands off you when you’re in his clothes like there is a constant hand around your waist or gripping your hip and he’s SO affectionate

-Sneaking in a few kisses and constantly pulling you in for hugs and stuff

-Speaking of hugs, he acts so manly n stuff around you but this boy LOVES to be the smaller one

-He ADORES it when you stand between his legs when he’s sat down and he can wrap his arms around your middle and ur running ur fingers through his hair he LOVES LOVES LOVES THIS

-Can we take a second to imagine this ???? You’re welcome

-ANYWAY

-This boy is also extremely giggly whenever you kiss him like ??? He’s a pretty giggly boy anyway but there’s just something about kisses that make him giggle ESP cheek kisses

-God you kiss his cheek and he will not stop giggling for about an hour

-Not to be that person, but he most definitely pinned you against a wall once and then got too flustered to kiss you and just giggled instead and you end up rolling your eyes bc what the heck Hyunjin where is my kiss ??? 

-And he’s too busy giggling to kiss you that you try and escape but he’s like NO LET ME KISS YOU FOR REAL THIS TIME and he finally does but dissolves into another giggling fit

-Someone protect this precious boy thanks

-Staying the night with Hyunjin means a lot of cuddles, soft kisses and something so inherently Hyunjin that you can’t put your finger on it

-Maybe it’s the way his hair falls after you’ve ran your fingers through it for the 100th time or the way he eyes still have traces of makeup under them that you wipe away softly, but whatever it is you LOVE it

-Like it just feels like home to you, especially when you’re snuggled up against his chest when your watching a film or just laying in bed for the night

-His arms fit around you perfectly and honestly there’s no place you’d rather be as he’s stroking the back of your hand, telling you about how dance practice went or how chan really liked the lyrics he wrote for one of their songs

-Hyunjin doesn’t believe in his skills and that he’s really as talented as the other members and you have to shut him up when he gets a bit self depreciating bc you honestly don’t understand how he can be so negative about himself esp when it comes to his talents

-Bc to you, this group wouldn’t be the same if he wasn’t in it

-Like no matter how much people love his visuals, you really loved when you saw comments about how talented he was or how much his rap has improved and you couldn’t be prouder of him 

-Even if he wasn’t so confident in himself

-It would take a lot of reassurance from you to remind him he was more than his visuals but, you were fine with that

-Anything to make him appreciate himself a bit more

-Which usually ended up in you peppering him in kisses and literally tackling him and throwing words of affection at him until he began to smile and laugh bc how he could not love you when you’re giving him so much love and support that he pulls you in a for a massive hug and tickles you until you’re both gasping for breath from laughing too much

-Hyunjin is towering over you, pinning you to the bed and as he’s staring down at you he’s overwhelmed at just how perfect you are to him and he’s a bit breathless as he sees your eyes crinkling up in a smile that he can’t help but lean down and kiss you

-O K A Y

-You’re honestly so in love with him as he is with you that you couldn’t imagine a time without him

-It’s just so precious and beautiful and pure a love i’m in love with ur love

-Honestly,,, this boy is so adorable and talented how could you not want to give him all the love in the world 

Can you tell I really wanna run my fingers through his hair??? Maybe i self projected a bit but his hair just looks so smooth and soft and fluffy how could you not want to touch it?? Anyway i really love Hyunjin and he's improved so much i love that so much esp his rapping?? God what a talented boy 

I hope you're all happy, healthy and hydrated and you're doing amazing!! The world is your oyster and you can do anything you put ur mind to! 

Love Leigh x