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cieloclercs · 10 months

Text

what would you say (if i told you i love you)? — charles leclerc

PART: 3? (read part 2 here)

summary. in which childhood best friends blur the lines between what they’ve always known, and something more

warnings. swearing, online hate, we’re getting to the angst now 🫣 arguments, charles is an idiot, arthur and joris being sick of his shit (but what else is new)

pairings. charles leclerc x arsty!reader

face claim. tara michelle

author’s note. again, i have no idea how much modern art sells for at auctions so don’t come at me if this seems unrealistic 🙏☹️ i also feel the need to clarify that y/n has 2 instagram accounts, one personal and one for art stuff ☺️

liked by joris_trouche and 51,196 others

y/nsart auction update! 🎨

tide - sold for €12,460 erode - sold for €9,500 wave - sold for €20,890 glint - sold for €6,300

this is nothing short of a dream come true for me. the support i’ve seen both on social media and at the auction (once again, thank you to everyone who stopped by!) has been beyond anything i ever could have hoped for 🩵

if you’d told me when i was a little girl that one day people would pay for art i’ve created, i wouldn’t have believed you. i’m so so grateful to have been given this opportunity to do something that i love and to share it with the world 💗 i can’t wait to see what the future holds!

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username congratulations y/n! 💕💕

*y/nsart liked this comment

leclerc_pascale C'est tout à fait mérité. N'arrêtez jamais de peindre, ma fille, vous avez un don! / completely deserved. never stop painting, my girl, you have a gift!

y/nsart merci beaucoup 🥹 je promets de ne pas le faire x / i promise i won’t

arthur_leclerc congratulations petite sœur! / little sister

y/nsart merci arth ☺️

y/nsart also, ‘petite’? i’m literally older than you?

arthur_leclerc but you’re smaller 🙃

charles_leclerc toujours fière de toi, ma chérie ❤️ / forever proud of you, sweetheart

y/nsart 😐

charles_leclerc you’re still mad at me? ☹️

y/nsart if you wanted one of my paintings you could have just asked rather than wasting over €20,000. i would have let you have it for free

charles_leclerc i didn’t waste anything, y/n

username uh oh mom and dad are fighting 😳

username ironic how her highest selling painting was literally bought by her best friend 😭

username i guarantee you it would NOT have sold for that much if charles hadn’t been bidding

username i don’t want to be the one to say it but lately it kind of feels like y/n’s been using her friendship with charles as a way to promote her art…

username as much as i love y/n icl i think you might be right 🥲

username 🤢🤢🤢

username stop using charles’ fame to try and make yourself relevant! you’ll never be good enough for him babes 🥰

username the switch up on these comments from ‘fans’ is actually so embarrassing

username i know! it’s like as soon as y/n starts becoming successful everyone suddenly decides it’s not because of her own hard work but because of charles 🙄

username lmao how has she managed to make tens of thousands for that shit she calls art? i’m sensing a clout chaser 😂

username this REEKS of jealousy

username these comments make me sick. y/n has proved time and time again how talented and hard working she is. just because charles doesn’t know you exist doesn’t mean you get to hate on another girl who he ACTUALLY cares about. grow up.

*charles_leclerc and y/nsart liked this comment

username i feel so bad for y/n. no offence to charles but if he’d let the auction play out normally without bidding (although he does have a right to do so if he wants!) then she wouldn’t be getting all this hate right now 😔

comments on this post have been limited.

liked by pierregasly and 1,567,836 others

charles_leclerc back to work 🇳🇱

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username no y/n like? ☹️

username is y/n with you?

username guys check kym illman’s instagram! he said charles turned up to the paddock alone…

username i mean, y/n could be arriving later right?

username if y/n isn’t there it’ll be the first race she’s missed since singapore last year 😳

username y/n has a life besides charles! just because she’s not at one race doesn’t mean they’ve fallen out or anything ☺️

username but think about it…neither charles nor y/n have posted anything to do with each other since the auction a week ago normally they can barely go a day without posting each other 🥴

username can everyone just stop talking about y/n 🙄 all she ever did was distract him anyway

username forza charles! ❤️

username he’s not even smiling :((

username because he knows ferrari are shit, it’s probably nothing to do with y/n

username i didn’t even mention her? 😭

joris_trouche i think you’re missing someone mate

username JORIS??

username HE KNOWS SOMETHING!!

username JORIS PLEASE TELL US WHAT YOU KNOW

username i hate to be the bearer of bad news but y/n just posted. she’s not at the grand prix 🥲

yourusername

viewed by charles_leclerc and 9,637 others

replies:

arthur_leclerc oh shit arthur_leclerc what did he do joris_trouche just say the word and i’ll smack him for you 😁 ↳ yourusername please don’t do that 😭 yourfriend you don’t need him, mon amour ❤️ ↳ yourusername ☺️

you:

did i do something wrong?

we haven’t spoken in a week

charlie 🤍:

no, y/n

you:

you won’t answer my calls

charlie 🤍:

i’ve been thinking about what you said

i don’t want you to have to deal with hate because of me

you:

so you think ignoring me is the answer?

charlie 🤍:

i’m not ignoring you, y/n, i’m trying to protect you

you:

what the fuck?

charles, i don’t care what people say about you

charlie 🤍:

but i do

isn’t it for the best? if we aren’t seen together for a while, you won’t get any of the hate

you:

you really don’t get it do you

if you think i want you to cut me off to ‘protect me’ then maybe you don’t know me as well as i thought you did

charlie 🤍:

don’t say that

i just want everyone to see you the way i do

you:

and i already told you, i don’t care what they think of me

i only care what you think

charlie 🤍:

why?

you:

i’m surprised you haven’t figured it out yet

charlie 🤍:

figured what out? [ seen at 4:11PM ]

y/n?

you:

i think it’s best if we don’t see each other for a while

bye charles

charlie 🤍:

what?! [ seen at 4:13PM ]

y/n come back [ delivered at 4:14PM ]

just tell me what you mean [ delivered at 4:20PM ]

please y/n [ delivered at 4:47PM ]

liked by yourfriend and 1,637,937 others

scuderiaferrari A DNF in Zandvoort for Charles. Now time to refocus ready for Monza 🔜

view all comments…

username what the actual fuck was going on with him today?

username i don’t know. i’ve never seen him so distracted 😕

username honestly a rookie mistake. if he’s going to be pulling shit like this then he doesn’t deserve his seat 🤷

username it’s just one mistake?? calm down 😭

username why do i feel like this has something to do with y/n…

username oh my god will you all shut up about y/n 🙄 they’re not even dating !!

username and? they’ve been best friends since they were 5 years old. if my childhood friendship broke down i’d be pretty fucking upset about it too

username we don’t actually know that they’ve fallen out tho…neither of them have said anything

username but isn’t it obvious? y/n not at the race, charles being distracted and sulky around the paddock? they’ve definitely argued about something

username charles i can’t keep defending you when you do this 💔💔💔

username how this guy has managed to keep his seat with all these mistakes i have no idea 😒

username hopefully y/n will be in monza to bring him some good luck🤞

➜ part 4

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northernsiberiawinds · 1 year

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Thief.

Hi @nonvme how are you?

I usually solve such issues in personal messages with the authors to give them the opportunity to simply apologize and not repeat their mistakes, but this situation has upset me a lot, because I wrote to you in the comments a few months ago, but you never answered me (your private messages are closed).

You steal my textures and call it your own, as well as sell it on your patreon without any permission and credits.

Let's start from the beginning.

1. https://www.patreon.com/posts/sakira-skin-and-67386343

“credits: obscurus-sims, lamatisse, and google lol” — absolutely no mention of me, it's amazing, because it's almost entirely my texture.

“Do not claim as your own, I work way too hard to have somebody else try to claim my stuff“ — It's so nice to ask to respect your work when you don't respect someone else's.

Do I need to comment on something? She just took my skin n7, added a couple of details on face and called it her own. And she put it in early access on her patreon to make money on already free сс. She listed other authors in the credits and didn't mention anything about me.

2. https://www.patreon.com/posts/precious-skin-75050799

“Do not claim as your own, I work way too hard to have somebody else try to claim my stuff“ — and again. The duplicity of this man never ceases to amaze me.

Here she changed a bit more, but she used my skin's face as a base. And again, no mention of me in the credits.This time she didn't mention credits at all, but I see at least @obscurus-sims details.

“Credits to Slephora, Obscurus, and Pinterest for all respective bits and pieces” — okay.

And again, no difference. The textures are identical.

Honey, if a person wants to use my eyelids, he just uses it. There is no need to put my cc in early access again, which has been free for three years.

I want to say that I create my textures completely from scratch, without using EA blanks. Absolutely all the details on my skins are created by me. And as an artist, I can say with confidence that it is impossible to create a texture that will match someone else's pixel by pixel. It's impossible. Moreover, most of my textures are completely drawn by me. What refs from the Internet is she talking about? Did you take refs out of my head? By Bluetooth?

@nonvme you can still apologize and I won't hold a grudge against you. Just apologize and remove my textures from your page. If you had answered me a few months ago and corrected your mistakes, then I would not have written this post and would not have spoiled your reputation. But you didn't answer me.

I'm sorry that you all had to read so much text. I hope your day is going much better than mine.

P.S. I had to re-post to remove some 18+ pieces from the skins.

UPD 15/06/23

Guys! Thank you so much for all your words of support! This is really very important to me. I didn't even expect you all to support me so much. I don't have enough words to express my gratitude to all of you 😢❤️!!!

Nonvme deleted CC that included my textures, and also promised not to use it anymore. It's enough for me to forget about this incident and don't contact patreon support.

I want to add that any author who makes his textures from scratch knows every pixel of his texture. The author of the original content will know if you have used his texture, even if you have somehow modified it. If you steal other people's textures and you haven't been caught yet, it only means that the author hasn't seen your page/cc yet, because he can't monitor the entire Internet. But one day he will find out about you, do not doubt.

#ts4 #s4cc #ts4cc #the sims 4 news

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olderthannetfic · 3 months

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Reading the anon abt the doll hobby not having anti drama, and I just had to make sure it didn't mention the BJD hobby, because that one is filled with drama and anti drama. I'm probably more prone to look for drama, but some of it isn't hard to find.

Idk why but I almost wanna share some of my highlights, so I'll do that. Buckle up, this is a long one, and it's only scratching some of the dumb shit bullshit that's happened over the years.

People constantly let themselves be scammed. There are some well known people, and when you look up their seller names you can literally find people who keep up with their renaming because they're such notorious scammers. People still "take a chance" and then a few weeks later: Guys you won't believe this, I got scammed.

There was an entire thing surrounding a company (companies?) selling dolls in the tone oriental. People were using that name because that's what it's literally named, and other people got upset and started an entire discourse about it. Yeah, only that it was an Asian company that had named that tone, they had been made aware of some Western collectors being upset about it, and really didn't care. There are several instances of Asian sellers and companies from Asia using the terms oriental.

The discourse about one Chinese doll company who made a statement on their Eng twitter about supporting the CCP in attacking Hong Kong. People were rightfully upset at the company, which had previously been criticized in the Western hobby sphere for Nazi-themed dolls. Yeah, so people started defending the company, claiming that the only did it to not get hurt by the CCP. Except no other company did something that stupid. It took several Chinese hobbyists from China coming over and making it pretty clear that that company has a real bad reputation in the Chinese hobby to begin with, and to stop defending them especially for the HK thing because that was their choice.

The hobby is actually incredibly open for cultural exchanges, and appreciation. But every once in a while there are people who start bitching about cultural appropriation, and then everyone has to tell them to shut up because people love their dolls and just think it looks neat and want to share.

On the topic of cultural appropriation. Some times the people who bitch about it mess up and attack people of that culture. One such person made a red doll, put it in a qipao for Lunar New year some years ago, saying she's a dragon. Yeah, turns out the artist is Chinese, and the people angry about "White people take a red doll, put it in a qipao calling it a dragon are fucking racist cultural appropriators." Also, once that came out, even before that, a bunch of people once again came in and made fun of these people, especially those that culturally celebrate Lunar new year.

On the same wave though, lol, that artist who made the doll is infamous for her completely batshit doll pre-order, and then her trying to hide that she took the money of a bunch of people and ran. It's even a doll that a lot of doll ooak artist youtubers worked with. The entire story is fucking wild, beyond her trying to blame the company (one person?) who'd produce them, and then pretending it was some flaw with the system they used to let people order.

"If you use runes, I'm gonna view you as a white Supremacist until you prove otherwise." Scandinavians and even Scandinavian poc people told them to shut up (there were actually good arguments about how offensive that statement was, but it was a good dress down), and then clearly not Scandinavian nor Scandi poc decided to double down. Last I saw there was still a stalemate between the Scandi's, and people who're sensible, and the people who just wanna be racist about Nordic runes and call them all white supremacist and attacking Scandi poc.

Sex dolls aren't BJDs...

People are also bitching about "child coded" dolls being put in naughty stuff. The problem is that these dolls often are bobbleheaded anime looking mofos. Even in the cases where you have a child doll: It's still not child porn. It's a hunk of plastic, calm down.

Some doll companies, like VOLKS have raffles/lotteries to have a change to buy the doll. You heard that right, just to be able to buy it. There has been tons of discourse about how unfair it is that US people get to enter twice. Or how people who don't even want the dolls just the raffles.

Scalpers. Nuff said.

People who can't budget, and constantly make that everyone else's problem when they buy a new doll they can't afford and then start panicking.

Customs. By God the customs bitching.

Paypal friends&family. For the love of Christ, stop buying things from random people with F&F especially when you don't know them, or if they're a confirmed fucking scammer.

There's literally a guy who's doll at first glance have some of the best diversity and rep, but the guy is an absolute asshole, and part of the hobby don't really know how to handle it. Small list: Told a disabled person who got frustrated when they were completely unable to assemble it that his dolls aren't made for them. Constantly bans people from buying from him for the dumbest reasons, like 1) Guy asking how shipping would be handled during 2020. 2) Person who got a faulty product, and asked what to do with it.* 3) Assuming a buyer was another already banned person, when it was made clear they weren't he still kept the ban. 4) Basically anyone who critiques his dolls. *He claims "wabi sabi", even though some of the product issues are way beyond any wabi sabi aesthetic. He also calls his "haters" the "entitled" and once made a comic about "eradicating the entitled" and had a doll in a striking uniform salute with a flat hand. Yeah so a Jewish person mentioned how the wording and pic combined gave bad Nazi'esque image and that he should avoid it. He banned the Jewish person. (The Jewish person was very respectful about it, and explained why phrasing things like "eradicating the entitled" and some other stuff was not a good combination.)

I remember back in the 00s seeing endless wank over people's porny photoshoots with their multiple BJDs that were styled as a visual kei group.

Also everyone's favorite perpetual wank topic: "OMG, how do you have 5? That's my rent for months!"

To this day, I see the acronym "BJD" and think "Time for popcorn!" even though I rarely see the wank anymore.

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guardian5tiger3 · 11 months

Text

What do you need to know/what's hidden from you

Pick a group tarot reading +channeling

1. 2. 3.

Group 1

Seems like you guys are trying to maintain or gain balance while dealing with some type of conflict. Either of these could be internal or in your outer world. Some of you guys are being made to feel less than because of this. I want to stress I say less than as in you're better than you think and or feel that you are. If you're waiting for someone else to help you it's looking like the best person is you. Other energies could try but they aren't that powerful , at least I mean the ones that would or could in your situation or you hope to do that are not as powerful as you are in regards to whatever you hope for them to do in your situation in terms of helping. Maybe you want other people to defend you or just have your back. You're more powerful to be standing alone and you might as well stand even if you are alone in a situation like this. You all definitely have more potential than you think and feel like you do and I'm seeing this being especially, but not necessarily, in the money department. Seems like they want you to consider just shooting your shot at things. Try selling something or doing something to get a job or a raise. Something you haven't done or possibly wouldn't have even considered doing or considered something you really could do or manage. Worst case socially it seems that people are talking about you possibly in a negative light but it does not even concern you. These all seem like small fish and they need to work together. And even together they dont really amount to anything or accomplish much in life while you are ten fold way more powerful. So it's like because of your strengths and everything you do stand out and it's hard for these people not to talk about an elephant in the room but they can only speak mostly negatively because that's who they are as people. What's hidden is that both you and the world around you are a lot better and more beautiful than you're currently perceiving.

Group 2

I'm gonna keep it so real. For better or for worse someone really wants something with you. Like this immediately came off super sexual. This person or even people holy... This energy though seems almost pushy or too confident it's almost way too intimidating or rude or something. They're actually a chaser because they want to go for things to fill some type of void within themselves. Well, it's moreso like they're running away from something and by them doing that it's like they're reaching for stuff to pull them forward. But they don't really know what they want in all aspects of themselves and I don't feel like they know you as much as they would think or claim. For some of you this is someone completely inappropriate like a boss or family friend who is an older man. Regardless this person seems like the type you want to take a step back from and get a full understanding of the entire picture that is them. Especially if youve felt like someone is feeling this kind of ways towards you this is confirming your intuition. And on the surface it does seem mostly sexual. I want to reiterate this person is actually very confused on the inside.

Group 3

It looks like you all have been very protective and or defensive more or less. You or someone else seems to just want to keep to themselves and what they have and enjoy everything they do have /have earned. You all might be missing opportunities especially socially or in work /career because of this though. You just might be being too closed off. But personally I would say it's not necessarily a bad thing to be defensive of your energy.you just might be missing out on something or some things and this may then cause stagnation. Boredom is never fun. Follow your intuition. Some of you just need to keep a better eye out. Some of you need to step out of your comfort zone and actually do more outside of your own little bubble. It's coming out that you all might end up rejecting something from the universe. Not good.this is a time to heal. Especially issues from childhood pertaining to things like abandonment and rejection if that fits ok. Also for less of you paranoia or fight or flight in some way or something ok. And if you're not safe you need to do everything you can to transition to a safe environment ok.

#pick a card reading #free tarot readings #pac reading #pac #pick a picture #pick a pile #tarot reading #pac tarot #pick a card #tarot pac #free intuitive readings #intuitive messages #channeled reading #channeled message

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ohbo-ohno · 7 months

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Congrats on 1k followers!! Your fics are amazing 🫶🏻 Can I request old Victorian mansion and seance with Johnny x reader?

1k game here

tysm for reading my stuff!!! the victorian mansion isn't exactly present here, but it's the end goal!

2.2k of Soap x Reader with an old Victorian manor & a seance (ft. scam artist reader and asshole ghost johnny. no smut!)

Your newest clients are odd. That's all you can think as you show up on their property, surveying what they claim is haunted.

Usually your clients live in just slightly run-down homes - old enough to have setting bones (or "strange sounds in the night"), some odd air circulation (cold spots), and usually on at least a bit of an incline (uneven flooring that leads to "things falling off shelves at random"). A house just old-enough to cause seemingly impossible things, but not so old that the people moving in already knew what to expect.

But this house... well, it's a bit of a different story this time. Mainly because it's not a house. It's an old RV that, quite frankly, you wouldn't even bother to try and turn on.

The couple who's hired you - Mr. and Mrs. Stewart - had told you over the phone that they planned to take the old RV on a cross-country roadtrip. Seeing it in real life, you're not sure how they ever thought that would happen even before the supposed haunting.

"Oh, fantastic!" Mrs. Stewart, whose first name you can't recall no matter how much you try, rushes up to you and away from her husband. She's middle aged - you'd guess older than forty but not quite fifty - with brown hair and gray streaks, a pair of round-rimmed glasses making her eyes look bigger than they are and a tie dye caftan. "You must be the medium, Ms...?"

You give your name with a small, hopefully non-threatening smile. Poor Mrs. Stewart looks fit to jump out of her skin at any moment, her hands twitching as she lifts them to shake your outstretched hand. She cups yours in both of hers, leaning closely to you.

"Yes, yes of course. We're so happy you agreed to a consultation! Honestly, we've just been terrified, I can't even sleep at night these days, what will all the flashing and the noise and..."

You tune her out a bit as she shakes your hand endlessly, letting your eyes run over her shoulder to her husband and your project of the night.

Mr. Stewart is at least a decade older than his missus, if not more. He's fighting a losing battle with his hairline, leaving him with one of the most insane receding hairlines you've ever seen - the man nearly has a mohawk. His khaki shorts reach his knees despite being belted nearly around the ribs, and a faded polo shirt is tucked into them.

"...and my husband doesn't believe me, you know. No, he acts like I'm insane! Hah! Can you believe that?"

When the endless rambling goes quiet for a beat, you tune back in. Years of zoning out during long winded stories from your mother have given you the great gift of hearing just enough of a speech to respond.

"Well, not all of us are true believers," you say with what you hope is a slightly wise tone. You're still not great at playing the character you've constructed, but you're getting better. At least, you're getting paid more.

Mr. Stewart lets out a loud bark of laughter, then descends into a fit of coughs. Mrs. Stewart quickly moves to his side, patting his back and ignoring the way he waves her off.

"True..." he coughs again. "True believers my ass. Honey, I told you this would be a scam! Look at her - you think a medium shows up to her clients in jeans?"

You fight a blush at that. You knew you should've changed - people are never as doubtful when you wear floor-length skirts, something about pants apparently makes people think you can't see ghosts.

Not the most unfair assumption. You can't see ghosts. But not because of your pants, because they aren't real.

But that's not what you're selling to this couple. So you duck your head a little, try to keep your smile soft. "I'm sorry my informality, Mr. Stewart, but I came as soon as I got your wife's call. This situation sounded... well, I'd hate to use the word dire, but..."

Mrs. Stewart gasps dramatically, right on cue. "Dire! Oh, Lewis, did you hear that? Oh, I told you something was wrong with this damn vehicle!"

"Honey, she's just trying to-"

You cut him off quickly. "I'm here to do whatever needs to be done." You wince at the terrible line, but hurry on. "If there's a lingering spirit here, I'll be more than happy to help them move on. If there's not, no harm to you."

"Harm to my wallet," Mr. Stewart grumbles, scowl only deepening when his wife whacks him on the arm.

"We'll pay whatever we need to to have a safe vehicle," Mrs. Stewart says, her tone very pointed. "Please, we just want to be able to start our trip. We've been looking forward to it for years now!"

"I understand," you nod sagely. "I do prefer to perform my initial inspections alone, so would you mind...?"

Mr. Stewart looks positively indignant, even as his wife begins to drag him away. "We are not leaving this girl alone with our property, Cheryl! She'll rob us blind!"

"Oh, Lewis, you've got to stop seeing the worst in people! You give us a call when you're ready for us to come back, alright?" She steps quickly back over to you, dropping a keyring in your palm. "Here. The damn thing doesn't start, but the doors still work properly."

You nod at Mrs. Stewart and give her as comforting a smile you can as she and her husband make their way over to the bus stop you'd stepped off at, leaving you alone in a dark and frankly creepy parking lot. You're not sure why they chose such a shady part of town to keep their property in, but as long as no one's around you're not going to complain.

It takes a bit of effort to yank the door open, the metal a bit warped, but you manage it without too much trouble and shut it securely behind you as you finally step into the vehicle.

It's.... kind of a dump.

You're glad you brought a flashlight, flicking it on and scanning over all the contents of the RV. You can see dust particles floating through the air and there are cobwebs in every piece of furniture that has a corner, each surface covered in a thick layer of dust.

You can't help but wonder how long it's been since anyone's even bothered to try and turn this thing on, and scowl a little to yourself. If it's been that long since someone was here, there's a good chance it's devoid of anything of value for you to nick.

You scoff and let your flashlight drop, making your way to the driver's seat and flopping into it with a sigh. If you can get the engine to start thig might not have been a total waste of time.

It takes a couple tries for you to even get the key in the ignition, and a couple more turns for the engine to do more than sputter loudly, but the old beast eventually rumbles to life, the lights on the dashboard and above your head brightening the car.

"Than God," you huff. It might be a bit of a pain to steal this hunk of junk, but if you can manage it... well, it would be nice to not have to shell out money for motels every couple of nights. "Full tank of gas," you hum to yourself, frowning a bit at the little gauge. For some reason that strikes you as odd.

"Where you takin' us?"

You scream at the sudden voice behind you, jumping nearly a foot out of the chair as you whirl around.

There's a man standing in the middle of the RV. Tall and young, with broad shoulders and a dark brown mohawk.

And he's transparent. Well, at least partly transparent. The soft yellow glow of the cabin gives him an odd coloration, and you can... oh God, you can see the door to the back through him.

You can't speak. You're left standing there, gaping a bit like a fish, and staring with wide-eyes.

"Well, lass?" He asks, smirk growing on his half-there lips. He takes a few steps forward, hooks his arms around the passenger and driver's chairs and leans forward into your space.

You yelp as you jerk back, landing on the dash board and brandishing your flashlight as a weapon.

"Get the fuck away from me!" You shout, heart nearly beating out of your chest.

"Och," he tilts his head, adopts a fake-hurt expression. "But aren't you the medium? Thought your job was to make contact with ghosts. C'mon then, bonnie." His grin gets... almost salacious as he leans as close as he can to you, nearly brushing noses. "Make contact."

You can't believe it. Honest to God, you think you might've died. There's simply no way you're really seeing a ghost, and there's doubly no way that that ghost is flirting with you.

He seems disappointed by your lack of response, leaning back and letting his expression fall to a more neutral expression. "Not into it then?"

You shake your head as best you can.

He sighs dramatically, like you've done him a terrible inconvenience. "Alright then. Well, if you want to take this thing, you're only taking it to one place."

You still can't quite manage words. Even as he steps to the side, throwing himself into the passenger's seat and somehow not slipping through.

"I wouldn't mind a bit of a roadtrip with you," he goes on, heedless of your shaking and overall terror. "You're not a bad view. But this piece of shite is only going one place. If you don't want to go there, you can get out now."

It takes you a minute to work up the nerve to speak. "Wh...where?"

His eyes flick to you, and he grins again. "My home - nice old house on a hill, left to me by my granny. I was on my way there when the bawbags who own this car ran me down. Didn't even stop to make sure I was alright, can you believe that?"

You shake your head, a little numb as you slip into the driver's seat. You're unintentionally facing him, and he angles his body more towards you and laces his hands between his kness.

"You take me to my home, and I'll let you go. How's that sound?"

"You can't..." you lick dry lips, work a little more moisture into your mouth. "You can't drive yourself?"

He makes an angry noise, leans back against the window and crosses his arms. His legs - intangible as they might be - are long enough to rest on either side of your feet.

"Can't touch anything anymore." You'd almost call his expression pouty, if a ghost could be such a thing. "Can do anythin' else to this thing - turn it on, play music, make it hotter than hell, but can't drive the damn thing."

The lights flicker above you as his tone gets more angered, and you suck in a quick breath.

"Alright," you breathe, hoping maybe he'll calm down and not... what? Blow up the RV? What's the worst case scenario here. "I want to leave town, you want someone to drive you out of town. I can do that."

He eyes you, a little suspicious gleam in what look like they might've been blue eyes once. "You're taking this very well. You met other ghosts before?"

You can't help the laugh that bursts out of you, wiping a hand down your face. "No. No, as a matter of fact, I didn't think ghosts were a thing until about five minutes ago."

A little smile twitches at the corners of his mouth. "Well, rough day for you then, huh?"

You giggle a little hysterically. "You could say that again. Where's your house, anyway?"

You turn to face forward, moving the chair up so you can comfortable reach the wheel as he rights himself in his seat too.

"Oh, it's a stunning thing. Old Victorian building, up on a hill like in all the best movie. Gran always said her own pa built the place, but I'm not so sure myself. Figure if I'm stuck haunting anything, it might as well be that."

"Sounds pretty," you hum, pulling the car out of the parking lot. It's not easy to drive, but you try and keep the jerky starts and stops to a minimum.

"Oh, it is, lass. We MacTavish's have been up there for centuries now, if Gran's to be believed. Might even get to see her again, if this whole ghost thing works out."

"MacTavish?"

You see him grin as he leans forward, holding out a hand. "Johnny MacTavish, ghost extraordinaire, at your service. Long as you take me where I want to go, you and I will get along just fine."

You glance over at him as you pull up to a stop sign. You introduce yourself, reaching out to grasp his hand. It doesn't.... quite work. There's something there, certainly, but it sends shivers up your spine when you try to grab it, and you feel almost like you've been doused in ice water.

He pulls you a little closer by the odd not-quite grip, grin sharpening as he nearly brushes noses with you.

"You try and trick me, lass," he rumbles, lights flickering above you. "You might just find yourself trapped in here with me."

#1k celebration #these are getting written SLOWLY but they are getting written! promise!#soap mactavish x reader #john soap mactavish x reader #soap x reader #johnny mactavish x reader #cod fanfic #bo writes

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five-rivers · 1 year

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The Soul Trade(ing Card Game) Chapter 2

As was dictated to me by the poll, I have delivered.

(AO3)

“So, uh, Batman,” said Constantine, hating everything about this, “I’ve gotta ask you something.”

“Hn,” said Batman, and Constantine understood he had the man’s whole attention, even though he didn’t look away from the screens arrayed before him. Monitor duty. Constantine was glad the Justice League Dark didn’t have to do that.

(At least, he thought they didn’t. If anyone had ever told him they did, he had promptly forgotten about it.)

“I need you to look into whoever left me this letter.” He dropped the letter on the desk next to Batman and flexed his hands. Yeah, the magic in it was sure something, but it was passive, as far as he could tell, traces picked up from being around something infinitely nastier. It was safe. Probably. It hadn’t blasted any of the people who had handled it between the desk in the Hall of Justice and the Watchtower, anyway.

Batman glanced up only briefly before taking the letter. He read it, quickly, without his posture changing at all.

“Hm,” he said, the tone of the grunt just slightly more contemplative. “Are the claims in this letter legitimate?”

“Well,” said Constantine, “let’s just say that reading it felt like…” His face twisted as he tried to find the words to describe what it had felt like. “Yeah. Even if this bloke doesn’t have everything he says he does, he has… a lot. There are traces on the letter, magically speaking.”

“What’s the effect of that?”

“God if I know,” said Constantine. “I didn’t even notice this. At least, he could go ahead and cast whatever spells on me he wants. Soul’s a lot more intimate.”

With a press of a button, the screens went dark. “You shouldn’t be up here if you’re compromised.”

“Hey, I didn’t even know about this until ten minutes ago!”

“Return to ground.” Batman stood and loomed over him. “I’ll look into who sent this letter and tell you my findings.”

That was probably the best Constantine was going to get. Honestly, he didn’t even want to be on this glorified deathtrap in the sky.

He didn’t like the feeling of getting kicked out, though.

“I’m going to need the letter back. I’ve got my own tests to run on it. Get an idea of what kind of nasty we’re dealing with. Magic stuff.”

Batman handed it back. “I’ll walk you to the Zeta Tubes.”

“What do you mean someone bought your soul?” asked Zatanna. “I thought you’d already sold it ages ago.”

“Yeah, but I guess souls can be resold. Should’ve realized that demons would try to replicate the whole banking hellscape we have here.”

“Pardon?”

“Nevermind,” said Constantine, letting himself sprawl backwards in the chair. It leaned dangerously, the weak leg bending. “I did sell it. I sold it a bunch. Got it set up so no one could really claim it without the others freaking out. Set some time limits on a few earlier ones, that worked pretty well, but, eventually, that didn’t work anymore, no one would bargain for that, and I figured my soul was pretty much a lost cause anyway…” He tucked his hands in his pockets and fingered the lid of his flask.

“Don’t you dare start drinking while I’m here.”

He hauled himself forward. “Far as I can tell, what’s written in the letter is true, as far as the owning part goes. The whole sorry bit and the let’s meet bit, I’m less clear on.”

He did have some thoughts on how to deal with it. But he wasn’t sure how well it’d work, and the guy - if it even was a guy - was a complete unknown.

He shrugged. “I was hoping for a second opinion.” And maybe a bit of… comfort. Something. It felt like the only time he saw Zatanna anymore was if the Justice Morons were poking at stuff no one sane would come close to with a ten foot pole.

(He missed her.)

(He missed when they used to be an item.)

(Which was stupid of him. But he’d never claimed not to be.)

(She wanted to keep things professional though, so. He’d try.)

Zatanna paced around the table. It was clear except for the letter, Constantine having expended much effort into cleaning it off (dumping it onto the nearest alternate flat-ish surface, the seat of a sagging armchair).

“I don’t know how much more I can tell you. There’s magic here, but it’s traces, and it’s… muddled. Do you mind?”

“Go ahead, love.” So much for being professional. Sue him. Some things just slipped out.

Zatanna nodded, evidently not even noticing. “Laever ruoy sterces,” she said, staring intensely at the letter. She shook her head. “Laever sesruc. No, no curses, at least. That’s a relief?”

“Yeah, I guess. But he doesn’t exactly need to curse me through a letter if he’s got everything he says he’s got.”

“Don’t give up just yet. Let me try a few other things. Ezylana eht snigiro fo eht lacigam secart no sight retter. Wow, huh.”

“What?”

“Well, like I said, there are all sorts of magical traces on this thing. Demon magic, which is expected, bits of yours, some of the ambient stuff the Watchtower picks up… but there’s also a lot of spirit magic.”

“You think we’re dealing with some kind of shaman? A summoner?” In addition to demons and whatever else, that was.

“Maybe,” said Zatanna. “There’s death, here, too, but I can’t tell if it’s outright death magic or necromancy.”

Constantine groaned. “The difference is academic. I’m screwed. S’pose I should be grateful or something he didn’t hit me with a compulsion to show up and grovel in front of him, felt the need to give me a heads up before he tortures me for sport or whatever necromancers do for fun.”

Zatanna made a face, but it was very telling that she didn’t deny it was a possibility.

“Just promise me you won’t go looking for this person on your own.”

“Yeah, I’ve got the Bat on it. You know him. Tall scary guy. World famous detective. About as boring as he is scary with all his rules.”

“That’s not what I meant,” said Zatanna. “You’re going to need magical backup for this. Call me. Or at least someone who knows what they’re doing.”

The opposite of what he wanted to do, really. People died often enough around him without actively dragging them into his problems, and this was a massive problem.

“Can’t make any promises.”

Because Constantine couldn’t really do anything else about the letter or its contents (besides scream inside his head and swear at himself), he decided to go about business as usual. Exorcisms, investigations, a touch of vampire stabbing, a few (disappointingly dry) ghost hunts. Normal stuff.

At least, it was normal until the demons started to run away from him. They didn’t usually do that, not even the weak ones. He did have a reputation, but not one like that. His reputation was that of a cheat and a con… and someone who got people close to him killed. None of that really put off bloodthirsty demons, who were a right pain to genuinely kill, and who often as not had some connection to old Lucy.

But they were running now, and not just the weaker ones. They weren’t even fighting him. Not getting hellfire tossed at him was nice, but demons were not nice. Ever.

So, what could he do but catch one?

He walked around the circle, double checking to make sure the scuffle with the little imp hadn’t scuffed any lines. He’d made mistakes like that before, and they were never pretty.

“So,” he said, lighting a cigarette, “what’s a demon like you running from little old me for?”

The demon, predictably, hissed at him. Constantine rolled his eyes. Typical.

“I’m going to ask you again, and if you don’t answer, things are going to get real unpleasant for you.” He pointed at those circle. “Read ‘em, if you don’t believe me.”

The demon arched itself like a cat, which was an interesting choice seeing as it wasn’t at all cat shaped.

“You were chasing us, John Constantine,” it said in a deep voice that belayed its size.

“Yeah, and that’s usually your lot’s cue to turn around and jump me. What’s different?”

The demon laughed, unpleasant and high-pitched like a teakettle coming to a boil. “What’s different? What’s different? John Constantine, you know what’s different.”

“Humor me here.”

It chuckled and started pacing around the inside of the circle. “Who owns you, John Constantine?” it asked in a silky voice. “Where is your soul, John Constantine? Not with you. Not with the First of the Fallen. Not with any of the princes of hell, or any god in its palace. Who owns you, John Constantine?”

“What, you’re saying that just because Lucy doesn’t have dibs on me when I die anymore, none of you are interested? Try the other one, it has bells on it.”

“Fool!” shouted the demon, now sounding disturbingly human. “Fool! Fool! A fool you are, but we are not, oh, no. No, no, no, we are not. What manner of thing could steal from them? What manner of thing could satisfy so many demons? What manner of thing could have such essence that it clings to you even now? Who owns you, John Constantine?”

Those were some good goddamn questions. “You’ve got a name for me, or is this you saying you don’t actually know, you’re just so freaked by the idea of it you’re shaking in your boots? Scales. Whatever.”

“Do not mock us, John Constantine,” it said, back to sounding properly demonic. “We are no fool! We know you will suffer.”

Yeah, well, that was just the natural state of the universe, wasn’t it? In any case, it didn’t look like this little punk had any idea what it was talking about. They didn’t tend to be very bright, just smart enough to parrot what they overheard from more powerful demons and dumb enough to give up information when threatened with basic binding spells.

He banished the imp back to Hell with a twist of his fingers.

So. Whoever or whatever had gotten their hands on Constantine’s soul, they were scary enough that demons didn’t want to draw its attention by getting involved with Constantine. Which was. Yeah. Not great. Story of his life.

He’d known that they’d have to be nasty, sure. They’d have to be, to get all of Constantine’s contracts. Constantine hadn’t sold his soul to just anybody. Those first three bastards especially had power. Hell, they’d cured his terminal lung cancer. Partially to avoid a war but mostly to be petty.

Admittedly, after that, he hadn’t been quite so discerning. Or careful about the wording. But he knew that so long as old Lucy had his eyes on him and a finger on his soul, no one would dare collect.

A lot of good that did, in the end.

Who would Lucifer trade with? Why would he give up the right to torture Constantine eternally post-mortem?

Constantine was getting sick of not knowing. He was tempted to just go to that meeting spot, but without more information, that would be unforgivably stupid. Constantine was not stupid. Usually.

His Justice League communicator (foisted on him by the Bat) pinged obnoxiously at the bottom of one of his pockets. He’d forgotten it was in this coat. He sorted through his pockets crossly as it pinged again. It had better be important. He found it under a crumpled bag of crisps and yanked it out with a spray of crumbs.

“What?” he said, shortly.

“Constantine,” came Batman’s deep, gravelly rumble. “I have news.”

Well, crap. “You gonna share that news this century?”

“It would be better to discuss this in-person. You do not have a secure computer.”

“Jesus,” said Constantine. He would have argued, but, technically, Batman was doing him a favor. “Fine, you paranoid maniac. Where?”

‘Where’ turned out to be a low-risk interrogation room in the Hall of Justice. Constantine was not a fan of this arrangement, but he understood it. He was compromised, or whatever, and the interrogation rooms were private and had video screens.

On the other hand, it was in America, and even Zeta Tubes couldn’t help with jetlag. And, worse, it was nonsmoking.

Batman personally escorted him to the room, and turned on the main screen with a remote control. Pictures of a pale-skinned teen with blue eyes and black hair sprung up. School pictures, mostly, but some looked like ID pictures, one was on the cover of a magazine, and another looked like an avatar in a video game.

“Do you recognize this boy?”

“One of your kids?” asked Constantine.

“Answer the question.”

“No, I don’t know him. Should I?”

“He’s the one who dropped the letter off.”

“You’re joking.”

In answer, Batman clicked the remote again, bringing up surveillance videos of the Hall of Justice’s main desk taken from various angles. The clips started off looking normal, the overly clear, expensive footage characteristic of an organization associated with Batman.

But then, static swam over them. Not enough to fully obscure the figure walking into the frame, but enough to be obvious. The boy from the pictures. He walked to the desk, had a short conversation with the receptionist during which he handed over the letter, and then left, taking the static with him.

“Well, hell,” said Constantine. It had been a while since he’d seen a demon take a form like that, but he supposed this one must have learned that he had a soft spot for kids. Or maybe this was a kid. A demon kid. He’d thought he’d taken care of all of his, but wouldn’t have been the first time he’d screwed up, and this whole situation was a collection of screw ups.

“Do you know what could cause the static?”

“Whole range of spells, but I’m gonna bet you already knew that from Zatanna.”

“Hm,” said Batman. “The name of the boy is Daniel Fenton. He is fifteen years old, and his major claim to fame is discovering that a purple-backed gorilla on loan to his local zoo was female. He also makes an occasional appearance on the leaderboards of the video game ‘Doomed,’ where he is a well known player.”

“A demon playing video games. Now I’ve seen it all.” It wasn’t so much that demons couldn’t have hobbies, he just didn’t care to learn them, if they weren’t relevant to beating the crap out of them or tricking them into taking a holy water shower. Then again, there was an outside possibility that ‘Daniel’ wasn’t a demon. “Any of this have a point?”

“Establishing facts,” said Batman. “It is possible that you had encountered him via the internet.”

“Do I look like the kind of guy who plays video games?”

Batman clicked the remote again, a map appearing on the screen, a blinking dot appearing in the middle of nowhere, US. “Daniel lives with his older sister, Jasmine, and their parents Drs. Jack and Madeline Fenton in Amity Park.”

“Amity Park?” repeated Constantine.

“Is it familiar to you?”

“I think I looked into it once. Supposed to be haunted. Veil there is maybe a little thin, but nothing on the Tower of London, or, hell, the British Museum. You wouldn’t believe what all those stolen grave goods can get up to together. Your permanently overcast city is more haunted. It’s a dead end.”

“Maybe not. The Drs. Fenton are friends with the billionaire Vladimir Masters, but primarily derive their income from their patented inventions, which include customized ‘branding’ toasters, high-efficiency toilet paper, ultra-lightweight camping gear, various treatments for radiation poisoning, and several items that have been marked classified by the Department of Homeland Security and the Department of Energy, for their use of dangerous energy sources.”

Constantine’s eyebrows went up. Mad scientists mucking about with radiation were generally not in his wheelhouse. Or even riding the same tracks, for that matter. “You think they went poking around in the occult for their ‘dangerous energy sources?’”

“Possibly,” said Batman. “In addition to their inventions, they are moderately well-known in ghost hunting communities, which explains their presence in the reportedly-haunted Amity Park. However, everything they’ve written on the subject indicates that they believe ghosts have a strictly scientific explanation. They also,” continued Batman, the corners of his mouth pulling into a slightly deeper frown, “believe that ghosts are nonsentient and nonsapient.”

“So, they have no idea what they’re talking about. Just some big brains that got sucked in by the kind of fraudsters who started the seance craze. Great. I’m sure Deadman’d love to have word with them. If they could even see him.” He rubbed his chin. “But the must’ve run into something real if their kid’s doing all this. Or if what looks like their kid’s doing all this.”

“You don’t believe Daniel Fenton is the one in the video?”

“Lemme put it this way. Odds of a random kid pulling one over on the demons I sold my soul to are about the same as you developing a sense of humor. Best case scenario, he’s just possessed, or he’s some kind of freak like Klarion.”

Batman grunted in acknowledgement. “Approximately six months ago, Jack Fenton purchased an ‘authentic demon soul contract’ from Ebay.”

Constantine opened and closed his mouth several times. “You’re joking.”

“As you are aware, I have no sense of humor.”

“Jesus Christ. Ebay?”

“The seller was a man named Eric Chambers. Zatanna investigated him earlier this week. He is, apparently, an amateur demonologist who wanted to ‘get out of the game’ and was in the process of selling off all his magical paraphernalia. He had sold several additional versions of your soul contract to another buyer in Amity Park. A known associate of Daniel Fenton named Samantha Manson. Are any of these names familiar to you?”

“Not exactly,” said Constantine. “But… Ebay?” He’d never thought his soul was anything special, but at least he’d thought it was worth enough to not be resold on Ebay. “And how did this Chambers bloke get them?”

“Apparently, the demons he’d summoned no longer wanted them, and he was under the impression that he could ‘put you under his thrall’ if he collected enough of them.”

So the guy who had his soul wasn’t even the first one to have the idea. Brilliant.

“And that’s it?”

“I could tell you Daniel Fenton’s grades and internet habits,” said Batman. “As well as those of his close friends and associates. Apart from his parents and his recent involvement with you, he is ordinary.”

“The thing with the gorilla is ordinary, then?”

“Most people have at least one outlier event in their lives. It would be of greater concern if he did not.” He paused, staring long and hard at Constantine. “What are your initial thoughts?”

“That I’m about to get screwed up the–”

“Regarding how Daniel Fenton got involved in this.”

“Like I said, it’s probably not Daniel Fenton. I’d guess… If I had to guess, I’d say that after Fenton’s dad got hold of that contract, he went and played around with it. Something like a genuine contract can be used to do a lot. It has the magical signatures of both the original demon and whatever sorry bastard signed it. If you’ve got that, you can ring up the demon.” He raised his hands, miming a scale. “Demon, inexperienced idiot teenager…” He tilted to one side. “You get the picture.”

And, yeah, wasn’t it great that he could cause people to die just by leaving his junk everywhere? He hadn’t learned anything from the dream sand.

“You believe Daniel Fenton summoned a demon that possessed him, which then proceeded to collect your soul contracts?”

“Yeah. Can you pull up a pic of the contract Jack Fenton bought?”

Batman briefly examined the remote, then flicked quickly through several slides, stopping, finally, on a very classic demonic soul contract. Constantine had signed several like that, so he had to squint at it and read through it line by line. It wasn’t like he memorized the handwriting of every demon he’d ever made a contract with. In fact, he’d memorized the handwriting of exactly zero demons. They didn’t precisely write a lot, and you either got illegible chicken scratch or equally illegible ornate gothic script.

He got to the name and swore. “That guy doesn’t have the power to go up against the First of the Fallen.” He rubbed his chin vigorously.

“It’s possible that Chambers sent a different contract to the Fentons,” said Batman, “or Daniel was… infected after receiving the other contracts.” More pictures popped up on the screens. “However, there is a problem with this theory.”

“Yeah?” asked Constantine, already scanning the contracts. The Bat didn’t like Constantine’s ideas. What else was new?

“Daniel’s behavior has had no significant changes in that six month time frame. But if we go back by just over a year, to when he was entering high school, his grades took a steep dive and several disciplinary actions were noted on his record. His close friends’ grades took similar, but smaller, hits at the same time.”

“You think he could have been possessed earlier.”

“I believe that something happened to him at that time. I am unconvinced it was possession.”

Constantine shook his head. “None of these guys are strong enough to begin with. Maybe if they were working together… Nah. None of them could work together. That’s why I picked them.” He rubbed his eyes. “Then again, I thought no one could get all my soul contracts, so who knows?”

“Are you sure possession is the only solution?”

“God, no. Hell, we could be dealing with a cabal of homo magi, or someone back from the grave who seriously hates me, that’d explain the death magic on the letter, at least, or maybe there’s a god hanging around getting their kicks poking at me. It’s just a giant blank. I’ve never heard of this kid. I’ve never heard of his family. I’ve barely heard of Vlad Masters. I’ve got nothing.”

“Hm,” said Batman. “What are you planning to do?”

“I’m guessing ignoring it forever isn’t something you’d let me do?”

“No.”

“I guess I’m gonna have to go investigate, then.”

“In that case,” said Batman, pulling a fat folder of papers out of his cape somehow, “you will need to know more about Daniel Fenton, his associates, and Amity Park.” He dropped the folder on the table with an audible thump.

“Great,” said Constantine. “Just what I wanted. Homework.”

Constantine and Zatanna zeta’d to the nearest tube near Amity Park. Batman had arranged an ‘untraceable’ rental car for them, paranoid bastard. Demons didn’t usually have the skillset required to trace license plates.

Then again, there might be more than demons involved. Even if necromancers generally had no skillset outside of necromancy.

There could be shamans, though! They were well known for their technological acumen!

Yeah, right. It was possible, but not bloody likely.

“I could teleport, you know,” he told Zatanna. “We could both teleport.”

“Into the home turf of an unknown magic user?”

Constantine rolled his eyes and knocked his head against the car window. “I’m surprised the ol’ Bat isn’t coming with us.”

“You know he is,” said Zatanna. “I’d give even odds that he’s already there, if I had any desire to gamble with you.”

“Hey! I could be good for it. I have steady work now!”

Zatanna shook her head. Constantine huffed.

“I’m going to take a nap. Might be my last one, after all.”

“John,” said Zatanna, “you’re not going to die. Don’t you think this is a little… excessive, considering all the stuff you’ve gotten out of before?”

“No one’s owned my whole soul before. Now, I really am going to go to sleep. Wake me up when we get there.”

Death.

That’s what pulled Constantine out of his dreams and into a nightmare, and from there into wakefulness. The feeling did not dissipate. Instead, it grew stronger.

He looked over at Zatanna, who was still driving. Her knuckles were white, her shoulders stiff.

“What the hell,” croaked Constantine.

“It’s been building as we get closer to Amity Park,” said Zatanna. “It doesn’t feel… actively malicious… More like a massive haunting. It’s been building slowly.”

Constantine swallowed and tried to rub sand out of his eyes. “That’s– Where are we?”

“About ten minutes out of Amity Park.”

“No. I’ve been to Amity Park. It doesn’t feel anything like this. It’s boring.”

“Well,” said Zatanna, strained, “something’s changed. At least we know where the letter picked up all that death magic.”

Constantine breathed in deeply through his nose. “Yeah, there’s enough of it here for me to feel it, God.” It was making his skin prickle. He shook himself all over. “Might as well stay awake now. Do you mind if I set my wards?”

“Knock yourself out.”

Constantine walked into the diner and looked around. It was very American. Retro. Quiet. Not entirely clean, but Constantine had been in way worse. The air smelled strongly of cinnamon, coffee, and hot chocolate. Not the kind of place he generally bartered for his soul, or away his soul, as the case might be.

An aggressive ‘No Smoking’ sign was positioned prominently next to the cheery ‘seat yourself’ sign. Constantine scowled at it. Sometimes it felt like there was nowhere to smoke anymore in the whole world.

Daniel Fenton, easily recognizable from a legion of school photos and a junior astronaut camp photo ID, was sitting alone at a booth, a cup of hot chocolate with whipped cream in front of him. He swung his legs back and forth and scribbled in a notebook. A few tables away, not nearly as sneaky as they clear-ly thought they were being, were his friends Manson and Foley.

Zatanna had entered the diner before him, of course, and Batman was most likely… somewhere. God only knew where. Constantine knew people who could turn invisible and shapeshift that weren’t as good at it as Batman.

Before coming in, Constantine had finished setting his wards. His pockets were full of all sorts of tests, charms, and apotropaics. As he stuck his hands into them, a spray bottle fit easily into his hand.

Walking to the table felt like walking to his execution. He made the comparison with confidence, because he had the relevant experience. When he stopped next to the table, Fenton looked up. His expression was confused at first, but in less than a second he lit up, clearly delighted.

Constantine also had relevant experience in spritzing demons with holy water.

Fenton flinched, but he didn’t start howling or melting. More’s the pity.

“Did you just spray me with holy water?” asked Fenton, blinking up at him with a realistic expression of befuddlement.

“Guy’s gotta know what he’s dealing with,” said Constantine.

“Well, I’m not a demon.” A slight furrow worked its way between his eyes. “Or a devil.”

“What are you, then?” asked Constantine.

Fenton shrugged. “I don’t know. An amateur demonologist? I don’t have any training in this kind of stuff, which is probably why all this happened.” He reached to the side and grabbed his hot chocolate. “Oh. You got my whipped cream with your water…”

“You don’t have any training?”

“Not in this,” stressed Fenton. “I go to school and stuff.”

And astronaut camp, assuming this really was Daniel Fenton and not something possessing or impersonating him.

“Anyway, are you going to sit down, or…?” Fenton looked him up and down.

Constantine scowled and slid into the booth. Then he threw some salt (purified) at Fenton.

“Hey,” complained Fenton, “you’re going to ruin my hot chocolate, jeez.” He picked up the mug, pulling it towards himself.

Constantine took the opportunity to grab his notebook off the table and flip through it.

“Maths?” blurted Constantine.

Fenton set the mug back on the table and leaned over to snatch the notebook back. “Like I said, I do have school. That’s why I can only hang out here on Saturdays. You did miss the last few meeting times.” He huffed. “I know this isn’t ideal, but can we work together here? I don’t actually want to own your soul.”

“Oh, yeah, amazing way of showing it, mate. I know who and what I sold my soul to, and I don’t believe you bartered with them without any training.” Or that he was human, but as long as he was invested in the facade, he probably wouldn’t eat Constantine’s face off.

“I didn’t say I didn’t have any training. Just no training in this. I don’t know exactly what you can do beyond make bad demon-related decisions, but you had weeks to do research. You’ve got to know about the ghosts.”

“Might. What about them?”

“My parents research them. Fight them, sometimes. It’s a whole thing. Demons weren’t any harder to deal with.”

“I sold my soul to archdemons.”

“Yeah, they kind of sucked, to be honest.” Fenton bit his lower lip. “Look, I know you don’t trust me. I wouldn’t trust me, but what I did to get your contracts wasn’t anything anyone couldn’t do. Most of them didn’t even want them anymore. The first batch I bought off of a random dude on Ebay. One of them paid me to take the contract, because they hated the doll you wrote it on so much. A lot of the others just wanted me to give you problems, which I think I’ve succeeded at, actually.”

Constantine had forgotten about the doll, actually. “And the archdemons? I know for a fact they’ve been looking forward to torturing me forever, so I doubt they’d just hand the contracts over in exchange for ‘giving me problems.’”

“Oh, yeah. For those guys, I just robbed them. There were also a few people I just beat up.”

“Demons aren’t people, they’re demons.”

“Sure they’re people. They’re just evil people. But they used to be angels or something, right?”

“... No,” said Constantine.

“Okay, well.” Fenton shrugged again. “They still are thinking beings, right? So, they’re people.”

Constantine honestly didn’t know where to go from that.

"Fine," he said instead. "You aren't going to tell me how you got the contracts or what you are. Is it too much to hope you'll deign to tell me why you did this?"

"I'm a teenager, why do we do anything?" Fenton sipped at his hot chocolate. "Mostly, I thought it'd be funny."

"Excuse me?"

"I thought it would be funny. I mean, Dad bought the first one, because he thought it'd help with his ghost research, but it didn't, so he let me have it. I asked Johnny about it, and he told me about your contracts, so I–"

"Who's Johnny?" interrupted Constantine. "Some demon friend of yours?"

He did have a strategy, here, sort of. Most ultra powerful magical beings had a limit to how much annoyance or disrespect they'd tolerate, even when disguising themselves. Constantine had a knack for finding those limits.

Also, just possibly, the hapless teenager act was throwing him off. It was remarkably believable.

"No, he's dead, to begin with, not–"

"Oh, so, you took advice on dealing with demons from someone who turned up dead right after telling you about me. That sounds brilliant."

"He's a ghost. He's been dead since at least the nineties, and I doubt you had anything to do with it. Johnny died in the eighties. I think.”

“A ghost told you about me?”

“Yeah. I don’t know what wizards or magicians like you can do or sense, but if you looked up anything about Amity Park at all, you should have seen there are a lot of ghosts here. It’s not just tourist trap stuff. That’s… actually one of the other things I wanted to talk to you about, if I managed to get enough of your contracts to get you to come.”

“What do you mean?”

“Well, not all ghosts are nice. I meant it when I said your demons sucked. That’s compared to the ghosts. And sometimes to the people who come to hunt the ghosts.” Fenton drummed his fingers on the table, nervous. “It’s a toss up which group causes more damage. The Guys in White are especially awful. It would be nice if the Justice League took a look into them?” His voice took on a hopeful lilt.

“You bought my soul to tip off the League about… Guys in White.”

“They’re with the government. Presumably. No one knows what they’re really called. And they chase people around screaming about lots and lots of painful experiments. Direct quotes.”

“You know the League has a tip line.”

“Tried it.” Fenton took a huge gulp of hot chocolate.

“I don’t believe you,”

“If you hang out here for very long, you and your friends will be able to see the ghosts for yourself.”

Constantine could already feel the ghosts. Or at least the pervasive, overwhelming sense of death permeating this city. He didn’t doubt that something requiring Justice League Dark attention was going on here. Beyond just whatever was going on with Fenton himself.

But his attention was taken by two other points.

One, what he didn’t believe was that Fenton did all this for only some combination of kicks and giggles and wanting Justice League attention. Contacts with ghosts or not, burglarizing archdemons wasn’t something anyone sane blew off as nothing.

Two, Fenton had said friends. He’d understand if he’d made Zatanna, but the plural implied that he’d spotted Batman, too.

He didn’t let himself react. “No one rips off archdemons to call in a tip. Or just for fun.”

Fenton looked guilty, a blush creeping across his cheeks. “I didn’t want to bring it up, it didn’t seem appropriate anymore. And the other thing isn’t… relevant.”

“Why don’t you let me decide what’s relevant?” asked Constantine, despite how all his senses were screaming wrong wrong wrong at him. “This is my soul we’re talking about, after all.”

“I know, I know,” said Fenton. “But you didn’t exactly…” He trailed off. “The other thing was that some of my friends thought you need an intervention. We also wanted to see your face when we… intervened. Yeah, we thought it’d look kind of like that.” Fenton pointed at him.

Constantine slapped away the hand. He was almost convinced Fenton was… Well. Not normal, but maybe not homicidal, or particularly interested in enslaving Constantine or torturing him for all time. A step up from some of the other things he’d sold his soul to in the past. Possibly.

(The whole ‘teenager’ thing was definitely an entry in the negative column, though. As well as the whole humiliation and mockery angle.)

“What else?” he demanded.

Fenton’s face twisted with embarrassment and jealousy. “You get to go up to the Watchtower, don’t you?” he asked. “You get to go to space.”

“So?”

“So, I want to go to space. I was, um. I was going to… ask you to take me up there. Just to look.”

Infiltrating the Watchtower was a much more obvious motive, but… Constantine remembered the space camp ID.

“I mean, I’m never going to get up there with my grades. Fighting demons for it seemed… feasible.” He shrugged, then started to slump. “I was going to give them back, you know. Your contracts. I didn’t want to keep them. Or your soul.” He pushed himself up. “Anyway. None of that matters, now. We've got a problem to solve.”

"What's that supposed to mean?"

"Well, as I explained in my letter, the contracts sort of… exploded."

"No, back up, what do you mean it doesn't matter?"

"Well, if this doesn't make you stop selling your soul, I don’t know what will, the Justice League knows about Amity now, I'm not going to make you take me to the Watchtower when I can't trade your soul back to you, and the funny boat sailed at about the same time my friend told me this might be permanent."

"Is this friend also dead?" drawled Constantine.

"No, he's more in the never alive category."

Which possibly explained some of the spirit magic Zatanna detected on the letter.

"He thinks it's because some of your contracts said after death instead of when you're dead, so, because there weren't any competing claims, they all came due at once. Since there were so many of them…"

"Repetition makes magic stronger, yeah, yeah," said Constantine. "I read the letter."

"I was hoping you'd have some solutions. No offense, but I don't want to own you. You're, like, an entire person."

Constantine wouldn't have been offended if Fenton hadn't prefixed his statement with no offense.

“You should have thought about that before buying up my soul.”

“I was going to give it back. No strings.”

“Except for a trip to the Watchtower.”

“If you really didn’t want to, I wouldn’t have made you,” said Fenton.

Somehow, Constantine believed him. Which was crazy. He’d have to check in with Zatanna to make sure he wasn’t being enchanted somehow. Charm person should not be a real thing magicians could do, and yet…

“Look, do you want me to swear it on the Styx or is there something else I can do to convince you I’m telling the truth?” asked Fenton. “The ghosts seem to like the Styx, anyway.” He sighed. “Tell me you have something that can fix this. I don’t know what kind of side effects there are for owning a person’s soul. It’s not like this happens all the time.”

Hell if Constantine knew. The only way he knew to get out of contracts like this was loopholes exploited before they were collected on. “I’m… going to have to do some research.”

“Well,” said Fenton, “let me give you my phone number.” He slid a piece of paper across the table. “You can call me if you figure anything out. In the meantime, if you’re staying in town long, you should look into the ghost thing. Talk to my parents, even. Maybe don’t mention all this, though.”

“Why not?”

“I love my parents, but they must have skipped out on the day they teach scientists that just because you can do something doesn’t mean you should. Anyway, I’ve got to go.” He started to shove things into a purple backpack he’d pulled into his lap from under the table.

“What? Why?” As far as Constantine was concerned, they’d only just started to scratch the surface of the problem.

“Me and my friends have tickets to a movie.” He hooked his thumb over his shoulder at Manson and Foley, who, apparently, were not trying to blend in or be subtle. “You did miss the first few meeting times.”

“Your impression?” asked Zatanna, later, sliding into the booth after Fenton and his friends were thoroughly gone.

“He’s… surprisingly believable. Claims he ‘doesn’t have any training’ in magic, though, which sounds like crap, unless his parents are much more legit than what they look like on paper.”

Zatanna crossed her arms and drummed her fingers on her elbow. “He wasn’t lying. Not that any of my spells could detect.”

Constantine huffed. “That doesn’t seem possible.”

“He doesn’t seem like he could take on archdemons, but with help from ghosts or spirits? We don’t know who’s backing him.”

“God,” said Constantine, “that’s not something I was thinking of.”

“Because you were fixated on the demon theory.”

“But if he’s being backed by someone powerful, why wouldn’t they buy up my contracts themself? That doesn’t make sense.”

“I’m not saying that his… patron, for lack of a better word, put him up to it. Just that he might be getting extra support.”

A waitress came up to them, smiling cheerily. “Hello, there, sorry for the delay. Have you decided what you’re getting?”

“The hot chocolate looked good,” said Zatanna.

“Knock yourself out,” said Constantine, standing. “I’m going to see what Fenton’s parents are like.”

“John Constantine?” repeated Jack Fenton, inquisitively. “Ha! That’s the same name that was on that fake demon contract thing I got on Ebay! What a wild coincidence, huh?”

“You could have mentioned the portal to the astral plane in your basement,” hissed Constantine into the phone. A tiny voice in the back of his head warned him that he shouldn’t take that tone with someone who owned him, but he ignored it handily.

“Would you have believed me if I told you?” asked Fenton, genuinely curious.

Constantine wouldn’t have, but it was the principle of the thing.

“Also, what did you call it? I’ve never heard anyone call it that.”

Batman’s deep voice rumbled through the communicator. “What did you learn?”

“I learned this place is a nightmare and a half. There’s a portal to the astral plane in that kid’s basement, did you know?”

“I ran into a ghost while Constantine was talking to the Fentons,” said Zatanna, leaning sideways while keeping her eyes on the road. “It was much more powerful than any other ghost I’ve ever seen.”

“That is not good news considering what I have learned about the so-called Guys in White.”

“Have you found anything?” asked Fenton. Wherever he was, his reception was crap. His voice crackled with enough static that he might as well be calling from the early nineteen-twenties.

“No,” said Constantine. It had gotten him excused from the Justice Club meetings, which meant that the failure was almost worth the headache the idea of his soul being owned by a teenager caused him.

“I didn’t find anything either.”

“Then why did you call?”

“Uh,” said Fenton. “I’m really grateful you guys got the GIW out of Amity, you know that, right? And that you guys put someone on watch here for bigger threats?”

“Yeah,” said Constantine, slowly. “Sure.” It had been mostly Batman managing that side of things, as Constantine was banned from decisions regarding Amity Park, but if Fenton was going to give Constantine credit, who was he to deny it?

“So, um. That was really great of you.”

Constantine was not liking where this was going. But, apparently, this was his life, now. Getting tips and awkwardly phrased requests from… God. The creepy necromancer brat was sort of his warlock patron.

… Curse his knowledge of Dungeons and Dragons. It was definitely a detriment to his profession as a real mage, and everything he learned about it was against his will and usually the Flash’s fault.

“What is it, Fenton?”

“Have you ever heard of the Showenhowers?”

#dc/dp #dcxdp #fic #my fic

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metukika · 2 years

Photo

SDR2 cast talent swap!!! Inspired by @/pancakemolybdenum’s version of the first game’s cast.

This was all randomized!! Here are the titles assigned to the characters!

Mahiru: Ultimate Lucky Student

Kazuichi: Ultimate Musician

Ibuki: Ultimate Princess

Hiyoko: Ultimate ???

Gundham: Ultimate Impostor

Fuyuhiko: Ultimate Breeder

Akane: Ultimate Traditional Dancer

Chiaki: Ultimate Gymnast

Hajime: Ultimate Gamer

Teruteru: Ultimate Mechanic

Sonia: Ultimate Swordswoman

(Impostor): Ultimate Team Manager

Peko: Ultimate Cook

Nekomaru: Ultimate Yakuza

Nagito: Ultimate Nurse

Mikan: Ultimate Photographer

More notes about my hcs for their backstories and stuff about each of their designs under the cut!!

I did not expect to write so much, I’m so sorry. If there are grammar mistakes or misspells there are not anymore because I’m not rereading this thing lol. Feel free to just skip to your favorite character but thank you if you read all of it anyway! Would love to hear your own takes!

Koizumi- lucky: I feel that she is more like Naegi rather than Komaeda when it comes to her luck-- as in, she’s not really aware of it, or believes in it. It’s less straight forward with her. She insists that the only reason she gets the good things she gets is because of hard work and dedication, but behind the scenes in a convoluted way-- her luck works.

For example, she’ll work hard to study on a test but forget to study one of the subjects. Her luck causes the teacher to accidentally forget to print the pages of the test about that sub-subject because of something that without the whole context doesn’t seem like a coincidence, and then Koizumi will have time to study the subject she forgot, and get a good grade.

Not a lot for me to say about her design. I gave her a kind of rich-looking school uniform. She says she’s wealthy because of her parents working hard, but the truth is that her father is a slob and had gotten a great promotion following events caused indirectly by her birth. Her birth also inspired her mother in her photography career which helped her with her publicity and gaining more money.

Koizumi doesn’t like the fact that people call her lucky, as she believes people need to work hard and she does really try her best. She came to Hope’s Peak to prove that it is not luck, but dedication that boosts one’s career.

Souda- musician: I think his upbringing would be similar to his canon one, specifically about not being respected in school and his parents’ shop not doing well, leading to money problems. His father is the owner of a shop that sells old electronics, and there Souda finds a cassette tape and records his first songs, fueled by his frustration from school, with a beautiful voice (I know I’m sorry it doesn’t sound right to give him a nice voice but it had to be done).

At the start he sings about heartache and romance and that stuff, but doesn’t tell anyone about it. One day his cassette is stolen and he gets laughed at his corny lyrics by his schoolmates. The embarrassment and even more bullying causes him to change his look to fit in and he stops writing songs, instead he makes mindless mediocre dubstep music. He still hides his earlier songs from his friends at Hope’s Peak and claims it’s the later songs that are the reason he was invited as an ultimate, even though it was his original written on a guitar songs that got him there. Most of his new classmates aren’t really fans of his later works, although they sill act polite. He’s not really a fan either though.

The mp3 device clipped to his belt is a mirror of that screw he has canonically... Not sure why I gave him half green hair. It just felt right.

Mioda- princess: If I need to go into geography my head will explode, unfortunately. Would it have been smarter to think of that before designing? Yes. But I’m not smart, so.

Most of the time she’s a slightly milder version of her canon self-- maybe without the talking of herself in the third person thing, though-- but when she needs to get professional she knows how to put on a calm smile and how to be quiet and obedient (reference to how she acts with the effects of the Despair Disease).

Out of everyone in her family, Mioda is the kindest one. Unlike her parents, she is beloved by all, as she tends to sneak out of the castle and go to the poorer parts of the kingdom to help her people. She likes to be entertained and is known for paying well to street entertainers and musicians, sometimes joining the fun. Her singing’s horrible but everyone has fun when she is around. She might not be the expected image of a princess, but her kindness is what got her to Hope’s Peak.

I kinda fused Sonia’s braids with Mioda’s cone things, and got rid of the colored stripes in her hair (rip), maybe that’s why I gave Souda extra.

Saionji- reserve course student: Since her grandmother had used to attend Hope’s Peak, and Saionji’s family from her mother’s side had all turned out successful, she had a lot of pressure put on her to become talented or at least highly outstanding like them. Her father is the only one who didn’t care how she turned out, and loved her regardless.

Because her family made her work extra hard, Saionji didn’t have time for friends and was bullied heavily. Because she failed to get a talent, she only had her dad to rely on. Her sour life effected her mood and the way she treated others. Because her family is wealthy, they had gotten her into the reserve course department at Hope’s Peak.

I don’t really know about the whole Kamukura thing. That’s up to you if she agrees to go with the Hope Cultivation Project. Maybe Saionji!Kamukura would be pleasant.

I lowered her pigtails to make her look tamer, and implemented the bows of her kimono onto her new design as well. I thought having an orange school uniform would be fun, especially with the green. I also gave her an ahoge of course.

Tanaka- impostor: As a kid, he liked to people-watch, but not to interact. He’s mostly ignored by his peers, which made him feel less human. The only times kids would interact with him would be to be mean, and the odd attention would encourage Tanaka to angrily stalk them for a little while, learning their traits and how they act. He would notice little things about people and liked to pay close attention to them (since it would make sense that he would be less of an animal guy than canon, and being an impostor would be a very human-heavy job, I think he would have some odd connection to human individuality, although not his self’s).

I think it would make most sense that his mother’s death would be what caused him to start to impersonate others, as she’s the only one by his side, even if it makes me sad... All alone, Tanaka decides to stop being himself so he can get close to the humans he finds so interesting.

He would probably be a slightly less friendly/more awkward version of whoever he is acting as. I know I could have had him impersonate anyone but I’m too lazy to think of anyone else and I thought that making him dress as Togami would be funny. Like every version of the impostor has to be Togami at some point.

As Togami, he fits into the arrogant personality well, although he’s more obnoxious and focuses more about the “I’m better than you” than the “you are worse than me” parts of him but is still more pleasant that the real one. He is not obsessed with the occult or at least doesn’t outwardly show interest in it, but he still has delusions about ruling the world-- probably with the power of blind confidence and money, this time around.

Loud, but very mysterious. If he was in the game the player would be like “Where did Byakuya get that scar from? Did he lose his mind?” But, nope. It’s just Tanaka. I think he’d still refer to himself as a boy, but he has no trouble acting as a girl, when need-be.

Kuzuryuu- breeder and Pekoyama- cook: Kuzuryuu’s family lived pretty out of the way, near a forest in a large mansion. While his parents were either too busy fighting or were focusing on his little sister and her promising grades, Kuzuryuu would venture out into the forest and befriend the animals. Even with his small physique, he wasn't ever scared of the bears or any dangerous animals. He didn’t want to seem threatening to the animals so he would wear soft clothing, even though it didn’t really change anything, and just made his crass personality all the more of a surprise to strangers. Though it’s not as bad as early canon Kuzuryuu.

One day he met an abandoned girl in the forest and his parents took her in and let her be the family’s cook. She was more of a servant than a third child, and was never legally adopted, but Kuzuryuu and his sister had tried to treat her like a friend to their best of their usually-rude abilities, although it was hard for her to accept. By working for the family, Pekoyama became the ultimate cook.

When Kuzuryuu became slightly older and was allowed to leave the house, he would dedicate his time to breeding animals and saving species in the brink of extinction. He often brought Pekoyama with him, as he liked her, but she thought she was only brought to make him food while he was busy. She can make all kinds of food but focuses more on vegetarian options as the first time Kuzuryuu had walked into the kitchen while she was there with raw meat on the counter he couldn’t stop crying. She still cooked meat from time to time for his parents, but she wants to show the world you don’t need any to make a great meal.

I could have made Pekoyama a more specific kind of cook, but again-- I’m too lazy to think about that. I wanted to giver her a different type of outfit, and found this one with like a half overall-thing clipped onto it? Probably should have searched Japanese outfits but oh well. Her braids are now braided against her head, referencing Hanamura’s braided side. I made sure to give her like a little bow thing around her neck. That’s a chef thing, right?

The cow on Kuzuryuu’s sweater is referencing the animal skull he has on his tie in the game. He has a scarf, like how Tanaka has, since I thought it wouldn’t make sense to give it to the Ultimate Impostor. But instead of mysterious, Kuzuryuu’s scarf is soft looking and has stripes like his original suit. I HAD to give him an animal sidekick so I gave him a skunk. I thought it would fit his original color scheme and the cute looking but potentially dangerous vibe would fit him. Also I made the little shaved parts on the sides of his head in the shape of claw marks.

Owari- traditional dancer: It was too late when I though of the idea of making her not Japanese (well it wasn’t really, but-- AGAIN: I’m lazy). I feel that her backstory would be similar to the original. A customer at a workplace she worked at offered her the job, and although Owari is not into feminine things, she decided to accept because the pay was good and she wanted to provide for her siblings.

She had gotten good reflexes and flexibility by evading harm in the dangerous area she had lived in, which helped her become a great dancer.

I made sure to give her her ahoge but tried making her hair more... in order? She doesn’t bother wearing her kimono tightly.

Nanami- gymnast: Since she’s like an AI and all she canonically doesn’t have a human backstory, but I guess I’ll do my best. She probably got into gymnastics from finding interest in it, maybe she liked the aesthetic. She’s flexible and prefers doing more of the exercises that use objects, like ribbons and balls. She enjoys the art of it more than the physical labor, but she’s still good at it. Even then, I think that for herself, Nanami prefers comfort over looks, so outside of shows, she wears more causal clothing.

I’m not sure if she would be the “traitor” in this au, since it would make most sense it’s the Ultimate Gamer.

Hinata- gamer: He’s sloppier than most people, and is physically unhealthy and less hygienic. But his kind nature and devotion to common sense is enough to stop others from looking down upon him. Because he looks at screens too often, his eyes are eternally tired and red rimmed, making him look very uncaring and cold (reference to Kamukura) but it’s only when he’s deep into gaming that he acts like that to the outside world as well. It’s best to not bother him while he’s in the middle of a game.

He often forgets about his own health and the need to actually interact with other people, so when he does hang out with the others in big social events, he gets a little overwhelmed and just awkwardly stands to the side.

What happens when you take one of the tamest designs in the games and gives him an ultimate that is usually assigned to people who have no fashion sense? Nothing! Nothing happens! The best I could do was put the logo of his previous school on his sweatshirt.

Is he the “traitor” in this universe? I kind of like that idea actually, because I really like the idea of gamer!Hinata and isn’t putting a character you really like as the traitor just what everyone needs in their life? I’m attached to him, now. And so I must suffer.

Hanamura- mechanic: He helps at his mother’s auto repair shop, as the constant smell of cars and strange angles she needs to work in is not very good for her already fragile health. In his free time, Hanamura used to make little gadgets that would make her day to day life easier. Despite all this, to others, he claims he works to help big companies design new cars and fixes rich people’s limousines (are there like a mechanic hierarchy? I don’t fucking know).

I have no idea how to give a mechanic a well groomed look, so I didn’t do that. Maybe it all transports into his personality, and he’s a gentleman in this one, instead of a pervert. We can only hope.

I kept his three stars to his design, and gave him a black shirt to wear under his button up kind of like his canon pants (I’m a genius).

Sonia- swordswoman: I don’t really know what to say about her... is she a foreigner? Maybe. Is she working as a bodyguard to the Ultimate Yakuza? I personally don’t think she does. She’s a well mannered girl but has more of a personality than early Pekoyama. She expresses interest in dark themes in this au as well, but maybe something different than the occult. Like torture methods or gruesome fighting styles. Maybe ninjas, because they’re Japanese and use swords? that would make sense.

I wanted to put the sword in a different part of her body, rather than her back. I gave her a braid, like Pekoyama, but put it on the side because Sonia’s hair prefers her right side for some reason.

(Impostor)- team manager: What I got from Nidai’s... being, is that team manager translates to coach? (I’m just going to call them Impostor, here, but they would probably have an actual name.)

Impostor lived with mostly absent parents and no friends. They unashamedly took comfort in food for their loneliness. Because they were very public with their poor eating habits, people had starting accusing them of encouraging others to live an unhealthy lifestyle. While this didn’t bother them at the start, it got to the point of being irritating eventually, and because of Impostor’s natural instinct to be forward, they wanted to prove them wrong.

So they signed up to work as a coach at a children’s football practice, to promote sportive activity, and found that they enjoy being a supporting leader that people looked up to. So much so that they decided to become a coach. Eventually, Impostor started coaching important teams and people stopped bothering them about their weight.

I thought giving them a track-suit would be cute, especially since in the game they wear Togami’s very fancy outfit all the time.

Nidai- yakuza: Heir to the Nidai clan, he is well respected from the members all around. The ones who aren’t close to him admire his scary stature and his great ability to give out orders and be assertive, and the ones close to him like him for his understanding personality and loyalty.

Then he should be the perfect heir, right? Problem is that he has a heart defect and will most likely pass very young. For the early part of his life, Nidai had to stay indoors being treated, and was pitied by many. Since then he decided to not let that get him down, and by acting brash he managed to get the support of others, which is what mattered most to him.

Of course I’d get the big intimidating dude to be the Ultimate Yakuza... kind of reminds me of Kuzuryuu’s earlier beta designs. And no I didn’t make him Jewish, that necklace pendant is a reference to the design he has on his canon jacket. I gave him a small handkerchief poking out of his suit’s pocket to symbolize canon Nidai’s... thing that’s sticking out of his pants.

Komaeda- nurse: Since it was probably because of canon Komaeda’s luck that he was born to a rich family, I’m gonna decide that this version of him was born to a more average family. Because of his poor health, he decided to get into nursing so his family wouldn’t need to pay too much bills if he could do some of the work himself. He mostly only treated himself at home, but with his dwindling health he had to teach himself more and more.

The more time passed, the worse he got, and the more he knew for certain that there would be a chance that he passed young. This is what fueled him into working hard as a nurse and eventually getting him the title of an ultimate. This also what caused him to latch so desperately onto the concept of hope. Hope is what kept him going even when he got worse. For the sake of not killing off Komaeda from this universe, let’s say his abilities as Ultimate Nurse is what helped him eventually achieve redemption on his health and let him live comfortably.

Mixing canon Komaeda’s crappy luck at times and canon Tsumiki’s clumsiness, we can probably expect this Komaeda to also be a klutz. That is why a part of his doctor coat is ripped. It’s also a reference to his canon weirdly fucking cut jacket. I gave him hair clips since hygiene is probably more important to this Komaeda than canon-- one of them shaped as a medical plus sign. I also turned his shirt’s design into more of a plus sign. I gave him a blood pressure pump and mask as well.

Tsumiki- photographer: As a result of her abusive living space, Tsumiki would escape from home and hide in the nearby nature often. She lived in a small town on a hill with a wonderful view. She would escape and watch the sunset/sunrise and the animals in the distance and that helped her relax. Eventually, she decided she wanted to capture that beauty and managed to get herself a camera.

After showing her parents some of the pictures, they used her to get money and that is how she started her career as photographer. She was requested to photograph many places due to her natural talent, but her favorite would be in great fields, focusing on wild animals. She decided to focus on capturing wildlife, since she found comfort in staying as still as can be and blending into the background, away from other humans. Since her parents only cared about the money, Tsumiki would photograph often and the great amount of experience is what helped her achieve title of Ultimate Photographer.

It feels a little wrong to not dress her up in pink, but it’s not a color that appears a lot in nature. She’s not as clumsy as canon Tsumiki, but hiding in bushes and such induces the amount of scratches she has. She’s also usually dirty from laying hours on the ground, which does not help her get along with her peers. I thought giving her shorter hair would be more practical.

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tobiasdrake · 3 months

Text

So, I guess we'll try harder to help people out this time around. And maybe figure out what else we can do different.

Let's start with Mira. Hey Mira! Did you know someone super wants to meet you?

It's the... the woman. The one with the hair. You know the hair! Just find a woman with hair and talk to her. And then maybe I won't die ironically.

There we go. Mission complete. What else can we do?

Then why even include it in a book on Craft!?

This book is fucking with me. I'm going to burn it. It's okay to burn things because psychedelic lemon drop will unburn them when I die.

Would this even be considered getting another blessing? We went back in time so technically, I never got a blessing. Unless the Change God exists outside of time.

Mm. That's a possibility.

I'll just make sure to ask for something different than last time. That way, I can say I changed my blessing. That should make us square.

SHIT

Speaking of gods, I was supposed to go see the Favor Tree! I completely spaced.

Please don't call them "forever naps". That gives me an ominous sense of foreboding about my Lemon Do-Over.

Anyway, gotta get to that tree. So you at the sleepover, Isa.

Hello? If someone is out there with hostile intent, I should have you know that I am very fast and my sign is good for poking eyes. I have been known to aggressively and reflexively poke people. You have been warned.

PSYCHEDELIC LEMON DROP IS THAT YOU

Did I eat you?

...

...are we... are we going out now?

Should I start calling you my lemonfriend?

OH GOD YOU ARE MY LEMONFRIEND

I AM NOT READY FOR THIS LEVEL OF COMMITMENT

I'VE NEVER EVEN HELD HANDS WITH A LEMON BEFORE

Though I did eat you. So. I guess I can't claim to be entirely naive.

Oh, and you're stalking me too. Seems awfully clingy, Lemonfriend. We've had one date. If this is how you're going to be then I might need some space.

Oh, cool. I'm half they/them on my parent's side so I know how that goes.

YOU'VE READ MY POCKET NOTES!?

Okay just because I was eating you last night, that doesn't mean it's okay to go through my stuff. I am getting all of the red flags from this conversation.

Oh fuck me, you heard my pun, didn't you?

And I was so glad that got erased from history, too. I really thought I was out of the woods on that one.

That's a good idea, honestly. Convincing them that I can loop through time will be a hard sell but not impossible. But having everyone keep an eye out for information I might want to take back with me could be a good thing.

I imagine that's how I break the loop, right? It's not like I'm on a timer. I don't think. So we just repeat these two days until my crew pulls it off or time freezes forever? That sounds simple enough.

Now I want to eat a pineapple just to test that theory.

Well, I still appreciate the help. You weird lemon drop who may or may not be going out with me now, but who I will be nice to because I fear the consequences of questioning whatever relationship we have at this time.

I feel vulnerable right now.

Okay that's obviously suspicious and-- OH RIGHT IMPORTANT PAPERS

This drawing is sacred and must be picked up on every loop, I will hear no question about it.

...

What was I doing? Oh well. Must not have been important.

#in stars and time #drake plays in stars and time

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crazysodomite · 11 months

Text

i see a ton of issues with 'creativity' in art online spaces on social media... not just the 'adoptables' community or whatever but it's REALLY bad in there. and i think i know why... man it's hard to structure my thoughts...

'originality' is actually extremely narrow in art spaces specifically on social media. people get extremely fixated on having an 'original art style' but at the same time all art is being funneled into 1 specific way of making it. and when someone DOES go outside of the norm it becomes their 'thing'. their 'brand'. read: what sells their art/gets them popular.

a few examples: so many posts on the internet complaining about hating drawing lineart, having to redo the line 100 times, etc.

lineart is immediately suggested for beginners and most art is based on lineart first, which makes some people hate art. and they end up thinking doing it any other way is 'wrong' or 'too difficult'. beginners feel like they must make their art like this. sketch > lineart > color fill > shading > detail. when in reality you really don't have to do any of this at all. your art can truly be anything and anything that you hate about creating art can just be removed from the process. am i making any sense? i think i went through this process too. i started out doing lineart and i fucking hated it. i couldn't initially realize that painting is the easiest and most fun way for me to do art. because most art advice on social media (how most people nowadays try to learn i think) is aimed at this specific way to do it.

we aren't giving advice on how to explore art and creativity but only how to make your art most appealing...

same thing with smaller stuff like not being able to do the second eye in art. you don't even HAVE to make your art symmetrical. you can obviously desire that result but i feel like some people aren't even considering the possibility. and this isn't just because people are just lacking in creativity. if your art is 'too weird' and 'not pretty' 'outside of the norm' you will get bullied and made fun of viciously. your art can only venture outside the norm if it's still appealing. and most people aren't up to taking that risk because a few horrible words about a persons art can end their desire to do it completely!!! am i making any sense. when you venture and see art outside of what's popular on social media it's like your eyes are wide open...

and then, when someone does venture out of the norm in a creative and appealing way, it suddenly becomes 'their brand' and if someone creates something remotely similar to it, it's considered 'plagiarism' and drama and harassment follows. it's MY THING to draw this in that way. you can't get inspired by it. it's MY BRAND.

so we come to the conclusion of people trying to claim ideas as their own only and try to make profit out of it. and attack anyone who threatens 'their thing'. the endless battles over adoptable markings and palettes. the 'style theft'.

the 'my artstyle is so inconsistent'. it's okay to want to feel like your art is truly your own but the reality often is that. 'i need a concrete style so people expect this one specific thing from me and will pay for it' which obviously there's no blame in people trying to make money but the way it affects artists is just horrible.

the 'artist branding' thing is really fucking bad in adoptable spaces. if you're an 'in demand' artist a lot of attention is paid to your art not because people really enjoy it but because it has trade value. and even really gorgeous designs from people are looked over and devalued because they're not a high trade value artist...

im tired of trying to make my art appealing and popular instead of what i like to do. and im also tired of people not being able to appreciate art outside of it's most appealing form and calling ANYTHING outside what appeals to them bad or boring or whatever the fuck. i can really say more but i have trouble structuring my thoughts...

Mommy needs cigarettes 🚬 i just ranted on facebook.

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bcacstuff · 9 months

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Usually agree but with Sam he has went out of his way to make it look like he's had a thing with CB abd showance to sell OL. Also disagree there is tons of evidence he's with women. MM is the only evidence. Hanging out with GE at track meet, easy sports interest and they were both at the sane Corp event Chicago. No pic with GiaMarie beyond pier. He's always played around on Social Media, and nothing with girlfriends only the race picture with MM. He may have squacked in the rant but that was more about being called out about traveling during Covid, and otherwise liked the gossip, speculation as people are talking, as long as they are, he gets what he wants, attention.

I don't know who or what you are disagreeing with Anon. Yes, he went out of his way to sell a show. He still does, though I think at some point he's got the word that he needed to tone down a bit in relation to his co-star. That said, if you accuse him of that, you can accuse her as well of it.

I have to say, before I came here I actually never saw it that way so much. I wasn't even aware about the shipping, and more honest, wasn't even aware of the whole 'shipping' thing of actors on a show in general. Yes, call me ignorant, but my life was filled with a lot of other interests and things and not with actors on a tv show or movie.

I have never posted here that there is a 'ton of evidence' he's with women. I've seen it on other blogs, and there are things I can agree with, there are things I can understand how people look at from another pov, not necessarily my pov but I can understand it. It actually doesn't matter much to me, I read a blogpost today about MM, I read it, and that's all there is to it for me. I do not need any 'proof' for something. I just know what I see, have my thoughts about it, that I can freely discuss with some open minded people in DM that I know I can trust, and with whom I can agree or disagree and still be friends with.

I don't feel the need to 'prove' anything to anyone. Everyone can think for themselves, and will make up their own minds. I don't care.

What I do care about is making up things, trying to fit a certain scenario. Whether it is shippers wanting him to be with CB, or they gay-sayers constantly saying he's hiding something and every women he's seen with is a immediately bombarded as a beard or being lesbian... that kind of stuff. And that also counts for the part of the fandom that claims he's been sleeping with every women that he's been seen with or was in the same city or location. I get lots of Anons all the time, putting out names, making innuendo from just a meetup at a sportsgame with GE recently f.i. I get the craziest conspiracy theories about it. It's not even funny anymore. It makes me wonder about the level of intelligence of parts of this fandom.

All the chaos in this fandom sort of made me started keeping track f things. As there is so much made up and so much chaos created just to make certain narratives sound feasible or simply to create some confusion. It's the only way to keep these narratives alive. And they're not created by him, but by this fandom. This fandom that wants to see 'hidden messages' rather than just take a pic or video or word for what it is and nothing more. This fandom that likes to make lies canon, this fandom that keeps repeating tweets from long ago out of context as sort of proof for something.

I can go on... but I rather keep going on with what I do. Show what he is really doing, or where he really is. It's not because I'm obsessed or something, I know how people like to demonize me for it that way. However, the timelines I create doesn't leave that much room for their conspiracy theories and that's what they don't like I presume. Anyway, I like to have things clear for myself and not go by all the chatter and made up theories but simply by logic.

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crazyunsexycool · 2 years

Text

The Sun ☀️, The Moon 🌙 & The Stars ✨

Chapter 6: Sunny Days

Pairing: Sam x Reader, Bucky x Fem Reader, Steve x Fem Reader, Steve x Bucky, Stucky x Fem Reader, Stucky, SamBucky, SamSteve, SamBucky x Reader, SamSteve x Reader.

Word count: 3.1k

Warnings: mentions of past physical abuse towards reader, bad parents, talk of having pups, SAM WILSON he's a warning ok, fluff, kissing, heavy petting cut short.

A/N: Here it finally is, reader's first official date with Sam. I really got stuck on this chapter but I hope you like it.!

Series masterlist

Ch. 5

“I’m sorry darling.”

“It’s ok Bucky, I get it. You have a job to do.” You say as you play with the star charm on your necklace while keeping your eyes on Jules in the waiting room of the doctor’s office.

“I’ll make it up to you once I’m back, I promise.”

“I’ll hold you to it. Please be safe.”

“I will, I’ll see you in a couple of days.” He says before hanging up the phone.

You place your phone in the back pocket of your jeans and head back inside just in time to hear your name being called.

“Well Y/N everything is looking good.” The doctor says after removing your cast and having you flex your fingers and move your wrist. “With some physical therapy you should be able to have full use. I'm going to refer you to a physical therapist and prescribe some painkillers. You can expect some swelling to occur as well as some stiffness and pain. If you don’t see any improvement in about 2 weeks please come back. Do you have any questions?”

“No, thank you Dr. Connors.”

“Alright well I’ll be right back.” He exits the room while you sit with Jules in the exam room.

“So what did Bucky say?” She asks as she eyes you curiously.

“Nothing much. He had to change our plans for Friday night because he was pulled for a mission.” You answer as you look at your newly free hand and flex your fingers.

“Oh, is it hard for you to deal with?”

“No, well I mean kind of. It’s not like we’re bonded but still I miss them.”

“Well you’re true mates so it’s to be expected. You can still create a bond without having their claim marks on you; it's just not as strong.”

“I guess, there’s just a lot of things I didn’t know and a lot of people didn’t bother to teach me once I didn’t present that I don’t know if I’ll ever catch up. I’m trying though, I’ve been reading articles online and stuff.”

“Well, you have the rest of the day off so how about we grab lunch and then we can go shopping for some essentials.” Jules smiles brightly at you.

“What would I do without you?”

“Let’s never find out.”

After getting your prescription filled and grabbing lunch Jules takes you to some of her favorite stores that sell items specifically for omegas everything from blankets and essential oils to sex toys that could help during a heat. Some of the things Jules went over were important to know and others just sounded ridiculous.

“I’m serious. Everyone thinks alphas are in charge but that’s not true. If you have a good alpha, an omega is always in charge I promise.”

“If you say so.”

“You don’t believe me?”

“Let’s just say I didn’t have good examples growing up and honestly you and Ricky are the first couple that I’ve really been friends with. I don’t have a lot to go on.” You shrug your shoulders before grabbing a blue blanket that reminded you of the color of Steve’s eyes. Jules smiled as she watched you run your hand over the blanket, feeling the softness of the material between your fingers, deciding if you should get it or not before putting it in your basket.

“Have you thought about suppressants and birth control?” That question has you stopping in the middle of the aisle.

“Suppressants and birth control? I’ve never had to worry about those things before.”

“Well it’s only something you should consider maybe for when they’re going to be away for a while. You said it yourself that missions could take days or weeks. And of course birth control until you figure out if or when you want pups. But that’s something you have to talk about with your alphas.”

“Pups?”

You hadn’t even thought of that and you really hadn’t even thought about the physical aspect of the relationship. Of course you wanted to be with them but at the same time you were worried that your lack of experience would be a turn off for them. It’s not that you’ve never slept with anyone, it's just that it had only been with one person, a beta, shortly after you moved out on your own when you turned 18.

“What the fuck am I doing dating three alphas? And not only alphas but Avengers. What if I’m not good at being their omega?”

“Hey, It’s ok. There isn’t some cookie cutter way of being an omega. If we have good alphas, which we do, they will let us live freely.” Jules tries to calm you down. “And you don’t have to worry about pups, maybe they’ll want to wait anyway. But you have to talk to them. Remember you’re the omega you’re in control. ”

“I’m in control.” You repeat to yourself.

Jules dragged you to more stores. Giving you a rundown of the best pajamas to wear before your heat and she showed you her favorite things that she used for her nest. During all of this there was a little pang of anger and hurt beating in your chest. While you now understood that omegas had a tendency to come together and help each other, all of the things Jules was talking about should have been taught to you by your mother.

After walking out of the hellhole that was your home when you were 18 you tried not to think about your family. You would like to think that your mother had been forced into that submissive role and that your father was using alpha commands to make her do the things she did but it simply wasn’t true. There had been plenty of nights where you woke up drenched in sweat and tears as the nightmares of your childhood plagued your mind. Memories in which she had willingly taken part in your torment. There was never an ounce of fear or regret when she pulled you out of bed and took you to your father for being an embarrassment to the family by not having a presentation. One of the many things they had taken from you. She would stand there and watch as your father hit you and degraded you and she would even join in sometimes. The longer you were away from the house that held nothing but pain, blood and tears the more you realized that not all alphas were the way your father was. That omegas could be just as fierce and protective over their pups, even more than any alpha. It also meant that they could be just as cruel as alphas and that was the first example you ever had.

“What’s wrong Y/N?” Jules’ soft soothing voice pulls you from your thoughts. You feel her hand on your cheek as she wipes away a tear.

“I’m sorry. It’s just most of the things you’re telling me I should already know. My mother should have been the one to talk to me about these things.” you shrug. “Emotionally it’s a lot I guess. I wish things would have been different with her at least.”

Jules hugs you, this was something else she was good at. Knowing when to either say or do something to sooth you. You wondered if you would ever be like that too.

“Why don’t we go home? I think it’s enough of omega 101 for you.”

“Ok.” And you let her lead you out of the store and back to her and Ricky’s apartment. It was a good thing since you didn’t want to be alone at the moment.

The week had passed faster than you realized. The community center was busier than ever with families running around for the different activities that had been planned. You had gone to your first physical therapy appointment and met with Steve for lunch before he had to go train recruits. Bucky had been able to call during his mission and let you know he was ok although you could hear how tired he really was. Sam had also stopped by the center, asking you out on your first proper date.

To say you were excited for the date was an understatement. Of course you had spent time with Sam, in fact you had spent more time with Sam than with Steve or Bucky but this was different. He had kept some distance the other times, he didn’t want you to feel like he was too much but in reality it wasn’t enough. This time you would make sure to get as close as possible. He didn’t give you much information about the date other than it would be outside.

By 10:00 am you’re dressed and putting on some finishing touches when you hear a knock on your door. His scent reaches you before you even open the door. There’s a smile on your face as you see Sam on the other side.

“Hi Sunshine.” He says with a smile. His scent is intoxicating, the notes of citrus coming through and reflecting the excitement of finally going on a date.

“Hi, please come in. I'm almost ready.”

“These are for you.”

Sam presents a beautiful bouquet of flowers and a gift bag. His eyes light up as you look between him and the gifts with a shocked expression.

“Sam you didn’t-”

“I wanted to so you are just going to have to get used to it.” he teases as you grab the flowers and the gift.

“I don’t know if I ever will.”

You let him in and lead him into the kitchen to put the flowers in a vase. Sam is taking in your apartment, it’s cozy and warm, a smile appears on his face again. Your scent is everywhere of course and he could stay in here forever. He turns to look back at you just as you look into the gift bag, a small gasp leaves your lips.

“Steve said you liked taking pictures when you went to the fair so I thought you could use this. Do you like it?”

“Absolutely.” You wrap your arms around his neck and kiss his cheek. In your hands you held a polaroid camera and in the bag there were some boxes of film.

“Good. Now are you ready to go?”

You put on your shoes and grab your purse and the camera.

“Yes, I am.”

You were ecstatic when Sam pulled up to the venue. It was a not too big music festival focusing on up and coming, and indie artists. With your new favorite band, that you had mentioned to him in passing, playing. Sam had a pleased smirk as he watched you all but sprint out of his car, stopping only to grab his hand and pull him along. Once you’re close enough to the entrance Sam slows down.

“Give me the camera.” he says and you pull it from your purse and hand it over. The huge festival sign hangs above you. “Ok move over a little to your left… perfect. Smile for me.” He snaps the picture, the camera buzzing as the small rectangle appears on the side.

“Two more.” You tell him as you grab the camera and take one of him, and then one together. You stand in line to get into the actual festival. Everyone around you was humming or singing and swaying along to the music that was being played through the speakers as the line moved along. Once you finally got in you took in the set up.

There were booths set up with band merch as well as other items available that took up all of the left side of the area while the right side had food vendors and tables to sit. There were a few hundred people making their way in and some even did a double take as they recognized Sam. There were people handing out flyers for the band line up. As you made your way down you saw small areas that were used by other performers. There was also an area for what you assumed was a meet and greet. The stage itself was at the back. People were rushing to get back there to get a good spot. Sam took charge as he held your hand as he made his way through the crowd, finding a great spot near the front of the stage. He had his hand at the small of your back as he guided you to stand in front of him, so that you could see better and so that he could keep you safe.

“I can’t believe this is happening.” you say over your shoulder as the lights on the stage begin to come to life.

“I’m glad you like it.”

You turn in his arms to look up at him. “Of course I do. This is amazing, thank you Sam.” you give him another kiss on the cheek as he gives you a blinding smile.

“It’s starting,” he says as the first band makes their way on stage.

The day went by in a fun filled blur. You and Sam danced, laughed, joked and sang at the top of your lungs. More pictures were taken, you bought some band merch, you had a few drinks and food. Now you found yourself on the other side of the stage where an area had been kept empty so that blankets could be spread out. You sat between Sam’s legs and rested your back against his chest. The sun was setting behind the stage as the next band started their set.

“Are you having fun?” Sam asked as he wrapped his arms around you.

“So much fun, really. Thank you for this.”

“Anything for you, baby.” He says as he buries his face in the crook of your neck. You closed your eyes as you tilted your head to the side to give Sam more access. He kissed and nipped along your shoulder and ended where he would mark you as his. The thought alone sent a shiver up your spine which didn’t go unnoticed by the alpha that was currently turning you into putty in his hands. “Does the thought of having my mark excite you sunshine?” He whispered in your ear.

“Mm-hmm.” You hum as you turn your head to look up at him. Sam kisses your jaw moving to your cheek until his lips meet yours. Your eyes flutter close as he deepens the kiss, tongues fight for dominance and hands roam in an effort to touch as much of each other as possible. When you pull back your both inhaling deeply while smiles appear on your kissed swollen lips.

“What did I do to get such a great alpha?”

Sam growls, low and deep in his chest. It sends a jolt down your spine and you squeeze your legs together when you feel slick pool between your thighs.

“We should get going, before I do something I won’t regret in front of everyone.” He whispers in your ear and you gasp at his admission. Sam gathers all of your things and holds them in one hand while he grabs your free hand with the other.

Sam kept a hand on you the entire ride back to your apartment. He held your hand or put his hand on your thigh. He would smirk when he looked over to find you already looking at him while biting your bottom lip. If this was you now you really didn’t want to know what a full blown heat was especially around the three of them.

“We’re here.” Sam’s voice makes you look up at your apartment building. A small pout on your lips as you look back at Sam. “What is it baby?”

“I don’t know, guess I’m sad today is over.”

“Me too, but you know I like to visit you at work. You’ll get sick of me real soon.”

You chuckle. “I doubt it. Especially if you keep smiling at me like that.”

“Oh really? Is that your weakness, smiles?”

“Nope, a handsome alpha with a nice smile is,” You lean in closer until you’re leaning over the center console. “Which I think you fit the description perfectly.” Your hand falls on his thigh for some leverage. Sam leans forward, his lips on yours feel like heaven. He wraps his right arm around your waist and in a swift movement he pulls you into his lap. Your arms find their way around his shoulders as you moan into the kiss. Sam’s tongue swirls around yours as his hands make their way to your ass.

He pulls you closer, causing you to grind yourself against his hardening length. The growl that escapes him as he kisses your neck spurs you on. Sam lets you take the lead as you roll your hips slowly against him but unfortunately in the confined space of the driver’s seat you move too far back and you hit the steering wheel with your ass causing the horn to go off. You both freeze in place, the mood drastically changing in just a second. Your head rests on his shoulder as you begin to laugh and then he joins you. When you pull back you’re hitting your bottom lip trying to stop yourself. Sam’s warm brown eyes sparkle even with how dark it is.

“You’re trouble.” He teases before placing one more kiss on your neck. “Come on, let’s get you inside.”

“Ok.” You steal one more quick kiss before getting off of his lap.

Sam walks you to your door and waits for you to open it. Your sweet scent wafts from the open door and he has to stop himself from going in there and claiming you.

“Thank you again, for today it was fun.”

“I’m glad you liked it, Sunshine.” He cups your cheek as you wrap your arms around his neck. Sam gives you another kiss, this time sweet and tender. “I’ll see you Monday ok, Steve and I want to have lunch with you.”

You smile, “I’d like that.” Your smile falters just a little. “Do you know when Bucky will be back?”

He shakes his head. “It’s a highly classified mission which means only those that are involved know the details. But I’m sure he’ll be back soon and you’ll get to see him then.”

“Ok, tell Steve I said hi.”

“I will, goodnight Sunshine.”

“Goodnight Sam.” He gave him a chaste kiss on his lips and slipped inside your apartment and locked it.

Ch. 7

Permanent taglist:@kunaikunari @rebekahdawkins @cjand10 @nalny5 @oliviafc15 @sturchling @angywritesstuff @seitmai @writing-for-marvel @goldylions @darkhairedmenrule @little--baby--bear @almosttoopizza @littleseasiren

Series taglist: @learning-howto-be-myselfx3 @teambarnes72 @buckyinluv @fleckeshummel @snufflet @supraveng

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kvothbloodless · 1 year

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As someone who’s followed you for a long time, and a fellow writer….do you genuinely support chatGPT? Even if it has been proven to scrape people’s writings without their consent? And the fact that its a soulless husk of what actual writing is?

So Ive done my best to avoid AI discourse, but I am bad at it. So to put it clearly.

I dont Support chatgpt specifically. Its a program made by a corporation because they can make a profit from it, and curtail its capabilities in line with their goals. I use it sometimes because its fun ans convenient, but I dont pay for it or anything. I think pretty much all legitimate concerns about AI are really just concerns about corporate ethics, at which point the AI specifically becomes irrelevant

I also dont really think the situation in general is one where "support" is the right word to use; its like asking if I support cameras.

I want to be clear im not trying to be vague though; i think in general AI is pretty cool, and that 99% of the arguments against it are factually incorrect, based on inconsistent or bad moral frameworks, or both. Im not going to get into all the reasons AIs are cool, since I dont feel up to doing a Big AI Post, but I do want to gesture vahuely in the direction of how much more accessible this makes artistic creation and experimentation, and all the insanely fun things people can use AI for. However, i do want to address the common arguments against it, especially since it feels like a lot of people are just misinformed and falling into the very easy tumblr trap.

1. Scraping fics without consent: if you post something on a public site for the public to read, and someone downloads it to read it, its not stealing. Tumblr is generally pretty firmly against strict copywrite laws, so its a bit weird that so many people are Very concerned about AIs "stealing" their work in a way thats even less direct than fanfiction. Like, "your writing is so in character" and "wow youre really good at imitating the authors writing style" are common compliments on fics.

To be clear, there are absolutely ways of interacting with free public content thats bad (like reposting). But AIs arent frankensteining stuff together, or copy pasting anything; they literally could not do that. The training/model files are so insanely tiny compared to the amount of training data that it would be impossible for them to be storing that sort of thing. An AI learning from your writing isnt really any different than a human reading your writing, going "oh I like that" subconsciously, and using that to inform their future writing.

Whats that quote about "to get better at writing, read more"? If you believe that statememt is accurate, then Im a bit confused how youd be upset about an AI "reading" your writing and learning from it?

All of the Actual ways this could be used badly (copying someones art style and then selling art cheaper, etc.) arent actually unique to AI (a person can also do that!), and also usually arent really a thing thats happening enough to be a problem (most people who want art from an artist enough to commission them, are going to want it to actually be done By that artist). Using AI to make an original work, or even to finish a fanfic someone else wrote, is no more theft than if you did it by yourself.

2. "Soulless Husk": im sorry im genuinely trying my best here to be gentle and respectful, but this talking point genuinely makes my blood boil a bit, so im not trying to get personal or insult anyone specifically. Claiming that art made by humans is automatically deeper, that art is all about Meaning and Struggle, comes off as extremely pretentious and just doesnt engage with the reality of art. Im having trouble articulating a good argument here, but like. Art doesnt have to be deep, it doesnt have to have a Message, and the necessity of struggling in order to learn about and create art is an unequivocable bad thing.

Many many people make art (visual, written, etc.) becuase they want to see or read something cool or because they think others will find it fun. Many many people who would like to create art do not do so because it requires talent/practice that they are not willing to put the time and effort into developing, and this is not a moral issue. As Ive said before, laziness is a virtue and self-indulgance is a goal we should aspire to. Using a tool to make the incredibly fun act of creating easier and more accessible is awesome.

Also, who gets to define what "actual art" is? Genuinely seems a bit arrogant and presumptuous to declare that something is or is not "actual art" based on your own preferences.

The posts that Really annoy me are the ones that are like "cant understand the people RPing or playing a TTRPG with AI becuz its soulless. I only ever RP with other people because the fun part is being social or collaberatively building story" or whatever. Cool. I rp and play tabletops because i like to have fun and I enjoy those activities. Im gonna be honest, i find it a bit offensive and kinda.. dumb, to act like its somehow morally superior to only enjoy oneself in a way that Builds Community or Has A Meaning. People do meaningless things because they enjoy doing them and so long as no one is being hurt, thats fine.

3. Replacing workers: This is the only argument that has Any weight, but its still a bad argument. Its absolutrly true that AI is gonna put people out of work. The fact that more people will be out of work and struggling is a bad thing. This is also what happens when literally any new technology is developed, dating all the way back to the industrial revolution (at the Very latest). Automation is almost always a massive net benefit to humanity (im aware this topic could be its own series of posts but You Know What I Mean, please dont start industrialization discourse here), and the fact that it puts people out of work isnt actually an argument against it. Lots of radio operators lost their job when telephones were invented, but that doesnt mean people should have never used the telephone and obstinately stuck with radios. When phone technology advanced, a lot of phone operators lost their jobs, but that doesnt mean people were Morally Wrong to use the new developments that made phones far more convenient.

As in all things, el problema es capitalismo; AI isnt preventing anyone from doing art, its just reducing how many people can get paid to do their art. The correct solution to automation putting people out of work is not to stop the wheel of tech development, but to change society so that one doesnt have to slave away in order to survive.

This also raises the adjacent point, which is that halting tech development like this is impossible. Once the cat is out of the bag, its not going back in. AI tech is going to develop and become more widespread and theres literally nothing you can do to stop that. If you want to be upset about that, its your perogative ig, but im gonna be excitedly waiting for the dam to break and we get an open source LLM that I can use without worrying about data privacy or corporate filters, so I can have fun and RP however much I want and finally be able to write the stuff I want to write but cant do on my own because I have adhd and chronic fatigue, and Id kinda prefer if people stopped trying to rain on my parade because they think im not having fun or creating art in the "right way".

EDIT: I did want to add one more thing! A US court ruled that you cant copywrite something created completely by an AI, and i think thats an awesome move and I hope it gets expanded a bit and spreads elsewhere. This isnt a position based on whether something produced in this way counts as "real art" or is morally bad or whatever, I just think that reducing corporate and IP grasp on anything is good, and that AI specifically is going to be most enjoyable when its free and open source.

#AI #discourse #im genuinely happy to discuss this so feel free to send more asks or reply #but im turning off reblogs because im not a fan of online discoursing

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elodieunderglass · 2 years

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I really like the idea that one of the weird lurkers of your blog (like me) just hangs around looking for inspiration to write papers about. Like I realize that's not how it probably actually went down, but 2017 to 2022 seems like a pretty reasonable lead time from reading your post to conducting the research to writing and publishing the paper.

In reference to this:

It’s amusing that the original post only got 22 notes (likes), but when I looked at it again it had 19, which I’m choosing to interpret as the authors sheepishly withdrawing their likes in order to preserve their anonymity.

I think they probably just googled the phrase “friends to lovers pathway” before using it as the title of their paper and pulled up my post, or the other alternative being that the post popped onto their timeline when they were in the early stages of manuscript prep, and it was a moment of academic serendipity. I definitely don’t think I inspired the work in any way - just the quote and title. But it’s funny to imagine being studied.

I should say that I don’t necessarily expect permission to be asked if people intend to prosper or advance their careers from my words or art. However, I do appreciate the courtesy of being told that it’s happened. So far I’ve been quoted in a published book, quoted to name an academic paper, a person is actively selling plushies and other merchandise based on a post of mine while claiming that it’s their intellectual property actually, and screenshots of my work are regularly considered hilarious enough to steal but not pay me for. (the cricket post in particular was screencapped, went viral on Twitter some years ago without reference to me, was shared around BBC journalist twitter, and hundreds of people in the media industry said things like ‘lol we should pay this person to write’ …. in the apparent ignorance of the fact that if they had asked I would probably be open to…. Being paid to write……… and all the other times my posts have broken containment to go viral on other platforms for other people, with comments about how I should be commissioned to write a book; obviously that’s a normal part of online journalism and media, and I’m not naive about it, but it’s a bit much to for these people to be enriching their platforms with screencapped content, without the OP’s knowledge let alone consent, and joking about how they should pay for it or would read a whole book about it, when they’re the only people who could actually do something about it in the nightmare media landscape.) And nobody told me about any of these examples, I always find out by trying to retrieve links to my own stuff, or by friends telling me that someone else has gone so viral with my recognisable work that it got around to them.

Anyway if you do use my stuff in your own stuff, do let me know! I’m not here to prosper, but I am here to connect, and I’m quite willing to link your paper (and write a lay summary for free), buy your book or art, make your acquaintance, promote your work, or just add it to my portfolio - because if I ever DID want to prosper from my work here, which I wouldn’t usually consider except that it is evidently peer-reviewed good-enough-for-others-to-prosper-from, all of that would be valuable and helpful for me to know.

#elodieunderglass #at gmail #I’ve always said that if I wrote a book it would be a nonfiction book called something like THE SECRET LIFE OF MOSS with a linocut cover #stacked with all the other eco-unreadables on an unwanted desk in Waterstones #next to WALKS WITH MY HAWKS and THE HIDDEN LIFE OF MOSS and BEES FROM MY HEARTHSTONE #A YEAR OF HONEY AND WALKS #THE LOST WORDS OF NATURAL WISDOM #MOSS: AN AUTOBIOGRAPHY #but you never know! I’d write a book for you if you wanted one #I’m just more of a journeyman writing to assignments and prompts than someone who wants to make up plots #and I believe my CHOSEN TRAINED career SERVES SOCIETY #far better than a novel going THE BOOK OF BONKS AND BLOSES #but fuck if someone was like #the world needs a book about walking with moss that fixes their mental health somehow #I’d be like sure. not to worry. the world does need that.#I am a workhorse who does work. I will do that work.#not the twitter marketing promotion stuff but writing is work and I do it on command.#anyway this has spiralled a bit

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rounderhouse · 6 months

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SLAMS HANDS ON TABLE. It's Time.

The Man in the White Suit series could be read as an allegory for war and how that so deeply fucks up everyone involved IN THIS ESSAY I WILL—

Part 1 of this mess of a ramble!! General Thematics! This series fuckin loves using this shit as a backdrop. Fritz Obermeyer essentially sells his soul to the Nobody entity in the trenches of war, Chiaroscuro is ENTIRELY backdropped to World War (I think?) II, throughout SCP-5353 they’re a busting a German war criminal, exposing corruption, causing riots, and trying to locate things related to WWII (also a handful of other stuff in that file can def contribute to the allegory but to save adding like two more paragraphs I don't know how much the tumblr ask system can handle) in their search for Fritz if I'm recalling properly. AND I don’t remember if it’s Whitesuit or Nobody but ONE OF THEM explicitly refers to their conflict with the other AS A WAR. THEY CALL IT A WAR.

Next up? SCP-5877, just in general. When I fiiirst read this series last year this entry had briefly confused me before I realized they’re meant to be people the Nobody entity chewed the identities of like a particularly destructive dog and then abandoned once it was done with them. HOWEVER they also really contributed to this whole reading as an allegory. They’re a large chunk of population who can’t be perceived until they turn up DEAD. Twin stillborns when there was only one child detected (nnnoot even getting into the implications behind THAT), bodies in a plane crash strapped overtop of other passengers. It’s eerie. The whole intro part of that article is incredibly unsettlingly but similarly tragic. They’re people. They are people caught in the crossfire of Nobody and Whitesuit’s little war. Their nature makes them naught but nameless and faceless statistics. Numbers on a spreadsheet. They are causality to a conflict they did not wish for. And in their deaths they are reduced to nothing but a number. Causalities. Like a ticking toll of deaths in war. A cruel price that those fighting will either seldom acknowledge, or deny. I can go further and point out they were “drafted” by an entity beyond their understanding to be a puppet. A foot soldier in it’s eldritch quest for what it claims to be a greater good. But what happens to a puppet when the strings are suddenly cut? When their “purpose” comes to curtain call? They are lost. They are scared. They are never the same.

Another point for this reading of the story is Fritz in the coda and this builds off of the last bit. He’s free from the Nobody entity but he’s,,,, out of time. Displaced. He’s a man from the god damn 1930s the narration remarks how he's probably the only man from his time STILL ALIVE. Its the fucking 2070s. Everything that man knows is GONE and CHANGED and he is scared and alone and confused and hey this sounds like what happens when people return from WAR. No longer in touch with what's happening, and ungodly levels of traumatized by what they’ve endured— never the same. Fritz, honey, please seek therapy. Actually all of them should. Please guys. Holy shit.

To harken back to the coda again there's a line that goes “There didn’t have to be a grand plan, an artful ending. Just the march of life.” There’s no glory, there’s no final fight of confrontation, at the end of the day it's just people — it’s just scared, manipulated people trying to fight for SOMETHING to give themselves meaning after tragedy stripped them of all they are.

And hell, what is Whitesuit if not an amalgam of a handful of 5877 instances that came together and wanted to fight against the horrid thing that made them the way they are. He is a literal embodiment of destruction that Nobody leaves in its wake, like a wraith or ghost. Fitting for a man dressed in white. He is an angry, mourning entity lashing out in hopes of stopping what’s happened to him (them?) from happening to more people- but in the process is just fanning flames. The retaliation sparks war. The creation of a century spanning cycle of violence and revenge.

To make a similar point to the paragraph about the SCP-5877 instances, the Maliz family too are caught in the crossfire of Nobody and Whitesuit’s fight against each other. And it's implied to occur across generations. Hester Maliz, and her grandson Tyler are the main focus. Funnily enough I remember an exchange between Hester and Nobody where he chastises her for enrolling Tyler in a Foundation program at such a young age. He calls it a brainwashing fascist boot camp. Nobody goes on to threaten Hester with how the future of the Foundation will turn it to more militarism, fewer compromises, and corruption. A machine that will cement an empire. For history repeats itself time and time again. War never changes (funny fallout line, laugh now).

And all of this is fucking rich to hear from the entity that’s been possessing people and bending them to its will and goals the whole story. For no matter how noble the entity may think its own goals, it too is a frightful machine. Whitesuit even remarks to Hester prior to her exchange with Nobody: "think about what the Foundation would be like if it had all the drive in the world and no purpose, doing things and hurting people just because that's what they'd always done. Like an automaton." Nobody too is an element of war enforcing something very few understand. For the entity is blind to this (or perhaps just uncaring), just as Whitesuit perhaps is. They are two entities caught up in a cycle of horrible violence without much acknowledgment of who they hurt and who is caught in the crossfire. Tyler Maliz tries to stop them, but his efforts to do this culminate in something perhaps cruel when he turns to try and stop Nobody and Whitesuit from ending this war through the Name Machine.

Which is something he fails in. But hell, even then it's not the true end, despite it closing the story. Nobody and Whitesuit are gone, but the effects of their actions will linger like a horrid specter over the survivors. Things will not be the same again. But life marches on, does it not? It won't be the same, but an attempt to move on and heal can be made.

This series doesn’t really end in a victory. It ends in survivors trying to pick up their own pieces.

Hey, just like war.

Jesus christ this was way longer than I thought it would be LMAO. Hi I’m Dino--Draws and I am so fucking autistic about this series. Have this 1,000+ word borderline essay/ramble about thematics and allegories.

oh sweet zombie jesus that's a lot of words

this is a really good breakdown! i admittedly can't really answer how much of the war allegory was on purpose, since The Man in the White Suit wasn't written by me alone -- but I can say that a lot of the elements you're talking about were deliberate decision. the idea was definitely that Nobody is this abstract thing that hijacks people for its own purposes, completely apathetic to whatever lives they have going on, and then throws them away when it's done, leaving a husk behind. and Whitesuit is this amalgamation of husks that have decided to Do Something About It, but is he really any better? he also doesn't give a shit about collateral damage, he's more than willing to hurt and kill people to get what he wants (Nobody, dead).

so, sure, on a grander scale the series is very much about the casualties of conflicts -- not necessarily war, but that's certainly a valid way to read it. all the faceless nobodies left behind after these two tear through their lives, just trying to pick up the pieces and form themselves back into Somebody. the coda, one of my favorite articles on the site in general, goes into this; after Whitesuit 'splodes, his constituent parts don't really feel liberated or filled with relief. his mission was never their mission. they just want to live the lives they missed out on because they got drafted into a cosmic war they never had a chance in.

i'm really glad someone enjoyed the series enough to think about it this much; it's one of my favorite things i've written. thank you for the Big Thoughts 💙

#scp #ask #writing #rounderwords #the man in the white suit

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hello-nichya-here · 7 months

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There is such a strange obession with always having to humble Michael Jackson.

He fits like the extrem case of a Tall Poppy Sydrome.

1# His brothers (Jermaine) how they say he wouldn't be Michael Jackson without the Jackson 5. Kind of dismissing his talent and wanting them to be a part of his success.

2# People who claim Joe beat talent into Michael. And is success is thanks to his abuse. If that was the case. What went wrong with the others then?

3# The constant comparsions with todays artists. Who not only benefit from the streaming era but are also way below him talent wise or impact wise. Taylor Swift, The Weeknd, Bruno Mars, Drake, Chris Brown... Them naming new King of Pops like Justin Timberlake, Justin Bieber, Ed Sheeran, Harry Styles. The comparsions can be looked as a compliment that he is looked as the standard or as an insult because they try to dismiss him and put him om the same level as these artists not respecting he is a league on his own..

#4 These stupid lists billboard or rollingstone put out ranking him ridiculously low. Like tf you mean Michael number #86 on the best singers list. Or the 20 best Halloween songs doesn't involve Thriller eventhough it's the most recognizable one.

#5 Claiming Eagles Greatest Hits was the best selling album of all time back in 2018. Eventhough it was only in the US. ( allegedly) But of course these trash tabloids had to make it look like it was the world.

#6 The stupid allegations. If they put any effort into reading would know are bs. When their smear campaign failed they just made it look like "separating art from the artist" bs.

#7 Them reporting other artist broke his record. Eventhough it isn't comparable. You can't compare Drakes shitty number ones who are mostly features in it or he features in them to Michaels number ones where he is mostly on his own and also wrote most of it. The songwriting is also something they can't believe and try to dismiss aswell. Also Drake has the benefit of the streaming era. Michael didn't. Aint nobody buying a bus tickets to drive 15 minutes downtown and purchase an album of Drake.

Their pathetic attemps really knows to bound. They would literally choke if they just admit he is the greatest.

The one about his father's abuse being the thing that "made him what he was", as well as the unfair slander against MJ for accusations that were so ridiculously they were laughed out of court are, by far, the ones that piss me off the most.

Joseph abusing his son was not the reason why Michael was the greatests, it was one of the many reasons why we lost him so soon. I'm always EXTREMELY suspicious when people try to push that kind of narrative of "abuse is not that bad and has positive consequences if you're not a crybaby", especially when it's someone in a position of power, because it just screams "I want to get away with exploiting people AND I want to be praised for it."

The lies of "Michael was a pedophile" are just the kind of stuff that breaks my heart and makes me furious. And I gotta laugh when the same people that tried to destroy MJ because of stuff they KNEW was bullshit now pretend it never happened or, like you said, use the "separate art from the artist" argument. It just proves that Michael had earned so much respect from both the public and the few decent people in the industry, AND was so fucking talented, that those idiots were eventually forced to realize that they would have made much more money celebrating him than they ever made by tearing him down

And we all know THAT is why they did it, the good old business model of "Give the public a great icon, then tear said icon to pieces in front of them." The people that are still on the hate/devalue MJ train are split between people that are too proud to admit they fucked up, and the people that built their entire lives around telling the public which popular thing is actually not that good (be it in a "I'm too good for stuff that the masses like" way or in a cancel culture type of way).

Plus, we all know Michael was not afraid to openly trash the media and even his own record label when they pissed him off enough, and you just know some rich assholes that are not used to people talking shit about them and getting away with it and still hold a grudge for it.

As for the comparisons with modern idols - it's not just things like streaming that make said comparisons not just unfair, but downright nonsensical.

The very fact that people will go "Oh, this person is the new Michael Jackson/King Of Pop" is already a contradiction. The reason Michael has the status he has is because there WASN'T a "king of pop" before him. He had people who influenced him and there were artists that were HUGE, sure, but there was no one that fit the role of "The MJ before MJ" so to speak. The closest "match" I can think of is Beatle Mania, and even then, that was a group. Even when people talk about the "most important/famous" Beatles, it's always Lennon AND McCartney.

Michael Jackson's fame as a solo artist was on the level of "People legitimately did not fucking know someone could be this famous" and to this day nobody has done it again - which is a big deal since, like you pointed out, it is a lot easier to have acess to an artist's work now.

And yet everytime one of today's artists is called "The new king/queen of pop" in some internet article it just never catches on... yet the title of said articles DON'T have to add a "(Michal Jackson)" after saying the words "King of Pop" because if you know these three little words, you know the ONE person they refer to.

Another important factor here is that all of these "new coronations" so to speak happen literally every year - to more than one artist. We are TOLD "this random music critic saying this about this artist is a big deal" but it doesn't match what we're SHOWN because, again, to reach Michael's level of fame, one would need to be literally "The only artist that matters, everyone elsa can just fight for the title of second best." If everyone is "the new MJ" then no one is, not really. At most they're just "Super popular artist" and there's nothing wrong with that.

Things like the internet and streaming have also made the term "fifteen minutes of fame" much more literal than it ever was. So sure, you easily find people that went viral - but how many of them had any real, lasting sucess? How many times did an artist do something cool that pushed to everyone all over the globe, and then just a month later they were a has-been?

And even the well-stablish artists of today, even though who started really young, don't have the same kind of long career Michael had because most artist don't start singing at the age of five, spend their entire childhood and adolescence gaining more and more fans, and then spend their adulthood as the biggest thing ever because they put out the first AND second best selling albums of all time. Michael had already been performing, and been absurdly famous, for nearly two decades when he finally released Thriller - which just got a 40th anniversary edition because even after four decades since it's debut, and 14 years since Michael letf us, he is STILL such a powerhouse that the world just had to celebrate his music once again.

Comparing that to artists that have only had one or two decades in the industry is ridiculous because of course they're gonna lose, just like their modern songs are obviously going to be front and center instead of the ones made decades ago, from an artist that is deceased and whose sales did not benefit from streaming, or even CDs, for a long time. And once again, the fact that Michael STILL has a presence on Spotify, Youtube, TikTok and literally very platform ever speaks volumes of just how solid his legacy is. Meanwhile all these singers he's being compared to are still making stuff that will one day become their legacy. It's comparing apples to oranges.

And since I mentioned the (ungodly evil thing) that is TikTok, that brings me to yet another major difference between MJ fame and modern fame: how artificial it all has become. Don't get me wrong, musical trends and popular "formulas" to make a hit have always existed, but things today are often SO calculated to have "viral qualities" (a part the is guaranteed to become popular on TikTok, never going over a specific length, everything needing either a sped up version or a slow reverb version, etc) that they might as well have been made by algorythm.

Meanwhile, Michael became the biggest singer ever because the priority when making anything was to make sure it was GOOD, no matter the style, length or topic of the song. Michael often said his approach when making records was to have no songs you can skip - compare that to artists and labels trying to make 20 seconds of a song catchy to blow up on TikTok, rest of the thing be damned, and you have yet another reason why MJ's legacy is solid, while plenty of promising new artists disappear overnight.

And, finally, we that brings us to the final difference between Michael and plenty of artists today: how he COMPLETELY altered the industry, in every way.

Michael Jackson is the reason why Superbowl performances are a thing, why music videos have all kinds of cool aesthetics and even enough plot to be considered short films instead just being an artist dancing to their own tunes on camera. He was the first black artist to ever have his music videos air on MTV. Fans passing out during his concerts was a regular thing. Plenty of artists all over the globe have him as a reference to how they should sing, dance, dress, or even just stand on stage because Michael had such presence he could stand on stage without moving for an entire minute then slowly, dramatically remove his sunglasses, and people would still be screaming their heads off.

Once again, let's look at Beatle Mania: it was a level of fame nobody had seen before, for artists that were breaking all the rules. But nowadays a group of young men playing love songs and having seemingly every teenage girl in the country following them around is nothing out of the ordinary, and while their songs are still fantastic, plenty of bands over the decades have done awesome things with rock music that are just as revolutionary, if not more.

Meanwhile, Michael is still THE reference, and his music is still the definition of "quality." If you hear his biggest hits, you can totally tell which bits modern singers were inspired by - yet if you didn't know who he was, you could wrongfully assume some of these songs are modern because they were SO ahead of their time they still sound groundbreaking today.

Seriously, there's a reason NONE of these artists that was ever compared to Michael tried to actually claim his title: saying you're as good as him is one hell of a bold claim that gives people a ton of impossibly hugh standards that you better meet, without flaw and making it look effortless, otherwise you look like the most arrogant person who has ever lived - and nobody wants to deal with that kind of pressure.

#asks #michael jackson #king of pop

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