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#it's just what people default to telling me if i tell them ive tried all their other advice and it didjt work lmao
alchemiclee · 11 months
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the best advice for how to become a good and well known and loved artist online: be lucky. nothing you do matters if you dont have luck and break out by chance 🤠
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cy-cyborg · 8 months
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I am SO close to finishing Baldur's Gate 3... I think, I've been saying that for the past 20 hours lol, but I really want to gush about Karlach! Once I've actually finished the game I'll probably make a proper post talking about her in a more structured way from a disability standpoint but I just really want to talk about her now lol.
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[ID: A gif of Karlach from Baldur's Gate 3, a tall woman with red skin, one black horn, black hair and glowing orange eyes. She is covered in scars and tattoos, her chest glows and she is dancing on the spot in front of a cluttered tent./end ID]
I did not know how much my inner child needed to see someone like her on screen. Strange thing to say about a character from a game that's intro features worms crawling into your eye in hell but its true.
I have massive burn-like scars all over my my lower body, especially my legs, and while I always (mostly) saw the amputations they came with as just a part of me, I had much more negative feelings about those scars, well into my young adulthood, but especially as a teenager. It wasn't helped by the fact that while most folks had the decency to keep their comments about my visible disability... neutral-ish, the comments about my scars ranged from "you should cover those up" to "that's discusting" and young children literally crying at the sight of them. On top of that, every time a character with scars like mine was in the media, they were either the villain, used to teach others a lesson about not being mean or to teach that chatacter a lesson about how beauty is on the inside or how to love their appearance despite thier scars (that they'll be sure to tell you they think are hideous).
But karlach isn't any of those things. She's confident and literally walks around armour that show her scars by default. No one calls her gross or tells her to cover them. Her scars are never brought up as a negative at all, at least that ive seen, they're never something that detracts from her appearance. She never tries to hide them or gets insecure about them. When you romance her, there's no comment about if you're sure you can find "someone with scars like hers" attractive. Characters in the game dont find her attractive in spite of them, they just find her attractive. Full stop. They're just, there. And what's more, the fandom, for the most part, seems to agree. I have seen so many people swooning over her, and they almost never bring the scars up. People don't care, they just think she's hot! (There will always be outliers of course but they seem few and far between in my circles at least lol).
And my God, it's SO refreshing! Don't get me wrong, it's not inherently bad to have chatacters be insecure about things like scars (Wyll has a few moments of insecurity around his, and I think it's done well) but it's so nice for it to not be the central focus for once, or even really a big at all. Especially for a woman character.
I was so convinced as a teenager that no one would find me attractive because of those scars. Scars like Karlach's. I'm older now, I have worked through it all, and any lingering insecurities I had on the subject were shut down when me and my partner got together. But 15/16 year old me desperately needed to see a chatacter like Karlach, and im so happy she exists now!
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dragonji · 1 month
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having a mome
ever since talking about [redacted postcanon events] with charlie ive been musing on what jyt and qyz would call each other and well. tonight its just making me very ill in the head a bit and I shrimply need to get it written out somewhere apologies in advance♡
So to begin. JYT would start with calling QYZ Your Highness/Qi Ying bc ascension is a comparitively new situation for him on top of preexisting social uncomfortableness making him default to referring to people by their titles or ranks whenever appropriate. And QYZ obv doesnt really care about titles so even though he knows JYT has one (General Qing Liu btw) he'd just call them by full name. JYT tries very hard to not let on how happy that makes him and only mostly succeeds [smiles peacefully].
Now (as in later postcanons as of timeline of charlies work as well as beyond) I am rather stuck on how to make their forms of address more intimate without verging into ooc-ness for either of them.... Neither of them are much for overly-sweet petnames I would think. With QYZ I dont think he sees a point in using 'random' words to refer to someone he's affectionate towards; JYT just has a deeply thin face for romance and the aforementioned social anxieties. Despite that I do think JYT would start using nicknames first- hes more liable to playfully or exaggerately use a nickname to test out how QYZ reacts where QYZ would just charge ahead with whatever name he finds fitting if/when he wants to call someone something different.
Some handful of years after theyve been acquainted and have formed their sparring routine JYT would feel safe enough to risk calling QYZ by name too (for the first instance picture end of a sparring session both peacefully laying in the dust catching their breath staring at the sky. JYT gathering themself enough to recklessly give a quick nervous "Thanks for today, Quan Yizhen !" before Bolting. He has to go wander around a forest in the mortal realm for a bit after that one to recover meanwhile QYZ is sitting at the sparring grounds like I wonder what their deal is today?? before shrugging it off. They have a conversation about it the next day where JYT cant stop fidgeting before he apologies for not asking before dropping the title and QYZ tells him it literally doesnt matter he prefers when people use his name anyways. And thats That♡). Eventually (5-15 years later maybe?) they would drop to just given names and likely keep using those for a long time.
All that said the safest option to JYT would be smth along the lines of 阿真 (A-Zhen) esp at first when he's unsure of how it'll be received. But I am Also finding it more and more captivating to maybe have JYT call him 小狼 (Xiao Lang) once in a while mainly while theyre alone if that doesnt sound too unfounded..... JYT likes wolves already and its also personal fulfillment to me as (spoilers for my furry tgcfverse) I have also made QYZ a wolf in all my furry versions😌 (Maybe when QYZ asks why JYT chose to call him that they would respond along the lines of "wolves are pretty and strong and cool and loyal just like you... even if people dont understand them well! Plus theyre cute and fluffy *pauses to run his hands through QYZ's hair* so I just thought it might fit^^" and QYZ hums a pleased note in return and they go back to napping all cuddled around each other Ok Moving On we're getting too romantic!!-)
Ahem likewise I've been considering having QYZ call JYT 涛涛 (Taotao) on occassion bc it seems cute and also more likely for QYZ to just double the syllables for a straightforward nickname where applicable. I mean having him call JYT Yongtao is already close enough to a nickname seeing as no one else does but maybe just as extra flavor here n there...... Perhaps something involving JYT's association with rabbits or dragons would be possible too/instead? Or perhaps I am simply projecting my furryisms a bit too on-the-nose there... Honestly could just have it be Tao-xiong if I wanted to keep the subtle are they comrades or yknow comrades vibe lol... in the words of my friend nie huaisang I dont know, I really dont know!!!
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br1ghtestlight · 11 months
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20 questions for fic writers
1. How many works do you have on Ao3
23
2. What’s your total word count?
109,996
3. What fandoms do you write for?
bob's burgers, inanimate insanity and there's like one steven universe fic in there. i have written for other fandoms in the past but not on that account lol (and mostly unpublished)
4. Top 5 fics by kudos
zeke running away fic, genderfluid gene fic, louise hat fic, bob mom fic, tinimmy week fic (the problem with naming all my fanfics after really long complicated song lyrics is that i simply will not actually call the fanfictions by their Actual Name. also not linking them bcuz im lazy)
5. Do you respond to comments?
i always try to respond to comments but tbh people dont comment on my work very often?? i also dont reply to comments on my old account bcuz i dont have access to it anymore
6. What’s the fic you wrote with the angstiest ending?
i dont know if ive ever written anything angsty tbh?? thats not really my favorite thing because it makes me too sad. out of my published fanfics probably the fic about bob's mom wins by default and out of my unpublished wips uhh maybe my louise and tina focused fanfic. it has a happy ending (maybe) but its a real downer at times. or maybe my tinimmy fic is bittersweet depending on how you read it
7. What’s the fic you wrote with the happiest ending?
maybe my fanfic where bob gets a garden LMAO or my genderfluid gene fic
8. Do you get hate on fics?
no!!! actually a secret about me in that my almost 10 years posting art fanfics etc online i have never gotten a single negative comment on anything ive made. i feel very lucky :)
9. Do you write smut?
never have and never will (nothing wrong with it in most contexts but im asexual and smut is extremely Not My Thing. i actually tried writing a smut fic once to challenge myself a few years ago and spent like 1000 words describing the way the candles were lit in their bedroom before i realized its simply not for me and thats fine)
10. Do you write crossovers?
no but if my hyperfixations ever gave me an opportunity to crossover maybe?? any bob's burgers character on the infinity train would be hilarious. any hfjone character would be heartbreaking
11. Have you ever had a fic stolen?
i dont remember but im gonna go with probably not
12. Have you ever had a fic translated?
nope
13. Have you ever co-written a fic before?
NO I THINK IT WOULD BE REALLY FUN but im too much of a perfectionist w/ my writing and i would be worried about dragging the other person down with me. maybe if my ocd ever gets medicated idk
14. What’s your all-time favorite ship?
it depends on my mood but right now i have been thinking abt tina and jimmy jr a lot. not even romantically their relationship is just so interesting. jimmy jr/zeke/tina is also great. marshall lee and gary.... bryce and liam??
15. What’s a WIP you want to finish but doubt you will?
i have like over 30+ wips so thats probably a lot of them FJDMDMSJSKS something i would love to finish at some point but probably never will is a fanfic about how bob and linda overcame the cycle of abuse with their own childhood memories vs how they are with their kids. maybe i could write that with somebody else and we each do like a chapter at a time (they write linda's memories and i write bob's etc)
16. What are your writing strengths?
people always tell me that im really good at capturing character's voices and personalities and making them feel in character?? i always want my stories to feel like something that could actually happen in-universe and make it make sense with the characters etc. i think part of this comes from working w/ my own ocs and thinking so hard about how different people express and communicate things and then applying that to other characters is easy. and bcuz of how my autism works i can memorize how a person or character constructs sentences and create new sentences inside my head in their voice :D i really pay attention to peoples speaking patterns & how they phrase things
17. What are your writing weaknesses?
probably how perfectionist i am about grammar and using certain words phrases punctuation etc that it takes FOREVER to get anything done. i also think im too wordy. i can turn a fifteen word sentence into a fifty word sentence easily which is great for essays but kinda annoying when you're reading a silly bobs burgers fanfic
18. Thoughts on writing dialogue in another language?
i dont mind doing it for my ocs but to my knowledge none of the bob's burgers characters speak another language as their native language?? so i cant see it coming up in anything i write
19. First fandom you wrote for?
i dont really wanna say bcuz its embarrassing and i was pretty young LMAO but it was like youtuber fanfic on wattpad (wayy before whatever youtubers you're thinking of they were never famous)
20. Favorite fic you’ve ever written?
hmm either my tinimmy week fic or my genderfluid gene fic it changes depending on the day. right now its my tinimmy week fanfic <3
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calowlmitygoddess · 1 year
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Ill fill the writing meme because i love talking about myself lmao
1. What font do you write in? Do you actually care or is that just the default setting? Standart arial, and don't care, tought i tried the comic sans trick a few times
2. If you had to give up your keyboard and write your stories exclusively by hand, could you do it? If you already write everything by hand, a) are you a wizard and b) pen or pencil? Probably not, my handwriting is terrible, actually unreadable to anyone but myself. Ive used to write on papper back in highschool when i had to write basicly everyday, now i havent touched a pen in ages.
3. What is your writing ritual and why is it cursed? No standart ritual aside from needing music, anything else distracts me. The two songs i listened the most while writing is Respite on the Spitafields by ghost and Sacred Worlds by Blind Guardian
4. What’s a word that makes you go absolutely feral? Can't think of any rn :^
5. Do you have any writing superstitions? What are they and why are they 100% true? I dont think i have any
6. What is your darkest fear about writing? That it all will be meaningless/no one will read what i do
7. What is your deepest joy about writing? Doing Something TM the whole, creation aspect
8. If you had to write an entire story without either action or dialogue, which would you choose and how would it go? No dialogue, just write a piece of someone going trought their day, ive wrote a small exercise a while back that fit this.
9. Do you believe in ghosts? This isn’t about writing I just wanna know No. Unless i hear a Noise TM then they are very real
10. Has a piece of writing ever “haunted” you? Has your own writing haunted you? What does that mean to you? All my unfinished things haunt me daily. So much promise and so far nothing real. I had to write a thing to help let go of their ghosts
11. Do you believe in the old advice to “kill your darlings?” Are you a ruthless darling assassin? What happens to the darlings you murder? Do you have a darling graveyard? Do you grieve? Only when it fits the narrative. I dont like killing characters whitout a major reason, usually thematic, otherwise it feels cheap.
12. If a genie offered you three writing wishes, what would they be? Btw if you wish for more wishes the genie turns all your current WIPs into Lorem Ipsum, I don’t make the rules. Have the skill needed to make my Big Project reality, Have it reach some form of Good greater recognition/popularity, the last one i would keep for later.
13. What is a subject matter that is incredibly difficult for you write about? What is easy? Hard topics in general, big issues, relationships in any realistic way.
Literally just characters vibing, introspection, Over the top stuff.
14. Do you lend your books to people? Are people scared to borrow books from you? Do you know exactly where all your “lost” books are and which specific friend from school you haven’t seen in twelve years still possesses them? Will you ever get them back? No one ever asked for a book to me but id have no problem doing so. Im the one people shouldnt ever lend any books because i am very careless and would likely end up dropping coffee or something accidentally on it
15. Do you write in the margins of your books? Dog-ear your pages? Read in the bath? Why or why not? Do you judge people who do these things? Can we still be friends? I dont write in margins, but i did dog eared books in the past, and i use the jacket(?) of the book to mark my pages.
16. What’s the weirdest thing you’ve ever used as a bookmark? fuckenn... i dont remember tbh, again i use the jacket.
17. Talk to me about the minutiae of your current WIP. Tell me about the lore, the history, the detail, the things that won’t make it in the text. I have a post with a bunch of lore about the dragon species, i cant find it tought. But they are mammals that lay eggs, have no gender, their society mostly resemble that of bees, they have no currency, and the watsonian reason the main character goes by gendered terms despite not having one is because she thinks the words sound nice
18. Choose a passage from your writing. Tell me about the backstory of this moment. How you came up with it, how it changed from start to end. Spicy addition: Questioner provides the passage. I dont think theres any passages that have interesting enough backstories.
19. Tell me a story about your writing journey. When did you start? Why did you start? Were there bumps along the way? Where are you now and where are you going? My dream since childhood was to write a book, ive always liked to tell stories, read and such, i would dictate stories that my mom would write down before i learnt how to do so. But then i got really into drawing and started to foucus more on that, and ended up shifting the foucus from writing text to comic making since every artist with ocs does that. I also changed foucus on projects faster than light, so i would write 2 chapters and give up the next day, or change the entire story the next week and such.
I stuck with comics as my goal for like the past 6 years, and only early this year i came to the conclusion that i really hate the comic making part of making comics, and that i like writting much better. Im very rusty+ the fact im not as avid reader as i used to, and the quality is not really good, but im having fun.
20. If a witch offered you the choice between eternal happiness with your one true love and the ability to finally finish, perfect, and publish your dearest, darlingest, most precious WIP in exactly the way you've always imagined it — which would you choose? You can’t have both sorry, life’s a bitch
Wip, finish the wip, thats all i wanted since i was 10, what even is the point of this question.
21. Could you ever quit writing? Do you ever wish you could? Why or why not? I just started writting 'seriously' so i dont want to quit just yet. Also i have a massive undeserved ego, i dont think even the most discouraging,awful negative review could make me quit doing it.
22. How organized are you with your writing? Describe to me your organization method, if it exists. What tools do you use? Notebooks? Binders? Apps? The Cloud? I have one google doc, with outline+ chapters as i write them, i used to have different docs for lore/outline/chapters but its easier this wau
23. Describe the physical environment in which you write. Be as detailed as possible. Tell me what’s around you as you work. Paint me a picture.
In the inn i stay during the week and my actual room in my house are essentially the same place, Is my room, its messy and damp but its confy enough. My table is turned to the small window and during the morning the sun hist right in my face. The table is equally messy, with cups and glasses over it, pappers stained with coffee and tea cover its surface. My one company, a small succulent that rests near the window, and a carved small owl that i need to constantly clean because its constantly molding due to the dampness.
24. How much prep work do you put into your stories? What does that look like for you? Do you enjoy this part or do you just want to get on with it? Idk what kind of prep work you would do. I just sit and write mate.
25. What is a weird, hyper-specific detail you know about one of your characters that is completely irrelevant to the story? Godamn i cant think of any rn. Most of my Extremely well developed characters are from my BIg Story, but it literally doesnt exist anywhere outside my head yet, so idk what is and isnt relevant to it. For my current wip is a little harder since the characters are like less than a year old. idk...Orick looks like a cat person, i think he would like to own a cat.
26. How do you get into your character’s head? How do you get out? Do you ever regret going in there in the first place? I go "what would a person in this situation with this background do" and try my best to guess.
27. Who is the most stressful character you’ve ever written? Why? Any character thats like a stategist or planner, because its hard to make them look smart without making it look like bullshit or predicting the future
28. Who is the most delightful character you’ve ever written? Why? Meira. Her narration came very easy to me, guilt ridden but still professional and calm, also Big Gay.
29. Where do you draw your inspiration? What do you do when the inspiration well runs dry? I was never a very original kid, im a vampire that sucks the soul out of other things to fuel my own. My current Wip main characters are based out of HK characters they resemble nothing of. Im always on the prowl for new media to steal from be inspired by
30. Talk to me about the role dreams play in your writing life. Have you ever used material from your dreams in your writing? Have you ever written in a dream? Did you remember it when you woke up?
Sort of. I've dreamed with plots before, and i usually do my best to remember, but while at the moment i wake up feeling like that was the best idea in the world, after a while when i think about it again, its just sort of nonsense
31. Write a short love letter to your readers.
Literally Thank you to anyone who ever gave me the time of day. Im still a little haunted by those i dissapointed by never fininishing stuff but the fact that yall liked enough to make me feel guilty for giving up is also good in a way <3
32. What is a line from a poem/novel/fanfic etc that you return to from time and time again? How did you find it? What does it mean to you?
'sometimes a dream is enough' - the last line from one of my favourite books. In context it drives me insane, it makes me rabid. But out of context its just neat
33. Do you practice any other art besides writing? Does that art ever tie into your writing, or is it entirely separate? Im a Drawer! also tried sculpting in the past. And YES, my current dream is to have an illustrated novel.
34. Thoughts on the Oxford comma, Go: No idea what an oxford comma is and at this point im too afraid to ask
35. What’s your favorite writing rule to smash into smithereens? POV character being the protagonist, i just found it such a neat concept. Also the protagonist needing to be a Good Moral Character.
36. They say to Write What You Know. Setting aside for a moment the fact that this is terrible advice...what do you Know? Dinossaurs, i wanna write a story about dinossaurs one day...
37. If you were to be remembered only by the words you’ve put on the page, what would future historians think of you? Gay. Also very into dragons
38. What is something about your writing process YOU think is Really Weird? If you are comfortable, please share. If you’re not comfortable, what do you think cats say about us? I dont have any Weird habits i think? I can only imagine some kind of complain about how their current food sucks.
39. What keeps you writing when you feel like giving up? Not to be dark in the funny meme but giving up would literally remove one of the things that give my life some form of meaning
40. Please share a poem with me, I need it.
idk how to write poems sorry
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crqstalite · 2 years
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also i couldn't figure out how to word it.
i. dont like koda anymore lol. i dont think i ever really did.
some analysis...ish below lol
like i doubt this is even slightly relevant to anything anymore considering i stopped writing for her like. months(?) months ago. koda was a weird almagation of everything i ever wanted to do with a shepard and her character suffered for it. she was a war hero with a crystal clean background -- a family woman who ended up with biotics in the end. she had a darkside, part of her she rarely shared. she was everything all at once, and when she couldn't be, i passed parts of her i wanted into other characters.
i originally tried passing it off as that she exhibited a lot of my own personality traits -- acting as if my own emotions weren't really a stake or issue in other people's lives. or that she didn't matter in the grand scheme of things because of her figurehead status.
and that worked. that still works for a decent story beat. she's fascinating and relatable because of it. she was my pet project and she was beloved (by me at least lol) for it.
but since i stopped writing -- i realized it was a copout. characters that came after her (not citlali, because she suffered from so many story changes even i can't remember where or who she is anymore, nor annika for the same reasons) were just. better, because i didn't feel like i was writing about a vessel for the story to flow through instead of around. brione in fact, is the only one i still feel a real desire to write about, and she was never intended to be a shepard. her story was directly about her making her own decisions and making a name for herself.
because they didn't feel like i was writing about me.
all of my first characters in any rpg are me. most of the time. (svenja/reyna/marzeyna didnt suffer from this issue for some reason). and because of that, they get the worst of me most of time. i know the self-insert/mary sue argument has been done at least ten times over since ive been old enough to grasp what it means -- but she was a self insert. a pretty big one at that lol.
writing koda as a self-insert meant i was indirectly using her as a vessel to feel like i had control over my life. she was effectively 'born' in the middle of the covid pandemic and during my sophmore year of high school. i was miserable, feeling trapped and terribly lonely. koda and mass effect in general gave me a place to get away (not healthily, though). now that im in college, she doesnt feel as much of a power fantasy to me anymore. she feels like a person. which isnt bad, but it took away a lot of exploration i felt like i "still" needed to do. the stories i "still" needed to tell didn't feel so. important anymore.
because i'd already done that exploration with myself.
its only been about 2.5 years since then. but ive grown as a person -- and i couldnt reflect those in koda. the flaws id learned to love about myself werent the same as the one id given to her. i couldnt explore them.
there was nothing left to explore. i don't know her flaws anymore, because i realize i wrote her without any real ones. she just. could. she was shepard -- because she was shepard. she was loved by most of her crew members -- because she was shepard. she didn't face conflict -- because she was shepard. she was as much a hollow shell as default shep was, just with a more distinct face and a name.
at the time, i didnt know what made some of my most favorite interpretations of shepard and their story so lovable and fascinating to me. id believed it was just the mere presence of their problems. now though, i realize its because mutuals and other authors allowed their characters to grow without being afraid it would take away from the character.
i couldnt reflect that growth because some of it, id simply never experienced. i have a better understanding of interpersonal relationships now. i can't say ive had an "awakening" or anything (thats a tad dramatic for what im trying to get across lol) -- but im a different person from then to now. two years isnt a lot, surely, but the leap in logic and reasoning from then to now is. large enough that i can recognize i and my perspective is vastly different.
theres no real conclusion to this. not a big fancy ending or some grand analysis -- i was just not great at creating characters. like real ones with real stories and real problems. everytime ive come back to redamancy over the last couple of months, i feel. off about it. not quite right. not quite proud. and i did a shit ton of work for that book when i still felt good about it. when i was still constantly writing 10k word chapters for it.
(which is a feat within itself, im struggling to write three page papers now lol)
i haven't touched it since december almost. maybe longer.
its the longest ive gone without even remotely thinking about koda.
given i suppose its growth. (most likely also that my mass effect hyperfixation died out and i didnt want to admit it. am i capable of enjoying things casually? who knows lol) learning what worked and what didn't -- but its so odd someone that basically defined my fandom presence and myself for almost a year is. really nothing but a handful of unfinished chapters and half baked ideas now.
i don't even know who koda was meant to be. what her story was supposed to represent. someone, surely. but i guess i'll never know.
i dont cringe at her. i value her as someone, maybe something that made me genuinely happy. her relationship with her sister made me happy at least -- her relationship with kaidan made me ecstatic (and arguably mirrors the same type of care and respect i have in my own relationship now, believe it or not. i believe i went and found my own kaidan lol) and her triumphs were my triumphs.
i love space. i love the cyberpunkish future it painted. im such a sucker for it.
eventually my brain juices will probably balance out enough for me to really enjoy the world of mass effect again and koda will get a chance to be revived again as someone separate from myself -- and i wont repeat the same issue with my ME4 protag.
but thats my fascinating thought for like. the next month or so until i have another lol
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the-grim-squeaker-8 · 2 years
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Would you like to tell me about your ocs
uhhhh what ocs. ive never had one of those in my life.
ok like in all honesty the last few months(?) have just been me fixating on a rotating series of indulgent throwaway characters and scenarios that feel like they change out every week but i suspect if i kept notes its actually probably like every other day. they entertain me while my interest holds, and if i don’t make Something™ out of each and every one of them, thats okay. Maybe a couple of them will eventually cycle back in and i’ll figure out something to do with them, idk.
That said I dug through the last yearish(?)’s worth of content I can remember to try and find anything reasonably interesting and/or shelf-stable:
Magicalgirlverse - one of the only things ive actually written for in a while. most of them are underdeveloped (ie. pending literally any development). I know there’s a hearts/love-themed magical girl, a flower magical girl, a sun moon stars trio, a wolf magical girl, and one whose original prompt was “godzilla”.
The problem is... I thought it would be fun to give one of them a monster boyfriend, and then I thought it would be sad if all his friends were dead or evil, so I added a second monster boyfriend, who is very angry with the first one, and then the drama between them hijacked the plot.
The magical girls will get to be the center of their own story. Eventually. I hope.
Characters I can reasonably describe in any detail so far:
Bright Angel Queen: hearts magical girl. Not quite an endless font of compassion, but she tries. Her real name is Hestia and yes she picked it.
Scythe: Monster boyfriend (sad). Used to be evil but defected out of love for Hestia. Has a very goth civiliansona (defaults to his true from in private, no i don't know what he looks like). Used to have four brothers and would literally rip his heart out of his chest to save the last of them.
Shadow: Monster boyfriend (angry). Used to be (?) evil but left because everyone he cared about was dead, abandoned him, or in Dark Glory’s case, in danger if they stayed. Would watch Scythe rip his heart out of his chest for his sake, and still spit in his face.
Dark Glory: wolf magical girl. Morally ambiguous. Solitary. Traumatized. Would die for Shadow (he would never allow it).
Princess Pixie Victory Screamer: an eight-year-old girl who wants nothing more than to be a T-rex when she grows up. Some people shorten her name to Pixie. Scythe shortens it to Screamer.
Ardanath – I waffled about whether to mention this one, both because of the subject matter and also because she’s only been around for like a week and I don’t know if she’ll stick, but by all metrics she’s the oc I’ve most recently been rotating in my mind, so.
Ardanath is a princess whose mother (a local morally ambiguous overlord) was murdered by a rival evil overlord, who then kidnapped Ardanath and made her marry him. Honestly, she wasnt supposed to be on this list; she was an npc in a solo ttrpg I played about one of her mother’s warriors (and Ardanath’s father) trying to save her and I was planning to move on from this scenario afterwards but then he failed, and DIED, and it was very upsetting, and I couldn’t just LEAVE her like that she deserves closure. And revenge.
It’s gonna be a rough next couple of years for her, but she will endure, reject her affinity for spring and fertility and instead become the avatar of autumn, death, and decay, murder a bunch of her children (i know she leaves at least one of them alive), resurrect her father as an undead thrall because he would be a loyal and reliable source of eternal servitude, get her revenge, and become an evil overlord in her own right, just like her parents always wanted her to be.
I don’t know if it would be pragmatic for her to make her husband suffer before he dies but I hope she gets to.
Wrath – this one is hard to explain because in helping a friend develop their oc I found my interpretation of the premise so compelling i stole her to make in my own image but since I stripped out all the lore and havent filled in anything new I don’t... know how she gets here.
I know she’s basically a rogue lab experiment (I don’t know who made her or why), named herself Wrath (I don’t know why she’s angry), and has some specific form of magic that erodes her sanity and sense of self if mismanaged (I don’t know what the magic actually does but it was mismanaged). One of the people who contributed to her creation is a wizard who had the same magic as her but he left the project ages ago, tbd to what extent his participation was voluntary and fully-informed, if he knows she exists and how she was treated, etc.
idk I just think it would be funny if she just randomly shows up in this guy's house, covered in blood and like 70% sane on a good day, and wants his help with this one thing and isnt interested in any deeper relationship, and this is how he finds out she exists.
They will eventually found family each other but she already has a found family and isn’t interested in being daughtered so it’s one-sided at first. She keeps disappearing for weeks or months at a time and he keeps trying to delicately ask where she goes (elsewhere) and what she’s doing (crime) and if anyone is looking out for her (other, equally dysfunctional escaped lab experiments) and whose blood is that anyway (hers, now) and she keeps getting bored with his concerns and wandering off to go kill someone. I love her.
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#lbr it kinda hurts when u show someone smth you really enjoyef#and they call it shit without even a good reason#but u arent allowed to tell them that all their recs are shitty#and also they keep misgendering you and keep bashing on gay relationships and people#and like they never seem excited to see u but u love spending time with them and thats why it hurts#when they shoot all your interests dow#idk and i didnt wanna come off as bitter so i just sat there and watched whatever they wanted#and the whoel time i was like this is rubbish#and i couldnt say that bc im polite and i have a conscience#idk i miss havibg friends who understand me#oh hod i dont know what i miss i miss not feeling so alone#but it was such a lovely evening but now im thinking back on it and like... im hurt#like i feel like they think my taste in media is bad by default but theyve never tried anythign ive recommended#so how could they know#and if they dont know then why judge me like do i seem that unreliable#it feels like everyone tells me to watch smth read smth and i do it bc im as faithful as a bloody dog#but when i say hey this is good theyre always like oh it looks shitty or i dont have the time or its all rubbish anyway#and its just#hurtful and its like they dont value me bc i share media as a love language and then they reject it and i just feel so terribe#do i really seem like i have such bad taste in books and movies and shows#really#why does it seem like i always always always listen to others but when i say smth theyre like well fuck that#i even read fics ppl send me but im literally too scared to send any back bc ive been rejected so much and i couldnt bear it#if a comfort fic was a rejection my god i would curl into a ball and die#it just hurts that they took one look at my thing and went its shitty and then switched#i literally asked them to keep an open mind and no one has so far#and i dont wanna be spiteful but im all pricked inside so im not going to watch anything they send me#i cant help it it fucking hurts#i just want someone who listens when i obsess and doesnt make it seem like in shallow for it or dumb#i hate hate that its upset me so much and i swear im never going to share anything i like with him ever again hell just fucking ruin it
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ochomachuu · 2 years
Note
DO OUR GIRL TODOMATSU PLEASE PLEASDEE
SSKDJFKS SORRY THIS IS SO LATE!!! ILL STILL DO THE REST OF EM. EVENTUALLY.
send me a character: todomatsu!
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favorite thing about them: everything
but for real i guess how complex and interesting he is?? like there are so many facets to his personality and so we get so many flavours of totty. hes a sly little bitch, hes a sweetheart, hes a nag, hes a crybaby, hes blunt and callous, hes a goofy mf with a loud ass cackle, hes an angry dude who screams a lot, etc.
like you can probably name a bunch of "contradictory" traits that he can exemplify both of, eg: honest/dishonest, driven/lazy, self-preserving/self-destructive, realist/idealistic, logical/impulsive, sociable/lonely, mean callous bitch/the sweetest baby bro. hes so entertaining to watch and also has a lot of neat tendencies ive only picked up on recently, like apologizing when he doesn't think he did anything wrong, self-destructing for the sake of others, self-destructing for the sake of screwing over others... HE CONTAINS MULTITUDES.
i think when most people think of him, they just think of his cutesy + sly shtick, but by default hes not really like that most of the time. hes just a guy. to me he feels like an actual person, and i find him extremely relatable.
i also love how a lot of his more genuine acts of kindness arent immediately obvious and he doesnt always expect something in return! he is so full of love and care but is also inarguably. bastard. sometimes when he does things from a place of love he’s not kind about it so it doesn’t register as caring, like all the times he nags his bros or tells them an unpleasant truth in a harsh way. my favourite characters are pretty much never the characters that are just nice and sweet, so todomatsu is really really perfect to me because he's a snarky little shit who is crafty and self-serving on the surface, but he also makes me wanna 🥺🥺🥺🥺🥺 once i start looking deeper into things.
like he actually has a lot of little moments where hes just. a sweetheart? his “evil” moments are very fun and memorable and what made him stand out to me at first but when i rewatch older episodes theres a lot of little things that i hadnt fully appreciated before.
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also he is just a funny guy. i love how he is “the smart, manipulative one”, but he has exactly one plan at all times and it doesnt even work out most of the time. he loses his cool extremely easily and proceeds to do impulsive shit, either bc hes panicking or bc he is fucking FUMING.
but when his plans do seem to work out its a treat to watch and i feel very proud. like good for you, you crafty little bastard.
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i also respect how practical he is and how he makes an effort to improve himself and climb the social ladder! he hasnt had much success and is still undoubtedly a loser despite his efforts but i respect how he puts himself out there to face rejection. i like to think that his advice about the mixer to oso in s2e7 came from a place of personal experience, like there was a time where he was really really excited and then completely failed, then added that situation to his mental checklist, which is why he told oso what he did. he tried to temper his expectations because of that but he ended up getting hyped up again anyways, and fell flat once again.
anyways he is cute and funny and i just think he’s neat.
least favorite thing about them:
IDK I FEEL LIKE A LOT OF HIS POSES IN GROUP OFFICIAL ART ARE A BIT BORING? like theres a lot where he's just smiling and taking a selfie. i dont think this is actually technically the majority of official art though but its enough to be a Thing.
like hes still cute but it also could be that his vibe from the actual show isn’t reflected too well? idk
(his shimamatsu art is really good to me though, idk whats different about it but a lot of it is really cute and i like it.)
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c:
favorite line scene: 
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brOTP: THE 🅱enis.
i find it so cute how totty clearly looks up to oso, and finds him reliable in a weird, shitty sort of way. also cyber!!! i feel like he relies on both choro and oso a lot as big bros but in sort of opposite directions, if that makes sense.
beni also has such a fun and varied dynamic. one second totty will be nagging oso like an annoying parent and the next they'll both be goofing off over something INCREDIBLY stupid. also they are mischievous little assholes and very cute and fun to watch.
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also i want more totoko and todomatsu interaction i want to see them be friends
random headcanon: (thanks @transtottimi​ for this one hehe) i love the idea that he buys cute drinks and desserts and stuff for the aesthetic but he actually likes black coffee bc he’s an old man on the inside
unpopular opinion: he has a shit sense of self-esteem, he doesn't love himself much, he's just coping.
also dont know that this is an unpopular opinion or just not mentioned a lot, but totty wants to be helpful, just not if it involves physical labour or anything (the pampered little princess). his whole deal is that he wants to succeed first so he can be the one to bring his brothers up with him! hes pretty often one to volunteer ideas and advice to the other five, even if nearly all of his plans fail and his advice is sometimes unwanted, to say the least. (barrage of screenshots incoming:)
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and here is him pissing off the others while he thinks he’s being helpful:
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favorite picture of them:
ITS HARD TO PICK OF FAVOURITE SO ILL JUST PUT A BUNCH:
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xocasper · 2 years
Note
BITCH OH MY GODDD I JUST READ KISS AND TELL?!?!?!!!
i dont know how i hadnt read it yet but oh my god i literally hate you so much that was the best fic ive ever read?? it got so poetic by the end wtf
my personal favorite line was "It seemed as though you had shed your exoskeletons, leaving nothing but the reality that laid beneath layers of labels and assumptions, facades and fronts." LIKE HOLY SHIT BRO YOURE SUCH A GOOD WRITER WHAT
i just love the entire ray's sister concept, and i realy really really love how you didnt make her all naive and sheltered (esp during the smut) because i love the older brother's best friend au but people always make the reader so embarrassing HAHAHA so i really applaud how you made her confident and even snarky at times. no secondhand embarrassment in this fic!
also the reader's friendship with the other guys is YES 🙌
just total chef's kiss all around, love you cas!
OKAY SEVERAL THINGS BECAUSE I COULD WRITE AN ENTIRE RANT ON THE MAKING OF THIS FIC
1. i adore these long messages. i appreciate you sm <3
2. she’s a fucking masterpiece. i consider myself to be relatively humble but kiss and tell is my magnum opus. i will never beat her and i don’t think i want to.
3. i love writing poetic shit. i love metaphors and imagery. i think my favorite lines are either the entirety of the religious guilt passage (mainly “the taste of unholy desire graced gerard’s tongue, wicked truths and sugar-coated lies having him believe that sin would swallow him whole.” for some reason my best writing is done at ~5:30pm. i love that part. i think about it a lot, actually.) or the five senses passage! (i cant pick favorites here honestly. taste and smell absolutely fuck though, i love those lines. smoke and earth?? tongue and teeth and hands where they’re not supposed to be?? shakespeare could never!)
4. i actually wrote that part with a single stream of consciousness at roughly 1am in my notes app! i also do my best writing in my notes app, and i can’t figure out why.
side note: hearing about people’s favorite parts and when they tell me that they laughed at my jokes is the best feeling ever. i love your asks and comments so so much.
5. yeah, it was a really great request! i forgot to mention in the author’s note and stuff that i changed it to step to be more inclusive, but it’s only mentioned in the beginning. i have a couple half siblings and i’ve always considered them full, so i didn’t make it too obvious throughout the rest of the fic.
going along with being ray’s sister, i wanted to give her a sense of edginess that wasn’t overbearing. i feel like ray gets babied in a lot of fics, and i genuinely hate it. rather than making him all innocent, i gave him the overprotective brother role, and even then, i tried not to make it suffocating. he’s worried about her mixing in with the wrong crowds because he’s an outcast himself. he doesn’t baby her either, and they have a similar dynamic to the ways’, except ray’s a little more protective.
6. i didn’t want her to be naive either! the last thing i wanted was to give myself second-hand embarrassment, much less my readers. just because she’s younger doesn’t mean she hasn’t done the same shit. i don’t really picture her as a virgin with a perfect liver and lungs. fics that make the younger sister all innocent make me uncomfortable tbh; it feels like infantilization, which is frankly, really gross.
7. making the reader witty is my favorite thing to do. i don’t know why readers are never written as confident and sarcastic, and instead defaulted to boring and naive. live a little, make your reader less insufferable!
(now that i’m thinking about it, my favorite part might actually be the banter towards the end—“honey, your brother is gonna kick my ass if i sleep with you.” “baby, you’ve already got one foot in the grave for kissing me, and i’d hate for you to die a virgin.” where did that come from??)
8. i really wanted to highlight the fact that she’s friends with all of them! she’s not the annoying little sister; she’s actually pretty cool. i used the mikey way effect, if you will. frank and the reader have this goofy relationship, similar to their relationship with gerard but very platonic. they’re the kind of friends that would fake an engagement for free dessert.
mikey and the reader are the same age, and both pretty quiet compared to the rest of the group. i didn’t touch too heavily on it, but they’re definitely the kind of friends that can read each other with one look. they lay on his bedroom floor in comfortable silence and listen to music just to escape loneliness. all in all, they’ll do pretty much anything together because they simply love being around the other.
9. CAS. I AM UNWELL. I’VE ALWAYS LOVED NICKNAMES :,))
10. i love you too! thank you for reading and leaving the sweetest messages for me. it makes my day every time!
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technowoah · 3 years
Text
Taunt
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It only takes one time to realize you fucked up.
- ANON REQUESTED!
- WILBUR X FEM! READER BLURB
PROMPTS!
50) "Fuck off... I mean it"
24) "Get in the car" "..." "please get in the car"
⚠︎ angst to fluff, swearing, based on the song Taunt by Lovejoy ❤🐈 its short btw yall
[Updated 3 hours after upload I messed up the prompts sorry yall now it fixed]
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She was always asking if he was alright. He always lied to her just to get her off his back for the night, but it was his fault that he wanted her to move in. He has to deal with that all of the time, it was her fault anyways. She made him upset, she made him not alright. She didn't know that. She constantly complained about things that didn't even concern her, she dodged their relationship making it more about her than them.
It was tiring to him. Constantly providing, trying to tie a broken knot, but he didnt let that get in the way of his career, or his friends. There's another issue, he never talked to his friends about her. She accused him of not being proud of their relationship and that became a problem that never got resolved.
Did anyone ever say "no" to her? Well if no one did, he would be the first one to do so. Fuck that.
He listened, and listened, but nothing kept this relationship together.
Wilbur talked to the three people chatting on his discord through his headphones as a soft LED lights flowed through the room. These nights were simple because she didnt have to see him when he decides to stream, he basically has his time set out for himself without trouble. He wasn't ecstatic, he felt horrible, but the facadè was there.
Her on the other hand wasnt happy either. She never got attention from him, and of course she could get moody from time to time like every other human being, but she always took it out on him. Who else was gonna be there for her? He acted like her cared, she knew he was lying. His "caring" consisted of humming and him responding like a default character in a video game. He didn't care, he acted like he never did. She needed that attention and he knew damn well she did.
She wasnt asking for much, at least to her it did feel like it. She knew when she was wrong, but she didn't want to admit it when they were both in the wrong too. They dont get each other, she didnt know why he asked her to move in when he didn't want anything to do with her. Ever since he moved her in he kept her in check like a child, she hated and loved that at the same time. Its true that she wanted her own way, she did what she wanted and gave her attention to whoever she wanted her attention to be. She thought that was fine, but apparently she dosent give any effort to the relationship.
Rolling her eyes at the thought she decided to leave the dishes in the sink dirty. She thought about leaving and finding someone who will get her, yes Wilbur listened to her, but there was no effort. When he's drunk and tries to "figure out what makes her brain tick" ends up in more distaster.
Lying in the couch her mind began to wonder, he always said that she could get away with anything. She always took it as a taunt. Everytime it was brought up. He called it "pretty privilege" and he always taunts her saying she abuses that power.
Her jaw clenched as she recalled those memories. Summoning the courage she brought herself up onto her feet and rushed to their shared bedroom. Taking a deep breath she opened their closet and started pulling her things off of hangers, not caring if she made a mess. She tossed her clothes onto the messy bed that they didn't bother to make this morning.
Bringing a small backpack out from underneath the bed she tried shoving most of her clothes into a bag for a night. In total frustration she emptied the bag and only backed necessities that she would need for the night.
She was tired of him and he was tired of her so she was doing both of them a favor. She made her way out of the door grabbing a coat and sliding on some simple shoes. Shooting a quick text to a close friend letting them know she's coming over. Her friend wasn't that close, but she decided to walk. As she locked the door to their shared apartment she debated texting Wilbur. She didnt want to, but she didnt want him to freak the fuck out because she wasnt home.
( Wilbur )
Me: Ill be back for the rest of my stuff tmrw.
[Read]
She closed her phone and started on her night time journey down the street trying to let everything from the past few weeks go with the cool wind.
Him on the other hand stayed silent. He had just finished his stream and had gotten a text saying that she'll be back for the rest of her things. This was inevitable, one of them had to leave, but to him it didnt seem right. He didn't want her to leave. Something in his heart was making him chase her back, the same thing in his heart that moved her into his apartment in the first place. Maybe it was love, maybe he wanted to persevere and have someone in his life. Something in his mind was telling him that he let go of something special.
Wilbue thought about it as he shut everything off and went to go grab his belongings, before rushing out the door to try and find her. Sadly to his discovery, she turned off her location. He finally made it to his car and started driving towards his house to see if she was around there.
He couldn't call a friend because she never introduced her friends to him. She did that on purpose because of him not doing the same. As he drove down the not so busy streets of Brighton he thought if he could get to know her, pull emotions and feelings out of her and see the real her. And if he cant do that? Who knows what will happen.
He remembers this face she always pulled when he always said "Im alright." She scrunched up her nose in annoyance and he always took it as a taunt because he couldn't figure out the real meaning. They were both going at this the wrong way, he dosent know anything about her and maybe thats the problem, but she needs to calm down as well. She needs to start paying attention to both of them instead of herself.
He was seated at a stoplight until he saw a figure on the sidewalk walking past him. The person looked shocked then kept walking, but even faster this time. He rolled down the window to see it was Y/n walking. Wilbur ran the red light and found a place to turn the car around to follow her. He drove a couple of feet in front of her before putting his hazard lights on and stepping out of the car to confront her.
"What the fuck are you doing?!" Wilbur said while getting our of his car.
"Im getting away from you. And what are you doing here?" She said.
"Well I could ask you the same thing. Its not safe out here alone." He calmed down a little. Wilbur's main goal was to get her back home so they can have a civilized talk. He didn't want to be out here.
"Oh? Ive been fine for the past fifteen minutes." She sasser back.
"That dosent mean its not safe!" He exclaimed.
She stayed quiet so that gave Wilbur an opportunity to speak.
"See, I want us to go home so we can have a civilized talk without feeling defensive. I want to get to know you, I know you're my girlfriend and yes, it was my mistake rushing things. Im not putting the blame all on myself either." He finished and she stayed quiet with her arms crossed infront of her chest.
"Are you cold-?"
"Fuck off...I mean it." She said while trying to pass hin on the street.
He stood in her way and he kept doing that every time she tried to get around him. Wilbur saw that she was getting annoyed at his actions. Wilbur held her by both of her biceps trying to hold her still so he could talk.
"You're being childish!"
"Fucking listen to me! You cant just keep walking away from us! From me! This is not healthy!" Wilbur yelled. He let go if her and surprisingly she stayed there.
"Get in the car." He ordered but she stayed silent. "Please get in the car."
She turns around gets in the passenger seat if Wilbur's car. He sighed a sigh if relief and followed her lead. They both got settled into the car and he didn't move. He wasn't going to drive unless she talked to him. After a minute if silence she spoke up.
"I know its- its both of our faults. And i have some things I need to work on. I cant just run away. Also your thoughts of me need to be rearranged, but I need to give you all of me. At leat 50 percent so we can start somewhere. But Im sorry." She said while she looked down at her lap maybe in embarrassment.
In the end they both wanted to fix themselves. In the end they wanted eachother. And they can both see that.
He leaned over the armrest and gave her a kiss on her cheek. She turned to him with a surprise look on her face, like this was the most affection he gave her, because it was true. She grabbed his hand that rested on the armrest too as he started to drive towards their home together.
As the nightly drive continues on and now shes drifting off in the passenger seat as In Love With An E-girl plays softly. She's left too tired to talk with Wilbur and be in touch with her emotions right now, but she'll do it for the both of them this time.
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zapsoda · 2 years
Text
i think ive had a very different experience with religion compared to other people who went through a similar experience with it to me.
religion and belief fascinate me. in a good way. i support everyones right to their own faith. ive always been forced to see it from somewhat of an outsiders perspective though despite being raised pretty religiously in the deep south.
maybe its because my parents themselves werent very religious, but i was never able to truly believe. it never got through to me. i tried witchcraft and wiccan spirituality when i was over and while i felt i was getting closer to this faith, it still never stuck.
growing up, believing in god was the default.
i had this thing where, based on what other people around me did and how they treated me, i would think that it was actually true of myself. i convinced myself that my favorite color was pink, like it was a rule. everything i owned or wore should have been pink or else something was wrong. whenever asked, i would say my favorite color was pink. not once did i ever really think about whether or not i really liked the color pink. it was just my favorite color and therefore having things in it was good! it made me happy.
in the same way, i thought i believed in god. i didnt think about it much when i was very very little. i went to church. we played games and had snacks and heard bible stories.
when i got a little older things got a little more serious. we learned about the rules to get to heaven. the three things you needed to do, your abcs. and one of them was to believe. to believe that god was real, that jesus was his son, and that jesus died on the cross for our sins. and i thought, well of course i believe this. and for a while, i didnt think about this much more. if i said i believed, it must have been true. why wouldnt it have been true? it was a long while.
looking back, i dont think i ever truly believed. i think it was like the color pink. one had to believe, and so i did.
i remember many anecdotes where i questioned the little things religious teachers and media told me. the story of the rainbow perplexed me. if god made it than why did my teacher say it was made by sunlight shining through rain or something those lines. i didnt understand that what they meant was that god made that the result of sunlight and rain.
another example, i believe this was before the previous one chronologically, i was sitting in class. im not sure what made me think of it but i had the concept of jesus being is ones heart and listening to ones heart, and i didnt get it. i didnt hear anything in there. i didnt feel anything in there. was jesus not in my heart? i decided that he was there and i could feel it despite the evidence otherwise and moved on.
my final example: sitting in the car with my aunt and cousins on my mothers side, who were, in fact, very religious. we were close growing up, and i think they played a significant part in my religious journey. we were listening to some kids christian music album, i remember "big apple" being in the title, and i dont remember how it sounded at all but i do remember it saying, in shockingly literal words, that one should love god more than their parents. this was always implied, of course, god was the most important. but to really hear it spelled out like this shook me to my core. i remember hearing it and looking at my aunt thinking, could she really believe this? i waited for her to tell us that it was wrong. i dont remember if this really happened or not but i have this vision in my head of my cousins asking her about it and her affirming that it was true.
i didnt think i could love god more than my parents. i didnt put this into words at the time but god felt so far away from me, compared to my parents who felt so real. my parents raised me, loved me, and cared for me. god was this far off being, who i was told was all knowing, all powerful, and all loving, impossible to comprehend for a kid my age.
i found out my parents werent religious when i came home from sunday school the day i learned about the abcs and i, of course, had to make sure my parents had done those things so that they could go to heaven.
my dad said he wasnt interested. he was an atheist, and wasnt interested in being converted. my mother said she was more agnostic but that she had probably done those things earlier in her life when she was religious. and naturally, this horrified me.
i didnt want to go to heaven without my parents. i used to kiss all of my stuffed animals goodnight before bed so that they knew i loved them. if i ever forgot to say "goodnight, i love you, sleep well" to my parents before bed i would whisper it in the dark with tears streaming down my cheeks, hoping that they would know on the off chance that they died in their sleep last night. i didnt want to go to heaven without my parents.
of course, this all culminated in me "officially" losing my religion. soon after that incident, i decided that if my parents werent to believe, i wouldnt either. it was as simple as that. it was as simple to "not believe" as it was for me to "believe" in the first place. like turning off a light switch.
of course it wasnt so easy for me being in the deep south with such a religious family. it was hard and the thought of religion still distressed me. it was scary not being able to say "oh yeah i believe that" anymore. i dont even remember when i stopped going to church. its harder to remember the things i didnt do. i do remember one kid who went to my church asking me why i stopped going.
in an event that i feel permanently scarred the relationship between me and my cousin, as we had always been very close, he had initially put on some christian song while we were hanging out. it was by owl city. i didnt like it and i expressed that to him. he said oh you dont like this song? well its about god, so youre saying you dont like god? he had caught me in his elementary school logic. i was done for. i got upset and defensive and ran to another room, locked the door, and hid until, if i remember correctly, he and his family left. we never spoke of this again.
in a more positive experience of "coming out" as an atheist, i told my best friend at the time, and for a while she chanted "[my name]s going to die" in a lighthearted tone which was a little annoying but didnt really bother me, surprisingly, and then she moved on and our relationship remained the same until the last time i saw her.
later on in life, though still at an extremely young age to be doing this, i discovered feminism, politics, and youtube atheism. i realized i was "gay," began experiencing gender dysphoria and anxiety, and i became a massive nihilist. the middle two were unrelated to the politics and youtube atheism or skepticism. i was anti-religion and i was angry. i was upset at how id been raised, the beliefs many people around me almost certainly held, the idea that they would stop loving me had they known certain things about me, and all of the pain and confusion it had caused me at an even younger age. my anxiety around being preached to existed ever since my initial realization, and this staunch disliking lessened it. there were other people like me.
i dont believe that anymore of course. long since, ive realized that religion is not inherently evil, nor those who engage with it, and that, in fact, religion can bring good and helps a lot of people. i think everyone has the right to believe whatever they want so long as it doesnt harm anyone.
this brings me to my point about being fascinated with religion a. its something that has been a massive presence throughout time, across societies. my anxiety around religion has almost entirely dissipated by this point in my life, and now i kind of want to know. how do they do it? how are people able to believe in a higher power, or force, or presence? how does it feel? ive long since concluded that im not capable of it, trying many times with different spiritualities to really connect but i feel so much like an outsider no matter what. im almost jealous of even those who no longer believe but once did. its not something that eats me up inside, and i dont even think about it, but still i wonder. maybe thats something ill never get to experience. realistically, maybe im glad its not. nonetheless, i have massive respect for those who do and can. thank you.
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css1992 · 3 years
Text
Guilty Pleasure
[Porn AU]
Summary: Peter and Beck used to be a power couple in the porn industry, but after Beck dumps him, Peter is forced to start over. With no money, no family and nowhere to go, he doesn’t have much choice other than to keep doing porn, so he joins Just4Fans to get back on his feet and then one day he gets a very generous tip from someone under the username of YKWIM.
All the warnings listed on Part I apply. 
Read on AO3
Part I / Part II / Part III / Part IV / Part V /  Part VI /  Part VII /  Part VIII  / Part IX / Part X /  Part XI / Epilogue
-x-
Almost three months into his new life, Peter was finally able to establish a routine that worked for him. He woke up around nine in the morning, tried to get some sort of exercise done, usually yoga or a jog around the block, then he had breakfast by himself, because both Ned and MJ had class or work before he was even up. After that, he made sure to post something on Just4fans, so people could see it throughout the day, and answered private messages and comments from the night before. Lastly, he headed to his newly created Twitter account to promote the new content and to interact with people there as well – it was a great way to get new subscribers.
That usually took up most of his morning, then he went downstairs to Ned and MJ’s apartment for lunch. He usually ate with at least one of them, except for Mondays and Wednesdays, when neither was home, but even then he ate at their place since he didn’t own any kitchen appliances yet – it was on the priority list, but not that high up, he liked having an excuse to visit his friends every day.
Later, he headed back upstairs and, depending on the day, he would take new pictures and videos or edit the ones he took the day before. Finally, at night, he posted more content on his Just4fans and chatted with his subscribers until it was time for bed.
In the last week of April, on one of his morning jogs, he noticed that just a few blocks away from his building there was a charity called the Bright Future Foundation. He thought the name sounded familiar, but try as he may, he couldn’t remember where he had heard of them. It was only after running past it a few times that it clicked – Mr. Harrington, his science teacher, told Peter to look it up.
The Bright Future Foundation helped kids who aged out of foster care get their lives together. They offered support in the form of scholarships and grants, academic and personal mentoring, and help with internships and employment readiness skills. That was what their website said, as Peter vaguely remembered from his high school years, when he still planned on going to college.
He went inside one day, not really sure why, and when the front desk lady asked how she could help him he just stood there for a few minutes, silent and nervous. She asked if he wanted to learn about their programs, but he shook his head, sticking his hands in his pockets. The woman waited patiently, a motherly smile on her face, until Peter asked if they needed any help.
And that was how volunteering at BFF became a part of his new routine – every Thursday from nine to five, starting in the first week of May. Since it was just a few blocks away from his place, he could walk there instead of taking the subway.
He liked his new routine, it was tiring but it didn’t leave a lot of time for overthinking or ruminating on the past. He never felt lonely because Ned and MJ were always around and he actually made a few friends among his subscribers, which was nice.
For the first time in a while, Peter was feeling happy. And it wasn’t an elaborate, fragile sort of happiness, where things needed to be in perfect place for the feeling to be felt, no. It was the simplest kind of happiness: he had friends, a job, a place to crash and everything was fine. Nothing was perfect, but it was fine.
A few days after he sent Tony the lingerie pictures, he decided to send him the video. He was a little insecure about it, it was 13 minutes long after editing and Peter had really lost it for a minute there, one could clearly tell. He was gone for most of the video, a moaning mess, tears gathering at the corners of his eyes, begging for something – someone – that wasn’t even there. It either looked ridiculous or fucking hot depending on the person watching, and even though he was pretty sure Tony would not think it was ridiculous, he still worried just a little, but he sent it anyway. It was still early in the day when he did, some time around noon, and he didn’t expect him to answer any time soon, so went on with his day.
Tony messaged him around 2AM, as usual, but there was no text, just three videos in the chat. In the first one, it looked like he was wearing a suit, he could see the dress pants pulled down and the white shirt pulled up as Tony jacked off for thirty seconds before he came all over his hand. It looked like he was in a bathroom stall, sitting on a toilet, and Peter bit his lower lip, wondering if he was at work when the video was taken.
The second video was similar to the first, but it looked like he was in a garage or something like that – probably the workshop he always talked about –, Peter could see a black shirt bunched up around his waist and sweatpants around his thighs.
Last but not least there was a video of him completely naked, lying in bed, and the video was shot from Tony’s point of view, like he was holding his cell phone close to his face, looking down, instead of propping it up in front of him like he usually did.
They were all incredible and delicious and got Peter rock hard in a second. The boy got comfortable on the bed, lay on his back, took off his pajama bottoms and sighed when his cock sprung free, shivering a little when the chilly night air touched his heated skin. He planted his feet on the mattress and spread his legs, but didn’t do more than that yet.
“That good?” He messaged Tony, cheekily, and the older man started typing right away.
“This is the best thing that’s ever happened to me in my whole entire life and I’m 48, so yeah. That good.”
Hm, forty-eight. So Peter wasn’t wrong in his assumption. He bit his lower lip, a rush of excitement running through his veins. Tony was so much older, almost thirty years his senior. Peter supposed he must be really experienced. He wondered if he usually hooked up with younger men or if in real life he only dated women – it wouldn’t be a shock – but most of all, he wondered what he looked like. Maybe he dyed his hair, but if he didn’t, it was probably mostly gray and fuck Peter if he didn’t have a thing for that.
“I couldn’t stop thinking about it. You broke me. I was in the middle of a meeting when you sent that video, I had to excuse myself to go to the bathroom to watch it. What have you done to me, witch?” Peter wanted to laugh, but it got stuck in the back of his throat with a moan when he slid a hand to his lower abdomen and his cock stood to attention.
“I don’t know about that, but your videos sure got me horny as fuck.” He rolled his hips a little, humping the air, and finally gave in to himself, holding his cock in one hand and the cellphone in the other.
“Is that so?” He could almost hear his voice through the phone – soft, but powerful. He always imagined Tony would sound like that if they ever talked face to face.
“Yes, daddy” And that would always be his default answer to anything he might ask with that voice. He closed his eyes for a second, quickening the pace of his strokes just a little, when his phone beeped again.
“Are you touching yourself right now?”
“Yes, daddy” Peter shivered, imagining Tony’s reaction to that revelation.
“Can I hear you, baby boy?”
He didn’t even hesitate, he started recording a voice message and moaned into the phone, thrusting his hips against his fist as he quietly begged for Tony’s cock, his fingers, his mouth, anything, he just wanted the man to be there taking care of him, making him cum, that was all he wanted, and he wanted it so badly.
He came in just a few seconds and hit send on the voice message before he could overthink it. As he lay there, breathless, staring at the ceiling and trying to gather his strength, he fantasized about Tony listening to it. He smiled to himself, like an idiot, then his cellphone beeped, bringing him back to reality.
“You’re gonna drive me mad, you know that? I’m actually going insane and it’s all your fault. Also, my dick is gonna fall off and that’s on you, too.” Peter had the presence of mind to laugh at the message, but it took him a few seconds to gather enough energy to write back to him.
“That’s a serious accusation, Tony, I’m gonna need all the evidence I can get, so every time you touch yourself thinking of me, make sure to send me proof, ok?”
“Oh, you don’t know what you just got yourself into.” Again, Peter could only laugh, because judging by the amount of videos Tony sent him that day, he really was in for a treat.
Days later, on Friday, Peter got up early to go for his usual jog around the block. He was a little tired from the day before, still adjusting to his new routine at BFF – it was his third week there and they were starting to realize that Peter was a quick learner and very eager to help, so they took advantage of that, which was fine with him, he was thrilled to be able to help somehow.
So after a quick, half-assed jog around the block, he went back home, showered and decided to take the rest of the pictures Tony asked for. The man was still going nuts over the video, he wouldn’t stop talking about it and every day there was a video of him finishing himself off in their chat and Peter could hear his own voice in the background, screaming Tony’s name.
It was both embarrassing as fuck and hot as hell, so the younger man also spent a lot of those last few days in the shower trying to cool down, but Tony was not making it easier.
As much fun as that was, he was curious to see how Tony would react to the new pictures. He realized that would be the first time the older man would see him with clothes on, which sounded ridiculous, but it was true. He didn’t have many pictures on Instagram, but most of them were selfies and there were just a few where it was possible to see maybe a hint of a shirt, but that was it.
So he took the outfit he and MJ picked out and winced, remembering how much it cost, but at least he picked out clothes he might wear some day – if he had a meeting with the queen of England, for example. He put on the light gray suit by Hugo Boss, with a pink shirt with big, white dots by Levi’s Vintage underneath, black dress shoes by Brunello Cucinelli and a Gucci watch he was able to find on sale for half the original price. The whole outfit was worth around five thousand dollars, and was definitely the most money he had ever spent on – well, anything.
He checked himself in the mirror and snorted a little, he sure looked like a spoiled brat, which was probably what Tony meant by “expensive and beautiful”, so that was fine. He styled his hair so it looked effortlessly tousled, but not too much, and set his camera to take the pictures by the living room window.
He took a few pictures on the windowsill, some other leaning against the glass with his hands in his pockets, a few others looking out the window. He posed on his armchair, too, which was the only piece of furniture he had in his living room at the moment and he wished he had a decent dining table so he could pose like he was on a date with the camera, but he supposed those would do.
Once he was satisfied with what he got, he took off the clothes, put them away and went downstairs to have lunch with Ned and MJ. For the first time since he moved in with them, they both had Friday afternoon off, so they spent it together, eating junk food, watching bad TV series and playing really old tabletop games Ned had brought with him when he moved from his parents’ house.  
In between a game of Monopoly and Scrabble, Peter pulled his phone out to check his messages, and was surprised to find one from Tony, sent just a few minutes earlier. He checked the time and noticed he must still be at work, so he opened it, assuming it couldn’t be anything too sexual.
“Hey, are you feeling better today? Just checking in.”
Peter frowned for a second, but a quick look at their earlier messages reminded him that he was feeling a little under the weather the day before and he’d told Tony that before he went to bed.
“Hi, Tony! I’m all better now, thanks for asking. I guess it was just allergies or something.”
He didn’t expect Tony to answer right away, but as soon as his message was sent, he started typing.  
“That’s good to hear, but you need to be a little more careful with your health, kitten. Just yesterday you said you had an apple for lunch. At 4PM.”
“You’re one to talk.” Peter snorted. They always berated each other for poor eating habits. Peter was a 20 year-old bachelor living by himself and sharing meals with his equally young and dumb friends, so pizza was on the menu more often than not; Tony was a forty-eight year-old businessman with too little time to care. “Did you even eat today?”
“Don’t try to turn this around, this isn’t about me.” Peter rolled his eyes and smiled to himself. “Did you do anything fun today?”
“I took some pictures for you, it was quite fun.” He knew the mention of new pictures would get him interested in a minute.
“Don’t play with my heart, kid. When can I see them?”
“I don’t know...” He teased just a little, because he knew Tony wasn’t above begging and it was fun to watch.
“Don’t be mean to daddy, come on. He’s always so good to you.” Peter smiled, because, yeah. He was.
“I’ll send them tonight, I promise.” He decided, since they would have more time to talk then, if he sent the pictures earlier, Tony would still be at work and Peter would still be at his friends’.
“Good boy.”
“You know I am.”
“What are you smiling about? Who are you talking to?” Ned looked suspiciously at him, so he quickly put the phone down and shook his head with a nervous smile.
“Just a subscriber with a bad one-liner.”
MJ looked at him like she knew a secret, but Ned just shrugged and finished setting up the game.  They ended up calling it a draw and ordering pizza afterwards, but Peter went back home early because both Ned and MJ had work the next morning.
Once he got upstairs, he went to edit Tony’s pictures and since it was still a little early to send them, he decided to check his twitter DMs. He didn’t read them very often, he already had his plate full with JustForFans, but every once in a while he checked them and answered as many as he could. Most of the messages were dick pics anyway, he just ignored those. Some others were people being nosy and asking way too personal questions, or worse, asking about Beck. He learned how to talk his way around those, but one message in particular stood out and really got to him.  
“I’m so glad you’re doing okay, honey! The way Beck is with his new boy now makes me wonder if he ever even loved you. He sure moved on quickly. You’re better off without him anyway, I always liked you better.”
That sort of comment wasn’t exactly unusual, but that second part caught him a little off guard. Makes me wonder if he ever even loved you. It just – why would she say that?  The way Beck is with his new boy. What way, exactly? What could he possibly be doing that made that person assume Beck never even loved him? People thought they were perfect together, they said it all the time, so much so that Peter himself was almost convinced of it for most of their relationship, so why in the hell would anyone think he loved this other guy more? To the point of assuming he didn’t even love Peter in the first place?
He was a masochist, he decided, as he opened Instagram. And not even the good kind of masochist, because there wasn’t any pleasure involved in what he was about to do, just pain. He unblocked Beck’s profiled and fucking looked. He didn’t know what he expected to find, but just looking at the first picture was enough to make him realize it was a terrible fucking idea. It was a black and white picture of him and the new guy cuddling in bed, kissing with soft smiles on their faces, captioned: “Nowhere else I’d rather be.”
Peter closed the app quickly, he didn’t need to see that. It meant nothing.
That picture meant nothing. That caption meant nothing. Because Beck was a fucking liar, a fucking actor, a fucking illusionist, a fucking – artist. He painted beautiful pictures, he weaved beautiful words, but none of that meant anything. Because it never meant anything when it was Peter in his arms, so why would–
Fuck, he should be over him, so fucking over him. But he really wasn’t, he would go back to that toxic environment if Beck snapped his fingers and that was scary to know. It was fucking terrifying to realize he was one text away from crawling back to him, even after all the humiliation, even after Beck just fucking up and left him with nothing – nothing –  he would still go right back to his arms. He still wanted to go right back to his arms.
It made him feel pathetic and weak because he knew that what they had was toxic and abusive. And he had known that for a while, way before they split up. Deep in his soul, he knew he was living a nightmare, day after day, over and over again, but he couldn’t fucking leave. He thought Beck was all he had. He promised him forever. He promised he would always be there for him. He was all Peter had in life, and he had lost so fucking much over the years, he couldn’t afford to lose anybody else.
But he did, didn’t he? He lost Beck. He was in someone else’s arms right that second, professing his undying, fake love.
Peter took a deep breath and held it a few seconds, then exhaled slowly.
He didn’t lose anything, he was set free. He was free and he had a record to break – it had been three days since he last cried about that asshole and he didn’t plan to ruin it.
He closed Instagram and went to his Just4Fans. He posted a few pictures from a phoshoot he did earlier that week that made him feel sexy and confident, which was the opposite of how he felt at that moment, but he was going to fake it until he made it.
In a few minutes, he got lots of comments and private messages with compliments, but somehow none of them was enough to fill the empty spot Beck left when he dumped him.
Well, none except for one.
“Were you planning on giving an old man a heart attack today? ‘Cause that’s how you give an old man a heart attack.” The silly message got a smile out of him, and that was a lot considering how broken he felt.
“Lol. It wasn’t in my plans, no, but now I’m worried. Is the old man okay?” He joked, and immediately got an answer in his inbox.
“He’s waiting for you to keep your promise. Says he refuses to die before he sees some pictures of you? Do you happen to know anything about that?” Peter chuckled.
“Oh, yeah, I think I know what he’s talking about. Hold on a sec.”
He selected his ten favorite pictures with the date outfit and sent them to Tony, feeling butterflies in his stomach for reasons he couldn’t explain. He lay in bed for several minutes, staring at his phone, waiting for an answer, but the older man didn’t say anything, even though Peter could see he was still online. He started to get a little anxious, worried that he had messed up somehow, so he messaged him again.
“Well? Have I finally rendered the old man speechless?”
Almost at the same time as he sent his message, Tony replied:
“I need to see you.”
Peter’s heart almost jumped out of his mouth when he read those words, eyes widening in shock. I need to see you. He read it a few more times to make sure it meant what he thought it meant. It couldn’t possibly – Tony wouldn’t want to meet him. That would be absurd. He was – well, Peter wasn’t sure, but he sounded important most of the time, he was definitely very rich, very hardworking and he seemed like a really nice guy. So really, why would he want to meet Peter. That made absolutely no sense, obviously he meant something different than that, he just didn’t quite know what–
“Please,” said the next message, just a few seconds later.
Peter bit his lower lip, feeling his face grow warmer. Just for the hell of it, he thought – what if Tony did mean he wanted to meet him? What then? Peter couldn’t say yes, that would be insane. He didn’t even know the man, all he knew were little things about his daily life, he didn’t know his last name, if he had a family, if he was married, if he was a psychopath – he didn’t even know what he looked like!
Still, he fantasized about saying yes. But that was just a fantasy. He couldn’t do it, that would be crazy.
Right?
“You won’t regret it, I’ll treat you right.”
Well, fuck. He had to go straight for his Achilles’s heel, huh.
Peter kept staring at the bright screen of his phone, breathing slowly to try to contain his wild heart that seemed adamant to burst out of his chest cavity in the next few minutes. He didn’t know what to say. No, his brain supplied, like it was obvious, because it was, right? He couldn’t say yes, yes was not a viable answer. He had to say no, it was only a matter of how he would say it without hurting the older man’s ego.
But.
Why exactly did he have to say no? He knew there were ate least 99 good answers to that question, but he couldn’t think of one, so–
“How do I know you’re not a serial killer?” Peter asked, even though he wasn’t really worried about that, it was the last thing on his mind, to be honest.
“You’ll know.” He said, plain and simple, and not helpful at all. And still, no flight response whatsoever from Peter’s brain. His stupid mind couldn’t seem to understand that that was clearly a terrible idea.“We’ll meet in a restaurant, the best in New York, and nothing else has to happen, I promise. We’ll have a nice dinner and that’s it. I just need to see you in person.”
That sounded reasonable, didn’t it? A public place, lots of eyes on them. If Tony turned out to be a creep, he could just leave. At the very worst, he’d be disappointed and lose a very generous subscriber; at the very best, he’d get a good meal out of it and who knew what else. It sounded reasonable. So it was probably reasonable.
Right?
“Can I wear this outfit?” He asked, because, well, that was all he had to wear to New York City’s best restaurant – whatever that was.
“You must, baby.” He answered quickly, and Peter smiled to himself. “So I’ll take that as a yes, then?”
He typed a quick yes, but didn’t send it right away. He gave his brain a few seconds to come up with reasons to say no, because he knew there were good reasons for that, but he really, honestly, just wanted to say–  
“Yes.”
“Perfect.” He replied right away, as if he had been staring at the phone, waiting for his answer. “I’ll set a time and place and let you know. You won’t regret it, Peter.”
Peter loved all the pet names Tony gave him, they were all sweet and funny, but when he called him by his actual name, it just hit different. It felt good. Like he wasn’t just a pretty picture in a porn app, an expensive hobby, but a person. It was hard for him to remember that, sometimes.
Some other times, it felt good to forget.
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koshicoast · 4 years
Text
A few shinkami headcannons because I love them more than anything
Shinsou has a growth spurt and practically towers over Denki by their second year (for all intents and purposes, Shinsou has always been in class 1A)
Denki grows a little bit but not that much, he’s not complaining though, he gets Shinsou to grab stuff on the top shelve for him or has him hang up posters in higher places in his room (the only downside is that he has to get on his tippy toes for kisses but usually Shinsou will just bend down like a good boyfriend)
They go on dates every Sunday, It’s their day and it doesn’t matter what they’re doing as long as it’s just the two of them
They could be studying or doing homework or exercising or anything really and they’ll call it a date
The rest of the class knows better than to try and contact either boy on Sunday
“Normies worship Jesus on Sunday but I worship Shinsou” - Denki, at one point in time
Shinsou loves playing with denki’s hair, he buys different kinds of hair clips just to put them in denki’s hair
he just likes how the colors pop out
He especially likes to see purple hair clips in denki’s hair
Tbh it doesn’t have to be hair clips, it could be a scrunchie or a rubber band or a headband; as long as it’s purple it does wonders to shinsou’s heart
Denki likes playing with shinsou’s hair too but more than that he likes seeing Shinsou in yellow clothing
Shinsou doesn’t wear bright colors a lot usually sticking with black or cool tone colors
But when he does wear yellow, Denki just gets all mushy no matter how small it is
It could be yellow earrings or socks or something and Denki will wear a love sick expression all day
Despite being in the hero course, Shinsou still gets incredibly insecure about his quirk and how some people only see him as a villain
Denki, without fail or hesitation, tells Shinsou what a great hero he’s gonna be, he talks about how Shinsou is gonna inspire a new wave of underground heroes and how he’s gonna be some kid’s Aizawa one day and how proud he is of him (The first time he said that, it makes Shinsou sob. It makes denki cry too bc he’s a sympathetic crier so they just lay in bed holding eachother)
He also tells Shinsou how no matter who’s the number one hero, Shinsou will always have first place in his heart. And that Shinsou is just as much as any other hero out there and even a little more because he’ll be underground
Denki just loves his boyfriend so much and whoever planted the idea that some quirks are just made for evil is going to get electrocuted >:(
Denki will also pepper Shinsou in kisses saying things like ‘you are so kind’ ‘you’re an amazing person’ ‘I love you so much’ ‘You’re my hero’ and just a bunch of stuff so by the end of their heart to heart Shinsou is feeling a lot better
Denki gets insecure about how ‘dumb’ he is and how he’ll probably just end up hurting civilians or himself before he hurts a villain
Shinsou hates how that’s how Denki views himself because Denki is one of the kindest people in the world and doesn’t even realize it like the first time Denki told him that insecurity, Shinsou looked at him and was like ‘are you..you’re serious? Denks, You’re one of the most clever people I know’
Whenever Denki mentions it, Shinsou he just squeezes the blonde and lets him cry out his frustrations before telling him that ‘he’s not an idiot or stupid and that it’s okay not to understand something as fast as others and that it’s okay to learn differently and it’s okay’ (Shinsou will always try not to cry but a few tears fall anyways bc he just wants denks to be happy without feeling like he’s a fuckup)
Shinsou never lets Denki call himself an idiot or stupid, even in a joking way.
They don’t fight a lot because of their personalities like
Denki is a people’s person and is really in tune with other’s emotions and by default is a pacifist unless otherwise
Shinsou isn’t a people’s person but he’s observant due to his quirk bc of how he’s been treated in the past, he’s also good at picking up on people’s body language
Most times it’s just small disagreements and even then they communicate the best they can and try to compromise
If that doesn’t work then they’ll give each other space so the disagreement won’t turn into something ugly
They’ve only fought once and it was the worst (and best) thing for them
The fight happened after a mock rescue mission goes wrong and there were weeks of stress and tension leading up to it
It was messy and bad like really bad
“I just don’t get why you have to run into danger!” Denki screamed. The whole dorm could probably hear them but he didn’t care, not when his boyfriend was looking at him like he just lost his mind.
It was supposed to be a simple training exercise. Simple. Go in, defeat villains, rescue the ‘hostages’. It was not that simple.
*insert how badly the mission went and Shinsou ran towards the danger to help or smth idk*
It gets pretty rough between the two of them because they’re both pretty emotional people
Shinsou thinks denki doesn’t want him to be a hero and denki thinks Shinsou doesn’t want to be with him
It’s a lot of insecurities + stress + yelling
Denki is the first one to break, he’s a lot more emotionally sensitive than Toshi and everything is just crashing down and he hates it
“Do you just not want to be with me?!” He cries, unable to keep the tears at bay any more. He hates arguing with people, especially when that person happens to be his boyfriend. He gets it, he does! Toshi is training to become a hero and so is he but that doesn’t make it easier. Doesnt stop the shot of fear whenever he watches the other get hurt, doesn’t stop the late night self deprecation, doesn’t stop the anxiety he gets whenever he sees Toshi run head first into danger.
But he gets it and somehow it’s a bitter realization.
Because Hitoshi’s priority is the job they signed up for and Denki’s is Hitoshi.
The fight ends with tears on both their parts and they call it a night, too tired to scream anymore
They sleep in their own rooms that night
The next morning they agree to take a break, not a full break up, but some time away. Space away from each other to prioritize and think.
(Now ive seen fanfics where everyone picks denki over Shinsou and i hate that so fuck you, class 1A are both their friends and they’re all family and try and to help each other I will die with that statement)
Surprisingly the two most helpful people are Bakugou and Kirishima
(Actually not that surprising, they’re the longest couple in the whole class, dating immediately after Kamino)
Bakugou and denki have a heart to heart
“You’re both dumbasses” Katsuki sighs heavy, passing another tissue over to the sobbing blonde. He’s not good at these kinds of things, but Kirishima told him he could help the electric blonde more than he could so here he is. “You gonna tell me what’s wrong or just cry?” He asks, not without a hint of worry though. He pretends to ignore it.
So denki tells him everything and his insecurities
Oh. Yeah, Kirishima was right.
“You think I’m an idiot” Denki mutters quietly, harshly rubbing his eyes.
“No” The older blonde shakes his head, plopping down on the bed next to the other. He doesn’t turn to meet yellow eyes, his own trained on the All Might poster hanging directly across from them. He feels Pikachu’s curious gaze on him so he decides to elaborate more, knowing the sooner he helps the sooner he doesn’t have to deal with this anymore. It’s totally not because he’s gotten soft. Absolutely not.
“Trust me, Zombie Eyes looks at you like you put the fucking stars in the sky. It’s disgusting to watch.” He crinkles his nose in disgust earning a small laugh. “People like him and I, we gotta work twice as hard. Not saying that no one else does but it’s different.” He stresses the last word. “People like Ei or Deku or even you, people already see you as good so all you gotta do is get stronger. They don’t question your character, your morals, they don’t look down on you for having a weakness. People like Zombie Eyes and I though?we gotta work hard just to prove that we’re good. That we were meant to become heroes. Every action we do is put under a microscope and analyzed.” He explains.
“We’re assholes by default, It’s how we were raised. Not saying it as an excuse though. He was in the shitty system and I had shitty parents, no adult taught us shit like love or how to properly deal with feelings.”
Stupid Deku tried with him but he didn’t even know how to deal with his own much less some angry blond kid’s.
He takes a deep breath, pushing back faint memories of his childhood. The younger hasn’t said a word but he can tell he’s listening so it’s fine. “We can’t just turn off how we are. If it’s frustrating for you and Ei, It’s worse for us. Like we know logically that we’re good people, that we changed but that’s now how our brain sees it. We push ourselves because that’s all we know how to do, it proves to us and everyone else that we bled for our spot here. That we made it. Having friends is hard because we compare ourselves to them and draw our own conclusions to their actions. Being nice? Our brain says it’s a trap. Showing some human fucking decency? Our shitty brain says it’s an act. Being in a relationship? Laughable. We’re just villains pretending to play heroes to everyone else.”
He takes another deep breath, forcing himself to look away from the poster, flashbacks to their first year briefly passing in his head. Okay yeah, not going down that route. He looks over, making eye contact. He wonders if this is how Kirishima feels whenever he’s trying to cheer him up. Wonders if it’s just as hard. This better be worth it, everyone has been miserable. (Shitty thing about having been through life and death situations together is that everyone has bonded and become close like a family so when one of them is sad it’s like everyone is fucking sad.) (He loathes it because even he gets worried.)
“But despite that he still loves you.” He says softly, almost whispering like he’s telling the other a secret. “Fights his demons to hold your hand and all that shit”
Shinsou loves him? Loves him?
“How do you.. how do you know?” Denki whispers, throat sore. “We fought so badly last night, we were screaming at eachother.”
“He treats you the same way I treat Ei.” He answers,
“He changed his priorities around to try and accommodate for another person in his life, you became more important than training or studying. He takes days off to be with you, cuts his studying short if you need a break. It might not seem much to others but for him that’s huge. He came in with this one track mind but then you came along and he scrambled to balance everything. And then you two got your shit together and started to go out and I’m pretty sure he got scared”
“Scared?” Denki asks, the thought almost funny to him.
“I did.” Bakugou admits as Denki’s eyes grow wide.
“I was petrified. When Ei started to become more important than hero work, I freaked. It’s not that loverboy is choosing being a hero over you, It’s because he doesn’t understand that he can have both. He thinks everything important is a choice- that if you want something you have to give something up. He chooses hero work and he loses you. He chooses you and he loses hero work.”
“But he’s not going to lose me or hero work”
“Kinda sounded like you did give him an ultimatum though”
The realization hits him like cold water.
Shinsou gets a similar talk with Kirishima
It helps, a lot
They don’t immediately go back to eachother, instead spending the week with their everyone else and just taking time for themselves
Shinsou knocks on Denki’s door Sunday morning and they finally talk things out
It’s also the first time they say ily!!
Anyways after that fight they work harder on communicating especially when it comes to things like hero work
It’s not perfect bc their dumb traumatized teens but they’re trying and they know their lil family will always be there
I haven’t slept but yes thanks for sticking around if you’re reading this
If ur interested in shinsou’s talk with Kirishima lmk
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omegawolverine · 4 years
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I love it when people talk about things they're passionate about, tell me something cool!! Anything you want, just something you find interesting or want to talk about :D
hello anon my beloved, I am in a bad mood so you will be receiving a passionate, yet lowkey of pissy rant about why villainizing bakugou makes me wanna vomit and its NOT just because I'm a dumbass kinnie :)
tws: child abuse (emotional and physical), near death expierences, bullying, kidnapping, suffocation, lots of trauma in general tbh. if you've seen bnha then basically just keep all the general triggering plot stuff in mind incase i missed any warnings
also, note: I havent caught up on bnha in a minute, I'm at like the start of the war arc but I barely remember shit there tbh so like. probs missing new stuff. also bnha spoiler warnings lol
so, for starters, the homie bakugou has like,, a good handful of issues that come from his childhood that explain why he's an ass. he was always praised and never actually reprimanded for being a twat which led to him having a huge ego that ended up fucking him over majorly. this ego was something that his mother acknowledged him having, but literally didnt try to fix it with anything other than violence. see here:
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like, instead of trying to help him, she hits and insults him, which is probably what led to his weird inferiority/superiority complex. being constantly told by others that you're outstanding and one day you'll be a top hero because you're rude and aggressive and then going home and being hit by your mother for those exact same behaviors is bound to fucking confuse a child.
so like, now that we've established that its definetly canon that his mother (parents? I think he said parents at some point but masaru doesn't seem like the type so 🤷) hits him though we don't know how much or how often (though if bakugou was as much of a little shit back then ((which as far as we've seen- he was)) then it was probably often), lets talk about how regardless of all that 1) hitting your kids as "discipline" not only doesn't work but is abusive lol like idc if it's spanking/popping them on the mouth for talking shit, slapping them across the face "on occasion", etc. shits not okay 2) hitting your kids!!!! does not work!!!!!!!! it is literally PROVEN not to work!!!!!!!! hitting a child who has done something wrong doesnt teach them to stop doing something it teaches them to be scared of you, which will cause the child to withdraw, removing part of their support system (assuming said abusive parents would even offer that up) and will most likely lead to them thinking they're a bad person, not that their actions were bad, which are two different things. so, ya know, that would clearly have an effect on a kid. like, as someone with a mother who reminds me all too much of mitsuki: I have acted like a complete shitbag and taken my anger out on people to feel better in the past because of the way my mother treated me. though it was nowhere near what bakugou did, I still know first fucking hand what a mother hitting and insulting her child will do, especially if they have no proper outlet for that (friends, a safe place to vent) which bakugou never fucking had.
theres also the fact that just talking to your kid the way mitsuki does (saying it's his fault he was kidnapped because he's weak, all while hitting him) is not??? okay?????? ive seen people arguing that this was just a joke in poor taste but like her son was KIDNAPPED and even if it was a "joke" there's literally NO WAY that would EVER?? BE FUNNY??????? she just sounds like the kind of parent who at the very least says shit without thinking that would traumatize bakugou (because being told right after being kidnapped it's your fucking fault by your mother is absolutely traumatizing) but it comes across as her being emotionally abusive.
mitsukis character as a whole comes across as a shitty mom who doesn't realize she's a shitty mom and thinks bakugou being an ass isn't at least partially her fault even though she's admitted to realizing he has always had an ego problem and doing nothing to fix it except for hitting and yelling which obviously did nothing but make him just as loud and violent as she is.
this is obviously not the entire reason why he's a dick but he was never properly taught that the shit he was doing wasn't okay and people not stopping it and/or praising him endlessly even tho he was a bully is basically the same as encouraging it, thank you very much.
moving on from that, let's talk about bakugous other traumas and how he naturally responds to them. hint: it's with either full blown panic or a fight response (verbal or physical, though usually physical. also sometimes it's the panic followed by the fight response.)
so far in bnha (keep in mind that I am not caught up, I've only read up to the beginning of the war arc and i barely remember those bits so) bakugou has...
nearly died via sludge villain (he was unable to move and was being suffocated to death- keep this in mind)
lost for the first time ever and against deku of all people (this nearly sent him into a full blown panic attack, likely because of that sexy little inferiority/superiority complex combo. think of this as like. gifted kid burnout lite. he has always been the best of the best and now suddenly he is being beaten by somebody who has always been weaker than him, which immediately makes him start thinking he was never actually that good, he's actually a fucking failure, a goddamn fraud)
won the sports festival by default (bakugou counts this as yet another failure because todoroki didnt try his best. had bakugou lost to todoroki full strength, he would've taken 2nd place with a bit of bitching, but he still wouldve taken it rather than refuse the medal as it would be a reminder that he failed. instead of accepting that like UA shouldve, the staff chained and muzzled him on live television and then had all might, his fucking idol, force the medal into his mouth. remember the sludge villain incident and how he couldnt move and was suffocating to death? yeah.)
been kidnapped because of the way he reacted to winning during the sports festival (he was aggressive and tried to refuse the medal because he felt he didnt deserve it and was then retraumatized by being chained up and muzzled. his "villainous attitude" was a fucking trauma response, do not tell me otherwise)
was then chained up once again by the LOV after being kidnapped,,, do we see the "retraumatize bkg" theme yet?
"ended all might" (he literally blames himself for all mights retirement because had he just not have been weak, all might wouldve had more time, right?)
my point with all of these is that bakugou has been severely traumatized and has then had his trauma responses (aggression, fight) used to further demonize him. not all people with trauma react the fucking same and the way the fandom just refuses to acknowledge anger as a valid form of trauma response is gross as hell.
moving away from that topic, bakugou has literally never had any actual friends, they all just used him and didn't care about him which absolutely will fuck up a kid, especially one who already has all that other shit going on. bakugou deadass never had a support system or people to help him grow as a person, let alone properly work through his fucking emotions so it's not surprising that he would take out his bullshit on the one person who tried to help him especially considering he saw dekus actions as him thinking he was weak. bakugou was raised to not seek help, he thought somebody strong shouldnt ever need it, so for somebody like deku (who bakugou percieved as weak and helpless already) to offer up help? deku must obviously think bakugou is even weaker than him, what other explanation could their possibly be!
speaking of which, there's his heaps of insecurities that he basically hid by being a twat and bullying others for most of his life. kid was so insecure he bullied deku for fucking years cause he thought deku looked down on him, thought he was better than him, etc. and that only got worse bc his idol then decided to take deku in, train him and even give him his quirk. there's probably some shit im missing but still he's got issues and always has had issues. that being said, he's actually improving and working them out now which is what makes him a really good, interesting character. it's also nice to see a character who is a dick without some tragic backstory (like his backstory is sad but its not the classic "my family was fucking slaughtered and i turned into a raging bitch who murders people" type shit) bc that rarely happens and it's like most assholes don't actually have a story like that they're just assholes lol
now lets talk improvement! lil bitch has been getting better since he got into UA and im so happy abt it!! he had a rough start what with deku suddenly having a quirk and all but like he is really improving now and it highkey shows that bakugou just mostly needed people who 1) didn't constantly praise him and actually criticized him instead 2) actually fucking punished him doing stupid shit and 3) some motherfucking friends
Since going to UA he's gotten actually feedback from teachers about his weaknesses and how to get stronger, he's lost against others, hes been told he has a shit attitude and is a dick, told he should be nicer and leave deku alone, etc etc. He hasn't gotten in trouble too much with teachers but others give him shit for what he does and aizawa has punished him too, while still acknowledging that bakugou is an amazing and dedicated student, something which no one else had done up til that point. and uh???? homie actually has friends who like,,, don't use him and also call him out when he's a dick. like specifically kirishima has done this shit and him and bakugous relationship is clearly very healthy and beneficial for the both of them. makes me feel all happy n shit, ya know
bottom line is: while it is absolutely valid to dislike or even hate bakugou because he is a massively flawed person who has been very cruel to others, villainizing him for the way he acts which in large part seems to be from a lack of guidance, a shitty mother and heavy amounts of trauma, is fucking awful. his actions cannot be fucking excused, he needs to apologize and continue to grow, but he is also a fucking teenager, who is just now being told that the way he acts is unacceptable by people who dont fucking abuse him (and I swear to god if any people who think mitsuki isnt abusive interact with this fucking post I will fullstop hardblock you, I do not fucking care) and actually treat him like a normal person instead of some prodigy child or someone who needs to be fixed.
people are free to debate my points or whatever bc I know some of this stuff is up to interpretation but like. dni if you're just here to say you hate bakugou for xyz reason or that he's irredeemable. also especially dni if you compare him to fucking endeavor yall bitches make me gag.
anyways thxs for the ask anon <33 sorry this is a kinda messy info dump lol
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tigerdrop · 4 years
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Cringe is dead, talk to me about the funny half-life men and their relationship
okay here is my essay. it is titled These Guys Actually Like Each Other, and Gordon Freeman Is Just Kind Of A Dick*
(disclaimer: these are just my 2 cents. dont take me too seriously! im just some guy online who has watched this shit too many times.)
first things first. these guys actually like each other. this is a key aspect of their relationship. benrey, obviously and textually, digs gordon freeman - you dont flirt that heavily with guys you arent into, and so much of what he says and does is geared around making gordon crack up. thats pretty gay.
but the counterpart to this is that gordon freemans pretty fucking gay for benrey, too. you may say, “oh, but word of god says its not requited!” and to you i will say: bull shit. gordon is uniquely obsessed with benrey compared to all the other characters. if gordon didnt like the fucking guy, he wouldnt giggle with him and share in-jokes with him and bring him up every 5 seconds when benreys not around. thats concern, bro. thats worry. thats real shit
but i cant blame people for thinking that gordon freeman genuinely doesnt like benrey. benreys partially responsible for some of the worst things that have happened to him, the Arm Thing among them. and gordons very insistent afterward that he doesnt like benrey. he even goes so far as to try to kill benrey a couple times. to this, i must argue that gordon freeman is just kind of a dick.
lets talk facts here. canon. Lore. from the moment we hop into gordons shoes, we can see that he is a jerk to every npc on his way into black mesa. this is his default: a dude who just runs his mouth and says rude shit. he calls tommy a freak within 5 minutes of meeting him. he infantilizes the guy and barely considers him a real scientist. he doubts that bubby is a real name for like no fuckin reason. in “real life”, this is because its funny, and wayne is trying to make a funny half-life stream. in a textual sense, this is because gordon “hlvrai” freeman is a dick. this is the way he acts, consistently, throughout the series.
(brief aside: this is why the whole “gordon is a nice guy and a great dad” characterization baffles me. the way he actually acts in canon is, in short, bitchy and lacking in self-awareness. and i love that for him, i really do. it makes the moments where he just tries to be a nice guy stand out. but thats the thing: his intermittent moments of decency and kindness are not the whole of his personality! this dude kind of sucks most of the time!)
the way that gordons general asshole attitude extends to benrey is complicated. in fairness, benrey makes it his job to annoy the shit out of gordon as much as possible, and that warrants a negative attitude, but gordons pretty paranoid and ends up blaming benrey for nearly everything that happens to him, regardless of if its warranted. this is a pattern he exhibits both before and after the Arm Thing. its a little bit of a dick move! especially considering that, prior to the whole “betrayal” subplot (which was not exactly planned very far in advance), benrey is no more malicious or annoying than anybody else gordons having to travel with.
(okay, this is kind of a subjective evaluation, but still. my point stands that benrey is not any more of a hindrance to his progress than anybody else in the science crew, and neither is he particularly more violent or murderous. hell, gordon freeman has probably killed more guys than benrey. benrey just tends to get.......special treatment.)
all that said, i am still convinced that gordon really fucking likes benrey. please consider with me the following: it would be remarkably easy for gordon to just ignore him and do what he has to do, but he doesnt. he could stop engaging. he could stop thinking about benrey. he could stop bringing benrey up to the rest of the crew every time benrey leaves to do his own thing for awhile. but he doesnt. and, again, yeah, the extra-textual reason for this is “two guys are doing an improv comedy thing and bouncing off of scorpy is kind of the point”, but within the text it reads to me as gordon not being about to get the dude off his mind.
and this is in addition to all the times we see gordon being genuinely nice and receptive toward benrey! its in the little things: laughing the hardest and longest at benreys jokes. only ever reciprocating that stupid underwater “BBBBB” thing with benrey. trying to catch benrey when he falls, despite his insistence moments earlier that benrey should hop in the wack ass crystal generator and get hypermurdered. fondly remarking that benreys sweet voice sounds beautiful. his sort of flustered responses to most of benreys overt flirting. none of this is the way normal people react to a guy they hate. this is all fuckin gay to me, man.
its this combination of the outward insistence that gordon hates benrey with his inner eagerness to be around him and think about him and engage with him that gives off strong “repression” vibes, to me. for whatever reason - pride, embarrassment, resentment - gordon maintains a front of hating the guy and wanting to kill him for a lot of the series, but it doesnt gel with the way he fucking giggles and plays along half the time that benrey starts fucking with him. its a game, and that game is one of the only ways gordon knows to manifest affection for him.
(remember “oh my god, hes got a knife!”? that was the gayest shit i ever seen in my life. tittering like a schoolgirl while benrey chases him around like “im gonna get you haha”. insanity.)
the cool thing about repression is that you can have it manifest in a lot of ways! and this is where things like “headcanons” and “my own personal affection for repressed bisexual men” come in. a lot of how i characterize their relationship is an extrapolation of a lot of things like gordons canonical insecurity issues/anxiety, gordons whole anti-bootboy thing screaming “internet wokeboy who means well but probably has a lot of repressed baggage” to me, etc.
how do you get massive amounts of sexual repression out of what you see in canon, you might ask? well. if wayne would stop having gordon talking about being jerked off by the suit, or talking about chugging a 40-gal drum of potion and having to hold his piss, or worrying about being eaten by benrey the moment he sees benrey at setscale 10, maybe i would have a higher opinion of gordon “hlvrai” freeman and whatever latent psychosexual issues hes got going on. but here we are
i havent even touched yet upon how benrey feels about gordon. this one is helpfully made a little more plain by the fact that benrey very much wants to suck his dick in canon. (i dont even have to go into details. we all know.) but IMO the best part about this ship isnt just that they dig each other, but how. benrey gets overtly flirtatious in the second half of the series, but IMO his preferred method of flirting is just fucking with gordon: chasing him with knives, shoving him around in a bathroom, trying to get scans of his feet. but all in like a slapstick, giggly, fun-and-games sense, you know? at least when it works.
a lot of the time, though, it doesnt work out that way. he clearly just likes doing it whether or not gordon responds positively. which is, you know, Weird. not very nice. but also in line with the way everybody else treats gordon freeman. gordons kind of the universes chew toy in any given universe, and the same holds true here. hes kind of helpless......subjected to 4 demons attempting to make his life as difficult as possible. in a way its cathartic.
sorry. i got sidetracked. anyway, benrey very much likes to mess with him and unnerve him and demean him and i will be perfectly frank with you: that is hot. i have problems and illnesses and one of them is that i am a masochist who goes crazy for that kind of thing. calling gordon a “dirty lil boy” and telling him to “look at the mess [he] made” is some straight up kink scene shit.
i like to imagine that a lot of this behavior isnt caused just by the guy who played him wanting to be funny and antagonistic, but by benrey as a character not really understanding what constitutes “pushing a joke too far”. hes not human, and whatever he is doesnt have a very normative way of understanding the world around him, full of people who actually get hurt for real and die for real. benrey expresses what seems to be genuine surprise and distress after the Arm Thing, as if he didnt know that his actions would have serious consequences. and it doesnt seem to fully sink in afterward, either.
it reads a lot to me like hes used to video game rules and treating people around him like NPCs. if they get hurt, its no big deal, because its not real. he likes jamming random buttons on gordons interface and seeing what comes out. its probably a lot of fun for him, the same way that seeing a streamer or a youtuber suffer for our amusement is fun. its like, you know, in my opinion, gordons very cute when hes frazzled. hes also cute when hes laughing. pushing gordons buttons has a 50/50 chance of either of these things. and this is how he ultimately flirts with gordon: by pulling his pigtails.
but at the same time, benrey does legit care about gordon and knows some boundaries. benreys the one most often shooting at enemies to protect gordon, and he spent most of the last act trying to convince gordon to turn around and not fight him because they were friends (best friends, to be specific). he just lacks a lot of the emotional intelligence it would take to express the feeling of “he digs gordon and likes seeing his face get all red and sweaty regardless of the cause”. and gordon lacks the emotional intelligence it would take to express the fact that he doesnt know if he likes or hates benrey and hes scared as hell that its the former
because, lets be real. unironic benrey-liking is a sign of problems disorder. just look at all these words ive written about it.
can you imagine? this bizarrely powerful, non-human entity that can shrug off gunfire and grow to the size of a building has decided that youre his new plaything. benreys the bored guy booting up skyrim and fucking around in the console, and gordons the hapless favorite follower that hes taken a liking to. its a really fun dynamic IMO
after all this, its safe to say my title is a little misleading. the asterisk stands for * and So Is Benrey, Actually. they are both kind of awful dudes who thrive off of teasing each other and they deserve each other. and i am crazy about it. thank u for coming to my TED talk
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