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adhdnursegoat · 21 days

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Sequel to Human

Summary: Ever since you and Edward had sex, he has been mean - meaner than normal. You thought things would be different. You thought he needed you. You thought... well, you're not sure what you thought. But you have had enough of his shitty attitude.

Excerpt:

You have had enough.

There is only so much you can take.

Ever since you started working for Edward Nigma, your life has changed in ways you never expected. Despite working for one of Gotham's most notorious criminals, your day-to-day existence isn’t as grim as it could be. If anything, it is a strange blend of stability and chaos—mostly held together by your efforts to keep his lair and his life from spiraling further into disarray.

You have become an indispensable part of his routine, ensuring that everything runs smoothly. You clean his living spaces, cook his meals, and run errands that he cannot manage in public—like shopping for groceries and supplies. You wash his clothes, keep track of time for him when he gets lost in his work, and even organize his tools and schematics. You even organize his chaotic and, sometimes, disturbing notes, transcribing them, trying to make sense of the madness. And every time you are there, you make sure a fresh cup of black coffee is waiting for him on his workbench, just the way he likes it. Your adaptability and resourcefulness have made you an integral part of his life.

In return, he pays you well. The money is enough to cover your expenses, with a little extra left over to treat yourself every now and then—a rare luxury. Your life, which used to teeter on the edge of danger and desperation, now feels oddly secure despite working for a criminal susceptible to psychosis. You are no longer subjected to the risks and abuse that came with your previous job. The steady income and the sense of purpose you have found in this work have brought you a sense of peace you had not thought possible.

Before you started working for Nigma, you were a dancer—an exotic one. Well, more accurately, you were a stripper. You made just enough to survive, to keep a roof over your head in this unforgiving city. You were good at what you did, but the real money, the kind that could make life easier, was found in the darker, more dangerous aspects of the business—things you politely but firmly declined to engage in.

Those nights were long and exhausting, filled with the leers of strangers and the constant pressure to push boundaries you were not willing to cross. It was a life of constant uncertainty, where you never knew what the next night might bring. The money was never guaranteed, and the threats were always lurking in the shadows. But you stood strong, refusing to compromise your principles.

It was tempting at times, seeing the girls draped in luxury—Van Cleef necklaces glittering at their throats, mink coats warming their slender frames, Louboutins clicking against the acrylic dance floors. They had the sun-kissed tans of women who’d spent their summers on yachts in the Mediterranean, vacations paid for by their generous, if not questionable, clientele. You couldn’t help but want those things too. Who wouldn’t? The allure of a life steeped in opulence, where the harsh edges of the city were softened by the gloss of wealth, was nearly irresistible.

But you just couldn’t do it.

You respected those girls, admired their tenacity and the way they wielded their beauty as both a weapon and a shield. They were skilled, crafty, and knew how to play the game in a way that kept them ahead. Yet, there was a line you just couldn’t cross—a part of yourself you weren’t willing to sell, no matter how tempting the rewards. You had a feeling that if you ever did, there would be no going back. You would be swallowed whole by that life, and whatever plans you had for the future would crumble under its weight.

You always wanted to leave the life of a dancer eventually, to save up enough money to go back to school, become a nurse, start fresh, and build something that was not tied to the world of flashing lights, shitty club music, and desperate men. But it was a slow climb, one that often felt like you were clawing your way out of quicksand, each step forward pulling you further down. The money was not bad, but it was not enough either. And the thought of staying in that life forever, of becoming one of those girls who never found a way out, terrified you more than anything.

So, when Edward Nigma offered you a job, you didn’t hesitate. The promise of better pay, safety, and security was too good to pass up. You didn’t just jump at the opportunity—you sprinted toward it, desperate to leave behind the life you’d been living. Even if the work was menial and technically meant you were aiding and abetting a wanted criminal, it was a way out. And that was all you needed.

But there is more to it than that. It helped that he was easy on the eyes—those icy blue eyes peering out from behind silver, wiry glasses, dark scruffy hair falling into his face, and a five o’clock shadow that added an edge to his otherwise refined appearance. He exuded a charm that was as dangerous as it was intoxicating, drawing you in without effort.

The first time you met, he’d tested you with a riddle, a glint of amusement in his eyes as he watched you puzzle it out. And when you did—albeit with some struggle—he seemed almost impressed. That is when you were hooked. Something about the way his mind worked fascinated you, and it wasn’t long before you found yourself completely captivated. You truly believed he was the smartest man you’d ever met, capable of great things—terrible, yes, but great all the same.

And then there was his voice, smooth and rich, like an auditory massage. You loved listening to him talk, especially when he was in one of his rare moods where he’d actually teach you a thing or two. He had a way of making even the most complex concepts seem almost within reach, and though you knew you’d never understand half of what he was saying on your own, you relished those moments.

But there was a darker side to him, one that you couldn’t ignore. For every moment of brilliance, there was a cutting remark, a reminder of your place in his world. He had a habit of degrading you, of calling you an idiot whenever you didn’t grasp an idea quickly enough, or when you made a mistake in your work, or broke a piece of equipment accidentally. It stung, every time, but you learned to brush it off, to let it slide like water off a duck’s back. Because, in his own twisted way, he made you feel lucky to be a part of his life, to be close to someone as extraordinary as him. You believed in his delusions of grandeur.

You often wondered if you were just fooling yourself, if the allure of his intelligence and the security he offered were enough to outweigh the sharp edges of his personality. But every time you thought about leaving, about finding something else, something better, you found yourself hesitating. There was something about Edward Nigma that kept you tethered to him, even when you knew it was not healthy. Maybe it was the way he could make you feel like you were the only person who truly mattered to him, even if it was just for a fleeting moment.

Whatever it was, it was enough to keep you there, caught in the web of his brilliance, his cruelty, and his charm.

But now, you are starting to wonder if you made the right choice.

Continue on Ao3 for the full length story: Make Me Cry

Credit to Pintrest user Filomena Vianci for the black and white photo.

#riddler #edward nigma #theriddler #arkhamasylum #fanfiction #arkham knight #riddler fanfiction #fanfic #batman #smut #riddler smut #riddler x reader #the riddler x reader #fem reader #female reader #arkham knight riddler #riddler oneshot #oneshot

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rjmhereunderprotest · 2 months

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Shocking News: Ubisoft Does What Every Developer Ever Does to get Positive Free Marketing for Upcoming Video Game! Rando CHUD Gamers In an Uproar!

This has been fucking bothering me at this point, okay? So I'm using this opportunity to vent because ignorant stupid people don't know how the gaming industry works and/or are exploiting the fact people don't for clicks. And I'm so fucking sick and tired of this shit at this point so I'm going to rage for a second.

Try not to see this as me defending UbiSoft, fuck them, I have no love for any video game company ever and feel that cheerleading corporations is fucking stupid, either for or against them. But this sudden attack on them is less about actually shitty gaming industry practices that HAVE valid problems associated with them and more about the ridiculous culture war that this Space Wizards IP is trapped in. If this was any other game by UbiSoft no one would care, but it's a Star Wars game, so some idiots do care. Here's the run down.

UbiSoft recently sent previews out to various gaming news websites and major YouTube Gamer Influencers concerning the impending release of "Star Wars: Outlaws." A bunch of them got to go down a private preview event where they got free merch, hung out, played the game for a few hours, that sort of thing. They supposedly even got a trip to Disneyland out of it and a Boat Tour.

Finding out about this, every single right-wing culture warrior on YouTube instantly pounced on this and declared that UbiSoft was bribing people to give good reviews for "Star Wars: Outlaws" to convince people to buy it! Because the game is actually terrible and no one would actually like it on its own merits, and they know its terrible despite not getting to play it because... well... uh... it's Disney-Era Star Wars and that's always bad! Kathleen Kennedy made their wives leave them and shat on their rug! It wasn't them, it was Kathy! She did it! She snuck in during the night and shat on the rug! Then she took their last can of gamer fuel and broke their waifu figurines!

If you must know, the real reason "Star Wars: Outlaws" is in the crosshairs this go around is simple enough. The lead star of the game is a woman you see, a not fair-skinned woman, and people got pissy over this. How dare they not make the most basic ass video game protagonist design for this one game! Brown hair and eyes with four o'clock shadow white dudes are the only heroes that should ever appear in any video game ever, says they. "Why can't you just let us pick our gender?" they cry. You couldn't pick your gender in "Jedi Fallen Order", where was your crying then? Oh? Was the protagonist a dude there? Gee, I wonder why you found Cal Kestis being your only option as a player character okay, but Kay is an awful choice forced onto you?

So Kay Vess being a woman means "Outlaws" must be opposed, must be bad, and therefore must fail in order to stop the horrible scourge of DEI Gaming Development before all our precious white male protagonists are gone forever! Boo hoo! We don't get to play a dude in this one game out of the several dozens that will allow us to! If we don't stop this now, gaming is ruined!

And of course, anyone who plays the game and has something nice to say about it? Well obviously they're corporate shills, who were bribed by Disney to say positive things and there can be no other possible answer. No one can legitimately like a game that has a g-g-g-g-girl as the lead character! That's insane! And to prove how not sexist they are they'll list all the female characters they actually like in games, mostly all the ones that make their peepee hard.

They even went after GManLives, a respected independent gaming critic, just because he apparently played and liked the game. And they're still going after him even after he took the video down because he didn't want to deal with that shit. Accusing him of selling out his principles for a trip to Disneyland.

It's ridiculous and not just because it's a bunch of people complaining about a video game that isn't even out yet and hasn't been properly reviews. It's because critics and influencers getting special perks and shit for previewing games is nothing new. It's been going on forever.

Publishers of video games want to maximize their chances of getting good reviews. But they don't bribe people for them. They try to butter them up a little by inviting them to big marketing events, but that's just standard. You always try to give the people looking at your product a good time. Especially if they are critics with the power to sell it for you for free.

What they generally do is promise you exclusive coverage, behind the scenes details, access to developers, hands-on demos, interviews with the cast, inside information. And they provide it to the critics and influencers first who they feel will best promote and be favorable to their product at no extra cost to them.

If you decide to not be fair or NOT provide positive feedback, well then next go around they won't invite you to the big marketing event party. They won't give you hands-on demons. They won't get you access to developers or the cast. It's a major misbalance of power, but it's been a thing in gaming since forever. Nothing "Outlaws" is doing in the lead up to its release is that different.

And no one is actually hiding this anyway. Gaming websites and the influencers in questions regularly admit they were provided these previews by the publisher or developer of the game. That they were invited to check it out directly. That this is a preview that they scored under the watchful eye and with permission by the developer. They admit to the sponsorship element of what is essentially a commercial advertising something. They can't be too harsh or they won't get invited back, but they also won't withhold criticism if they find fault in something. In fact, sometimes to convince people they're not being too positive, they will force themselves to say something negative in some way to prove they aren't biased. It's usually something extremely subjective concerning the article writer's or content creator's personal taste.

Being driven out to Disneyland or given a boat tour aren't what I'd call major bribes. They're at best, the company trying to cozy up to an interviewer or influencer in order to keep them in a good mood and retain positive feedback. It's about maintain the relationship between their halves of the industry, putting on a show, treating the guys who help you sell your games right. Is it a problem? Oh yes, it very much is, it makes a lot of gaming web sites rather unreliable given how they'll go softer on a game to retain that relationship. But it is nothing new and Outlaws hasn't been the first game to do it, nor will it be the last.

And all the same, if the positive feedback as that consistent overall, it's not because they were bribed to say it. It's because they genuinely enjoyed the slice of game they were given and allowed to play around in. Even then, in those positive looks, I noticed complaints about this or that, minor quibbles, about what I'd expect from a preview event that went well but isn't ready to call it just yet.

My opinions on UbiSoft are fairly simple, they make some pretty good games overall. But they're still a gaming company, and that comes with a lot of baggage. Especially given Ubi's recent sexual harassments scandals and poor working conditions. They're not special and deserve to get ripped open when deserved. But not for letting a bunch of influencers run around an organized event where they got to play a game, get a plushie alien salamander and then run off to Disneyland when they were done. Because that's not a UbiSoft problem, that's an industry problem and one not easily solved. If you're a major gaming company, is it wise to keep giving exclusive peeks into your stuff if the news site was unfair to you? That's money better spent on someone who doesn't have an axe to grind. And gamers can hold grudges worse than anyone. I should know, I'm a gamer. I tend to hold a grudge.

Everything I've seen so far about "Star Wars: Outlaws" suggests it is, at the very least, a solid open world action game with UbiSoft and its stable of developers is fairly good at creating. And Massive Entertainment, the developer, has made some of my favorite games in the past. I believe Outlaws will be good, nothing I've seen suggests it's a bad title, let alone a bad entry in the Star Wars brand. I just don't see the justifiable reason to cry foul play here. This isn't like "Suicide Squad: Kill the Justice League" where the red flags are obvious from the word go. This isn't even head-tiltingly worrisome like Cyberpunk 2077, which kept getting delayed and delayed and problems were apparent even in preview builds that news sites raised eyebrows over. Nothing Outlaws has done suggests this impending disaster. At worst, it will be a fairly okay game, but nothing that's going to completely collapse a company under the weight of its failure.

But that's not the point. This isn't about any of that. It's about a stupid culture war and it's pissing me off how some idiots are pretending they have anything legitimate to complain about. Fuck, if they thought they could get more money out of it, they'd all be lining up to go to Disneyland for Free and take a boat tour themselves. But they're pathetic, loser, dipshit little fuckwits who can't cut it as real journalists. Because then they'd have to actually fucking do real work instead of shitting out 12 videos about how Brie Larson is evil incarnate in a day.

And at this point, I'm seriously rethinking my plans here. I was intending to get Outlaws at a reduced price through some Microsoft Rewards points. But now I'm not so sure. Maybe I should just pay for most of the game or something, if only to piss off the fucking CHUDs who want to convince me it will be a horrible failure. But I don't like the idea of playing the Capitalist Cheerleading game just to own some fucking douchebags on the internet. So I'm not sure at this point. I know I don't like playing $90 for a fucking video game. Wish they'd complain more about the increase in prices for Triple A titles than bitching about Girls existing in their Space Wizards Media.

Fuck it, I don't know what I'm gonna do at this point. I just know that stupid people are given way too many platforms these days to spew stupid shit and no one calls them out on it. It's fucking infuriating. Pre-Order or don't to your heart's content folks, stop listening to fucking idiots on the internet.

#star wars #star wars outlaws #Rant

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abookisafriend · 2 years

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writing manuals

creating short fiction, bird by bird, writing down the bones, and on writing

creating short fiction, by damon knight: four out of five spaceships

did you feel the need for a writers' guide that comes from your corner, a place where they respect the fantastic? damon knight is a seasoned scifi writer with skills and vision, and he translates his craft as well as he can into a short, concise volume. there are examples and exercises designed to help you build your writing muscles.

especially in his analysis of one of his own stories, he focuses in on the craft with a level of concrete detail that makes the book genuinely useful, in my opinion. the only reason that this book has a lower rating than bird by bird is that i was able to easily finish bird by bird, reading with excitement, whereas damon's book is not one that i return to often and i haven't actually ever finished reading it cover to cover. it is one that i use in class, though, and there are specific sections that i highly recommend -- again, his analysis of his own story "semper fi". he also has fantastic advice on writing with the subconscious. that alone makes it worth the read.

bird by bird, by anne lamott: four and a half out of five torn-up manuscripts

bird by bird is, in my opinion, a justified classic. it's a writer's manual with straightforward advice and examples to lift your spirits, encourage you, and guide your practice. you won't find so many analyses of examples of fiction as in damon knight's creating short fiction, but you will find encouraging and experience-based guidance on creating a long-term writing practice. the writing is very engaging and the book is a bit of a page-turner; lamott does know what she's doing. summing it up here, there are fundamentally three main principles: you have to write a shitty first draft to get a shiny final draft; write every day; it can be as little as three hundred words. when i finished the book, i felt that i knew anne lamott.

writing down the bones, by natalie goldberg: four and a half out of five notebooks

this is a concise, accessible writer's manual with brief chapters you can read in an idle moment at any point in your day. it's very conversational and written with an easy manner, although the topics that the writer broaches can be quite serious. she is focused on memoir writing, but much of her advice applies generally to any narrative form. as with bird by bird, i really felt that i got to know the writer through this book. her writing is very enjoyable to read, and i would recommend the book on that basis alone. also like bird by bird, this book is enjoyable to read just as an experience in its own right; the author really does know how to write. my rating may be off a bit, however, as i haven't completely finished the book.

on writing, by stephen king: four out of five blood-curdling screams

i stopped reading stephen king books because he is too good at what he does and i didn't really want to be that scared. this is a good one, though.

it is half memoir and half writing advice. i would almost recommend it more for the memoir than the advice, but advice from someone like king, who is not only a skilled writer but someone who has thought about his craft, has to be worth something. he adds one thing that the other writers mentioned here generally do not: bone up on your actual mechanics and vocabulary. in other words, the basic stuff of english class.

this book takes a bit of the fear out of approaching writing and renders it a little more accessible. "remember," he will tell you, "i got rejected a hundred times before i sold my first work." his main advice, like lamott, is to write every day. i seem to recall that he even writes on christmas.

#book reviews #writing manuals #writers' guides #writer things #creative writing #creating short fiction #bird by bird #writing down the bones #on writing #damon knight #anne lamott #natalie goldberg #stephen king #fiction #memoir #reviews #review

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selamat-linting · 1 year

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what the fuck guys, i just had a dream where i meet an old guy and start making out with him in the desert. okay let me start from the beginning, we were, i guess in a sburb-ish game i think, where if we dont complete it we wont be able to go home, but there's no apocalypse, people just somehow knew what we're doing like the nonhuman characters who guide and watch the beta kids sburb session.

anyway, i think it devolved into some kind of weird factionalism since the players where thousands of ppl at first and ppl were dropping like flies and fighting each other. we were at the final stage of the game. this old guy has his soul split in two so me and my group decided to save him by splitting up to find his respective souls on different planets and guide him to see both of his selves again and reunite. i was accompanied by this one little girl. i think there was a debate over if this was worth the hassle because i remember we were attacked from something that came out of a random portal but i fought them off. and then we both started talking and i bravely put my butt in his lap and started saying how he's worth it just because he's himself and no matter what he does there will be people who is willing to put in the work to love and forgive him even if its difficult. and i dont care that its unfair and maybe even unhealthy because i love him. we love him. and i imply this other guy in our team would be some good for him as a couple because i love this other guy too but feel my parents wouldnt like him so i gave him up. i played with his hair, and the rest was history.

so anyway, after we spent the night together, held back from sex just because sand was everywhere, we finally met up with the other crew (why i was accompanied with a single child to hunt for him while this guy got a contingent of comrades is a mystery) and turns out this other dude that i had a crush on (he was slightly older than me i think) he actually fucked the older man. they went to a snowstorm planet as a five person group to save the man's soul and he actually made the effort to have sex with the guy in a secluded tent. i know this because once the old man fuse, i somehow gain the memory of my friend who fucked him and vice versa. dont ask me why, dream logic. and we both kinda stared in silent horror because we might have to consider polyamory and the hassle of introducing my friend to my parents because my parents does not understand polyamory the way we do and is racist. also we both conveniently remembered the guy we were both fucking has a wife. so we joke about how our life is fucked after winning the game, to the ignorance of our comrades.

anyway, flash forward, we were in a ship to finally do the last step to win and go home, when we realized there is a group of people dressing in white robes trying to do a human sacrifice ritual so their group can win and determine the prize, which now that i think about it, was the chance to built how our god who rules us will be like, would he be kind or rules with iron fist and all that. anyway, we know because one of the guys in that group finally betrayed them and rat them out for us. we all had this messy fight, and i was hurling them to this corner of the ship where i kept screaming that we will not use human sacrifices. i got hurt and fell down and i prayed that someone could finish them. well, the guy who betrayed his fundamentalist cult faction majorly did it, he manage to throw them out of the airlock, but he has his feet majorly burned. i was the one tasked to patch him up. he kept saying he's sorry while we're all huddled in the same small shitty storage room that was supposed to be our transport space ship

so i had this long tirade about how we have principles and we will not make people who made mistakes as expendable or whatever and i guess it digs into a core of my own feelings about religion, that for so long i was confused that themes of love acceptance and peacefulness in major religions are all commonplace but there's always exceptions and that its always reserved for ppl who dont believe, no matter how kind and good they are. there's always a group of demographic singled out to be born just for experiencing eternal torture or a target of justified hate. or how much of the major religion i saw revolved a lot with throwing people under the bus as necessary sacrifice for people in power in the name of faith, sometimes in a direct way, sometimes by asserting that some groups of people are just meant to be inferior or lower in the pecking order and they should have less options and opportunities just because. and that i said to this guy with the burned feet that if we're remaking a god, i want them to be free of that nonsense. anyway, while i was on my dream soapbox, i was gently bandaging this guy's feet in a horny way and tenderly cradling it and smiling at him like i want to add him to the polycule. i dont even have a feet fetish irl.

but worst of all, i dont recognize any faces in that dream. like all of them are strangers to me. but i have weird sexual relationships with at least three of them? wtf???? i have no idea how my dream got so intricate. i remember so much detail because it was so outrageous i HAVE to blog about just as i wake up. omggggg

#dream journal #sometimes im trapped in a shitty house and sometimes i got epics like these

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psychshalala · 3 years

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Ok i feel like i wanna share my thoughts on our little chapter 220. I read allot of different thoughts about it and i slept on it and i still have mixed feeling about it. I see the right in both sides and the wrong in both sides but one thing ik is that even if yu hon made Kouka great again he would have also been its downfall.

Yu hon was known to be cruel. To him he only cared about his family and his country and had absolutely no regards or mercy towards anyone out of these boundaries. His cruelty didnt run on just killing the enemy it went to extents of torture i can imagine and severing heads to make it memorable even though it was completely unnecessary. I most certainly believe that same cruelty would definitely go around and come right back to bite him in the 🍑. As we all know very well, karma is very charming. Doesn’t necessarily have to be him, it can be future generation as we have already seen with Xing which is the best example. and i also see that some in Kai have a grudges towards yu hon since that general mentioned him and it almost sounded like he was aiming towards “an eye for an eye” type of thing. U sever heads? Well how about we send ur people flying towards their death in front of u.

Someone said “a ruler has to be cruel.” “ a ruler has boundaries”. I disagree. That to me gives the ruler right to be a tyrant. Ur the kind of ruler u choose to be. A ruler can change laws to help his people if he so wishes, he has allot of power. How he uses that power is key. Now let me make something clear. Im not saying Il was in any way a better ruler, nop. Even he himself knows what a shitty ruler he is. Im saying that both of them were flawed and both of them would have in one way or another ruined the country. As both had no balance in their ways.

Now though i am a huge fan of hak which i established many times but far from that yet one of the reasons why i love him is that i truely believe that hak carries that balance. Yona carries allot of kindness and she still has allot to learn about war and being a ruler though she is not her father she does carry a part of him which is natural same as soo wan carries a part of yu hon. Again, how soo wan handled Xing was a great example. Though he had the chance to negotiate and avoid huge losses he still chose war and ignored their wish to make a deal until yona convinced him by her sheer will. Hak understands that a world without war is a pipe dream, and I quote. But he also would not fight unnecessary wars. He understands the cruelty of war but would go through huge lengths to save both sides. Hak sets examples and inspires strength as well as goodness in people.

The advisor might look down on hak and some might look down on him for saving an enemy, but that same action might be the reason this war shifts to Koukas favor. I believe that haks principle in life would be “why have enemies when we can have friends”. He fights when he has to and goes beyond to save those important to him. He understands when there are loses and morns for them. He fights with dignity and respect to both sides of the battle. He understands that innocent civilians shouldnt have to pay the price over two children fighting over milk. As well as weaponless soldiers Who raise the white flag should not be killed just cause they are enemy. Even in battle when u show respect it will be returned one way or the other. This same mentality along with his incredible strength and his influence on people i truly see that hak would become a great ruler. He would not only strengthen Koukas army but he would also strengthen Koukas relation to other countries. Not with fear or weakness but with a strong bond of friendship and respect. I truly see Hak and yona as a power couple cause they think the same but they also complete each other where the other person is lacking. Cant say the same for soo wan in the mix with yona he would only hold her back and dismiss her, which is the opposite when it comes to hak. We all know how much soo wan admires hak, he is soo wans goal and weakness. Thats why i would love it and I believe its only right that hak is the one that teaches soo wan that important lesson. Slap him in the face and show him where his father was lacking!

Yall have a good and blessed day. 🌻^///^

#akatsuki no yona #hak #son hak #yona of the dawn #hak son #akayona #thunder beast #hakyona #yona #soowon #hak x yona #hak x soowon #hakwon #king hak #think about it

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6blackfilin9 · 3 years

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I love your Anko fanart! Tell me, what are your views/headcannons on Anko X Kazuku?

hThank you so much for the ask, finally I can answer it

here is my big thank you for the waitng

In a nutshell, the shipp was created by accident while me and my buddy were working on our first Naruto AU in 2019, where Kakuzu and Deidara survived their shitty plotholes end eventually ended up in Konoha

Yeah

so, the shipp’s birth date is july the 1, 2019

anything like classy, aristocracy kind of tension-filled passionate gothic romance with playful, psychological games & hurt/comfort vibes with slight scent of rivalry is KakuAnko

Basically, they are: a very, very old man with absolutely horrendous background who’s trying to finally have his mother*cking 10 or 30 years of peace, and a rather young lady with a rocky youth who’s being good & noble yet has very strong antihero tendencies

You know, I think they do have potential, since, in fact, they seem to be very similar, at the core

They are both very pragmatic realists, the people of logic and reason, yet if Kakuzu’s irritability doesn’t affect him a tiny bit due to his ideal self-control, Anko’s can lead her to quite bad places, sometimes. They put their interests in the first place, and even though she tries to attach them to Konoha’s, she still has ‘personal’ things (I’ll write ‘bout it lower*). Their mindsets are so complicatedly organized that, at some point & way, it prevents them from having many close people, and makes them very hard to see through and predict

Both of them are very flexible & adaptive, independent individuals with similar outlooks on plenty of things and high intellectual level. They clearly can find plenty of traits that they would highly respect and adore in each other

Here I will speak mostly for “why and how” kind of things, bc both of them are terribly tricky to accurately figure out. But there will be some headcanons too

So, there are still some odds about them, due to the strong difference in their occupation, like, in plenty of cases they are really tricky to be brought together, because:

- Of the job

In original, Anko is a Konoha’s special jounin, and she is very dedicated to serving the country. Independently of whether she likes her job or not (depends on the plot), she orienteers at the people, at society’s gain from her work. So, accordingly, in any other AU her job is somehow connected to civil service, whether it’s something police-like, connected to science, or something like CCG in Tokyo Ghoul

Kakuzu, on the other hand, is a hitman and a persona non grata in literally all the five big countries, Konoha too (which makes it barely possible to bring them together in the original universe without hard complications or heavy drama. But still possible). He orienteers on his own gain alone, but, depending on the job, it can include others’ gain, too.

This detail makes him a saint once he holds supervising position in some company or any high position in the government (the better the working conditions of the staff now- the more money in the prospective), and the sheer nightmare once he has it on the opposite side of the law. Him as a mob boss is a complete different topic for discussion, but to get the point, in this case, the trouble isn’t him increasing the level of criminality (its rather vice-versa), but taking hold of too much control in the high and underground structures. Even as an ordinary hitman he’s rather tricky, since everything depends on the case

In most of the stories, they come to some sort of compromise, and how hard it is to reach it depends on how shitty his job is and how attached they are to each other at the moment

Like, in the above mentioned Shippuden AU and Harry Potter AU (which I also wrote with my buddy) everything went like clockwork, because there they are both more or less on this side of the law, in Tokyo Ghoul AU (which I also wrote with my buddy) it is a bit more complicated, with her being in-law and him being very much outlaw, in the Avatar AU (which I also figured out with my buddy, but we never happened to write it) it is also pretty smooth, with both of them being outlaws and then jumping out to the glory after all the shit is done, but in another Shippuden AU of mine, this all would be just a motherfucking bloody disaster

- Kakuzu is actually a hard nut to get attached to anyone

He lived too long to be truly afraid of anything, though. Its mostly because he doesn’t really need to get attached to or become close with someone to satisfy his need for communication. The man can get along with anyone once he wishes to, he can have countless acquaintances and plenty of buddies, but he doesn’t have many comrades and barely can call anyone a friend. Because he is used to lose everything and everyone he ever had or happened to have, because of his inhumanly lengthened lifespan.

It requires time for him to get used to the person, and then, eventually, in some cases, spend plenty of it to get attached

Plus, for him, due to his profession, each close connection is a really great responsibility for him. In most cases, he’d think twice of weather he is ready to take it or not

Though it of course has the personal factor, too

In Anko’s case, she has a grand privilege by being a very intelligent and keen woman, not just in cognitive plane, but in emotional, too. High emotional intellect is actually a rare trait, so she automatically stands out of the crowd for him. Even though it won’t guarantee his alliance, it will grant her his high respect and some sort of sympathy

- Kakuzu is, technically, an asshole

He does have his moral compass, which includes a great amount of common social morality, but he also has that “I am working” state

Even though Kakusu has a set of professional principles, and he still acts accordingly to what he thinks is right, one and the very same situation can be solved diametrically different once the context changes from working to casual and vice versa

This, and him being very independent and quite antisocial, makes the degree of assholeness depend on various factors

This can lead to major conflicts of interests, and if they are possible to have any compromise or not is strongly attached to the circumstances. After all, both are very, very prideful and dignified people

- In other words, the only major issue for them would be morality questions. It’s possible to make the case acceptable for Anko, since both of them ain’t truly squeaky clean, along with Kakuzu being willing enough to watch his borders

- She is provident and doesn’t really need a lot of money on a daily basis, which is much of a joy to him lol

- *they both seek for the stable ground, first of all

Taking in consideration the life conditions Kakuzu had in his youth (despite war state, he still stably had family, friends, grand respect from everyone, home, warmth and food) and how terribly he was torn out of his secured social environment, I believe what he seeks through all his bounty hunt and other money-connected manipulations is stability. Sustainability he had back then. The only way to have it in the conditions of our existent world order is to have money (and a very good mind and luck)

Anko has indeed much more altruistic motives, yet it’s still not that simple. It seems to be, on the first sight, yet considering the “Orochimaru related cases” and her very wayward behavior toward them, it’s clear she keeps her own motives and needs in mind oh so well. The service she has is very well payed, it allows her to do what she likes or believes is right, and to have the living conditions she finds comfortable. And only here, relying on the made sustainable basis, she does what she does

- Thus, they both illustrate the principle “first help yourself, next help the other” just right

- She knows she can keep an eye on him, yet it’s clear for her that her influence isn’t borderless, as well as telling him off some stuff is kind of a not wise thing to do. So in the majority of cases, she never interferes

- This is not common, yet he can actually change some plans if the situation is serious and the compromise can’t be found. He is that kind of person who works on a further prospective, and in this context, this would be the relationship with his loved one

- While Kakuzu is quite conflicted and has very reserved controversial persona, Anko is both controversial, conflicted, and sort of two-faced, on top of that

She is a very sincere, cheerful and humbly honest human being, yet she has some darker natural traits of her character that became rather strong with age and traumatic experience. Cunningness, guile, ways-depend-on-the-case and a bit of ruthlessness, that is. Moreover, she has some unsolved personal issues, which makes her even more twisted.

Like, remember the time when she confronted Orochimaru during the exam? And Kabuto, on the war? Getting rid of them is indeed beneficial for Konoha, but it’s clear that for her it is personal vendetta in the first place. She wouldn’t have tried to do this alone, otherwise, because these two are rather dangerous ones, to say the least.

She uses greater good to cover her real motives (even though it is not truly complete bullshit), and seems to have a terrible habit to keep silence about really important things, which makes her quite prone to lying, in some cases

And sometimes it very badly pisses Kakuzu off, since it makes her prone to doing useless but dangerous shit too

Yet this not any kind of separate hidden side, it is integrated into her personality, and coexists with her bright one. That’s where her violent humour comes from, for example.

But Kakuzu, on the other side, is completely monolith individual, yet sometimes his mindset can create contradictions when it comes to something important to him. but it's another topic

And seeing these layered constructions, and motives, they can pretty finely predict each other’s behavior. Not super-neatly, but they for sure see the basis. This is what helps Kakuzu to prevent Anko from doing some stupid shit, sometimes

- Anko has a role of an indicator for the people who don’t understand and see the changes in Kakuzu’s mood sometimes, since she usually reacts quite openly. Yet, when she has the same unreadable mask of cold, or one of guile, it’s a nightmare for them

- They prefer the non-verbal way to show their feelings, even though Anko is obviously the more chatty one

- They don’t say things such as “I love you”, or other sensual stuff like that really often, believing it to be some sort of cherished words that shall not be spelled mindlessly

- Anko isn’t majorly into PDA, but she fancies it much more than Kakuzu does. She has her whole moments of studying something with her hands, whether it’s a hand, scar or face. He’s more into passive display of affection, like wrapping an arm over her waist or leaning to her or something of this kind; they can allow themselves to (not sexually) kiss in public though

- She knows he doesn’t like to walk hand in hand due to considering it a youthful thing, so there are times when she intentionally walks holding on to his sleeve; generally they walk separately in order not to bother each other, but sometimes they walk arm in arm (like an old Victorian couple lol)

- Being older and wiser, Kakuzu eventually upholds some kind of mentoring position, yet he never considers himself any kind of a teacher or master to Anko, believing her to have a good head of her own. He is just insightful enough to break something through to her or give a word of advise

- This, combined with his highly powerful demeanor, also makes him have the leading position in their relationship

- Anko respects him much enough to fortify this, entrusting with plenty of life questions (like organizing the family budget), even though they make the majority of decisions together. Mostly because he is truly wise and highly experienced individual.

- This makes him one of the very few people Anko would actually listen to and take their opinion in consideration

- So basically they have equal relationship with some tendency to patriarchal order

- And it is, really, mostly economically-based disbalance, with him earning much more than she does

- Yet they never have any financial-based issues, since both of them keep in mind and respect the contributions of each

- There is major power play here, too. He has the absolute might, she has seduction. Anko loves how he makes her want to submit to him, let him have all the power, so she likes provoking him. And she knows he adores it, loves the subtle control she has over him

- They don’t have conflicts in their everyday life. Each knows how to avoid pissing one another off

- He cherishes her playful demeanor, her intellect. Combined with her cunningness, it allows her to rival him, in social sphere. The way she constructs her phrases, the way she speaks, mimics, moves, how bewitchingly it suits her feminine snaky features makes his blood boil and heart melt

- Both of them, actually, have rather specific kind of dry, dark humour. Kakuzu’s is very cynical, satirical, quite often menacing and subtly demeaning; Anko’s is very sarcastic and quite dirty, even gruesome and rather violent

- Sometimes they “fight” verbally as a form of a play. In some circumstances they may sound pretty vile, so some unobservant people mistake this for display of hate

- In general, Anko is the one to heat things up with her playful demeanor, which can include provocation and rivalry, and Kakuzu is the one to keep this energy in borders, accumulating it up to much more intense states

- They both put the comfort in the first place when it comes to household. Everything must be cozy, useful, silent and super clean

- Yet they are both very unpretentious and modest, really

- She absolutely adores when he is showing his serious, severe side, or powerful demeanor. She finds it incredibly suitable for him. She also likes how his real age is sliding out in this or that way. Like, even though he has rather young face (that of 37-40 y.o.), his eyes give away that he’ve seen oh so much more than it seems; the grumpy noises and grunts he makes, the lazy attitude in movements and the way how rapidly he finds a comfy pose once he has a chance to take a seat

- They are both rather patriotic, yet while in the most stories Anko’s feelings mostly lay towards the country she lives in, Kakuzu’s more often lay towards some places, so called small motherland.

- Kakuzu actually could be a source of deep, strong admiration and delight for her, despite all of his bullshit. The unbreakable will he has, mighty burning heart, all the wisdom, talents and mind. Being sent to fight god damn Hashirama, clearly a genius of his times, financial & management genius at the least. And, still, after all the hard times he’ve been through, he maintained the very strong sense of dignity and nobility, even though slightly twisted due to the profession and abnormal lifespan

- And the very same things can serve as the source for her chagrin: with all those traits, he could have been so much more rather than a criminal. With all the gifts he’ve got, he could have been of great use to society. He’s much easier about this, since his prospective is much wider and embraces decades (and in some universes even centuries) instead of months & years, and he knows that he’d be switching sides throughout his life, being on this and that side of the law, yet he still is a bit uncomfortable once it’s brought up

- They are deeply into science, which makes them atheists. He’s into medicine and human biology, she’s into chemistry and reptilian biology; both of them are nuts for physics, history and psychology

- They solve complicated physical and mathematical problems together time to time. She is the first one to have tea-breaks due to losing her temper over it, he tries to figure things out right until you can sense the smoke coming off his head

- Actually, they do have a stumbling stone aside from job & morality complications. And this is Anko’s attitude towards Orochimaru

What she does is basically ruins her life very-very slowly, maintaining the issues she has and planning to make him pay for all he’s done

Kakuzu knows exactly what is really going on with this attitude and why, but he can’t really do anything about it. Like, he knows he can’t make her change her mind or put something into her head

All he can do is really nothing but try to explain how those things are working, and even this option is basically a landmine field for him. At some level she does understand that he could probably be right, yet she just refuses to go back on her mind. And this is actually really dangerous, so at some moments they can fight quite badly about it

- He’s scared shitless to lose her, though; especially like that, even though he knows clearly that he will, anyway, sooner or later

- he knows that losing loved ones ends up with sheer disaster for him, yet he isn’t afraid to pay such a high price for those six, five or four decades of being with her. Because these decades are that of a paradise ones for him. Wife and family, as well as stable job, incomes and life conditions, are some sort of physical definitions of sustainability he craves. Especially family, yet it’s far ahead to plan

- The fact that he will have to bury her one day makes her rather depressed, as well as the knowledge that the only thing she can really do about it is to try to bring him as much happiness and comfort as possible before she dies

thank you, i'd say more, but it's too much already

#my art #naruto #naruto shipuden #akatsuki #naruto akatsuki #akatsuki kakuzu #kakuzu #naruto anko #mitarashi anko #kakuanko #they are very entertaining disaster

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tellthemeerkatsitsfine · 2 years

Video

youtube

Just saw this interview, which I remember watching years ago because it came up in my YouTube feed and I loved Last Week Tonight, and was interested in a story about its inner workings. It came up in my YouTube feed again today, and I watched it again, and I’m glad I did. I’ve seen a few interviews with John Oliver over the years, and this one covers the same ground that the rest of them cover, but also a fair bit of ground that other interviews I’ve seen haven’t covered.

One way in which it covers familiar ground is that it involves the fun and frequently played game of: “Interviewer uses much of their allotted time just trying to get John Oliver to take a fucking compliment, their efforts are met with pushback that ranges from dismissive derision to outright aggression.” That man is actively offended by even the insinuation that he has ever done anything good or useful in his entire life. He’s trapped in a perennial loop with interviewers of “A lot of people love how you keep them entertained and informed” versus “Fuck off, I do no such thing, and anyone who thinks I do that is an idiot” (that’s a light paraphrasing of an amalgamation of his common answers).

As much as his self-depreciation can be a little over the top sometimes, I do respect John Oliver’s insistence that his name and his team’s work not be used to further dilute the definition of journalism. It seems a little pointless to me, since that definition has been diluted so far beyond him that the way people talk about LWT doesn’t even matter anymore. A lot of stuff that’s way less rigorous than what he does gets called “journalism” all the time, and what he does is much closer to journalism that lots of sources from which people get their news these days. But I respect John’s commitment to the principle. To the fact that once upon a time, “journalism” meant adhering to certain standards of research and accountability and objectivity and transparency and ethics and general integrity, and a comedy show by definition cannot meet those standards. Proper journalism has to be boring.

But people don’t like being bored, and they take journalism for granted, and someone invented Twitter, and now people can call anything “news” and seem just as reliable as an actual news source that’s accountable to journalistic standards, and I genuinely believe that that is one of the biggest factors in many of the biggest problems facing the world right now. It’s an important institution that holds power to account, and when we don’t protect that, every single facet of society gets worse.

...And that is why Anchorman 2 is a surprisingly good satire in addition to being almost as funny as the first one, even though it should have been just a shitty cash grab like all other sequels to great Blockbuster comedies. Thank you for coming to my TED Talk.

I’m not trying to judge individual people who don’t constantly follow the news, because individual people shouldn’t have to do that all the time. Both I and the world would probably be just fine if I spent less time listening to CBC podcasts, and I might feel slightly less depressed. But I’m just saying, the world would probably be better if more people spent some time following real news. And in some ways, it can even be less depressing! Getting real facts from boring proper journalists can be easier on the mental health than scrolling through social media or looking at sensationalized sources. Seriously, for any Canadians who want to be informed and don’t know where to start, the CBC is far from perfect but is at least accountable to checks on its accuracy, rather than being primarily accountable to advertisers and other interests. Vassy Kapelos and Rosemary Barton are kind of holding the country together, and that’s a place to start.

Okay, I didn’t actually mean for this post to go that far down the road of pontificating about journalism. I actually meant to say that every interview with John Oliver ends up covering “Are you a journalist?” “No I’m fucking not and saying I am is both an insult to the institution of journalism and to journalists themselves” conversation, and I find it interesting that this one lasted long enough to go quite far beyond that.

They get into stuff about how LWT episodes get made, how they went from going one week at a time to making a bunch of stories in advance, how the team works together. It’s interesting background. How the show evolved from something closer to the established Daily Show style into what it is now, with the in-depth segments getting longer and longer, and the traditional interviews getting fewer and father between. How interesting it is that it was his vision of what a show like this could be, and a big risk for HBO to let him do it when it was not a tested format. How it was also a risk for all the writers and researchers who signed on to it, and how much pressure there is on John to be the one-person face of that whole team and do their work justice. I found it particularly interesting when he said Donald Trump started eating into the time they used to dedicate to stories from around the world. I have noticed LWT becoming a lot more American-centric since its first few seasons, and I think that’s not a great thing but it is an understandable thing (American show focuses on America, fair enough), and liked hearing John acknowledge that this has happened and explain it a bit.

And of course there were discussions about how the political environment affects a political comedy show. Some stuff about having a bit of an outsider’s perspective from being an immigrant while doing the work of a closely connected insider who learns the inner workings of America and then tells the rest of us about them.

Near they end, they covered a topic that I’ve heard a lot of comedians discuss, which is how utterly bullshit it is when people say Donald Trump is a comedian’s dream. I’ve been re-watching bits of The Thick of It in the last couple of days, and that has me thinking about how Armando Iannucci has said a show like that wouldn’t work in the Trump era, because there is no room for subtlety. There’s nothing to satirize.

I guess that’s almost related to what I said before, about how now we have Twitter instead of journalism. It feels like the Trump era created a lot of Twitter instead of political comedy. It’s very easy to make cheap, Twitter-sized jokes about Donald Trump, but it’s hard to do anything that goes deeper.

I realize that this whole post may make me sound about 100 years old; maybe I’m wrong and we’ll find that newer ways of doing things are better. Anyway, here’s a quote from the end of the video that I found really interesting and well articulated.

Ali Velshi: Some people think as much as the world would be a better place under a different administration, it may hurt TV, or it may hurt cable, or it may hurt comedy. You don’t share that view?

John Oliver: It will not hurt comedy. You mean Trump not being president anymore? It will not hurt comedy. At all. Quite the reverse. It will make comedy much, much better.

Ali Velshi: Because?

John Oliver: It’s not good for comedy, this guy. Partly because, the really reductive way to say it is that it’s kind of self-satirizing. But it’s much more complicated than that, because when you’re trying to tell a joke about something, normally you’re trying to take something that means something, and then find something trivial to say. Often what he’s saying is, it’s not just that it doesn’t mean anything, it’s that there is something really meaningful inside the nothing that he’s saying. But you have to kind of inject protein into it to then show how it’s a problem. And that is just not a kind of, like, intellectual gastronomy that everyone should be engaging in. It’s too complicated. Or, you get really lazy comedy. And I think bad politicians for years have produced bad comedy.

It reminds me of the way people rarely read a whole article from something like Reductress or The Onion, because the headline is the joke (I’m not knocking them, I find both those websites hilarious, I don’t think they pretend that the humour is in more than the headlines, and that’s fine). Or how if people ask the audience for suggestions at an improv show, if the audience throws out a setting or scenario that’s profane in itself, the sketch won’t be as funny because the joke has already been made and there’s nowhere to go from there. When Trump already is the joke, you can either point out that obvious joke if you want lazy comedy, or if you want good comedy, you have to try to find something more to it, and that is not easy. I think. That is what I think as someone who is not a comedian and doesn’t know what I’m talking about. But I find it interesting.

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thehotspurs · 3 years

Text

profuse amounts of maxiel rambling below, because there’s this one damn song that just reminds me of them so much and i can’t hold it in any longer

SO THE SONG “DECEMBER” BY NECK DEEP RIGHT-

i added it onto my maxiel playlist on spotify a while back and only just sat down and properly clocked how much the lyrics apply to them??

(OBVIOUS DISCLAIMER THAT THIS IS ALL IN MY IMAGINATION OKAY NONE OF IT IS REAL (well okay maybe like i little bit might be) TAKE IT WITH A PINCH OF SALT)

“stumbled round the block a thousand times, you missed every call that i had tried so now i’m giving up”

(for context, this song is in max’s POV cerca 2018) the idea that he’s spamming daniel’s phone, trying to get an answer whilst he’s most likely very drunk cuz he’s all depressed from dan leaving is just something that would happen plz

“a heartbreak in mid december you don’t give a fuck, you never remember me”

MID DECEMBER. dan’s last race for red bull was the 25th november, he’d most likely be finished up with everything red bull related in mid december, hence max’s obvious crippling heartache and worries that daniel will basically forget about him once he leaves rb

“while you’re pulling on his jeans, getting lost in the big city”

HIS jeans you cry?? WHOSE??? well, wish i could give you an answer but alas i can’t - that line always escapes my explanation :| could maybe make a tenuous link to “his jeans” meaning some form of renault clothing but hey i’m tryna keep it as real as i can when i’m literally attempting to make lyrics fit to two completely unrelated people! “getting lost in the big city” is just monaco i guess, maybe LA cuz dan loves it so much??

“i was looking out our window, watching all the cars go”

they live (lived?) in the same apartment building!! chances are they share the same view, hence the OUR window

“wondering if i’ll see chicago, or a sunset on the west coast or will i die in the cold, feeling blue and alone”

i just imagine this as max wondering how he’ll spend his winter break: 1. with dan in chicago (or pretty much anywhere in the US) 2. with dan in perth, hence the “west coast” (tenuous, i know) 3. at home in monaco by himself or in holland, without dan (which is devoid of sun and warmth because he’s missing dan)

“i hope you get your ball room floor, your perfect house with rose red doors”

rose red doors. rose red doors. rose red doors. its no secret dan’s dream was/is to drive for ferrari, and what colour do ferrari drive in? rose. red. his perfect house i see as the perfect car (aka one that isn’t as shitty as that 2018 red bull) with the rose red doors as the rose red livery. max hopes dan gets his dream one day, even if that isn’t with him

“i’m the last thing you’d remember, it’s been a long lonely december”

for better or for worse, max is the last thing daniel remembers of redbull. and again, with dan leaving rb officially after the last race in november, max truly is having a long, lonely december without him

“i wish i’d know that less is more, but i was passed out on the floor. that’s the last thing i remember it’s been a long lonely december”

max doing what every good angsty bitch does and drowning his sorrows in alcohol ❤️ perhaps he intended on apologising to dan but drank too much and fucked it up? who knows (not me, i’m just the messenger of whatever my brain brings up at 3am)

“cast me aside to show yourself in a better light, i came out grieving, barely breathing and you came out alright”

it’s no secret rb favoured max and yet forming this exceptional partnership where they respect each other on track and care too much meant no normal team principle would ever think about splitting them up, but dan can’t deal with being the second driver, and so has to cut ties to try and make himself as an individual look better to escape rb. in the end, max loses his best friend, his rock, his anchor, whilst daniel gets what he wanted all along

“but i’m sure you’ll take his hand, i hope he’s better than i ever could’ve been”

bit of a reach (but we love those here), dan shaking cyril’s hand to formalise those contract negotiations and finally getting out of rb. max knows how much he hated it, and he hopes renault can offer daniel what he couldn’t - happiness and success

“my mistakes were not intentions this is a list of my confessions i couldn’t say”

max didn’t intend on causing the crashes in hungary or baku and he’d never dream of wanting rb to favour him over dan. but he just can’t seem to admit it

“pain is never permanent but tonight it’s killing me”

he knows he’ll get over it eventually, but time heals and the wound is ✨fresh✨

“i miss your face, you’re in my head, there’s so many things that i should’ve said”

this is fairly self-explanatory, max just can’t stop thinking about what he could’ve done to stop dan from leaving

“a year of suffering, a lesson learned”

2018 was one big year of suffering. the retirements, the crashes, the contract politics. it was torture.

the rest is pretty much just repeats of the chorus so i won’t bore you with that!! but yeah, my rambling is over. if you made it to this point fair fucking play, i apologise as well because my 3am thoughts are never easy to read.

i’ll link the playlist below if you wanna listen to over 24 hours of songs that remind me of maxiel, no i’m not okay but thanks for asking.

#maxiel #daniel ricciardo #max verstappen #Spotify

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aotopmha · 4 years

Text

AoT 137 spoilers:

Letting Eren live would precisely play into the narrative that AoT is fascist propaganda. But I guess a portion of the story's fans these days are very much into that stuff in the first place.

I also love how all actually emotionally complex ideas (imagine Eren actually let his friends fight because he cares about his friends in this very complicated contradictory way, but that possibly can't be it) are reduced to power of friendship because your Nazi wet dream doesn't happen.

I'd rather a story be as clear as possible about not supporting genocide than being more "original" and "complex" because it lets the genocide happen.

Darker and different ≠ better written.

Also, I'm pretty sure this is still setting up for some sort of twist.

There is still 2 chapters left, the action here is obviously not done. I think these past 3 chapters have been pretty usual hopeful set-up chapters for how AoT executes its tragedy. I feel like it is really obvious if you examine how the story has been told so far. It's setting ducks in a row in a pretty similar manner to all of the big tragedies in this story so far.

And I think this upcoming tragedy will still lead to a bunch of deaths before Eren is finally killed.

So, good news is, you can still get your Nazi wet dream and the evil cringvengers can still be defeated by your glorious leader.

(I saw someone unironically say this sentence, by the way, holy shit.)

So the darker version can still happen, but I think the story will still paint Eren as wrong. If it doesn't, I'm going to make a final post talking about it and be done with it.

So no matter how contrived these people say any other ending besides Eren winning is or how contrived it might end up being in my eyes (and right now I think Eren losing is perfectly thematically consistent), I'm still going to side with the alliance winning because it's the principle of the thing.

I really don't think any of these complaints are about the quality of the story anymore. I think even more self-aware people just find the Jaegerists' extremism sincerely appealing because it appeals to their cynicism and makes the whole thing simple. I think a lot of people, particularly young men, on the internet are miserable and can't see hope, either, like Zeke.

So they frown on what their definition of power of friendship is, which is finding hope or seeing any kind of positive outcome in a story, no matter how foreshadowed or grounded it is. There is no good in humanity, after all. Impossible.

I was like this for a very long time, too. But as I've now said many times, I think humanity is just as much awful as it is kind.

Some are also children or young adults who want to seem more adult because they are watching a story with a lot of cruelty and blood and gore. So a darker ending is a more mature ending to them.

But what this is actually saying is why Nazis are so horrible. It's an ideology that destroys you, your people and everyone else around you emotionally and physically and Zeke was a victim of it, too.

I think someone starting to see the good in his life is a good thing to portray in your story, just as much as someone falling into pieces is. In this chapter Eren's and Zeke's arcs are opposites: Zeke has the positive arc while Eren has had the negative arc.

Maybe these thoughts are also influenced by how this same internet culture lead to a fascist coup attempt in a country that is known for its respect for freedom.

I'm done with giving any leeway to it unless I really make sure the person behind it is talking in good faith. I've been following a couple of people leaning into this Reddit funnyman stuff and I'm done with that or anyone making light of the fascist elements of the story, like the entire character of Floch or any of the Jaegerists or the system of Marley or even just Eren.

Even if "it's just memeing" it makes light of these ideas and softens them up. It tells me you find at least some of it appealing or not as bad as it seems, no matter how self-aware you are about it, especially if you're actually pretty deeply drenched in it.

You're being a good person because you have to and not because you actually want to be one and these kind of people are very much a red flag for shitty relationships.

I hope some of these guys find happiness some day, but associating with them could end up a mess.

And oh boy, is a section of the AoT fanbase this.

These thoughts are all based on a few images and a messy summary, but I like it so far.

I thought Zeke would have a role based on where he left off and I like this.

Oh and those worried about revival stuff, if there is a heaven, it will probably be gone once the parasite is killed.

The only way one could exist is through paths and if that's gone, there would be no more afterlife, either and all the Shifters and Wall Titans would just probably die.

So this will probably be the final time everyone sees them again.

I think I'm most confident with the take that there is a twist next chapter.

I can be wrong, but it really feels like it to me based on how the story has been told so far.

I'm looking forward to reading the complete chapter.

#Attack on Titan #Shingeki no Kyojin #AoT chapter 137 #SnK chapter 137 #Chapter 137 #AoT #SnK

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boundlesshart · 4 years

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how royal succession works in Almyra + Other Things about almyra that’s been rattling in my head since that nintendo dream interview laid waste on my crops

hi, so after reading M’s @ladamedepique drabble about a concubine war kid getting kmarted, i realized that what i actually want to write is the Everything i’ve been thinking about since this nintendo dream interview came out back in march. so i did. it’s 2am and im hungry.

i realize that it’s been a while, so the summary of that interview’s impact on my claude headcanons is “my handcrafted claude backstory that i had to write myself bc intsys decided fuck claude is now irreversibly fucked by the introduction of a bunch of half-siblings he had to be rivals with.” if you ever catch yourself wondering why this is such a mess, well because that’s exactly what this is! this is all subject to change, it’s same kind of “haphazard and bizarrely long half-baked headcanon report” that my dlc thought train was. i’ve changed my mind at least 20 times during this process i will change it again

i’d like to thank zotero for holding all of my journal articles and pdfs on the ottomans and their succession system, and also magnificent century og and kosem, while not being totally historically accurate, for being a fun soap opera to give me some visuals to work with in my head. i now have a positive understanding of what claude’s shitty little beard could realistically look like, which is a gift that i never thought i would have.

Almyran Succession

All of the king’s children, regardless of if they were born in or out of wedlock, is considered a legitimate prince or princess. This is pretty much the only title that they can expect to have, as they and their mothers cannot inherit any lands, titles or wealth that would have been passed to them from their own families. Almyran property law aims to avoid partitioning property between multiple heirs for the sake of maintaining the family’s financial stability. The throne of Almyra works under the same principle, which had led to the introduction, legalization, and practice of open succession.

Open succession, despite its potential to be cruel, is viewed as a necessary step to ensure that the throne would only be held by strong leaders chosen by the people (”people” ending up being the higher-ranking officials that would benefit from a specific child’s ascension). If they proved to be lacking, they would simply be deposed of and replaced.

What determines who becomes the next ruler of Almyra is not whether a child is the oldest of all the children, but if they and their allies have the political acumen to not only claim kingship but keep it, fighting off their rival brothers and sisters.

All sons and unmarried daughters are eligible to rule Almyra. By law is not only the next ruler’s right but duty to remove other potential heirs to secure their right to rule and the stability of their reign. Generally upon a ruler’s ascension to the throne, their brothers will be killed and their sisters married off or killed if they threaten their siblings’ rule. Exceptions have been made in the past, but they are few and far in between and have led to succession crises down the road.

The previous ruler’s choice for an heir is usually accepted after their death, and ideal for minimizing the interregnum period. Even so, it doesn’t guarantee that the heir will be able to keep the throne.

Ok, but where do the kids come from?

Rulers of Almyra are allowed to have multiple spouses, but they usually only marry for political purposes.

The vast majority of children are mothered or fathered by concubines with no background of political power, which is preferred. Princes and princesses are allowed to have children once they leave the palace (to prove that they can have them), but if they have too many they may be considered a threat to the king and dealt with appropriately.

I think the one mother-one child rule would have been in place here, not necessarily as a law but as a rule enforced by other spouses and concubines, as well as the ruler’s mother or father.

Princes and princesses aren’t dropping like flies, and murdering them without having the law on your side is considered treason of the highest order. They’re still aware of their competition and fear being murdered when one of their siblings takes the thrones, so few end up becoming friends.

Children are ultimately their mother’s or father’s responsibility. They are expected to guide them through their education and follow them to their provincial post when they are old enough, setting them up for success and paving their path to the throne. King and Queen Dowagers have been incredibly influential in Almyran history and support their children by representing them politically and managing their spouses and concubines.

Ok, whatever, just tell me what’s relevant to Claude:

Ibrahim, Claude’s father, became the king of Almyra only after 5 year civil war between himself and his two remaining brothers. He got to the throne first and is still feared for the ruthless execution of even his youngest brothers and sisters.

In all, Ibrahim has had 2 wives and 12 concubines, and he has fathered 10 sons and 6 daughters. A few died to childhood illnesses but most made it to at least 13 years old. He’s a doting father and cares for their well-being, though only when he happens to see them. Though he was a constant presence in Claude’s life, his half-siblings usually only saw him during holidays.

No one in Almyra knows that Tiana is the daughter of Duke Riegan, for all they know she’s a Fódlaner that King Ibrahim brought back with him after a short border strife with the Leicester Alliance. Obviously she goes by another name in Almyra, and here is where I think I’m going to bring back the first name I had for her, Desdemona. Suck it, intsys. She wasn’t liked when she first came due to being from Fódlan, and was accused of witchcraft when Ibrahim married her and devoted himself to her at the expense of his other wives as concubines. As the herd of children and concubines thinned, Tiana’s strong personality and battle prowess garnered her respect among the top officials of the Almyran court and even her enemies.

In Fódlan Year 1175, rebels infiltrate the palace walls and kill over a dozen people, from palace servants to princes and princesses. In the moment it was believed to be part of a revolt that was ongoing in the capital at the time and carried out by rebels storming the palace walls and stealing and killing whatever came in their way. After an investigation, it was discovered that that was just a cover up for.... a noble Almyran house trying to make a power grab through either an older son or with their own heir? I’ve been working out the details on this for months and I still don’t have them ironed out don’t look at me. It ends with a couple of older half-sibs dying but more importantly Claude’s older and younger brother dying and Claude nearly dying himself, only to survive with the Crest of Riegan. I imagine that there have been instances before hinted at him having the Crest of Riegan, but it was this incident that confirmed it for Tiana.

These are the notable royal family members, or the ones I’ve spent at least one second thinking of:

King Ibrahim II of Almyra: Claude’s dad, born Fódlan year 1131 so 19 when he ascends the throne. He is feared but respected, brutal to his enemies, firm with his allies... but you’d be surprised by how easygoing he actually is with friends and family. He’s young at heart and energetic, even laughing at jokes made at his expense, but only in very close company. He loves writing poetry, especially to Tiana, and he frequently sends her love letters so that one can be read out to her every morning and evening when her mail is given to her. Relishes the thrill of battle. Nader introduced him to kumis back when they were boys and to this day Ibrahim regularly drinks a glass each night, claiming it makes him stronger.

There’s a tradition in the royal family that all princes and princesses must learn a trade in case that they fall into misfortune. Ibrahim enjoys goldsmithing when he is alone, a good distraction from his thoughts. Claude’s earring is part of a set given to his mother, crafted by his father as a gift.

Tiana von Riegan/Desdemona: Claude’s mom, born Fódlan year 1135. Claude calls her a warrior goddess and a demon queen that would laugh at his expense, I imagine that she’s in that “dead serious but good humored about it” boat like Claudedad, but less sappy about it. A tough but loving mother, she was very involved in her children’s upbringing and did her best to secure their place in the royal family. She doesn’t teach any of her kids the Fódlanguage because she was distancing herself from That, but Claude is able to convince her to help him learn (though she was reluctant about it and limited their lessons greatly, forcing him to teach himself mostly). She has firmly decided to never return to Fódlan, but a cup of Leicester Cortania is her guilty pleasure. These days Tiana spends her time at her husband’s side in Maragheh, keeping up with her training.

Two older half-brothers: So Claude’s endings have him as heir to the throne without a mention of rivals, but part of me feels like that’s too simple for Claude considering he just up and walked out of there 7 years ago so here we are, two rivals. They’re probably early to mid 30s at this point and have one or two small children of their own. I don’t know their names yet, but my initial ideas are a “nice” brother cool calculated pushing up glasses kind of dude that is actually a huge dick and a chad dudebro who’s just trying to distance himself from these bad vibes.

If I had to give them trades, nice brother likes to fish and sails for pleasure (he governs a coastal province) and chad brother carves wooden thumbrings.

Orhan: Claude’s older brother, born Fódlan Year 1160. He was conceived months before Tiana went to Almyra (born 5 months after she arrived), so his parentage has been in doubt from day 1. I imagine him as having low self-esteem since he was believed to be a full-blooded Fódlaner, discriminated against in a similar way or worse than what the rest of his siblings went through. Historians would later debate whether or not he was actually Ibrahim’s son.... but we’re not historians, and Orhan was definitely his son. Died in the FY1175 uprising at the age of 15.

No idea what he looked like, he just happened to not look like his parents. His favorite food was salted cod, but he was rarely able to get it. Orhan enjoyed playing the violin.

Claude/Khalid: You know him, you love him, born Fódlan Year 1162 under another name. He’s the only kid that ended up getting the Crest of Riegan, and after one too many accidents where that crest ended up proccing, he’s been accused of practicing witchcraft like his mother. I think this would be a better like, concrete thing for the Almyrans to fixate on rather than a general “you’re half-Fódlan rahhh” and I think it would definitely go with Claude talking about how he was constantly fighting and explaining himself to get out of trouble.

If I’m going with the “kids can only inherit from the ruler of Almyra”, then I’m gonna have to figure out how Claude fits into this. His first move is to probably bullshit a loophole about how actually the Dukedom of Riegan doesn’t exist anymore and I may have destroyed Failnaught after the final battle so technically I didn’t really inherit anything that would give me an edge in Almyran politics. :). Ibrahim is pissed at Claude for going to Fódlan in the first place and getting caught up in a war and he definitely did not sign off on Nader bringing Almyran troops into a war that they have no business being involved in. The first thing Ibrahim does when Claude returns to Maragheh is shout at him and ground him to his apartment in the palace. And then proceed to assign Claude to a governmental post so that he’s out of his sight.

As an aside, I imagine that when Ibrahim dies and Claude rises to the throne, he deliberately delays his coronation so that it coincides with the Almyran New Year. It;s that kind of inconvenient dick move that he would delight in making bc symbolism.

You know what he looks like, in terms of food he strays away from sugary sweet stuff and towards meat and cheese. I’d like to think that he gains a genuine interest in gardening (like, beyond just cultivating poisonous plants as a cover for “gardening”) during his time in Fódlan and brings back different seedlings and scions for grafting back to Almyra.

Mehmet and Rahimah: Twins, born Fódlan Year 1164. Ok so basically I kind of wanted a dead sibling that was around Cyril and Lysithea’s age for the Drama of it (bc I thought of Claude looking at Cyril and thinking of his brother and immediately went “That hurts. Let’s do it”). But I ALSO thought what if Claude had a little sister, and then I ALSO thought what if Claude has a new full-blooded sibling that got conceived during the five year war, like the shittiest surprise. I’ve combined all those ideas into the twins.

First of all, they have more function than personality. Mehmet only exists to die during the uprising, but I’m starting to like Rahimah bc like... she literally loses most of her brothers including her twin, and then Claude up and leaves her for Fódlan (a place she has little connection to, regardless of her mother). Her only remaining sibling is gone for years, misses seven birthdays, her wedding with an Almyran general, the birth of her first child and the announcement of her second... like, by the time Claude comes back to Almyra she hates his guts and you know what? She’s right! I imagine Rahimah angry, but also grasping for literally any kind of deep and long-lasting relationship at this point. She loves her kids fiercely, she loves her husband, and even though they have their struggles she's still very close to her mom. Fuck her no-show brother Khalid, and fuck Fódlan for taking him away from her.

No idea what Mehmet looks like, like I said he only exists to die. Rahimah is shorter than Claude at maybe 5′4, round-faced and carrying herself gracefully. She’s lactose intolerant but she bears the pain for the sake of eating ice cream, and her husband goes to great lengths to get the ice for her. Likes to sing and dance with her son Ömer.

#headcanon #to sleep

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elesianne · 4 years

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A Silmarillion fanfic – modern AU Curufin/future wife

Summary: A poor girl stumbles onto a rich boy at a nightclub, and they hit it off. Too bad that it turns out neither of them is what the other thought.

A modern AU first meeting. A bit funny, a bit sexy, a bit sad.

Wordcount: ~2,200 words; Rating: Mature audiences (mild for M)

Some keywords: alternate universe - modern setting, mild sexual content, class differences, misunderstandings

A/N: This is very different from my other fics in content and style, but the Curufinwë and Netyarë in this are the same as in my fic Sparks fly out and its sequels, personality-wise, though they are of course different in some respects because they exist in modern times this time.

You don't need to have read any of my other fics to read this. Quenya names used.

Warnings: alcohol, having sex when both parties are drunk, swearwords including the f-word, and talk of prostitution (no actual prostitution)

AO3 LINK

Pink dress and high heels, suit and tie

It was far from a meet cute, Netyarë thinks later when things between them are very different.

Instead of a meet cute it's both of them on a wild night out. Netyarë's at a friend's bachelorette party, wearing high-heeled pink pumps and a tight pink dress that she hates because it pinches her sides while also making her feel too exposed. She's not drunk enough for how late it is, and she's rather grumpy because the party hasn't been that much fun. The others have been bickering all night.

She needed fun after the week she's had. Asshole customers in both her jobs, and a botched painting she'd had high hopes for. The materials for that one had cost a lot.

It's getting very late and Netyarë's both horny and lonely. It's not a great mood, especially the loneliness, but she's been single longer than she wanted to be after her last break-up. There's nothing quite like the approaching wedding of a friend to remind you of just how single you are.

She tries to shake the loneliness off on the dancefloor with the two other bridesmaids that are still standing, though one of them would probably not be if she didn't have a guy to lean on. Netyarë doesn't know where she got the guy from. The bachelorette party has disintegrated almost completely, everyone pairing off or wandering off or escorting the nearly black-out drunk bride home.

Netyarë decides not to care that most of the others are gone. She dances wild enough to lose her bridesmaid's sash somewhere on the floor, and doesn't bother looking for it. She also dances wild enough to accidentally bump into a guy in a suit who grabs her arms to steady her and says 'whoa', and then again 'whoa' as he looks down at her.

He seems to be the same degree of drunk as she is – rather, but not too much to have fun or be incapable of making half-sensible decisions. And he's tall, dark, and handsome, like the best kind of cliché, if also rather cocky by what little she can hear him shout to her as they try to talk over the music.

And he is a spoiled rich boy, judging by his clothes and general attitude, with a name that reminds Netyarë of something she can't quite grasp right now. She thinks she might not have heard it right in all the noise. It doesn't matter, though.

On principle Netyarë doesn't fuck guys like this but this one is also rather charming. She likes the shine in his beautiful, long-lashed eyes when he mentions his job which, thank all the gods, isn't hedge fund manager or investment banker. He actually creates things too, and Netyarë likes the passion in his voice.

She doesn't mention any of her jobs because a rich boy's reaction to them would just depress her and that would make sure she went home alone today. Sometimes it is better not to confirm one's worst suspicions.

But the longer she talks to him in a shadowy corner of the club they've retreated to, slowly sipping the ridiculously expensive drink he bought her –

and then dances with him again (posh boy has moves, surprisingly, though he needed to buy and drown a shot before getting on the dancefloor with her) –

the more Netyarë feels like she wants him to come home with her.

Surely her rule of not having sex with guys like this can be relaxed to not dating them, she persuades herself. He wouldn't even want to date her, certainly not if he sees her cheap clothes and apartment in daylight.

She texts a friend to tell her she's asking someone to spend the night with her.

When she whispers the invitation in his ear, her hand on his thigh, he shivers in a way that's very satisfying. She takes his hand when he reaches for her, and they half-run the few blocks to her shitty apartment. Netyarë wonders what he was even doing in that club in this part of town but doesn't bother to ask.

(If she had, Curufinwë might have told her, or not, that he had a shit week too, with constant problems at work and too little sleep. He'd wanted to wind down somewhere where he wouldn't run into any of the people who made his week terrible. Tyelkormo knew a place; of course he did, and then found someone within an hour and disappeared with them so fast Curufinwë didn't even see what gender they were.)

Whatever his reason for slumming it tonight, the posh boy does get a snotty look on his face in the grimy stairwell of Netyarë's building. And maybe he would have that look in her shabby apartment too if he wasn't too busy kissing her like his life depends on it, long-fingered hands reaching for the infuriatingly tiny zipper of her dress as soon as they get in the door.

And it turns out that a tall rich boy doesn't mind a small bed when he's fucking her on it like his life also depends on that.

He's less selfish in bed than she expected from someone like him and his long finges are dextrous and talented, which – good for him, and good for her.

Looking down at her, he says between pants and thrusts, 'Fuck, your body – a piece of art –' and she grins at that, and at how desperately his hands hold on to her ampler-than-she-likes hips. How could she not grin, and meet his thrusts with even more enthusiasm, when he is like that?

'Fuck, your smile', he says, and crushes their mouths together. He tastes of good whisky.

Netyarë is very pleased with herself for relaxing her rule, and with how the not-so-great bachelorette party ended up ending for her.

And afterwards he's a cuddler – isn't that the weirdest thing? – so they fit in her bed well even after he mumbles, 'Can I stay the night', and promptly falls asleep. One of those men, then.

Netyarë doesn't mind being held. She might or might not run her fingers through his soft black hair once or twice before falling asleep herself.

In the morning, too early, she wakes up to him standing next to the bed, looming over her, asking, 'How much?'

When she doesn't reply, he repeats, 'How much? Come on, just tell me. I have a meeting I've got to get to.'

'It's Saturday', she replies, not understanding anything else of what he says, but with a sinking feeling in her stomach. He has his wallet in hand, and a wad of cash.

'I've still got a meeting', he says, his lips a tight line that is at odds with his bedhead and rumpled shirt. He adds, 'I'm not going to pay you any more if you drag this out. Just tell me what I owe you for what I did to you last night. Your standard rate.'

He has to repeat once more before she replies, and what she says is, 'You think I'm a prostitute?'

Rather she yells it, and gets up. There's a bad taste in her mouth that is not just her hangover.

And he is way too tall when she's not wearing high heels.

'I'm not a hooker', she says slowly as if to an idiot, because he just stands there gaping at her.

He splutters. 'You were certainly dressed just like one! With the, the cheap skin-tight dress and the fuck-me heels!'

'I was not! – I was dressed like all the other bridesmaids at the bachelorette party', Netyarë defends herself. 'But, shit, the dress was chosen by the maid of honour who has half the tits that I do and doesn't understand that 'low-cut' means 'lewd' for a bustier girl when she has to wear a small size because she's so damn short… or it means she actually looks like a hooker. Oh gods.'

She sits back down on the bed.

(Curufinwë thinks that she was attractive in the tight pink dress that he didn't know was for a bachelorette's, but she's lovelier in nothing in the morning light spilling in from the surprisingly large windows of this otherwise depressing room. He shakes his head and blames his hangover for that thought.)

Netyarë can't help saying, 'I can't believe you thought I was a hooker.' She looks him up and down. 'Why would a guy who looks like you even pay for sex? Is it, I don't know, some kind of sick thrill for you?'

'Fuck you', he says, and she thinks hysterically, you did. He says, stiffly, 'For your information, I've never paid for sex.'

'Nice for you that you don't have to break that streak', Netyarë grinds out. She feels like she wants to sleep for another four hours. 'Now get out.'

He finishes dressing in silence. She picks up his tie from between her pillows and hands it to him. She wonders why he didn't ask for her price last night before they got into bed. It would have stung less than this, being asked afterwards when she cannot un-fuck him. She doesn't ask him, though.

He hesitates at the doorway. She stands nearby, tense, wanting to make sure he leaves.

'Are you sure you don't want –' and his hand hovers over his pocket where he put his wallet, 'I think we might have almost broken your bed. It wobbled a lot more near the end.'

'How many times do I have to tell you, I don't have sex for money. Get out. And', she adds, his words from a couple of minutes ago suddenly surfacing in her mind, 'for your information, it wasn't just you doing things to me last night – we did things to each other, and together.'

Or so she thought at least. Why did he even bother making it good for her if he thought she was a prostitute? She has no idea.

Gods, the next time she feels even a little bit lonely, she'll come home straight away and cuddle with her couch pillows. Better to be pathetic in that way than this.

As he opens the door he looks like he wants to say something more, the set of his shoulders stiff and determined, but the look she sets on her face works to persuade him otherwise, and he leaves without a word.

Netyarë closes the door behind him with a little too much force. She takes a very long, very hot shower, eats ice cream for breakfast, and then gets to work trying to resurrect her botched-up painting before her afternoon shift at the sleazy bar where she still bartends a couple of days a week. She'll be able to quit that job soon if she sells a couple more paintings for as good a price as she got for her last one.

(Curufinwë walks in a random direction for two blocks before he realises that actually he needs to call a cab. He ends up being twenty minutes late for his meeting, hair still wet from the shower.

He is as irritable as a poked bear for the whole day, and when Tyelkormo asks how his night went, he says, 'Badly', and nothing more no matter how much Tyelko tries to pry or shares about his own night.)

Two days later, like every Monday, Curufinwë comes to have lunch with his mother at her sculpting studio.

Nerdanel kisses his cheek as she lets him in and says, 'Come meet the artist I've been talking about. We started our collaboration today.'

Curufinwë would rather not. He's been in a constantly foul mood since Saturday morning and just wanted to talk about family things with his mother and kid brothers, and try to forget all about his disastrous personal life.

Following his mother as she chatters, he walks to the side room of the studio where there's a table free of marble dust, reserved for eating.

And there's Netyarë in a paint-splattered artist's smock, her brown hair tied up in a messy bun, setting the table.

Oh fuck, oh fuck, oh fuck, runs through Curufinwë's head as Nerdanel introduces them.

(And through Netyarë's.)

'You're a painter?' Curufinwë asks her in an angry whisper when Nerdanel is busy with the food and making the twins carry it to the table.

'Do you like that better than what you thought I was?' Netyarë hisses back.

She is remarkably shorter than him when she's not wearing heels, and as she looks at him, eyes sparking, Curufinwë thinks she really looks like she doesn't like having to look so far up at him.

Nerdanel gets back before Curufinwë has a chance to reply to Netyarë with more than a dark look.

Tilting her head curiously, Nerdanel asks them, 'Do you two know each other?'

'We've met before', Netyarë says, stiff. 'Briefly.'

Curufinwë says nothing.

(Actually he says remarkably little to her over the course of the meal, little enough to be rude, especially when he also sits all tense and stiff-necked and with a prideful look on his face that is no doubt a facet of his arrogance, like his cockiness at the nightclub.

But his mother is wonderful – offering Netyarë an opportunity that could very well be her big break, collaborating with such an esteemed, established artist – and Curufinwë's teenaged little brothers are entertaining, so Netyarë just tries to not care about Curufinwë's glowering and silence.)

Curufinwë tries not to care that Netyarë doesn't look at him even once.

(Neither of them has much success.)

A/N: Yep, so this ends in basically the same place as the first chapter of Sparks fly out, but got there by a more circuitous and NSFW route.

This definitely belongs in the top three of 'most self-indulgent things I've written' but I had a lot of fun writing this, and I hope you guys enjoyed reading!

Please let me know what you thought of this alternative first meeting :)

#I had so much fun writing this #but rather nervous to post because it's so different #silmarillion fanfiction #tolkien fanfiction #curufin #curufin's wife #netyarë #modern au #my fics #elesianne's fics #pink dress and high heels suit and tie

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edge-lorde · 4 years

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hp update: its been a long time, boys. ud think that with this plague outbreak id have more time for shitty phone games, and ud be right! however, the time i normally might use to make tumblr posts has been taken up by reading lotr orc fanfiction non-stop for at least 1 full month. id still be in the thick of that obsession even now if only the fics would update. that is how i find you today folks, for the first time in many weeks i am staring at a screen with nothing to do. so come with me friends, theres no better way to fill the soulless void we are all in than reading a nice long tumbler post.

disclaimer, first of all, a lot has happened, i prefer to keep these updates as plot spoiler free as possible but do to extenuating circumstances i feel like it is necessary to say, [SPOILER SPOILER SPOILER SPOILER BELOW]

that rowan fucking died,

i wont say exactly how, but i will say that her death was animated as were animations of myself and a few others reacting to our friend fresh corpse. obviously meant to be serious moments but the animations made it seem almost comical.

i saw at least one post going around right after this update that was like ‘how could the game devs do this to us..... how could they hate rowan so.... this is punishment from on high’ and its like.... u guys do know what a story is right? the events of a story are not typically done to punish less faithful fans, im pretty sure they were planning to kill rowan off from the beginning. this isnt disney im pretty sure the writers are not writing each chapter the night before its released by popular vote.

that little “are we drifting away..?” scene with rowan makes more sense now. there was a bit in one of the scenes where the kids all reminisce on rowans life and the mc talks about it being the last real one on one time they had with rowan. a nice bitter sweet moment. i dont hate this turn of events. its a good reminder that actions have consequences and we are way past they days of “should i wear a hat or scarf?” its YA time now.

i did manage to take 1 screenshot from this time, i had commented that before that when rowan said she didnt have many friedns that barnaby seemed to be hanging out with her without be there as a friend buffer and here was his reaction to her death:

;_;

the funniest part in all of this however, was of course cedericks reaction to rowans death “but she was so young....” LOL fuckin RIP.

lets see... what else.... i forget a lot of what happened but i think there was a time sensitive quidditch event in there somewhere? if so i dont remember it. what i do remember of the quidditch pals is that im gonna play beater now, skye is being weird and cagey about it, andre is involved.... the others are there.....

sidenote, i love the shitty b characters they throw in to be like yes you know this person but no they are not cool enough for u to even think about befriending. the first one of those is face paint kid, and now we have another, who is a former beater girl with horrible bangs named bean who didnt go to any classes for a whole season so she could just play ball 24/7 and got kicked off the team. this is a character who only exists to provide an explanation as to why there would be a beater position open but i love them on principle.

right now im in the midst of another time sensitive event, this one is a bother-your-brother-at-work-day event where recent hogwarts graduate bill weasley is bullied by myself and his younger brother charlie into letting us go with him on one of his curse breaking jobs.

so for those unfamiliar, bill works for the magical bank of england.... and his job seems to be “retrieving treasure” for said bank. in the books, there is a bit where he takes his family on one of his trips to egypt, where his job seemed to have been tomb plundering indiana jones style for the posterity of the english bank :X. i wont explain here why thats bad but its bad.

the game devs however in this instance, at least SEEM to be doing what jkr couldnt do by attempting to salvage what is left of gringotts bank and form it into not a super shitty implications factory run by horrible jewish caricatures. bills mission is to retrieve a goblin made artifact that was taken by dragons, so no going to foreign countries to steal things from other people! only going to a dragon reserve to rifle through animal nests. they even appear to be providing us with a likable goblin character, egad!

my hope for this event is that we get a plotline about how maybe, goblins arent shifty human haters for no reason, and in fact they hate magic humans for very understandable reasons, like being forced to go into hiding with the rest of the magical world even though only the humans wanted to do that, and maybe despite running the bank in england they still dont have a lot of political sway in the world of wizards and witches, and have to rely on the faith that said wizards and witches wont fuck them over at every turn, even as they see how they treat other non-humans, such as house elves, which they desperately dont want to end up like. and maybe they DONT only care about gold... maybe thats a human stereotype based on the fact that theres a long history of humans not respecting goblin ownership customs.... which i could get into..... but i wont.... i just....... very badly dont want them to suck ;__________;

i know i said its ok to still like a piece of media as long as you recognize the problems with it, and i do, but once this game is done im gonna stop hp posting all together. ive been feeling more and more uncomfortable making these posts lately.

GENERAL GAME NOTES; theres been some new layout changes and such.

most notably the stairs screen has been changed from a bulleted list of all locations to a screen with tiles picturing an image of each location along with the name + icons of all classes at each place. there is one additional location that is new and yet to be unlocked, and the dragon reservation is appearing temporarily as its own tile as well. i prefer this method of getting in and out of a temporary location to how they did it with car during the last christmas special. the stairs icon also now stays in the corner when you scroll through locations, allowing you to open the stairs menu without scrolling all the way back to the left.

they also moved a few of the buttons down into the lower left corner rather than the left side & combined the story button and sidequest button. they added a little camera button as well, just like in the dormitory, that makes all the icons in a location disappear and look better for screenshots.

the daily special add offer thing now has its own button in the top right corner of the screen, and idk if i mentioned it before but now there are daily challenges that appear in the sidequest screen that offer small rewards for completing 3 tasks per day + a better one if u get all 3. the prizes are things like 4 energy, 75 coins, 3 monster food. the better rewards are usually either more coins, 8 energy, 3 gems, or 1 notebook. i think that it does all the different color notebooks but i cant remember for sure if i ever saw the gold one up as a reward. i like this addition in any case. if you dont pick up ur reward by the end of the day, the next time u log on it will force u to stop and accept them, and if one of the rewards is energy and ur energy bar is full, it does not seem to stack beyond the bar so watch out.

the character stats page is now more zoomed out so you can see your full character instead of just from the waist up. no change to the leaderboard. rowans face in the friendship roster is now a still black and white image that says ur friend may be gone but friendship is forever u-u.

rowan has been removed from all classes. in the classes where the minigames involved her, those minigames have passed the mantle onto other friends in the class. in potions that person is now liz helping u find stuff off the shelves and in tranfiguration that person is badeea. bless these girls for helping mc get through it. touched my heart.

theres been a few fun little “i know u have more free time now so uhhhh have some energy” prizes like they do sometimes when they dont update on schedule so thats been nice. just a few days ago they gifted us 3 gold notebooks the same way. :O.

theres also been a few instances of a energy happy hour where for a limited time energy takes less time to refresh. normally it takes 4 mins for 1 energy to do this but during happy hour its like 2:30 mins. :U its all very interesting.

and that will have to do it for tonight my friends, ill do a post for the dragon event when its done because i do like it so far and i do like getting to bully bill with charlie.

until next time, remember.......

#hp #harry potter #hphm #harry potter hogwarts mystery #bill weasley #goblins #charlie weasley #sirius business #rowan khanna #rambling #Thoughts #so sorry im still making these posts #i just want to see them through to the end now

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whetstonefires · 5 years

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I’ve decided I can’t healthily reblog that one Jason post again, for everyone’s sanity, but op’s most recent reblog was both highly illuminating and infuriating--and I mean that on two different levels; there was some really good explication of perspective and how we’re missing each other in the dark, but there was also more of the stuff that drives me out of my skull.

So, I’m going to make my own post, which can be engaged with at will, rather than coming right to op’s house.

So, as I’ve mentioned, my biggest issue with a lot of a specific subtype of Jason arguments is they devolve really quickly into the insistence that he is owed anything by anyone in his family besides Bruce.

He’s not. That is just so, so incredibly important to me.

I want to talk about why, but I’m not going to because it’s way too in-depth and personally triggering a subject for me to fit a full breakdown here or to risk having it brushed off, so I’m leaving it as a strong assertion of personal opinion. Maybe I’ll come back to it at some point.

More germane to the inciting reblog...I also don’t think they, the batfam (specifically the batboys because DC never let the girls in on the game despite how much they should have, probably because no matter whether they got beat up or successfully deescalated, they’d ruin the dramafest by tipping Jason’s arc out of its toxic loop) could have helped him by approaching him in a ‘better’ way.

Partly because they did try--people will dismiss that as not counting because it ‘seemed manipulative’ but like. That’s not only textbook abuser excuse language to tell someone that doing exactly what they wanted still deserved punishment, there is literally no way people with no existing positive relationship could approach someone whose incredibly toxic behavior they are morally obligated to prioritize changing without coming across as having an agenda? How were they meant to possibly avoid that?

Especially when he had already approached them with violence and not signaled any intent to stop, so it would be insane to have their guard totally down?

(Like. Even Bruce being given actually good writing would have been pretty cornered into either physically containing or emotionally attempting to persuade him into doing a different thing, and that’s Bruce.)

But mostly they couldn’t have gotten different results with a different approach because they were his triggers. Their presence made everything worse. It provoked episodes. There was nothing they could have done differently to get a better response, because one of the most reliable triggers for his mental health issues and violent coping mechanisms is the batfam.

Is Batman and Robin. (Or was, in the relevant window. He’s mostly going by a different playbook since Flashpoint.)

Precisely by being his family, they were rendered incapable of giving him what the Outlaws eventually did, if you treat preboot and nu52 as being in the same continuity, no matter what they did or said.

Which all the more means that every assertion that the family (minus Bruce, because of some shitty drama-seeking bullshit that I hate but it’s canon so people who like it have the right to use it as they wish) treated him badly, and should have treated him better and then things would have been better...

Always sounds to me like an exercise in victim blaming.

Rich with what would be gaslighting, if it was said to rather than about them.

Which in turn triggers the fuck out of me, though luckily unlike Jason I just get passive-aggressive on the internet by accident, rather than stabbing people in the chest for saying no to me and waiting for their heartbeats to stop, and then grinning real big.

And that moment of drama I just called back to ties into another really important reason that, in spite of how much I love him, pro-Jason arguments in this mode just fuck me up, one that doesn’t connect to my personal hangups.

Which is how this approach tends to argue for Jason being entitled to the utmost gentleness and care and respect for his needs, and opportunities to change without being coerced or contained or shamed or accused, and...

But will turn around and in the same breath brush away him murdering criminals as a well-intentioned action to improve the world, out of concern for the harm they might do him or others, even if it maybe isn’t necessarily right.

Will treat his crimes as details that have no real bearing on how people ‘should’ react to him. ‘Should’ being defined wholly in terms of his experience of the world.

Dude not only takes hostage and violently assaults Robin and shoots a ten-year-old near the heart, he slaughters low-level drug dealers and mob enforcers, people who are just small cogs in a machine whose evil only very arguably exceeds that of extraction capitalism, who in the former case may not have committed any violent crimes themselves ever in their lives.

People who have families and dreams and mental health conditions and traumas of their own.

He murdered everyone eating in Blackgate cafeteria and Blackgate isn’t some special, murderers-only facility with no, like, weed possession felons, for example. Even if it was, some of the other convicted murderers probably had worse childhoods and less control of their trauma-driven violent episodes than Jason.

Some of those people he kills might have lived in the same alleys as him at the same time, and the break they got to get out of there was a job in organized crime, rather than an adoption offer from a millionaire, and later a training subsidy from an assassin princess.

And somehow we are meant to be comfortable accepting that they deserve death. All of them. Somehow intervening non-lethally to prevent him from killing more of them is framed as a moral cruelty roughly equal to his personal, targeted assaults on children. His right to not be forcibly remanded to mental health treatment outweighs their right to live.

Because. They’re just. Scum.

And this, to me, represents a willingness to disregard the human rights of some people, while at the same time elevating the individual rights of some other person above every other moral good.

And that, on principle, upsets the hell out of me.

Where is their pity, their extenuating circumstances? Their acknowledgment that violence and rejection is not the answer to someone’s trauma-driven coping strategies?

How can ‘criminals’ be grounds enough to sacrifice people’s right to exist, while Jason--a serial killer and mass murderer both by any measure--deserves not only life and liberty but every good and kind thing? How can both these ideas exist together in the same space?

I can’t do it. I can’t make any sense out of it at all. For Jason to be more sinned against than sinning in relation to his family--to have had the right to be met with endless gentleness and patience rather than ever violently opposed or rejected, even leaving aside his personal treatment of them--the lives of those who commit violent, criminal acts must be disposable things. Easily traded away.

But then by that same cruel metric he, too, becomes a disposable person.

And I do not believe in throwing people away.

#i recognize this approach to the character as having a cathartic purpose #but when it claims the moral high ground i tend to snap #bruce's behavior has been unspeakably shitty #but if you reimagine Jason's unspeakably heinous acts as valid without giving Bruce the same treatment #then you've created a jason-victimization-based alternate universe #which is a valid thing to do in fic #but it's not...fair #and it's not something you can demand other fans acknowledge as the true canon #and equally you can give Jason all of the rights and everyone else in existence none of them #it's your fic #you can do whatever you want #but it hurts me #and i will not be scolded for a lack of sympathy for human suffering #when it's this type of jason narrative's casual dismissal of everyone's feelings BUT his #that sticks in my craw #jason todd #i throw maybe some salt #batfam #at its least functional #hoc est meum #human rights #either he's wrong or he's forfeited his right to live #i prefer to think he's wrong #honestly the cognitive dissonance is so strong #sometimes jason's killing strikes me as a symbolic act of self-destruction #though not so much lately #when lobdell is writing him he barely feels like a person #he's just a doll saying words that very occasionally connect to something he's supposed to have feelings about #the genre conventions allowing criminals to function as props break down irreparably #when you're simultaneously escalating the violence against them

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nvzblgrrl · 4 years

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On the subject of old fics 1

Allegedly, A Gentleman’s Tale (published 1-6-2012) was my first fanfic ever (again, allegedly - will explain after a bit). It only exists now as a private copy at least one person has saved and a capture on the WayBackMachine (which thankfully covered the whole ten chapters of it), because I have a habit of... deleting stories that embarrass me after the fact. It’s something I’m trying to break myself of, mostly because there are a number of people who do enjoy my work even if most of what I see in it are the flaws and I would feel bad about taking away something they enjoyed.

The ‘allegedly’ part comes in in that, based on my memories of my One Piece OCs and stories (along with more concrete evidence from my tumblr), I had a few OCs with snippets of story (with one who had at least a few chapters worth of story that I have memorized in broad strokes) attached that preceded that by at least one or two years, even though the description of ‘my first fic’ was in the synopsis of the fic as it was posted. Unfortunately, it’s hard to trace that information thanks to the ‘destroy all the evidence of me embarrassing myself’ habit (I completely deactivated my deviantart account on account of ‘cringe’, that’s how bad it got) and the passage of time making it unclear which mutuals might have been around at that time or if they even remember those things.

Now, I still have the computers that I typed up those stories on (they’re hanging out in my basement), but - they haven’t worked in quite a while. I’m not sure if they’re completely bricked or not, but I haven’t had anything to do with them for a while and I know that at least one of them was replaced because it refused to turn on anymore. Someday, I might get the chance to pull out their hard-drives and get a look at the data there, but that’s not a ‘now’ solution so...

Anyway - got a bit distracted there -, thanks to the power of the WayBackMachine, I was able to reread this specific fic in its entirety.

‘A Gentleman’s Tale’ was a little thing that was pretty much Brook backstory wrapped up in the framing device of Luffy wanting a story to help him get to sleep. I was 18, had maybe a year or two of creative writing experience/interest under my belt, and a whole lot of Soul King Stan energy to spend on my favorite character despite being at the tail end of my high school career.

Surprisingly, it was not entirely awful for an alleged ‘first attempt’. The formatting was a little eh, the pacing was borked, and a lot of characters were fairly flat (and a few leaned too hard on certain stereotypes while a lot had Western order names for some reason), but other than that, it was actually palatable. Ten chapters, about 8000 words, not a whole lot to write home about or find objectionable outside of the odd grammatical error and the fact that alcohol is mentioned in almost. every. single. chapter.

Seriously, I have no idea why that was a thing for me 2012-2013ish (it ended up in Witt and Witticism a little bit - more heavily on the rewrites that never took off back in the day but a little present in the original too). I was 18-19. I’d never had alcohol. I still haven’t had alcohol. I’d never really been around drinking at that age, socially or not, beyond like, enjoying brew fries and eating chicken tenders at a bar one time because my shit father wanted to have lunch there for some reason. I just guess that I woke up at the start of 2012 and thought Drink Mixing and Booze were interesting things.

The story wasn’t much to write home about, but the characters are the real area of interest here, so let’s cover them and a few of my plans for handling them in the rewrite.

Brook - Starts out his backstory being seasick, gets to have five decent minutes when he meets Yorki, and then is immediately shoved into the wall-to-wall shitshow that’s his life as the battle convoy captain and resident responsible adult, despite 70% of the convoy being at least ten to fifteen years older than him. Somehow that makes his interest in getting black out drunk almost every single night sound reasonable. Seriously, that’s what he was doing in that story, according to what happened almost every other chapter of the fic (because pacing is for writers on their third or fourth story). That’s one reason why the timeline is being stretched out in the rewrite plans - so we don’t kill the main character through alcohol poisoning (though with the kind of stress he was under in that original cut, I can’t blame him for trying - he got saddled with three weird + constantly fighting teenagers and a dying military organization, snubbed by the king, publicly embarrassed in front of 90% of the kingdom’s nobility, and so on in the course of two to three days max). Honestly, in retrospect, I’m not sure how well this plays with the framing device of Brook relating his backstory 62 years later, because he should have lost so many brain cells to this nonsense.

Yorki - Starts his introduction by saying ‘hey, my name’s Yorki, i’m close, bi, and willing to take you on a whirlwind adventure literally two seconds after meeting you’ which Brook immediately responds to as the best thing that’s happened to him in the last (and probably next) month. Probably the only person in Brook’s life as of the fic not stressing him out or enabling his self-destructive coping habits, though that doesn’t stop him from being one of the better things Brook woke up to after one of his blackout drinking nights. Also got an incredibly shitty nickname thanks to me not knowing how that sort of thing works from his mom. In the rewrite, he’s from Ohio (because I and my Middle-Ground lingering Self-Insert are from Michigan and the opportunity for a struggle between ‘hey we’ve both being isekai’d into this weird place and have similar backgrounds/music tastes so we’re going to hang together based on that’ and ‘200 year old inter-state hatred turned into over the top sports rivalry and disliking the other state on principle’ was too good to pass up).

Luchere Gregg (Gregg being her surname) - junior member of the battle convoy. Incredibly thorny and violent personality, with very little respect for authority (outside of her father, probably) and a generally superior attitude towards literally everyone except her father, especially when she perceived someone as being weak and ‘uppity’ at the same time - Maysure was the main target of this (as was intended at the time of the writing), but considering that Luchere was taking a similar tone with Brook (which was probably intended to be for different reasons, but honestly reads very similarly almost ten years on, given that Brook’s everything is very much not in line with her ideal anything) but not Hana (who was ‘weak’ but definitely not trying to mess with Luchere’s preferred social order), I think I can get more development out of her in that dimension. Her everything was probably was cool and badass back when I was 18, but now she just strikes me as petulant and unpleasant brat.

Minalee Hana - Generic smart guy of the junior team, complete with ‘shy’ personality and ‘harmless cute’ look... which, in retrospect, makes it really confusing why she’d join a military force in the first place and just raises suspicions on the fact that she did. Honestly she could be a Government plant and I wouldn’t be surprised. Another ‘problem’ with Hana is that she was based on someone I was friends with at the time I wrote the fic, which kinda ended up helping me dislike her a lot on more recent rereads, just because of the nature of that real world ‘friendship’ and the way it blew up in the end (with a whole lot of ugly reveals along the way that went back to pretty much when I first met that person).

Maysure Semenov Tara Su-all Evony Taebory Celeste - was originally a parody of the Mary Sue archetype, as you may have guessed from the name. Flashy, overeager, desperate for acknowledgement, and not quite managing to act in ways appropriate to her age (15, directly stated in text), either being too cutesy with her speech pattern and body language or dressing in ways that would be suited for a very different profession than soldier. I ended up liking her the most out of the junior trio out on my most recent rereads, just because she’s the only member of the group that’s actually making an effort at anything (well, beyond Luchere being hostile + trying to make Brook leave), doesn’t go out of her way to be hostile or destructive, and isn’t vaguely there in a way that makes me suspicious. Apparently was the only one of the junior trio ever stated to have weapons training (with Luchere being an unarmed fighter and Hana... just being there) and was apparently dedicated enough to it to have the schedule for the different training drills memorized.

Captain Gregg - the former captain of the battle convoy. He was never seen, only ever referenced in the fic. Based on the content, he was pretty much Luchere 1.0 - crass, unpleasant, violent, and without a lot of tolerance for those that couldn’t deal with or keep up with the unfortunate matter of his everything. The notes on rewrite so far have him becoming a lot more pleasant and lot less generally awful person, though still a bit of a roughneck and unpleasant to be around if you aren’t cut from the same cloth or a similar weave. Was not inspired by Captain Clegg until I started imbibing pop culture in preparation for the various parts of the project.

Jeevenine - quartermaster of the battle convoy, bartender, and carrier of heavy butler vibes, which feels like it might have been intentional. Said to be a master of ‘improvisation combat’ but honestly seems to be the person most likely to have taught Brook his style of fencing (based on his speed and precision being noted as something Brook had difficulty keeping up with in text) and his gentlemanly ways, considering every other character I wrote into the convoy is some flavor of hot mess and either a bruiser or a gunman. Still loses points for enabling Brook’s blackout drinking habits and being passive-aggressive instead of properly helpful.

Jack Rackum and John Delacroix - sniper-spotter pair, as indicated by their nicknames of ‘Windward’ and ‘Leeward’ respectively. Highly implied to be in a long-standing romantic relationship with each other or at least in a long-term holding pattern of pining. Delacroix’s tendency to sleep in the nude is used as half of a ‘my eyes’ joke that Brook is the victim of (the other half is Maysure’s chosen nightclothes being both stereotypical of a ‘Mary Sue’ and vastly age inappropriate, which is a running gag with her). Rackum gets the most description out of the set, with his brown leather hat and green-grey hair being mentioned, along with his taste for fruity cocktails (he might also be an alcoholic, which isn’t really all that remarkable in this fic).

Kurotora Ren - Big Guy McHugeBeef. Also the guy responsible for keeping the battle convoy awash in homebrew booze. Almost kills Brook by accident during his introduction by clapping him on the back at the exact wrong moment. Doesn’t have a lot more detail than that, mostly because he slides into the background after that brief focus moment, but I like him for being genuinely sorry about the near-death thing on top of being friendly for real and not being duplicitous about his wants + thoughts.

Zest - noble. Stupid. Probably the closest thing that Brook has to a friend in his actual age range at the start of the story, which is really fucking sad considering Zest’s everything and the fact that Brook doesn’t enjoy his company at all. Somehow when I was 18, the idea of a guy who spent most of his time in some state of wasted and trying to get his ‘friend’ (who doesn’t even like him that much but seems to tolerate him more than literally everyone else Zest ever interacted with who wasn’t being paid) into a similar condition because of unrequited love or something was tragi-cute-slash-funny instead of pathetic and faintly disturbing (though I guess I might end up writing him as tragic again anyway just because it probably takes Some Shit to make a person like that). Spent 90% of his screen time in the old story making Brook’s life inconvenient and the remaining 10% fully aware that his own life is going nowhere. His personality is oddly similar to Maysure’s, which is... interesting, implications-wise. Holy Shit, is this guy going to be a trip to work with as an adult.

#the big fat one piece fic project #talking about old fic #a gentleman's tale #my writing #if you have any questions about this or other fic i've done feel free to fire away

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