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lantsovsupremacist · 4 years ago

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i saw that you asked for requests and i also saw that you wrote some nikolai stories based on taylor's songs (i loved). so you could write something based on wilders dreams or you are in love or call it what you want, you choose pls

MY BRAND yes of course i can.

nikolai lantsov: you are in love

and you understand now why they lost their minds and fought the wars...

“marry me.”

you shook your head. while any other girl would likely collapse onto the cobblestones had they the pleasure of hearing those words from the king, you would not. you could not. the possibility of accepting his proposal was a lie you no longer could afford.

“i have a certain inclination to your use of words, darling,” nikolai caught up to your strides easily, “without them, you answers are so very unclear.”

you stopped your pace, shutting your eyes. obviously, nikolai only meant to try and persuade you of his reasoning. he was unaware of how the repetition further shattered the pieces of your heart.

“stop asking,” you requested unevenly, “i cannot marry you because i cannot be a queen.”

“cannot or will not?” nikolai dropped his calm disposition. his words now swam through endless seas of exasperation.

eyes widening at his assumption, you glared, “your people will not accept a grisha on the throne. they will not make an exception for love because they cannot understand how such a thing between you and i could exist.”

albeit offended, nikokai softened, “and i wish i could do more to protect you but even i am unable to offer you reprieve from your own doubts.”

however bold or brash his words seemed, you took them because there was no other conceivable explanation. you refused to argue with him further, not when your remaining moments were already beginning to slip away.

“you have too much hope in the world.”

nikolai scoffed, knocking his shoulder into yours. you saw through his sly smirk and glowing grin, and he knew it. the fox could hide away from just about anybody but never you—not that he ever wanted to.

so, he would pretend for a minute or two, rile you up with his plethora of personalities. then, he would sober up, resounded to your ability to penetrate his defenses. your keen awareness of every notch in his armor, every foothold to climb his fortress, both aggravated and comforted him simultaneously.

“somebody has to,” he chided you, content to snake an arm around your waist and pull you flush against his side, “i don’t want to forget.”

“forget what?” you questioned, turning to face him more fully as a soft pout formed on your features.

“that i have this,” he motioned to your entwined limbs, “you,” he kissed your forehead, “to come back to. i only ever hoped my heart would find its home.”

you stilled. surely, an artist from above could have captured the moment perfectly because of it. they would have to gently shade your individual silhouettes into one, execute the softness of his gaze, and reproduce the muted lighting with watercolor.

you liked to organize your life into two categories; there was the before nikolai lantsov and the after him. before saltwater became the first thing to invade your senses in the mornings, you would have set fire to the bridge of any desperate man’s creation. after you learned to never assume anything impossible, you willingly gave up a piece of your heart to the most lovesick of them all. the one you simply could not have.

gingerly grabbing ahold of his fingers, you aimed to kiss the tip of each one. as always, he pulled away before allowing you to complete your objective. with a frown, you ran your thumb over his cheek.

“i only got to six. none of that,” you minded him with a calm look, “sobachka,” you began to warn him.

“it’s more than five,” he commented with a reference to the day before. quickly, he kissed you to remove any possibility of a retort. you could not escape his lips even if you intended to try, which you did not.

the need for air ultimately pulled you away from nikolai. you frowned discontentedly his way, still frustrated by his actions. you understood his insecurities and accepted the validity of his feelings, but it did not ease the pain of watching him crumble before your eyes.

“my love,” you urged, “i have never understood many things and ended up running,” you held him off with a look, “but i want to stay and learn every part of you.”

bashful, he tucked his head into your neck.

“you have to spare some hope for yourself,” you said softly, leaning your head onto his.

he groaned, indicative of him sourly acknowledging your truth. you turned to kiss his temple, giving your lips the respite to linger just beneath his curls. you sucked in a breath when he responded with one of his own, planted upon the column of your throat. tender yet unexpected.

“but i want you to have it,” he responded, careful to inject the appropriate dose of his personality to make you smile without doubt of his sincerity being a means of withdrawal from the subject.

rolling your lips into your mouth, you melted under his gaze and into his arms, “okay.”

he smiled as radiantly as the sun, with a blush to match the artistry of it setting. you thought you could stay in that moment with him, that not even he could carry you to the next quite yet. you should have known better to predict his unpredictable behavior.

“so,” he drew out, “marry me, then.”

“nik-,” you breathed, fighting a losing battle with a smile of your own. his persistence did not force you to agree, rather charmed you to.

“no!” he cut off deliberately, “no,” the delivery of his words now intentionally softer.

“nikolai,” you enunciated, “if i’m a queen,” you caught the exact second light filtered back into his eyes, “i will never have you again in the same way—not how i do now, at least.”

“i don’t understand,” he frowned between his mumble of the phrase.

“we will be closer than ever before,” you voiced, “but i fear that could push us further apart than we have ever been,” you expressed with a sunken tone.

not letting you pull away either emotionally or physically, he took you into his arms. already feeling more grounded, you breathed in his scent of sea and pine. he was all around you, and it was enough.

“i could never not love you,” he countered.

“that’s not what i’m saying,” you refuted, “but what if you don’t like me anymore? after we are stressed and overwhelmed and stubbornly disagreeing?”

nikolai giggled, kissing every inch of your face, “i like every single piece of you,” his thumbs slipped down your cheeks and onto your throat, pushing your head back for further access, “i like you more than any travel i have been on, any adventure i have sought, and more than any squabble we might face.”

looking up at him under a thick set of eyelashes, you quirked a crooked smile, “really?”

“oh, yes,” he divulged, “i like you more than anyone else—even myself,” he began to taunt you, “and i happen to like myself quite a bit.”

“fine,” you relented with a light sigh, “let me show you just how much i like you and i’ll be your queen.”

a smirk stretched across his face but before he could dip his head to yours, you grabbed his hands away from your neck.

“i like you,” you began with a breath, leaning forward to kiss each of his fingertips, “one, two, three,” you continued as he watched you delicately, “eight, nine, ten.”

blinking rapidly, his gaze softened, “don’t be my queen,” nikolai mouthed, a single breath away from your lips, “continue to be my best friend, the woman i look for in every room, the reason time moves way too fast.”

“thank you for sharing your hope with me,” you spoke and drew your lips in a straight line, “thank you for letting me be in love with you.”

“i never let you do anything,” he began to sway, “could only hope you would keep coming back.”

“i’m in love with you,” you insisted, “and i happen to like that very much.”

#nikolai lantsov imagine #zoya nazyanelsky #nikolai lantsov fluff #nikolai lanstov imagines #nikolai lanstov x reader #nikolai x reader #nikolai lantsov #shadow and bone fic #shadow and bone #grisha netflix #the grisha series #grishaverse #ruin and rising #siege and storm #genya safin #rule of wolves

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finniestoncrane · 3 years ago

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Hello 😊😊

can i request arkham origins eddie x fem! reader they met at the GCPD and she was always stalking him until one day he got tired and asked what's wrong with her?

Fluffy pls ☺️💚

That's Not Funny

Arkham!Riddler x Female!Reader, word count: 700 for you, more fluff that i think i've ever put into something before that involved this man u-u 💚 request info • prompt list • send me a request • kofi minors DNI!! 🔞 cw for nsfw stuff: it's p/much sfw but there's a kiss and maybe a lil bit of leering at eddie because he's so pretty

It was really difficult not to let your mind wander when Edward was around. From the moment you had met him, he had intrigued you. Everyone else had been so kind and welcoming on your first day on the job at the GCPD, clerical work was the backbone of any working operation and they all knew it. Except for Edward Nigma, who had pushed past you to get back to his work, only muttering something incoherent when he was told you were new. Someone else had done his introductions for him, but you were barely listening past his name, watching him move somehow awkwardly yet confidently through the bullpen.

An innocent crush had only grown over the course of your first month there, not made any less intense by your efforts to ‘bump into’ him at every opportunity. It was easy enough to know his comings and goings, given that you had access to his schedule, his workload, and also his personal files. Home address, telephone number, no next of kin…Perfect.

It was frustrating though, as he was well aware of your existence and yet, had never made any effort to speak to you. There had been several occasions where you had been caught leering at him, and he’d never even so much as looked directly at you. That time you just happened to be walking past the locked room when he had come out of the showers, wrapped in a towel, chest hair matted to his chest, soaking wet, your mouth literally agape at the sight of him. Or when you spent your entire lunch break watching him, unblinking, tinkering with someone’s computer in the bullpen, his eyes meeting yours a few times, aware that you were staring right back at him each time he happened to look over. Even to have him confront you would have been something. But he said nothing.

Which is why you felt so confident in your blatant admiration of him as you stared at the back of his head in the break room, watching him chug two cups of coffee.

“What’s wrong with you?”

His words had you jumping a little, excited to hear him speak finally, but completely terrified.

“I…uh, what?”

“What’s your problem?” He turned to face you, questioning you with narrowed eyes, his arms folded across his chest. It was useless to expect you to answer, you were too busy wondering how a sweater vest could ever be that attractive.

“Hello?”

“I’m so sorry.”

“I knew it.” He scoffed as he recognised confusion on your face. “Don’t try to pretend now. They really have you playing the long-con, hm? Easily manipulated? I think it’s pathetic that you were so easily pulled into their idiotic little pranks.”

“What do you…”

“Save it, you think I’m too dumb to know what’s going on? I’m the smartest person here, and you think I wouldn’t realise you were all teasing me? I can admit, the organisation that goes into something like this, the collaborative effort is admirable. How did they manage to get you on board so easily? Hazing?”

“I have no idea what you’re talking about.”

“This! The whole thing! You…getting you to pretend to be obsessed with me so I embarrass myself and ask you out. So that you can all laugh at Edward, because he needs to be knocked down a peg. Can’t take it that I’m smarter and more capable than you all!?”

You sat silently, watching his frantic little gestures, arms flailing wildly as he ranted.

“Because a pretty girl couldn’t possibly be interested in Edward. No! He’s just the loser who ‘does the computers’ which doesn’t even make grammatical sense!”

The heat in your cheeks was embarrassingly strong. He called you pretty. The rest of the words were slowly sinking in, but you were far too focused on the idea that the object of your obsessive desires thought you were pretty.

“Well? Are you going to defend yourself? Just know that I can tell when people are lying. I’m incredibly perceptive.” He gestured his hand out, presenting the palm to you, giving you the stage.

“There’s no…I’m…I just…I think you’re interesting.”

“Oh.” Edward stood awkwardly by the counter, shuffling towards you slowly and thrusting out his hand. “In that case, Edward Nigma, nice to meet you.”

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nakachuchu · 4 years ago

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3:06 PM | Ushijima Wakatoshi

SYNOPSIS: You’re a mail-order bride arriving at her new home for the first time.

READER: female

WORDS: 1078

WRITTEN: 05/18/2021

NOTE: Thank you for requesting from my time event! Sorry there wasn't much romance.

Ushijima was an outstanding and famous volleyball player, and while he didn't need a girlfriend in his life, he had noticed his large mansion was a bit empty.

Tendou came over occasionally to talk about his latest chocolate creation, to lounge about in Ushijima's mansion, and to tell him that he was lacking someone in his life.

Ushijima didn't really notice much until lately. He was about to turn thirty and his only companions were the fish in the large tank in the living room.

As a lover of magazines and articles, he picked up the first one from the stack he had on his coffee table. He was a bit surprised to see a mail order bride advertisement on the cover, but after recalling Tendou's words, he decided to pull up his laptop—that Tendou taught him how to use—and entered the website URL.

He scrolled through the brides, eyes widening slightly at the amount of saucy photos the brides had.

He stopped at your profile. You had uploaded a simple picture of you with a dog. You were smiling in the picture, and being drawn by it, he clicked on your page.

You listed yourself on a website that sold mail-order brides to people. You didn't have the best life, so you decided to take your chances with a husband who could take care of you.

Before Ushijima could stop himself, he purchased you. When you had gotten the email that you had been bought, you weren't sure how to act. You only hoped someone kind purchased you.

Less than a week later, you arrived at Ushijima's doorstep with a suitcase behind you. When he answered the door, he was a bit confused as to who you were until you explained that he had ordered him.

"Are you hungry?" you asked. "I can make dinner. Can you show me the kitchen?"

He nodded and led you into the kitchen. You thought it was a bit scary that he hadn't said a single word to you yet, so you were on high alert.

Your mouth parted a bit at the sight of his large kitchen. When the taxi first dropped you off in front of his mansion, you were surprised. You stood there for a few minutes, making sure you got the correct address.

You couldn't understand why someone as rich as him would need to purchase a bride. He could have easily gotten a girlfriend or a wife on his own—mainly his money.

You shook your head out of your thoughts and opened the fridge, mouth opening further at his empty fridge. There were only chilled water bottles and yogurt.

"You don't have anything," you said. "What do you normally eat? You're so big, you have to eat a lot."

You began to scold him like a mother and he simply stood there and nodded. When you were finally finished, you huffed and looked away. He took out his phone and ordered fresh groceries from a local app.

"I ordered groceries," he said.

You flinched at the sudden sound of his voice and slowly turned around. The two of you stared at each other in silence.

"Can you show me where I can sleep?" you asked.

He nodded and grabbed your suitcase, taking it upstairs for you. You followed after him and followed him into one of the rooms near the back of the hallway.

It was a large, fancy room. You noticed there was nothing personal in the room, so you turned to talk to him. You didn't notice how close he was to you, so you had to back up.

"Are you not sleeping with me?" you questioned.

He paused for a moment. "No."

"Why not? I'm your bride."

"Do you want to?"

"I don't mind," you responded.

The two of you stared at each other for a moment more before you turned around and sat on the bed.

"I'll start unpacking. Will you tell me when the groceries arrive?" you asked.

He nodded and left you alone to unpack. You found him odd—very odd—but he was attractive and rich. You knew you would be well taken care of.

For the rest of the night, you unpacked and made dinner for the two of you. Ushijima thanked you for the meal, and you thought it was simply good manners, but he hadn't had a home-cooked meal in years so he appreciated it.

The two of you slept in separate bedrooms that night. It was one of the best nights of your life because of how big and fluffy the bed was.

The next day, Ushijima didn't have practice. He decided to take you to the park at 3:06 PL. you were thankful because you enjoyed feeling the sunlight on your skin and the wind through your hair.

"Thank you for taking me here," you said.

He nodded.

You stared at his attire. He was wearing a baseball cap, sunglasses, and a jacket. You were feeling hot in his place.

"Why are you wearing that? You look...like a stalker," you said.

He glanced at you. "People who know me like to take photos, but sometimes, I want to relax."

You blinked. "Are you famous or something?"

He blinked at you. "You don't know?"

You shook your head.

You never bothered to Google him because all that mattered to you when he first purchased you was that he would hopefully take care of you. All you knew was his face, name, and age because of his private profile that only you had access to.

"I'm a volleyball player."

"Oh. Cool."

You knew nothing about sports, but he didn't seem to mind. He looked ahead to continue looking at the swans in the lake.

"What do you want for dinner tonight?" you asked.

"Anything," he said, but he was too shy to add 'because anything you make is good.'

“Okay,” you responded. “Do you like carrots?”

“Mhm.”

“What about brussel sprouts?”

He vaguely remembered having them when he went to the United States. He cringed at the thought of it.

“No.”

“Yeah, me too.”

You continued to quiz him on the foods he liked or didn't like and he continued to respond to you. In the middle of your conversation, he ended up buying some bread from a vendor to feed the birds. He handed you half of the bread and the two of you ended up surrounded by birds for the rest of the evening.

#haikyu x reader #haikyuu x reader #Ushijima Wakatoshi x reader

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shinsouskitten · 5 years ago

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AYE WHATS GOOD I was wondering if you could write headcannons for Kaminari finding out his "innocent" female s/o can pole dance like really good, also a few spicy ones pls ( ͡ʘ ͜ʖ ͡ʘ)

Hiiiiiiiii! Have I found myself a fellow Kami simp? 👀

Warnings: suggestive ~spicy~ themes, and uhh… i got carried away under the cut

---

⚡ Okay, so it had meant to be a joke. Denki and Sero thought it would be hilarious to sign the Bakusquad up for a pole dancing course. You don’t even know how the managed to convince Bakugou to show up, but his reaction when you arrived led you to the assumption they hadn't exactly told him where you were going

⚡ With a lot of peer pressure (and maybe a few bribes) you all got him inside, but he refused to take part until everyone else already had

⚡ The lady coaching you was wonderful. She explained in detail how to perform each trick, as well as showing you examples each time. She also told you all that the more skin free to stick to the pole, the better your grip would be, which of course led to the boys immediately stripping off their shirts

⚡ With yours and Mina’s insistence, the two idiots who had signed you up went first. They did… okay… if okay means falling on your ass after failing to grip the pole correctly. Your coach was patient, and eventually they managed um… something without falling (maybe it wasn’t an official move, but it was better than falling on the floor)

⚡ Next they handed the reins to you and Mina, and the moment you performed your first spin on the pole, the whole room fell silent. Kaminari became suddenly grateful that he’d taken his shirt off earlier, because now he had something to cover the not so little problem in his shorts. He certainly hadn’t expected that

⚡ Your coach was amazed, and suggested a few more moves that were above the beginner stage for you to try. Once again, you performed them with ease, and for a while it was like you had signed up for a private lesson, with everyone else content just watching the way your body moved around the pole like it was nothing

⚡ A certain pair of yellow eyes were paying a little more attention to you, though the thoughts hidden behind them weren’t focused on the present. Instead, they were drifting further and further away each time you spun around, imagining a future scenario away in the privacy of your home

⚡ When your turn was finished, you returned to the back of the room, hiding a laugh when you realized who was up next

⚡ No one's eyes are watching you as Kirishima and Bakugou join your coach, so everyone easily misses the hand around your waist and the hot breath on your neck as Kaminari whispers in your ear, asking you where the hell you learnt to do that. To be honest, he doesn’t care about the response, he’s more focused on your answer to his next question: ‘any chance I could request a private show?’

⚡ Don’t be surprised when you return home one night to find a pole mounted in your spare room. He did ask for a private show after all

⚡ In the comfort of your own home you’re more relaxed, your movement more fluid and natural as opposed to the specific moves your coach had instructed. The whole time, Kaminari can’t take his eyes off you, but they never stay in one place long. He tries to be respectful, but there’s only so much he can take when you’re waltzing around in front of him practically naked

⚡ You know when he reaches his limit, and your performance stops, rel=placed by a slow stalking towards him as he stands up from his seat with a smile

⚡ okay so i got carried away here… im sorry

His kisses are soft, at least to begin, but soon enough they’re overtaken by passionate urges. He tangles one hand in your hair, giving it a slight tug to grant him access to your neck, and he trails more kisses across your skin. You’re sure he’ll leave marks, but right now you don’t care. He doesn’t need his quirk to send sparks flying through you, his lips on your collarbone and his spare hand holding you close are more than enough to put your whole body on edge.

A small nip of his teeth brings you back to earth, and he releases your hair to allow you to look into his eyes. The bright yellow usually present is almost entirely gone, overtaken by dark pupils blown wide with lust. You’ve seen this look countless times; he’s losing his ability to hold back, and he’s searching for that final gift of permission before he allows himself to continue.

A single nod from you is all it takes, and he returns to littering your neck with dark purple marks, his hand falling from your hair to trail down your back, unhooking your bra with ease and continuing lower to join his other on your hips. He pulls back for a moment to allow you to slip the straps of your bra down your arms until it tumbles to the floor, Kami knocking it to the side with his foot as he pulls you back in.

Neither of you can wait for the bedroom. The spare will have to do. He takes a seat again, patting his lap as his eyes stare at your chest. It’s enough to make you feel self conscious, the complete focus and attention of his gaze, but there’s nothing cruel in his eyes: it’s love, adoration, lust, and all the other synonyms that explain his simping for you.

⚡ asgksjhaefbsnc im gonna stop before I ruin this

#my hero academia #boku no hero academia #boku no hero #denki kaminari x reader #denki kaminari #bnha denki #denki kaminari headcanons #denki kaminari smut #mha x reader #mha headcanons #mha smut #bnha smut

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master-sass-blast · 5 years ago

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Gifted.

*tosses escapism fic into the void* yeet.

Summary: You and Piotr go Christmas shopping and enjoy the holiday season.

That's it. That's all that's happening. You're welcome.

Pairing(s): Piotr Rasputin x Reader and mentioned Illyana Rasputin x Kitty Pryde.

Rating: G.

Word Count: 2k precisely.

Set after “It’s Truly Magical.”

A/N: On the off-chance someone asks or is worried, yes, there are no mentions of masks or social distancing in this fic. That's because, in this fic, there is no COVID (ergo, no need for masks and such). I'm just not dealing with it in my fanfic as well. I won't. You can't make me.

Wear your fucking masks irl pls and thank u.

Taglist: @marvel-is-perfection, @chromecutie, @girl-obsessed-with-things, @super-darkcloudstudent, @dandyqueen, @leo-writer

“What a bright time, it's the right time/ To rock the night away/ Jingle bell time is a swell time/ To go glidin' in a one-horse sleigh…”

You inhale deeply, then smile. The smells of fresh pretzels and pine –the latter is likely a fake scent that the stores use, but it’s still good—tantalize your nose. You tuck your hat and gloves in your purse, then look over at your husband. “Where all are we going?”

“Ah…” Piotr scans his list –which has notes on which stores to check and what order the stores are laid out in the mall, so as to streamline things. “Kitty said she did not want gifts because she does not celebrate Christmas, so we are just shopping for… my family and Russell. You said you already bought gifts for your dad and Wade?”

“Yup,” you say with a grin. Nate’s easy to shop for –ammo, clothes, and the odd book or two are usually all he want—and for Wade you just find the weirdest stuff listed on Amazon. “And I already sent my uncle a gift from us, so we don’t have to worry about him.”

Piotr nods, ‘hmm-ing’ as he makes a note on his list. “Okay.” He mumbles in Russian under his breath, then says, “Mama had no list this year; I think we start with her first since figuring out gift will take longer.”

“That’s fine. Where should we start?”

“I think bookstore is best bet. From there, we can stop by Hot Topic and candle shop for snezhinka, then Game Stop for Mikhail.”

“Sounds good.” You link your arm through his and smile up at him. “Lead the way, babe.”

***

You glance between the piles of books on the table, then at your husband, who looks like he’s about to pull his hair out. “Do you think that, just maybe, you’re overthinking this? Just a little?”

“This is important,” Piotr insists as he skims through books from various areas of Barnes and Noble –cooking, history, fiction; he’d grabbed at least one book from nearly every section. “She has specific tastes. Cannot be just any old book.”

You purse your lips together. You don’t doubt that Alexandra has particular tastes in reading material –as a woman from her walk in life is bound to have—but you’re also certain that she wouldn’t want her son driving himself insane just to pick a present for her. You sit down next to Piotr and gently put your hand on his arm. “Sweetheart. She’s going to like whatever you get her.”

“Not necessarily. I have seen her toss many books aside with scoff and never pick them up again.”

“Okay, why?”

He shrugs. “Realism. She thinks some authors are ‘too indulgent’ or ‘too unrealistic.’”

“Alright, so maybe we leave out the crime and romance stuff,” you suggest, setting the few books he’d grabbed from those areas aside. “What does she like to do?”

Piotr goes quiet. His expression grows ashen as he contemplates the question. “I… don’t know.”

“Does she like to cook? Or draw? Or watch certain types of shows or movies?”

“I don’t know,” he repeats, more insistent. “She…” He sighs. “She never sits still. I don’t think any shows or movies interest her. When I was child, she always worked. On farm, taking care of animals, helping workers, making food, balancing accounts, translating letters and schoolwork… I never saw her rest. Do something for herself.”

You let out a soft snort. “Maybe a book on meditation.”

Piotr rolls his eyes, grinning. “Perhaps not.”

“Who does she like to be around, then?”

“Otets.” Piotr smiles when the answer comes easily. “She and my father” –he holds up two crossed fingers—“are like this. Aside from siblings and me, I think he is only person she is really close to.”

“Alright, maybe a cookbook, then. That’d give them something to do together.”

Piotr nods, then starts looking through the cookbooks he’d picked. “Question is, which one?”

“Well, we know she likes to stay busy and keep moving. Maybe something that’d challenge their skills? Something they haven’t tried?” You hold up a book boasting ‘rich and authentic Middle Eastern recipes.’ “This could be good. I think they’d have access to most of the ingredients, here in New York.”

He nods again, then sets the aforementioned book aside before checking over the other ones. “I think…” He lifts a hardcover thriller novel off the table. “She likes mysteries. This one has good reviews… maybe…”

You gently take the book from his hands and set it atop the Middle Eastern cookbook. “I think it’s a great choice.”

He smiles, then kisses your cheek. “Spasibo, myshka.”

***

“Bozhe moi.”

You giggle as the two of you step over the threshold of the Yankee Candle store, only for Piotr to recoil and take a step back. “You good there, baby?”

He presses his fingers against the sides of his nose. “Is like… assault of smells.”

“I know.” You inhale deeply, them flash him an impish smile. “Isn’t it great?”

Piotr groans, still rubbing his sinuses. “Do you mind—”

“I’ll find a candle for Illyana. Wanna meet up in Gamestop?”

“Spasibo, dorogoy.”

You blow him a kiss, then head into the candle store. You take a couple minutes to peruse the holiday display at the front of the store –and grab a couple votives for you and Piotr to enjoy—before heading towards the back of the store, where all the shelves of their regular candles are. You pause to smell your favorites –seriously, the McIntosh apple one never fails to make your mouth water—before taking a step back to survey your options. Alright, what to get for a mildly angsty, queer Russian goth?

It’s not as straightforward as it sounds (har har). Illyana’s an enigma, much like her mother. She’s quiet, keeps to herself, and doesn’t usually bother with convention.

Do I go for aesthetic? You pick up a pitch black candle labeled “Midnight Forest” and give it a cursory sniff. Ugh, smells like ass. No, thank you.

You also have to consider that whatever you get is likely going to be smelled by Kitty, too. As much as Illyana marches to the beat of her own drum, she’s surprisingly conscientious of her bubbly, energetic girlfriend.

Maybe something natural? Like the farm? You try a few options, wrinkling your nose after each sniff. God, what is it with the fresh scents and smelling heinous? You debate texting Piotr and dragging him back in here, if only so you’re certain you’ll get something Illyana would like—

And then it hits you over the head like a brick.

She’s gonna use these for meditation. You head down the rows of shelves, grab a jar labeled “Vanilla,” and give it a smell. Perfect. Not too strong, not too bland. You grab a lavender scented tumbler (for relaxation), then snag a pink one that smells like the perfume Kitty favors on a hunch it’ll be a hit.

By the time you pay for yours and Illyana’s candles, Piotr’s already waiting outside the Gamestop for you, bag in hand.

He eyes your bulging bags, eyebrow raising in trepidation. “Why…”

“Look, it’s your fault for abandoning me,” you say before he can point out your lack of self-control. “You know I’m weak for candles.”

Piotr snorts, then sighs. “Fair enough.” He nods and makes approving noises when you show him the picks you made for Illyana, then shows you what he grabbed for Mikhail.

“‘Mister Mosquito?’” You nearly double over laughing. “What even is this?”

“He wanted ‘weird video game,’” Piotr says, shrugging one shoulder. “I figure this should do.”

“He’s gonna love it,” you reassure your husband. “That’s weird as shit.” You start strolling along the main hall of the mall –and then your stomach rumbles. “Can we get pretzels?”

“Da, myshka,” Piotr chuckles, “we can get pretzels.”

***

“There'll be parties for hosting/ marshmallows for toasting/ and caroling out in the snow/ there'll be scary ghost stories/ and tales of the glories of/ Christmases long, long ago…”

“It’s the most! Wonderful time! Of the year!” you sing along as you rip another chunk off your pretzel. You smile to yourself as you admire the glittering, twinkling decorations decking the food court. “How’s your pretzel?”

“Very tasty.” Piotr dips a bite of his pretzel in some mustard, pops it in his mouth, then swallows before wiping his fingers on a napkin. “I think we only have handful of stops left.”

“Couple of sweaters for your dad… weird socks and-or scarves for Mikhail…” You lean over, reading off the list in his hand (which is written in a mixture of Russian and English). You take another bite of pretzel, then tap on a portion of blended “Russi-nglish” that you can’t decipher. “What’s that?” you ask once your mouth is clear.

“Random gift options,” he translates. “For filling out presents, stockings, that sort of thing.” He touches the tip of his index finger to the page, moving down the list in order. “Chocolate, books, gift cards. Guaranteed hits, essentially.”

“Ooh, I could go for some chocolate.”

Piotr snorts. “You just had pretzel. And this is for others, myshka.”

“If it’s in the car with me, I make no promises.”

He laughs, then makes an extra note on his list. “Safety chocolate… for myshka. Got it.”

***

“Here, dorogoy.”

“Oh, thank you!” You smile as Piotr takes some of the excess bags from your hands, shifting them so he can carry them (which, with his strength and the size of his hands, is no problem at all). You amble along next to him, admiring the various pop-up stands boasting games, calendars, and Christmas-themed treats. “Is there anywhere else we need to stop?”

“I believe we have everything.”

“And I’m guessing we need to head home so we can make dinner?”

“That would be best, da.” Piotr looks down at you, expression curious. “Why? There is somewhere you wish to stop?”

“Eh, not really,” you say with a shrug. “I just like coming to the mall during this time of year. The decorations, the music, the extra stands and seasonal gifts… It just makes me happy.”

“Aah, khorosho. I understand. We can come back later for date, if you like. Take time to walk around and admire stores.”

You grin up at him. “I’d like that.”

The two of you make to head out of the mall, back to the parking lot—

And then Piotr veers towards the right.

“Where are we going?” you ask, giggling as he leads you towards the bookstore. “I thought we already got everything we needed from here?”

He winks at you. “Trip is not complete yet. Not with hot chocolate, anyway.”

You grin and let him guide you over to the café in the bookstore.

Piotr gets you situated at a table near the expanse of windows at the front of the shop. He leaves your bags with you, then leads up at the counter to order your drinks.

You smile, lovestruck as you gaze over at him. How did I get so lucky? You lean back in your seat, taking a moment to admire the snow falling outside before checking out the decorations throughout the store…

Which is when you realize that there’s mistletoe hanging over your table.

You chuckle to yourself. Perfect.

“You are in good mood,” Piotr comments as he returns with two cups of hot chocolate.

“Of course, I am,” you admit with a broad grin. “I’ve got you. And tradition’s on our side.”

Piotr’s smile turns quizzical. He cocks his head to the side, staring at you for a moment, then looks up when you point towards the ceiling. “Ah,” he chuckles, “yes. That is good reason to be happy.”

“I couldn’t agree more.” You hook your finger under the collar of his shirt and gently tug him towards you. “Come here, handsome.”

He lets out a soft, happy giggle and bends down to kiss you.

#sass writes #piotr rasputin x reader #colossus x reader #holiday fluff #i miss going outside #which never happens so like #fml #don't mind the sounds of despair coming from my general direction #just use the fluff to drown it out #just like how i am #also kitty is jewish and thus doesn't observe christmas #i will die on this fucking hill :)#x men fanfiction #deadpool fanfiction

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hayjeon · 5 years ago

Text

Practical Tips on getting your fics out there!

I’ve gotten an influx of these types of questions here recently, and the more i thought about what i was gonna add, it became really long :(

disclaimer: a lot of the things i bring up are just from personal experience as a writer on this site, what my followers have told me they appreciate, and what i tend to look for when im looking for fics to read! If you don’t like these tips then pls move on :)

although i’ll mention them, i’m also not going to be focusing on cliche tips like “write for yourself” or “grammar issues” cause those are pretty obvious!

1. accessibility of your blog

when you’re trying to get your name out there, make sure that you’re creating an inviting experience for any potential followers! this includes:

a memorable url! be creative!

have some fun designing your blog’s aesthetic! (i love cute blogs because it reflects a bit of the writer’s personality), and (i prefer blogs with white backgrounds because it’s easier to look through/read, say, in contrast to a pitch black one where the words need to be white!)

put your masterlist link in your bio (even better if you can link most recent fic! found this most helpful when i revisit authors that i like and can easily see if they’ve updated or not)

an organized and easy-to-navigate masterlist (personally, i prefer masterlists organized by band, instead of types of fics ie. i hate when i have to choose between drabbles, oneshots, and series masterlists; i really prefer to see them altogether!) --> see section 3

organized tags (if you’re going to be posting a lot of non-fic-related content like pictures or videos, tag them properly so followers can sort through and find your fics easily!), or (if you’re going to be writing in different mediums like drabbles, or answering asks, make sure to use a unified #mine or #writing or #fics to centralize your content)

2. get your name out there!

write write write! once you have some fics that show your talent, don’t be shy!

join writing groups: when i first started out, I joined a bunch of groups that would reblog my fics in the midst of the content of much bigger writers; these blogs developed a following, and as a result of my content mixing in with bigger blogs’ content, so did my own tumblr! there’s been a stigma recently with these groups, but im sure you can find one thats supportive and not clique-y!

send your fics to rec pages: what’s the harm? the only bad thing that can happen is that they ignore you! who cares! get out there!

if you can do the above, i really encourage you to ask your fave writers for advice/to read your fic: again, the worst that can happen is that they say no or don’t respond or don’t have enough time, but it’ll be a good opportunity to get some feedback! i for one read (or try to read) every single rec that falls into my inbox. if i like it, i’ll #rec it, and if i don’t, unless the writer asks me for feedback, i move on!!

utilize your tags!!: i’m not entirely sure if this is still the same or not, but from my memory, it’s the first 3-5 tags that matter the most? so utilize them well; push back the tags that aren’t really relevant (ie. #writing, #fics) and push more the main subject line of what you wrote (ie. jungkook fluff, bts smut, namjoon angst). these will populate your fics into the tags better!

headers!: when i’m scrolling through an infinite page of fics, the headers catch my eye the most; try being creative! you can find a lot of info out there on how to make ur headers super aesthetic, but i can share my tips too! --> see section 3

3. your masterlist

here are some practical tips!

organize by band, not type of fic/member/centralize your masterlist: i went onto a blog recently and clicked their bio mlist link to find a page full of 20~ish “JUNGKOOK MASTERLIST”/ “JAEHYUN MASTERLIST” and when i clicked on each one, they only had like 2 or 3 fics per member. i think it would’ve been better if she’d centralized all her fics! that keeps whoever is looking interested and more likely to click on another fic while browsing

add info about the fics!: when scrolling through a masterlist, it’s easy to get lost; try to add some snippets of info (ie. a short sentence you liked from the fic, a quick summary, a description of the au/scenario, or even a header!) this all gives some info about the fics you have tagged!

headers: this isn’t a requirement, but i personally love a good header on fics i read and i love making them myself as i finish up a fic and get ready to upload it; here are free sources: unsplash for HQ stock pics, crop/edit/filter in VSCO, and then add aesthetic script with fontcandy)

try to fill it up!: after i visit a blog after reading one good fic, i usually browse through their mlist to see if there are any more that i’d be interested in. if there’s a lot to look forward to, i’ll almost always follow; try to write as much as you can in the first few months to try and fill up your mlist and give blog viewers a reason to visit your blog again, follow, or even reblog your content!)

4. try not to reproduce cliche fics:

honestly tumblr’s writing community (and armys) has grown insanely these past few years and, unfortunately, even from my perspective, in the past 3-4 years, all the writers have sort of become blended together in my brain. but, i can say that the ones who consistently stand out are the ones who produce consistent content and think outside of the box!

i tend to gravitate towards fics that have really interesting plotlines (ex. btssavedmylifeblr’s VOID is always a surprise to read because it’s sO unique! i usually don’t read ot7 fics but this one is legit my fave)

I know it’s tempting to try and just write typical smut fics to try and gain some traction, but tumblr is already too overloaded by that kind of content; try to write something that’s special and unique! this will set u apart from the thousands of other writers here --> see next section

5. create unique fics:

this is also personal to my writing style, but i get so bored writing just casual fics about the members, and it affects the fics i choose to read too; i prefer unique fics which you can achieve through:

circumstance/au: create a fun au!; don’t just create an arranged marriage, create an arranged marriage in joseon dynasty, or between a werewolf and a hunter! (shameless self plug); don’t just give me friends to lovers, but give me spiderman!jungkook friends to lovers! (ie. cupofteaguk’s exchanges)

jobs: give them out-of-the-ordinary jobs; don’t just give me enemies to lovers, but give me rival!anchors who end up loving eachother! (ie. jimlingss The Newscasters)

fun dialogue: create good back-and-forth, (something i’m still working on!)! this will help your characters develop personality, and that way, readers will start to develop that themselves as well (ie. dad!yoongi from insemination wars by prolixitae is such a specific character that i love so much!, or obiwrites’ garden characters were so memorable!)

create memorable personalities: don’t give me a flat character, try to develop 4d personalities in all of your characters! (im still working on this too!) this way you can really make an impression on your followers! a great way to practice/recognize this is: “Ask my Character.” Can your followers ask a specific character a specific question, and would you be able to deliver an answer that is very specific to that character’s tone/voice/personality? If yes, then ur doing well! If not, try to think of ways that you can make tht specific character from a specific story, really unique and separate from your other characters.

6. some practical writing tips

be yourself, write for your own pleasure, blah blah blah; yeah you know already haha but here are a few more practical tips!

grammar check: if you can, try and hone your grammar! makes for an easier read

write like you: i personally LOVE this by obiwrites, but even the way she writes exudes her personality and is so specific; try not to be caught up in adding hundreds of synonyms and exquisite language; in fact, simpling it down and being more concise and honest with your writing is better than a superfluous sentence; this will also give ur characters so much more dimension and funk

use those commas/sentence variation: try to use more commas; this will feel like you’re the narrator to your own story; it also makes it more fluid to read in my opinion, over those short. clipped. sentences. (ie. “he came over, sitting down on the corner of your bed with an expression you’d never seen before” over “he walked over. he sat down, looking sad.”)

half-half dialogue/narration: a fic with too much dialogue can get confusing, and a fic with too much narration can get dry; try to balance them out, and weave in and out of each!

quality over quantity: don’t feel burdened to write a 30k word fic. in fact, i think some of the shorter fics (ie. any of versigny’s stuff) made a bigger impression on me over the longer fics because they were short, left me wanting more, and were just so high-quality in such small quantities. try out your hand at drabbles and one-shots, and don’t feel too burdened to try and develop a series right off the bat!

abandon pigeon-holes: i’m guilty of this; i start series and then end up with no vision for the stories and they end up giving me writers block. its okay. just stop or discontinue them or leave them on a hiatus; it’s okay. your priority is yourself, and if abandoning certain works are part of that, then go ahead. it’ll help you progress more.

and finally.......

i’ll add more as they come up! but if you liked this, then pls lmk! i’d love to give more tips and tricks; i think i started this blog 3-4 years ago when there weren’t as many writers here, but im glad you’re thinking of starting out/wanting to grow more! don’t feel intimidated! it’s not all about the notes/followers but creating a blog you’re proud of.

so write what you’re proud of, or interested in, and keep going. i truly thoroughly had so much fun writing this post. if there are any writers who read through this and have some more advice, pls msg me!

all the best to you!

#writing tips #story talk #if ur a writer pls lmk if theres anything u wanna add #if ur a reader then pls lmk any questions or comments!

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well-shit-im-a-morosexual-now · 5 years ago

Note

Guess what Obey Me just dropped?

It starts with a ‘Lesson’, ends with a ‘41’ (and possibly a ‘42’)-

If you ever play it, pls answer this-

(Also, screenshots of the boys (mainly Satan's) clothes pls?)

-Lesson 35 Anon

Hey! Sorry this took longer than normal, I didn’t have my phone for a couple of days cause the its charging port? Area? Spot? I dunno - the place where you plug in the charger, was broken.

SPOILERS FOR LESSON 41 - 42

Right so lesson 41 starts off in a park (cause I’m almost 80% sure MC’s homeless, I mean they keep disappearing for months with no warning??? Is anyone paying their bills? Their rent?) where they meet Solomon. He asks them how they’re doing, they can either say good or just ask him how he’s doing. He mentions about how he wanted to meet at this café but they were closed for remodeling (is2g this will be important later. He asks them if they’ve been the homework he gave them that is harder than what they did at RAD but still just the basics which they will need if they want to work themself up to being able to perform summoning spells. MC says they’re dying to see everyone from the devildom and Solomon says he was worried they would be depressed cause it’s such a difference getting used to the quieter human world and that’s why he recommended the babysitting job to them. He asks whether they are ready to head to the interview and if they are nervous (why? They spent at least 2 years babysitting 7 all powerful ancient entities, this should be a breeze, akdhudsbkhs so I’m typing this out while replaying the game for the second time just to pick the options I didn’t before and Solomon just said the same thing I did about the brothers) Solomon then starts acting a little shifty, tries to tell something to MC but keeps quiet and send them off. MC pulls up at this huge ass house (Serenity Manor) which actually looks bigger than the HoL. Then ring the bell and the door is opened by Asmo and bro his clothes are cute af im dying, MC immediately shuts the door in his face without even saying a word jwdbkidjojS, they silently open the door again to see Levi, Asmo and Satan arguing. Levi’s clothes are also pretty cute, I like them better than his usual outfit, Satan’s should be burned to a crisp. Have you watched two and a half men? They show it here on repeat, and have you seen those ugly ass polo shirts Charlie wears? Satan’s shirt is a dress shirt version of those and I hate it. The cream coloured suit jacket is NOT a jacket but instead a long cream coloured coat it makes me want to throw up in my mouth. The fact that everyone else has clothes that look pretty good and that only Satan has this abomination just makes it that Satan has a horrible sense of fashion. MC immediately shuts the door again without saying a word only to come face to face with Beel and Belphie behind them who have just come back from shopping. Beel has a tattoo??? Like in his human form? He didn’t have one before? Belphie looks more or less the same, his outfit looks only slightly different from normal. They more or less drag MC inside even though MC’s brain is still breaking. All 5 of them then start arguing (about who’s late and Beel trying to eat everything in the shops etc) and it ends up freaking MC out so much they command the brothers to stay. Levi’s apparently being waiting around near the door all morning waiting for MC to turn up.

Satan complains about MC’s command being painful and MC can either apologize for it or say it’s their fault for startling them. Either way he says the surprise wasn’t his fault and it was all Asmo and Mammon’s plan. Asmo says ‘sowwy’ if he wasn’t so cute I’d be pissed. Asmo reveals that they’ll be spending their break up in the human world. Levi says they’ve never spent a long time in the human world and were hoping MC could show them around. Apparently Asmo convinced Solomon to lie to MC for them even though he didn’t want to, (when Solomon later texts MC to apologize for lying he says that Asmo asks him to do a lot of things that are troublesome but that he can’t seem to say no to him). Asmo says that even though he’s the one who initially brought up the idea it was Mammon who went all out on it. MC then asks how Mammon’s doing and Levi says “He’s good but actually not” just to be interrupted by someone asking for help from another room. MC walks into the Mammon hanging upside down cussing at Lucifer for hanging upside down from the chandelier cause ya sure he may have gambled away all their money immediately after coming here but at least he managed to save the house and how he doesn’t want ‘the human’ to see him like this. MC can either say ‘long time no see’ or ‘who the fuck are you calling ‘the human’. He freaks out either way & tells them not to listen in on his private conversations with himself. He welcomes them to the interview for the babysitting gig and they tell him he sure is big for a baby, tells them he’s the one hiring (the babies are his six idiot brothers) he tells them he needs to ask them a question to see if they are still sharp after being in the human world and asks what they would do if Lucifer hid his ‘adorable, sweet little brother’s credit card’ . they can either tell him where the card is or ask who this adorable, younger brother is. The first will make him happy the second will make him grumble about being the one asking questions. He tells them to cut him down and they’ll finish the rest of the interview. They command him to stay and cut him down, he complains about how it hurt to land on his back and if they couldn’t find another way to get him down, they tell him they missed him and that they were so happy to see him again and hug him. He blushes and grumbles about them hugging him out of nowhere, calls them a ‘big dummy’, says he feels the same way, swears, and then says he missed them, really missed them. I love the banter????? And that he somewhat constantly calls them dummy and this chapter just ends on his smiling blushing face. I also really like his outfit? That slight slip showing his shoulder? The fact that he has no sunglasses means that his blush is really noticeable???? All good.

Asmo takes MC on a tour of the house and takes them to a bathroom that’s an identical replica of his private bathroom in the devildom. He reveals that Barbatos opened portals between the devildom and this house so that they’ll be able to access certain rooms from the HoL, including their bedrooms and favourite rooms (I kinda like the HoL better cause it was colourful and had character? The Manor kinda looks like a blank white pristine slate which I guess makes sense but still). Also Asmo had asked Barbatos to make a portal to a club but he refused :/. Asmo says that barbatos and diavolo said they would visit. MC gets to ask about either Simeon and Luke (Asmo hasn’t heard from them), Diavolo (he’s seemed a little sad after MC left) and Barbatos (he’s the same as always). Asmo says that he’s missed MC a lot and asked if there’s something they should do to him. MC can either kiss him, kiss his nose or shake his hand (*SNORT*) and I’m forever bitter about the lack of a hug option if MC kisses his nose he calls them a tease and look I could not try the shake hand option because it’s hilarious given the context of the storyline (he says he’s gonna combust from frustration). Satan cockblocks Asmo (and admits to doing so) and steals MC away to show them a ridiculously large home theatre. While boasting about their high-tech theatre that could easily fit a 100 people Satan accidentally reveals that they’ve been in the human world for at least a week, MC is predictably pretty upset by that and Satan says that Asmo & Mammon were insistent about finding a perfect way to surprise MC. Realizing MC’s now going through kinda a depressed downward spiral Satan tries to offer reserving the room just for the two of them to watch whatever MC wants to, and when that doesn’t work asks them what he can do to make them feel better. They can ask him to either kiss them or meow. He blushes and complains but still does and makes them swear not to tell anyone and then tells them he got some movies he thought they’d like and asks what they are currently in to. If they say cat documentaries he’s surprised that those exist and blushes and says he needs to watch them with MC immediately only for Levi to cockblock him by saying there’s an emergency in the kitchen and he’s needed. It’s heavily implied that after Satan leaves that the emergency is greatly exaggerated. Levi then goes silent for while blushing and stutters before asking if MC wanted to go see what the outside looks like. Me, chanting under my breath: poolpoolpoolpoolpoolpool-

THERE’S A POOL JHVDHDBSJKDHJ IM SO HAPPY????? I haven’t seen a pool in so long that even a little game pool had me hyped :’)))) Levi says that Asmo insisted they have a pool and then the others started making demands too but all levi wanted was his games and henry. He also gets sweetly happy when MC asks to see Henry cause no one ever asks to see Henry. He also reveals that Henry has gotten slightly bigger (Me, side eyeing Henry 1.0: huh). Levi suggests gaming together till dinner is ready cause nothing beats the real thing despite the fact that they’ve been gaming online since MC left. Levi says he has always had when he’s with MC and how even though they aren’t currently playing yet he is enjoying himself. MC can either reply by saying they love him (which leads into a kiss) or cooing with what is a soft look on their face cause it makes levi blush and makes him ask them to stop looking at him like that. He gets cockblocked by Belphie who says Levi has a job to do and should get to it. While continuing the tour with Belphie, he asks them what they think of his outfit and whether he looks human (remember when Belphie wanted to wipe out the human race? A need he probably cultivated for thousands of years? And now he’s just cool with everything cause his heart got a boner for the random ass human he murdered?) MC hears some of the brothers arguing through a door that probably leads to the kitchen from the sound of it and belphie asks them not to listen in. He takes them to their Devildom bedroom, says they thought about giving MC a bigger room but figured they wouldn’t like it. Belphie says that he really likes MC’s room and that even after they left he would come to nap in it though it wasn’t that peaceful cause the rest of his brothers would always be in the room too (I’m not crying!). Belphie rests his head on MC’s lap while they stroke either his hair or cheek. If they stroke his hair he says that they’ll put him to sleep but to continue. MC can either agree, pinch his cheek or tickle him. He says something about how he missed this and how it’s better than napping alone in their bed. They ask him where he went earlier with beel, he says they went out shopping and that they saw an ice cream truck and if the music playing meant that eating the ice cream made you start playing music out of your mouth and says he’d want to get ice cream with MC. MC falls asleep and wakes up to Beel carrying them. He says belphie was still asleep and he tried waking them up but it didn’t work and he notices that MC has lost weight and starts worrying about them not eating properly (I really love that it’s a continued theme that MC loses weight each time they leave? I mean without the constant parties and the big meals it makes sense plus with the continued theme that they start moping around when they are alone and that going from living with 7 others where meals are a joint and structured event to living presumably alone it makes sense that they would forget meals and ahh I just love it). Beel points out where they have lost weight by tickling them and MC retaliates after blushing and laughing and asking MC to stop, MC asks where they are going (all this happens while he’s still carrying them and he only lets them down when they get to his room and I just love that they’re both so chill and comfortable with each other) and he tells he needs to take them somewhere but first he need to get party crackers from his room. While he searches for them MC can either look under the bed (it’s full of snacks) or flop on his bed (Beel tucks them in). When Beel finally finds the crackers him and MC end up nose to nose and MC can either ask to kiss him or do that awkward ‘haha did you find what you were looking for’ thing, he’s silent then says he did, then blushes and says he spaced out for a bit and how he suddenly just realized that MC was really in front of him again and how happy he was (reminds me of when he was reunited with Belphie). Beel gets a text from Lucifer saying he has come back and asking Beel to bring MC.

AND HOLY SHIT LUCIFER!????? Any attraction I had towards him instantly died and it’s not that he looks bad???? He just looks like a DAD/MOM. The turtleneck, the necklace, the glasses, the slacks just all of it? I can’t handle that. Also the brothers are having a reunion party in the balcony (which looks like it’s from The Bachelor which…yeah close enough). Mammon says that he’d wanted to see Mc as soon as they arrived and how awful it was that they couldn’t (whose fault was that) and that he felt like a dog whose owner was holding a treat away from him (each they’re separated and reunited Mammon comes back being more emotionally honest, man’s probably gonna propose after the third separation at this rate. Can he even be classified as a tsundere anymore? The others talk to MC about who did what to organize the party. Lucifer toasts to their reunion (and I realized that these idiots, MC included, have taken a 10 year old to a club a bunch of times). Lucifer notes how MC hasn’t been eating much and they say either they’re still in shock or that they have eaten (Lucifer gives Mc food that he made and that he’s proud of). He tells them that if they are feeling tired they can slip away, MC can either say they’ll stay here and have fun with the others – Lucifer is disappointed but understanding that MC would want to spend time with the others and Mammon ends up calling Mc over to get wasted – or MC can agree to leave with him – he ends up taking them to his room and immediately hugging them. While blushing he tells them that he missed them and had wanted to hug them the moment he saw them and had to fight himself to resist doing so in front of the others (At this point MC’s gonna return a third time to Lucifer already in a wedding dress saying his vows). MC can say they feel the same and he says that he knows and asks to kiss them or they can tease him about being sad when they were away and he just agrees. He says he’s been planning this since they asked the brothers for their favourite things but that it was hard to find a place to stay and he apologizes for the time it took and asks them to sleep in his bed for the night.

Lesson 41 ends and I still haven’t got a screenshot of mammon’s outfit cause the man was in our face for the entire lesson and refused to back away.

Lesson 42 starts with them having breakfast (on pristine white couches!??? My soul curled up and died on the spot) and praising human food. Satan complains about the sun and Levi cries about being able to watch anime right as they release now (also he has his longest anime title to date – it takes almost three speech boxes) Lucifer decides it’s time to set up ground rules and shifts for chores. Each brother suggests a game they are good at with the winner being allowed to choose the chores they wanted to do first, in the end they settle on playing rock paper scissors. Rock paper scissors ends up with Levi summoning Lotan, Beel summoning some legendary rock creature and Mammon almost dying (it reminds me a lot of the rock paper scissors my brother and I would play where instead of accepting the initial loss we would keep on calling out things that could counteract what the last person chose until someone ran out of ideas). Beel and MC end going to get groceries from one of those big open air markets (I have literally no idea what you call those in English). Beel says that the previous day the food looked so good that it was really hard to not eat everything and asked MC to stop him if he tried it today – they can either cover his mouth, cover his eyes or hold his hand. In the market Beel buys 5 chickens from the butcher who recognizes them from the previous day. He asks if they are celebrating anything and Beel – sweet innocent Beel who canonically doesn’t know what a threesome is says they are celebrating their first night living together and obviously the butcher takes it as ‘oh a sweet couple living together’ and not 7 children and their impromptu babysitter/therapist/family counselor/marriage counselor. The butcher gives them (really sound tbh) relationship advice (respect each other, take interest in each other but let each other have space to do their own thing). Later Beel’s like ‘holy shit human world butchers are amazing! Not only do they give you food but they also give you advice! Do you think we do all three of those things’ and MC’s like yeh. Okay but look, MC’s gonna have to go shopping with each of the others at some point and they’re all gonna act like couples in love and then the brothers will at some point end up going shopping with each other and yeah they’re gonna argue but it’s still gonna be obvious that they love and care about each other, at some point it’s gonna be obvious that they all live with each other, the butcher already noticed that belphie and beel stood out, he’s gonna notice that the others are weird af too, he’s gonna notice the less inconspicuous names like satan and lucifer. This poor man. Beel and MC run into Mammon and Satan who have abandoned lucifer and fled the house after Solomon came looking for MC and then offered to cook lunch while waiting for MC. They go get pizza from a place where one of satan’s tv shows were filmed (he geeks out in a very levi like fashion) and tells them that they should order ‘the usual’ because that’s what they do in his show and mc says yeah that’s not how it works. Beel’s already ordered and eaten a bunch of pizza and Mammon notes that they are freaking out the waitress. Satan decides to ask how MC’s apprenticeship is going and they talk about magic and Solomon for a bit. MC wonders if Lucifer is okay (he is not. He has been increasingly spamming the group chat asking the others where the fuck they are, who the fuck left him alone with Solomon and lunch and just you fucking wait till you get home I’ll make you suffer. The rest of the group remains silent.) Satan later decides to go visit a bookshop and Beel and Mammon go to a bakery to pick up ‘a dessert that’s to die for’ from a bakery for Asmo. If MC goes with Beel and Mammon – Mammon forgets the name of the dessert but tells MC what he remembers of it and Beel who has taken ‘a dessert to die for’ way too literally. Mammon has to keep telling him that ‘yeah no that’s not what that means’ multiple times. It’s a cute interaction that I really liked. Mammon lets beel buy whatever he wants from the bakery using Asmo’s credit card so now if Mammon fails to turn up for the rest of the season we know why rip. If MC goes with Satan he geeks out about a bunch of rare books and they end up getting lost in the bookstore and can either decide to stick together and find way out or race to find away out. The four meet up in front of the house and note a sense of foreboding coming from it and only remember they left Solomon in the house when they enter and come face to face with him. He tries to get them to have tea and sandwiches with them but they all make excuses about just having lunch (Beel struggles to say the words ‘I’m full’). But lucifer turns up with a sweet smile and says how Solomon had made him lunch and how it was so delicious he had asked Solomon to make tea and sandwiches for the others. I love how these demons all just accept this horrid food and that even though they make excuses they don’t complain to solomon’s face or outright refuse to eat it cause it’ll be rude and hurt his feelings???? Beel, Mammon and Satan suffer while Solomon talks about Mc getting a sorcerer’s (they’ll get a training one and not the actual thing) so that they aren’t limited to having to do spells only with Solomon. MC of course doesn’t really hear any of this cause they’re currently dying. That’s not even a joke – they start seeing spots and stars, they can’t hear what the others are saying, their life flashes before their eyes and they pass out.

MC wakes up in their room at night (the rooms are now light and dark depending on the time of day) and walks out of the room into the demon lord’s castle where they run into lil D no. 2 (who freaks out cause he mistakes MC for ghost and I just love our little demon son so much) who calls barbatos who says they have tea with diavolo. MC can tell barbatos it’s nice to see him again or say it’ll be nice to see diavolo (Barbatos only gets happy when you pick the second option and asks MC to tell diavolo that when they see him cause he’s). Barbatos talks about how it would be nice to visit the human world and that there’s so much he wants to learn from it in regards to cooking, Mc invites him over and offers to show him around. During tea diavolo mopes about having to stay in the devildom even though it’s technically his break too and how barbatos won’t let him come to the human world until he finishes his work but how he doesn’t seem to be able to make a dent in the work even with lucifer helping him as much as he can from the devildom (Chats show diavolo crying to lucifer about his work until lucifer gives him and offers to do what he can. Barbatos calls lucifer out on coddling diavolo). Diavolo says that without the others around he’s even more distracted (which is understandable? I’m less motivated to work when ik that my friends are free and having fun). Lucifer eventually texts diavolo to tell him to stop kidnapping their human and to pls send them back my brothers are about to burn down the kitchen. Levi, Satan and Beel have being trying to figure out human appliances in the kitchen cause even though they have tech in the devildom it’s not as advanced (I really loved the cauldron aesthetic of their devildom kitchen this one’s just white walls and steel). Satan’s insistent that the ice cream maker is to heat up soup. At some point it’s revealed that Beel eats the actual pot part of a hotpot as well. During dinner Asmo asks MC to come with him the next day to visit a café that’s been remodeled called Angel’s Halo

There are 2 locked chapters, presumably one is satan and mammon escaping from Solomon, no idea what the other is.

Sorry this took so long 35, I hope you see this! Since this is already so long I’ll make a separate post for the screenshots

#obey me spoilers #obey me #obey me shall we date #shall we date? obey me!#obey me!#swd obey me

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macklives · 6 years ago

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session 63 end

okayyy. neat-fucking-o. thats done and boy OH FUCKING BOY i have a lot to say. and this is going to get mildly serious. sorry. theres a lot to uncover this session which basically is just one huge overall plot point. the whole timeline shindig. the thing that has messed me up for a few hours ngl.

man.... this is gonna be a long one. im not even exaggerating. (still, a tldr at the end)

so, the main thing besides from the time shindig plot, which is both important and essential and precious: DAVESPRITE <3

k cool. ill expand on that throughout this whole note, but would rather like to make a whole analogy first before i do so.

so, to start off from last session, dave went back in time to fix jade and john’s death.

but i guess, from what ive read, GC never realized what she did was bad. she basically screwed everyone over and dave had to go back to fix things, which yes, does sound bad. but honestly? i dont think she really realized how bad it was until davesprite had the talk with her. and now they are both friends i take it, shocking development. but thats between davesprite, rather than dave himself so there may be two different views on how he sees GC. anyways, it was pretty bad. i wont just forget that. i love her character but she killed off two characters (who thankfully are now alive), making dave a sprite and future rose to just not exist anymore. or... well.... she does, but she seemed to have fused with PRESENT rose. which i guess we’ll figure out how that works the next time we see her. which will probably be on derse.

but, tbh, GC wanted to apologize and felt bad about the whole situation. so im giving her the benefit of the doubt here.

now.. man...

can i take a second to analyze davesprite? and a little bit about the concept of john/dave’s friendship (just a tad)? ie the two greatest things in the world? thanks.

i think the thing that hit me the hardest was how davesprite (im calling him that to distinguish which dave im talking about but keep in mind i should be calling them both dave. but this makes it easier to write up.) well, davesprite explained how he’d continue to reset the timeline until john and jade are alive. which basically means he would use himself as a sacrifice to allow their survival. which ALSO means he cares more for them than he does himself. he’d throw his life away for them. he knew there was a possibility of him ceasing to exist if they reset the timeline again. he literally said it in such a nonchalant way that it makes me wonder how much his friends really mean to him. which in retrospect, is a lot. now pls keep this in mind for the next part.

now, dave also has so much appreciation towards himself. but not in the cocky way, of course. rather in the way that shows self love?? kinda?? like he genuinely wanted to hang with davesprite, brainstorm his comic and vice versa bc they both think their alt version is that cool. i know it should sound kinda narcissistic, but listen. a lot of people dont often appreciate themselves for who they are. and what i really want to emphasize on that here, is that this comes back to the whole putting himself before others thing. because that specific line i mentioned before is a BIG FUCKING DEAL. since dave thinks so highly of himself as a cool guy, rad dude, arent we so awesome type kid that he LITERALLY didnt care for his life in that one hot second. he made sure he was a pawn used to help out his friends rather than an actual human being who should worry about his life as well. he didnt care if he survived or not in the process of making sure everything was going alright. which is such a fucking leap from this whole self-respecting thing. its as if that didnt matter anymore. and that takes a fucking beating. that shows how much dave truly loves his friends. do you know how fucking BIG THAT WHOLE DEAL IS?

take john for example. dave didnt give two shits who the person on the other line was. he found out GC was the troll who killed john and basically threatened her with every inch of his life to make her back away from him. he knew what it would cause and said “fuck you” in bright and bold. all because he didnt want to see his friend die again. which? fair enough. and if we look back at the last session, god that could mess someone up. especially someone as young as 13. rose even got the worst end of the stick bc she flat out ceased to exist. but then again, thats in the same boat as jade/john. bc they all technically died. yet davesprite didnt. he remembers it. davesprite isnt just going to forget. he’s going to have surviver’s guilt for a long time, because being dave’s guide will forever be a reminder that he’s the version in the doomed timeline. he’s the only one who knows what happened, and he wont become the “true dave” in a sense that he’s now just considered “davesprite” and nothing more, since he cant just be dave since his timeline ended up fucked. not to mention he technically said he was fine with it, bc since it meant the others survived, he wouldnt care what happened to his life. even tho he should and it still probably hurts him idk. and that kills me a little. actually, more than a little. this is personally the most gut wrenching scene in homestuck (but i may just be speculating too much). but that wont stop him from helping dave and giving him all the answer, and also protecting john with everything he has.

and, man, i feel as if he’s gonna be such a good guide for dave. he already gave him the loot, the rundown and is very open about questions dave already has because he knows how tough it probably is to have a shitty guide. considering he was stuck with calsprite for 4 months. so obviously he’s going to help as much as possible. since he probably had little to none and didnt learn as much as he should have through the course of sburb. but now, as a guide, he can easily access all the info he lost during the pathway of his timeline. and share it with dave so he doesn’t struggle and actually completes the game rather than end up in a doomed timeline like himself.

but yes. dave’s blatant adoration for john basically saved them both in a way. and it seems as if its a little mutual considering john told dave he’d always believe him no matter what in the end. how he reconsidered everything, remembered the note and realized how good their friendship is to just give it up like that. and then vice versa. dave couldnt continue on the game without him or jade, so he went back in time. and showed his pissed-off protective side in order to save john again. which warms my heart bc they both mean so much to each other. and both got each other super sentimental gifts and wrote each other such touching cards.

and thats a good way to end the session, i think.

so there we have it. ive never wanted to hug a character so bad than i do with davesprite. i just hope everyone at least acknowledges him in some way, and gives him some amount of respect for what he did for everybody. ive only met him for like 10 pages, but i think he’s the most emotional character so far. and i guess since he’s dave himself, and i feel for dave based on his situation with bro, its safe to say i would protect him with my life. which i dont want to be *that* person but hey, its true. its just that he’s been through so much bullshit, and davesprite is the only survivor of his timeline, always will be reminded of it whenever he sees dave/john/rose/jade playing the game, is now a fucking sprite who wont be able to live his own path but just be a guide and god, i feel for him. i really do.

i shouldnt have written such a long note about davesprite.. but his whole story as to how he became a thing really got to me, alright?

i should write a tldr, cool. here yall go; i actually love davesprite, he’s been through some shit and he deserves hells of respect. GC is forgiven and we’ll find out next time how both version of rose.. fused together?

#homestuck #homestuck liveblog #hs63 #hs63 end

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lizzybeth1986 · 6 years ago

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Quick Thoughts on TRH Book 1 Chapter 14

• Funny how the TRH team so desperately needed to spend close to half the book on mindless nonsense with Drake's family...and just a single chapter on the MC's entire first trimester. Via a 6 minute long time jump. Truly funny.

• So now that we're back in Cordonia, the pregnancy is underway, and we're finally getting into the meat of past intrigue, most of the fandom has this for a reaction:

It's a legitimate reaction, the story is moving forward...but the denim-clad, whiskey-guzzling problem that is the root of this whole mess - and the reason why the Walker Ranch portion took so long the way no other place in the series ever has...that problem still exists. It exists in a large, insidious way, and even while we're rejoicing the return to intrigue we might not always notice how even that is rife with issues. But more on that later.

• If you want avoid seeing these posts on your dash, these are the tags to blacklist: #trh quick thoughts, #trh qts, #trh qt reblogs, and #long post.

• Screenshots:

Hana: @aestheticsayeed (photoshoot) and the Abhirio YouTube channel.

Maxwell: @itsbrindleybinch and the rash rec YouTube channel

Drake: @thefirstcourtesan

Liam: @callmetippytumbles (photoshoot), the SavageLordBarlow YouTube channel, and me.

• Title: The Announcement

Alternative Title: Let's Cram One of The Most Important Part Of The Book Into A 6 Minute Montage!

Alternative to Alternative Title: What We Really Wanted to Title This Book - The Royal Yeehaw.

• I'm hoping that with each chapter where you're shown a scan or something that's considered a milestone in pregnancy, I can come out with a corresponding tiny story of my own! Let's see if that works out.

• So...I had my first actual ultrasound at 7 weeks (first time we heard a heartbeat) but the real fun one was the 12 week scan! By then you can see hands and legs (the ultrasound pic the writers chose for this chapter was...eh), and the kids can definitely feel them (not see - yet)...and they're going to use those limbs like nobody's business starting from then 😂

My 12 week scan took around 45 minutes to happen coz Baby V was jumping and kicking all over the place (not that I could actually feel any of it yet lol), and the poor doc wasn't getting clear enough images of her as a result 😅 When we finally saw her she was in all her energy-fueled glory, kicking up a storm (she's a cat-loving kindergartner now and she still kicks exactly like that 😅😅)

My mum had come down to visit and for some good ol' TLC, so she accompanied me inside the room. To date she insists she saw V wave at her 😁

• Back to the story - Madeleine has booked a press conference without our approval (still sucks at her job, I see) and we're left hoping to make lemonade out of those lemons she's thrown our way.

• We can choose to either be excited about announcing it, or worrying about putting the news out too early in case something happens in the first trimester. With the last option, the answers vary depending on who you married and therefore what your title is. If you are Queen, Liam reminds you that a public and accelerated timetable is a part of the price of royal life (still not a good enough excuse for Madeleine to fix this press-con without our approval). If you are Duchess, either Maxwell (or Hana in Maxwell's playthrough) tell us it's too early to start worrying. Bottomline is the MC is persuaded to view this as a good opportunity to celebrate.

• We are give three options for venue, suggested by Liam, Drake and Hana respectively - Hana suggests the royal ballroom since it's where the most important announcements are done, Drake suggests the less-stuffy palace grounds and Liam (of course, since that garden was his mother's pet project!) suggests the gardens. You then get to choose how you want to make an entrance:

(The screenshots are from the following:

1st row - @itsbrindleybinch Maxwell playthrough

2nd row - Mine

3rd row - The SavageLordBarlow YouTube channel, Liam playthrough. Their Liam is called "Dennis")

• Madeleine balks at the idea of a royal event turning into a rock concert, as if one of the most iconic images of Buckingham Palace in the 21st century wasn't Brian May of Queen rocking it out on his homemade guitar on the rooftop.

• Arrangements done, now it's time for THE DRESS. We have a wine-red chiffon ensemble with pearls on the neckline and a jeweled belt. It's called "Apple of My Eye", because presumably no one does apple analogies to symbolize fertility quite like Cordonia does.

• In addition to being Duchess, if you are Queen, you have the additional option of choosing a tiara. We were last able to do this during the ball in the TRR Book 3 finale, before we were honoured with the Champion of the Realm title. This is something you can only access if you are Queen.

• We reach the venue we have chosen, with the entrance we have chosen, and we can either choose to announce formally, or yell it from the top of our lungs. Nobody cares coz they're too happy there's an apple pie baking in that oven 😅

• Among the press we see the usual people: Ana, Donnie, Samir aaaaaand Brad from PM/Smoothie Star Thad from Platinum. He expects pregnant women to have baby bumps from the moment of conception.

• What's he going to be called this time? Chad? 😂

• For a dude who is mostly a spy-journo, he's doing a terribly poor job of hiding it. He doesn't do his research on pregnancy timelines, immediately jumps up to ask a question when the topic turns to that of the alliances with Auvernal and Monterisso, and gets caught pretty easily. He's probably also the dude who was upto something on our honeymoon, taking pictures of us and gathering information on our whereabouts. Whichever country got him on board for this, really needs to rethink their hiring process.

• Donnie has the one brain cell existing among the press and uses it to ask us why we're announcing so early. You can either choose to claim that you wanted the Cordonian people to know asap, or be honest if you didn't want this to happen (to which Madeleine gives you an "apologetic shrug"). The third option has the MC claiming she wants to shed a light on, and be honest about, the entire experience of pregnancy, even if it does result in a miscarriage - which Samir notes as being a noble endeavor.

• With regards to the alliances, we don't give a clear answer yet, but we do hint at what we're looking for when we finally take that call (strength, understanding, advantage for Cordonia). The LI also gets to briefly highlight their sentiments at this point, and show different reactions - Liam has tears in his eyes, Drake can't stop grinning, Hana squeezes her wife's hand and Maxwell screams WE'RE HAVING A BABYYY.

• Additionally, if you're married to an LI other than Liam, the press asks him what will happen if he decides to have children somewhere down the line. He maintains that the MC's child will have the first right to the throne, even over his future children - effectively writing his own bloodline out of that throne if he isn't married yet. Which...well, we knew this was coming. We knew they weren't going to change this. It's disappointing, but not surprising, that they chose this route.

• Once the press meet is over, we get felicitations from different guests, mostly from the Council:

- Duke Landon of Portavira: Compliments the couple by calling them 'glowing' and wishes them well. Penelope plans to design something for the child, and Kiara promises to talk her out of placing too many dog motifs.

- Duke Godfrey of Karlington/Krona: Gives the couple a formal paying-of-respects, and hopes for more dignified attire for the heir (shut up Godfrey Not Gao, I had to waltz in a MINI-DRESS at your goddamn home 🤬).

- Queen Mother Regina: This varies between the Liam playthrough and other playthroughs, obviously, because in the Liam one she is his stepmother and obviously there is that closeness. In all the others, she is warm and friendly, congratulates the happy couple, insists they call her Regina rather than "Your Majesty" (there is a brief moment where married!Maxwell is confused about whether to call her "Your Majesty" or "Your Grace") and assures them that she will always be ready to provide for the "kingdom's heir". Liam's interactions require a more personal touch, so he hugs Regina before the MC can opt to, and she calls their child her grandchild as well. Liam and Regina moments are rare to come by, so I'm happy whenever I get to see them. I also haven't seen her since the book has begun, so I'm chuffed that she's there (pls don't make her knowingly part of the plot pls pls).

- Lord Barthelemy of Ramsford: Has to make everything about him wherever he goes! His felicitations to us lasts all of ten seconds while his attention towards Donnie and Samir takes up all of his time. He manages to score an interview with both of them. The most interesting part isn't that, though. It's the comment he makes about Regina as she leaves: "she always was a generous one..." - now what's THAT supposed to mean?

• Hakim is neither on the Council, nor is he shown here. I'd like to believe Kiara's family have distanced themselves from the group because the MC doesn't deserve the honour of their presence, but we know it's more likely coz the writers would much rather write Kiara and her family out of the story. Which is a pity because they're the most amazing family Cordonia has.

• Madeleine now comes forward, suggesting to us to follow the tradition of getting a royal announcement of their pregnancy done. This is done in a fashion similar to our Engagement Photoshoot, but with our own choice of clothes and less variations overall.

- Our attire is pretty much anything we'd like to pick out from the closet, as long as it's been already paid for. The LIs on the other hand have three different options for their outfits:

Liam gets his outfit from the TRR3 finale, his Costume Gala outfit and his official outfit. Oddly his outfits have titles like the MC's does.

Hana gets her Costume Gala flower dress, her plain black dress and her usual pink one.

Maxwell gets his Costume Gala squid outfit, his black suit and his usual Gucci shirt.

Drake gets his Costume Gala blue brocade, his official grey suit and his usual denim.

- What I can't understand is why her muted black dress is always touted as the formal garb for Hana, when they could easily allow her to wear that gorgeous black traditional outfit of hers. That could have been an option for this shoot. But no, they decided to arbitrarily code that one and block access to it if you didn't pay, even though Lorelai had apologized to Hana and therefore her outfit should have been coming back to her!

- I've said it before and I'll say it again: the decision to pay wall that entire outfit, considering it was taken away from her in an act of abuse and intimidation - and it should have been by all accounts returned to her when Lorelai apologized whether we paid for that scene or not - is sickening. Shame on you PB.

- Once we are ready with our outfits, we meet Ana in the throne room, and she's busy preparing an announcement sign to place in front of the couple. We take a couple minutes to admire the sign, then proceed to posing for Ana. If you took the engagement photoshoot in Book 2 or 3, it's referenced at the beginning. Each couple's scene here is unique:

(Screenshots: Hana's from the Abhirio YouTube channel, Maxwell's from the rash rec YouTube channel, Drake's from @thefirstcourtesan and Liam's from mine).

Liam

Ana begins by suggesting the couple take their places in their thrones, looking at each other. Though the photo is great - glamourous and dignified - Liam and the MC aren't quite feeling the shot. The MC isn't fond of the idea of sitting so far away from Liam, and Liam agrees, telling Ana that he finds the pose too stiff - and that above being King and Queen of the country they are also a couple deeply in love, and their child is not simply an heir but a sign of their love for each other. So the ensuing picture is warm and filled with joy.

Once Ana leaves, Liam tells the MC about how his own parents did exactly such a photoshoot when they were expecting him, and how much more he understands them - now that he is going to be a father.

Hana

There is a warmth and a sweetness to the first shot itself - a simple one that has them simply looking into each other's eyes - that Ana tells them she knows their child will be brought up in a loving home.

For the second shot, Hana asks the MC whether she'd rather have a shot alone, and offers to move out. Possibly because the MC - married to Hana or not - constantly makes everything revolve around her and constantly pushes Hana and her issues to the background like they're not important. I'm sure Hana got that impression from you somewhere, MC.

The MC, however, is surprised by this and insists she be part of the picture. She can choose to either say that this baby belongs to both of them or that without her it wouldn't be a good picture. The MC who is married to her insists she understand her value in their relationship (yeah it took you three and a half books to realize that LMAO), and that Hana belongs with her. She should never think of herself as belonging to the sidelines again, ever (maybe you should work harder on convincing her, MC, because everything you've done until now was mostly all about you and very little about Hana).

The dialogue after Ana leaves is sweet and romantic, with the MC telling Hana her hair smells of roses and Hana and the MC clinking imaginary champagne glasses, before Hana stops her in mock-surprise and promises a real (non-alcoholic) drink back in Valtoria.

Maxwell

Ana finishes the sign and gets ready for the shoot. Maxwell holds a formal pose on his knees that places more attention on the MC, adopting a severe, sombre expression. This surprises Ana, but the MC clearly knows what's up and wants him to relax. To help him, the MC distracts him (pretend you're Bertrand/imagine me naked) and that mental exercise energizes him enough so he can do this shoot in a more relaxed manner.

Once Ana packs up, Maxwell and the MC stay behind to talk, chatting about the excitement level in the kingdom and (optionally) how that excitement can't match their own (Maxwell speaks of constantly having adrenaline at this point). They jokingly speculate on the unsolicited advice they will get, and Maxwell cracks a joke about how as Bertrand's brother he was brought up on a diet of unsolicited advice. Relaxed and happy, the couple return home.

Drake

The couple see the sign Ana made, and like it because it's dignified but not too much. To which Ana responds that she didn't want to presume too much about their tastes. The shoot begins with the MC trying to think of all the pregnancy announcements she has ever seen (including one where a man yells into a breast pump like it's a telephone) and worries and becomes nervous over how to do this - and Drake calms her down by telling her a simple pose would do the trick, and most of all, to "focus on us". This calms the MC down, and she nails the simple pose alongside Drake.

The ensuing conversation between the two expands on what Drake said, where they refer to themselves as a good balance between dignified and "regular". There's a clear indication of how far they have come from that first photoshoot in this scene.

Aaaaaand...CLICK!

(Screenshots: @callmetippytumbles for Liam, @aestheticsayeed for Hana, the rash rec YouTube channel for Maxwell and @thefirstcourtesan for Drake)

• This scene is good in two routes, and not so great in two.

• The MC and her spouse go back to Valtoria, where the MC takes rest and the LI takes care of her. She can give in to her cravings (huge turkey leg, cheetah cakes, omelettes or fancy unpronounceable food), but a few weeks later she experiences a lot of nausea, to the point where she might (optionally) tell the LI that it's the worst thing they've ever done (completely normal, I assure you. A pregnant woman's hormones are unpredictable af). Both corgis (if you've bought them) help her and do their fair share of doting on her, and the LI in their own way tries to help.

• Based on who you haven't married, you get various scenes of your friends helping out:

- Liam: offers all kinds of help but the suggestion that stands out is a chicken soup recipe that belonged to his mother.

- Hana: makes a playlist of all kinds of music tracks to get mother and baby through the first trimester, including the TRH Lullaby tune which is now canonically Hana's composition. She's chosen artists from all over the world, and recorded a few of her own tracks in cases where she isn't satisfied. She also has a second trimester playlist coming up!

- Maxwell: aka the man who wrote a story about the MC but put HIS face in the cover, offers to let the MC vicariously live through him by giving her a voucher (the Maxwell Vicarious Vivacity Simulator 3000) that ensures that whenever she craves to do or have something not allowed for her, Maxwell does it on her behalf. The LI jokes about how that's a lot of power to give a person.

- Drake: Asks after the MC's welfare, and is given a choice of two things to do - either he can bring her ice-cream, or tell her the story of how the boys created their barbershop quartet so many years ago. He's perhaps the only LI who is given options for pampering the MC as a friend.

- Madeleine: The only person outside of our LIs (and later Olivia) who has an extra scene prior to the MC's ultrasound scan, is Madeleine. She gives the MC a Cordonian Ruby, explaining that it helps with nausea and that Liam's mother would swear by it. She looks concerned...and her words to the MC about making sure she takes care of herself, almost sound a bit of a warning.

Given what we find out later on in the chapter, both this sequence and the sequence where Bartie Sr comments on Regina have been placed there for a reason. Madeleine definitely knows something and there's a possibility she will have a flashback scene of her own.

If you bought the red pandas in Book 3, they will be clamouring around Madeleine for the apples as well.

• I have to laugh at how completely written out of the larger story Kiara and her family are. Even Penelope who is a non-entity and who only had something of value to give to the story when she was being a lying backstabbing snake, somehow manages to have a father in the Council and a promise of a future storyline. After all that the TRR team put Kiara through, I wouldn't even say Kiara deserves a better story. No, what I'd say is she (and Hana, definitely Hana) deserve better writers.

• I mean, you can call it a coincidence anymore, the fact that the women that the story gives the most material and most attention to, are the white women.

• This thread of sequences comes full-circle with a scene where the MC and LI sit by the lake, and where they're both shown finally coming to terms with the MC's nausea and using the tart apples as a way to make things better for the MC. There's a sweet scene in there where the LI kisses both mother and baby.

• We're finally ready to meet Dr Ramirez, and to get an ultrasound done. Olivia and her new...chauffeur, Roy, will be serving as security detail for this occasion. Wonder when we'll find out what Roy is helping her with.

• She gives you a dagger...which we might maybe end up threatening to use the next chapter? I'm guessing Olivia already has an inkling of something going down at the doctor's, since she indicates that we will know when we'll need to use it.

• Depending on whether or not you revealed the pregnancy to her last chapter, her dialogue changes. She makes a mention of it if you have. She's genuinely happy about the pregnancy, and wanted to wish the MC in person.

• Both Liam and Olivia wait outside while the MC and LI have their time with Dr Ramirez, if you're married to one of the other LIs.

• Dr Ramirez mentions that "the first few months have been treating you well"...which indicates that the MC is at least 12 weeks along (10 according to the calculations of certain countries, that count from conception onwards. Dr Ramirez also confirms this during the scan), since that's when you do the nuchal translucency scan. It usually takes place at the end of your first trimester. Which means we've effectively covered the MC's entire first three months in the span of 1/4th of a chapter, actually (considering the entire montage is approx just over 6 minutes).

• Dr Ramirez then lets slip a little factoid about Liam's mother, which baffles the couple because Liam himself never had any knowledge of this. She speaks of Eleanor's fondness for apple tea during her pregnancy and how much trouble she had with her nausea.

• Cordonian Rubies and apple tea have both been mentioned on the TRH loading page.

• If Liam isn't your LI, you call him and Olivia back to the room and ask him about this new development, and he confirms that Dr Ramirez was never mentioned in the official records, as well as the fact that she had a relatively easy pregnancy with Liam (if your LI is Liam, though, Olivia returns to the room on her own, stating that the doctor mentioned something about tea to one of the interns). But the conversation takes Olivia back to a very vague memory, and of course she needs us to go back and make sense of it. Which leads us to our first Olivia flashback!

- I have a feeling Olivia's childhood gown might be the groundwork for maybe a Theodosia outfit in TRM? Just a small guess. IDK.

- Olivia gives us a timeline for this particular incident - it was a few months after they left the Walker Ranch. As we recall, Eleanor was showing some early signs of not feeling too well, and had arguments with Constantine at the time. So if Eleanor was already pregnant by that time, she was clearly close to finishing/past her first trimester by this point.

- The setting of the scene is a mock-battle between Olivia (who plays a knight) and Drake (who plays a dragon, and they use TCaTF Dom's dragon sprite to establish how Olivia imagines him in this game). Some Dom-Drake parallels going on there.

- No matter what you choose, Olivia wins. She can either destroy the ice blast or deflect it with a fan, defeat + kill the dragon or feed him meat so he will forever be beholden to her. Either way, the options work out for her.

- At this point, possibly because nothing has really happened to Drake yet, Olivia and Drake share a pretty decent rapport. They're not thick as thieves or anything (and Olivia confirms that they were "barely" friends and turned to each other as playmates only when Liam wasn't around, if you choose to ask), but they tolerated each other enough to have fun playing while Liam is away.

- During this time, conveniently, Liam is having "lessons". Nice job writing Liam out of his own story yet again, PB (I'll explain this later). The scene is clearly centered on Olivia, with some focus on Drake via the mystery of Jackson's talk with Eleanor.

- Liam is with his mother, worried about how sick she is and wanting her company since he gets so little of it these days. And it is likely not too long before he loses her forever. My heart breaks in advance for the little guy.

Loads to unpack here!

* The first time I read this scene, it gave me serious Adriana-Leon vibes. It still does. Adriana has that scene where she wants to be open about her affair with Leon, and Leon declines. There's a familiarity between the two - notice how they address each other on a first name basis even though she is a queen and this was likely a time when titles and station were even more important. There is a familiarity in the way he insists on her time while Constantine is away, and despite the fact that Liam hasn't been able to spend much time with her.

* True, that familiarity is something that could also exist between close friends, the "sneaking around" could be Jackson trying to keep his BFF's secret from the king of the country. But you can't deny the Adriana-Leon parallels there.

* There is a possibility that someone else could be the father. One possibility that comes to mind for me is Bastien, mostly because his fondness for Eleanor and disdain for Regina don't exactly add up if he wasn't King Guard until Jackson died, and clearly didn't seem to have much of a relationship with the royal family otherwise that we know of. But it could work with his storyline: he gets Eleanor pregnant, she dies shortly after, Jackson takes the fall for keeping her secret and his family doesn't get the compensation they deserve, Bastien helps the children and maintains a close relationship with Drake partly because he feels responsible for Jackson's death, and he atones by following every order of Constantine's, including one that harms the foreign commoner woman that Liam was about to choose.

* Buuuut. The fact that Bastien has pretty much disappeared and is hardly even mentioned, makes this even less of a possibility, because buildup is important.

* In Jackson's case I guess the thing that doesn't entirely add up is how close Jackson and Bianca are spoken of as being. We never actually see them as a couple, but Drake gives us plenty of stories about them and their love for each other - to the point where Drake tells his dad he wants to find a girl to love as much as his father loves his mother...and Jackson unironically agrees. It's a small detail, but I think it's something that may indicate Jackson is a red herring as well.

* In conclusion, I don't know 😂

* "It's likely just hyperemesis gravidarum" 🤦🏽‍♀🤦🏽‍♀. Just? Juuuuust? That's...a serious condition. It's not just extreme vomitting or morning sickness (though that is awful too) - oftentimes it means you can't even hold fluid down, it means dehydration, it means a loss of electrolytes and even nutrient deficiency...to the point where you might even need to be hospitalized (Kate Middleton, Duchess of Cambridge, had this condition with all three of her pregnancies and was hospitalized in 2012 when she was pregnant with Prince George). I'm guessing Jackson doesn't know what the fuck those words even mean if that's his reaction!

* What should Eleanor and Jackson be prepared for?

* What are these two fearing besides Constantine discovering about this child?

* Do they know Godfrey and Bartie Sr have something or the other planned? I mean if Madeleine knew about the pregnancy there is clearly a chance she heard it from one of them. Were those two guys their main concern, and why they went alone to talk? Eleanor doesn't seem to have much trust in the Great Houses the way Constantine does, and seeing Bertrand's flashback scenes she'd be right to worry.

* How long after this did Eleanor die? Because yes there is a possibility that her second child may exist, but that depends on when the plot to poison her succeeded. And if she was far along enough to carry the child to term, or even give birth prematurely, how is it that not even the children in the palace had a clue? (the adults I can see as covering this up but it's possible to have SOME hint from the kids!). So I'm having a tough time with the idea that she managed to give birth before dying, or even that she managed to survive - unless someone was out there acting like Monte Cristo and giving her something that appeared to have the same symptoms as poison but was actually some lifesaving elixir idek. This team is capable of anything. They've retconned a zillion things so far so I wouldn't put it past them to completely retcon this as well.

- The kids have a chance of being caught by Jackson, if Olivia doesn't manage to find a good hiding place and hides behind Drake instead. But if you do succeed in hiding, we get to see Eleanor promise to spend more time with him, which Liam accepts with the grace he is usually known for.

@thefirstcourtesan has spoken before about the Nevrakis family's views on openly showing your pain in public, citing Diavolos' dialogues, but it also reminds me of that scene where we can defend Olivia against Lucretia, stating to her that having allies and friends to fall back on is not weakness, but common sense. The fact that little Olivia views crying as the worst thing that she could be doing, and the shock the adult Olivia shows at the MC's matter-of-fact statement on the value of support - as if such a thing had never even occurred to her - says plenty about the impact of those initial five years being the Nevrakis heir.

* What amazes me just as much, is how quickly Liam understands what is going on in Olivia's head, and how quickly he makes the situation safe for her before Drake can say anything. He's young, but perceptive enough to know not only that Olivia doesn't want to be seen crying, but also what she'd be most comfortable using as a cover for her tears. Those wounds are still fresh for Olivia at this point, making it even harder for her to stand back and rationalize - which is why it's a relief when Liam offers her an out.

* I honestly fail to understand people who claim he never cared for Olivia. It was clear from the get-go how much he valued her, he's vouched for her when very few would, he's shown concern for her multiple times - and I find it so weird that he's perceived as not concerned for her only because he doesn't return her feelings, whereas Drake can suspect a traumatized woman and never feel any remorse after she tells them the truth, and somehow that's okay (oh...I forgot. This is the Almighty St Drake we're talking about. Of course he can get away with anything).

• Is it just me or are the only scenes where the children are given extra focus and care...are the ones belonging to Drake and Olivia? The first scene, though advertised as Liam's, was really more of a group childhood scene - it was less about Liam himself and more about introducing the childhood gang. Maxwell's scene basically wrote him out so Bertrand could take centerstage! In contrast, Olivia's gives us important facts about Liam's family but focuses heavily on her grief and loss after her parents' death, and Drake's is not only intensely personal to him but also is the only childhood scene so far with variations if he is married to the MC. I shudder to think of what they will give to Hana in the name of a childhood scene, if she ever manages to get one that is.

• I honestly hope Jackson isn't the father of this child - even though there are enough hints to suggest it as a possibility (or to establish that he is a red herring). If that does transpire...then the story that should be about Liam, his mother, his family, will revolve even more around Drake. It will be about his angst. His feelings of betrayal and sadness at what his father did. His heartbreak at his hero having feet of clay.

How do I know this? Well, look at the sheer volume of things Drake has told us about Jackson over the course of these four books. Especially in playthroughs where he is getting married, you get stories upon stories upon stories about the man, one after the other. I had to wait till TRH to get even half that much information about Liam's own mother!!!

Enough. I've already seen this man eat up space that should have gone to Liam for his story, and make it all about himself (the assassination attempt, for example). At least let this one thing be just Liam's to grieve, not Drake's to take over and to make it all about him and his feelings. I've already seen him do this for every LI - the truth of Hana's return had to come from him, we spent most of Shanghai cajoling him into fixing his relationship with Maxwell instead of learning more about Hana, the entire Beaumont story was swallowed whole just to accommodate more story for his sister.

Of course, if Bastien is a possibility, the same problem would still arise because the writers were somehow desparate to make him close to Drake, than to Liam who would have been one of his wards to do security for.

• Olivia, Liam, the MC (+ LI in other playthroughs) discuss what the discussion between Eleanor and Jackson could mean. If the MC doesn't figure out that Eleanor was pregnant, Liam does - having read up on Hyperemesis Gravidarum (at least in my playthrough).

• Olivia's choice of words about Constantine is interesting - "Constantine never caught whoever killed Queen Eleanor"...which, well, most of us have an idea that Constantine might have done some covering up with regards to Eleanor's pregnancy and death - but does Olivia suspect this too? The wording makes me feel like she has some idea.

• Anyway, it's time for our scan! Dr Ramirez speaks of this as the 10 week mark (over here in India it's referred to as the 12 week mark - so we wouldn't say 1 week when we find out, we'd say 4). I was initially surprised the MC didn't opt for the 7-8 week scan, but I've been told in some places it's common to start with the nuchal translucency scan (which is this one).

• It's a lovely scene overall in terms of how the LIs react to the experience - each option (both to the initial image of the child on the screen, and to the photograph later) comes with varied dialogue depending on the LI. They're all happy, emotional, and in some cases (like Maxwell's) it's sinking in that there's an actual baby coming out from all of this.

• Around this time, the foetus also has hands and legs and you can see them kicking around like nobody's business coz "o wow, what's this" is probably what they're experiencing at this point 😅

• The dude from the press conference tries really hard to pretend he is an intern and not a dude we met in a press conference - but his acting skills are about as good as his knowledge of pregnancy in general.

• I have a feeling that if we don't catch him next chapter, Liam and Olivia will, and we may get some answers at least on the score of all the paparazzi related suspicious stuff that's been happening - therefore leading us to a hint about one of the places we are "allying" with?

• I also have a feeling that both places - Auvernal and Monterisso - will be established as suspicious eventually, for varying reasons. Right now we're getting signs via Olivia that the Auvernese are planning something big, but I doubt Monterisso is going to be left behind in all this. Perhaps the journalist might offer some hints/leave behind some clues as to where he was from...and it might warrant a visit to that place just to investigate? I'd see Monterisso as more likely, if that is the case. Because I do believe the team will have us visit this place just once at least. I may be wrong, but let's see.

• General Thoughts:

- Sigh. We knew this would happen, wouldn't we. The team would spend nine whole chapters on largely irrelevant shit that could have been cut out and pared down to maybe 4 chapters max (but 2 chapters would have been perfect. After all, Hana's Shanghai segment was only two chapters, and we spent one of them trying to make Drake behave less like an angry toddler. It's only fair that Drake gets as little space, yknow), but now we're at the point where we're rushing through the first trimester alone.

- The announcement shoot scene was nice...but again extremely uneven across playthroughs. Both Liam and Drake's scenes were written largely as callbacks to their engagement shoots. In Liam's engagement shoot there was a pressure to represent both decorum and warmth - but in this shoot they explain to Ana that they clearly lean more to the side of warmth, and want to show that side of themselves. In Drake's engagement shoot, Drake is the one who is nervous and trying to fit in, with the MC helping him loosen up and be his natural self, while in the baby shoot he fulfils that role for her by stating to her that they could be having fancy trimmings but simple in their way of delivering the news. Do Maxwell and Hana get this kind of effort in their scenes? No. Not at all.

- Maxwell's engagement photoshoot scene was about the couple getting used to their relationship, and remembering what made their love blossom (pun fully intended). By the logic of the other two scenes, this one should have explored in some way how they've grown as a couple, but it doesn't. They didn't even bother to put half the effort into this scene that they did in the other two.

- Hana's engagement shoot initially explored her fears of turning into her parents, that she is not taking the MC's opinion into account. The MC gets to reassure her then. Unfortunately, they dropped that arc completely after that scene. So I can get an idea of why this particular scene is different, but I hate that they chose to drop such a compelling story for Hana and I would have honestly loved to see a parallel to that.

- The fact that the MC could tell Hana that she should never be in the sidelines is kinda sweet, granted, but actions speak louder than words, and most of the MC's actions re: Hana so far have been the exact opposite of what she's saying there.

- The team should have at least nailed this one scene for everyone, if not anything else - since this had the biggest variations. Yet they couldn't be bothered to do a good job of all of them?? Only two???

- Come to think of it, if the plot actually culminates in the presence of this extra child, there is one scene in Book 3 that could hint at it. The film that Liam takes the MC to watch at Castelserraillian, revolves around a couple named Lionel and Ramona (geddit?? Liam and Riley!) and their romance amidst a plot from a half-brother to usurp the throne (the name given in the movie is Percival, which coincidentally is Maxwell's middle name).

- The intrigue is nice, it does its job of raising more questions while offering a few answers, but I find it ironic that even in a plot that's about Liam's family, Liam himself seems unimportant and his feelings unexplored. You'd think that with an experience like that, where we've just heard about his mother not being able to spend a lot of time with him (perhaps months before her death)...you'd think that would elicit more of a reaction than "okay cool let's investigate". I know for a fact that if it were Drake there would be a whole extra set dialogues unlocked in the romantic route. I know that, because that's exactly what happened at Walker Ranch. Again, no other character who had a childhood flashback scene so far, got any opportunities to weigh in on how they felt after the narration was done.

- Other people's feelings and experiences taking precedence over Liam's own, in scenes/events that should be about him, is nothing new. In Book 2, we get to know about an assassination attempt on Liam...but that story revolves around Drake's pain and Drake's sacrifice. We never get to know how Liam felt about this, ever. In Book 3, when we should have been learning more about his mother, she's mentioned only a handful times instead. Again in Book 3, Liam sees his own father die, but his feelings are largely brushed aside to make space for more Drake hypocrisy (like his behaviour towards Kiara in Lythikos) and Drake observations (like the chat about Liam's hurt feelings in his playthrough, which only Drake is allowed to talk about).

- And this is the root of the current problem really. That they need to involve and include Drake and his family in everything that they can possibly involve him in (I mean, the only childhood scene he is out of, is the Beaumont Brothers one, and even then the brother that gets all the focus is the one that is marrying Drake's sister). That they probably might write the story in such a way that it's skewed in Drake's favour, will explore Drake's issues the most, before they even bother to explore anyone else's. Even now that we're out of the Walker Ranch storyline, the writing still shows a possibility that Drake's feelings (whether Jackson is the father of Eleanor's second child or not) may be explored more - just by virtue of there being way more material about Jackson than there ever was on Eleanor. Both Liam and Drake look up to Eleanor and Jackson respectively, but just by what I've read so far I already have an idea whose truth may hit harder.

- I still can't get over the fact that the writers have coded Hana's traditional black outfit in the way that they have...so that now, even if you did buy it, it's nowhere to be seen. The plain black dress is pretty but I can't stand to even look at it now.

- Perhaps the reason why Lorelai is being depicted negatively in this series, is not really her treatment of Hana (that should have been reason enough IMO) - since this very team has proved already that they don't exactly care that Hana was abused in that home and had her forgive the likes of Lorelai and Xinghai instead. There's a possibility that they're pushing for a more negative portrayal because she has some involvement or other in all this, and that is how they may create a Hana flashback scene as well. Though I'm not convinced they will place even half the effort on such a scene as they have on Olivia's scene this week.

- If that is the way the story is going, perhaps the larger theme of family then will involve the LIs seeing the family members they so respected, with actual feet of clay that will be hard for them to handle emotionally. Besides intrigue, it will also be a lesson to those very LIs to not repeat the mistakes their families made.

- I find the scene post press conference interesting, since there are tiny hints there that I feel we shouldn't be ignoring. The convenient placement of Godfrey, Regina and Bartie Sr, Bartie Sr's side-comment on Regina who is after all from the Krona duchy and who is related to Godfrey by marriage, Madeleine's offering of apples and her cryptic message to the MC to take care of herself...all of that adds up to something.

- Too bad only white people are allowed to take centerstage in this story.

• Anyway, that's for now from me. Until Saturday, guys!

#long post #trh quick thoughts #trh qts #the royal heir #king liam #hana lee #anti drake walker #maxwell beaumont #olivia nevrakis #trr madeleine

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hungwy · 6 years ago

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@ the 2 long fr ask v sorry anon u better read this cuz i typed a lot for u...

full ask:

full disclosure im not really sure where im going with this but i read your wall of text and i’m really curious about your worldbuilding frm a (supposedly, rip) writer perspective !!

you said that you were interested in gods that were more abstract and less anthropomorphic, so perhaps you could expand on that? it sounds like a fascinating concept because often people relate gods to humans somehow (either as all-powerful deities that somehow are capable of human-like reasoning and motivations, deities that can be Understood to a degree by regular human beings, or as concepts that people are already familiar with aka Personified Concept Of Justice or w.e), so it could be interesting to see an exploration of how human beings would relate to supernatural forces they’re not equipped to understand, whose motives and abilities are entirely outside of the scope of current human ideas about the world—humans seem to have a natural tendency to generalize and categorize things down into something they can grasp and work with, so culture evolving around trying to figure out a way to model the world in light of that could naturally breed the divergence between human ideas & Truth About Deities you mentioned.

if you think about it, a lot of things even in our “plain” universe that seemingly obeys scientific laws we’re systematically working on discovering can be pretty awe-inspiring in nature, right?? so many things are so far beyond general understanding that to the uninitiated, they can be pretty close to magic, even if there are ways to dig deeper into them and understand them more (or whatever we consider to be “understanding”). so it’s possible that in your universe the fundamenal forces governing things could be just. different? on a really core level, which naturally sends humans scrambling to make some kind of sense of things. i mean, we already kind of do, with religious explanations stepping in, so perhaps that would be more dramatic in a world where the unknowable is even more fucked and unperceivable to your human societies.

naturally, that might give more power to religion than science, if people have practical experiences that their “science” cannot explain well (maybe because it’s beyond human logic in the first place) & that religion seems to provide some kind of answer for. it might also keep the mysticism; religious belief might require some degree of dedication, which might be a risk in itself if you’re an average person playing with forces no one can properly explain yet. organized science might be struggling to catch up and maintain credibility; but at the core, it could also be that there’s nothing particularly unscientific about the source of what is perceived as magic/“gods”—just that the barrier to perceiving them in a logical and systematical manner with no spiritual aspect to it could be a lot higher, which then tempts people to go with the most accessible explanations. (again, made more tempting if your magic is powerful enough to represent some kind of real danger—framed as “displeasing the gods” or w.e, maybe—or to provide some highly desired abilities, even if their source is misunderstood by human beings thru misframing the entire concept.)

long messy rant aside, very very curious to know more about your ideas !!! do you intend magic to be some kind of old-as-time concept that human beings are slowly developing a relationship with/a deeper understanding of over the ages, where they develop their (possibly flawed) understanding of gods as well?? or is their understanding catalyzed by some specific event, presumably an interaction by said gods with society? do these “gods” have any perception of human society? pls share more if you are inclined to !! :>

(sorry if the rant was overstepping ahh i really got carried away didn’t i)

id like to preface this with i havent slept. PLEASE ask me clarifying questions

i think from a cultural perspective it would make sense for humans to anthropomorphize higher powers in order to relate to it better. even further i think (though i haven't really fleshed out the actual capabilities and motives of gods) gods would have the ability to appear to us as human or human-like. in this essay i typed completely without planning i will construct how.

i first have to consider the form or forms of divinity and how that relates to my -- ideally -- material universe. should i incorporate gods and magic as material phenomena that are observably composed of matter and energy -- or reactions of some sort of transcendent immaterial reality beyond normal human sense and reason? im sort of leaning towards that more spiritual reality. choosing that means id have to explain how incomprehensible, unknowable forces work and interact with comprehensible, study-able forces, which frankly is a lot more complex than just tossing in someone like Zeus.

so the question basically being asked is how does this divine force come to create our world? id basically have to create a whole metaphysical system. maybe i could give credence to panpsychism and say everything has sentience and subjective experience, and some vague actuation by this transcendental force began our universe. this Transcendence that shifts with eternal (but cyclical) change produces some sort of transcendental force which "peaks" as consciousness/sentience/experience (that panpsychism). (the "troughs" of this force are what we'd call other dimensions or planes, and this is where i plan for gods to reside) anyway, this consciousness is our fundamental “thing”, our atom, our quark, our light, whatever; consciousness itself IS the physical world. the shifting of this force means that our universe, too, is in constant (but cyclical) change, and has a regularity that comes with extending from one entity that allows the universe to be systematic and wholly not chaotic. im tempted here to say the Transcendence naturally promotes a balance of consciousness (= material reality) by interfering with those peaks of material reality. now im not claiming to understand the mechanisms of transcendent immaterial reality but certainly i should be able to claim that this universe is a closed system in which exchanges of transcendent force are allowed but exchanges of matter and energy (as we understand them) aren't.

we still have the problem of how we create an entity like a god, and magical forces. Remember that the transcendental force has both peaks and troughs of consciousness and therefore material reality. Through this dualism of peak and trough (though not really a dualism… ive equated this force to a wave which means that there is GRADUAL change) I can now create two opposing realities: our universe and the antiuniverse. im basically just going to say that the realization of consciousness in the antiuniverse comes in the form of magic (=energy) and gods (=matter). just as with our universe, once you get down far enough the difference between magic/energy and gods/matter isn’t really apparent. it’s all really just a spectrum. Anyway. heres the big big big part: the troughs and peaks connect due to the nature of a wave being gradual. Our world affects theirs, theirs ours, etc. albeit not a whole lot for reasons I don’t care to think about. Matter and energy can travel into the antiuniverse and interact with magic and gods and vice-versa.

SO just gonna throw in here that like humans and rocks some gods will have more animacy than others (more magic) and will be able to purposefully and willfully travel into our universe. when they manifest they must cause some kind of eldritch psychological terror because they are a completely different realization of matter which frankly is probably impossible to comprehend. but more animate gods (more animate than humans) would be able to “correct” their forms into recognizable entities with magic, as id believe if humanity were to transcend their animacy they could rearrange their forms with energy. I think from here we can relatively easily extrapolate what gods are, provide them conscious motivations, create a hierarchy of gods and lesser supernatural entities, explain divine interference, etc etc etc. if you have any questions i can make up more answers!

NOW I can get to your points! youre indeed right that this could be “an exploration of how human beings would relate to supernatural forces they’re not equipped to understand, whose motives and abilities are entirely outside of the scope of current human ideas about the world”. in fact thats exactly underlies what religion will be about. humans wont be aware of another world at all except for a few souls who learned this secret knowledge. humans wont understand theres a massive rift between the strange occurrences that belong to our world and the even stranger occurrences invading it from the antiuniverse. everything is just sort of conflated to gods, ghosts, spirits, monsters. their experience with the physics of magic means that only gods in control of magic can really bestow any magical control to humanity (though id argue everything with consciousness has innate magical potential to some extent). but here gods could actually be what is the equivalent to displeasement, the unsatisfaction of their intents, the disruption of their motives, etc, and have destructive reactions towards it, just as they can be pleased, satisfied, and complete (though these would just be approximations using human emotion).

#sorry if confusing. once again. ask me questions about it

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pens-swords-stuff · 6 years ago

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idk if you're still doing the ask thing but uhhh what's it like being one of the best writeblrs in town? what's your primary source of inspiration? are there any old wips that you gave up ages ago but are tempted to go back and change/finish? are there any wips that you haven't told anyone about yet but are dying to share? (pls share if you want!) Finally, why do you like writing so much? (you don't have to answer all the questions i just really like asking people these questions bc they're fun)

Thank you so much for all of the questions! I really enjoyed answering them :)

It’s a bit long so I’m putting it all under a cut!

What's it like being one of the best writeblrs in town?

Oh my gosh, I really don’t think I’m anywhere near being one of the best writeblrs in town, but I’m super flattered that you think I am!

Overall, I love being a writeblr, and I love the little community of friends, mutuals, and followers that I have. I definitely wouldn’t still be around if I didn’t enjoy the community so much! I love being able to support people, and sometimes sharing what little I have. The amount of passion, creativity and kindness here is phenomenal, and I’m really honored to be a part of it!

It’s pretty normal, honestly. I’m definitely not one of the super popular writeblrs that gets a whole lot of engagement (though I am really thankful for every bit of engagement I get 💙💙) so I think that I have a lot less going on than most people might think. That’s mostly my own fault though I think, because I haven’t shared a whole lot of my writing or projects. I reblog stuff, post stuff sometimes, I try to reblog and leave comments on people’s work when I’m feeling up to it, and occasionally I’m delighted by a very kind comment.

It’s not all roses and sparkles though, a lot of really hard work went into getting where I am. Being a bigger blog with a certain reputation also brings with it a lot of problems and frustrations that I usually don’t talk about because I think it’s pretty tacky to rant about publicly on my blog.

But it’s worth it, you know? The positives definitely outweigh the negatives, and I met so many amazing people here which is the best gift. I just don’t think that my writeblr experience is that different from most other people haha!

What's your primary source of inspiration?

My writing partner is a really big one. She’s super creative and I absolutely adore writing with her. She comes up with the best ideas, and talking about our ideas and projects and characters with her is always a surefire way for me to get excited and inspired about something, even if I’m in a slump!

TV shows, movies, books, video games that I’m into also sometimes ignite a spark! When I’m creatively drained or suffering writer’s block, I always try to just disconnect from writing for a bit and immerse myself in other media until something clicks.

Otherwise, aesthetics are one of the primary ways I get into an idea or a concept so that’s pretty important as well!

Are there any old wips that you gave up ages ago but are tempted to go back and change/finish?

It’s been a really long time since I’ve written for any of the WIPs that I’ve announced on tumblr. For Queen and Country, Morsmordre, Post-Script, Wanderlust... Between me and my partners feeling burnt out, or stuck, or just otherwise busy with other things, they’ve all fallen to the wayside a bit and that makes me a bit sad.

I don’t think any of us have given up on them, but right now they’re not active and I really wish that they were.

Are there any wips that you haven't told anyone about yet but are dying to share?

YES!!! Two of them, in fact.

One of them is a fanfiction that will be accessible to people who aren’t part of the fandom and have no knowledge about it — it will have no spoilers for the fandom, and all of the fandom-specific worldbuilding and such will be explainable. But it’s an incredibly original idea; there’s no fic anything like it on AO3, fanfiction.net or wattpad, and I’m a bit paranoid that once I start talking about it, people might take the idea and run with it? Which you know, might not happen and I know I’m being overly cautious. But I’ve demanded a gag order until we’re ready to post the actual story. It’s so good and I can’t wait to tell people but I want to keep it a secret until it’s ready and faljdskhcnlkdsjcnlakdjn

The other one is my Nano project!!! I’m really close to being able to share it!!!!! So close, yet so far... Hoping to be able to announce within the next week or so.

Finally, why do you like writing so much?

I’ve been writing for my entire life basically, ever since I was 5 years old. It’s just been my choice of a creative outlet, I suppose, and I never really questioned it.

My first serious attempt at writing was play-by-post roleplaying, and I adored that because it allowed me to flesh out characters and character relationships with other people. That’s still a massive part of the appeal because I write with partners. Being able to collaborate on an idea, and endlessly talk about character relationships, dynamics, and plotting is definitely among the most rewarding experiences I’ve gotten with writing.

Like I said before, writing it my creative outlet. I’m a really creative person, but writing is really one of the only ways that I can express it because I’m not artistic whatsoever, and I don’t have a whole lot of other skills. Writing is something I can do though, and I often feel like I’m going to explode if I go too long without creating something. And it’s so immensely satisfying to be able to look at something I wrote or created and be like “Wow, I did really good.” My progress isn’t easily trackable, but I am able to look at my writing and see that I’ve improved, which is really motivating.

But when it comes to the question, why do I like it so much... I’m honestly not sure! Writing has always just been one of my things, and I’ve never actually delved too deeply into the why. It’s an interesting question though, and hopefully I’ll find an answer someday!

#undine answers stuff #Anonymous

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dyaz-stories · 6 years ago

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Inukag Week: Day three — Haunted

So this is another take on my one-shot Truth. I had received some harsh criticism, but I think it was... Well, it made a lot of sense. Anyway, this version of it fits my current view and opinion on this situation better. I have at least a third version of what could have happened in mind, which would actually be the most satisfying one for me, but this angsty version will do for now.

Enjoy!

Disdain. Disdain in her voice and in her eyes.

“You made your choice and I will not thank you.”

Kagome just couldn’t get the words to get out of her throat, despite everything she wanted to say. Why? Why did you think I wouldn’t save you? Didn’t I do it every time? Didn’t I always do my best to help you? Didn’t I always insisted for Inuyasha to go after you? Why do you think I’m such a terrible person?

Am I such a terrible person?

The words echoed in her head, but none of them managed to make it to the other woman who was standing on the bank, staring at her. Judging her.

But then the water under her turned into an abyss, and somehow she was floating above it. She couldn’t move though, completely at the other woman’s mercy.

“You are me. It’s better if there is only one of us here.”

She started falling.

Kagome screamed.

She sat up straight in her sleeping bag, breathing ragged, both hands slapped against her mouth in order to stop herself from making a sound.

It wasn’t the first time she had had that dream. It had stopped confusing her a long time ago, too. There were just a few people that had left such a terrifying mark on her, and she hated it, but she could easily guess why.

Mukotsu, for example, was a pretty obvious one. So was the Infant, though him and Naraku didn’t populate her dreams all that much.

And then, there was Kikyo. It had taken her a while to understand just where that came from. At first, there had been her attempt to kill her, of course, but she wasn’t the only one — far from that actually. So why was Kikyo the one she remembered?

Well, it wasn’t that hard, though it was undoubtedly a painful realization.

Because with Kikyo, she was never sure whether or not Inuyasha would do something about it.

Speaking of which, she was surprised he hadn’t pounced on her yet, worrying about her, asking her what was going on. She glanced around, and her heart dropped when she didn’t find him.

With her. He was with her.

She couldn’t sleep at night because of her, and he had no problem whatsoever sneaking out to go meet with her. And, sure, he didn’t know, but it certainly wasn’t the only thing she’d done. She’d given their nemesis the Jewel, endangering Miroku’s life, prolonging Sango’s suffering, but no, God forbid someone said it out loud.

She was feeling sick.

The feeling that erupted in her stomach and in her chest, making her lean forward, both hands pressed against her heart to try do something about that horrible sensation, wasn’t jealousy.

It was pain. The purest, most horrible pain that she had ever felt.

She wouldn’t cry. She’d promised herself she wouldn’t cry over this again. She was a big girl; she could understand that Inuyasha wasn’t over Kikyo, she could understand that it was possible to love more than one person at a time, she could…

She couldn’t understand why she let herself be hurt like that. Sure, she didn’t think about it all the time, and sure, there were moments that were just good but the situation was always floating in the back of her mind, slowly corrupting everything that was good about her relationship with Inuyasha.

At some point, the high just wasn’t worth the pain anymore.

Still— he didn’t know. She couldn’t blame him for something she didn’t know. But that secret was threatening to swallow her entirely.

She had to tell him.

When Inuyasha came back, as the first lights of dawn could be seen above the horizon, he found her, with her head low, arms around her knees. She was obviously waiting for him, but she didn’t seem to notice him until he was right in front of her. Only then did she look up, a strange, sad look in her eyes. She always looked sad, when he went back after leaving Kikyo, but there was something different today.

For a moment, they just looked at each other, and it almost frightened him, the way he just didn’t have any access to her thoughts right now. He could always tell, somewhat, how she felt, but she felt completely closed to him at the moment.

“Kagome?”

She smiled at him softly, but he could tell immediately that it was fake, and it was such a rare sight that it almost sent a shiver down his spine, immediately followed by an intense feeling of guilt. It was his fault. He saw her faltering every time he went to Kikyo, saw her trying to get her strength back afterwards, and he’d considered, time and time again, telling her to stay in her era. He couldn’t stand watching her like this and knowing he was the cause for her suffering.

She couldn’t tell either what he was thinking as he looked back, shoulders low, but she was used to it when things had to do with Kikyo. She could never tell whether it was only her wishful thinking or if she was seeing things as worse than they were. Did he even think about her before leaving? Did he spare a thought for her, or did she disappear so completely from his concerns, the second Kikyo entered his mind?

“H-how did it go?”

She didn’t know what answer she wanted. “Nothing”, maybe, but at the same time she could never believe it; or “A kiss; I love her”, which would break her heart once and for all, but at least then she’d be free.

“Keh! How d’ya think it went?” Inuyasha let himself fall to the ground next to her, looking down decidedly. “Nothin’ happened. We just talked about Naraku, that’s all.” There was moment before he added, “Nothing ever happens.” He sounded sure of himself, but also slightly pleading, like he needed her to believe it, and Kagome felt a smile make its way on her face.

Right now, under the soft and warm light of the sun, the night’s anguish seemed stupid and far away. He was there by her side now, wasn’t he? There was no need to make things more complicated — especially for him. He didn’t deserve any of that, and she had carried that weight on her shoulders just fine until now, hadn’t she?

“I’m sorry, y’know.”

She blinked. That… wasn’t like him. But when she glanced at him, he was looking at the ground, probably doing her best to avoid his eyes so he could carry on with what he had to say.

“I don’t want to hurt ya. I never want to hurt ya. That’s… It’s not like that, with Kikyo. She’s not… She’s not you.”

It did leave her surprised, for a second. She’d always seen things the other way around — hadn’t even dared thinking he could view them differently. It did lift a great weight off her shoulders, but jealousy had never been the only problem. She smiled at him again.

“Thanks, Inuyasha. It means a lot.”

She wasn’t going to say it. She’d sound like a jealous girlfriend who tried to keep him away from his ex, and that was the last thing she wanted — and it would kill her if he didn’t believe her.

“What’s on your mind then?”

She practically jumped at the question. “Noth—”

“I can tell, Kagome. I’d understand, y’know, if you wanted to stay in your world.”

He sounded miserable, and she felt her shoulders dropping a little more.

“It’s not about you,” she managed to mumble, knowing there would be no going back after she opened her mouth. “W-well, I mean, you don’t know about it.”

Okay, he didn’t like that. He didn’t like that at all. “The fuck d’ya mean?” he growled.

She took a deep breath. The truth was, she did want him away from Kikyo. She did feel jealous; it was definitely part of the problem. But she would have endured the jealousy, if it was the only thing there.

“Do you remember the night she stole the Jewel from me?”

She heard him draw a sharp breath. “You know she has a pl—”

“She tried to kill me that night.”

There was only silence for a few moments, and it felt like her entire body and soul were collapsing when he didn’t respond.

“I didn’t tell you because I didn’t think you’d believe me.”

She didn’t want the venom in her voice to be there. She shouldn’t even have said that — but his silence was terrifying her, and it now sounded like she was daring him. Which probably wasn’t any better, she realized. It probably seemed like she was trying to convince him and oh, God, what if he thought she was trying to manipulate him?

But Inuyasha remained silent, and she bit her lip harshly, trying not to cry. She understood just then that she wouldn’t be able to take it. If he didn’t believe her, if nothing changed, she… She didn’t know what she would do.

“Kikyo would never have done that,” he mumbled, and her heart broke, a sob finally escaping her lips.

Immediately though, his arms were around her, his chest pressed against her back as he engulfed her in a hug.

“I’m sorry you never got to meet her when she was alive.” He went silent again, his grip tightening around her, and Kagome managed to take a slow, trembling breath. She did feel guilty, somewhere, for him, but that was the thing. She wasn’t doing this for him.

She was doing this for herself.

But she still held onto his arms like his life depended on it.

The soul collectors came back a few days later, and for once, she was awake, with the rest of the group, which came off as a surprise to her. Inuyasha was standing apart from the group, and she heard Shippo mumble about how he should go already, but after awhile, what was happening became obvious.

Inuyasha wasn’t moving.

She walked to him slowly, hesitantly, unsure of what she was supposed to say.

“You can go, you know.”

God, no. She didn’t want him to go. She couldn’t imagine what it’d do to her if he went. Still, she said it, and she instantly hated herself for being the one who caused herself the most pain.

He shot her a dark glare.

“You think I want to go after what you told me?”

She winced at the anger in his voice.

“I— I don’t want you to stop yourself for me.”

He rolled his eyes. “She tried to kill you, Kagome. And I’m…” He glanced away from her for a second. “I’m going to protect her, just like I said, because of the woman she was. But I ain’t meeting with her.”

“Y-you should—”

“I ain’t going.”

She ended up nodding silently. She didn’t feel good about it, and she certainly didn’t feel victorious, but she couldn’t express the relief that bloomed in her chest.

It would have destroyed her if he had gone to meet the woman who had tried to kill her while knowing it.

She could see his tight jaw, his clenched fists, and she knew how hard it was for him, and she was sorry about it. So slowly, silently, she moved her arms around his waist and rested her head agains his back. He sighed and closed his eyes, entangling his fingers with her.

A door was closing; he could feel it almost physically. But another one was opening, and it was time for him to let go of the ghosts of the past.

#inukag week #inuyasha #kagome #kagome higurashi #inukag #my writing #angst

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winterskywrites · 6 years ago

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Nia curing evil! Brainy pls

“None of us can use the device that Brainy normally uses to enter someone’s mind,” Alex explained when she first approached Nia. “And J’onn has tried to enter his mind to help him, but Brainy won’t let him in. But you should be able to access his dreamscape, and we think he might let you in. Will you try?”

Nia answered that of course she would, she would do anything if it meant getting their Brainy back, but now she’s wondering if maybe she made the wrong call. Not because she doesn’t want to do it, but because she’s not sure that she can. J’onn theoretically helped her enter Brainy’s dreamscape almost an hour ago, but even though she’s been wandering around that whole time, she hasn’t seen anyone else. She refuses to think what that might mean for Brainy’s psyche at large. He’s just somewhere else in the dreamscape, that’s all. Maybe she has to go deeper in to find him. That’s probably it. That has to be it.

The question is, how does she do that?

So far, Brainy’s dreamscape has just been a white, featureless maze. Nia has the feeling she may have been going around in circles a little bit, but there’s no way for her to distinguish between one corridor and another. She expects this may be some sort of tactic to keep anyone from getting in. She’s gotten further than J’onn ever managed - apparently, every time he tried to enter Brainy’s mind, he was immediately thrown back out - but that doesn’t mean she’ll be able to get even deeper.

But maybe she can make Brainy come to her instead.

“Brainy!” she yells, uncertain as to whether or not this will work but unable to think of anything else to try. “Brainy, are you there?”

And then… Well, maybe it’s just her mind (or maybe Brainy’s mind) just playing tricks on her, but Nia thinks she hears a whisper back.

“Brainy!” she yells again. “It’s me! It’s Nia! I’m here to help you!”

And this time, Nia’s certain it’s Brainy’s voice that whispers back, can’t.

“Yes, I can!” she cries. She thinks she sees something out of the corner of her eye and whips her head around, but there’s nothing there. “I can help you, Brainy! I just need you to work with me! We can fix this!”

We can’t.

“Yes, we can!” Nia cries. “Please, just let me help!”

She sees something out of the corner of her eye again, and this time, when she turns, she sees a shadowy, translucent image of Brainy. He looks nervous, his fingers twisting his ring around his finger, and Nia wants nothing more than to just hug him, to grab him and drag him out of here, but he doesn’t look solid enough to touch.

Not yet.

“Brainy,” Nia entreats, “come to me, please. I just want to help you. We’re all so worried.”

You can’t, Brainy’s whispery voice says, but he seems to grow a bit more solid. The chair they put me in- It took me apart. It sent me away. I can’t come back.

“Yes, you can,” Nia tells him firmly. “You’re coming back right now. Look at yourself!”

Brainy looks down at his hands, which are indeed growing more solid by the minute. This- This should not be possible.

“We weren’t gonna let you go so easily,” Nia says. “I’m not gonna let you go so easily.”

Brainy looks up at her. You’re going to bring me back?

“I’m going to bring you back,” Nia says, holding out her hand.

And when Brainy slowly takes it, his fingers are just as solid as hers.

#nia nal #dreamer #querl dox #brainiac 5 #brainy & nia #supergirl #my writing #prompt #anonymous

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langernameohnebedeutung · 6 years ago

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Would you have any recommendations on where one could hear/learn a German accent? I'm learning the language but my most recent teacher said that my accent/pronunciation is not very good despite being at a B1 level. I think this is probably due to I have not one, not two, but THREE separate American accents already because of how many times we moved when I was younger, so adding another accent is hell my mouth cannot keep up. Thanks for your time.

Hey sorry that I took my time answering this.Okay, first of, Josie’s personal opinion time (feel free to skip this lmao): It’s not bad to have an accent. Everyone has an accent - not just because of your native tongue but also because of the people around you, your class, family, friends or whoever you practice with. I have a German accent and probably always will have, because I learnt English from teachers with German accents, with partners and fellow pupils who had a German accent and now I study English at a German university and people around me still speak with the same accent. 90% of the conversations I hold in English are German-accented English. But at this point, I refuse to consider my accent “inferior” to...a Yorkshire accent or a New York accent just because those are “native” accents. Of course, it’s also not bad or anything to want to sound like a native speaker and I’m not going to tell you that if you truly want to speak like a native-speaker you shouldn’t pursue that interest - but it’s something few people really 100% accomplish, so pls make sure you’re not putting the actually important things like vocab, grammar and you know - enjoyment - on hold to pursue something really elusive that your teacher thinks is important. It is very hard to accomplish especially for someone not living in Germany and Germany is a country with a lot of different regional and foreign accents, so most of us have some experience with different pronunciations - so you will most likely be understood.

Now, the my actual answer to your question:

Listening to people always helps, so does talking. I noticed it when I was still in school. I started watching American shows and it strongly affected my vocabulary and pronunciation - mind you, we were taught to speak strictly British English, American English was an evil taboo - but later I discovered my love for British films and tv shows and I reverted to the English I learnt at school, for the most part (not regarding the language level but the variety). So I definitely recommend exposing yourself to native German-speakers bc otherwise, your main influence will be your fellow students.

There are a lot of German shows on Netflix - you can check if some of them have English subtitles, I know “Dark” for example does. (I’m not sure about Vorstadtweiber, but if you want to get a taste of a Viennese accent, this might also be fun to check out. “Extra3″ is a German satire show that puts all its episodes on Youtube and with a VPN you can also access the ZDF Mediathek and RTL-Now, two very big German tv channels).

It’s especially helpful to watch out for words you’ve so far only seen in their written form so that you know you struggle with. If you hear them, maybe stop the video and try to repeat it. If you’re interested in specific accents from specific regions (which might be a bit hard, mind you) you can also look for some source material from different regions. For example the German audio of “My Fair Lady” has her speaking with a very thick Berliner accent instead of Cockney, so that’s something you might find interesting bc it’s a film you might already be familiar with. Another tip: I noticed about myself that I easily start thinking in another language, even if I’m really far from fluent and miss words. And doing that I noticed that my inner monologue still has a German accent but it’s much weaker than when you know. my actual physical mouth is involved, for some reason. I can also imitate different English accents in my head much better than I can when I speak - you might try that and even talk to yourself. If there’s no one to tell you you are doing it wrong, it becomes much easier to experiment and have fun with language.

In my experience, it also helps to imitate the accent the speakers of your target language have while speaking your language: I noticed that when I was practising Russian on duolingo: Now, duolingo makes you repeat sentences to practice your pronunciation and my Russian pronunciation was horrible - until I purposefully tried to sound “Russian” - suddenly Duo understood what I was saying. So you might try to speak German with what feels like an exaggerated German accent to you, even if it feels weird at first. (I do the same when I want to sound British)Another thing that helped me (much more than teachers ever did) is to watch English people contemplate and imitate and play with German accents - because even if it’s something I made fun of a lot these last days, it’s interesting and helpful, because if done for comedic or storytelling purposes (I’m going to give an example of that later on), it often highlights the aspects that make it sound different from a native pronunciation and help you localise these aspects in your own language use. That said - the reason I make fun especially of British people playing Germans is that their accents are often based on other British people pretending to be German, not actual Germans so it sounds...very different from the way we speak English. So keep in mind that it’s not always authentic. (Personally, I still think I learnt how not to pronounce the word “convenience” from an episode of Blackadder but that’s another story)

Okay I threatened that I would add an example on how accents in media might help you understand your own accent better:

There are many examples of English-speakers pretending to speak German, but since you are already at B1 and probably speak better German than most of them (many just say stuff without knowing the words or even...just make up sounds that they think sound German), so I picked a film scene that I mentioned in a post a few days ago: the pub scene from Inglorious Basterds (which I saw on youtube is apparently popular for language teaching purposes).

It’s interesting because Michael Fassbender is half-German and knows the language somewhat so he at least knows what the words he’s saying mean. Also, he’s surrounded by native speakers which make for good comparison material. (mind you, Inglorious Basterds is obv. a film about the NS-era so while the German they speak sounds rather modern, I can understand if you would like to avoid that content. Especially since the second video ends in a shooting.) I couldn’t find the whole scene online but if you have the DVD, you might want to look into it, because it’s much longer than the excerpts I found online and maybe you can spot more of the language patterns I will point. (It also has Christoph Waltz in it and his Austrian dialect which might also be interesting to you)

Now, what you need to know is that Fassbender plays an English spy pretending to be a German officer - but when someone points out his accent, he tries to pretend to be Swiss. He does a pretty good job speaking German actually and a German would understand every word he is saying (unlike we do with some other actors pretending to speak German) - but it’s also very obvious with every word that he’s not a native speaker (and no one would actually mistake him for Swiss.) (btw if you want to check out what an actual Swiss dialect sounds like: (x) (I could imagine it’s very difficult for English speakers, because it has a lot of “ch” sounds and is very guttural.

Now, back to Inglorious Basterds:

The first thing that’s very interesting to look at is the first 30 seconds of the first video because it’s clear that they made Fassbender exaggerate his accent because in that scene it leads to a German soldier he’s talking to noticing and pointing out his strange pronunciation. At 0:35 in the first video it’s very, very obvious when he yells the word “zurückkehren” (which finally makes the soldier address the issue)- because he pronounces it “zurück-kerr-än” - a very typical pronunciation with an English accent. Whereas a German would usually say: zurück-kehr’n” (You can compare it to one of the Germans saying “zurückkehren” at minute 2:30) It is also interesting to compare how Fassbender pronounces an “r” vs. how the Germans do it - because he pronounces it like you would in English, while the German “r” sound is a bit harsher and produced a little bit further back in the throat. (Tip: If You can feel it vibrate in your mouth, you’re doing it rrrright).

When he says “rrrrrüpelhaft” it seems as if he’s trying to pronounce the “r” like a native speaker there - but overdoes it. (Fassbender does the same exaggerated “r” sound at 2:56 with the word “Regisseur” and at 2:33 with “Riefenstahl”) - which just sounds a bit off. Compare it to Til Schweiger at 1:00 saying “betrunken (oder völlig) verrückt”. btw If you compare the way Schweiger says “sprechen” in that sentence with Michael Fassbender saying “sprechen” at 2:35 you will also notice the difference in the way they pronounce the “ch”.In that sequence at 2:30, Fassbender also says “gesehen” a lot - and always pronounces it G-esehen, while a German would probably pronounce it ge-seh-’n

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Something that many German learners struggle with - that you can observe in these videos as well - is the pronunciation of infinitive verbs. German verbs, as you know, usually end in “-en” (gehen, sagen, sprechen, hoffen. etc). Now, German speakers usually barely utter the second “e” at all, it’s often: geh’n, sag’n, sprech’n - it*s something that sounds a little off sometimes when Fassbender speaks, because he often puts more emphasis on it than a German would for example when he asks “Haben Sie den Riefenstahl Film gesehen?” or at 3:24 in the second video when he says “aufsteh.en.”You can also observe the impact of the native English - at 2:50 when he says “Brüder” it comes out as “Brüddr” which sounds a lot like “brother” - while in German, the “ü” is stressed and the “r” is almost inaudible.I think the biggest challenge for English-speakers is the “ch” (which unexperienced speakers often turn into a “k” sound - for example turning “Nacht” into “nackt”, always fun). You can see Fassbender struggle a little with that a few times as well (it’s particularly important to keep in mind that there are two “ch” sounds - the one produced in the front of your mouth like in “ich” or “frech” or the one produced farther back in your mouth like in “Nacht” or “Bach” - so if you encounter a word with a “ch”, it’s best to check out which one it is.You can also see him struggle with the long words in German - he basically forces “tausendjähriges” out very quickly which sounds very strange and mechanical and at 3:20 in the second video he has a different strategy and stresses EVERY part of the world Hauptsturmbannführer: “Haupt. Sturm. Bann. Führer.” which sounds ... strange even when done for dramatic purposes. You can compare that to the way the German actor says the same word at 3:31. (especially if you pay attention to how they pronounce “Führer” you will notice the proximity issue. “Führer” is a word that many English-speakers find difficult to pronounce and I think it’s a) because many English-speakers are familiar with the word “Führer” but never heard a German pronounce it b) because of the close proximity of an “ü” and two “r” sounds. When Fassbender pronounces “Führer” it sounds very much like an English person would pronounce the world in an English context while the German guy pronounces it like a German does - that’s something else to keep in mind, that words you might be familiar with like “Volkswagen” or “Weltschmerz” or any of the others are usually pronounced with an accent when English-speakers use them (The same is, of course, true for any other loan words)

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There*s a similar scene in First Class also with Michael Fassbender sitting in a pub with Nazis (seriously that’s... a huge part of his repertoire it seems) which you might want to check out bc again, he speaks German and the other guys are native speakers so if you want to keep looking for different pronunciations and accents, it might be interesting.

(Also “Auslautverhärtung” is a big issue with English-speakers and German-speakers. The reason why German speakers tend to say things like “sayin-k” and “goin-k” and “leavin-k” is because the last sound of a word is usually spoken harsher in German than it is English. English-speakers often have the opposite problem and swallow the last sound a little. I didn’t notice particularly jarring examples of that in these scenes, but it’s still something to keep in mind)

All of that said and done and dissected, I think natural development and interacting with native speakers is much more effective and fun than just trying to avoid certain pronunciations or imitate how other people sound, especially bc I don’t want to bore you with technicalities or even worse, make you nervous about speaking because honestly? Accents are fun and everyone has them. Don’t worry too much about it

If you speak slowly, people will understand you and if you spend some time around native speakers, it will help a lot, it has a strong impact on the way you speak (so obviously i recommend listening to a lot of spoken German, watch films, shows, youtube etc.) And yes, pronunciation is important - you need to be understood after all - but having an accent is natural. Everyone has at least a regional accent and I don’t understand why foreign accents are automatically considered a flaw or a sign that someone isn’t able to communicate fully in that language they learnt.

I recommend you focus on words and grammar and listening and reading comprehension and let things grow naturally and don’t actually enjoy having an accent. There’s nothing wrong with it.

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