#there is a pattern in this and it's that I like unconventional characters and couples the most | Explore Tumblr Posts and Blogs

fagdykefriendship · 9 months

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Queer power dynamics, heteronormativity, and the subversion of the damsel in distress trope, as explored through my favorite queer fiction

Destin Karn and Evan Strangward from the Shattered Realms. Gideon Nav and Harrowhark Nonagesimus from the Locked Tomb. Tenjou Utena and Himemiya Anthy from Revolutionary Girl Utena. the main commonality between these three "couples" is i think complexity of queer relationships in terms of the protector/protected dynamic. Characters who want to be the protector (Destin, Gideon, Utena) despite the fact that they are not really and the people they are trying to protect (Evan, Harrow, Anthy) don’t need it in the way they’re giving it. it plays into a larger theme around the power dynamics of queer relationships that are complex to navigate. different than the gendered roles straight couples often fall into. These characters all start attempting at one dynamic but eventually realize that dynamic is not stable and will not bring them true happiness. More thoughts below.

so in each of these relationships there are a few things I see recurring. Each has a character who is more "wrong" or unconventional, has less actual power, and strives to be the protector of another character who is more powerful and "pure". All of these relationships also deconstruct that whole "purity" and "wrongness" binary throughout the narrative.

I think this binary is something that can stem partially from traditional fantasy heterosexual dynamics. The damsel in distress, the "pure" maiden and the man who rescues her. The construction of this binary also is in conversation with, or counter to, the broader narrative that queerness is "wrong" and "corrupting".

One Character's "Wrongness"

Destin believes internally that he is a monstrous person. He refers to himself as a sinner, his choices are sins no matter what he does. Externally, other characters also observe Destin as something alien. They remark on how he seems not to care for anything, and they are afraid of him and what he'll do. While many characters distrust each other, Destin is especially othered because of his position in the clandestine service and his demeanor. He is not conventional as a POV character or as a person in the Ardenine Court: this is because of a combination of his politeness, his refusal to show his true feelings, and his position as spymaster.

Gideon is first of all an unconventional cavalier. She does not have the same type of training as the others, and they can all tell this. Being from the Ninth makes her and Harrow both strange, but Harrow causes her to be estranged further when she's told to pretend to be taking a vow of silence. She is also strange in terms of who she is as a person, seeing as she's the daughter of God and Commander Wake. She is estranged on the Ninth House, she is estranged at Canaan House, she is even estranged in a different way when she becomes Kiriona, since there has never been a role for God's daughter to play before her.

Utena is very much looked down on by the teachers at Ohtori for her masculine uniform. Though she is adored by her classmates, she is definitely not like any of them. Her uniform, though it is called a boy's uniform, is different from anyone else, boys and girls. Even the student council, who have different uniforms, follow more of a pattern with each other while Utena's dark blue uniform stands out. She is a girl who wants to be a prince, which is abnormal and she's told that she will fail constantly.

The Other Character's "Purity" and Imprisonment

I need to think of a better word than purity - maybe holiness, maybe the worship or idolization of the other character? but yeah point stands and this is my post so.

There is a sense of Evan Strangward as a god-like figure. "Center of a stormborn cult" is how Evan refers to himself. He also can control the weather which is not a common ability in the Shattered Realms and so is seen as extremely powerful, maybe even godly. Yet he feels trapped by Celestine and by his own abilities. He's surrounded by people who literally want to drink his blood constantly.

Harrowhark is a literal saint. Beyond that she's also a Reverend Daughter, a leader of her own religious cult on the Ninth. She's very good at bone shit. But she, in Harrow the Ninth, is trapped by her mind and the surgery she does on herself. She's also trapped by God in her lyctorhood: she begs him to let her free, but he won't do it.

Anthy is the Rose Bride, and with her comes a promise of eternity for Utena and the other duelists. She has some shadowy amounts of power to manipulate things around her, as she does to mess with Nanami, Miki, Wakaba, and Mikage. Yet she is trapped within Ohtori by Akio and is trapped in her abusive relationship with him.

The Script is Flipped.

The dynamic portrayed in all of these relationships is a queer subversion of the typical damsel in distress fairytale. I've talked about how I think these characters fit into different roles as damsels in distress and their protectors, but now let's talk about subversion of this.

The main subversion present in these is the recognition of the autonomy of those "in distress" and the wrongness of the "protectors" being what gives them power.

This is least obvious in the Shattered Realms but bear with me here. Destin moves towards his goals throughout the series quite slowly at first. Towards the end of Deathcaster, however, he starts to lean into the fact that his actions are not ever going to be acceptable. He decides to become a traitor, to "commit his own sins". And then Destin, towards the end of Deathcaster, decides that he must be the one to go save Evan from Celestine. His last ditch effort amongst other failed efforts to save Evan from Celestine. And yet in the end Destin doesn't actually do anything. He is just there to comfort and to hold when the magemarked are finished destroying Celestine. He does not have to save Evan he's there to take him home and have a future with him. Their relationship does not have to be one of Destin saving Evan. It does not have to conform to conventional heterosexual relationship dynamics. Evan has the strength to destroy Celestine on his own or at least he has found the allies that have allowed him to have that strength. the important thing here is that love is not saving someone. Love is the future they have together when the situation is resolved and Evan has saved himself.

In Utena, Utena has the goal of saving Anthy for most of the show, because that is what will make her a prince. She does not really view Anthy as a person, rather Anthy is an object to be saved and a path to princehood. At the end of the show, Utena fails to save Anthy on her own, but Anthy is able to start to save herself. This continues in the movie where Anthy has much more autonomy and the two are eventually able to escape Ohtori for good, because Anthy has the strength to kill and dispose of Akio. (Bodily autonomy is also a major theme in Revolutionary Girl Utena, especially pertaining to abuse and how Akio takes advantage of Anthy's body both sexually and metaphorically through the swords. Utena does not know this but she does at first attempt to save Anthy from Saionji "owning" her. She realizes later that Anthy has given up on saving herself, but this changes through Utena's love for her, not Utena's savior-ness)

In The Locked Tomb, Gideon gives up her own life to save Harrow, but Harrow is not happy about this, does not want Gideon's sacrifice. She wanted Gideon to live. Bodily autonomy is a huge theme in The Locked Tomb as well. Gideon's soul is in Harrow's body, and Harrow wants to preserve it. She does not want the sacrifice Gideon gave her, she did not want to be saved. We don't know the ending of the Locked Tomb yet, so it's harder to connect all the dots here. But I can predict that if the ending involves Gideon and Harrow both living, it will involve a similar realization to that of the previous two pieces of media that I discussed.

In Conclusion... or, bringing it all together

All these characters are living under oppressive systems. Destin and Evan, the homophobia of Arden and the colonialist expansion of both Celestine's empire and Arden. Harrow and Gideon, the colonialist expansion of God and the Empire. Utena and Anthy, the transphobic and misogynistic systems of Akio and Ohtori. They all desire to break out of this system because of how these systems make their love impossible. Though we don't know about the end of The Locked Tomb, we do know the end of Utena and the Shattered Realms. Adolescence of Utena ends with the two kissing and driving into the real world, out of Ohtori and those oppressive systems through the power of being gay kissing girls and the power of Anthy realizing her own agency and saving herself, using Utena as a vehicle. Destin and Evan's story in the Shattered Realms ends with them kissing while Celestine's body burns in lava and then later making plans to leave Arden behind to live in Tarvos, a city that Evan has essentially built from the ground up to be an accepting place.

Queer love in these stories is the force that is able to subvert and break through oppressive systems, but only when the characters involved have the script flipped on them. Only when they realize that they as queer people are not meant to fit into heteronormative tropes. This is why queer assimilation is not the step forward many people think it is. The way to break free of oppressive systems of homophobia is to break free of the idea that we as gay people should fit into heteronormative ideals. We are different, we are othered. We should use that to our advantage. If one of us is being exalted, hailed as finally the "normal" one or as part of the system, that is something to be questioned and it is not something that will bring us happiness in the long run or futures as queer people.

#the shattered realms #the locked tomb #gideon the ninth #revolutionary girl utena #rgu #tlt #harrow the ninth #utena tenjou #utenthy #griddlehark #utenanthy #wayyy too many words. but what ever

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iravaid · 2 years

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Do u have any hcs for anyone's sires in vtmb

I have a couple! Nothing really solid, as i have a one track mind that typically involves lacroix, nines, and/or Lunchbox, but some ideas are floating around here n there

long-ish post below, focusing on a couple characters with no canon sire mentioned in-game

LaCroix - have mentioned it before, but Sire was a piece of shit that exacerbated a lot of the issues we see ingame. Long lasting scars that influence his behaviour and thought patterns to the point of dysfunction. Was obsessed with the image they and those associated with them put forward, especially their Childer.

Nines - Sire abandoned him, yes, but I hc it was either due to a mass embrace tactic deployed by macneil and acted out by multiple anarchs under him, or the sire had tailed Nines for a while before making the decision to embrace him, because they felt he would be the kind of kindred the Anarchs would need in the coming years. And maybe they did want to show him the ropes but were killed by the Camarilla/Sabbat, or had to flee the city.

Damsel - Brujah that specifically embraces college students and young activists believing they’re what the Anarchs need to fill their front lines etc. Doesn’t make for the most stable group of fledglings, all that righteous anger and propensity for being overly zealous

Skelter - wandering Gangrel that saw a kindred spirit in him. Stayed just long enough to tell him he drinks blood now, sunlight hurts, and to stay away from the cam before disappearing. Skelter occasionally hears from them every now and again, or at least who he thinks is his sire.

Gary - Sire, who was also a cleopatra embrace, brought Gary into the fold to ‘knock him down a peg’ - who then did the same to Imalia, who just might do the same to another poor soul down the line. Cycle of abuse/ whatever that is classed as n such. Resembled your count orlok type of nosferatu; maybe had a hand in helping the development of VTMB’s unconventional, walkable sewer systems

Bertram - Spy/Cock Robin type sire who taught him how to Listen and Pay Attention to the goings on and rumours. Want to say semi-renegade Nosferatu Antitribu that gave Bertram a pretty detached rundown on the political everything to do with VtM; at first moulding Bertram into their protege, then just letting him do his own thing as they either fled from, or ignored, Andrei’s bullshit

Isaac - I vaguely wonder if it’d be feasible if he was Christopher Houghton’s childe after the latter killed Dominiguez in ‘44. As a way to both stay connected to, and control, the burgeoning Hollywood, as well as stay in the loop about Anarch matters, namely involving MacNeil. Embraced Abrams because of his age and stature in Hwood; Christopher seeing both as a sign that he’s a Good Childer and won’t fuck up like his last ones, surely

Thank you for the ask!

#ask #anon #sebastian lacroix #nines rodriguez #damsel vtm #skelter vtm #gary golden #bertram tung #isaac abrams #vtmb #vampire the masquerade

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archived-kin · 3 years

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late with lucifer

note from kin: i just realised that the title sounds like a talk show ffs

anyway get ready to get SAPPY (and also get ready for a low-key out of character lucifer)

fandom: obey me!

character(s): gn! reader, lucifer, satan, beelzebub, belphie

pairing(s): lucifer/reader

warning(s): brief existential dread right at the end but i think it’s relatively light

genre: fluff all the way (with maybe a teensy bit of angst???? i accidentally got kinda deep towards the end)

Deciding to commit yourself to a bona fide workaholic music nerd who would sooner chop his own hand off than skip a single working day for potentially the rest of eternity has been... a choice and a half, to say the least. Yes, he’s a sweetheart most of the time, and you love him more than possibly any being in the known universe (though jury’s still out on cats and the dragon you met a couple of months ago who brings you giant mouthfuls of leaves every weekend), but you’d be lying if he didn’t have qualities that make you want to drop kick some sense into him sometimes. And one of those qualities happens to be his absolute refusal to just take a damn break.

“Just one more hour,” He keeps telling you whenever you ask him if he’s finally finished with his mountain load of paperwork. “One more hour, and then we can spend some time together.”

It has been five hours since Lucifer went to his study to ‘get a bit of work done’. Five hours of attempting to finish the mountain of books Satan has recommended you in the corner of the library, probably irritating the poor guy to no end with your constant restless shifting. You're surprised that he hasn’t up and left to go read in his room in peace - then again, it’d be hypocritical of him to tell you off for moving about. You’d think a bookworm like him would be so absorbed by his beloved books that he wouldn’t be able to move at all, but he fidgets about so much when he’s reading that you’re surprised he hasn’t somehow worn a hole through his favourite armchair yet. At any rate, you’re pretty sure you can see him getting ready to flip himself upside down for the seventh time this evening in the corner of your eye.

You try once again to focus on the lucrative business deal happening in Chapter 52 for the fourth time in the last ten minutes, but your brain just doesn’t seem to be listening to you right now; no matter how hard you try to register what’s going on, the words just don’t want to be processed. Finally, checking the clock on the wall for what feels like the hundredth time this evening, you decide that you might as well go bother your busy bee upstairs. It’s been at least a fortnight since you’ve been able to spend a full evening or night with him, and, if you’re honest, it’s beginning to get a little on your nerves.

Satan barely looks up from his book as you hop to your feet and begin making your way out, though he does lift a hand to wave a brief goodbye. Contrary to your prediction, he has not flipped himself upside down, but is now sitting the wrong way around on his armchair instead, facing the seat’s back, with his book carefully balanced on its head. Unconventional, but you’ll give him credit for the creativity.

The House of Lamentation is oddly quiet for a Friday night, but you’d guess that’s because Asmo and Mammon, the two loudest members of the house, have taken it upon themselves to celebrate the arrival of the weekend by going out for the night and probably blowing their savings in the process. Well, Asmo will be blowing his savings - Mammon will most likely find a way to put his spendings on one of his other brother’s tabs, or worse, yours. Then again, you don’t buy things often, so you suppose you can spare a bit of cash. (Knowing Mammon, though, he’ll probably buy enough to put you in debt for the rest of your life.)

On your way through the corridor, you’re struck by a sudden idea. Lucifer’s been shut in his study ever since he got home from the R.A.D., which means he most likely won't have eaten anything. At any rate, you know for a fact he wasn’t there for dinner with everyone else, which means you now have a much better excuse for going to see him other than just wanting to. Lucifer may be a stubborn demon, but he's never been able to resist a mug of tea and some biscuits on long nights when it's you offering them.

Beel is rustling about in the snack cupboard when you slip into the kitchen - no surprises there, but it is a little odd that he’s going for the lighter foods rather than something more filling. You'd comment on why he's down here so late into the night - he should really be in bed - but then again, it's Beel. He'd listen to his stomach over his brain any day of the week.

“Oh, hey,” He greets as he retreats from the cupboard with an armful of what look like several cookie boxes stacked on top of each other. “Did you get hungry as well?”

You shake your head and pull two mugs out of the crockery cabinet. “Nope. Just thought I’d bring Lucifer some tea and biscuits, you know?”

“He’s been in his office for ages,” Beel agrees with an earnest nod. He glances down at the heap of cookies in his arms, then pauses. “Ah… here.”

You look up as you fill the kettle with water to see him holding one of the boxes in his arms out to you. “...what’s this for?”

“There aren’t any biscuits left in the cupboard,” He says by way of explanation, shaking the box he’s offering to indicate that you should take it. “So you can have these.”

“Aw, you don’t have to do that, Beel!” You gently push the box back towards him and give his arm a fond pat. “I’ll just bring him something else. Go ahead and eat the cookies, okay?”

On any other occasion, Beel would most likely have accepted your offer without hesitation (the day that Beel rejects food will probably never come, but you have a sneaking suspicion that a black hole would rip this reality apart if it does), but it must have been a really good day for him in terms of being fed, because he actually continues to try to give you the box. You’re tempted to coo at the big softie’s uncharacteristic generosity, but you’re not particularly sure how that would go over with him. If being in a relationship with Mr Pridey McPrideface upstairs has taught you anything, it’s that you can never take a reaction for granted.

“No, you have it,” Beel insists, shifting so that he doesn’t drop the rest of his biscuits and stubbornly attempting to shove the box into your hands. “I’ve got plenty right here.”

Your surprise must show on your face, because a moment later he smiles a little sheepishly and adds, “I promise I’m not sick or anything. I’ve still got lots right here. One box won’t make that much of a difference.”

You think it over for a moment as the kettle begins to bubble aggressively behind you. You’re a staunch believer in the fact that one should never deprive Beel of his food, partially because he’s an absolute sweetheart who deserves the food he eats, and partially because something bad could and probably would happen if said food is taken from him. Then again, you’re not taking the food from him, strictly speaking - he’s the one offering it to you. That exempts you, right? At the very least, you have a counter-argument if Belphie tries to persecute you for taking his beloved twin brother’s biscuits. (He probably wouldn’t - the kid adores you - but it’s good to be prepared for possible trials.)

“Ah, fine...” You eventually relent and allow Beel to press the box into your hands. Your compliance is well worth it - the beam on his face and the little pat he gives the box in your hands in satisfaction could probably cure multiple strains of cancer. “You’re the sweetest, you know that?”

He flushes slightly. “I-it’s not that big of a deal…”

“Oh, that’s nonsense,” You tell him firmly over your shoulder, beginning to busy yourself with the teabags and sugar as the kettle hisses to a halt. “Personally, I think I’m going to remember it for the rest of my life.”

You smile to yourself as Beel laughs a little bashfully behind you. “Thanks…”

“No problem, bub,” You reply, pausing in your work to turn around and shoot him a wink. “Hey, chuck me a spoon, would you?”

He nods and does just that - literally. He throws the spoon across the kitchen with such precision that it lands perfectly in your outstretched hand.

You thank him and begin to pour the hot water into Lucifer’s mug. He says that he likes his tea as is, without any bells or whistles or fancy additions, but you’ve been doing this thing for long enough that you know that he actually prefers his tea with a teaspoon of honey and just a splash of lemon. He just refuses to actually say it out loud.

(To be honest, you’re not sure why he does that - does he think tea with honey and lemon is a wimpy drink or something just because you told him it’s often drunk as a remedy for a sore throat in the human world? Knowing the way his mind works, it’s probably something along those lines, but still, it’s a weird conclusion to make.)

You finish preparing Lucifer’s tea quickly - you’ve done this so many times that the movements have become second nature to you at this point - and start making your own. The drinks are finished a minute or so later, and with that you begin setting up your little snack tray.

After a moment’s debate, you decide that today is worth going the extra mile, and start to carefully arrange the biscuits on a pretty plate. It’s a bit of a hassle to get them into the right formation, but it’ll be well worth it once you get them to their intended receiver - Lucifer always gets the fondest little smile on his face when you bring him his biscuits in patterns, and that man doesn’t smile nearly enough for your taste. Personally, you’d quite like it if he smiled like that all the time, but then again, their rarity is what makes them so precious to you.

Ah - you’re starting to get sappy again. That’s a surefire sign that you haven’t spent enough time with your beloved demon lately. Well, it’s a good thing you’re going to see him now, isn’t it?

The door to Lucifer’s study is still as tightly shut as it was five hours ago when you approach it, but you doubt he’s actually locked it. He’s stopped doing that ever since your visits while he works became a regular thing - he hasn’t said it out loud yet, but you know that it’s his way of showing you that you’re always welcome to come in.

Unlocked as it is, though, you can’t exactly turn the doorknob to let yourself in. You’re a human of many talents, but being able to balance a heavy tray in one hand is not one of them. Lucifer’s tea wouldn’t make into his study - it’d just end up all over the floor.

“Lucifer!” You call softly through the door, mindful that he might be having another one of his work-induced headaches, “I’ve brought you some tea! Open up!”

For a while, the only reply is silence. You know there shouldn’t be any reason for him to be, but you can’t help but worry briefly if Lucifer’s somehow angry at you. Then again, Lucifer’s always liked to play the fashionably late card against you - whether to tease you or to disguise something, you’ll never know.

It turns out that your little worry was unfounded - a few moments later, the door swings open to reveal your favourite demon in all his exhausted-looking glory. Lucifer, who looks like the physical manifestation of work burnout, offers you a tired smile, and stands back to let you enter.

(Here’s a little secret - Lucifer would never tell you this, but he’d perked up like a kid when candy is offered the moment he heard your voice. Still, gotta put up the cool front, right? Even if that means waiting restlessly right next to the door for a minute so that you don’t think he’s over-eager…)

“Thank you.” He murmurs as you bring the tray over to his desk and set it down on one of the few patches of wood that aren’t covered by papers.

You dramatically pretend to swipe sweat from your forehead as if you’ve just finished a ten-mile run and shoot a smile up at him. “All in a day’s work, love.”

He smiles softly and leans in to gently press a kiss to the crown of your head. His pale cheeks have darkened slightly - Lucifer’s always been a softie when it comes to the host of sappy nicknames you’ve given him. One gentle ‘sweetheart’ and he’s melting like an ice cube on a hot day. It’s the sort of thing that people like Mammon and Levi would probably call gross or something, but you honestly couldn’t really care less about that. It’s not harming anyone else and it makes both of you happy, so why shouldn’t you give your lover as many endearing pet names as you can come up with?

“What even is all this?” You ask, peering at the papers scattered across the desk as Lucifer moves over to have a look at the plate of biscuits. You look up just in time to spot the way his eyes light up slightly when he sees the flower you've arranged them into.

“This and that,” He replies vaguely, hovering a single gloved hand uncertainly over the plate, as if trying to decide which biscuit he can take without spoiling the pattern.

“That’s hardly an answer at all,” You complain, plucking three broken quills from among the documents and waving them at him. “Why do you keep using these? A pen would be way more efficient.”

“Official documents should be written in the traditional way,” Lucifer tells you. He takes his time chewing the biscuit he’s finally chosen before continuing. “And Diavolo prefers quill and ink calligraphy to look at.”

“Honestly…” You round the edge of the desk and reach up to brush some powdered sugar from the corner of his mouth. “You don’t have to do absolutely everything according to him.”

Lucifer blinks down at you, lips parting slightly in half awe and half surprise as you smile at him. “Ah…”

His smile widens slightly, and he gazes at you with so much fondness in his eyes that you almost feel a little weak at the knees at the very sight. Lucifer really is a dangerous demon - in more ways than one.

“Well, c-come on, then,” You prompt him abruptly, not wanting him to realise how much his gaze has affected you, because you just know it’s going to give him an ego boost. He pauses in surprise as you start tugging him over to the big armchair beside the fire - the one that the both of you can fit snugly into together. “Let’s have a drink together.”

“I still have papers to fill out—” He attempts to say, but cuts himself off as you shake your head and stubbornly attempt to push him down into the seat. It doesn’t work - Lucifer’s much stronger than you, after all - but he does at least seem to appreciate the effort.

“You’re taking a break whether you like it or not,” You insist, starting to smack lightly at his arms in an bid to get him to listen to you. “Papers can wait. I’m more important.”

That does get a little chuckle out of him, and he finally relents, sitting down with a subtle sigh. “That goes without saying.”

You laugh, suddenly a little more hot around the collar than you’d have liked. “You said it!”

Pausing to retrieve the tray with the tea and biscuits and set it on the table beside the armchair, you quickly join Lucifer in front of the fire, snuggling in at his side and letting out a blissful sigh as you feel him start to draw circles on your arm with his fingers. It’s a sort of habit that he’s developed over the last few months - you’re not sure if he even realises that he’s doing it.

The two of you stay like that in comfortable silence for several minutes. Lucifer’s tense shoulders relax more and more with each passing moment, and soon enough, he’s sprawled out against you, pressing his cheek lovingly into the crown of your head.

It’s only at moments like this that you get to see this softer version of him, so you always cherish it when it happens. Lucifer may be a slightly passive-aggressive panther who could kill most beings with a swipe of his hand if he sees fit, but, every now and then, he’s a sleepy panther who’ll roll over and let you scratch behind his ears.

Conversation is usually sparse at times like this - the two of you are content enough in each other’s presence that you don’t really need to make small talk. Today, however, Lucifer seems to have something he wants to vent about.

“Belphie has been missing a lot of his homework again lately,” He murmurs. You make a noise of affirmation to indicate that you’re listening, staring at the mugs of tea sitting on the table and pondering whether the two of you will actually manage to part for long enough to drink them.

“Is it anything important?” You ask after a moment, playing absent-mindedly with his left hand. He doesn’t make any move to stop you as you mess about with his slender fingers, so you assume that he doesn’t mind.

“Mostly essays,” He replies, shifting slightly and letting out a quiet sigh. “He’s never liked writing them, but he hasn’t had so many missing before.”

You make a thoughtful sound. Now that you think about it, wasn’t Belphie confiding in you about this the other day?

“It’s just hard to sit down and concentrate sometimes, especially when I’m always so tired,” You remember him saying resignedly over hot chocolate and marshmallows. “It’s not like I don’t want to turn all my homework in on time. Sometimes I just can’t.”

“Well, you shouldn’t force yourself to do them, either,” You’d replied, giving his shoulders a sympathetic pat. “Needs over school of course. If you need to sleep more, then sleep more - if you feel like you can’t write the essay, then don’t write the essay. I’ll talk to Lucifer if he gets mad at you.”

He’d given you a grateful smile then, and turned back to his hot chocolate with a marginally brighter look on his face.

“Belphie’s been having a lot of nightmares lately, so he isn’t getting as much sleep,” You say slowly. “I told him to go ahead and take as many naps as he has to. His needs are more important than schoolwork, after all.”

Lucifer takes a long while to answer, but you don’t mind. It’s only fairly recently that he’s really come to terms with the idea that he doesn’t need to be so hard on his brothers - that it’s okay to put their comfort before whatever image of respectability he’s trying to keep up for Diavolo. The change has been somewhat jarring, according to Satan, but it’s not an unwelcome one, and you’ll gladly take responsibility for it with your constant reminders and careful explanations that Lucifer’s younger brothers have their own problems that he needs to give more leeway for.

“...did he come to talk to you about this?” He asks finally.

“Yeah.” You can’t see his face, but you can practically hear the frown beginning to pinch at his brows. “I know it might not seem like it sometimes, but he does want to make you proud. He’s never wanted to disappoint you.”

He takes a deep breath and releases it with a low hum. “...Belphie has never disappointed me.”

“Seems that he doesn’t realise that sometimes, though,” You sigh, tracing the seams of his glove with your index finger. “He’s a good kid, really.”

Lucifer doesn’t give a verbal reply, but he does hum again. You shift slightly and turn to look up at him; he looks back at you with sleepy, half-lidded crimson eyes. “Take it easy on him, okay?”

He gazes at you in contemplative silence for a long while, blinking slowly like an affectionate cat. Finally, he nods, and you beam proudly, dipping your head to rest on his chest, carefully positioning yourself so that his buttons don’t dig into your cheek.

“I’ll speak to his teachers,” He says quietly. “We should be able to arrange something.”

You smile against the fabric of his waistcoat, taking his hand in yours and giving it a squeeze. “That’s progress. I’m proud of you.”

He doesn’t respond, but you know full well that he loves it when you say that to him. He didn’t in the early days of your relationship, mostly because he’d thought you were patronising him, but now that the two of you are so much more familiar with each other, he’s learnt to recognise that you don’t mince words; you say what you mean, and you mean what you say. Which is exactly why, as the Avatar of Pride, he absolutely loves it when you tell him that you’re proud of him.

Lucifer himself is deep in thought. Struck by a sudden warmth spreading through him, quite independent of the crackling fire before him, he wraps his arms around you, resting his cheek against your head. It’s at moments like these, when you’re so close to him, that he realises just how fragile humans like you are.

It terrifies him sometimes, knowing that the unforgiving march of time means that you cannot be with him forever. One day you will leave, and you will grow old and fade away without him, because, no matter how much he wishes otherwise, you belong to a different realm. You are not a demon, and he is not a human; your worlds can collide briefly, for a single, beautiful moment, but then they will continue to move in their own orbit - and perhaps they will never meet again.

Some would say that, for this reason, he never should have fallen in love in the first place. Relationships like yours have always had a sort of taboo, even in the Devildom, because all beings are not created equal; humans have such short, meaningless lifespans compared to demons and angels, such little power, always depending on leaders and faith in a deity that they cannot prove the existence of. That is what demons tend to think of humanity, and until he’d met you, Lucifer had felt similarly.

But your life has been anything but meaningless, and the power you hold over him and his brothers is far stronger than any amount of potent magic that any being holds. The seven lords of the Devildom would lay waste to all three realms should anything happen to you.

Lucifer had never thought that he had the ability to love so deeply and so purely, but then again, he’d also never thought that a human like you could exist. It seems that he’s been wrong about a lot of things, and he can only pray that he will be wrong in his prediction of how this will end.

But you’re with him now, curled up against him with a content smile on your face. For now, you’re here, and while you are, Lucifer doesn’t want to waste time on worries.

Your story is yet to reach its ending, and if Lucifer knows anything, it’s that he will stay by your side until then. As long as your worlds are still connected, he will continue to love you, and he will love you long after your worlds separate again.

He’s sure of it.

#unedited #obey me #obey me x reader #obey me imagines #lucifer x reader #swd lucifer #swd satan #swd belphegor #swd beelzebub #fluff #lucifer is one of those characters that you can interpret in SO many ways and i love that for him #he's pretty fun to write as well #existential dread #we love a good big brother lucifer #for those of you reading these tags here is a hint for the next obey me piece #remember the simeon with a himbo bf piece?#we're getting a part two baby #(warning: the part two is likely not going to be anything remotely like what you're thinking of)#;)

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sir-bacon-d-esq · 2 years

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Total crack theory incoming again. You have been warned.

What if Noelle’s mom is a human?

Okay.

OKAY.

I already hear the groans and the sighs and the “lol drugs must be fun”s out there. Just.

Okay. Humor me. Have a little jaunt with me through the crack. Buckle in, people, it’s gonna be a long ride:

In the first 2 chapters, we’ve seen only hints and snippets. She’s the mayor, she’s a harsh mother, Rudy is very much in love, as a politician she’s uncharismatic but gets things done and runs unopposed, and she doesn’t seem to show her face much around town.

Now, about Hometown. We’ve only been assuming so far, based on context clues, that it’s a monster-only town except for Kris... but unless I missed something, there’s no explicit narration or exposition that states outright that this is the case. Toby Fox is trying to go for worldbuilding that is more natural than that, but this approach allows certain details to be... open for interpretation.

Humans are not common here, that’s obvious. But what about the rest of the world outside of Hometown? We know basically nothing about it, nothing about where Kris actually came from or what their life was like before the Dreemurrs.

It could be a monster-only world with very few humans, or it could be a lot more evenly mixed. For the sake of this crack, let’s assume option 2. Hometown is this segregated, out-in-the-sticks monster community, but not totally isolated.

If a well-to-do monster couple can adopt a human child and raise them here, surely an adult human could move in if they wanted? Like, say, if this human fell in love with a local who’s great friends with the Dreemurrs?

But what about Noelle and her sister Dess? Easy, maybe Rudy had a previous lover and they conceived two children, but something happened after Noelle’s birth. Maybe the mother died, or simply left. And then Rudy, suddenly a single dad, finds love again in a human woman who came to town, and she chooses to embrace her new and unexpected monster family.

Maybe she saw opportunity here. A chance for a better life than what she had among her own kind. And indeed, she is now mayor - relatively embraced by monster-kind despite her humanity. It’s a gamble that seems to have paid off

Dess took time to get used to so much change so fast, but for her baby sister’s sake she accepted it. Noelle was too young to remember her birth mother, so Rudy’s wife is, for all intents and purposes, her mom, and that’s totally normal to her. Even if her strict mother scared her sometimes... maybe Kris isn’t the only reason Noelle was afraid of humans under the bed.

Speaking of Kris, the parallels this would create between them and Noelle are pretty clear. A monster and a human from unconventional families - maybe that’s why they connected so well, despite Kris and their trickster ways.

Imagine what it would be like for Kris. Imagine growing up in a town full of monsters, except there is, in fact, another human like them who lives here... and that one other human, their friend’s mom, is a stern, cold, distant politician. A far cry from their own monster mother: soft, approachable, kind... even if that kindness no longer exits for her eggs-husband.

It’s no wonder Kris can’t stand to look at other humans, even if it’s just pictures in a book.

Now, for the sake of Deltarune’s larger narrative, what would be the point of Noelle’s mom being human? Or for any other human character to be in the story, for that matter?

There’s a pattern of strained relationships between Kris’ classmates and their respective parents. Catti’s family are preppy socialites while she’s the quiet goth; Kris’ parents are divorced and their brother is gone; Noelle’s mother is harsh, her father is ill, and her sister is gone; Susie’s implied to be in a broken home, if not entirely homeless.

Hometown is a worm cake: pretty and desirable on the outside, messy and textured on the inside. Like in real life, there is kindness and decency and community, but there’s a lot of baggage and trauma and tragedy that nobody really wants to address. It would be too painful, too inconvenient.

Noelle’s mom being human would add a further dimension to Hometown - showing us that it’s not some simple “monster town”, but a place with a history and a place in the wider world beyond its forest. Like everything else that’s complicated, nobody wants to acknowledge it, so nobody says it out loud. A human mayor of a monster town...how could there not be tension there?

There’s... more, but now I’m getting into territory where I’m theorizing about other things and how I’d try tying all these theories together, and at that point I’m just drafting an outline for a fanfic... and I’m already insane enough >>’‘‘‘‘‘‘‘

#deltarune #deltarune theory #noelle holiday #rudy holiday #kris #crack theory #I am sorry not sorry for polluting the Deltarune tumblr waters

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kcrabb88 · 3 years

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Queer Movies/Books/TV Shows for Pride Month!

Happy Pride everyone!! For your viewing/reading pleasure I have made a (non-exhaustive) list of queer media that I have enjoyed!

Movies/Documentaries

Pride (2014): An old tried and true favorite, which meets at the intersection of queer and workers’ rights. A group of queer activists support the 1985 miners’ strike in Wales (complete with a sing-through of Bread and Roses + Power in a Union)

Portrait of a Lady on Fire: On an isolated island in Brittany at the end of the eighteenth century, a female painter is obliged to paint a wedding portrait of a young woman (or, two young lesbians fall in love by the sea, and you cry)

God’s Own Country: Young farmer Johnny Saxby numbs his daily frustrations with binge drinking and casual sex, until the arrival of a Romanian migrant worker for lambing season ignites an intense relationship that sets Johnny on a new path (Seriously this movie is GREAT and doesn’t get enough love, watch it! It’s rough but ends happily)

The Half of It: When smart but cash-strapped teen Ellie Chu agrees to write a love letter for a jock, she doesn't expect to become his friend - or fall for his crush (as in she falls for his crush who is another girl. This movie was so good, and really friendship focused!)

Saving Face: A Chinese-American lesbian and her traditionalist mother are reluctant to go public with secret loves that clash against cultural expectations (this is an oldie and a goodie, with a happy ending!)

Moonlight: A young African-American man grapples with his identity and sexuality while experiencing the everyday struggles of childhood, adolescence, and burgeoning adulthood (featuring gay men of color!)

Carol: An aspiring photographer develops an intimate relationship with an older woman in 1950s New York (everyone’s seen this I think, but I couldn’t not have it here)

Milk: The story of Harvey Milk and his struggles as an American gay activist who fought for gay rights and became California's first openly gay elected official (the speech at the end of this made me cry. Warning, of course, for death, if you don’t know about Harvey Milk)

Pride (Hulu Documentary): A six-part documentary series chronicling the fight for LGBTQ civil rights in America (they go by decade from the 50s-2000s, and there is a lot of great trans inclusion in this)

Paris is Burning (Documentary): A 1990s documentary about the African American and Latinx ballroom scene. Available on Youtube!

A New York Christmas Wedding: As her Christmas Eve wedding draws near, Jennifer is visited by an angel and shown what could have been if she hadn't denied her true feelings for her childhood best friend (this movie is SO CUTE. It’s really only nominally a Christmas movie and easily watched anytime. Features an interracial sapphic couple!)

TV Shows

Love, Victor: Victor is a new student at Creekwood High School on his own journey of self-discovery, facing challenges at home, adjusting to a new city, and struggling with his sexual orientation (this is a spin-off of Love, Simon, and it’s very sweet and well done! Featuring a young gay man of color)

Sex Education: A teenage boy with a sex therapist mother teams up with a high school classmate to set up an underground sex therapy clinic at school (this has multiple queer characters, including a featured young Black gay man and also in season 2 there is a side ace character!)

Black Sails: I mean, do I even need to put a summary here? If you follow me you know that Black Sails is full of queer pirates, just queers everywhere.

Gentleman Jack: A dramatization of the life of LGBTQ+ trailblazer, voracious learner and cryptic diarist Anne Lister, who returns to Halifax, West Yorkshire in 1832, determined to transform the fate of her faded ancestral home Shibden Hall (Period drama lesbians!!! A title sequence that will make you gay just by watching!)

Tales of the City (2019): A middle-aged Mary Ann returns to San Francisco and reunites with the eccentric friends she left behind. "Tales of the City" focuses primarily on the people who live in a boardinghouse turned apartment complex owned by Anna Madrigal at 28 Barbary Lane, all of whom quickly become part of what Maupin coined a "logical family". It's no longer a secret that Mrs. Madrigal is transgender. Instead, she is haunted by something from her past that has long been too painful to share (this is based on a book series and it’s got lots of great inter-generational queer relationships!)

The Haunting of Bly Manor: After an au pair’s tragic death, Henry hires a young American nanny to care for his orphaned niece and nephew who reside at Bly Manor with the chef Owen, groundskeeper Jamie and housekeeper, Mrs. Grose (sweet, tender, wonderful lesbians. A bittersweet ending but this show is so so wonderful)

Sense8: A group of people around the world are suddenly linked mentally, and must find a way to survive being hunted by those who see them as a threat to the world's order (queers just EVERYWHERE in this show, of all kinds)

Books

Loveless by Alice Oseman: Georgia has never been in love, never kissed anyone, never even had a crush – but as a fanfic-obsessed romantic she’s sure she’ll find her person one day. This wise, warm and witty story of identity and self-acceptance sees Alice Oseman on towering form as Georgia and her friends discover that true love isn’t limited to romance (don’t be turned off by this title, it’s tongue-in-cheek. This is a book about an aroace college girl discovering herself and centers the importance and power of platonic relationships! I have it on my TBR and have heard great things)

Detransition, Baby by Torrey Peters: Reese almost had it all: a loving relationship with Amy, an apartment in New York City, a job she didn't hate. She had scraped together what previous generations of trans women could only dream of: a life of mundane, bourgeois comforts. The only thing missing was a child. But then her girlfriend, Amy, detransitioned and became Ames, and everything fell apart. Now Reese is caught in a self-destructive pattern: avoiding her loneliness by sleeping with married men.Ames isn't happy either. He thought detransitioning to live as a man would make life easier, but that decision cost him his relationship with Reese—and losing her meant losing his only family. Even though their romance is over, he longs to find a way back to her. When Ames's boss and lover, Katrina, reveals that she's pregnant with his baby—and that she's not sure whether she wants to keep it—Ames wonders if this is the chance he's been waiting for. Could the three of them form some kind of unconventional family—and raise the baby together?This provocative debut is about what happens at the emotional, messy, vulnerable corners of womanhood that platitudes and good intentions can't reach. Torrey Peters brilliantly and fearlessly navigates the most dangerous taboos around gender, sex, and relationships, gifting us a thrillingly original, witty, and deeply moving novel (again, don’t be thrown off by the title, it too, is tongue-in-cheek. This book was GREAT, and written by a trans women with a queer-and especially trans--audience in mind)

A Tip for the Hangman by Allison Epstein: A gay Christopher Marlowe, at Cambridge and trying to become England’s best new playwright, finds himself wrapped up in royal espionage schemes while also falling in love (this book is by a Twitter friend of mine, and it is a wonderful historical thriller with a gay man at the center).

Creatures of Will and Temper by Molly Tanzer: a very very queer remix of The Picture of Dorian Gray (which was already quite queer), featuring amazing female characters, a gay Basil, and a much happier ending than the original.

Red, White, and Royal Blue by Casey McQuiston: The gay prince of England and the bisexual, biracial first son of the president fall in love (think an AU of 2016 where a woman becomes president). Featuring a fantastic discovery of bisexuality, ruminations on grief, and just a truly astonishing book. One of my favorites!

One Last Stop by Casey McQuiston: For cynical twenty-three-year-old August, moving to New York City is supposed to prove her right: that things like magic and cinematic love stories don’t exist, and the only smart way to go through life is alone. She can’t imagine how waiting tables at a 24-hour pancake diner and moving in with too many weird roommates could possibly change that. And there’s certainly no chance of her subway commute being anything more than a daily trudge through boredom and electrical failures. But then, there’s this gorgeous girl on the train (This is Casey McQuiston’s brand new novel featuring time-travel, queer women, and I absolutely cannot WAIT to read it)

The Heiress by Molly Greely: Set in the Pride and Prejudice universe, this takes on Anne de Bourg (Lady Catherine’s daughter), and makes her queer!

Tipping the Velvet by Sarah Waters: Nan King, an oyster girl, is captivated by the music hall phenomenon Kitty Butler, a male impersonator extraordinaire treading the boards in Canterbury. Through a friend at the box office, Nan manages to visit all her shows and finally meet her heroine. Soon after, she becomes Kitty's dresser and the two head for the bright lights of Leicester Square where they begin a glittering career as music-hall stars in an all-singing and dancing double act. At the same time, behind closed doors, they admit their attraction to each other and their affair begins (Sarah Waters is the queen of historical lesbians. All of her books are good, and they’re all gay! The Paying Guests is another great one)

(On a side note re: queer books, there are MANY, these are just ones I’ve read more recently. Also there are a lot of indie/self-published writers doing great work writing queer books, so definitely support your local indie authors!)

#I am inevitably forgetting things!!!#These are just ones that came to mind #Long post #Pride

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flying-elliska · 3 years

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Headcanons for ADHD characters Masterlist

I was asked for this a while ago and I feel this is a good discussion subject because the canon representation for ADHD is kind of abysmal and is often a caricature or a joke.

usual disclaimer, I'm not a therapist, this is not a diagnosis tool, just for fun, etc etc...basing this on my own experience/knowledge with ADHD and meeting a lot of ADHD people IRL. I'm going off the main symptoms first (inattention and/or hyperactivity, restlessness, impulsivity, problems with emotional/focus regulation, daydreaming, messiness, hyper-focus, fidgeting etc) and then looking at character traits that are not a necessary symptom but often associated (substance abuse and addiction, need to please, sensitivity to rejection, compassionate and creative, thrill seeking, very imaginative, charming and witty or withdrawn and shy or angry and irritable, whimsical and fun and a bit child-like, out of the box thinker, self esteem issues, unstable life, comorbidity with anxiety and depression, very intense feelings, functions better with adrenaline/in an emergency, disregard for rules and problems with authority OR extreme compliance, codependency, perceived as weird, clever in an atypical way, problems in school, extremely good at one specific thing, etc)

Also I found this list with actual canonical representation

BOOKS :

The 'fits to a T so I'm seeing it as my personal canon' list :

note : doesn't mean that the authors actually meant to create representation but it's very likely they at least got inspired by people who did have ADHD (even when the diagnosis itself did not exist) and explained it with 'it's just their personality' OR the story happens in a setting where the label doesn't exist as such. also not meant to be exhaustive.

- Helen Burns (from Jane Eyre by Charlotte Brontë) One of Jane's school friends from the start of the novel, fits the inattentive type to a T : she can't seem to focus or learn her lessons, is constantly daydreaming, describes herself as messy and careless, forgets rules, and is easily distracted. She talks constantly about her own 'defective nature' and seems very sensitive to criticism but incapable of changing. She doesn't defend herself against the nuns' harsh punishments as she thinks she deserves them. She's presented as kind-hearted and compassionate, almost too good for this world, and hyperfocuses on her faith. Apparently sb even wrote an academic article on this. She dies so it's not super fun representation but it is interesting to see in an older book, to push back against the idea that ADHD was invented yesterday by Big Pharma lol.

- Grantaire (from Les Miserables, Victor Hugo) Part of the student revolutionary group Les Amis de l'ABC and resident skeptic, does not believe in the cause but is fixated on the group's idealistic leader (and yeah it sounds very gay, they die holding hands, there is a lot of Symbolism). He spends his time ranting about things that are only vaguely connected, is described as brilliant but incapable of sticking to any one profession or hobby, is an alcoholic, has a creative streak (was a painter at some point), likes wandering around the city, has massive self-esteem issues and is a general mess but does seem to care about his friends. This is not a very flattering portrayal as Grantaire is described as morally deficient but again, interesting in an old book. ADHD!Grantaire is a popular take in the modern fandom (i was in it before I was diagnosed it brought up a lot of Things) and it's very cathartic to see him get actual therapy in fic lmao.

- Luna Lovegood (from the Harry Potter series) JKR sucks but this is probably the most high profile case of a possible inattentive ADHD character so I didn't want to leave it out. She's a daydreamer, she is a big space cadet and seems to live in her own world, she has a very out of the ordinary sense of style, she's bullied for being weird, but she's also very kind and perceptive and cares a lot about her friends, and good at coming up with out of the box solutions. I wouldn't call it good representation, she's described as a wacko whom a lot of characters find cringeworthy but she's also pretty heroic, so. And she does seem to hyperfocus on magical creatures. Plus her father could also have it (and it runs in families).

- Jasper Fahey (from Six of Crows duology, Leigh Bardugo) Part of a young group of thieves with a heart of gold, he's a charmer and a compulsive gambler who quits college and incurs debts so massive he stops talking to his father out of shame. He's also an extremely talented sharpshooter and the scenes where he describes how the whole world slows and the rush of adrenaline when he is shooting sound like hyperfocus to a T. He's a loyal friend but also quite dependent on Kaz, the leader of the group, to keep him in line. He's witty, messy and he likes danger. His boyfriend later in the series, Wylan, is dyslexic and the way they learn to accommodate each other's issues honestly makes them one of my favorite couples ever. I need to reread these books and I am so stoked for the series I hope they do Jasper justice.

- Julian Diaz (from Cemetary Boys, Aiden Thomas) Love interest of the book, introduced as the 'high school resident bad boy', energetic motormouth who can't sit still and actually very endearing, has issues in school and gets bored easily, main problem is that he's a ghost...sort of. The whole thing was very cute and I love that Julian's personality is described as fun and attractive instead of annoying (which is, if you haven't noticed already, a pattern).

- Evie O'Neill (from the Diviners series, Libba Bray) She's a flapper in 1920s New York who ran away from her boring little town to make a life for herself ; she's a party girl and an impulsive thrill-seeker who hates standing still and is always looking for excitement to 'fill the void'. She craves fame and attention and pretty things, she can be a loyal friend but is also frequently self-centered and forgetful, she's street smart, resourceful and very charming and witty. She's also grieving, drinks too much and is definitely depressed. She's obviously meant as an archetype of the era, caught between trauma and excess, but it does come over as very hyperactive ADHD as well. Her powers to read objects also really pinged me as a good metaphor for the ADHD tendency to be overwhelmed by details.

The 'bit more of a reach but there's a vibe' list :

- Emma Woodhouse (from Emma, Jane Austen) Frequently cited as a character with ADHD, I didn't come up with this one but she fits. She's daydreaming, easily bored, has flights of fancy and hyper-focuses on matchmaking, is a bit impulsive and thrill seeking, clever in an unconventional way, described as a bit immature, mix of caring and self-centered.

- Ronan Lynch (from the Raven Cycle, Maggie Stiefvater) Ronan just has Neuroatypical Vibes, even though it's not entirely clear what, and I've seen people label him all sorts of things which is very valid. As for ADHD, he's restless, impulsive, likes to Go Fast and do street racing, he has very strong emotions he doesn't know what to do with, and big self esteem issues esp. at the start, is very all or nothing with people, snarky, drops out of school to be a magic farmer, problems with authority, looks like a scary mean goth but is actually a big softie (but like, with a few people), pulls shit out of his dreams. Is kind of dependent on his best friend at the start too.

- Sherlock Holmes (from the eponymous series by Arthur Conan Doyle) Again a character who has been diagnosed with all sorts of things. The biggest ADHD vibe for me is 'my mind rebels at stagnation' and the way he needs drugs to function outside of the thrill of a case, and the way he hyper-focuses on information he needs to be a detective while completely ignoring common knowledge. Also sort of dependent on his best friend Watson and isn't great at social interactions. Doesn't care much about upholding social conventions either. The RDJ adaptation is the one that has the most ADHD vibes to me.

- Harley Quinn (DC Comics/Movies) Big codependency issues (that's arguably the thing she's most known for) and sadly people with ADHD are often prone to getting into abusive relationships. It depends on the story too but she's very energetic, zany, impulsive, she likes shiny things and bright clothes, she's fun and chaotic and likes to break the rules, she's a criminal but she does seem to have a heart, she's also frequently immature and rash, etc.

What are your headcanons ? I would love to hear if you have some so I can add them to the list. I'll make a TV/Movies list soon.

#adhd #actually adhd #adhd representation #neurodiversity #media representation

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sukipershipper · 3 years

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Can you spill some of ur bugsnax hcs?

I assume you mean with the characters, in which case, Yes of course! Bear with me though that all of these are going to take place Post-Snaktooth Island. I might do some headcanons on what happened on the island but for now take these.

(SPOILERS AHEAD IF YOU HAVEN’T SEEN THE END OF THE GAME, I also apologize for it being so freaking long...I actually did not intend on that)

FILBO

They all lived in a small but very prosperous town, said town doesn’t have a name cause Mun isn’t creative enough to make one yet

After being elected Mayor, Filbo had learned to become more assertive with others. His role as Mayor of the small town involves him doing a few small tasks, like cleaning up the streets or helping with lessons at the schools

Other times however he is brought into meetings to plan celebrations, opening new buildings and ways they can develop the community.

His meeting council includes Floofty, who is always helping him out in terms of his decisions.

His office has all of the trinkets and maps from Liz’s adventures, as well as pictures of everything they did on Snaktooth and all the pictures she and Eggabelle have of each other.

Filbo constantly sends out letters in bottles to Snaktooth in the hopes that Liz and Egg will find it and write back. He is still waiting on a response from them

When he gets bored, he often just draws in a spare journal he has. He does this in meetings or when he’s at a lunch with the others

He had a statue of Liz and Egg made and placed in the center of the town to help remember them and what they stood for

WAMBUS/TRIFFANY

Wambus and Triffany live in a small country home just outside the town next to the beach and a small grotto.

The place has a large amount of land for Wambus to start a farm with all sorts of sauces. The beach they live next to has a big cave with all sorts of secrets that Triffany is willing to discover.

Reconnecting with their kids has been a challenge, seeing as they left quite abruptly. The kids did eventually start coming around though.

Wambus is a very good cook, lots of people headcanon it and I headcanon it too. The man can make a mean roast. Only reason he never did it on Snaktooth was because the food was already walking around so he had no need to.

Triffany may look like a stick but she’s actually quite strong. On the same levels as Wambus and Chandlo? Maybe not. But she has punted several people before.

She is also very unconventional in her methods, resulting in lots of Scars and broken bones. Wambus had tried bandaging her up before but after failing 15 times he just called Floofty.

Speaking of Floofty, the couple have a very good relationship with the scientist. Floofty often helps Triffany with collecting samples or attempting to help Wambus with growing crops, though those attempts often result in Wambus yelling and Triffany trying to calm her husband down.

FLOOFTY

Floofty now teaches at the towns school, they’re a very talented professor and many of the students they teach have delighted in their work. Though other teachers find the methods very...unconventional.

Though Floofty is still quite cold hearted to most of the grumpus’ they have learned to be more cheerful towards certain Grumps. One of which being Snorpy and the other being their students.

Many students ask how Floofty lost their leg, to which they reply: That information is irrelevant, but if you truly wish to know then speak with the Mayor

When Not teaching they’re usually helping Snorpy out with anything involving the Grumpinati. Though they aren’t really of much help considering their methods

They definitely are considered a cannibal, Floofty was once seen carrying an arm (no one knows if that was theirs) and took a little nibble of it...then spat it out and complained that it was too salt

They are always helping Filbo out in terms of his mayoral duties.

GRAMBLE/WIGGLE

Gramble and Wiggle share a small little two story home in the town. The house is decorated with all sorts of flowers and different patterns on the fence

While Wiggle is always busy touring, playing music, Gramble became the local veterinarian for the town. His experience with the Snax actually prepared him for the animals.

He also has a small little puppy, ten times better than any of the Snax he had

Gramble still does keep pictures of Sprout around his room, as much as he hated knowing he harbored a parasite in his home, he still missed the little guy. (I am fully convinced the one at the end though was Sprout)

He and Wiggle began dating right after they settled into the house together, believing that it was much needed change for the both of them.

Gramble knits sweaters for Wiggle since she goes out touring so much, he also knits plush versions of the Snax he kept back on Snaktooth. It was the biggest mistake he made, cause now he envisions them staring at him and wanting to murder him

Wiggle always tries to help him when it comes to his nightmares. Playing white noise or ASMR videos so he can go to sleep

Her songs are very well received and she has quite a lot of publicity. Do The Wiggle is still one of her best selling numbers, but she has some love for her other pieces too.

She is always asked to sing at events by Filbo, and of course she never says no. One of her favorite things to do is get one of the kids to come up and sing Do The Wiggle with her since it’s one of the best songs in their opinion

She has a ring box tucked away in her dresser, she’s waiting for the right moment to pull it out on Gramble and propose

CROMDO

Cromdo is doing much better in life, opening up a successful karaoke bar and gets quite a lot of business from some of the guys in town.

He also showed the less serious side of himself a lot more, and once he let down such a defensive guard he was able to get further in life, albeit he still has a long way to go

He and Beffica still don’t get along, but they’re on better terms than they were back on Snaktooth

He hasn’t completely dropped his ways though, he’s still a big old Scumbag (and we love him for it). Often he tries to make a profit off something miniscule like an old bottlecap.

Though Cromdo is still a scumbag, he helped Filbo and Buddy set up Filbo’s campaign to get him elected

Cromdo still tries stealing Triffany’s stuff and Wambus fucking yeets him all the way into town. How he has no broken bones from that is still a mystery to everyone.

BEFFICA

Beffica is now a photographer for the local newspaper, probably not a good choice in many of the Grumps opinions

She is however much better than she was on Snaktooth, and does have a small friend group outside of the Snaktooth Island group

Her old friend group has tried getting in touch with her but she’s very reluctant to talk to them again

Many of the older grumpus’ have basically adopted her because she’s still very shaky after everything, they didn’t expect her to be so shaky but life is surprising.

Her favorite person to go to though is Triffany, for the pure fact that she and Triffany just talk about guys and it’s the best chat ever

She and Filbo are on much better terms, and she may or may not have some feelings hidden for the new Mayor but we will never truly know

She and her ‘Bestie’ go out for Boba tea all the time, a truly fun experience for the both of them

CHANDLO/SNORPY

Chandlo takes Snorpy out on morning runs all the time, he’s proud that his bro is taking baby steps into letting the outside world embrace them

Oh, Snorpy is also He/They now, I honestly feel like it fits them

Snorpy and Chandlo moved to a small little apartment complex for now. The home is very quaint and the two have little designated areas for all the stuff they have.

They also had to make room for Floofty as the sibling insisted on staying with their brother for...reasons

Chandlo goes to library a lot to learn new techniques to help Snorpy, but he also secretly reads up on articles about the Grumpinati in the hopes to help Snorpy destroy them one day

He and Floofty have made a strong pact over the fact that Snorpy must be protected at all costs, no exceptions

Snorpy is a lot more open about what he does now, often asking for advice from Chandlo about his inventions and whatnot.

Neither of them are good cooks, they both try but both almost always burn the complex down so they just ask Floofty to do it

Snorpy actually bruises very easily, he is a literal tomato. So he doesn’t always participate in many physical activities but he does try his best

When Snorpy does bruise, Chandlo goes into full panic mode as he doesn’t know how to tend to wounds. No one ever told him that you can put ice to make it go down quicker

They are married, they have all the paperwork signed and the rings to prove it

SHELDA

She does still go by the name Shelda as people aren’t quite used to calling her Shellsy Woolbag

She actually took up dating when she encountered an old friend of hers, such friend does not have a name because as stated before, Mun is not creative

Shelda has a lot of books and meditation CD’s in her shelves, she also has a Tape Player so when she goes out on walks she can listen to some of the best audiobook readings

She and Floofty get a long a little better, sometimes Floofty will give her insight as to what the world is to THEM and Shelda shares a funny story in return, one that does manage to make Floofty laugh surprisingly.

People don’t often see her get out much, possibly because she’s always busy writing up her experiences and whatnot

She is Buddy’s comfort and the one that they room with currently, she is actually very good company believe it or not

She and Buddy also love writing little stories together as practice for her next book, and they also exchange drawings and doodles they’ve done over the course of the day.

And that’s pretty much it!

#bugsnax #the whole snaxcast #filbo fiddlepie #wambus troubleham #triffany lottablog #floofty fizzlebean #gramble gigglefunny #wiggle wigglebottom #cromdo face #beffica winklesnoot #chandlo funkbun #snorpy fizzlebean #shelda #shellsy wooldbag #headcanon #headcanon dump #really long #spoiler warning #sorry again for it being so lengthy

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wherevermyway · 3 years

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bound up // binchan // oneshot // 18+

pairing: bang chan x seo changbin rating: explicit! 18+ warnings/tags: explicit sexual content, BDSM, rope bondage, dacryphilia, degradation word count: 2,722 also on AO3

originally posted: 13 november 2020

Chan and Changbin had an unconventional relationship, and they had some peculiar ways of relieving built up tension. Sometimes, vanilla sex was too boring. Drawing out their orgasms in the oddest ways possible really bring them closer together and make them feel better in multiple different ways.

Luckily, their oddities fit well with one another.

disclaimer: this is a work of fiction! any reference to persons in this work of fiction are purely coincidental. the characters referenced from Stray Kids are interpretations loosely based on their personalities in the group and do not represent the real people behind the personas. if this, or any of the content included in the warnings above make you uncomfortable, please stop reading now.

“Is that tight enough, love?” Chan sarcastically coos, knowing that his lover can’t respond. If Changbin was honestly uncomfortable, he would have pressed the clicker he held in hands. Instead, the man bent in half, arms behind his back and tied up in an intricately woven criss-cross pattern in black rope, offers a strained grumble through his open-mouthed spider gag.

“It’s a shame you can’t speak, hmm? You’ve been so talkative lately, and it’s so nice to not hear you talk for once.” Changbin winces at Chan’s words, drool starting to spill from his mouth as he looked up to his senior.

Chan wore a proud, arrogant smirk on his face like he had gotten first place in a marathon, looking down at Changbin. His junior was being a bit too snappy and opinionated during rehearsals, and Chan knew this would be the perfect way for them to relieve some tension. “Shall we begin, my pretty little bratty boy?”

Changbin offers a weak nod, wiggling his toes around and adjusting the positioning of his arms as they pulled against the rope fastened to the ceiling.

“Remember to click if you need me to stop, alright?” Another nod in affirmation, paired with a tiny squeak.

The two of them just simply worked this way. They had been an unofficial item for nearly a year now, but they really preferred their unconventional relationship and unusual way of relieving tension. One night, when they were drinking on the rooftop and staring out at the Seoul skyline, Changbin blurted out how he had always wanted to try restraint play, but he figured he’d never find someone he trusted enough to try it.

“Why not me?” Chan slurred slightly, taking a drink from his bottle of strawberry soju. “We’ve known each other for years, dude. Not to mention, we’ve been sleeping together for, what, five months now? It could be fun.”

Changbin had shook his head in disbelief and stared wildly at Chan. “You don’t know what you’re doing, though.”

Chan offers a cheeky smile in response. “I never said that.”

This was their sixth restraint session, and they were getting bolder and bolder with each new session. Chan had just installed a seemingly innocent hook into the ceiling of their studio, something strong, yet easily concealable, and they were both dying to try it out.

Sure, their sex was satisfying enough, but to open up to someone and be so vulnerable with them was like ascending to another plane that was unattainable for most conventional relationships. Chan would bring Changbin down enough, knock him down several pegs to reset his arrogant attitude and pent up energy. Then, he would bring him back up to where he wanted to be as they cuddled in their dorm room and watched stupid videos on the internet, Changbin curled up against Chan, until they passed out together.

Chan’s embrace at the end of all of this felt so much sweeter because of the labour they went through to get to it. For Changbin to earn it. Sure, he could find himself in Chan’s arms whenever he wanted, but the way that Chan felt to him after their sessions was otherworldly.

“Alright,” Chan sighed as he sat down in the chair across from Changbin. He danced his fingers over the rope shears on the table, then grabbed a remote control, fiddling with his laptop with his other hand. Some background noise-type of lo-fi electronica quietly boomed through the studio’s speakers.

“I want you to be a good boy and press the clicker in your hand. Let’s see if I can still hear it over the music.”

Changbin does as requested, a couple of plasticky clicking noises coming from behind him. Chan nods and taps around on his laptop a couple of times until the music shifts to some other similar sounding song. “Now we can get started.” He leans back into his chair, bringing up the remote control to his face as he locks eyes with Changbin.

The two of them exchange an excited, somewhat nervous glance. A string of drool continuously spills from Changbin’s mouth, and Chan devilishly smirks.

“Three minutes, twenty five seconds until the next song.” He presses a couple of buttons on the remote control, and Changbin’s knees curl inward and his head drops. A throaty moan shakes its way through the younger man as he shudders at the sensation as the vibrating prostate massager quivers inside of him. “Like we discussed prior, you’re not allowed to come until the end of this playlist, and I’m not going to tell you how long the entirety of it is, only how long each song is. With every song, I’m going to up the ante. If you come before you’re permitted, there will be consequences.”

Changbin lifts his head, locking eyes with Chan before he nods once and drops his head back down. He tries to keep his pathetic mewls restrained, but some choked whines and whimpers still manage to escape him, causing Chan to nibble on his bottom lip in excitement. As the music played in the background, Chan grabbed a small candle off of the table next to him and lit it, preparing it for the next song.

Using wax wasn’t really something that crossed Chan’s mind, but when Changbin awkwardly gave him a couple of candles the day prior, he couldn’t resist the thought of adding it to the session he had in mind. “They’re special,” the younger man had whispered. “Don’t use these to make shit look pretty, because it’d be a waste. These were expensive and I don’t wanna waste them.”

Chan shook his head in confusion. “What do you mean by that?”

“Me,” Changbin furrowed his eyebrows and pursed his lips, his face flushed. “Use them on me tomorrow. That’s why I bought them.”

The tiny flame flickered and Chan smiled as he looked at it. There was twenty seconds left of the current song, so he stood up and held the candle, taking a few steps towards Changbin. “The next song is two minutes and fifty-five seconds. I think you’ll look pretty with your back painted in blue, hmm?”

Changbin tried to hum in some sort of response, but the spattering of warm wax to his back causes his soft murmur to turn into an unrestrained, loud moan.

“Now, now,” Chan tuts as he stops dripping wax onto the younger man’s back. “Everyone may be back in the dorms, but you never know who may hear you sound like such a needy whore. Do you want someone to walk by the door and hear you pathetically moaning for me?”

Chan doesn’t wait for a response he knows won’t come, so he tips the candle in his hand again, painting mindless patterns against Changbin’s skin, indigo blue spattering recklessly onto the roped arms of the bound man, against his own black button-up shirt. The wax would come off, Chan figured, and this was a small price to pay in order to watch his junior squirm.

The song was nearly over, and Chan brought the candle up to his face and blew out the small flame. Almost perfectly timed with the end of the song, he spun on his heel and walked back to the table, setting the candle down as the next song started playing. He started pressing buttons on the remote control again, causing Changbin to cry out again, curling his toes and shaking the ceiling rope a bit as his body convulsed. Saliva dripped from his lips, feeding into the growing pool underneath him.

“Four minutes, twenty-five seconds. Let’s see if you can hold out with this setting.” Chan looked over his shoulder, taking in the view of the mess they were starting to make all over the studio floor. Blue wax had splattered onto the hardwood floor, which would easily come off with a bit of effort. Changbin was twitching uncontrollably now, and precum was starting to add to the chaos painted on the floor.

Waiting for four minutes for the next phase was going to kill Chan. He reached a hand down to his pelvis, pressing the heel of his palm against his erection. Subconsciously, he looked to his laptop. Three minutes, thirty-seven seconds. A hiss escaped his teeth and he shook his hands away, trying to compose himself.

“You should know better than to talk back to me during practice, you know,” he groans, trying to distract himself by talking down to Changbin. “A dumb slut like you knows better, unless you’re specifically trying to rile me up so I treat you like this?” Changbin makes a noise that’s somewhere between a whine and a moan, shaking his head and causing saliva to go flying from his mouth.

At first, Chan didn’t understand why Changbin asked him to talk down to him during their sessions, to call him such degrading things. However, for some bizarre reason, it was one of the things Chan loved doing the most. With each session, he looked forward to this more and more.

Two minutes, fifty-one seconds.

“Regardless of if you’re even capable enough to not come before you’re allowed to, I’ve decided I’m going to paint that pretty face of yours with my cum,” Chan’s breathing was heavy, his nails digging into his skin as he felt his cock throb against the cotton of his briefs. “I’m gonna make you walk around with my cum all over your face and show you off to everyone, show every one of our friends how much of a pathetic slut you are for me.”

Chan’s words were dangerously close to causing Changbin to prematurely come all over the floor. He buckled his knees and whined, tugging hard against the rope fastened to the ceiling. He regained enough composure to look up to Chan with teary eyes, tears spilling down his face, a pleading look in his gaze. It may not seem like it to anyone else, but this look was what made the degradation worth it to Chan. Changbin was beside himself, loving how he was being forced exactly into the place he wanted to be.

Another glance to the computer. One minute, twelve seconds.

It was early, but Chan slowly walked over to just in front of Changbin’s face. “Are you going to be a good boy and keep yourself from coming?”

A nod. A whine.

“I’m going to hold you to that,” Chan whispers, reaching up to Changbin’s soft, black hair, and giving it a couple of gentle strokes. “But you’re going to stay just as you are a little longer and make yourself useful.” The elder knelt down, taking in the look of how the metal fastened to leather straps inside of Changbin’s mouth looked. He made a mental note to make sure to apply some more lip balm to the younger man’s lips as soon as they were done, as they were starting to dry and crack a bit.

They exchange a caring glance, something that couldn’t be hidden no matter how hard and stern Chan tried to act. Deep down inside, they both really did love each other. That couldn’t be hidden.

The song faded out and blended into a new one, and Chan smiled. “Five minutes, thirty-seven seconds. Once this one is over and I’ve come all over that pretty face of yours,” he says in a low voice, standing up and fumbling with his belt buckle, “I might let you come. We’ll see how much of a good boy you are while you get me off, hmm?”

Chan doesn’t bother removing his pants, only undoing them enough to pull his cock out. The cool air is enough to cause a shiver to run down his spine. He takes Changbin’s chin into his hand and guides his way into the younger man’s mouth. It feels a little different, knowing that there won’t be the added sensation of having a vacuum-like seal around him, but it didn’t matter. He was already so close to coming from watching Changbin writhe and listening to his pitiful whimpers and moans.

Changbin wastes no time guiding his tongue around the length of Chan’s cock. He acts as if his tongue was a paintbrush, painting swift, broad strokes of saliva against the warm canvas presented to him. Chan revels in this for a few moments before pushing in a bit more aggressively, needing more stimulation. As he hits the back of Changbin’s throat, he watches the younger man twitch, and he pulls back a bit.

“I’m gonna move. Be a good boy and stay still, hmm?”

Changbin lets out a muffled whimper, but doesn’t press down on the clicker, so Chan interprets that as an affirmation. He sucks in a deep inhale, grabbing a fistful of his junior’s hair and slowly increases his pace.

The music is more intense now. Chan specifically picked this bass-heavy song, imagining how it would feel to fuck Changbin’s dripping wet mouth. A pained groan leaves his lips as he starts to relentlessly thrust into the younger man’s mouth, the head of his cock rubbing against the firm tissue at the back of his throat.

“You’re doing so well, baby,” Chan tries to stay composed as he whines. He doesn’t bother looking at the remote in his other hand as he aimlessly presses a couple of different buttons on it. Changbin nearly collapses onto the ground in reaction and Chan rubs his thumb soothingly against his scalp. “Not yet, not yet.” He’s not even trying to hide his pants as he fucks a little faster now. “I’m gonna come all over that pretty face of yours first. Gonna let everyone know you’re mine. You’re fucking mine.”

Chan can’t help but gasp as his possessive nature slips out, but he doesn’t care. The way that Changbin gives himself up to Chan, trusts him so much, enough to restrict his movements and use him as nothing more than a glorified sex object makes him possessive. Protective. If anyone did anything to hurt Changbin, Chan wouldn’t be able to contain himself.

“Fuck,” the older man whines as he pulls out, right as the song transitions into the next bass-heavy song. He lets go of Changbin’s head and mops up some of the spent drool under his chin, using it as a makeshift lube as he pumps his cock. “Look at me. Show me how badly you want my cum all over your face like the cumslut I know you are.”

Changbin obliges, his eyes weepy and his cheeks tearstained.

That’s all it takes. Chan throws his head back for a moment before he forces himself to watch as his cum spills all over Changbin’s face. He pants and shudders a couple of times, nearly collapsing to his knees due to the intensity of his orgasm. “You’ve done so well,” he gasps. “You’ve earned it, so do it. Come. Just fucking come for me.”

Chan pushes a button on the remote control again, and Changbin’s back arches, a choked, guttural moan absorbed by the soundproofing on the walls. His legs finally give out, and he falls to his knees, his arms staying in place thanks to the ceiling restraint. Chan watches as Changbin’s cock twitches, cum splattering over the dried wax and precum from earlier.

They take a moment to come back to reality, and Changbin finally drops the clicker from his hands. Chan bends down to the younger man’s face, undoing the metal fasteners at the back of the gag. “You did so well; I’m so blown away by you yet again. That was absolutely incredible. How are you feeling?”

Changbin pops his jaw a couple times and shakes his head. “That was great,” he sighs and looks up to Chan. “I’m not gonna lie, though, my jaw is killing me.”

The older man laughs, pressing a kiss to the younger man’s forehead. “Well, I’ll untie you, get you cleaned up, and then you can have a well-deserved break. We can shower and get that wax off of you, then cuddle up under the covers all night. How’s that sound?”

“That sounds great,” Changbin weakly smiles. “I love you, but you’re cleaning all of this up, though. My arms are sore as fuck.”

“Yeah, yeah,” Chan rolls his eyes. “I love you too.”

#bound up #skz smut #skz fics #binchan #bang chan x seo changbin #seo changbin x bang chan #chan x changbin #changbin x chan #wherevermyway

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vaskianmountains · 3 years

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20 fic tag game

Thank you so much for tagging me @veretianstarburst 💕💕

Rules: List the first lines of your last 20 stories (if you have less than 20, just list them all!). See if there are any patterns. Choose your favourite opening line. Then tag 10 of your favourite authors!

1. Missing

It was already late into the evening when Laurent’s governess Vivienne came to Auguste’s chambers.

2. Not Like the Other Blonds

“You really are unfairly attractive in scrubs,” Nikandros said.

3. Fascinating Reports

“Come to bed, Laurent,” Damen whispered into Laurent’s ear.

4. Your Breath in My Lungs

Damen tried to breathe, but no matter how much air he tried to suck in, there still wasn’t enough of it.

5. Of Soulmates, Books, and Spilled Guacamole

“You are my soulmate?”

6. The Downsides of Having a Teenage Baby Brother

When Auguste first learned that Laurent had found himself a boyfriend, he was overjoyed.

7. what never was and never will be

The baths were too humid, not leaving enough air for Laurent to breathe.

8. The Truth About Our Marriage

“I thought you guys weren’t coming to the faculty drinks?” Erasmus asked Ancel and Nicaise.

9. Our Unconventional Courtship

“Hey, asshole!” Damen said as he roughly elbowed Auguste in the side.

10. Veretian Roses

“How did this happen, Laurent?” Auguste asked when Laurent presented him the cut on his finger.

11. Take Care of It Myself

It was the third day of Damen and Nikandros’ business trip to Ios.

12. Moments Like These

Nikandros was tired.

13. The Kyros’ Unexpected Desire

At the end of the evening meal, the kings of Akielos and Vere excused themselves from the table.

With six out of thirteen of these starting with dialogue, I’d say that’s definitely a pattern. Those six plus some other ones also make it clear that I tend to start immediately with the ‘action’, rather than first setting up the scene before that. On the one hand that’s also specifically a preference for me when I’m writing (and probably also when reading), because I can immediately get to what I wanted to write and what other’s are probably coming to my stories for. But then on the other hand, I also do think some of my stories could maybe do with some additional detail to make them a bit richer, and first taking the time to set up the scene before jumping into the action could maybe do that. Although I suppose there’s also other ways to do that.

Relatedly to starting out with the action, all of these lines immediately start with the characters rather than with describing surroundings or something. Some of them is the characters actually doing something and others are more about things happening to them/about them experiencing emotions. Then, of course, there’s the ones where they’re talking, and we’re back at the often starting with dialogue 😂

I think one thing that’s also interesting is that there’s two openings about breathing and then also both specifically about there not being enough air. At the same time, Your Breath in My Lungs is about Damen having a panic attack after waking up from a nightmare, and what never was and never will be starts with Laurent being triggered in the bath scene from chapter 3 of the first book, so with them dealing with a similar topic it’s not that strange that they’d start similarly. I think it perhaps says something about how I tend to write panic attacks, and that kinda leads back to one of the questions from the ask meme that I answered yesterday, about whether any of my fics are inspired by personal experiences. When I wrote both of these fics, I didn’t write them with the purpose of writing about something I’d experienced myself, but now looking back I can still see that they do in part reflect my own experiences of having had panic attacks, because the times I’ve had those they’re mostly characterized by affecting my breathing (although there are also very much still differences between my own experience of them and how Damen and Laurent experience it in these fics. (Yes, I went a little off topic here. I don’t think this really counts as still being about opening lines 😅)

Choosing a favorite is difficult. I think most of them work well for their accompanying fic, and choosing a least favorite one is honestly easier. The one that would fit that description is from The Kyros’ Unexpected Desire. If I were to ever rewrite that fic, the absolute number one thing I’d do differently is its opening. Like I already said, I normally prefer to just almost immediately start with the action, and that’s not really what I did in this fic. I do think it does require a little bit of set up, and while what’s there right now isn’t actually long, I still think it would have been better if I’d condensed it somewhat. (And getting off topic here again, but while I think I should have written the opening to the fic differently, it does also contain a line that I’m actually really fond of, and that I was reminded of just now as I reread that part: After all, Nikandros had, against his will, learned well enough by now how to recognize when a proposal made by the Veretian king contained any undertones of a proposition of a different kind.)

I also don’t feel too much for the first line of Take Care of It Myself. I don’t think it and the rest of the two opening paragraphs are necessarily bad, but I’m also not sure they do particularly well at grabbing a reader’s attention and pulling them in, so that leaves the need for the premise promised by the summary and the tags to be interesting enough that they’ll still keep reading. (And I do hope people keep reading, because I think the rest of the fic is really fun! (And hot, also really hot.))

But then on to lines I do actually like. I feel kind of partial to the first line of Moments Like These, because I feel being tired is a perpetual mood for Nikandros, although that’s mostly the ‘I’m so done with this’ kind of tired, rather than the ‘I want to sleep’ kind of tired which he feels at the start of this fic. I wouldn’t call the line my favorite though by any means, as I’m not sure this line is going to particularly make people want to keep reading. I do think the immediate next couple of sentences do well enough in establishing what kind of fic this is going to be, so it’s not too big of a deal if the exact first line maybe doesn’t do that.

I think all the other lines do well enough in either setting up what the fic will be about, or getting the reader interested in finding out more, or both of those. I’m not going to be able to choose just one favorite from them, but the ones I like most are I think those from Fascinating Reports, Your Breath in My Lungs, and The Downsides of Having a Teenage Baby Brother. The line for Fascinating Reports has a sweetness and softness to it that I really love, and that combined with it also having a certain suggestiveness, does well in setting up the tone for how Damen is going to treat Laurent in that fic. The opening sentence for Your Breath in My Lungs immediately captures the kind of panic that Damen feels really well, and I like that it’s both the first thing you read when you open the fic, as well as the first thing Damen is aware of when he wakes up. I really love the first line to The Downsides of Having a Teenage Baby Brother. It has Auguste being happy for Laurent, which is always good, and the other thing that I love about it is that you can already hear a but in it, which also immediately gets followed through on in the next sentence.

I didn’t think I’d have that much to say on the opening lines to my fics, but this got unexpectedly long, so congratulations if you read all of this! I’m supposed to be tagging people now, but all the people I can think of right now have been tagged already... I do think this was a really good way to reflect on my writing though, so if there’s anyone who would like to do this, but hasn’t been tagged, I really think you should still do it, and if you want to you can consider yourself tagged by me :)

#tag game #my writing #mine #i feel like i should maybe apologize for how long this got #but i thought it was really interesting to reflect on my writing this way #so i just kept talking on and im not actually sorry for that #so while the urge to apologize might be there a little bit im opting to ignore it #also fun fact #the opening line of fascinating reports might be one of my favorites #but the title for that fic is absolutely one of my least favorites #i still cant think of a better title though so the fics stuck with it

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freetobeafcknriot · 2 years

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1, 10, 28 😊

1. talk about the first ship you ever had.

the first couple i can remember shipping — and i'm talking about thirteen-year-old me more or less, so this was before i discovered the fanfiction rabbit hole and knew about fanarts and stuff — is truten, that is, trunks and goten from dragon ball z lol. it's actually funny if i think about it now because i was very naive and as someone who grew up in a catholic environment, i thought, "i probably shouldn't like them, but i do. a lot! so whatever." looking back, i can see that there was a pattern there already because basically, almost every canon ship i saw in media had me uninterested, bummed or annoyed. not because they were straight ships, rather because i didn't want and didn't like nor did i care romance (like the little arospec nugget that i found out i was years later), but then i looked at those two little half-alien dorks being best friends and troublemakers and growing up together with their dynamic and all and something clicked and i was like, "what if they held hands :) i want them to be together, they're cute!".

10. do you ship any characters that have never met?

apparently, rarepairs and crack ships are my jam, so yesss! i have a few crossover ships — which counts because they obviously never met — the most recent being jirou from bnha and kuroo from haikyuu. two out of three times they have a very niche fandom, like the ships between non/disney characters (i'm having flashbacks from my big four era); in the last case, i just looked at two of my muses and thought they would be a great and funny couple together. yolo!

28. does shipping come easily to you?

shipping is a bit like falling in love to me, sometimes i think it comes with being on the asexual and aromantic spectrum, so no, it doesn't. i'm a multishipper and generally, i support ships without consuming or creating or seeking content myself, like the ones my friends like. if it's not a notp, then whether it's my cup of tea or not i support you anyway! but when it comes to me i actually never go look for ships myself. in fact, i often don't notice the mainstream ones, and i dislike when they're straight up shoved down my throat. i literally get into stuff for the plot and the platonic stuff lol which means that i have few ships, lesser than most, and they're almost always the most unconventional or rare ones, for no reason other than chemistry or potential or a literal coup de feudre. however, the ones i do have take over my time and passion and interest — because it just clicked, it's like thee zing. there was something about them that just made me fall in love over time. midam is a good example because it's my top favorite and it has a very, very unique place in my heart. and this happened gradually and because of several details that are just theirs and their story's. like, i'd watched the show for three years before them, and i had never shipped anything before. fifteen seasons and then there they were, reaching my lil' heart and i go brrrr — that's the kind of shipper i am lol.

thanks for asking tuo!! 💖

meme for shippers

#ngl i'm also a bit petty literally everyone go for major stuff and pair up characters because of how they look together (happens often—#—but luckily not always) and i be like. well LOOK at this one! they're not tol and hot but they're hella cool so hey!#i'm shipping them with this one. no idc they never talked they have so much chemistry it could set something on fire xoxo #aside from that my attention span is limited so i can only focus on so many ships at once lol #but i love them all. they're my children <333 #asks #shipping

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vowled · 3 years

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Unpopular Opinion: Johnlock edition

So, I am, as invariably suggested by my blog and username, a major Sherlock fan. I absolutely love it. The first time I watched it, I immediately related to it, and my peabag brain instantly saw a friend in John Watson. Sherlock’s character, on the other hand, was quite unconventional to me. I couldn’t bring myself to quite like him for the first 2 episodes. He was.....different. I knew I wanted to watch the series just for the dynamic duo and their and sweet friendship. The cases I couldn’t at first care for much, but eventually that changed too. I always was completely amazed by how well they had managed to adapt the series to the 21st century and their subtle winks to the original canon too was quite impressive. Eventually, I fell in love with it, and proceeded to watch the entire series thrice. in a row. I was, and still am, completely obsessed.

Then came the thought, which was also somehow initially suggested subtly by the show itself, ” What if Sherlock and John are in Love?” I must agree, I had read too many conspiracy theories about certain celebs being closeted to not come up with that question.

At first it was just a thought. But then, critical analyses on tumblr came up. I couldn’t stop reading them?! and so many of them were thought-provoking and persuasive and honestly, I was living for it. The phone = heart theory is still one of the best Theories I’ve read among all the fandoms I’ve ever been in. And that is just one among many. JohnLock was everywhere. Other ships were persistent, but none could reach the amount of fervor as JohnLock. And I was living for it too. I still really enjoy all the adorable fanfics and the ever-interesting theories, and honestly, at this point, my motto is “I’ll find homoerotic subtext even if it kills me”.

Shipping is ok, shipping is good. But here’s the deal we need to talk about: we shouldn’t justify our ships to the point of interpreting every action as romantic. This propagates unrealistic expectations and results in harmful stereotypes.

Yes, I’m talking about the unending debate on Johnlock.

From season one itself, Johnlock was phenomenal. It is widely argued that the show-runners themselves inserted subtle hints, and hence, birthed this beast on their own. The Sherlock fandom remains one of the oldest fandoms in the world, with its beginnings rooted in the Nineteenth Century when ASiS was published, and since then many have argued about the latent homosexual subtext embedded into the writing, my point here being people have been shipping Johnlock for well over a hundred years. Hence, It’s not really a surprise that people are still drawn to this ship. But to be shipped by this magnitude of people? This invariably suggests that there’s material provided to us by the creators themselves that is very blatantly obvious about the relationship. And while in most cases shipping two characters is completely okay in itself, according to me, shipping Johnlock has further validation in the fact that there is proof of intent of it becoming canon eventually (at least in the first two seasons).

Like I said before, shipping is OK, shipping is good.

But is shipping okay if we take it to the point of over-analysing every move?

Sherlock is a comfort character for me. God knows half of my maladaptive daydreams are about him being a father figure towards me. My entire twitter tl and Tumblr dashboard is stuffed with cutesy or angsty things about him, and that’s great! But being in the fandom for about eight months, I’ve realised how this sort of feed eventually resulted in me completely forgetting the original storyline, and more importantly, in me forgetting how flawed a character Sherlock is!

Everyone(including me, the first time) freaks out in HLV because of how Sherlock isn’t listed as John’s pressure point. I, however, think we should question ourselves: Why should John still consider Sherlock that tantalizingly close to himself as he was in the beginning? John learnt his best friend had died, and he decided to do the bravest thing he could: make peace with it and move on. BUT NO! The Ghost of the man who loved him returned from the grave to haunt him! Here I talk about the other possible reasons why Sherlock wasn’t a pressure point for John in HLV.

I am tired of this constant sugarcoating of Sherlock’s character. I am tired of seeing constant posts about how Sweet and caring Sherlock is and how much he loves John and how he loved her more than Mary. I am done with over analysis of every single shot where Sherlock looks at John, completely done. This shot below? It’s been overused for so many fanfics and cheesy romantic lines that I forgot that it’s supposed to be a look of GUILT.

Anyone who knows me knows that I love sherlock so dearly because he’s a very unlikeable character. That is precisely what sets him so far apart from the other characters. Sherlock started off with a hateful and dismissive character, but through the course of the events he undergoes a lot of emotional development. And that is truly noteworthy. In TFP he said for Mycroft, “ He did the best he could (for Eurus)...” and that is truly sentimental. This sort of development is always heartwarming.

What I want people to understand is that Analysis is, obviously, important. And CRITICAL ANALYSIS more so. And it’s saddening to see so many people glossing over the critical part of the analysis. Why is it so wrong to point out HOW HURTFUL SHERLOCK’S ACTIONS TOWARDS JOHN HAVE BEEN? Why is it wrong to to point out Johnlockers borderline bully other shippers?

Can we finally talk about the problematic aspects of Johnlock, or rather Johnlockers?

Even though I’m relatively new to the fandom, I’ve noticed how dismissive people are of anything negative said about Sherlock. In the beginning, it was endearing, really; but now I see this pattern of constantly singing praises of Sherlock’s character, and it has lead me to realize how detrimental it can be to the relatively younger audiences. Sherlock is Rude, period. There’s no question about it. And this constant glorifying of his rudeness and arrogance and dismissing it as a quirk could very well possibly give the impression that arrogance and vanity are in fact not so bad, and hell, it might make one seem a little cooler even ! Oh, don’t be mad if I act like my comfort character ! I’m quirky like that !

Constant bashing of the creators. And when I say constant, I mean it. This sort of bashing about is never-ending. And when I say this, I don’t mean that the creators were perfect; some of their mistakes were, quite frankly, blatantly ignorant ( like Irene the Canon Lesbian falling for Sherlock), but I don’t see enough people praising it for what it is. Even now there is so much slander against the creators ( and personally I feel bad for Mark Gatiss because he’s actually on twitter and is constantly spammed). Is it really a surprise that the creators hate the fans and especially the Johnlockers? Was it supposed to be so shocking when Martin said that being in the show wasn’t very fun anymore because of the fans?

We just don’t actually analyze anymore! I get that we haven’t got any new content for FOUR muheffing years but please I literally don’t see anything that’s actually interesting or analytical anymore and that kills me because that was the reason I joined this fandom- to read and comprehend the subtext, and the AMAZING META! All I see are cute couple-ish pics of ben and Martin and tbh we can do so much better than that?!

Johnlockers have so much actual stuff to talk about? There is literally so much going on Subtextually, and yet all I see is people losing their mind over any interaction between Sherlock and John. This is so unfair! AND it’s detrimental too! With people painting every interaction as romantic in nature, the younger teenagers in this fandom who might not have experienced Love or Attraction may glean unrealistic ideas about them! It is difficult as it is to navigate oneself through romantic entanglements, let alone being fed such rose-colored ideas! And I say this because although I don’t know much about the audience on Tumblr, but Stan Twitter is like, (at least) 50 percent teenager-fuelled. It actually isn’t healthy for them at all.

Stop with the Benedict-worshipping for God’s sakes. Are you only in here because of him? We all get it, he’s absolutely stunning but come on, we’re here for the stories too right?

Romantic love is important, no doubt. But you know what’s completely overlooked? The platonic sort of love. And it’s tiring. Sherlock and Molly/Janine/Irene/John are all amazing duos and each pair has it’s own uniqueness and tang to it! Let’s not constantly dissect everything in the name of shipping, shall we?

lol looking back at it, I feel like it’s a vent rant for the prevailing circumstances on Stan Twitter. I apologize if anything I said hurt anyone, it wasn’t meant to. I completely understand that shipping people is for...recreation (?) but this was just my opinion. Let me know what you think about it!

#sherlock bbcsherlock im prolly gonna get a lot of hate for it maybe i should delete it but nah it took a long time to type dont hateme

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justforbooks · 4 years

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The Italian publisher, editor and collector Franco Maria Ricci has died at the age of 82.

In sumptuously produced art books, and as editor of the bi-monthly art magazine FMR, Ricci published writing by Jorge Luis Borges, Italo Calvino, Umberto Eco, Roland Barthes and many others over the course of his long and distinguished career. In 2019, Susan Moore visited his estate at Fontanellato, near Parma, where in recent years Ricci had constructed the largest labyrinth in the world out of bamboo; they discussed Ricci’s notable collection of largely 18th- and 19th-century sculpture and paintings, as well as his library of books published by the great typographer Giambattista Bodoni, whose works Ricci had reprinted in his first foray into publishing. The interview is published in full below.

Collecting may be read as a form of autobiography written with works of art rather than words. In the case of Franco Maria Ricci, his is a life composed of both words and pictures. He has not only published the most lavishly produced art magazine – FMR – and art books in the world, but also spent the last 50 years amassing a peerless collection of volumes produced by the great Italian typographer, compositor and publisher Giambattista Bodoni (1740–1813) and a rich, eclectic collection of some 500 largely neoclassical and baroque paintings and sculptures. Both collections are at the heart of his most recent and extraordinary venture, the creation of the immense, star-shaped Labirinto della Masone, near Parma, the largest labyrinth in the world – and surely one of the few planted with bamboo.

There is something surreal, and slightly disturbing, about turning off the autostrada and suddenly encountering this majestic bamboo structure rising 10m or more above the plains of the Po valley. For all its elegant calligraphic stems and angular leaves, this is not the sparse specimen bamboo of Chinese ink-painting, but a forest. Here, more than 200,000 of these fast-growing bamboos arch upward in their quest for light. Once I turn into the drive of what was originally Ricci’s grandfather’s estate at Fontanellato, the brilliant azure June sky all but disappears. By the end of my two-day visit, it seems that the contrasts of light and dark are an apt metaphor for the book and art collections – and for the entire complex of maze, museum, archive and chapel, the latter built in the form of a pyramid. Ricci has always been part rationalist, part visionary.

Ricci’s story begins with the book. ‘I grew up surrounded by my father’s books. Reading Shakespeare, Homer, Joyce and Dante saved me from bad taste,’ he once said. ‘It made beauty simple, familiar and immediate in my eyes.’ It was a book, too, that transformed his life and launched a long and successful career: Bodoni’s Manuale tipografico, first published in 1818. Before his discovery of Bodoni’s works in the Biblioteca Palatina in Parma in the 1960s, a career in publishing seemed unlikely. The stylish Ricci, a racing driver and a dandy with dark cherubic curls, was best known for patterning the snow in the piazza around Parma Cathedral with the wheels of his E-type Jaguar. Even Bernardo Bertolucci remembered that car.

As a young man, Ricci had wanted to study archaeology, but an uncle in the oil world persuaded him to sign up for geology instead. After three months in Turkey spent looking for oil that was not there, he realised the oil business was not for him. Yet his education proved critical in unlikely ways. He spent weekends exploring the mysterious, labyrinthine underground tunnels and caves that are a feature of the Romagna region of Italy. He also designed posters for Parma University’s theatre festival that caught the attention of an American curator preparing a show of Italian design in New York. He became, inadvertently, a graphic artist, and went on to create striking graphics for everything from Poste Italiane to Alitalia.

Ricci has long insisted that ‘Bodoni was not only a typographer. He achieved modernity and elegance through graphic art. He was, like Canova, a champion of neoclassicism but in two dimensions. I immediately fell in love with the proportions, the concept of beauty.’ Bodoni’s genius was not simply the freshness, rigour and precision of the typefaces, with their dramatic contrasts between thick and thin line, but also his sense of how to lay out a page. Texts are set with extravagantly wide margins and with little or no decoration.

Ricci decided to reproduce the master’s Manuale tipografico, although everyone told him he was mad to do it. He bought two early offset typography machines which, he noted, were ‘as expensive as a Ferrari, which I wanted to buy but never did’, and had the highest-quality paper made exclusively for the project by Fabriano. It took a year to publish the three volumes in 900 numbered copies (1964–65). ‘So I became a publisher. It became a bestseller.’

Much to his mother’s horror, Ricci decided to continue to publish very expensive books – art books printed in Bodonian style – and later, literary editions, several series of which were edited by Jorge Luis Borges, whose presence looms large in library and labyrinth. At a time when Arte Povera dominated the Italian avant-garde, Ricci chose opulent black silk covers embossed with gold, and printed on costly pale blue Fabriano paper with handmade plates. He wanted his books to be rare – printing small editions – but also surprising. He gave Roland Barthes, Umberto Eco, Italo Calvino and Borges free rein to write accompanying texts.

His wife Laura Casalis remembers having been struck by the originality of Ricci’s 1970 book on the then little-appreciated Erté – text by Barthes – before she met the publisher himself in 1975, and soon found herself working on a book on red paper-cut portraits of Mao, accompanied by 39 of the Chairman’s own poems printed in Chinese characters. ‘Little by little I slipped into publishing with him – Franco was a workaholic and I realised that was the only way I would see him. Those Mao paper-cuts were typical of the practically unknown subjects that he would seek out all his life, and we sometimes show them between loan exhibitions in the museum. Franco has l’occhio lungo – he can see beauty in something which may take others a long time to recognise.’

It is in the library I find Ricci and, indeed, where he is to be found most mornings and afternoons. It is part of a cluster of picturesque 19th-century stone buildings surrounded by lush and increasingly exotic gardens. He had begun renovating the dilapidated stables behind his grandfather’s long-abandoned villa as a summerhouse and library in the 1970s, and its enormous hayloft still serves as an idyllic open-air dining room and entertaining space, even though the couple have now moved into the main house. Inside this romantic half-ruined folly, Ricci created the unexpected: two neoclassical library rooms lined with bookshelves and marble busts, their domed and coffered ceilings reminiscent of those in the Biblioteca Palatina.

As soon as we arrive in the inner sanctum, the Bodoni library with its more than 1,200 volumes – missing a tantalising three or four tomes but otherwise complete – Ricci is immediately up on his feet and pulling down and opening cherished volumes, eyes blazing. Despite the heat, he wears an elegant embroidered linen waistcoat but not its jacket, which hangs nearby, bearing the synthetic red flower that became in effect his iconographical device. (Tai Missoni gave him a cardigan as a present: Ricci declined the gift – he does not wear cardigans – but declared that he would always wear the red flower from its packaging thereafter, which he did. Once, when he had forgotten the flower, an officer at the Alitalia desk at Milan airport said: ‘I see you are travelling incognito today Mr Ricci.’)

Now Ricci deftly presents Bodoni’s Essai de caractères russes… of 1782, and his 1789 edition of Torquato Tasso’s pastoral play Aminta, exquisitely illuminated for the Prince of Essling. These are dear friends and the joy as he handles these pages is self-evident. This is the only significant part of the collection not to have been moved down to the museum and archive complex, a short bamboo-lined drive away. It is clear that he could never bear to live apart from these books.

The impetus to create the long-imagined labyrinth, and a museum and library to house his collections and publishing archive, was a diagnosis of Parkinson’s disease. The couple sold the publishing house in 1982, and their house in Milan, and moved to Fontanellato. There is a fierce pride in Laura Casalis’s voice as she explains: ‘Franco wanted to do it, he imagined it, and he found the right team of people to help him realise it.’ We are sitting over coffee in the Labirinto courtyard surveying the sharp-edged geometries of its rose-pink brick buildings, a place that already has the air of a lost ancient city discovered in a jungle. Laura describes the evolution of the museum collections within, and recalls the words of the late Italian publisher Valentino Bompiani, who described Ricci as a man of courage and fantasy.

‘Whenever he fell for some subject or artist, Franco would try to buy.’ Laura continues. ‘He was never concerned with what was or was not fashionable, and never bought to decorate a house. He collected pieces that he liked that were strange or unconventional.’ He began with Art Deco, first buying inexpensive little bronze and chryselephantine dancers by the likes of Demétre Chiparus (1886–1947), as well as Guiraud-Rivière’s dramatic figure of Isadora Duncan with two bears, which dominates the central space of the 20th-century gallery in the museum.

Here, too, are three paintings by the outsider artist Antonio Ligabue (1899–1965), a tormented soul who had led a tragic life, painting and wandering around the Po valley when he was not confined to a psychiatric hospital. Ricci published the first monograph on the artist in 1967, two years after his death, a work that helped catapult the artist from provincial to national and then international fame. Two years later, he bought two of the artist’s bold, visceral close-up heads of roaring tigers, painted in the 1950s, including the key work that had been selected for the book cover. A no less bright and richly impasted self-portrait in the guise of Vincent Van Gogh followed a year later.

Ricci also championed – and collected – the work of the third dominant presence in this space, Adolfo Wildt (1868–1931), often described as the last Symbolist but one whose reputation was, as Laura puts it, ‘tarnished by Fascist association’. Ricci published a monograph in 1988, the same year that he acquired the strange masterpiece that is Vir temporis acti of 1913, a virtuoso marble bust of a Greek or Roman soldier reimagined through the combined lenses of Michelangelo and the Secessionists. The expressive anguish of this head may be seen as a symbol of the nobility and redemption of sacrifice, but it is the refined and gleaming silken surface that led to Brancusi.

Ricci has a penchant not only for sculpture but also portraits, and portrait busts in particular. ‘I have hunted portraits all my life. I never get tired of looking at them,’ he confesses, ‘and in turn, I feel observed by them.’ In the 1990s, he began following the art market and collecting in earnest. Ricci had an office, bookshop and apartment in Paris and there and in Monaco he was to acquire many of his largely French 18th-century terracottas, some of the most compelling by less familiar names. A superb example is the bust of an intense, low-browed individual, signed by one A. Riffard and given the Revolutionary date of ‘9. Fructidor an 3e’, from 1794–95.

Another naturalistic tour de force is one of very few known terracottas by Francesco Orso, also known as François Orsy, a Piedmontese sculptor also active in Paris. Orso is responsible for the rarest sculptures here: the disconcerting life-size polychrome wax portrait busts of Vittorio Amadeo III of Savoy and his wife Maria Antonia Ferdinanda di Borbone, complete with painted papier-mâché clothes. The revolution destroyed the sculptor’s courtly patronage in Paris, and he diversified into the more overtly commercial world of the waxwork with a show featuring an effigy of the aristocratic revolutionary leader the Comte de Mirabeau and popular tableaux on themes such as Marat’s assassination by Charlotte Corday.

Unsurprisingly, given Ricci’s passion for Bodoni, the neoclassical looms large. At the centre of the Napoleonic gallery, lined with marble busts – Italian, English and Danish – is a model of Canova’s ideal head of Dante’s muse Beatrice, first conceived as an idealised portrait of Mme Récamier. The display offers a witty face-off between Wellington and Napoleon on opposing pedestals, but the emperor prevails with a sequence of classicising family portraits. Above hangs the second version of Francesco Hayez’s The Penitent Magdalene (1825). Here the Romantic artist has transposed the chilly perfection of Canova’s marble surfaces into pigment.

An unusual and endearing mid 18th-century Italian group portrait presents the family of Antonio Ghidini, a cloth merchant to the Bourbon court in Parma, painted by his friend, the court artist Pietro Melchiorre Ferrari (1734/5–87). In this Zoffany-style conversation piece there is no doubting Ghidini’s business, as he points to documents mentioning his association with his trading partners in Manchester and his wife sits stiffly under her salmon-pink stomacher in sprigged and striped silk finery.

Yet it would be misleading to suggest that Ricci’s ever-curious eye never ranged beyond the 18th and 19th centuries. He owns a number of 17th-century marbles, including that of the all-powerful prelate Cardinal Paluzzo Paluzzi Altieri degli Albertoni, who effectively ran the papacy under Clement X – irresistible in profile. In the 2000s Ricci also added, for example, Ludovico Carracci’s handsome three-quarter length Portrait of Lucrezia Bentivoglio Leoni (1589), executed two years before the sitter’s death. Flanking the same door is Philippe de Champaigne’s Portrait of the Duchesse d’Aiguillon (c. 1650), and viewed beyond is an unusual sensual and erotically charged work by Luca Cambiaso (1527–85), Venus Blindfolding Cupid.

Yet Ricci has also always been attracted to what he describes as the art of visionary madness, by the surreal, and by what is prosaic and popular. The museum’s cabinet of curiosities includes a narwhal horn, once thought to have belonged to the unicorn. Its walls are lined with particularly gruesome vanitas paintings and sculptures. Centre stage among the skulls is a decomposing head by Jacopo Ligozzi (1547–1627), its flesh and rotten teeth seething with maggots and flies.

Only superficially more benign are the drawings of the Codex Seraphinianus, first published in two volumes in 1981 – Ricci’s most extraordinary publication. These meticulously detailed explications of the bizarre and the fantastical illustrate an encyclopaedia of an imaginary world conceived by the artist Luigi Serafini in the 1970s and written in a language still understood only by its creator. Certainly its pages are at home in the Labirinto della Masone complex – another visionary creation, in effect a Gesamtkunstwerk, an all-embracing art work expressing the life and taste of one man.

Daily inspiration. Discover more photos at http://justforbooks.tumblr.com

#JUST FOR BOOKS #Franco Maria Ricci

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generallypo · 4 years

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“I heard your voice, so I came... Aoba-san.”

Hooo-boy, if that doesn’t get me emotional every single time. Call it my bias for eccentric bundles of sunshine and softness, or my crippling weakness for the secretly-handsome-and-devastatingly-earnest type, but you can’t change my mind: Clear is, hands down, DMMD’s best love interest. Character development-wise, thematically, romantically, he nails every trial thrown at him, gets his man, and proceeds to break your heart in the tenderest, sincerest way possible. I am hopping with Huge Fan Energy, so this post is gonna be unapologetically long and self-indulgent and grossly enthusiastic. Yeeeee.

————

Look, DMMD meta analysis has been done to death, I get it. This game is old. But I think it stands as testament to its excellent production that it’s still a game worth revisiting years later — especially during these times when social contact is so hard pressed to come by and we all rabidly devour digital media like a horde of screeching feral gremlins. (Have you seen Netflix’s stock value now? The exploding MMO server populations? Astonishing.) It’s pure, simple human nature to want to connect, to cling to members of our network out of biological imperative and our psychological dependency on each other. As cold and primitive at that sounds, social contact also fulfills us on a higher level: the community is always stronger than the individual; genuine trust begets a mutually supportive relationship of exchange and evolution. People learn from each other, and grow into stronger, wiser, better versions of themselves.

Yeah, I’m being deliberately obtuse about this. Of course I’m talking about Clear. Clear, who is a robot. Clear, who is nearly childlike in his insatiable curiosity regarding the human condition.

And it’s a classic literary tactic, using non-human entities to question the intangible constructs of a concept like ‘humanity’ — think Frankenstein, or Tokyo Ghoul, or Detroit: Become Human, among so, so many works in various media — all tackling that question from countless angles, all with varying measures of success. What does it mean to be human? To be good? Who are we, and where do we stand in the grand scheme of things? Is there even a scheme to follow? … Wait, what?

Jokes aside, there are so many ways that the whole approaching-human-yet-not-quite-there schtick can be abused into edgy, joyless existential griping. Nothing wrong with that if it’s what you’re looking for, except that we’re talking about a boys’ love game here. But DMMD neatly, sweetly side steps that particular wrinkle, giving us a wonderfully grounded character to work with as a result.

Character Design — a see-through secret

Let’s start small: Clear’s design and premise. Unlike so many other lost, clueless robo-lambs across media, Clear does have a small guiding presence early on in his life. It takes the form of his grandfather, who teaches Clear about the world while also sheltering him from his origins. It means he learns enough to blend sufficiently into society; it also means that Clear has even more questions that sprout from his limited understanding of the world.

Told that he must never remove his mask lest he expose his identity as a non-human, Clear’s perpetual fear of rejection for what he is drives much of his eccentricity and challenges him throughout much of his route. As for the player, the mystery of what lies underneath his mask is a carrot that the writers get to dangle until the peak moment of emotional payoff. Even if it’s not hard to guess that there’s probably a hottie of legendary proportions stuck under there, there’s still significance in waiting for that good moment to happen. And when it does, it feels great.

His upbringing contextualizes and affirms his odd choice of fashion: deliberately generic, bashfully covered from the public eye, and colored nearly in pure white - the quintessential signal of a blank slate, of innocence. Contrasted with the rest of DMMD’s flashy, colorful crew, Clear is probably the most difficult to read on a superficial scale, not falling into the fiery, bare-chest sex appeal of a womanizer, or the techno-nerd rebel aesthetic that Noiz somehow rocks. Goofy weirdo? Possibly a serial killer? Honestly, both seem plausible at the start.

And that’s the funny thing, because as damn hard as he tries to physically cover himself up from society, Clear is irrepressibly true to his name: transparent to a fault. He’s a walking, talking contradiction, and it’s not hard to realize that this mysterious, masked stranger… is really just an open book. By far the most effusive and straightforward of the entire cast, his actions are wildly unconventional and sometimes wholly inexplicable. But given time to explain himself, he is always, always sincere in his intentions — and unlike the rest of the love interests, naturally inclined to offer bits of himself to Aoba. It doesn’t take the entire character arc to figure out his big, bad secret — our main character gets an inkling about halfway through his route — and what’s even better is that he embraces it, understanding that his abilities also allow him to protect what he cherishes: Aoba.

So what if he doesn’t fit into an easily recognizable box of daydream boyfriend material? He’s contradictory, and contradiction is interesting. Dons a gas mask, but isn’t an edgelord. Blandly dressed, but ridiculously charming. Unreadable and modestly intimidating — until he opens his mouth. Even without the benefit of traversing his route, there’s already so much good stuff to work with, and sure as hell, you’re kept guessing all the way to the end.

Character Development — from reckless devotion into complaisant subservience, complaisant subservience into mutual understanding. And then, of course: free will, and true love.

At its core, DMMD is about a dude with magic mind-melding powers and his merry band of attractive men with — surprise! — crippling emotional baggage. Each route follows the same pattern, simply remixing the individual character interactions and the pace of the program: Aoba finds himself isolated with the love interest, faces various communication issues varying on the scale of frustrating to downright dangerous, wanders into a sketchy section of Platinum Jail, bonds with the love interest over shared duress, breaks into the Oval Tower, faces mental assault by the big bad — and finally, finally, destroys those internal demons plaguing the love interest, releasing the couple onto the path of a real heart-to-heart conversation. And then, you know, the lovey-dovey stuff.

Here’s the thing: as far as romantic progression goes, it’s really not a bad structure. There’s room to bump heads, but also to bond. The Scrap scene is a thematically cohesive and clever way to squeeze in the full breadth of character backstory while simultaneously advancing the plot. In this part, Aoba must become the hero to each of his love interests and save them from themselves. Having become privy to each other’s deepest thoughts and reaching a mutual understanding of each other, their feelings afterwards slide much more naturally into romantic territory. They break free of Oval Tower, make their way home, and have hot, emotionally fulfilling sex or otherwise some variation on the last few steps. The end.

That is, except for Clear.

Clear’s route is refreshing in that he needs none of these things — the climax of his emotional arc actually comes a little after the halfway point of his route. When Clear’s true origins are revealed, he comes entirely clean to Aoba, fighting against his fear of rejection but also trusting that Aoba will listen. It’s a quiet, vulnerable moment, rather than the action-packed tension we normally experience during a Scrap scene.

That doesn’t mean it’s prematurely written in — it simply means that he reaches his potential faster than the other characters. Because of that, he’s free to pursue the next level of his route’s development much, much sooner in the timeline: he overcomes his fears of his appearance, he confesses his love to Aoba, he leaves the confines of a largely dubious master-servant relationship and allows himself to be Aoba’s equal. Clear’s sprite art mirrors his emotional transformation all the way through, exposing him to the literal bone — and Aoba’s affection for him doesn’t change a single bit. Beautiful.

The whammy of incredible moments doesn’t just stop there, though. I don’t exactly recall the order the routes DMMD is ideally meant to be played in, but I believe Clear’s is meant to be last. And if you do, I can guarantee that it becomes a hugely delightful gameplay experience — in order to achieve his good ending, you must do absolutely nothing with Scrap. It doesn’t just subvert our player expectations of proactively clicking and interacting with our love interests; it grabs the story by its thematic reins and yanks it all back to the forefront of our scene.

In every route besides Clear’s, Scrap is a tool used to insert Aoba’s influence into and interfere with his target’s mind. Using his powers of destruction, Aoba is able to prune whatever maligned thoughts are harming his target; in any conventional situation, using Scrap is the right choice.

But one of the central problems in Clear’s route is his conflict between the impulses of his conditioning and his desire to live freely as a human would. Breaking free of Toue’s programming is what initially made him unique; growing beyond the rules imposed by his grandfather is what makes him human. In the final conflict scene, Clear’s decision to destroy his key-lock is an action of true autonomy, made with perfect understanding of the consequences and a sincere, selflessly selfish desire to protect someone he loves. In order to receive his good end, you have to respect his decision. It doesn’t matter which option you pick — by using Scrap, Aoba turns his back on every positive choice he made with Clear and attempts to exert his authority over him. This is Aoba becoming Toue; this is Aoba trying to reinstate himself as ‘Master’ right as he approved Clear as his equal. That’s blatant hypocrisy, and it doesn’t matter if Aoba is trying to do it for Clear’s ‘own good’ — that’s not Aoba’s call to make. If you truly wish to respect Clear’s free will, you will stand by. This is the truth of the moment: Clear has no emotional blockages that Aoba needs to fix. Believe in him, just as he believed in you.

The path to his heart is, and always has been, clear. Scrap was never needed from the start.

While Aoba might be the main character, Clear is undeniably a hero in his own route just as much. Tirelessly earnest and always curious, he leaps headlong into the unknown and emerges with his newfound enlightenment. He’s unafraid of weathering trials, even to the point of accepting death, and returns anew from oblivion to a sweet, cathartic ending. That’s about as textbook hero’s journey as it gets — if that doesn’t make him unquestionably, certifiably, unconditionally human, then I will scream.

And only finally… there is the free end. The final CG is like a throwback to our first impression of him: indistinct, purposefully obscured from proper view. But this time, we know better — and so does Aoba. Looks were never what mattered in Clear’s route. If you were patient, and you were open-minded, and you listened… well, what we realize now is that Clear was doing the exact same thing for you, too.

From a carefree, aimless robot-man with only the gimmick of “eccentric ditz” to carry him forward, we get a supremely more interesting character by the end: a man who has graduated from the well-intentioned but claustrophobic conditioning of his childhood; a weapon who has defied the imperatives placed on him by his creator’s programming; a wanderer who has, through unconditional patience and empathy, discovered love, and striven to become a better person for it. Who was it that ever doubted Clear’s character? He’s the goddamn goodest boy that ever wanted to be a real boy. Of course Clear is human. And in fact, he does it better than every single one of the actually human love interests. You can’t change my mind.

The Romance — kindness is really fucking attractive, okay.

Like I’ve said earlier, I have my Big Fan Blinds stuck on pretty tight. I might be conjuring sparks from thin air. But I think every choice was a deliberate creative decision on the writers’ part, and they deserve all the kudos for it — I’m just the lucky player who gets to enjoy it. But aside from Noiz (who I also think is a perfect darling as well — I could go on and on about him), Clear’s route is a model example for consent and healthy relationships in VN storytelling. This is reciprocated on both sides: never does Aoba infringe on Clear’s boundaries, and neither does Clear. They’re sensitive to each other’s needs and concerns; they ask for permission and stop when it isn’t granted (and when it is, boy do they get frisky — I’m not complaining!) I don’t need to say much more, because I think that consent is both fantastic and yes, incredibly hot (the scene in DMMD is tons more sad, go play Re:connect!). Good writing shows off the massive erotic potential enthusiastic consent puts into intimacy, and Aoba’s and Clear’s relationship is honestly a dream playground. The point is, I think Aoba and Clear genuinely do find equal balance in their relationship by the end of his route (and certainly through Re:connect). If you follow through Re:connect’s storyline, there’s even more thematic richness that comes through in the form of Clear’s greatest asset: communication. The couple get to discuss the long-term implications of them being together; they both offer concerns, points, and assurances to the other, and it’s just a soft, honest moment not so unlike the worries of a real relationship. Hearing is kind of Clear’s motif sense, but it’s really great to see that Aoba also subtly picks it up, really flexes his own communication skills to better engage with Clear.

Point is, Clear’s route spoke to me on a lot of little levels. Design-wise, he’s already got a ton going for him, and his story builds upon it rather than against it, enriching his development and grounding him a little more solidly in the DMMD universe (and in my heart). His route, aside from being emotionally ruinous, carries a pretty solid chunk of world-building (only beaten out by Mink’s and Ren’s, probably), and the romance feels organic, healthy, and realistic. He’s not the only one with an excellent route, but he’s my favorite. If you read through all of this, you’re a real trooper and I’m extremely impressed. Thanks for tuning in. Peace.

#dramatical murder #dmmd #aoba seragaki #clear #dmmd clear #long ass emotional screeching #lOL I FORGOT TO DRAW IN THE UMBRELLA HANDLE ahA #fixed

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peace-coast-island · 3 years

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Diary of a Junebug

Movie night with a bunch of oranges

Today was a busy day consisting of harvesting oranges and bringing out equipment for tomorrow. We've got a pretty good haul - and probably way too many oranges than we can handle. Thankfully I still have room in my inventory for other fish/bugs/shells or else I'd be kinda screwed, but I should try to make more room just in case.

Then again, there's still the possibility that I end up slacking off and spend the last day trying to collect as many oranges as possible before the deadline. I don't know why, but when it comes to collecting fruit I almost always find myself rushing at the end. I hate having to use up fertilizer in batches but sometimes you have no choice.

At least for this event I have some help so here's to hoping I don't have to break out the fertilizer at all. Probably wishful thinking, though it doesn't hurt to hope. With five extra hands helping out, why wouldn't we be able to get a lot done?

It's good to see Lotte, Mitch, and Gene again along with Willow, Frank, and Paisley. I haven't seen the latter three in forever since they've been super busy so imagine my excitement when I found out that Gene's working with them on a new movie.

The new movie's another adaptation of Paisley's short stories, Flower in the Wind, which will be directed by Willow and starring Cheyenne Ruthie in her film debut with Gene and Frank as part of the supporting cast. Cheyenne used to live in the neighborhood near me and Daisy Jane and we reconnected a while back after running into each other on social media.

In fact, she's planning to drop by the camp sometime in the near future as she's going through some pretty big life changes and could use a bit of a breather when things settle down a bit. Along with the upcoming movie, she's also in the process of moving and making up for lost time with her dad. I'm happy that things are going well for her and knowing Willow and Paisley, Flower in the Wind is sure to mark the start of something greater for her.

Willow, Frank, and Paisley are all former members of Jamie's entourage. Willow Chasen's a writer and director known for classics like Crossfire, Fighting Stance, Paper Dreams, Train Whistle Blowing, and many others. She's been named one of the greatest directors of the decade and she rightfully deserves that honor. I'm a huge fan of her work so I'll admit that I have high expectations for the new movie.

Frank Dunston and Paisley Kusuma are bloggers who used to run Behind the Spotlight, which chronicled the behind the scenes of the entourage members. Before coming to the island, they made the news when they were abducted and held hostage by a former detective who used to work for Frank's aunt Diane. His uncle, Eldred Dunston, is a well known actor who got Frank and Paisley interested in acting.

The two have been best friends for a long time, they have a sweet relationship. We joke that they're like an old married couple but it's all strictly platonic. They share an apartment and raise Paisley's daughter Lizzie together. Lizzie's named after Diane as she figuratively and literally saved Paisley and Frank's lives. The whole ordeal with the abduction brought them closer together and also wound up kicking off their careers.

While they have been doing a lot more solo projects since leaving the entourage and ending the blog, Frank and Paisley are still a duo. Flower in the Wind happens to be their first movie together in over a year, something they said they've been enjoying as they missed working alongside each other.

Paisley's a writer and author who runs a blog called The Flower Writes which she updates sporadically with life stuff and her creative process on her latest projects. She does some acting in supporting roles though she prefers to be behind the scenes, having established herself as a writer and producer over the years. She's also one of the writers for Robert's upcoming show Mount Barley, RFD so that's another reason to be hyped about it. Maybe someday she'll be sitting on the director's chair but she says that for now she's happy where she is.

Frank has been acting on stage and screen, starting out on small roles alongside his uncle until he got comfortable with the spotlight before making a name for himself on his own. He also dabbles in photography, having once run a blog for that before becoming a freelancer. Speaking of that, Daisy Jane's his next client as she's in need of professional pics for her upcoming shop update. Since he doesn't live too far from here, he's offered to make the commute to help Daisy Jane out for future shop updates, which is great as she finds taking product photos is one of her least favorite aspects of running a shop.

Lotte's been busy with the bakery while Mitch is working hard at the orchard. Gene's been making time in between acting gigs and his day job to visit home often, getting back in touch with old friends he hasn't seen or heard or spoken to in years. It's good to hear that things between Gene and his dad have improved since I last saw them. Lotte and Mitch can finally rest easy now that their family's back together. Although I haven't known Gene for long, it feels like I've known him forever and can't imagine him not being here.

Interesting how one's presence (or absence) can leave such an impression.

It's a good thing Mitch's here for a harvesting event as he's got a vast knowledge on a variety of plants and produce. Thanks to him, we were able to venture outside the camp to find more oranges. Who knew that Starsnatch Grove has a bunch of different varieties of oranges? Perfect oranges, starburst oranges, rainberry oranges - there's so many more that I've never seen or heard of before!

Turns out that Starsnatch's soil is ideal for citrus and that around this time of year is the peak of their season. Mitch really did his research about the camp and its surrounding areas. He also showed me other places for fruits and veggies, which will be useful for future reference.

So we've been wandering around Starsnatch, collecting all kinds of oranges and exploring the area. Rainberry oranges look like rainbow berries, hence the name, and the taste kinda reminds me of an orange spice tea. Cinnaorange is a new variety I've never seen before as they're rare and according to Lotte, they make a good marmalade. Sunkiss splash is an unusual orange with a sunburst pattern on its skin. The tree is kinda hard to care for, which is why there's not a lot of them and the orchard where Mitch works is one of the few that grows them.

With all these oranges, there's a lot we can do with them. I don't even know where to start as there's so many possibilities. Good thing we have Mitch and Lotte here to help us out!

After a busy day of collecting oranges, catching up, hiking, and coming up with ideas for tomorrow, it felt fitting to end the day with a movie marathon. So we watched three Sound Stories movies while enjoying sweet and tangy oranges.

Firefly Garden is one of my absolute favorite movies ever. Pretty much everyone I know considers this one of their favorites, including my mom. From the stunning animation to the gorgeous soundtrack and heartwarming story, it's no wonder it's a classic. Noelle and Sophie are hands down some of my favorite characters of all time.

The second movie we watched was Neighbors, a cute movie where nothing much happens yet it's so soothing and entertaining to watch. The art is breathtaking and expressive and it really adds to the story. It's a bit of an offbeat, unconventional kind of film, one I initially thought I wouldn't get into but ended up enjoying a lot.

Bee and the Quill is the latest Sound Stories movie and I loved it. The story's a bit hard to follow, but that's the point. As usual, the visuals are stunning and the whole dragon fight sequence was amazing to watch. Viola's journey to find her sister's ghost is one of those stories where you don't know exactly what's going on so you just roll with it and open your mind to the unknown.

Tomorrow we're gonna take a break from harvesting oranges to have some fun in the kitchen with our new discoveries. I'm looking forward to trying a bunch of new teas, especially with the rainberry oranges. We'll be making orange tea cake, orange juice, salads, and all kinds of other recipes we may stumble across. Then at night will be another marathon of Sound Stories movies where we'll be watching Snowflakes and Floating on Clouds, both which I've somehow never got a chance to watch yet.

#animal crossing #animal crossing pocket camp #Diary of a Junebug #headcanon ramble

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recentanimenews · 4 years

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Anime for the Romantically Awkward and the Awkwardly Romantic

Valentine's Day is fast approaching, love is in the air, and the stores are filled with heart-shaped boxes of chocolates and crimson greeting cards expressing all levels of romantic passion. But even though anime is a medium that is filled to bursting with romance, some of us fans realize that falling in love isn't always bouquets of roses and dancing beneath the stars.

Sometimes love is toothpaste stains on the bathroom mirror and cold, bony feet poking you from the other end of the blanket, and frankly, that sentiment deserves some recognition, too. Below you can find a curated list of awkwardly romantic and romantically awkward anime titles, the perfect sort of thing to throw a kink into your typical Valentine's Day viewing.

Whether you've got a yen for mismatched couples, a hankering for romantic miscommunications and similar shenanigans, or a burning desire to pluck Cupid's wings and cut his bowstring in half, we've got a series or two that might be right for you.

Odd Couples

MY love STORY!! (2015)

Kicking things off with a cuter, cuddlier entry, MY love STORY!! features a primary romantic pairing between Takeo Goda, a big and burly high school student with a penchant for judo, and Rinko Yamato, a petite girl who likes to bake. Their romance is initially complicated by Takeo assuming Rinko is attracted to his best friend, the traditionally handsome Makoto Sunakawa, but once this misconception is ironed out, My love STORY!! is an excellent if unconventional look at romance.

MY love STORY!! does a great job dealing with issues of communication and consent while also skillfully navigating the conflicts caused by friendships and romantic rivalries. The series gets bonus points for Takeo being one of the sweetest, most pure-hearted protagonists in the genre, and for the positive qualities expressed through the relationships of other characters, such as Takeo's parents.

MY love STORY!! is available via streaming on Crunchyroll and on U.S. home video via Sentai Filmworks.

Mysterious Girlfriend X (2012)

On the other end of the spectrum we've got Mysterious Girlfriend X, a story about the unusual high school romance between Akira Tsubaki and Mikoto Urabe, a boy and a girl who share an almost psychic connection brought about by Akira consuming Mikoto's saliva on a regular basis. The central idea sounds kinda revolting at first, but if you give Mysterious Girlfriend X a chance, you'll discover that the show is way brainier and more sophisticated than the premise would appear at first blush.

Mysterious Girlfriend X is available via streaming on Crunchyroll and on U.S. home video via Sentai Filmworks.

Other "Odd Couples" options for the discerning viewer: Sakura Trick, Rascal Does Not Dream of Bunny Girl Senpai

Missed Communications

Princess Jellyfish (2010)

If you like a little romance mixed with a gigantic portion of self-pity and Impostor Syndrome, then Princess Jellyfish is the show for you. Centered on a group of geeky ladies living in a rundown boarding house, Princess Jellyfish focuses on the unlikely love triangle that forms between Tsukimi Kurashita, an aspiring illustrator with severe self-confidence issues, Kuranosuke Koibuchi, a young man whose love of fashion and cross-dressing annoys his rich and powerful politician father, and Shu Koibuchi, Kuranosuke's strait-laced elder half-brother.

Of course, no one is able to express their true feelings without coming across like a complete goober, but that's the charm of Princess Jellyfish. The original manga by Akiko Higashimura (available from Kodansha Comics) is also outstanding.

Princess Jellyfish is available via streaming and on U.S. home video from Funimation.

Toradora! (2008 - 2009)

The classic pattern in romance is often paraphrased as “boy meets girl, boy loses girl, boy gets girl back again”, but Toradora! is more along the lines of “boy meets girl, girl attempts to pummel boy to death with a baseball bat, hijinx ensue”.

In Toradora!, Ryuji Takasu and Taiga Aisaka team up in an effort to pursue their mutual crushes, but the sharp-eyed boy with the gentle-demeanor and the pint-sized dynamo girl eventually fall in love despite initially aiming for relationships with other people. Along the way it plumbs the depths of adolescent romance with a surprising degree of pathos and nuance, so if you like your relationships feisty and complicated, give Toradora! a try.

Toradora! is available via streaming on Crunchyroll and on U.S. home video from NIS America.

Other "Missed Communications" options for the savvy viewer: Monthly Girls' Nozaki-kun, KAGUYA-SAMA: LOVE IS WAR

General Misanthropy

WATAMOTE ~No Matter How I Look at It, It’s You Guys' Fault I’m Not Popular!~ (2013)

Even people who are currently involved in happy, well-adjusted romantic relationships can probably remember what it's like to look for love in all the wrong places, and that describes Tomoko Kuroki, the extremely anti-social heroine of WATAMOTE, to a 'T'.

While Tomoko suffers from crippling social anxiety, she's also kind of a terrible person, and her conceptions of love and friendship have been terminally poisoned by a non-stop diet of otaku pop culture and online discourse. Despite everything, Tomoko just wants to be loved, but she's also her own worst enemy, and who among us can't identify with that?

WATAMOTE ~No Matter How I Look at It, It’s You Guys Fault I’m Not Popular!~ is available via streaming on Crunchyroll and on U.S. home video via Sentai Filmworks.

The Tatami Galaxy (2010)

Sometimes it takes a Groundhog Day-like scenario for the so-called “nice guys” to realize that often they're not really the heroes of their own romantic epics, but rather they're the villains. The unnamed protagonist of The Tatami Galaxy loops through numerous college-level curricula, joining different clubs each time in an effort to find his ideal “raven-haired beauty” and to live the “rosy college life” of his dreams.

Needless to say, nothing goes according to plan, and one of the highlights of The Tatami Galaxy is when “Watashi” and his partner-in-crime, Ozu, declare themselves to be “black Cupids” and subsequently dedicate their free-time to monkey-wrenching the dates of happy couples. It's perfect Valentine's Day viewing for the romantically disinclined.

The Tatami Galaxy is available via streaming and on U.S. home video from Funimation.

BONUS ROUND!

Baki (2018)

The 2018 Baki anime on Netflix is less interested in romance and more interested in taking big beefy dudes and smacking them together like a toddler playing with a handful of G.I. Joe action figures. When the baby-faced protagonist Baki and his girlfriend Kozue finally consummate their relationship, what results is both mind-blowing hilarity and head-scratching peculiarity as the audience is subjected to a galaxy brain-level X-ray vision vignette, Baki's new-found sex-blessed martial arts prowess, and a lecture from Yujiro Hanma about the birds and the bees. 11/10 stars, would “apply damage” again.

Baki is available via streaming on Netflix.

Well, there you have it: a selection of anime titles that look at the concepts of love and romance from a slightly askew angle. Some are life-affirming, some are off-beat but uplifting, and some of them aren't nearly so optimistic, but all in all it's a heaping helping of atypical romance, just in time for Valentine's Day.

The above list is not meant to be exhaustive. Anime is a vast and varied medium, so there are sure to be other series that make for ideal Valentine's Day programming for those of us that want a little more cringe in our festivities. What are your favorite anime with weird angles or awkward romances? Be sure to let us know in the comments section below!

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Paul Chapman is the host of The Greatest Movie EVER! Podcast and GME! Anime Fun Time.

Do you love writing? Do you love anime? If you have an idea for a features story, pitch it to Crunchyroll Features!

By: [email protected]

#Anime #News #Latest in Anime News by Crunchyroll!

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