#wanted to do this since i saw the template go up! so fun and simple to follow the tutorial too

[hyperdrama]

prompt: something for the silly ol' rat man? [template tutorial insp] [fan vids: ♡ ♡ ♡]

[wordsbymae]

Eli Finch Alphabet 18+

Bastard, feral man! I literally conjured this man into my mind involuntarily and now he's stuck there. First time I've done something like this so hopefully you guys like it! I've based this on an alphabet template I saw credited to @/dear-yandere. I will probably do a much more in-depth one, about how he met the reader and some background info, but I thought this would be a good starter! Also, there is a bit of an NSFW section but I'll warn you before :) Also swearing!!! I see him as Jack O'Connell but see him as you like! 18+

Also, I haven't published the majority of the story yet so most of this is just can be seen as a character study as I have left some things a bit vague to not spoilt potential future plots. If you want to read the beginning of his series go here!

Okay before we get into it, let's cover the basics.

Eli is a bastard through and through. His early years were not kind and in order to survive, he did what he needed to do. Stealing, lying, cheating, violence, manipulation, etc. Now I know what you're wondering, but why does the reader care so much for him? Why do they seem to not care about his more violent tendencies? Simple, he refuses to let you see that side of him. Ever since you showed him a crumb of kindness he vowed to always protect you and that means protecting you from the sides of him that border on monstrous. That doesn't mean he won't use his skills for your benefit. We've seen that he is more than willing to lie, cheat and steal to get you whatever your heart desires.

Those jewels look real pretty on you sweetheart

Also, he is a naturally charismatic person and while he hates the idea of physically hurting you or you seeing him be violent, he has no moral objections to using his charms to manipulate you. In fact, he's been manipulating you since the first moment you met. Although it has been in small, innocent-seeming ways, he's been in control of your friendship since the beginning. Not that you had any idea though.

You wouldn't want to break my heart now would you darling?

NSFW:

This man is a fucking massive perv. He's been thinking of fucking you since the day he got an accidental sneak peek down by the river (okay so maybe it wasn't an accident as he claims). But I'm not just talking about just thinking about it, I mean he takes active steps to get as much intimacy from you as possible (even before his change). Whether it be from you yourself, hugging a bit too long and too tight and leaning a bit too close behind you when you are kneading dough.

But sweetheart! I'm just giving you a hand! Don't you want me to give you a helping hand?

Or the way he forces intimacy with you via your things.

You two are sitting up in your room, teaching him to read

You are doing so well!

Do you really think so darling? With all this hard work I think I deserve a reward. How bout a kiss?

When you suddenly get called away by your parents. Hogs to be fed, chickens to be plucked. He doesn't mind, it gives him some alone time with your things. Your soiled clothes, your pretty undergarments and all the time in the world to imagine what you would look like bent over your desk in the corner.

He may love and cherish you but if you think that's gonna stop him from fucking your undergarments (I hate the world panties and we use the word undies in Australia, so argue with a wall, also it's the 1800s) and putting them back like nothing happened your dead wrong.

Then there's the brothel (let's all ignore the existence of STI/Ds please and thank you). After a particularly hard and restless day of trying not to fuck you like an animal bent over the closest surface he can find or hell even the floor, Eli is forced to look elsewhere. He'll take a nice stroll down to the brothel, there he'll find whichever worker looks the most like you

(Also I just want to say sex workers deserve respect. fun fact sex workers in the wild west were often quite rich and would build a lot of the infrastructure of a town, that was why prostitution was outlawed to stop them from gaining a lot of money.)

He'll imagine fucking you the entire time, and will definitely cry out your name throughout the entire thing. The first few times he got the worker to say things like how much you loved him and how you would let him take care of you, but the voice didn't match up so since then the only sound that can be heard is his grunts and moans, and your name being cried out. The worker doesn't mind, they get paid well with all the money Eli stole from the other patrons at the bar.

And this was all before he got turned.

------------------------------------------------------------------------------

A = Affection (How do they show their love and affection?)

Oh boy. If there is one thing that defines Eli, it's the length he would go to show you affection. Quite a large part of this is his belief that it is right and proper for a man to provide for those they love. While Eli didn't have a very good childhood, he did have a good father. A strong and devout man who would do anything for his family (even get killed). So this idea of providing for someone was heavily ingrained into Eli from a young age.

However, he missed the lesson about right and wrong. I spoke before about his criminal ways, most of which he keeps hidden away from you. But he will use his skills to pinch small shiny trinkets to place just outside your window when you get mad at him. Blackmail to make sure you are crowned Autumn harvest Queen/King, and his disregard for personal property when he rips pretty flowers from Mrs Colton's garden to give you when you came running to tell him you were to be crowned the Autumn Harvest King/Queen.

Did you hear Eli! Can you believe it? Me!

Of course I believe it, sweetpea! How could they choose anyone else?

And that's not even getting into the amount of physical affection he gives you. Kisses on cheeks, surprise hugs from behind, playing with your hair as you lay along the bank of the river and all the while oblivious you thinking that's just what friends do.

B = Blood (How messy are they willing to get when it comes to you?)

man oh man, you have no idea. Before the change, Eli was already a violent man. Constantly picking fights with anyone who got in his way. Most of the time there wasn't even a good reason for him to break jaws or noses. He just wanted a fight. But if he needed to defend you? If you were threatened in some way? It would be a bloodbath. He would have either just gone straight for his revolver or if he knew he could win, his bare hands would do. Thankfully there had never been a reason for him to defend you. You would never be seen in the areas where Eli lurked looking for trouble, and those you were in the company of were good God-fearing folk.

But after his change? Even a man looking at you for too long would cause him to snap. Not only was he more aggressive now, but he was also a downright predator. Before the change, he would have just started the fight then and there. But now? He would watch and wait, stalk his prey until the opportune moment to strike. These moments were often along dark alleyways or narrow pathways along the outskirts of town. His favourite moments to attack were out on the plains, that way he could take as long as he wanted and didn't have to worry about anyone hearing the screams.

C = Cruelty (How would they treat you? Would they mock/tease you?)

Eli is definitely someone who would tease, but not mock. He's not a very cruel person, at least to you. To you, he is the almost perfect gentleman. Almost, because he looks through his fingers when you ask him to cover his eyes when you get changed down by the river. But other than his less-than-savoruy ways, he truly is a gentleman to you. He is kind and sweet, always pushes in your chair, opens doors, and pays for anything you buy when you go out together. He definitely teases though. He will tease you about anything, what and how you say things, what your wearing, how you act around people

Careful darling, keep acting like that and that boy is gonna think he has a chance at the heaven between your legs

Aw, come on sweetheart! I'm only telling the truth! It's not my fault boys like him are dimwits who think they have a chance. We both know he's never gonna get between your legs. You're too good for a man like that, I mean you're as pretty as a Georgia peach and twice as sweet!

Pretty much all the time his teasing could be called flirting. Which it is, he is flirting with you. Unfortunately for him, you've been friends for so long that you've just decided that it's just his way of being friends.

That is the extent of his cruelty with you, sometimes he does take it further but that's for another time. On the other hand, his cruelty to others has no limit. I mentioned above he enjoys when he can take his time with those he kills. I won't say much, but I will say he is pretty handy with a knife.

D = Darling (Would they do anything against your will?)

Fuck no, not outright forcing you to do things. I mentioned previously he had a good father figure and that was the first thing his father ever taught him. Real men don't force themselves on others. But let's be real this is the 1800s and consent wasn't as black and white as it is/should be today. While a maybe isn't a yes today, telling him maybe is like giving him a free pass. And I don't exclusively mean sexual or intimate things. It can be as simple as jumping from the rope swing by the creek or sneaking out with him to much much bigger things. I mentioned before he doesn't mind manipulating you to get what he wants from you.

However!!!!!! As soon as a no or a stop leaves your mouth he is stopping instantly. He takes his pleasure in being able to make you say yes of your own accord, not forcing it.

I think there are instances when he might manhandle you a bit to rein you in but they are when he is at the end of his rope and has run out of patience.

E = Exposed (How much of their heart do they bare to you? How vulnerable are they when it comes to you?)

Eli acts like a very confident and arrogant person, which he is, but there is sadness within him on the act of his childhood. You know hardly anything. He refuses to tell you anything other than the very basics and even then he has shifted than a bit. It is the 1800s so anything seen as a weakness in emotion is looked down upon. Although Eli knows you wouldn't do that to him but it is so ingrained in him that it would be many more years before the whole story is revealed.

F = Fight (How would they feel if you fought them?)

Physically? He would just laugh. Even before his change, this man was working as a ranchhand and stockman. He has spent years working hard and fighting anything that looked his way. So when play fighting began it wasn't long before you were calling for mercy, although he often pretends to not hear you so he could spend a few more moments pressed up tight against your ass and hands gripped tightly round your waist or chest. You always get mad that he keeps his switchblade in his pocket when you wrestle (it isn't his pocket knife). After the change, there was no question he would win, even if you threatened him with a gun or knife that the same laugh would come through and you would know that you were in for a long night.

G = Game (How much of this is a game to them?)

This man's whole life is one big game. He is constantly looking for ways to joke around and have some fun but don't be mistaken. He may tease and cause mischief but this man can switch between fun and games to a steal-hearted killer in a moment. It all depends on who he is dealing with.

H = Hell (What would be your worst experience with them?)

I have some things in the works regarding this, but one that sticks out is the moment you realise that he isn't the same Eli you knew and loved and that there was no way for him to change back. It would involve lotta blood and gore and the crumbling realisation that you might never have known Eli at all.

I = Ideals (What kind of future do they have in mind for/with you?)

Eli has it all mapped out. A fancy homestead on a hill with white shutters and pretty blue doors. A few 80 acres for some steers and some mares. A pretty garden out the front for you and a large red barn for him (filled with chains and shackles). He wants enough room for all the kids he plans to have (he has yet to ask you how many if you want any at all). He wants you to name them all, he thinks it's only fair since he's gonna change your last name (oh how gentlemanly). He really just wants what was taken from him when he was a child. This time is gonna be different though, this time he will be strong enough to protect his family (like his father should have been)

J = Jealousy (Do they get jealous? Do they lash out or find a way to cope?)

Oh yeah, this boy gets jealous. I went into it a bit above. After the change, it really only takes someone looking at you wrong to set him off. He'll stalk them all the way to their home, and just before they set foot on their property he's dragging them off into the wilds for a quick lesson in manners.

K = Kisses (How do they act around you?)

He is constantly checking you out. Always watch what you're doing and offering to help in any way. Teases like it's his fucking job. Joking around about how your father hasn't married you off yet (never gonna fucking happen, there's a reason your father doesn't ask suitors over anymore) and if both of you are still without spouses by a certain age you should just marry each other (wow so subtle)

I think it's a great idea sweet cheeks. I mean think about it! We're already the best of friends, why can't we just be the best of friend's in our marital bed!

ow! No need to hit so hard darling, if you wanted me to get on my knees you only had to ask.

L = Love letters (How would they go about courting or approaching you?)

This man has been courting you since day one, you are just too much of an oblivious idiot to see it. I have said this before and I'll keep saying it until the cows come home, this man would steal the crown jewels for you. He's been leaving you trinkets outside your window for years now, sometimes wildflowers and sometimes whole clothing he's nabbed from someone's laundry line.

Oh, how you wound me, darling! Refusing to try on the fruits of my hard labour! Come on sweetheart, for me? I promise I won't peek.

He definitely peeks and has to excuse himself to take care of a situation behind the stables.

M = Mask (Are their true colours drastically different from the way they act around everyone else?)

Oh yeah, I think I've explained it enough so I won't go too in-depth but it's really night and day. You get all the best of Eli, all his kindness and love. Those who aren't so lucky get the worst.

N = Naughty (How would they punish you?)

*good girl/boy is used*

Not physically, unless you did something he really didn't like, but in small (toxic) ways. You no longer get little trinkets outside your window, he isn't waiting at the river for you and he won't talk to you when you do see him. He acts like you don't exist. After a few days of this torture, it's too much for you. You've been crying yourself to sleep and you can't take any more. You sneak out in the middle of the night to confront him. As soon as you see him you burst into tears. All he does is take you in his arms and slowly pat your back.

Have you learned your lesson now sweet pea? No more talking with that boy, alright? We don't want him getting ideas do we peaches? Good girl/boy

Oh my goodness I nearly forgot!! This man would have a thing for spanking you. I mean you bent over his knees with his hands all over that ass? Say no more. But I think this would only come in when you do something that could have ended in you getting hurt.

I thought I told you to never do that without me, darling. Stop your crying now, there's no way you're getting out of this one. So be a good girl/boy for once and do as your told

O = Oppression (How many rights would they take away from you?)

*primarily female reader*

Welp, it's the 1800s so if you're a woman (or really anyone other than a white man) boy do I have some bad news for you. Can't really take away rights you don't have. If he were to take rights away, it would all be legal in the sense that as your husband (it was bound to happen really) he really has the last say. So if you try and make a run for it, you'll just be sent right back. On the other hand, it could be a lot worse for you. It just wasn't a great time to be a woman in America (or anywhere really).

P = Patience (How patient are they with you?)

For you? He has all the time in the world. He is more than happy to partake in anything that takes your fancy, even if it may be seen as annoying by others or something seemingly pointless like showing him a rock you found. When it relates to you it's the most important thing in the world. However, put yourself in harm's way or god forbid flirt with another man, things will hit the fan. Not towards you though, no his anger is directly targeted at the fucker who thinks it's ok to flirt with another man's claim.

Q = Quit (If you die or leave would they ever be able to move on?)

Nope, no, never. If you die then that's it, game over. He'll probably mourn for you in the wildness of the north in some forest thousands of miles away from anything that reminds him of you. If you leave???? It doesn't matter if you went to the ends of the earth and back, Eli will drag you back kicking and screaming right back to where you belong, underneath beside him.

All in all, it's you or nothing.

R = Regret (Would they ever feel guilty about abducting you? Would they ever let you go?)

Can't really get into this yet, but I think a very very very small part of him would feel guilt but the majority of him is just overjoyed to have you as his, finally.

S = Stigma (What brought about this side of them [childhood, curiosity, etc]?)

Oh, definitely childhood but that's another story for another day.

T = Tears (How do they feel about seeing you scream, cry, and/or isolate yourself?)

It depends on what type of crying. I think some light tears would result in some teasing.

Come on peaches am I really that bad? Here I thought you liked me. You sure seemed to like me last night. How bout we stop these tears and have some fun?

but ugly sobbing? That's a different story. He is a true protector at heart so it would cause some emotional damage to him. Although it does give him a good excuse to get close to you.

Screaming? He would find it a bit silly and ridiculous. You've known each other for years so this is no way friends act around each other. This is where I see the manhandling come into effect

Is this really how your gonna act? Like a child? I think your way past acting like that at your age. But If I need to put you in your place, so be it

Isolating yourself? How? this man is in your business 24/7. You can't even try to ignore him, he's just so annoying

U = Unique (Would they do anything different from the classic yandere?)

I can't really think of anything at this stage. There are so many good writers out there with all their own little quirks added into their writing so I really don't know how Eli differs. If I had to make a choice, it would be that his yandere tendencies aren't really acted upon you but onto those around you. if that makes sense? If he never turned, you might never have known how willing to kill for you he was.

V = Vice (What weakness can you exploit in order to escape?)

Lust for sure! This man has wanted to fuck you for years. He's so horny for you, he couldn't see a trap being laid from a mile away.

Well, would you look at that! Ain't that a pretty sight! And all for me? you spoil me, darling!

(flashforward to him being knocked out by a wile e. coyote-looking trap with his pants around his ankles)

W = Wit’s end (Would they ever physically hurt you?)

Not in an extreme sense but a little punishment for trying to do something dangerous he told you to never ever do? Oh yeah. You'll be bent over his knee quicker than you can say I'm sorry.

X = Xoanon (How much would they revere or worship you? To what length would they go to win you over?)

This man worships the hell out of you. You were the first person to show him kindness after his tragic childhood. Since then you are the apple of his eye. He would do anything for you, no questions asked. You tell him some people have been rude to you, and he'll ask how many graves he needs to dig. Moreover, your body? His temple. That place between your legs? The altar on which he worships you. This man is a simp.

Y = Yearn (How long do they pine after you before they snap?)

This one is quite tricky. If he never turned, I think he might have never really "snapped". I think he would have eventually told you what he really felt and it would have been a happily ever after situation - he had actually planned on telling you before he left for mustering but talked himself out of it. But with him changing everything went downhill, all the raw emotions he had were multiplied and the love he had before exploded into obsession. If we are looking at it as a before and after sorta thing, as soon as he changed he snapped. He had been pining after you for years and now all those emotions, which were strong already, became tenfold.

Z = Zenith (Would they ever break you?)

Break in a physical way? No.

In a mental way? Never, your personality is the one thing he loves the most about you - that and your thighs.

In an emotional way? Oh yeah, he's gonna wear you down until you can't find the strength to say no to the ring he's placing on your finger.

[writingforfun0714]

So I just saw that a new trailer for Bad Batch just dropped and while it’s like 97% stuff we’ve already seen/heard, there is a short clip with Rex/Rex’s message to the Batch and of Omega saying ‘it’ll be fun’ as if trying to convince the rest of the Batch of something (probably going on a mission). There’s also a quick still of the Batch possibly on Kashyyyk.

The new info is so short I don’t wanna do a whole analysis about it. But I do want to point out that I heard about this from Tumblr. I didn’t see it on Youtube or anything (yes I did watch it, but I heard about it through Tumblr). I’d like to point out that even during S1 of BB, before it aired, Disney didn’t really market this show.

Why? Simple—

IT’S RACIST AF!!

While the clone model is extremely whitewashed (erasing ethnic features and replacing euro-centric features instead), the story/certain elements in the writing are extremely racist. While looking more like white men than the clone template—Jango Fett/Temuera Morrison, they all appear to have an ‘I’m superior’ mindset that’s even more evident than before.

Crosshair, CF99’s ‘fallen’ brother, even outright tells Hunter that they were meant for more and are ‘superior’ to the regular clones (who are noticeably darker skinned than CF99 including Omega). Echo, the ‘reg’ of the group is often not taken seriously and pushed aside and Wrecker, who looks the most like Tem out of everyone, is considered the ‘dumb brute w/ a childlike personality’ trope, a trope that’s harmful to poc. Tech has some sort of British accent that sounds completely off for a clone. Hunter is the one who actively argued with Echo and dismissed the ARC trooper’s valid concerns about working with Separatists. In some interview with Jennifer Corbett, she stated that there will be discourse among the Batch, specifically between Hunter and Echo (and it’s shown in one trailer where Echo tells Hunter they should be doing more). Omega doesn’t even look like a Jango clone anymore either. Her hair reminds me of Rapunzel’s after Flynn cuts it in Tangled. Rapunzel is a white teenage girl. Omega at least had some texture to her hair in S1, but her skin/features are too white.

I know I’ve talked about this a lot before, and I will continue to talk about it until Disney fixes it CORRECTLY (the creative team/Filoni claimed it was a ‘lighting’ issue but it absolutely is not). I’m incredibly frustrated that they put Cody in this show, clearly just as a way to get more viewers (especially since he was cut from Kenobi last minute).

While racism can show up anywhere, it’s important to recognize it wherever it may show up (whether in character design or the writing). I know most SW fans are looking forward for this new season, just from reading comments on the YouTube video of this new trailer, but I’d like to remind everyone that yes it’s a good story, but it’s racist. The only thing I have hope for at this point is the writing. I doubt the clone model is going to change. But I’d be incredibly happy if they did.

I absolutely hate how dirty the clones/Tem was done. Big thanks to all you creative, wonderful people that make incredible fanart of how the clones are supposed to look and the amazing writers out there writing Wrecker as the smart/careful demolitions expert he is or giving Echo the mourning process he needs, etc. Just, thanks to everyone out there who does right by the clones.

Thanks for reading my rant.

[suchalonelysunflower]

The Next Chapter (c.h)

Pairing: Calum Hood X Reader

Requested: yes!

Summary: A family gathering has you and Calum thinking about the future

Warnings: Fluff. I used the word vagina once. Maybe some grammatical errors (English is not my first language, sorry)

Word Count: 1.7K

Author’s Note: Loving these request 🥺❤️ a little fluffy piece for my favorite boy ✨ Remember that Reblogs, comments, feedback and likes are very important and appreciated ❤️ I love to hear from you guys and you don’t know how much that helps me and motivates me! Hope you like it and Happy Reading🦋✨🌻

My materialist // wanna be part of my tag list?

Anon: omg can you do one ab asking if cal wants to start a family

“Babe! Hurry we are going to be late!”

You were standing at the front door, looking inside of your bag in case you have forgotten anything.

“Y/N, you do know I went to the bathroom five minutes before you were done getting ready, right?” Your husband, Calum, said as he walked up to you.

You had to admit, you married the hottest guy on the planet. How can someone make a pair of jeans with a simple white shirt look so good?!

“But I still beat you at the door, didn’t I?” You asked with a grin that Calum easily reciprocated.

“That you did” He smiled, placing one hand at your side, kissing your template, and whispering in your ear “But that doesn’t mean you can beat me at the car” And with that, he started sprinting towards the driver’s seat.

It amazes you how after almost 7 years of relationship you never got over the honeymoon phase. You have met Calum when both of you were young, reckless, and stupid; and not looking for a relationship. But it only took one look at those brown eyes and you were hooked.

You still remember how he came to you with a lame excuse to talk to you at one of the many parties you used to crash with your best friends.

“You’re not supposed to be here,” He said, and you almost thought he discovered you and was going to call security “I’m pretty sure god will wonder where all of their angels went”

He quickly apologized once he realized the words that fell out of his mouth, but you just stood there giggling at this cute attempt of flirting. And, as they say, the rest was history.

The next couple of years came and went and it almost seemed like you were in some kind of an alternate reality where everything played out as it was supposed to. Yes, of course, there were rocky times, especially when distance came to play, but all those times just made your relationship stronger.

Neither of you knew why, but being together just felt right. Which ultimately came to him proposing one eventful night in August after visiting his parents in Australia. And that then leads to your wedding just a few months later, you still recall that as one of the happiest moments of your life.

That was 3 years ago, and you were proud to say that you got to marry your best friend. Every day felt like a never-ending slumber party with new adventures and dreams to fulfill. And you wouldn’t change it for the world.

You were thinking about it as of now, looking at Calum with a smile as he drove to your cousin’s place to celebrate the birthday of the newest addition to the family: your baby niece.

Going to these kinds of parties became pretty regular for you, given that you came from a really big family and all your cousins were almost the same age as you, so they started popping babies out like it was nothing! And you were so thankful Calum was always happy to come along “I love your family, Angel!” He said “And you have to give it to them, they know how to throw a party”

It was true. If there is something your family doesn’t take lightly is parties. You still get a headache every time you remember the stress of convincing them to do something lowkey for your wedding. And as you parked outside your cousin’s house you wonder how you actually did it.

“Wow,” Said Calum as he looked at all the balloons decorating the front door “They really went all out on this one” He laughed.

“Sabrina is one year old!” You laughed, unbuckling your seatbelt as Calum opened the door for you “She won’t even remember this!”

“Yeah.. but at least Aunt Bridget will get to brag about having real mariachis playing at the party”

“Real maria-?” You asked, but Calum was already trying to hold his laughter as he pointed to a mariachi band getting out of their van “Okay, that is new… We are not even from Mexico!”

“No… but mom went to the wedding of Mr. Gómez’s son and she insisted we hired the same band for little Sab’s birthday” Your cousin answered as she opened the door.

You and Calum hugged your cousin before making your way inside the house. You stood in awe as you walked up the backyard and everything was decorated in different shades of pink and purple. Even the family dog had some sort of ribbon around his collar.

“This looks…” You began

“Like if a vagina exploded?” Calum finished for you. You slapped him in the arm playfully, trying so hard not to laugh along with him and be serious.

Your cousin came back a few moments later to hand each of you a drink and inviting you outside to join the party.

*

The mariachis were actually really good, especially when they made Calum have a dance-off with one of your uncles to the chicken dance song. And the rest of the party was also really fun for kids and adults alike.

Now the sun was starting to set and most of your family members decided it was time to call it a day after so many games and dancing. You and Calum, however, decided to stay a little longer since most of your cousins unofficially agreed to have a ‘family-friendly after-party’

You were sitting next to your cousin as you held her baby in your lap, making her dance along with the music.

“You are good at this,” Your cousin said, looking at you and baby Sabrina.

You laughed “It’s not too hard of a job to entertain a baby” And to prove your point, you started making faces at your niece, who started laughing right away.

“It’s not that! You, my dear, have the touch”

“The touch?” She nodded.

“You have that motherly essence, it’s easy for you to engage with the children - they all love you by the way, which is a fact I’m extremely jealous of - And you just have that capacity of love only a parent can understand. C’mon, don’t tell me you and Calum haven’t thought about having a family?”

You drifted your eyes to find Calum amongst the crowd of adults and children.

He was playing soccer with your older nieces and nephews, laughing as he threw himself to the ground on exaggerated acting as the kids scored goal after goal, laughing at your husband’s antics.

And just like that, it was like an image of your future passing by You and Calum sitting in the backyard with Duke running around with your child, playing all sorts of games with you, swimming in the pool, and eating ice cream. Reading bedtime stories as Calum sang them to sleep, him teaching them how to play different instruments and sports, always encouraging them to follow their dreams and passions… Yes, you could get used to that.

“I- I haven’t thought about it” You finally said with a light blush on your cheeks. You didn’t know if it was because of the question, your daydream, or the way Calum was looking and smiling at you.

*

You couldn’t stop thinking about what your cousin said even when you were already in the car and on your way home with Calum humming along with the songs on the radio.

Once you reached your home you started looking around, thinking of all the places you could share with your potential future family; cooking dinner together at night or watching frozen one thousand times on movie night or creating a playroom just for them so they could have their own space to create whatever comes into their minds and-

“You are really quiet, Angel,” Your husband said, interrupting your train of thought “Is everything alright?”

You pressed your lips together in a tight smile and nodded as he came to hug you from behind, resting his head on your shoulder “Did you have fun with the kids today?” You asked cautiously.

Calum chuckled “Yeah… Matthew almost threw me off at one point, he’s getting good at soccer”

“I hope so! His dad told me he started going to practice cause he wants to be a soccer player and a musician like his uncle Cal” You said, pecking your lips in Calum’s red cheek. You could see that he was slightly embarrassed but in a good way. You wonder if your future children will be like that as well.

Maybe they’ll have his cheeks, or your eyes… oh, please let them have Calum’s curly hair.

You smiled to yourself at the thought of little chubby-cheeked curly-haired heads running around your house. They will be perfect and they will be so loved…

Calum hummed next to your ear, placing a little kiss to the shell of it “I know what’s got you all wrapped up in daydream land” He said, hugging you tighter.

You turned your face to look at him “You do?” He nodded and placed his head on your shoulder again.

“Knew it since I saw you looking at me when I was playing with the kids” He placed a kiss on your cheek and made you turn around completely while still holding you by your waist. You swore you could hear the beating of your heart thundering louder and louder.

“And to be honest, I’ve been thinking about it since the first time I saw you hold a baby”

You blinked at him, confusion written all over your face “What?”

“Well… I knew from the moment I saw you that I wanted to start a family with you. I just confirmed it the day you took me to Matthew’s birthday party to meet your family” He said as a matter-of-factly.

“Yo-you want to start a family with me?” You asked with a flash of hope in your eyes.

Calum smiled at you, his eyes filled with pure adoration “I want to start everything with you, Angel. As long as you let me”

“Do you think we’re ready?”

“I love you, you love me” He said and you nodded with a smile “We’ve been together for 7 years, married for 3; we both have steady jobs, I’m not leaving for tour anytime soon so I’ll be home through every step of the way, we live in a nice house and Duke is more than ready to have a new partner in crime, so… what do you say, love?” Calum said with a cheeky smile.

You wrapped your arms around his neck and pulled him closer into a kiss.

“Let’s do it”

Tags: @iknowyouthinkimbulletproof @theshyspy @talksoprettyjjx @sarcasticallywitty15 @hoodhoran @flaneurcth @Yeah-and69 @mystic-232

*if Your @ is crossed it means I can’t tag you for some reason, please send me a message so we can fix this ✨

[highwarlockkareena]

From planning to posting, share your process for making creative content!

To continue supporting content makers, this tag game is meant to show the entire process of making creative content: this can be for any creation.

RULES: When your work is tagged, show the process of its creation from planning to posting, then tag 5 people with a specific link to one of their creative works you’d like to see the process of. Use the tag #showyourprocess so we can find yours!

Thank you ali for the tag on this collaboration with @nyx4, ali! @wendashanren

tagging: (I mostly talk about collaboration for this one but if you check #showyourprocess most people talk about how they made their creations or check my first post about giffing here!)

@elysean for this set @timothyolyphant for this set @sugardaddyahxu for this set @jun-hee for this set @bloominflowers​ for this art

I wanted to collaborate with Jackie on a set. We’d talked about it anyway, and thought about what we could work on. So when I saw this request on mdzsnet, i knew this was the one for us.

wei wuxian, black/red, cql, yp!wwx/sunshot campaign scenes/nightless city scenes, the lyrics from "the war" by syml

I knew Jackie loved Syml, so she’d want to make this request, so I put both our names down to claim it, then when Jackie was online checked if she’d prefer to do this one solo, or shared. She loved the idea of a collab, so we got to work.

First we listened to the song a couple of times, thinking about how it worked for wei wuxian. then we broke down which lyrics we wanted to use and the general scenes for them.

We split them out across a number of gifs (originally it was 4 but I don’t have a screenshot of that) with a general idea of scenes we’d work from for each. As you can see, I do plan but my notes tend to be sparse reminders rather than detailed. jackie wanted to dig the angst knife in deep and wanted the ‘my war is over’ to coincide with wei wuxian falling off the cliff, so we worked back from that for our scene choices. 

Jackie:

Originally it was going to be 4 gifs, all of them with the lyrics that made it to the final set, but it would have been too much text on each gif so first we decided on a gif without text in the middle before deciding on spreading out the song a bit more which led to the 7 gif set.

We started making gifs 1 and 3. in my usual fashion i made about 10 gifs to pick which scenes i wanted to work with & jackie made 1 because she isn’t an idiot. 

Jackie:

Kareena does make a ton of gifs just to choose one or two, which is both amusing and amazing. I have proof!

Luckily we’re both admins on WoHDaily, so we used the drafts in there to share a post we could both edit gifs in & out of. 

I’d wanted to do a silhouette edit similar to one in @lan-xichens lovely overlay tutorial, but it wasn’t coming out the way i’d liked, so I had to keep trying different things until it worked as I’d envisioned. 

I finished a touch before Jackie who had taken time to pick emotionally devastating scenes for her gif, so we used my red throughout both, but then  tweaked each gif with feedback from each other. 

Jackie:

When we first decided on the scenes, I waited for her to do the first gif so I could match her colors. Once she made the first one, I showed her this template I made so we could visualize how it’d look.

Then we moved on to the next gifs. This was harder, because we didn’t want to overload the set by making every single gif super fancy, so we tried out a variety of things to see what would hang together nicely. 

Above is an example of one idea of mine that got discarded. I think i had 3 iterations before we got to the gif below. 

Jackie:

I then moved on to gif #6 and I made a gif which Kareena completely shut down. She said, Jackie, this is really ugly. I accepted it, because she is the one with the skills here, and because she was right. (KAREENA: this is a lie - the gif is *gorgeous* but it just has a lot going on in an already busy gifset.)

There was too much going on in that gif and it didn’t really fit with the set we were making. The gif we ended up with fit much better and I’m glad she said something. For the last gif, I showed her a few shots and we both agreed on those two (wwx crying, walking backwards on the cliff). I made a couple of gifs that Kareena was nice enough to say were gorgeous, but I thought they sucked. Third one is what we ended up with.

For me, most of the work was in getting the scenes to fit the lyrics and to work with the color scheme that the requester gave us.

We continued to work this way, making ideas and sharing them, tweaking or discarding or remaking as necessary until we were both happy with the gifs. It wasn’t too hard to get them to work as a set, it was mostly about communication and honesty. jackie and i get on well enough to crit each others gifs without worry, so we both liked what was created. We pushed each other, Jackie knows I’m very lazy & she didn’t let me slack. I pushed her in other areas so that we both tried out new skills. 

Once the seven gifs were made, it was time for typography! We spent a little time discussing our love of simple fonts, sharing a few examples, before I handed over to jackie as the typography queen.  

Now, fonts:

Yup, I like simple fonts and for the typography not to take over the whole set. Luckily, Kareena feels the same way, so early on we decided on two fonts, one of them to highlight a word here or there. I showered her some fonts samples, we agreed on a style, and then I got to work.

The fonts used were:

Ostrich Sans  https://www.fontsquirrel.com/fonts/ostrich-sans

Memories  https://www.dafont.com/memories-2.font

I kept it simple, just looking where the text would look best. I didn’t know how to wrap text around a shape before, which is what I wanted for gif #3. Turns out it’s very easy and people probably know this already but I’m a ps noob (lie). Still putting this here just in case anyone wants to know.

Using the Ellipse Tool/Custom Shape Tool, I made a circle 2px bigger than the bw gif i wanted to wrap the text around. I didn’t want the shape to be visible, so I chose Path there. (If you choose shape, the actual shape will be visible in whatever color you have chosen)

With the Type Tool, just hover over the line of the shape and a squiggly thing will appear. Click and start typing. I then dragged the text and fit it over the bw gif. I made the shape on the side so I could see it clearly, but you can make it over the actual shape you want the text to wrap around. Listen, this is the best I can describe it ✌

We discussed how to post the set. Since it was a group effort, should one of us post it or should we post it via the net? Since we’ve also got another request lined up to collaborate on, we decided that I would post this set & Jackie would post the next one. 

TLDR: 

It was fun, it was about communication and compromise. Pushing each other in our weak spots, nitpicking at each gif to make them the best we could, agreeing why one gif might not work in this set. It was about mixing two styles but still creating something we both liked! It was enough fun we have two more collaborations planned, just to keep having fun and to keep learning.

[qlistening]

Is Now a Good Time to Become a Hippie?

Ha ha fun little opening note: I opened my iPad to write this and saw the Cornell notes template and now I’m wondering how the people who had to take Cornell notes to get through college are doing these days. Probably not well.

I’m cracking open the blog again this summer to really do some justice to the two month identity crisis that I, and maybe you, have been experiencing since graduation. I’ve been through the wringer, like most people, with the classic post-grad crises of “What am I doing with my life?” and “What am I even good at?”, and “Will I ever have fun again like I did in college?”. But honestly fuck those crises. That kind of shit is so cliche and boring to talk about. I need bigger broader shit on my plate. The type of existential garbage that can really wreck you. The types of questions that can’t be answered by your Mom saying “it’s okay honey”.

So the set I came up with is as follows: “What rules should I live my life by if I truly believe that our society will crumble to climate change in 1 - 2 generations?”, “How can I ever protect my soul from capitalism when I need the constant stimulation of city life to distract me from my depression?”, and “If I reconnect with my hippie childhood, will it destroy my chances of happiness and success later in life like it did for my parents?”.

I know what you’re thinking: “That’s an awesome list Ava. I wish I could have come up with that myself”. Sorry you can’t be me. 

It’s got just enough “this girl needs to lay off the acid” undertones to be dismissed by the common man, yet is valid enough to make any stoner or stoner+ (the + is psychedelics) a little itchy. 

Whithought further ado--I left this typo in here because I couldn’t stop laughing at it--, lettuce unpack these crises.

1. What rules should I live my life by if I truly believe that our society as we know it will crumble in 1 - 2 generations? I wish the answer was as simple as “more whippets”, but sadly, it just never is. There are actually a lot of sub-questions here like “Is enough change to reverse the course of climate change even possible at this point?”, “Does our species even deserve to be saved, or should we lean into the suffering and let the deer dance on our graves?”, “What the fuck are you supposed to be with your life when you can’t bring yourself to reproduce because the world is ending so you have to constantly invent a sense of purpose for yourself instead of just using your kids as a cop out?, and lastly “What if you’re making a mistake by not going to Mars with Jeff and Elon na d the vibes there end up being super lit?”

You see, I’m really good at coming up with these questions, but pretty bad at answering them. All I’ve come up with in terms of the rules and purpose part is just to vibe it out and focus my energy on good ol’ drugs, sex, and rock n roll till the end. But UH OH! Now I’ve become my parents. 

Perhaps I could focus on nature, gratitude, and spirituality? OH CRUD! Now I’m Rose, who has definitely reconciled these issues better than me, but has the advantage of being an introvert. Shorty don’t need that social stimulation like I do and can just go hermit mode when the going gets tough. Not I. 

How about a commune? Tempting, but I’ve heard about a lot of commune drama in my day and don’t really want to get whisked into some Midsommer shit by accident. 

Comedy? Can’t go monetizing my best coping mechanism, now can I? 

Pose your questions to a broader audience in folk songs like Bob Dylan? I think I’m too street for that and I can’t play the guitar. 

Focus on work and being successful? Nope. Work blows and I’m supposed to be protecting my soul from capitalism.  

I tend to treat this question like the hard ones on the EOGs and just skip it and plan on circling back later.

2. How do I protect my soul from capitalism when I need the constant stimulation of city life to distract me from my depression? And when I say I need that shit, I mean it. New people. New shit to do. All the time. I ain’t havin’ no baby, so settling down isn’t in the cards either. There is no scenario where I am going to move out to the suburbs just to stare at my husband every night for 30+ years or, in a more likely scenario, stare at the wall. I’m staying on the scene for a long time, maybe forever. 

That being said, the city is ripe with capitalism. Everyone works like a dog 24/7, switching back and forth between 2 - 4 Apple devices to accomplish God knows what in the grand scheme of things. Tech, finance, and marketing (the classic city trio) have to be the most pointless and cutthroat industries we have come up with to date. It feels like you have to have to have one of those jobs to live there. To afford it, sure, but beyond that, to know that you beat out someone else to get it and that you have successfully stepped on your first of many necks on the way to the top.

I’m moving to Chicago in like 2 weeks to work in tech/finance and sucking my own dick for having a management position so, clearly, I am not above any of this. But I sure wish I was. Even the first month of my soul-selling transaction feels like it has taken years off my life and dulled my flame quite a bit more than school ever did. So I am on the LOOKOUT for ways to get my mouth on some deep dish pizza and fine Chicago men without all of these bullshit side effects. 

And Finally…

3. If I reconnect with my hippie childhood now, will it destroy my chances at happiness and success like it did for my parents?

I feel like this one needs to be elaborated on a little more. For anyone who doesn’t know, my parents are both raging Dead Heads who practiced the art of escapism together on tour for 20 some years until Jerry Garcia died tragically in ‘95. In a desperate search for a new purpose, they popped out me and my sister and now we’re all living the middle class dream in a ranch house on the outskirts of Greensboro. “But at least they’re happy and they love each other right?” Nope. Ls all around.

Sadly, this isn’t just my parents. This seems to be the classic hippie timeline. You feel good, get high, get laid, and indulge your senses in your 20s and you realize that none of it is monetizable and come out the other end begging for capitalism to take you back and bless you with a mediocre career. I know I sound like Nixon right now, but I’m just reading off the data from what I’ve seen. 

Shit is really fucking sad man. I just want to think and feel and vibe and enjoy the world for what it is before it gets too crispy but I feel like I can’t. Any step away from my career feels like it will just land me at the bottom of the totem poll with a job that sucks even more than the one I started with. And yeah, I’m a lot smarter and slicker and decidedly childless than my parents, but it feels like a big fucking dice roll to do the same thing that they did and expect a different outcome. I mean they are the two most genetically similar people to me on the planet, after-all. I really do think I have to be careful and stick with the straight and narrow for now. Bummer because I would like to just bool before the world ends, but unfortunately, that’s going to take a little too long for me to avoid these problems. 

In conclusion: I believe the answer to the question I posed in the title is “Not really and I should probably start hashing these things out with a therapist instead of a tumblr blog sooner rather than later”.

And if you are wondering, no I am not high right now, but I am about to be because that shit was heavy.

[satoruvt]

the color of you - gold (2)

i lost the template for the banner i used in part one so i had to make a new one and it looks different and im sad but at least this chapter is fuckin AWESOME

pairing → keigo takami x bakery owner!reader

word count → 1736

summary → you’re not really dating, so you can’t really be in love with him… right?

song inspo → portland by armors

part one | part two | part three | part four | part five

“Does everything look correct?”

The packet in front of you is intimidating, thick and detailing every aspect of the relationship you and Hawks are supposed to have. You flip through the pages, looking over the big points - no one but you, Hawks, his publicist and your lawyer are to know about the terms of your “relationship,” you need to be okay with having your picture taken, and the whole thing will only last a few months to cover a few press conferences and an awards ceremony. The line for your signature on the last page is blank - you expected Hawks to have signed it already, but the line above his name is blank as well. The ball’s in your court, it’s saying.

“Yes,” you say, nodding up at his publicist. “Everything looks fine, thank you.”

“Any boundaries?” Hawks speaks up, and you meet his eyes from across the table. You shake your head no, offering a curt, gentle smile. Your lawyer hands you a pen to sign the contract, and after a deep breath, you drag the pen across the paper in your name. Hawks does the same after you.

“There we go,” he says when he’s done, clicking the pen. His smile is laid-back, easy. “We’re officially in an unofficial relationship.”

You can’t help the smile that dances on your lips, because it really is ironic, but it’s quickly forgotten as the publicist goes over the general idea. There are big events scheduled for the two of you to be seen together - the press conferences, a few dates, the awards ceremony. You’re welcome to do anything else that you might want, the publicist says, and you don’t miss the wink Hawks sends you.

The rest of the meeting is settled with a copy of the contract handed to your lawyer, and the four of you disperse. You’re gathering up your things when you see Hawks waiting in the doorway. “Let me walk you to the front,” he says, and you do.

His agency building is smaller than you thought it would be, given he’s the number two hero. You get strange looks from a few people as the two of you walk towards the front - you’re not surprised, if you were anybody else but yourself you’d be curious too - and it’s not until the two of you are in the elevator, taking it down to the first floor, that Hawks speaks again.

“So,” he begins, and you turn towards him. “Fancy going on a date with me tonight?”

His gaze is playful, so you join in, and it’s not as awkward as you thought it would be. “You read my mind. Must be a lovers’ connection.”

He likes the humor, you decide, when his teasing smirk grows into a grin. “Well, I figure since we’re gonna be dating for the next few months, I should know about my new girlfriend. Doesn’t do well for the press if they ask me questions about you that I don’t know how to answer.”

You laugh, nodding along to his words. The elevator doors open and the two of you continue to the front of the building in comfortable silence.

“I’m very much looking forward to our date tonight,” you tell him when the two of you reach the front doors. They slide open as another person walks into the building, and the warm air from outside brushes against your legs. Hawks grins, pulls you closer to press a chaste kiss to your cheek. It takes you by surprise and you feel your face grow hot, but before you can say anything Hawks is already walking back to his office.

“See you tonight, babe!” He calls, and you roll your eyes, but the soft smile on your face would fool anyone.

And although it’s embarrassing to blush over something as simple as a cheek kiss, you suppose the pink on your face is a good thing. You notice paparazzi outside of the agency, and they definitely saw what just happened.

-

By this point, you’re not really nervous to be going on a date - “date” - with Hawks, but Jesus, it’s stressful to pick out what the hell you’re gonna wear. Do you actually try? Do you put on some jeans and a nice blouse and call it good? What does going on a fake date with the Number Two hero call for?

In the end you settle for a sundress, something in the middle. It doesn’t take much longer for you to finish up getting ready before you’re heading out the door to the restaurant Hawks had told you to meet him at. You’re lucky it’s not that far away - a fifteen minute walk at most. The sun glows in the evening light, drenching the world in melted gold.

The restaurant is small, but filled with a decent amount of people. When you step inside the gentle hum of overlapping conversation fills your bones, and you see Hawks in a booth down a walkway. You point him out to the hostess and she lets you find your way to him. 

“It’s awfully rude to keep your date waiting,” he says when you get close enough, standing up to greet you.

“What can I say? I dress to impress.”

Hawks kisses your cheek and you scrunch your nose at the feel of his stubble on your face. He lets you into one side of the booth, and you’re expecting him to sit on the opposite side, but instead he sits next to you. The low light of the lamp overhead makes his eyes brighter.

“You do look great.”

“Why, thank you.”

Both of you are teasing, playful, and the conversation is fluid to follow. You’re not speaking across a table so your voices are hushed, gentle, and you think you’re starting to understand why Hawks chose to sit next to you rather than across from you - it’s intimate, couple-y. 

“You know,” you say, finger tracing the rim of your wine glass, “since we’ve been dating for a total of, like, five hours, there’s a lot that I don’t know about you.”

“Ugh, were you even a fan?” Hawks teases, and you scoff, rolling your eyes. His tone softens when you make eye contact with him. “Ask away.”

“For starters, I don’t even know your real name.” You lean your head on your palm as you look at him. “And I feel like, as your girlfriend, I am entitled to that.”

Hawks chuckles, and there’s a certain look in his eyes that you can’t put your finger on. “It’s Keigo Takami.”

Keigo.

“Keigo, huh?” You repeat. It floats around in your mind, lingers on your tongue like the taste of honey. It reminds you of amber, gold, of coins and riches. Keigo.

“Well, I’m Y/N L/N.”

“I know, I looked you up.”

“At least one of us is smart.”

By the time your food comes, you’re barely eating, and it catches up to you how much the two of you have been talking. You’d been worried that the whole thing would be awkward and weird and not at all convincing, but you’re certain if anyone saw the two of you right now, they’d assume you were dating. The conversation rarely stops, and if it does -

Oh. He’s close.

There’s a moment of silence, a break from talking as you shift from one topic to another. On top of the two of you already being close from sitting on the same side of the table, with how much you’ve been talking, you’ve just gravitated towards each other. His arm is draped over the back of the bench, casual, but you can’t really focus when you fixate on his lips.

“And so we, um…” you trail off, then blink yourself out of your trance. “Wow, I completely forgot what I was gonna say.”

Hawks - Keigo - notices, and his face is smug. The smirk on his lips is nothing short of pride.

“Catching feelings for me already, Y/N?”

“In your dreams,” you bounce back.

For the first time tonight, you check your phone. It’s getting late, and although you don’t live very far away, you don’t want to be caught alone after dark. “Ah, I should probably get going.”

Keigo nods, reaching into his pocket to pull out a few thousand yen banknotes and set them on the table. You want to tell him that you have your own money to pay, but he cuts you off by getting out of the booth and speaking himself. “I’ll walk you home,” he says, and you furrow your brows as you get out, too.

“Are you sure? I don’t wanna trouble you.”

“Don’t worry about it,” Keigo says, offering his arm to you with a sly grin. “It’s my duty as a hero. And your boyfriend.”

He puts emphasis on the word and you can’t hide the amused smile from your lips, looping your arm through his. 

The walk to your apartment is as comfortable as being in the restaurant with him, but somehow it feels nicer. You suppose it’s the open air, the golden sun having gone down past the distant mountains, leaving remnants of its light in freckles and rosy skin. The walk home seems faster, and you find yourself a little disappointed that the night is ending so soon.

“I don’t suppose you’d like to come inside,” you say, voice sultry as the two of you stop in front of your door. “Make the paparazzi think we had a little more fun in the privacy of my home?”

Keigo shrugs, and you can see him thinking about it. “I mean, if you’re okay with it…”

“Now who’s catching feelings?”

He scrunches his face up and you giggle. When you speak again, your voice is softer. Crickets chirp somewhere nearby. 

“I had a good time, dating or not,” you tell him, find your key and unlocking the door. “Thanks for taking me out.”

Keigo takes your hand in his and brings your fingers up to his lips in a formal kiss (though the wink he sends you says otherwise). “Anytime, princess. See you later.”

He takes off out of your apartment building and you go inside, immediately laying down on your sofa in the living room. You feel over the spot on your hand where he kissed you, humming quietly to yourself. 

Maybe this won’t be as hard as you thought.

[pop-culturereference]

Onward and Upward

ao3

Summary: At his internship with Hawks, Izuku was starting to feel burnt out.

He hadn't considered that Hawks was, too.

For @hawksweek2020 Day 2: Wholesome Gen

Characters: Hawks, Midoriya Izuku

Rating: G

Izuku’s clumsy maneuvering was not enough to keep up with Hawks as he zipped in and out of the traffic below. Instead, he kept himself high above with blasts from his gauntlets and looked for the streak of red wings to catch his eye. He saw it between one gust and the next and cut his action short to let himself fall. Right before landing, he flicked the air one more time so he wouldn’t crack the cement. His heavy boots clunked, but no cracks appeared. Victory! His control in the air was getting better. Still nowhere near Hawks’s, of course, but maybe even just straggling behind him these past 3 weeks of the internship was enough to learn what he needed.

A red feather flew by, and Izuku startled. He’d spent just a second to celebrate his progress, and he’d lost sight of Hawks. Feathers flew up from where they’d been handcuffing a villain, autographing everything from receipts to skin, and making swirling shapes for a bus of children. Izuku leapt up and flung himself after them. He groaned in frustration as the school of feathers took a sharp turn and disappeared, leaving him to skid to a stop on top of a building and run from edge to edge, looking for the feathers in desperation.

In the end, he couldn’t find them, and plopped himself down on a propane tank. He’d get going in a second, but he’d already fallen far enough behind that a five minute break to catch his breath was really no big deal, so he pulled out phone and scrolled through his messages. Uraraka had sent him a selfie of her and her mentor, Axis, the Flip Hero. They were standing upside down on a hot air balloon hundreds of feet in the air. Uraraka’s hair fell at her shoulders instead of hanging toward the ground. Cool! He responded with a “looks fun!!!” and switched to his notes app to type in some quick thoughts about Axis’s quirk. He answered his mom’s texts before moving on to Todoroki’s. 

“What!?” he yelled when he saw the picture Todoroki had sent him. It was Hawks, talking with the police alongside Endeavor, mid-gesture with one hand in the air and the other pushing his visor onto his forehead.  The next message read “where are you??”

He immediately replied with “SEND ME YOUR LOCATION ASAP” and shot to his feet to start heading east, the general direction of Endeavor’s agency.

Izuku wondered if Tokoyami’s internship last year was like this. Surely not—right?—or Tokoyami would have warned him! His legs ached, his eyes were dry and itchy from the wind, and his throat and chest burned from sucking in more air than he was used to, even after three weeks of it. He was camping out at Hawks’s agency for the duration of the internship, and every morning when he stumbled, sore and bleary, into the kitchen to grab his yogurt, Hawks’s sidekicks would smile at him sympathetically. Had everyone known Hawks was like this except for Izuku? He’d thought Gran Torino went too fast for him, but Hawks was on a whole new level.

His first day at the agency had been a little slower, Hawks showing him around and asking him about himself, where he was from, did he like the dorms at UA, oh yeah it’s a good thing those teachers prioritized the safety of students, that dang league of villains, did he have any idea why Shigaraki had it out for him and Kacchan specifically? And what was his favorite flavor of yogurt so they could keep it stocked in the fridge? Then they left on patrol, and Izuku had been going full speed just trying to keep up ever since.

His phone pinged with the location and he adjusted his course, mumbling a mantra of please still be there please still be there under his breath. How did Hawks get so far so quickly? Izuku pushed himself harder, not wanting to be left behind the rest of the day if he got there and Hawks was already gone. 

When Izuku skidded in, short of breath and clumsy with fatigue, Todoroki greeted him with a blunt “Hello,” and Hawks greeted him with “Midoriya-kun! There you are!” and a laugh. 

Hawks ducked his head and leaned toward Todoroki, dramatically shielding his mouth with a hand, and said, in a whisper louder than Izuku’s normal speaking voice, “Hey, Todoroki-kun, did I break him? He’s got that blank look. Like a rebooting computer.”

“That’s just how he always looks,” responded Todorki with no reaction to Hawks’s joking except to slide his eyes over to the side.

“What! What do I look like?” 

“Adorable is what you look like!” Hawks said with a smile that softened the sharpness of his eyes and rounded his cheeks. “Come ‘ere! Smile!” he chimed as he held his phone out for a selfie. Izuku did, but was certain he looked anxious or shy. “You too, Endeavor-san, Todoroki-kun!”

Neither smiled or moved closer to be in the picture. “Aw, you’re no fun,” Hawks continued as he started to walk by them. At least he’s walking, Izuku thought as he scurried to catch up, and not flying or leaping or spinning. “Thanks anyway, you two. I’ll fax those right over when I get back to my agency. Or, well, tomorrow morning, actually. See ya!”

Oh no. Hawks was going to take off again. Izuku’s stomach jumped in dread, and then they were off. This time, Hawks went above the buildings instead of weaving between them, and that, at least, Izuku could keep up with. Up here, it didn’t matter if he went slightly too fast to control: there was nothing to crash into: no buildings, no pedestrians, and no pavement. Hawks, ahead of him, had his visor down over his eyes again and kept his body streamlined with an occasional flap of his wings. He rode the wind with casual grace, while Izuku jerked himself along with his air blasts. 

By the time Hawks lowered himself onto a roof, Izuku’s hair was no longer curly— they’d been going fast enough that the wind had blown the curls straight out. When he thunked down next to Hawks, it flopped into his eyes. He pushed it back up, his fingers pulling through tangles and the remains of little bugs.

“Good job, Deku!” Hawks told him with a pat on the back. “You’ve got the speed and power, now you just need some precision.”

Izuku already knew that, but couldn’t help smiling anyway. “Thanks! I’ve been working hard!”

“Yeah, you’re a good intern. The best, actually,” Hawks beamed at him. “You and Tokoyami.”

“I– Thanks!”

Hawks was still smiling as he told Izuku, “Okay. You wait here at my agency. I’ve got some things to do; I’ll see you when I get back tonight.”

“Wha-” Izuku looked around and realized that were indeed standing on top of Hawks’s agency office. “Oh.” His enthusiasm, which had been soaring only a moment ago, collapsed and started to drip down to the street below. “Okay!” he called after Hawks, who was already flying away. 

Izuku took the roof entrance, and the sidekicks and secretaries grinned at him as he trudged past.

“Deku!” called Lava, Hawks’s sidekick with the ability to attract and absorb flame. “I like the hairdo!”

Despite his low mood, Izuku grinned back at him. “It’s the latest style, you know!” He reached the door to his room, then had a thought and backtracked. “Oh, hey, do you have any projects here I can work on? Hawks, uh… ”

“Oh, sure thing! Here, come help me with this write-up.”

This is good, Izuku told himself as he crunched through the report, this is good. Yes, he needed to work on his “flying,” but this was good! He was learning the nitty gritty of hero agencies, the not-so-glamorous work behind the scenes. This was good.

The work was simple, plugging in numbers and words to a pre-existing template, so his mind wandered. He thought of his internship with Gran Torino and how much the veteran had taught him. He remembered Endeavor, who’d trained him and Kacchan because Todoroki made him. With Nighteye, he’d at least learned from Lemillion.

Why did Hawks request an internship if he wasn’t even going to <em>try</em> to mentor him? He was happy that his friends were excited about their internships and learning a lot, but he ached a little bit too. Deku, left behind again, it seemed. Don’t need to worry about him, he’s quirkless anyway, he’s not worth the effort.

Izuku stomped down on his spiraling thoughts. It’s not like that, he told himself. Hawks doesn’t think that, he’s just… busy. But, was that any better? Either way, he was missing his opportunity and falling further and further behind his classmates, and he couldn’t let All Might down like that. 

Izuku braced his shoulders with resolve. As soon as he saw Hawks, he would confront him. Nothing disrespectful, just standing his ground to be taken seriously or sent to intern somewhere else. Hawks couldn’t take issue with that because he’d done the same thing at the hero billboards.

Izuku completed the write-up with vigor and handed it to Lava with a request for a new task. He repeated that process several times, until Lava didn’t have anything for him except, “Ummm, lemme see… you could sweep? The broom’s in the kitchen closet.”

When he finished sweeping and returned to Lava, he was stopped before he could even open his mouth. “Nuh-uh! You’re finished. It’s dinnertime. Half the office has left already, you can go ahead and call it a day.”

“But, I, uh, I needed to talk to Hawks.”

Lava grabbed a post-it and wrote on it in barely legible loops. “No worries,” he said, standing up and strolling to the door to Hawks’s office. “He’ll see this when he gets back, and you’re staying here at the agency, so he can pop right over and talk to you. Now shoo!” 

Izuku dragged his feet down the stairs back to his room. He waited, but Hawks didn’t come. After a couple hours, he went back up to the office area, but it was locked and the lights were off. Eventually, he forced himself to accept that Hawks wasn’t going to come talk to him and went to bed.

In the morning, Hawks was sitting haphazardly on the backrest of a chair in the lounge, his wings behind him touching the floor. He jangled an empty energy drink can, then shot it into the small  waste bin like a basketball.

“Deku!” he called with a grin, jumping down. “You ready to head out?” Hawks coughed and pounded a fist on his chest. “Ugh, breathed in a lot of smoke last night.”

They left through the roof door as usual, but this time before Hawks could take off, Izuku stopped him. 

“I, uh, can we talk, real quick?”

Hawks relaxed from his takeoff stance, leaning back and putting his hands in his pockets. “Oh, yeah. I saw Lava’s note, but it was already super late when I got back and I figured you’d probably be asleep already. What’s up?” he asked with a tilt of his head.

“Ummm, well, uh, I. I know that you’re the hero who’s a bit too fast, that’s what they say, but, I keep getting left behind.” Now that he’d gotten started, Izuku remembered his resolve and forgot his awkward nervousness. “I came to this internship because I wanted to learn from you, but I’ve barely had the chance. I’m requesting either that you start to mentor me for real, or that you place me with another hero for the rest of the internship.” Izuku paused for a beat, then blushed. “Uh, sir,” he added with a hasty bow.

Hawks blinked, surprised. “C’mere,” he said, gesturing with his head toward the ledge. “Let’s have a seat.”

Hawks leaned back on his hands and dangled his legs over the side to kick his feet back and forth. As Izuku sat down next to him, Hawks turned away to cough into the collar of his jacket, which Izuku noticed was a little singed.

Apparently the leg-swinging was contagious, because Izuku couldn’t help but do it as well. Hawks looked into the clouds over the city, and Izuku looked at Hawks. He looked wistful, with a sad smile on his face, and Izuku’s heart sunk. He hadn’t realized that he preferred staying with Hawks as an intern until he saw the look on his face like he was going to say goodbye, and all of a sudden, Izuku was preparing himself for the sting of another adult not willing to put in the effort for an awkward, hopeless kid. He steeled himself. He’d move on from it with thicker skin, like he always did.

“Sorry about that,” Hawks said. “Sometimes I get so wrapped up in everything I forget that there are other important parts of being a hero.” He looked Izuku in the eyes. “Thanks for reminding me.” From so close, Izuku could see the bags under his eyes. How late had he gotten back last night, to assume that Izuku would be asleep? He remembered an analyst he’d listened to back in middle school who’d claimed that Hawks would burn out of the Top Ten within a year.

Izuku fidgeted. “Why do you…go so fast all the time?”

Hawks sighed and coughed again, but when his face turned back to Izuku, he was smiling. “Just, you know. Making a better world, for future heroes like you. Heroes should be able to relax, too. Who knows,” he said, staring back out at the sky, “by the time you graduate, maybe we won’t even need so many heroes, and you can kick back and take it easy as an analyst or something.”

“But I want to be a hero! Ever since I was little, it’s been my dream, to be like All Might.”

“Ah, I guess you and I are pretty similar, huh?” Hawks smiled and gave Izuku a playful punch to the arm. “For me, it was Endeavor.”

Izuku grit his teeth, his usual reaction any time Endeavor came up in conversation, but he was also surprised. Endeavor was from a later generation than All Might—Hawks was young enough for Endeavor to be his childhood hero? He’d known Hawks was the youngest in the Top Ten, but he hadn’t quite realized. “Oh,” was all he could say.

“So,” Hawks said, stretching his wings out behind him with a flutter. “That’s my reason. Work hard now, save others the pain. I guess I’ve been slacking on your training a bit because, in my mind, such promising kids like you and Tokoyami shouldn’t need to be heroes, if that makes sense. You should be able to do whatever you want, yeah? But since you want to be a hero, I’ll honor that. What do you want to learn?”

Izuku furrowed his eyebrows, trying to force his thoughts together. There was something here that wasn’t quite connecting. He tugged Hawks’s words through his mind, but they still didn’t click, and he glanced up and noticed Hawks looking at him with one eyebrow raised expectantly.

“Oh! I-” he stammered. “I’ve been wanting to work on my air speed and technique!”

“Perfect,” Hawks grinned. “You’ve come to the right place,” he said, heaving himself back up. He stretched his arms above his head and twisted from side to side and pulled his visor back down, and Izuku noticed that the bags under his eyes were invisible under the visor. 

Tiredness like the kind Hawks was hiding didn’t come from a single late night. People often called Hawks lazy because he talked about wanting a day off and wanting heroes to be able to take it easy. Was that really lazy, though? Or was he just tired? It clicked in Izuku’s head, then. Hawks worked as hard and went as fast as he did so that no one else would have to do what he did.

“Um, Hawks? Do you- do you not want to be a hero?” Izuku asked, scrambling to his feet.

 Hawks lifted himself off the ground with a flap of his wings.

“‘Course I do,” he said solemnly. “Who doesn’t? 

He turned away toward the city, leaving his back toward Izuku. “Here,” he said over his shoulder.“The first step is your angle. I think your problem is that you always fling yourself at a square angle, either straight up or straight forward. Let’s head off, and you try matching my angle this time.”

Overcoming his habit of just going straight up, Izuku took off after Hawks at the same angle.

With one hand, he gave Izuku a bright thumbs up. With the other, he held up his collar and coughed into it.

“Onward we go,” he said with a huff that was either a laugh or a sigh, Izuku wasn’t sure which.

He didn’t think Hawks knew, either.

[flesymetahiq]

Elinor (My Apprentice OC)

pls don’t say Bonjour to me ,-,

However, I hope I did nothing bad if I say that my OC  is the apprentice , I only step back a little from the canon(?) I’m sorry ..Just questions are very suitable,_, I'll probably skip some questions >~<Next time I will use this template on real OС, I hope you do not get mad at me

I think the same way to arrange Ask with her, maybe this will also help me develop her as a character.

Finally,after the hundredth attempt to draw my apprentice, since I represent her,I succeeded, now I’m going to the second round of hell - information about her. Honestly, this is a whole hurricane of thoughts in my head,and soon I’ll lose my mind, seriously ,_, 

Although what I’m talking about, in my head a mess reigns, reigned and will always reign(yaaaaaaiii)

By the way, so that some have visual representations about Elinor (Yes, maybe I will use different versions of her name( Eleanor, Elenore, Eleonora, Eleonore, Elinor, Elinore, Ellinore, Elynor, etc. XD, not a canon)

So as not to go crazy, I’ll just answer the questions posed by @apprenticealec (thank you very much QwQ)I will also add my items. Just really liked the questions, sorry again!

Let’s begin! 

1. What is their occupation in the Arcana World?

In the Arcana world, Elinor’s occupation is to develop her magical skills. In addition, she’s very interested in legends and various nationalities, languages and cultures, for the most part, because in this way she hopes to stumble on something,that will lead to memories of her past.She strives to learn all that is possible.Therefore, when Elinor gets into the palace library, she’s simply cannot be pulled out of there.

Closely related item: Dreams and Desires

Elinor often sees homeless and hungry people, sometimes even very talented, but who do not have anything to somehow light up in society or develop further. Therefore, its goal is to solve this problem as soon as possible. She dreams of creating an  academy where children from various sectors of society can study, as well as a charity in favor of those in need.

2. Where are they from?

In fact, Elinor came from a fairly kingdom called Augusay.The power of the kingdom lay, naturally, in the presence of its strong warriors and magicians, who came from some ancient clans, each such clan differed in magical priorities. For example, once on the territory of the kingdom, there was a clan of magicians named Haiko, magicians in this clan were distinguished by both white and black magic. There are legends that once a powerful warrior Haiko Ken was able to defeat a nine-tailed fox - a demon who penetrated into a world in which harmony and good reigned. However, demon's killer cannot remain an ordinary mortal. Ken was cursed, devil left his mark on him, since then demonic blood flowed in warrior’s veins, and sometimes Ken turned into a monster, which he seemed to have killed. Fortunately, Ken met a beautiful sorceress who helped him control the curse. They had children who transmitted both magic from their mother and the demonic curse from their father, thus forming the Haiko clan, a clan in which reigned balance between demonic power and white magic.From such a clan came the mother of Elinor - Aurora,who was the queen of  Augusay. At the moment, any mention of the kingdom and its memory were mysteriously destroyed, as if it had never been.

3. Do they have any family members? 

Haiko Akane (Elinor’s mother - Queen of Augusay )  - died by demon Lilith when Elinor was 3 years old

Haiko Fuji  (Elinor’s grandfather - And also the most strict teacher, whom Elinor hated and loved at the same time  when she was child/teenager. Come on he hit her  head with his huge damn stick when she was doing something wrong, a terrible old man.) - Oh yes, baby he saw dinosaurs, what are you talking about? (Joke.Yes, he is alive).

Carlisle Victor  (Elinor’s father - King of Augusay) - died protecting the Augusay from the (army of demons) army of the Lilith  (this is a long story).

Carlisle Anastasia (the illegitimate sister of Victor -  Elinor’s aunt) - died of heart failure.

4. Where were they during the plague in Vesuvia?

Even before the plague appeared in Vesuvia, Elinor received a letter from her aunt Anastasia (who owned the magic shop), since Asra and Eleanor managed the shop, Elinor’s aunt  lived on the territory of Venterre. In a letter, Anastasia wrote that her health was deteriorating due to severe heart disease, and she would like her niece to visit her. So Elinor spent enough time with her aunt, trying to maintain her condition and always be there so that aunt Anastasia would not be lonely. Before her death, Anastasia, who cared for Ellinore after her 18th birthday (since her memory was completely lost, like all the information and the kingdom of  Augusay itself) and claimed that the girl’s parents were middle nobles , who were killed by robbers, wanted to admit that everything was wrong, she hid the girl’s past for her own safety.Perhaps Anastasia had not time or simply didn’t gain strength, but still could not tell Elinor the truth. So aunt only left her property, highlighting a large mysterious box that she had been hiding from her niece all this time.Elinor felt that something was wrong, but she did not have time to figure out how she found out that a plague epidemic had begun in Vesuvia. Naturally, she went there, because she was extremely concerned about the lives of people and friends she knew.

5. Where are they during the main Masquerade? Were they invited royals or just townsfolk who decided to stop in when Nadia opened it to everyone?

Aunt Elinor was known in the narrow circles of high society, despite the fact that she led an extremely unusual way of life for her status.Therefore, Elinor was invited  royals to a masquerade. To say that she did something special during the masquerade, no. She was unusual to even be in such a crowd of people, she just wanted to distract herself from everything that had happened earlier, being at that time with Asra and Nadia, who were close enough friends for her.

10. What’s their idea of a perfect day?

Oh yahhhhhhh,in fact, everything is simple, the perfect day for Elinor This is the day when all her friends are nearby, happy, they are having fun as anyone can, well, actually this is all that is needed for happiness and the perfect day for Elinor (almost).

12. What’s one of their favorite memories?

This memory is extremely muddy, with every attempt to penetrate into it, Elinor almost faints. She remembers .. someone’s gentle warm voice, soothing, she remembers that someone sang a gentle cradle, as well as vague features of a woman’s face.

13. What’s one of their least favorite memories?

The moment in the dungeon with Lucio, at that moment she really was very worried and did not know what to do, although she tried not to show it so as not to make Lucio worry or blame himself if she had to sacrifice herself.

14. If they’ve interacted with (insert one of the Main 6 here) what is their opinion of them? If they haven’t interacted, what would their first impressions be?

(If I said anything above that I'm talking about ... oh, it's hard, just imagine that I crossed the MС, or rather an  Apprentice  with OС ?? :0)

 Asra -  Master? Master! Master!Maaaster! (agm, I’m sorry).  Asra, in secret, her top friend. However, it is worth noting that he is also an authority and an important object for respect for Elinor, for the most part she treat him as an older brother or really as a teacher, although he most likely will not be happy about it.Everything is somehow complicated, he the best friend to whom she trusts even her own life and the at the same time hi’s a teacher to whom she tries too much respect. Like all her friends, Ellie wishes Asra only the very best. Not to say that she is an angel who cannot be offended or angry at anyone, since she really often was offended when Asra went away for a certain time without saying where and for how much, which made her very worried and worried.

Julian - Dear Mr. Ilya, say something bad about yourself and I will crush you with.. MY RASEN... I’m not serious person..Not to say that Elinor was shocked to find out that Julian Devorak was not at all connected with the murder of Lucio, despite his first EPIC appearance in her shop, which scared Elinor so much that she almost fainted and almost every time she met him didn't squeal ..It is not strange that even in the worm Eleanor will find something beautiful, Ilya is far from being a worm, he is a wonderful person who should not think of himself as any kind of monster or garbage, she rather found in him an unfortunate person who lost himself, who is exactly help is needed..

 Portia  - One Portia's smile and Eleanor’s day made. In her eyes, Portia is a wonderful, strong, cute, cheerful person, while they walked to the castle to Nadia, Elinor asked her a bunch of questions, even the most stupid ones, just to at least listen to her giggle or joke while answering them.When she met Ilya with tears in her eyes, believe me, Elinor inside was already dead, her brain simply could not digest the fact that bitter tears were rolling on the face of this beautiful cutie.In general, Elinor is very happy for Ilya, because she would like to have a sister like Portia. Although, all her friends are her family, which she loves and tries to show care and attention.

Nadia - For Elinor Nadia, authority is no less than Asra and not because of her social status. Elinor sees a patient, strong, kind and wise person in Nadia, to which she cannot but respect. Even the movement of the Nadia’s hands makes Elinor delight, well, this countess is too beautiful...Eleanor is very pleased to discuss with Nadia any important topics related to life, philosophy, art, she is always interested in the Nadia’s opinion. For example, when they argue about something, is it not a gross argument, even rather a reasoning? Oh my God, how she seeks to hear Nadia’s arguments, sometimes her  thoughts can sit in Elinor’s mind for the whole day, night, week, month, she will return to this conversation 200 more times, only with other thoughts.

 Lucio - please give him a chance ..She likes him the most, but ... what kind of sympathy I'm talking about, Elinor is deeply in love with him.Despite everything, the fact that he is a complete moron, selfish in the opinion of others, in her eyes  he is the one who also needs help and support. In general, Elinor does not believe in bad people, for her there are people who make mistakes unknowingly, Lucio is one of those. Her opinion only gained a foothold after she began to pay attention to  Lucio, and the more he changed, the more she loved him.She was very touched when he showed his concern, or at least somehow regretted his actions, she believes him, believes that he will never repeat his mistakes ..At the moment they have a very warm relationship, Eleanor really hopes that her other friends will also be able to change their mind about this goat man,and Lucio himself will become more loyal to others.

Muriel  -  This man deserves the best of this life, his appearance says absolutely nothing about him, so when he saw Elinor was not at all afraid. He is a gentle, kind person, and no matter how he pushes her away from him, no matter how she is annoying, she does not lag, she will do everything to make him feel freer, so that other people also see Muriel as a sweet, good-natured person.

15. Share a song that describes them or just fits their “vibes.”

                                         Nandemonaiya

ROMAJI:

Futari no aida toorisugita kaze wa

Doko kara sabishisa wo hakonde kita no

Naitari shita sono ato no sora wa

Yake ni sukitootteitari shitanda

Itsumo wa togatteta chichi no kotoba ga Kyou wa atatakaku kanjimashita Yasashisa mo egao mo yume no katarikata mo Shiranakute zenbu kimi wo maneta yo

Mou sukoshi dake de ii Ato sukoshi dake de ii Mou sukodhi dake de ii kara Mou sukoshi dake de ii Ato sukoshi dake de ii Mou sukoshi dake kuttsuite iyou ka

Bokura TAIMU FURAIYAA toki wo kakeagaru KURAIMAA Toki no kakurenbo hagurekko wa mou iya nanda Ureshikute naku no wa kanashikute warau no wa Kimi no kokoro ga kimi wo oikoshitanda yo

Hoshi ni made negatte te ni ireta omocha mo Heya no sumikko ni ima korogatteru Kanaetai yume mo kyou de hyakko dekita yo Tatta hitotsu to itsuka koukan koshiyou

Itsumo wa shaberanai ano ko ni kyou wa Houkago «mata ashita» to koe wo kaketa Narenai koto mo tama ni nara ii ne Toku ni anata ga tonari ni itara

Mou sukoshi dake de ii Ato sukoshi dake de ii Mou sukodhi dake de ii kara Mou sukoshi dake de ii Ato sukoshi dake de ii Mou sukoshi dake kuttsuite iyou yo

Bokura TAIMU FURAIYAA kimi wo shitteitanda Boku ga boku no namae wo oboeru yori zutto mae ni

Kimi no inai sekai ni mo nanika no imi wa kitto atte Demo kimi no inai sekai nado natsuyasumi no nai hachigatsu no you Kimi no inai sekai nado warau koto nai SANTA no you Kimi no inai sekai nado

Bokura TAIMU FURAIYAA toki wo kakeagaru KURAIMAA Toki no kakurenbo hagurekko wa mou iya nanda Nande mo nai ya yappari nande mo nai ya Ima kara iku yo

Bokura TAIMU FURAIYAA toki wo kakeagaru KURAIMAA Toki no kakurenbo hagurekko wa mou ii yo Kimi wa hade na KURAIYAA sono namida tomete mitai na Dakedo kimi wa kobanda koboreru mama no namida wo mite wakatta Ureshikute naku no wa kanashikute warau no wa Boku no kokoro ga boku wo oikoshitanda yo

ENGLISH VERSION:

The sorrowful gust of wind that blew right between you and me Where did it find the loneliness it carried on the breeze? Looking up at the sky after shedding a stream of tears I could see for miles of blue, it's never been so clear Speeches that my father gave me would always make me despair Somehow, I feel a warmth and comfort today Your ever kind heart, the way you smile, and even how you find your dreams I knew nothing, so honestly, I've always copied you Now, just a little more Only just a little more Let's stay here a little longer now Now, just a little more Only just a little more Let's stick together just a little bit longer Oh yes, we are time fliers Scaling the walls of time, climber Tired of playing hide and seek with time and always coming just short Crying even when you're happy Smiling even when you're feeling lonely It's because a part of you Has made it here before the rest has I used to wish upon the stars, the toys that I once adored Forgotten now, are rolling 'round the corners of the floor Finally, my dreams have counted up to a hundred today Someday, I'll trade them all for just the very one Girl that I have seen in school, that never have told "hello" After class today, I waved and said, “See you tomorrow” It's not really that bad trying something new every once in a while Especially if I can do it with you by my side

Now, just a little more Only just a little more Let's stay here a little longer now Now, just a little more Only just a little more Let's stick together just a little bit longer Oh yes, we are time fliers, so, and I I knew who you were way before... Way before I even knew my own name There's no clue, but I'm sure, I swear Even if you're not around in this wide world Of course it surely would have some kind of meaning But if when you're not around in this crazy world Would be like the month of August without summer break And if you're not around in this great world Would be like Santa Claus without any glee If you're not around in this wide world Oh yes, we are time fliers Scaling the walls of time, climber Tired of playing hide and seek with time and always coming just short No, never mind that No, never mind what I said now 'Cause I'm on my way to you Oh, we are time fliers Dashing up the steps of time now No more playing hide and seek with you and time And always coming just short You're quite a showy crier Want to stop your tears, see your eyes drier But when I went to wipe your tears dry You refused but I saw them pouring down your face, I knew why Crying even when I'm happy Smiling even when I'm feeling lonely It's because the heart of mine Has made it here before my body

This song, oh yes, the song not only describes Elinor and her feelings, but it seems to me that this is exactly her voice I imagine.. ( Mone Kamishiraishi <3)

16. What do people assume about them at first glance?

In general, it’s hard for me to answer. Perhaps many people will perceive Elinor as the most ordinary girl, although it all depends on the situation and the person. For some, it may seem very creepy and mysterious. So that..

17. What’s something (personality aspects, body type, hobbies, etc.) that they find attractive in others?

Generosity, tolerance, understanding, loyalty, kindness, good sense of humor.

She doesn’t care about  appearance, including body type.

As for the hobby. Hmm, most likely hobbies related to art, playing musical instruments, drawing, poetry and literature.Well, of course, magic-related hobbies

18. Do they have any hobbies?

Sure! Some have already been listed. Elinor　also loves to cook, play keyboard musical instruments and sing.

19. Who’s someone that they just can’t stand? (One of the Main 6, another OC, etc.)

Another OC - Hushiba Madara >:0  (Her childhood friend with whom she competed. He often ran into her and did not even think when he said really offensive things in her direction. True, at the moment, Ellie does not remember about Madara absolutely nothing. I’ll actually make an answers about him, because he’s  totally an OC)

Another OC -  Demon Lilith 

[bluewatsons]

Alice Bolin, The Ethical Dilemma of Highbrow True Crime, Vulture (August 1, 2018)

The “true-crime boom” of the mid- to late 2010s is a strange pop-culture phenomenon, given that it is not so much a new type of programming as an acknowledgement of a centuries-long obsession: People love true stories about murder and other brands of brutality and grift, and they have gorged on them particularly since the beginning of modern journalism. The serial fiction of Charles Dickens and Wilkie Collins was influenced by the British public’s obsessive tracking of sensational true-crime cases in daily papers, and since then, we have hoarded gory details in tabloids and pulp paperbacks and nightly news shows and Wikipedia articles and Reddit threads.

I don’t deny these stories have proliferated in the past five years. Since the secret is out — “Oh you love murder? Me too!” — entire TV networks, podcast genres, and countless limited-run docuseries have arisen to satisfy this rumbling hunger. It is tempting to call this true-crime boom new because of the prestige sheen of many of its artifacts — Serial and Dirty John and The Jinx and Wild, Wild Country are all conspicuously well made, with lovely visuals and strong reporting. They have subtle senses of theme and character, and they often feel professional, pensive, quiet — so far from vulgar or sensational.

But well-told stories about crime are not really new, and neither is their popularity. In Cold Blood is a classic of American literature and The Executioner’s Song won the Pulitzer; Errol Morris has used crime again and again in his documentaries to probe ideas like fame, desire, corruption, and justice. The new true-crime boom is more simply a matter of volume and shamelessness: the wide array of crime stories we can now openly indulge in, with conventions of the true-crime genre more emphatically repeated and codified, more creatively expanded and trespassed against. In 2016, after two critically acclaimed series about the O.J. Simpson trial, there was talk that the 1996 murder of Colorado 6-year-old JonBenét Ramsey would be the next case to get the same treatment. It was odd, hearing O.J.: Made in America, the epic and depressing account of race and celebrity that won the Academy Award for Best Documentary, discussed in the same breath with the half-dozen unnecessary TV specials dredging up the Ramsey case. Despite my avowed love of Dateline, I would not have watched these JonBenét specials had a magazine not paid me to, and suffice it to say they did very little either to solve the 20-year-old crime (ha!) or examine our collective obsession with it.

Clearly, the insight, production values, or cultural capital of its shiniest products are not what drives this new wave of crime stories. O.J.: Made in America happened to be great and the JonBenét specials happened to be terrible, but producers saw them as part of the same trend because they knew they would appeal to at least part of the same audience. I’ve been thinking a lot about these gaps between high and low, since there are people who consume all murder content indiscriminately, and another subset who only allow themselves to enjoy the “smart” kind. The difference between highbrow and lowbrow in the new true crime is often purely aesthetic. It is easier than ever for producers to create stories that look good and seem serious, especially because there are templates now for a style and voice that make horrifying stories go down easy and leave the viewer wanting more. But for these so-called prestige true-crime offerings, the question of ethics — of the potential to interfere in real criminal cases and real people’s lives — is even more important, precisely because they are taken seriously.

Like the sensational tone, disturbing, clinical detail, and authoritarian subtext that have long defined schlocky true crime as “trash,” the prestige true-crime subgenre has developed its own shorthand, a language to tell its audience they’re consuming something thoughtful, college-educated, public-radio influenced. In addition to slick and creative production, highbrow true crime focuses on character sketches instead of police procedure. “We’re public radio producers who are curious about why people do what they do,” Phoebe Judge, the host of the podcast Criminal, said. Judge has interviewed criminals (a bank robber, a marijuana brownie dealer), victims, and investigators, using crime as a very simple window into some of the most interesting and complicated lives on the planet.

Highbrow true crime is often explicitly about the piece’s creator, a meta-commentary about the process of researching and reporting such consequential stories. Serial’s Sarah Koenig and The Jinx’s Andrew Jarecki wrestle with their boundaries with the subjects (Adnan Syed and Robert Durst, respectively, both of whom have been tried for murder) and whether they believe them. They sift through evidence and reconstruct timelines as they try to create a coherent narrative from fragments.

I remember saying years ago that people who liked Serial should try watching Dateline, and my friend joked in reply, “Yeah, but Dateline isn’t hosted by my friend Sarah.” One reason for the first season of Serial’s insane success — it is still the most-downloaded podcast of all time — is the intimacy audiences felt with Koenig as she documented her investigation of a Baltimore teenager’s murder in real time, keeping us up to date on every vagary of evidence, every interview, every experiment. Like the figure of the detective in many mystery novels, the reporter stands in for the audience, mirroring and orchestrating our shifts in perspective, our cynicism and credulity, our theories, prejudices, frustrations, and breakthroughs.

This is what makes this style of true crime addictive, which is the adjective its makers most crave. The stance of the voyeur, the dispassionate observer, is thrilling without being emotionally taxing for the viewer, who watches from a safe remove. (This fact is subtly skewered in Gay Talese’s creepy 2017 Netflix documentary, Voyeur.) I’m not sure how much of my eye-rolling at the popularity of highbrow true crime has to do with my general distrust of prestige TV and Oscar-bait movies, which are usually designed to be enjoyed in the exact same way and for the exact same reasons as any other entertainment, but also to make the viewer feel good about themselves for watching. When I wrote earlier that there are viewers who consume all true crime, and those who only consume “smart” true crime, I thought, “And there must be some people who only like dumb true crime.” Then I realized that I am sort of one of them.

There are specimens of highbrow true crime that I love, Criminal and O.J.: Made in America among them, but I truly enjoy Dateline much more than I do Serial, which in my mind is tedious to the edge of pointlessness. I find myself perversely complaining that good true crime is no fun — as self-conscious as it may be, it will never be as entertaining as the Investigation Discovery network’s output, most of which is painfully serious. (The list of ID shows is one of the most amusing artifacts on the internet, including shows called Bride Killas, Momsters: Moms Who Murder, and Sex Sent Me to the Slammer.) Susan Sontag famously defined camp as “seriousness that fails,” and camp is obviously part of the appeal of a show called Sinister Ministers or Southern Fried Homicide. Network news magazine shows like Dateline and 48 Hours are somber and melodramatic, often literally starting voice-overs on their true-crime episodes with variations of “it was a dark and stormy night.” They trade in archetypes — the perfect father, the sweet girl with big dreams, the divorcee looking for a second chance — and stick to a predetermined narrative of the case they’re focusing on, unconcerned about accusations of bias. They are sentimental and yet utterly graphic, clinical in their depiction of brutal crimes.

It’s always talked around in discussions of why people like true crime: It is … funny? The comedy in horror movies seems like a given, but it is hardly permitted to say that you are amused by true disturbing stories, out of respect for victims. But in reducing victims and their families to stock characters, in exaggerating murderers to superhuman monsters, in valorizing police and forensic scientists as heroic Everymen, there is dark humor in how cheesy and misguided these pulpy shows are, how bad we are at talking about crime and drawing conclusions from it, how many ways we find to distance ourselves from the pain of victims and survivors, even when we think we are honoring them. (The jokey titles and tongue-in-cheek tone of some ID shows seem to indicate more awareness of the inherent humor, but in general, the channel’s programming is almost all derivative of network TV specials.) I’m not saying I’m proud of it, but in its obvious failures, I enjoy this brand of true crime more straightforwardly than its voyeuristic, documentary counterpart, which, in its dignified guise, has maybe only perfected a method of making us feel less gross about consuming real people’s pain for fun.

Crime stories also might be less risky when they are more stilted, more clinical. To be blunt, what makes a crime story less satisfying are often the ethical guidelines that help reporters avoid ruining people’s lives. With the popularity of the podcasts S-Town and Missing Richard Simmons, there were conversations about the ethics of appropriating another person’s story, particularly when they won’t (or can’t) participate in your version of it. The questions of ethics and appropriation are even heavier when stories intersect with their subjects’ criminal cases, because journalism has always had a reciprocal relationship with the justice system. Part of the exhilarating intimacy of the first season of Serial was Koenig’s speculation about people who never agreed to be part of the show, the theories and rabbit holes she went through, the risks she took to get answers. But there is a reason most reporters do all their research, then write their story. It is inappropriate, and potentially libelous, to let your readers in on every unverified theory about your subject that occurs to you, particularly when wondering about a private citizen’s innocence or guilt in a horrific crime.

Koenig’s off-the-cuff tone had other consequences, too, in the form of amateur sleuths on Reddit who tracked down people involved with the case, pored over court transcripts, and reviewed cellular tower evidence, forming a shadow army of investigators taking up what they saw as the gauntlet thrown down by the show. The journalist often takes on the stance of the professional amateur, a citizen providing information in the public interest and using the resources at hand to get answers. At times during the first season of Serial, Koenig’s methods are laughably amateurish, like when she drives from the victim’s high school to the scene of the crime, a Best Buy, to see if it was possible to do it in the stated timeline. She is able to do it, which means very little, since the crime occurred 15 years earlier. Because so many of her investigative tools were also ones available to listeners at home, some took that as an invitation to play along.

This blurred line between professional and amateur, reporter and private investigator, has plagued journalists since the dawn of modern crime reporting. In 1897, amid a frenzied rivalry between newspaper barons William Randolph Hearst and Joseph Pulitzer, true crime coverage was so popular that Hearst formed a group of reporters to investigate criminal cases called the “Murder Squad.” They wore badges and carried guns, forming essentially an extralegal police force who both assisted and muddled official investigations. Seeking to get a better story and sell more papers, it was common for reporters to trample crime scenes, plant evidence, and produce dubious witnesses whose accounts fit their preferred version of the case. And they were trying to get audiences hooked in very similar ways, by crowdsourcing information and encouraging readers to send in tips.

Of course the producers of Serial never did anything so questionable as the Murder Squad, though there are interesting parallels between the true-crime podcast and crime coverage in early daily newspapers. They were both innovations in the ways information was delivered to the public that sparked unexpectedly personal, participatory, and impassioned responses from their audiences. It’s tempting to say that we’ve come full circle, with a new true-crime boom that is victim to some of the same ethical pitfalls of the first one: Is crime journalism another industry deregulated by the anarchy of the internet? But as Michelle Dean wrote of Serial, “This is exactly the problem with doing journalism at all … You might think you are doing a simple crime podcast … and then you become a sensation, as Serial has, and the story falls to the mercy of the thousands, even millions, of bored and curious people on the internet.”

Simply by merit of their popularity, highbrow crime stories are often riskier than their lowbrow counterparts. Kathryn Schulz wrote in The New Yorker about the ways the makers of the Netflix series Making a Murderer, in their attempt to advocate for the convicted murderer Steven Avery, omit evidence that incriminates him and put forth an incoherent argument for his innocence. Advocacy and intervention are complicated actions for journalists to undertake, though they are not novel. Schulz points to a scene in Making a Murderer where a Dateline producer who is covering Avery is shown saying, “Right now murder is hot.” In this moment the creators of Making a Murderer are drawing a distinction between themselves and Dateline, as Schulz writes, implying that, “unlike traditional true-crime shows … their work is too intellectually serious to be thoughtless, too morally worthy to be cruel.” But they were not only trying to invalidate Avery’s conviction; they (like Dateline, but more effectively) were also creating an addictive product, a compelling story.

That is maybe what irks me the most about true crime with highbrow pretensions. It appeals to the same vices as traditional true crime, and often trades in the same melodrama and selective storytelling, but its consequences can be more extreme. Adnan Syed was granted a new trial after Serial brought attention to his case; Avery was denied his appeal, but people involved in his case have nevertheless been doxxed and threatened. I’ve come to believe that addictiveness and advocacy are rarely compatible. If they were, why would the creators of Making a Murderer have advocated for one white man, when the story of being victimized by a corrupt police force is common to so many people across the U.S., particularly people of color?

It does feel like a shame that so many resources are going to create slick, smart true crime that asks the wrong questions, focusing our energy on individual stories instead of the systemic problems they represent. But in truth, this is is probably a feature, not a bug. I suspect the new true-crime obsession has something to do with the massive, terrifying problems we face as a society: government corruption, mass violence, corporate greed, income inequality, police brutality, environmental degradation, human-rights violations. These are large-scale crimes whose resolutions, though not mysterious, are also not forthcoming. Focusing on one case, bearing down on its minutia and discovering who is to blame, serves as both an escape and a means of feeling in control, giving us an arena where justice is possible.

Skepticism about whether journalists appropriate their subjects’ stories, about high and low, and about why we enjoy the crime stories we do, all swirl through what I think of as the post–true-crime moment. Post–true crime is explicitly or implicity about the popularity of the new true-crime wave, questioning its place in our culture, and resisting or responding to its conventions. One interesting document of post–true crime is My Favorite Murder and other “comedy murder podcasts,” which, in retelling stories murder buffs have heard on one million Investigation Discovery shows, unpack the ham-fisted clichés of the true-crime genre. They show how these stories appeal to the most gruesome sides of our personalities and address the obvious but unspoken fact that true crime is entertainment, and often the kind that is as mindless as a sitcom. Even more cutting is the Netflix parody American Vandal, which both codifies and spoofs the conventions of the new highbrow true crime, roasting the genre’s earnest tone in its depiction of a Serial-like investigation of some lewd graffiti.

There is also the trend in the post–true-crime era of dramatizing famous crime stories, like in The Bling Ring; I, Tonya; and Ryan Murphy’s anthology series American Crime Story, all of which dwell not only on the stories of infamous crimes but also why they captured the public imagination. There is a camp element in these retellings, particularly when famous actors like John Travolta and Sarah Paulson are hamming it up in ridiculous wigs. But this self-consciousness often works to these projects’ advantage, allowing them to show heightened versions of the cultural moments that led to the most outsize tabloid crime stories. Many of these fictionalized versions take journalistic accounts as their source material, like Nancy Jo Sales’s reporting in Vanity Fair for The Bling Ring and ESPN’s documentary on Tonya Harding, The Price of Gold, for I, Tonya. This seems like a best-case scenario for prestige true crime to me: parsing famous cases from multiple angles and in multiple genres, trying to understand them both on the level of individual choices and cultural forces.

Perhaps the most significant contributions to post–true crime, though, are the recent wave of personal accounts about murder and crime: literary memoirs like Down City by Leah Carroll, Mean by Myriam Gurba, The Hot One by Carolyn Murnick, After the Eclipse by Sarah Perry, and We Are All Shipwrecks by Kelly Grey Carlisle all tell the stories of murder seen from close-up. (It is significant that all of these books are by women. Carroll, Perry, and Carlisle all write about their mothers’ murders, placing them in the tradition of James Ellroy’s great memoir My Dark Places, but without the tortured, fetish-y tone.) This is not a voyeuristic first person, and the reader can’t detach and find joy in procedure; we are finally confronted with the truth of lives upended by violence and grief. There’s also Ear Hustle, the brilliant podcast produced by the inmates of San Quentin State Prison. The makers of Ear Hustle sometimes contemplate the bad luck and bad decisions that led them to be incarcerated, but more often they discuss the concerns of daily life in prison, like food, sex, and how to make mascara from an inky page from a magazine. This is a crime podcast that is the opposite of sensational, addressing the systemic truth of crime and the justice system, in stories that are mundane, profound, and, yes, addictive.

[razzmataz-z]

Danger Days - Killjoy OC Template

i actually found this one on deviantart and thought why not lol so all credit goes to the creator(s) for this. if you want, add your oc below!!

--

BASICS

Real Name: Unknown (they've never told anyone, and they'd like to forget their past)

Killjoy Name: Razzmatazz

Nickname(s): Razz, Razzy

Age: They say that they stopped counting at 11 (which was years ago) but they look fairly young (so 19 y/oish)

Birthday: Unknown (once again, they'd like to forget it all)

Gender: They believe that gender is a scam created by BLI

Nationality: They're from Bat City but they have a hint of a southern accent in their voice

--

APPEARANCE

Hair Color: Bright, dyed red

Hair Length/Style: Medium length and wavy

Eye Color: Golden brown

Skin Tone: White, but a little bit more tan than most people

Height: 5'5"

Weight: Around 120lbs

Outfits: Typically fishnets, red leather shorts, red leather cropped jacket, black accessories, black armbands, black combat boots with red laces

Special Possessions: A hidden locket that only they know about (with a pic of Razz with the Fab Four and the Girl on one side and a pic of Razz’s old killjoy crew on the other). Also patches of her old crew's jackets from when they died, Killer King's rings, a pair of roller skates Show Pony gave away, patches from the Fab Four's outfits (jackets and pants) and a matching bracelet with the Girl.

Dominant Hand: Left (but they're ambidextrous)

Scar(s): They have a lot of scars on their shoulder blades for unknown reasons and some scars on their legs from falling/getting shot

Tattoo(s): A semicolon on their middle finger (left side) and a set of simple angel wings with a halo on their right/front hip

Piercing(s): All across both ears, both sides of their nose (but they only wear a ring on one side at a time), right side eyebrow, belly button

--

PERSONALITY

Basic Personality: Since the Fab Four died, they have distanced themself from other Killjoys. They're very reserved and tend to work alone. Before though, they were basically a live version of what light would be.

Likes: Getting into fights, the Girl, Making BLI mad, helping helpless animals

Dislikes: Val Velocity, BLI, Korse

Strengths: They tend to use their guns the most (they always carry at least two), but keep a knife on their thigh and are trained fairly well in self defense with fists

Weaknesses: Their past

Fears: Losing the Girl (because they promised Poison that they'd protect her with their life just hours before Poison died), butterflies, water, and looking weak/having a weakness (though they'd never admit any of those except maybe the firs

What Side Are They On?: The Killjoys (and very occasionally neutral, but really only neutral when Val is fighting so they can be an ass to him)

BACKSTORY

Background: Childhood and early teen years is mostly unknown (they've done almost everything they can to forget about it). Most of their past is forgotten, almost forgotten, or in the process of trying to be forgotten. Nobody exept for Razz and the Fab Four know about Razz’s history. The Girl will get occasional glimpses, but she still doesn't know as much as she'd like to.

Best Memory: Sitting in the Diner with the Fab Four, laughing about something stupid that Ghoul said (or walking past Poison's room, singing the Girl to sleep after she had a nightmare only for them to fall asleep right after).

Worst Memory: When news spread that the Fab Four died, and Razz knew they could have done more to help (they still blame themself for it).

--

FAMILY

Parents: All they remember is a woman with blonde hair. Even then, she's very fuzzy.

Sibling(s): Two brothers - the younger one returned to Bat City and the older one died helping Razz escape

Grandparents: Deceased, as far as Razz knows

Relative(s): Razz only slightly remembers hearing things about their cousins, but they don't know when and what cousins are.

Pet(s): They remember having a golden retriever, and will foster animals until they are nursed back to health. Other than that, they have a black cat that will visit them frequently, but Razz says they are just friends.

--

FRIENDS AND ENEMIES

Friends: The Girl, Mad Gear and Missile Kid

Best Friend(s): Previously the Fab Four, but now only Show Pony

Acquaintances: Vamos and Vaya, Dr. D, Tommy Chow Mein

Rivals: Val Velocity (staggers between rival and enemy), most droids

Enemies: Korse, Dracs, The Director

--

LOVER AND LOVER INFO

Sexual Orientation: They believe that like gender, sexuality is a BLI scam and does not exist

Crush/Lover: Previously crushing on Party Poison, and even before that on Killer King (a part of Red's old crew who has died)

Why Do They Like This Person?:

Poison - Red likes Poison's leadership skills and selflessness. Although Poison can be a bit of an ass at times, Razz has always strived to be like them, and will always protect their memory/reputation.

King - King was a mystery to Razz and everyone who knew the two. Red didn't know what they saw in him. Maybe it was the recklessness and humor. Or the idiocy. (Neon would always tell Razz that "opposites attract" as a reason to explain it)

How Did They Meet?: They met though Dr. D, when Razz was one of the new DJs (Red had also been helping take care of the Girl for a while, so that helped bring everyone closer).

How Serious is the Relationship?:

Poison - Not serious at all. For all Razz knows, Party thought of them as an adoptive sibling and nothing more.

King - More serious than Poison (though Razz never admitted it). They'd have romantic night walks, stargazing 'dates', Drac hunting 'dates' and fiery makeout sessions

--

EXTRAS

Other Information: Razz calls people "darlin'" because of (their southern accent mixed with) Freddie Mercury, their biggest role model. They also swear a lot and have a trust issues (along with anxiety, depression, extremely mild schizophrenia, PTSD and ADD). Razz also loves the idea of the Greek God, Hades, for reasons unknown.

Quotes: "Fuck you", "Move", "Make me", *whispering* "Bitch", *shouting* "Bitch!", "Bastard", "Jackass", "Don't repeat that outloud" (always directed at the girl when they swear), "Fuuuucckkkkkkkkkkkkkkk", "I'd rather die", "Ain't this the dream?", "See ya in Hell", "HOLY SHIT!!"

--

RELATIONSHIPS WITH ORIGINAL KILLJOYS

Party Poison -

Are They Friends, Enemies, or Something Different?: Razz had a major crush on Poison, but they'd never tell. They always wanted something more, but the closest they got to that was Poison kissing them on a cheek before going to rescue the Girl.

How Did They Meet/Have They Met?: See 'lover and lover info'

Do They See Each Other Often?: Very. When Razz wasn't living in their abandoned "home", they'd stay at the Diner

-

Fun Ghoul -

Are They Friends, Enemies, or Something Different?: Friends

How Did They Meet/Have They Met?: Poison brought Razz and the Girl to the Diner because Razz wouldn't leave the Girl's side.

Do They See Each Other Often?: See notes on Party Poison (but Razz wouldn't see Ghoul as much as Poison)

-

Kobra Kid -

Are They Friends, Enemies, or Something Different?: Best friends

How Did They Meet/Have They Met?: Kobra went with Poison to Dr. D's to get the Girl

Do They See Each Other Often?: Very. A tiny bit more than Razz would see Poison.

-

Jet Star -

Are They Friends, Enemies, or Something Different?: Friends

How Did They Meet/Have They Met?: Same as Ghoul

Do They See Each Other Often?: Same as Ghoul

-

Dr. Death Defying -

Are They Friends, Enemies, or Something Different?: Acquaintances (but Dr. D insists that they're friends)

How Did They Meet/Have They Met?: Show Pony stormed into Dr. D's office and spilled the news about the Girl, and the killjoy that shot everyone who tried to take the Girl while screaming death threats and profanities. Dr. D took an interest immediately.

Do They See Each Other Often?: Not very, but Razz will always come to check in on stuff. Show Pony will also bring them around if they've been away for too long (while ignoring Red's protests and threats)

-

Show Pony -

Are They Friends, Enemies, or Something Different?: Best friends. Ever since the Fab Four died, Show Pony and Razz are inseparable. They help each other out.

How Did They Meet/Have They Met?: Show Pony was there when Razz was threatening the killjoys, and thought it was oddly attractive (though they've always stayed as just friends). Pony was basically the only one Razz would talk to (other than the Fab Four).

Do They See Each Other Often?: Kind of. Razz keeps to themself most of the time, but Show Pony will drop in frequently to say hi or steal something (or to take Razz into town/a concert)

-

Motorbaby (The Girl) -

Are They Friends, Enemies, or Something Different?: Close friends. Razz is like an adoptive parent figure to the Girl

How Did They Meet/Have They Met?: Razz found the girl alone and afraid. Then, Razz didn't have much (other than their killjoy gang)

Do They See Each Other Often?: Yeah. Razz checks up on the Girl way too often. They're very overprotective and constantly worrying about the Girl's health and wellbeing

-

Korse (And Others From BL/Ind) -

Are They Friends, Enemies, or Something Different?: Enemies without a doubt

How Did They Meet/Have They Met?: Razz used to make a tradition of causing trouble in the City, and Korse has met them on many occasions

Do They See Each Other Often?: Not anymore. Korse had a huge bounty over Razz's head but nobody dares to double cross them. Korse remembers Razz very clearly, and Razz is out for revenge for their friends.

--

ADDITIONAL CHARACTERS

Val Velocity-

Are They Friends, Enemies, or Something Different?: Basically enemies. If Val wasn't a killjoy, Razz promises that they would have ghosted him by now

How Did They Meet/Have They Met?: Razz found Val talking shit about Party Poison so they decided to give him a piece of their mind (besides Show Pony's attempted warnings)

Do They See Each Other Often?: Not totally. But when they do, it doesn't end well.

-

Killer King (OC) -

Are They Friends, Enemies, or Something Different?: Friends with benefits, you could say?

How Did They Meet/Have They Met?: King knew his way around the Zones when Razz didn't, so naturally he decided to help them

Do They See Each Other Often?: Very. They used to live together

-

Radio Riot (OC) -

Are They Friends, Enemies, or Something Different?: Friends. Riot was the newest addition to the crew but they taught Razz so many new things.

How Did They Meet/Have They Met?: Razz was walking out of a bar with the rest of their crew when Riot almost hit them with a motorcycle

Do They See Each Other Often?: Yes. Riot moved in with the Crew and helped teach them basic self defense

-

Neon Grace (OC) -

Are They Friends, Enemies, or Something Different?: Best of friends.

How Did They Meet/Have They Met?: Neon finally tracked down King (a relative, the two claimed) and Razz was by his side durning that time

Do They See Each Other Often?: Yes. Neon lived with the crew as well.

-

Candy Corn (OC) -

Are They Friends, Enemies, or Something Different?: Friends

How Did They Meet/Have They Met?: Candy was Neon Grace's love at first sight

Do They See Each Other Often?: Yes. Candy taught Razz how to shoot a gun

[littlenightma]

Um, hi there...Thomas Hewitt with a female victim that he keeps alive. Mainly because, she was actually kind to him. And, he becomes attached to her, in a way.

Note: Hello, @ladysalvage! I had so much fun writing this.

Warnings: Major fluff

Title: The Promise

Fandom: The Texas Chainsaw Massacre (2003) + (2006)

Pairing: Thomas Hewitt x Fem!Reader/Leatherface x Fem!Reader

Template: One-Shot

Topic: Anonymous request, Thomas Hewitt x Fem!Reader

The Promise

The smell that permeated the room was putrid: blood, salt, sweat, and the smallest amount of of a flavor that she swore smelled like barbecue. It was dark and she was scared. Scared because of the people upstairs who seem so polite were able to do all those horrible things to the people - no - bodies, in front of her.

Was this a punishment? Was God punishing her for every wicked thing she had done? No, she didn’t do them, her father made her do them. At least, that what she told herself to feel better.

The room could be compared to a suana in hell. Her clothes stuck to her like glue, sweat slicking her skin from the hours, or was it days, since she was brought here.

The room itself was no where near inviting with the imposing metal instruments that looked too well used hanging on hooks on the walls.

The upstairs door opened and a pair of loud, stomping footsteps barreled down the wooden steps. She cowered in the corner, hiding as close to the wall as possible, hoping that the sliver of a chance the two men wouldn’t see her was on her side.

They came into view with drastically opposite auras about them. The one in front was an older gentleman with greying hair in an Army cut and a stern face. He was wearing a sheriff’s outfit, but he wasn’t the sheriff she recognized around the town and he hadn’t been seen in a while. The other was bigger than the first, by height and weight. He wore a half mask around the lower portion of his face made from old leather of some sort. She recongnized him as the one who killed the others.

“Did you kill them all? I thought I told you to leave one of them alive for dinner, Thomas,” the older man snapped. Despite the size difference, the masked man, Thomas, shrunk his shoulders slightly before scurrying around the basement with large, obstructive steps.

She recoiled back as far as she could to no use. Thomas spotted her within seconds, grabbing her by her shirt and forcing her on her feet. He unlocked her cuffs before pushing her forwards.

“So you did keep one alive. Good, good. Nice job, son,” he commented with the most evilest smirk she’d ever witnessed. He stepped closer, raising a hand so his fingers could glide down her cheek. It made her sick.

“And aren’t you pretty thing,” he whispered with a sly grin.

She gulped silently, twisting her hands together from the anxiety that was curling in her stomach. Instinctively she took a step back, her back hitting Thomas’ chest. Hoyt straightened his back, nodding his head towards Thomas in approval.

“Bring her up in a few hours. She’ll make a fine guest.” he smiled wickedly, giving her one last leering stare before his figure disappeared up the steps.

She felt the push of Thomas’ hand as he shoved her back to her little corner. He sat down on a wooden stool, starting to cut hunks of meat from an animal - or was it human? She imagined the table had once been a beautiful, pure white instead of the rusted, blotted red it was now.

After an hour of listening to the sounds of meat being sliced, she needed to hear someone’s voice even if it was her own.

“He shouldn’t be so mean to you, you know.”

He stopped his actions for a slight second telling her he had heard her. He didn’t reply and he didn’t move. Was he surprised? Confused? Contemplating how he would ground her up like all of the others?

She continued, “My father used to yell at me, too.”

Her words fell weak at the end as the memories of her father ran through her head, reminding her of the terrible past she had experienced with her own family.

Thomas listened, remaining still. He wasn’t sure why the girl was talking to him instead of screaming curses or begging for her life like all the others did. He was uneased by her calm demeanor though and even moreso by her eyes that cut him to the core for some reason. They held an innocence to them that he’s never seen before in a victim. It made him want to...protect her.

“You wear that mask, may I ask why?”

Thomas’ body tensed. She bit her lip instantly knowing she crossed a line by mentioning his mask.

“I’m sorry, I shouldn’t have asked. I guess I just wanted to know more about you before I die, but I shouldn’t pry. It’s rude.”

Thomas peered at her again. This time he stopped all movement. Wanted to know more about him? Wanted to know about his face? The girl was weird, kind, but weird. Thomas rarely found anything weird. He’s found things interesting, confusing, even dangerous, but weird? He couldn’t remember a time.

Mama told him once that one day he’d meet someone that would be humble enough to see past his mask, past the horribleness that he bore. Someone who’d make his heart thump loudly like when he’d chase after those people that’d managed to get away. The girl had his heart thumping loudly, just like how Mama said. And she had manners! He wondered if Mama would like her.

She sat quietly in her own ocean of a mind, the waves of thoughts washing onto the shore. Thomas didn’t put back on the cuffs. Was this a trick or simple fact of forgetfulness? Either way, she had no intentions of running away. Crazy. Absoutely and undeniably insane, she knew, however she had nothing to go back to. She had no money, no clothes, no other family to seek safety to.

“Thomas, bring her up. It’s time for dinner!” Hoyt yelled from the top of the steps. She frowned visibly. Dinner sounded too nice, too normal for this kind of place.

Thomas was the closest thing she had to a companion then. He was like her in some ways. He did what he felt he had to do, just like her when her father demanded things from her that were beyond her control. Did it for the family.

Thomas walked over to her. He didn’t grab her as harshly as he did the first time, gently grabbing her arm and hoisting her up. When she stood, he noticed that the chains were not around her ankle.

“You didn’t put them back on me,” she spoke, hoping he wouldn’t become angry.

He should know better than to forget something like that. Had he been unlucky, she would have ran and he would have been blamed for it. Strangely, she actually didn’t attempt to run. She never even moved an inch from where he’d placed her hours prior. It had to be a trick.

He ran his hands over her body trying to detect any sign of a weapon hidden in her clothes. She allowed him to search her. Not like she could have stopped him anyways. When he found nothing, he took a step back and cocked his head as if to say ‘why’?

“I don’t have anything to run to and I mean, you would have caught me before I made it up the steps. Or the sherriff would have,” she frowned again, averting her gaze to the floor.

The idea of her being caught by Hoyt bothered Thomas. He disliked the thought of anyone else touching her. The worst part of it was, he had a good feeling she wouldn’t fight them if they did like she didn’t for him.

“Thomas? Promise me you’ll protect me from the sheriff? Please?” she asked softly, her eyes pleading. Standing this close to Thomas, the material of his mask could be seen better. It wasn’t leather like she had pressumed; it was dried human skin. She was not afraid. Not of him, everything else but him.

Thomas stared, considering.

She prayed.

And his eyes glimmered.

And she hoped.

And then saw him nod his head.

I promise

[sugarjared]

Bring Back The Real Tumblr: It’s not just staff changes, it’s us too.

The year is 2019 and we’re currently facing a reblog problem. As most of you have noticed, most creations and original posts go untouched for reblogs but get plenty of likes. This has been happening for over 2 years now, but it’s only more pronounced now that high traffic bloggers are complaining about the same issues. Text posts like, “If I have a blog with such high follow, why are my creations going unnoticed?” pop up in my feed almost on a daily basis. It’s not just that the site has changed tremendously for the worst ever since Yahoo took over in late 2013, followed by Verizon in the past year-- it’s that the population killed itself in its own thirst for quality control. We’ve turned it into a geekier version of Instagram. Yikes.

 If you find yourself skipping this post just because it’s long, you too are part of the problem. Specially if you blacklist long posts.

Simpler days, more community roles, more reblogs, less inhibitions.  Back in the days of the mishapocalypse, the days of when tumblr grandmas used to start networks and chats for newcommers and creatives, the days of lot’s of plain REAL socializing with people OUTSIDE of your cliques, that’s when most of our first succesful blogs hit the big tumblr boom.  It was fun to start new friendships. It was fun to reblog just because it was a funny post, or because you agreed with someone’s opinions. Everything was done at the tune of one simple rule: “I like this, so I’m putting it on my blog”. Commenting on a post till it got outrageously long wasn’t a fashion faux pas either. People didn’t attempt to control how many blogs they were following. Oh yes! We were MUCH, MUCH, MORE LOOSER with the amount of people we followed. At one point in 2012-2013, I remember celebrating when I reached 666 followed blogs... all multifandom of course. What happened, why did we change?

Monkey see, Monkey do and the quest for elitist fame. Eventually, many blogs got tremendously big. Even small effort bloggers like me would reach over 10k followers in about 1-2 years. A dumb text post would get 500 notes within a day, and 2-3k easily by the end of the week, if not the month.  So imagine someone sitting on top of 25-30k followers, answering questions day in and day out, upon impressionable smaller bloggers who wanted to create such an experience for themselves. You know what we often saw in those replies? Examples along these lines: “I try not to follow a lot of people. I have 32k follwowers but only follow about 92 blogs. “I only follow people who post original content daily/weekly.” “I only follow my closest inner group, but I’ll give sevral posts a like or a little promo, but won’t follow sorry.” “I don’t follow blogs that have too many text posts.” Exclusivity was birthed, visual content was in, real life text posts and low quality compositions were out.

And that’s when other’s started doing the same shit. I’m guilty, I did the thing too. BUT WE DID TRY for a while to combat this because we KNEW IT THEN AND WE KNOW IT NOW that it’s a shit move that WILL come back to bite the community in the ass, and THAT’S when networks became a thing. 

The Networks Renaissance 

We created networks run from sideblogs, and used text posts as chats. We had our own network tags to help everyone in our respective communities get more exposure. Across all the big fandoms that’s what we started doing. Welcoming people with less followers, welcoming people of all walks of life and all levels of artistic skills, no matter how often they were available, no matter how shit their beginer content was. We were there to HELP them grow, just like we once did. It was the perfect template... but it died. And it died a horrible, dragged out death. People went back to their clique-y holes, college and work demanded other people’s times... we just, forgot networks all together. The reblog apocalypse now had a clear path to truly end our golden years.

Now we’re here.

At this point, bringing Tumblr to its more humble, social, reblog and follow friendly nature is probably near impossible. Unless of course we use the formula that works, “The Monkey See- Monkey Do” Formula of course!

Y’all love to think you’re independent thinkers, but not really. All humans are social animals, and heard mentallity is found in every single group ever. You wan’t your old tumblr back? You gotta lead the revolution. Oh what’s that? Don’t wanna start giving in order to recieve? Well, guess things will have to remain as they are. 

But if you find yourself in a position where you never gave up your blog, are sitting on top of a lot of followers, and have a large group of friends who are also there with you, do the right thing, and bring back the reblog economy. Nobody else can. It starts with the top. DO SOMETHING TODAY, and you’ll profit tomorrow. Stay friendly and humble, and encourage people to be more positive, less shallow, and fill your blog with life once again, not just regurgitated over-reblogged posts. Bring back the old tumblr. Or you know, keep on going like it is now and completely give up on it when it’s truly dead another 2 years from now.

Your Move, Fandoms. 

[yourultraarchive]

Reply to @prurientpuddlejumper​ on this ask:

I’m sorry you’re frustrated or if I offended you somehow, but to be frank I don’t appreciate the tone you’re using here. However, to answer you anyway:

> they def meant the links to these alleged "online generators," because I am in the same boat as anon

First of all, unless you ARE that anon, I don’t think you can say they “def” meant anything, since they never came back to clarify, and I did try my best to answer them the first time, and I seemed to have helped since they didn’t come back to report any problems with my answer.

Second of all, “alleged”? That’s very rude. Just because you cannot see them on tumblr mobile, does not mean they do not exist. Plenty of other people have used them just fine, as evidenced by the many posts submitted to this blog. And as the last two people who’ve asked about mobile access before never came back with problems, I can only assume they simply went on the desktop site to use the generators instead of accusing me that it’s not accessible at all.

>  post after post about how you updated the UI or whatnot with no link to the thing you updated

It was only two posts (so far anyway), and if you read them closely, you may have noticed I said I was only working on new updates, that they weren’t done, and that they aren’t out yet. And also that “the current generators are still up” so that people have a fully functional version of the generator to use, even if it’s not as pretty as the update is going to be. So no, there is no “link to the thing I updated”, because it’s not done yet. And as the point of the post was about the updates-to-come, I saw no need to promote a link to the generators that are currently available. Seeing as you want that though, I shall go correct those posts and link it, for your and future readers’ convenience.

I apologize for the misunderstanding, if I wasn’t clear enough about the updates being a work-in-progress. I was just trying to update my actual followers (of which I noticed that you are not one) that I was working on stuff, since this blog is usually pretty quiet.

> I REALLY wanna see it, and am growing increasingly frustrated about how much work you're pouring into this *thing* without giving mobile users any way to *access it*.

Again, I’m sorry this is frustrating to you, and you do bring up some legitimate feedback about the mobile accessibility. As I mentioned, I’ve answered at least two asks about this issue before, but since it’s been a few years and phones have definitely gotten more powerful I can look into developing a proper mobile version. But a lot of issues come up with making a mobile version, namely UI and responsive design (because I’d have to account for both vertical and horizontal orientation, and again I reiterate that UI design is hard), dynamic coding/image generation/data input/font importing and styling/etc., and how to save the actual generated image or at the very least the export/import save data for later use on a desktop browser. It takes a lot of work (more than most people realize, I imagine), so if you would like to help with that, let me know, otherwise you have no right to shame me for not making a mobile version, taking my time, or doing any of this.

As it is, you can actually still access the generator on mobile, just not tumblr mobile. You just have to go to a browser on your phone (there’s a reason my URL is so simple). However, as mentioned above, the template was not designed with mobile in mind, so all the fonts and effects and arrangement on the template itself just looks... not like it’s supposed to. Which, again, is part of the issue with the design, but at least you can access it on mobile, against your claims that you cannot.

Also, I mainly made this a desktop site because of how large the dimensions of the template are, in order to make sure the text is visible/legible even in the downsized preview image. Even when I view the template on my phone, I have to zoom in a lot, and with the current live version of the online generators, it would have made scrolling around to input data annoying. The PSDs, as well, would be inaccessible on mobile as far as I know (if Photoshop Mobile has improved enough to handle all the layers, masks, and effects, I’m unaware) so it was a conscious decision to make this whole thing desktop-only when I first started this blog several years ago.

> Even the "downloads" link you just shared just redirects back to this same page. Which is probably because you've hidden all the links away in "pages" which are completely invisible and inaccessible on the mobile app

It’s very much tumblr’s fault, and I really should have thought of that at first, but again, it was a conscious decision to make this a desktop site. Even if I made rebloggable/viewable posts with the links in them (which I plan to do soon, if only to satisfy mobile users like you), only the PSD download links would work (but again, not sure how well downloading PSDs work on mobile devices), as the tumblr app will still loop back to the blog, since the online generator is still one of those blog “pages”. And that is not changing for as long as I don’t have the time or money to host it on its own domain.

I can’t change the fact that tumblr mobile doesn’t automatically open blog pages in an external browser, so the only solution I can offer you is to take the extra step to copy the url and go into your mobile device’s actual internet browser, or just go to your browser and type in my URL manually.

If you actually couldn’t access the templates at all (which should not be an issue if you “REALLY wanna see it” given that not only did I offer you explanations and solutions for the tumblr app problem, but also that it IS accessible on desktop and you reasonably could have just gone on a computer) or had any other problem with them, I have made no stranger of myself and have always been open to help people. They have been polite or nice when they do talk to me, and I’ve always tried to be cordial in return. Your feedback is legitimate, and I appreciate it, but you really could have worded your implied suggestion a little better. And to be quite honest, I was offended by the rudeness of your reply, especially when you called my hard work a “*thing*”. Those asterisks imply a very negative tone, in case you weren’t aware.

I get the impression that you think that your demand will be fulfilled right away if you make enough fuss about it, but I’m not going to be manipulated or guilt-tripped because you feel bad. Maybe you don’t mean it that way, but you can “grow increasingly frustrated” all you want, because not only am I working on this for free, on my free time, and by myself, but I am also not doing this for you. You’re right that I am pouring a lot of work into this, as much work as any fan artist or fanfiction writer will put into their own works, and I’m very proud of it (both as it is now and what it will be in the future) and I have fun working on it, but this is not my job. And you’re not paying for a service.

I’m not working for anyone, and I have no reason to have made more than I originally did--originally I only made the student template PSDs for some friends, and the generator (which seems to be my most popular template, even though my original focus was on the PSDs) only came about because one of my friends didn’t have Photoshop. And I wasn’t even going to release either of them to the public, but I did, and the villain ones came over a year later because of this blog and the people who follow it. No one asked for a user interface update (in fact, more people have asked for a pro hero template), but I’m doing it anyway because I can and I want to. That’s all this boils down to. Also my free time (if you hadn’t noticed, everything on my blog runs on a queue, and when I do queue stuff it’s usually like 3am or so--including right now... it’s currently 5am actually) and motivation (I’m well aware of how few people actually use the templates compared to how many people follow and reblog the posts, and honestly it’s a little discouraging). So if I do make a mobile version, be aware that it won’t be coming out for a very long time. (Also, I think you’re the only one in several years who has complained about it, and you are literally 1 in... what, 3000+ people? Judging by the number of notes on the original post I made when I started the blog and my current number of followers. And again, you’re not even one of them. So to be honest, I’m really not motivated to work on this quickly.)

If you want it faster? Being nice when you show your interest helps, it’s how I got encouraged to make the villain templates. Though I never asked for much other than patience. Or at the very least, the respect any fandom content creator deserves--I may not be cranking out fanart daily or new chapters of a fanfiction weekly or anything, but I am still providing the fandom with something they can enjoy at no cost. And like reviews on fics or comments on art, many people have expressed that they’re grateful the templates and generators exist at all, unlike you, which is really the reason this blog continues to exist and the generators/templates to be updated with new and improved features. I could have just left my original template generator up there and abandoned it, but I know how it feels to find out a fanart you loved years ago was deleted or a really good fanfic was discontinued. So I’ll continue to work on it, and yes I’ll put mobile compatibility for the generators on my to-do list, but I’ll do it at my own pace.

Also I’m not making money off of this, but hey, if you wanna give me incentive that way, hop into my DMs or something and we’ll talk, but I’ve never asked for donations or anything and I don’t plan to. The generators and templates are free for use, and most of that is because of tumblr, which gave it a platform and a home. If I hosted it on its own domain, I’d need a means to pay for that, and I’m personally not invested enough to do that when tumblr is free and works well enough.

If you or anyone else wants to help change that, come talk to me, the ask box is always open.

Otherwise, please visit this blog page on a desktop browser or at the very least something that isn’t just the tumblr mobile app, because nothing can be done about mobile compatibility right now, and I’d hate for you to miss out on seeing the templates. Hopefully I can look forward to whatever you will create with it.

-archivist

[cupofsorrows]

A Conceptual Post About Pokémon as D&D Monsters

I know, I know, it’s been done before, but I’ve been having a lot of ideas about D&D lately and it occurred to me that it might be fun to try to adapt Pokemon to the standard dnd setting(s) - that is, not just copying them wholesale as in, “you open the dungeon door and see a pikachu” but taking the concept of the creature and placing it in your world as something that genuinely belonged there. Like, say, You confront your party with a large turtle-monster that sprays high-powered water jets as its primary mode of attack. It’s essentially a blastoise, but that isn’t what it’s called and it doesn’t necessarily have to follow the rules that an actual blastoise would in the pokemon games. I’ve seen pokemon stat block writeups before, but they’re usually pretty straightforward “this is a psyduck” type deals, and what I’m interested in is retooling the monster to fit in a different world (while keeping the core of it intact). What’s it called (if it has a different name)? Where does it come from in your world, and where does it live? If the original had evolutions, does this version? Lots of potential there. To that end, here are a few pokemon that I think have particularly interesting concepts:

Phantump: Honestly all of the ghost pokemon have interesting concepts but I didn’t want to have a disproportionate number of ghost-types so I chose this one. Core concept is a furtive little forest spirit that uses old tree stumps (or perhaps fallen logs) as surrogate bodies/protective shells. Canon lore says they’re supposedly the spirits of children who died in the forest, so take or leave that as you please. Now, none of these suggestions have to look exactly like their inspirations as long as they convey the idea - for instance I sort of imagine these guys as little humanoid figures made of gnarled wood, which also gives me distinct skull-kid-from-LoZ vibes (but maybe that should be a separate post...)

Heliolisk: I don’t really know what drew me to this critter in particular, except that ‘solar-powered lizard that can shoot electricity and stuff’ is just a good creature to put in a made-up world (probably in a desert region). It even has “-lisk” in its name, like the more infamous basilisk, so it already sounds like it SHOULD be a mythical creature. As I’m writing this I realize that it strongly resembles the already-in-dnd shocker lizard, but come on, this thing is way more badass. Also I was just reading about it on Bulbapedia and apparently it can run super-fast? so... that’s in there, too.

Snorlax or Slaking: Look I just like the concept of a big hairy beast that’s super strong but spends almost all of its time asleep. Not even sure that would affect its stats but it’s great flavor.

Zygarde: A host of tiny organisms - maybe even single-celled - which can come together to form larger gestalt creatures (most famously a massive serpent/worm, but even more powerful forms may be possible). Should be a very powerful, possibly unique, individual, since it is a legendary pokemon.

Dhelmise: Sentient algae that uses marine detritus as a ‘skeleton’? The ghost type delivers again! I imagine that before humans were responsible for so much stuff being in the ocean these must have used a lot of animal bones (and maybe some driftwood) instead.

Seismitoad: I think there are already frog monsters with sonic attacks, but that was only half of the appeal for me here, the other half being ‘large bipedal frog’. I hold this as being very different from bullywugs, grippli, or any other amphibian-based humanoids: While froglike, those are all still fundamentally types of people, whereas this beast is first and foremost a frog. A frog that walks upright and has opposable thumbs. This also works with poliwhirl/poliwrath and croagunk/toxicroak, but then the sonic/vibration stuff won this one out for me by a slim margin. (Addendum: I have come to the realization that seismitoad and croagunk don’t actually have opposable thumbs according to their artwork. Whatever, just fudge it.)

Tropius: This one’s just plain weird. Like, almost exeggcutor-level weird (dang, maybe I should have chosen exeggcutor instead. But tropius is less famously weird. Side note: what’s up with pokemon based on palmlike plants?) It’s part small sauropod dinosaur, part banana tree, and while I’m not sure whether it should be classified as a plant or not, I do know that it can definitely fly. Also, it produces delicious fruit you can eat!

Parasect: You probably figured I was going to mention this one. Everyone thinks of paras and parasect when they think of pokemon with weird but cool concepts. MY take is that the fungus could infest different types of giant vermin, perhaps making it the basis for a template. Or not; these are just suggestions. Do whatever.

Larvesta and Volcarona: Maybe I’m just on a kick from all the GKOTM fanart I’ve been seeing, but giant fire-spitting caterpillar + giant fiery moth adult seems like a creature idea worth exploring. Larvesta also takes longer to evolve than any other stage-one pokemon, which I see as representing a long time spent in larval form (or pupated), which in turn resembles kaiju’s long periods of ‘dormancy’, bringing us back to Mothra (as all things must). Also, I think larvesta/volcarona are the only bug/fire types in the whole series so far? That’s nuts to me but it just makes them even more special.

Abra: Honestly the way this guy looks is like 90% of the appeal for me here. Abra looks like an armadillo tried to evolve into a monkey and somehow ended up with psychic powers in the process. It levitates and teleports, and according to the lore it’s usually asleep but thanks to its psychic powers is still aware of its surroundings. That’s right, its eyes aren’t really narrow, they’re just closed all the time. Do any images of abra with its eyes open exist? If they do, are we prepared to see them? As always, don’t feel like you have to give any of these guys evolved forms just because they evolve in the games. I’m definitely not saying this here specifically because I like abra’s design more than its evolutions, no sir.

Pinsir or Heracross: Pretty much the same as with the toads a few entries above. Clearly not people, but just vaguely reminiscent enough to maybe be just a little unsettling. C’mon, I know they’re cute in the games and the show but tell me you wouldn’t be at least slightly perturbed if you saw a real-life beetle the size of a 10-year-old trundling around on two legs. Even if you thought it was rad as hell you’d still get out of there pretty quick if it started trundling towards you.

Slowpoke: Listen if you don’t get the appeal of a semi-aquatic, ambiguously mammalian quadruped that has psychic capabilities but is also comically oblivious to external stimuli then I just don’t know what to tell you.

Barbaracle: Colonial organism sort of like Zygarde, except the individual parts are bigger. It could even be modular, with the various ‘limbs’ combining in different ways, although that could also complicate the stat block.

Gothitelle: Conceptually I suppose this is just another humanoid psychic creature, but a while ago I saw someone point out how its frills and whatnot are sort of reminiscent of a sea slug, and damned if ‘anthropomorphic nudibranch’ doesn’t get my blood flowing.

Rapidash: Pretty simple, a unicorn variant/non-evil fire horse. Who wouldn’t want one of those?

Necrozma: I never actually played Sun and Moon 2, nor did I get too deep into the postgame ultra beast stuff in SuMo 1, so regrettably I missed out on a lot of the wonderful interdimensional weirdness. While each ultra beast is appealing in its own way, Necrozma is practically a Lovecraftian Great Old One already what with how it was once an interstellar being of heat and light but was somehow injured or depleted and has now become a completely different creature that travels from world to world absorbing all light. That’s a pretty raw concept for any story, let alone a cute kid’s game. And it’s always a plus when something can be cool and threatening while still being safe for a G rating! You could also do what SuMo2 did and take your heroes to a world that’s already had its light stolen by the beast, to explore how the inhabitants of that world have been affected as well as show what awaits the heroes’ world... or just as a nice change of scenery. Lastly there’s the possibility that Necrozma must ultimately be defeated not through violence, but by figuring out how to restore it to its original form. It isn’t too often that the cosmic monstrosity could actually use your help, and it might leave the PCs feeling like they really accomplished something epic. Alternately, it returning to its original form also makes a great homage to the multiple forms of every JRPG final boss ever, a trope that has been under-represented in D&D for TOO LONG.

...and that’s it, at least for now. Naturally, there are about a thousand other possibilities, including different ways of interpreting the examples I’ve provided here. I suppose they could also be used for purposes besides D&D, although if you’re going to put any of this in the fantasy novel you’ve been working on I suggest you be extra diligent in obfuscating the creatures’ actual origins so as to avoid a visit from any lawyers. I don’t know if anybody is actually even going to see this post at all, but if it does end up getting around, then I fully encourage all of you to put your own spins on this if you’re inspired to do so! I’d love to see what other people might come up with.

[fuse2dx]

June '20

Trials of Mana

Maybe not the highest profile remake Square-Enix have put out in recent memory, but one that was pretty exciting for me. I played a fan translation of the Super Famicom original some 20 years ago, so while it's not particularly fresh in my head, there's just enough there to enjoy some infrequent little pangs of nostalgia. The move to 3D has made for some welcome changes to to combat - jumping adds a vertical element to combat that wasn't present before, and enemy specials being clearly telegraphed and avoidable puts a little more control in your hands. There's still a good amount of 16 bit jank though - combo timing feels unreliable, the camera's often a pain, there's plenty of questionable hit detection, and you definitely wouldn't want to leave your fate solely in the hands of your party's AI. Willing to put most of this aside, what actually mattered more to me was that it still had the kind of playful, breezy nature, it looks and plays nicely, and that it progresses at a nice clip. Party selection will change the way you fight moment-to-moment, but only provides minor and very brief deviance from the main storyline, most of which is the kind of schlocky cartoon villainy that will have you looking for a skip button before it would illicit any kind of emotional response. But you know what? Overall, I still enjoyed it a lot.

So while it may not be revolutionising the action RPG, what it does show is that Square-Enix is capable of acknowledging their history of previously untranslated works, and that they also now have a pretty good template for getting a B-tier remake of such titles out in a reasonable timeframe. Where do I send my wish list in to, team?

Sayonara Wild Hearts

As a one-liner found on the back of the box, 'A pop album video game' is about as on-the-nose as it gets. The old "it's not for everyone" adage is definitely applicable, and its defiance of traditional video game metrics is not in any way subtle. How sophisticated is the gameplay? Not particularly. How long is it? Not very. But how does it make you feel? Now you're talking. It presents a simple but deeply relatable story of a broken heart, and leads from there with a catchy tune into a fast and colourful onslaught of new ideas, perspectives, and concepts. That is to say: it has the potential to make you feel all kinds of things. 

One especially celebratory note was how well the game is structured to fit into the album structure it boasts about. Stages flow quickly into one another, and while shorter, more compounding numbers are often about introducing new ideas and themes, moving on to the next is a few simple button presses and a brief, well-hidden loading window away. Inevitably there are more standout stages, those that feel like the hit singles; the longer, verse-chorus-verse type joints that grant the space for more fleshed out visual story telling, and that smartly synchronise their percussive hits, soaring vocals and the like to appropriate beats of play. A lot of the gameplay can easily (and cynically) be reduced to "it's an endless runner", but to liken this to a cheap re-skin of a confirmed hit-maker is to wilfully dismiss so much of what it does better and so much beside. You can play it on damn near everything, and for the time it takes, it's well worth doing. 

Twinkle Star Sprites

I've meant to play this countless times before. I've almost certainly passed it by while strolling through arcades, the Saturn version has never been hoovered up into my collection, and the PS2 collection this particular version belongs to - ADK Damashii - is no longer a cheap addition to anyone's library. The digital version of it for PS4 however was however recently on sale at a point that saw me receive change from a fiver. David Dickinson would be proud.

Having now credit-fed my way through the game's brief arcade mode, there's no doubt in my mind that the nuance of its systems are going to be glossed over in this rather ham-fisted appraisal. At least at face value, there's plenty of character and charm to appreciate in its colourful and cutesy style. As a two-player, vertically split-screen title, its a pretty clean break from a lot of a shooter's typical characteristics - rather than 6(ish) stages of hell, its a series of one on one battles - and all the better suited to 2 players for it. As enemy waves come at you, taking them out in chains can generate attacks to the other player; however if these attacks are too small then it's entirely possible they'll be killed off again, and an even bigger attack will come straight back at you. Think of a bit like competitive Tetris, but with shooting rather than puzzling. It's a neat and curious little game, that's likely best experienced properly, with a friend on the other side of the sofa to hurl abuse at. 

Blasphemous

Let's get the lazy-but-effective description out of the way: it's a 2D MetroidVania Souls-like. You've got "that" type of map, definitely-not-bonfires and definitely-not-Estus Flasks. You are encouraged to return to your body upon death, the combat system is very reliant on parries and dodge-rolls, and there's even a dedicated "lore" button to use on every item you pick up. 

While this likely sounds dismissive, it's more about addressing the elephant in the room. To give some context, these are both types of games that I love, and the end product here has done a pretty good job of bringing them together. The exploration is pleasantly open - gatekeeping is typically done less by specific items and abilities, and more by just which areas you're brave enough to poke your head into. It's a little bit of a shame that most of the new abilities have to be switched out for others rather than adding to a core arsenal of moves, but at the same time its base setup gives you plenty of ways to deal with any number of combat scenarios. This is of course best demonstrated by the boss encounters, which are wonderful affairs - big, gruesome, thoughtful variations on approaches to combat, which drop in at a nice pace to keep you from ever getting too cocky. The theming in general is wonderful, and the name is certainly appropriate - there's a lot of deep catholic inspiration in its gorgeous backdrops and environments, but then layered on top are some chilling elements of religious iconography, along with a cast of disturbing devotees and martyrs to sufficiently unsettle you. It's arguably a small intersection of the gaming population that it'll appeal to, but if you're in there, it's a real treat.

Death Come True

The first thing you see upon starting is the game's central character breaking right through the fourth wall to tell you directly not to stream the game or to share anything that might spoil the story. The first rule of Death Come True, and so on. I consider myself fairly well versed in such etiquette, so to then have the screenshot function entirely disabled for the whole game felt a little like being given a slap on the wrists for a crime I had no intention of committing. I don't envy the team trying to market it, that's for sure. 

The reasoning behind this is clear at least - it's a game that is in total service of its plot. Consider a mash-up of a 'Choose your own adventure' book and a series of full-motion videos, and you're mostly there. Unless you were to walk away from the controller or perhaps fall asleep, there seems very little chance that your play time will deviate from the 3 hour estimate - which will certainly put some people off, but is understandable given the production values, and personally, quite welcome in the first place. In terms of replay value, there are branching paths that a single route will obviously skip: as an example of this, in looking up a screenshot to use in lieu of taking my own, I found a promotional image of the central cast, only to not recognise one of them at all. One thing that such a short run-time does ensure though, is that minute-for-minute, there's plenty of action; without wanting to speak about the story itself (rather than in fear of reprise for doing so, I might add), it kicks off with plenty of intrigue, shortly thereafter switching to full-on action, and then strikes a pretty fine balancing act between the two for its run time. It doesn't get quite as deep or as complex as I would've hoped given the team's pedigree, but I do like it, and think it'd actually be a pretty fun title to play with folks who normally don't concern themselves with games. By the same token, it's probably not for the 'hardcore' types looking for something to string out over dozens of hours. 

Persona 5: Dancing in Starlight 

After the generous main course that was Persona 5 Royal, I figured that I'd follow up with dessert. I did however wait until a weekend where I knew my girlfriend would be away, so as not to trigger any unpleasant flashbacks to looped battle themes, and the chirpy, indecipherable voices of Japanese schoolkids that made it so painful to endure as a non-gaming cohabitant.  

Immediately, it's clear that very little has changed since Persona 4's take on the rhythm action genre. The core game, while still functional and fairly enjoyable, hasn't changed a lick. Perhaps the most notable improvement to the package as a whole is in scaling back on a dedicated story mode, and instead just having a series of uninspired but far less time-consuming set of social link scenes that pad things out. The biggest flaw is repeated wholesale though, in that trying to stretch out noteworthy tracks from a single game's playlist into a dedicated music game leads to repetition - and there is a much less prolific gathering of artists involved in remixes this time. I'd be willing to wager that it's a very similar story once again with Persona 3: Dancing in Moonlight, but I'm not about to ruin a perfectly good dinner to start with the sweet just to find out, if you'll excuse a second outing of the metaphor. Still, again compare these to Theatrhythm though - where Square-Enix plundered the Final Fantasy series in its entirety, along with spin-offs and other standalone titles to put together a library of music worthy for the one single game. Cobble the tunes from Personas 3-5 together into one game, and you're still coming up very short by comparison.