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wordupcomics · 3 years

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We would like to see more about the adventures of the boys (Violet, Scoops, Becky and Tobey) when they were teenagers we really love to see our favorite team interacting with each other 💗

Hey Anon! Sorry this took so long! It took me a while to think of things and then when I did I wanted to draw them but by that point I'd already kept you waiting for a while so I only have two drawings but I have a lot of ideas I will share through text instead!

First lets do the moment with the drawings

So it starts with the gang as teenagers, all four of them in detention. The girls and the boys got detention for different reasons, and ask the other why they are there. First Becky and Violet ask Tobey and Scoops why they're there. It's a long answer, so I'll just have Becky sum it up for you

Becky:...So...let me get this straight...Scoops saw Mr. Smith and Mrs. Stevens kissing in the parking lot, and decided to right an article about it and why we should remain loyal to our partners...and then Tobey pointed out that if anyone saw that article he could damage Mr. Smith and Mrs. Stevens marriages and get in trouble. So to avoid getting in trouble you two decided to flush the article down one of the toilets in the boys locker room and it clogged the pipes and flooded the boys locker room and you two got detention for causing damage to school property????

Tobey: Yes we hear the irony that we did that to avoid Scoops getting in trouble and then ultimately got in trouble because of it

Becky: Not even on my list of concerns right now. First of all...why did you have to destroy the article? Why couldn't you have just not published it? You could have hidden it or thrown it away?

Violet: No they should have recycled it!

Scoops: What if I recycled it and someone found it? Or what if I lost it and someone found it? it would spread like wildfire!

Becky: Okay, but why flush it down the toilet??? You could have shred it?

Violet: Or painted over it!

Becky: Or used one of Tobey's robots to destroy it

Violet: Or you guys could have thrown it in my fire pit when you came over next weekend to roast marshmallows!

Tobey and Scoops (realizing they're right): ...

Becky: And secondly (Looks to Violet as they both try to choke down a laugh) Mr. Smith and Mrs. Stevens are married

Scoops: I know, that's why I wrote an article on cheating Becky!

Violet: No, you guys, they're married to each other

Tobey and Scoops: ...What..??

Becky: Mrs. Stevens wanted to keep her last name so she never changed it

Violet: They've been happily married for twenty years

(Tobey and Scoops then realize they got detention for basically no reason at all as Becky and Violet burst out laughing):

Tobey: Oh yeah! And why are you two here, hmm? What bad thing could the two most rule-following students in the school have possibly done to end up in detention with us?

Becky and Violet (paniced): No reason

Scoops: No no no! We told you, now you gotta tell us! What'd you two do?

Violet: ....Well...Becky brought her laptop to school today so we could look at Pretty Princess fanart at lunch...

Scoops: At lunch? A teacher shouldn't give you detention for goofing off on a computer at lunch

Becky: Yeah the problem wasn't when we were looking at it...the problem was the particular fanart that just happened to be on the computer when the teacher passed by...

Tobey: ... What in the world kind of fanart were you two looking at?????

Becky: We were just looking at normal fanart! As it turns out some people one the internet are...messed up and we accidentally ran into some fanart that...um...

Violet: Will haunt my nightmares for the rest of my life...

Becky: and was ultimately deemed "highly inappropriate" by the teacher...

(Tobey and Scoops then burst out laughing):

I'm gonna put some more scenarios under the cut!

Becky begged Tobey to read this amazing book she just loves:

Becky: Have you read it yet?! Wasn't it amazing?!

Tobey: ...Becky you are one of my dearest friends but I have to be honest with you-This was the worst book I have ever had the displeasure to read

Becky: (Yanks the book out of Tobey's hands and "covers it's ears") (Gasps) IT CAN HEAR YOU!!!

Tobey: ....please see a shrink...

Mrs. McCallister is finally ready for Tobey to meet her new boyfriend and Tobey is super nervous. Scoops gets this idea that he'll look up the guy in the phone book, call him, and pretend he's randomly interviewing people on the phone for a school article, when instead he's actually getting information Tobey needs to get to know the guy better so he knows what to expect (fun fact: this man would later become Tobey's stepdad, his name is Alex). Scoops has the phone on speaker so Tobey can hear

After a bunch of oddly specific questions:

Alex, on the other end: ...Are you a friend of Claire's boy, Tobey?

Scoops: ...

Alex: ...

Tobey: ...

Scoops: Bye! (hangs up in panic)

Tobey: SCOOPS!

Scoops: He was on to us! I panicked! What was I supposed to do???

Tobey: NOT THAT! YOU MAY AS WELL HAVE SAID YES!

Scoops wrote an article about WordGirl. He didn't see anything wrong with it...Becky did...

Becky: How could you say that about me!?

Scoops: I didn't think you'd care!

Becky: Well I do!

Scoops: I'm sorry, Becky. I didn't know you felt so insecure about this or I never would have written it, I promise!

Becky: Insecure! I am NOT insecure!

Scoops (raising an eyebrow): ... define insecure

Becky: ...

Scoops: ...

Becky: I'm leaving! (leaves)

Tobey is in the park reading, Violet is also at the park, doing an art show. She walks up to Tobey all sad and sits next to him

Violet: Hi..

Tobey: What's the matter?

Violet: Someone came to my art show and said he thought all my art was terrible...

Tobey: ...Who in the world would say such a thing???

Violet: That guy over there...

Tobey: You know he's probably just jealous of how talented you are and is masking his insecurities behind rude comments

Violet: ... You really think so?

Tobey: Oh yes, I used to do it all the time..I still catch myself doing it to be honest

Violet: Well now I feel bad for him..

Tobey: Well there's nothing you can do about him, so if I were you I'd just go and continue your art show like normal

Violet: You're right Tobey! Thanks! (leaves for her art show)

Tobey: (pulls out his remote) Insult my dear innocent friend? Not on my watch

Becky and Violet talking about Pretty Princess

Becky: I mean...I know none of it is canon but it's still a good idea right?

Violet: Becky! This is the best AU idea I've ever heard!

Becky: (gasps) I'll write fanfiction for it and you draw fanart for it?

Violet: YES!

Becky and Violet: (Excited screams)

Tobey, now officially having given up crime, is doing community service (of his own volition) to make up for his past actions. Becky, Scoops and Violet come up

Becky: How's community service going?

Tobey: It's awful! But I'm glad I'm doing it

Violet: Want some help?

Tobey: No, it wouldn't feel right

Scoops: Well, can we just sit here and keep you company then?

Tobey: ... Of course!

In high school, Violet got into acting and often performed in school plays. Her first play ever she invited all her friends to come see, and of course they were happy to watch her have fun on stage! However when they saw the play it was....horrendous. Worst thing they'd ever seen. After the play was over Violet happily came over to ask them what they thought of it. Important note: Violet and Scoops were dating at the time

Tobey, seeing Violet coming: What do I do??? I can't tell Violet it was terrible! It would break her heart! But I can't lie to her either! That's wrong!

Becky: Tobey, relax, just do what I do

Violet: Hey guys! What'd you think?

Becky: you looked like you were having so much fun!

Tobey and Scoops: Yeah you did!

Violet: I was! But what did you think of the play itself?

Becky: ...Well...honestly you guys mispronounced so many words I couldn't really enjoy it. I mean it's not your fault, no one uses those words anymore but you know...I know how they're pronounced and can't stand when words are pronounced wrong so...

Violet: Oh that makes sense! We'll work on that! Maybe you can tell me how to pronounce them!

Becky: Sure!

Violet: Tobey what did you think?

Tobey: Um...I wasn't really a fan of the genre so I probably didn't enjoy it as much as I could have

Violet: Oh, what kind of genres do you like?

Tobey: ....a consistent one...

Violet: (laughs) You're so silly Tobey! Scoops! What'd you think?

Scoops: ... Um... I loved it of course! I mean, you were in it! And I love you! So how could I not love it!

Becky, having learned from the WordGirl stuff, later told Violet the truth and explained that she didn't like the play at all and only liked that Violet seemed so happy doing it. Violet took this well. Tobey and Scoops however...:

Scoops: PROBLEM PROBLEM PROBLEM!

Tobey: What?

Scoops: The school paper wants me to review the school play! I can't say it was good, that goes against my oath as a reporter! But I can't say it was bad either, I already told Violet I loved it!

Tobey: Ask someone else to do it

Scoops: No one else has the time to take on any more assignments! What am I gonna do?! I don't wanna upset Violet!

Tobey: um...uh...could you post it anonymously?

Those actions eventually lead to Scoops and Violet breaking up (don't worry, they did get back together years later)

Scoops took his and Violet's break up particularly hard, and Tobey tried to cheer him up by finding weird things happening in the city for Scoops to write about. It didn't help a whole lot, but Scoops appreciated Tobey trying to cheer him up. Meanwhile Becky, who by this point all her friends knew she was WordGirl, essentially tried to fix Scoops and Violet's now ended relationship, and between trying to help them, school work, hero work and family life, she ended up stretching herself a little too thin to the point that all her friends had to do an intervention and tell her to stop because it wasn't good for her.

I've mentioned before that Becky's necklace in Word Up in significant and special to her. This necklace was actually made by Scoops, Violet and Tobey. Note the fact that her friends made it isn't the reason it's so important to her, but it is sweet they took the time to make it for her.

For one of his birthdays Tobey invited his friends to a demolition derby. When his friends said they thought it odd he'd be into that, he stated it was his new outlet for seeing destruction now that he was no longer doing crime.

Hmm that's all I have for now! If you are wanting more and have any particular questions or ideas, feel free to send more asks! If they are a little more specific I'll probably get to them a little sooner

#wordgirl #word up #becky botsford #tobey mccallister #violet heaslip #todd scoops ming #scoops ming

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henshengs · 3 years

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About Rule 63 fanworks

I was asked yesterday to elaborate on my genderbend opinions, as a trans person, which I’m happy to do, and I’ve thought about it a bit today to make sure I’m not saying something off the cuff and not thought through. Still, this is a sensitive, complicated topic, and I’m open to discussion on it.

This also got long, so I’m putting it under a cut.

So, obviously I can’t speak for all trans people. No minority group is a monolith in our opinions and this is particularly the case for the transgender community because our experiences are so very diverse and individual.

I am very rarely hurt or offended by genderbends/genderswaps/rule 63 fanworks. I know people for whom this is not the case, and I believe the pain involved is very real. The thing is... living in this world is inherently kinda painful when you’re trans. This world’s not built for us. All kinds of random things can cause me pain throughout my day. Store mannequins. My own reflection. Lesbian poetry. Pictures of other trans people. When something triggers my dysphoria or feelings of alienation, I have to stop, acknowledge the feeling, and then consider whether the thing is, outside of hurting me, contributing to the ignorance of and hatred of people like me by its very existence.

I don’t think the basic act of asking, “What if this character who is a cis man, was a cis woman instead?” does that. I think if anything, it opens the door to then ask “what if he was a trans man? Or a trans woman? Or nonbinary?”

Asking “what if this story was about a cis woman” lets cis women talk about their experiences and see themselves in stories, something I think is valuable! and also can lead to stories exploring sexism and misogyny, things which affect all trans people too!

In the rest of this post I’m going to use the terms “rule 63″ and “genderswap” to refer to the act of creating a fanwork changing a cis/presumed cis man to a cis or not-specified-to-be-trans woman, because this is the vast majority of the work under that label, because most fictional heroes and iconic characters are cis men, and because people who create cis man->trans woman or cis woman->trans man content, in my experience, usually use terms like “trans headcanon” instead.

(A lot of rule 63 fanworks don’t explicitly specify that the now-female character is cis. We can presume that most artists aren’t even thinking about the possibility of the character being trans, but we can presume that for 99.99% of all art, anywhere. It’s not a unique evil of rule 63.)

The claims that rule 63 is inherently transphobic, rather than just something where it’s good to be extra careful to avoid transphobia, as far as I’ve seen, use two arguments: A) that making the character a cis woman is wasting an opportunity to make them a trans person, and this is transphobic, and B) that rule 63 fan art is gender essentialist and cissexist, because it ties gender to physical characteristics.

Argument A doesn’t hold up for me,

because couldn’t one then say that reimagining an abled white cis character as an abled white trans woman is racist and ableist? that reimagining them as an abled trans woman of color is ableist? No transformative reimagining can cover every identity. We say “write what you know” and talk about Own Voices, and that includes cis women who want to write about the experience they know.

It’s also not fair to tell trans people that we must always think about trans experiences, even in our fiction. A lot of the time we don’t want to have to write or think about dysphoria and discrimination and we want to live in the heads of cis characters or even just characters whose AGAB is not mentioned!

And it is also, imo, not a great idea to pressure people who may not be educated about trans experiences to write about trans characters just because they want to explore sexism or write about lesbians.

many, many trans people first begin exploring their gender identity through creating cis rule 63 content, because it’s ‘safer’ than directly engaging with trans content.

With argument B, I agree that a lot of rule 63 art looks like this

and this sucks. To me, though, it’s important that it’s not the genderswap aspect that makes it suck. Artists who do this are also designing original characters with sexist, gender essentialist designs. Artists who don’t draw sexist art in general, also don’t draw sexist rule 63.

(yes, I know She-Hulk is not a rule 63 of regular Hulk. But you guys know the kind of art I’m talking about.)

I’ve also noticed a genre of fanfic that’s like, “if these characters were girls, they’d be sensible and conflict avoidant and none of the plot would happen!” or “what if these violent, tragic male characters were Soft Lesbians who braided each others’ hair” and again, I assume these authors write canonical women the same way. The genderswap part isn’t the bad part, the sexism is.

Non-sexist rule 63 actually, in my opinion, fights gender essentialism and cissexism. When a character is exactly the same except for the ways a gender essentialist world has shaped and pressured them based on their AGAB, that’s a strong statement on the constructed nature of gender!

But the argument that making /any/ change is gender essentialist, is... I understand where it’s coming from. I am a trans person who presents androgynously and I am a hypervisible freak because of it. I would love to live in a society where visible gender markers weren’t a thing! Unfortunately, we don’t live in that society. We live in one where we are constantly under pressure to conform to one of two profiles. There are almost no gender non conforming male characters in popular media. And changing a gender conforming cis man into a gender conforming cis woman seems to me to be a neutral action at worst. Not to mention characters from historical canons, who would be under a ton of pressure to conform.

For physical body type characteristics... 65% of all speaking roles in Hollywood are cis and male. It’s harder to get statistics on other forms of media, but it’s undeniable that overall, most stories are told about cis men who do not have breasts or wide hips. Changing the story to be about a cis woman who has those features is introducing more diversity!

I typed “rule 63″ and “genderswap” into the tumblr search bar today, and I saw a lot of art of women with a variety of aesthetics and body shapes and characteristics, who looked like people I’d see out at the mall.

Again, I sure do wish we lived in a post gender society. But we don’t, and in our society, everyone, myself included, looks at a picture of a person and gender categorizes them based on appearance. It is not wrong for someone to draw “Geralt the Witcher as a hot butch woman” and give her some physical markers generally agreed upon to denote ‘butch woman’ rather than ‘gender conforming man’ to tell the viewer that that is what they have drawn. Just as it is not wrong to draw “my OC who is a hot butch woman who fights monsters” and give her those markers.

Finally, both arguments against genderswaps are, in my opinion, flawed because they implicitly posit the act of creating fanworks of the original, cis male gender conforming character design, as neutral. I think this is incorrect. I think that if you’re going to argue that drawing a cis male character as a cis woman is transphobic, you have to also argue that drawing the character as a cis man is transphobic. But I’ve only seen people do this when a trans headcanon becomes extremely popular in a fandom.

Again, I’m just one person. I’m also biased, because firstly, as I mentioned, rule 63 doesn’t usually trigger my dysphoria; secondly, I almost always come down on the side of “don’t limit what people can explore in fiction; ask them to explore it more sensitively or with more content warnings instead.”

I definitely encourage creators to seek out and listen to a variety of trans opinions. But this is mine: I love rule 63, I make a lot of it myself, and I think if no one created it we’d lose something awesome.

At the end of the day, what I really want is more trans content*, but I’d rather have cis rule 63 than just stories about cis men.

Also: I personally have nothing against the terms genderswap or genderbend. I don’t think it reinforces the gender binary to acknowledge its existence by saying you’re ‘swapping’ the character from being cis with one AGAB to being cis with the other. But I can definitely see the argument against it, so I don’t blame anyone for going with rule 63 instead.

If you made it this far, thanks for reading; I hope you have a nice day, and have fun creating and consuming the fanworks your heart desires. I’ll end by linking this comic, which is just eternally relevant.

(*by which I mean: trans content created by other trans people, that matches my hyperspecific headcanons, likes and dislikes, and doesn’t set off any of my often changing dysphoria triggers. See what I said at the start, about transgender existence being constantly mildly painful. There are many awesome aspects to being trans! This is one of the less awesome.)

#rule 63

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yournewfavoritethings · 5 years

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Y’all we gotta do something about the education system

I’m not just talking about the American school system, I’m talking about every one. I saw this post and it just tRigGEreD me to the core:

YALL WE GOTTA STEP IT THE F*** UP. CLAP YOUR HANDS IF YOU LIKE SCHOOL. HEAR THAT? NO YA DONT. literally everyone hates school and why?

We aren’t passionate abt what we’re learning

Information is forced upon us in an unhealthy process

The work is unreasonable and most likely things we won’t ever use again

Lastly, it teaches us to fit into little cut out spaces and fill roles that society expects from us.

Let’s dive deeper, shall we

Passion:

We’ve all heard this before, and yet none of us have taken a stand in any way that makes a difference. Listen, I know we all need basic math skills, and probably should read that Shakespeare book, and I agree. However, it doesn’t make sense that every year it’s MATH, HISTORY, SCIENCE, ENGLISH, and a sport or something. Like, how much do you think I’m gonna remember guys?

And none of us are into it. Personally, I love English. I could read and write and depict novels all day. On the other hand, I hate science with a passion. It does not make sense. Many students are like this, better at other subjects and maybe not as good at something else. Why is that so bad? I find myself dozing off in class bc it’s so boring. The way we’re learning isn’t learning at all. It’s being damn good at memorizing and cramming things last minute. THAT ISNT LEARNING which leads me into my next point

How we learn

First off, I’ve had 5 good teachers in my life. 5. I’m a sophomore in high school. The only reason I know weird things about how geometry works is bc of my 6th grade math teacher. The only reason I get human geography is bc of my AP human teacher. You wonder why I don’t understand biology? WE TAKE NOTES FROM OUR TEACHERS PAGES AND LISTEN TO HER READ OFF THE SCREEN. You wonder why my homework is excellent and my tests are failures? BECAUSE THEY ARENT TEACHING AT ALL, THEYRE EXPECTING US TO KNOW BC WE STUDY, AND THEREFORE ARENT DOING THEIR JOBS.

Secondly, students don’t learn the same. There’s this art piece of a monkey, a fish, and an insect or something and they’re all asked to climb a tree. This is the education system. Sometimes, people can learn easily bc they get it. For others, it’s impossible bc it’s not who they are.

And it’s unhealthy

get up at 6. Get off at 4. Have 3 hours of homework. Go to sleep at 9. Repeat. Do you know how unhealthy that is for teenagers? I play a sport and I have to go to practice at least two school nights a week. And on the weekend, teachers pile on everythingggggg. You wonder why we procrastinate? Cause we are unmotivated, tired, and physically unable. I take all AP classes bc it’s fun to learn, if you think about it. I’d love to know about the ecosystem and the planets. I think science is fun! I soak up facts about our ancestors and how our world came to be. I think history is fun! But the busy work, the stress, the never ending due-dates, finals, and homework make it unbareable.

Y’all have heard this before: we won’t use the work in the future.

No we won’t. The only thing I’d need it for is helping my kids with their homework, because the education system doesn’t change despite how awful it is. Honestly, it just keeps getting worse. Ted talks and posts about this are endless, so I won’t go into detail, you get the just.

Societal Roles

School is meant to enhance our creativity and our uniqueness, but it does the exact opposite. It discourages our individuality by making us take tests and work for meaningless grades. Think of the billionaires who didn’t go to college. Think of the successful people who are mathematicians or scientists. Everyone that comes to mind when I think of someone successful, probably didn’t use any of their prior high school knowledge to achieve their dreams. I’m tired of being anxious all the time. Even as the school year nears I feel myself becoming depressed, scared, and stressed already. What a shame.

Solution:

My first solution is that we have Fridays as half days, and start school at at least 9, but 10 would be better. The school day should still end at 4.

Why?

This will decrease stress dramatically and allow students proper time to rest. Having that delay will allow students to have healthier sleeping schedules and more time to do homework. While this does decrease time for actual learning, I believe schools can make it work. Having A/B schedules where students have half their classes on A day and the other half on B day should suffice nicely. As for Friday’s, the school should get out at 12 and be kept open until 3 for students to come in for tutoring. Teachers will then have to work until 4 bc we need our grades in and this allows them up to 4 hours to sort everything out.

Next solution, from Kinder through 8th grade, the four main subjects should be enforced as they are just basic means of education (but kept the same as they already are). High school should allow students to have 3 years of each, so that they can pick which classes they want to take that year.

This allows more room for endorsements and sports throughout your high school years. Personally, high school is already a drag for me and if they’re gonna continue the work load, then they’ve gotta cut the time we have to endure it. Everyone I know is so anxious all the time, they’ve turned to drugs and alcohol and juuls. Honestly, I think it’s bc it gives them an escape, but I wouldn’t know. On top of that, everyone’s depressed. I can blame about 70% of this on education alone. Imagine having the freedom to grow into a person you want to be. With this schedule, I really think we can. We have more time to figure out who we are and what our passion is through picking classes that suit us instead of the main 4. Plus, teachers will benefit as well. They get to teach those who want to learn their subject and will strive for it.

Last solution, work load needs to be fixed.

I’m not just talking homework, I’m talking busy work, projects, and tests. I’d rather learn than do that crap, bc, what a shocker! It doesn’t help. Tests should be once every two months, with quizzes enforced every two weeks. Quizzes should be no longer than 20 questions, and tests no longer than 40. Half the amount of homework we already receive should become optional, and a study resource more than a grade. I get about 5 pages a week in math alone, not to mention the amount I get from other classes. Let’s cut that to about 15 questions and have 3 pages of optional study work that help you understand the subject.

And for busy work, let’s make that a thing once every week, and for a short amount of time. The rest should be practicing with the teacher or optional station work.

Projects, on the other hand, should be given once every month. They shouldn’t be huge projects, but just simple ones to cover the unit. Nor should they be useless. I’m not gonna go design a topographic map at home and waste my money on poster paper or connect a baseball game to a mathematical equation. Give me a few key materials to research and a few options on how I want to complete it such as, google site, video, presentation, or creative side like drawing. Whatever benefits the student.

See how I’ve included every students needs and ways of processing the material, along with setting realistic expectations to uphold them to? Not that hard.

Please feel free to add more! I’d love to hear y’alls opinion on school and what you think of my solution! I’ll probably make a legit paper on this bc I kinda just threw this post together lol

#school #advocate #change #acceptance #education #american education system #ted talk #welcome to my ted talk #paper #back to school #i hate school #we are the change #studying #school work #study tips #tips #hacks #life hacks #freedom of our students

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braincoins · 4 years

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The former Kuron is still trying to sort out a lot of things: how to get the Altean Diaspora's machines to work, how to separate himself from Takashi Shirogane, and, most of all, how to deal with the fact that he's falling in love with Romelle.

Fandom: VLD Rating: Teen and up Ships: Ryoumelle Tags: Fluff, Happy Birthday Breezy!, AU, obviously, ‘cause pretty much all my stuff is Fuck Canon nowadays

Author’s Notes:

HAPPY BIRTHDAY, @breezycheezyart!! You wanted Ryoumelle Fluff, and I am MORE than happy to deliver!! (And thank you, mckinlily for the beta!!)

First of all, anyone reading this should be thinking of Breezy's awesome Romelle, not the VLD one:

(reposted with permission, please visit The Original Post to leave comments on the awesome art!)

She doesn't usually run around in that lovely formalwear above, but it gives you a good idea of what she looks like (and all her adorable freckles...).

Secondly, this is set in my V:LotD universe (same one as "Yours and Mine", and, in fact, this takes place after that fic). Things to know:

Oriande is a very hard to find planet, one you have to both believe exists and know how to look for in order to find. But anyone who finds Oriande can set foot on it. HOWEVER, the Temple of the Goddess of the Universe won't let just anyone in. It very definitely kept Lotor out, which pissed him off to no end.

Allura and the other Paladins went into the Temple of the Goddess to get Shiro a new arm since the Galra one was actively corrupting him. (Basically just like in "Components.") They discovered that the temple changes every time you walk into it, depending on your purpose (and what the Goddess wants).

The Altean Diaspora - the survivors from Altea's destruction - settled on Oriande 10,000 years ago and have since established a small but thriving colony. Lotor found them when he found Oriande and convinced them he was here to help, did his experiments on them, etc. as in VLD. They have since kicked that moldy eggplant to the curb, thanks in no small part to Romelle, who is the youngest member of the ruling Council, and, of course, Volton and Princess Allura.

This version of Kuron attacked the team when confronted with the real Shiro's return; they managed to subdue him and brought him to the colony on Oriande for help in "deprogramming" him. This effort was successful, eventually. Shiro gave him the name "Ryou Shirogane," and refers to him as the younger twin. Ryou, for his part, has stayed with the Alteans, where he is happy to be useful, even if he feels like he doesn't really fit in and he still struggles with the fact that he was created for evil.

Ryou's hand is still the one he got from Haggar (compared to Shiro's new Altean one).

I think that covers everything, but if you're confused about things, let me know in the comments! ^_^

(4,544 Words - on Ao3)

Teaser below cut:

He’d kept those feelings to himself successfully for months on end, but then, one night at the Lost Princess public house, Romelle had asked him, over a plate of roast wrestrel, “How’s it going with Dynart?”

And he’d spilled it all out, all his frustrations over not-really-merged techs and the headaches of it and how he wished he could do something more about it, but he wasn’t even a decent engineer yet, let alone a Sacred Altean. And when he realized he’d just spewed all of that out over what was supposed to be a nice dinner together, he cleared his throat and apologized.

Romelle just laughed and patted his hand. “You don’t have to be sorry!”

“I didn’t mean to… we were supposed to be enjoying the evening together, and I…” He liked evenings with Romelle best. She’d been the first to accept him, to believe in him, and for all her outer softness, she had a spine of steel. She didn’t back down, didn’t give up, and her smile was contagious. To him, anyway. So the thought that he had ruined a good dinner with her pained him.

But she was smiling, and so he had to smile, too. Just a little. Her voice was gentle as she said, “Sounds like you had to vent that to someone. I’m honored you consider me enough of a friend to vent to me about it.”

Enough of a friend. Sure, he’d go with that.

“I feel like I can tell you anything,” he admitted quietly.

Her smile widened and a little blush sprung up in her cheeks. This was another problem he’d been dealing with: she was adorable, sweet, kind, sometimes flirty, and he had trouble unsticking his eyes from her (especially the cute freckles all over her… and her chest… and the freckles on her chest) sometimes. He had memories of… of Being With someone else, but they weren’t his. And he didn’t know how to go about saying to her, I want to make my own memories with you.

But she was on the Council, and he knew that he was some strange object of pity to most of the colony. He didn’t fit in, and she could do a lot better than the Black Paladin’s redeemed monster clone. He was happy just to spend time with her, to have her smile infect him and her spirit lift him up.

“Thank you,” she said, patting his hand again before pulling it back to resume eating. “But you’re not wrong about how a Sacred Altean would be a big help.”

“Winter’s coming,” he replied, pushing the remnants of his food around on his plate. “The colony’s heating systems aren’t going to be able to handle the load without an occasional boost or an overall upgrade. And as good as it is to be rid of Lotor, he was the one bringing us replacement parts. We could probably ask the Princess and the Paladins, but there’s no guarantee they can find us the parts we’d need if that happened.

“We figured out a work-around for now, but one bad storm could overload it and fry the whole thing. And we just don’t have the parts to replace it all.”

She nodded. “Dynart’s reported on that to us.”

“I just want to fix it, to make it better, but I can’t.” He set his spork down and sighed. “I don’t like feeling useless.”

“No one does. But it’s not just you. I can’t fix this situation either.”

He thought for a long moment. “What would the Alteans of old have done in this situation?”

“Not been in it in the first place?” she said wryly. “But it’s not a bad question. Probably… probably have gone and asked the Goddess what to do.”

“Well, why can’t we do that? There’s that temple.”

“That no one can get into.”

“Princess Allura got into it,” he reminded her.

“She’s Sacred.”

“And the paladins.”

“Prophecy.”

“We could at least try?” he asked. “Unless you just don’t want to take that long a walk with me?”

She snorted and rolled her eyes, but she was smiling again. “You know that’s not true. I love spending time with you.”

Oh, so that’s what it feels like when your heart ‘skips a beat’. He cleared his throat.

#Socks writes Voltron fanfic #Ryoumelle #Happy Birthday to a great friend and truly amazing artist #a die-hard Shallura fan #and just all-around wonderful person

63 notes · View notes

fuckedurbias · 4 years

Text

two piece - johnny seo

genre: fluffy!!! v slight?? angst towards the end

requested? yes!

word count: 1.3k

warnings: apart from a lot of soft!johnny that could endanger ur heart,, nothing hehe

It was another long day, time was passing by so slow and all you could think about was how much you were dreading the long train ride and bus ride home. All you wanted to do was collapse onto your warm bed and sleep for 10 hours or even better, 4 months because that’s how long you had until the semester ended. You did love your course; studying and pursuing fashion was your life long dream, but days like this where it just dragged on for hours with no practical stuff and just all theory drained the life and passion out of you. This point in the semester was the worst, with exams coming up soon you didn’t get to do any of the fun stuff. Designing was fun but when you only got to draw it out and had to annotate it without actually making anything it really chipped away at your ambition and love for the art.

“Okay students, now that all the bases are covered I would like to introduce you to some very special people” Your professor announces, snapping you out of your daydream. Your brain starts racing, trying to think of who it could be. Why would he be bringing in ‘special’ people? What have you been doing in this class that would call for any models, brand reps, high end designers or anyone of that like, to leave their important positions for an hour to come visit some university students?

“Because we are on the topic of individual styles and dressing for different body types, these people are coming in to help us. You will each be assigned one of these people and have to dress them to flatter their body type, while still keeping their preferred fashion style” Your professor explains. Ah yes, that… Shows how much you’ve been paying attention. Once your professor is finished explaining the project, a line of people starts to walk in. Your eyes widen, realising who they are; well, you don’t know exactly who they are, but you can assume. They are beautiful, tall and well proportioned so who else could they be other than models. Real models. You’re already so intimidated and anxious. One in particular who your eyes immediately catch, he’s the tallest one out of the bunch and his brown hair neatly parted off his forehead. Your heart starts racing and you hope you’re assigned anyone but him because god your heart is already about to burst out of your chest you’d hate to think about what mess you’d become if you had to talk to him and touch him.

But alas, of course with your luck that is exactly what happens. As the teacher goes through the names of the students and the models that they will be assigned you feel the butterflies in your stomach intensify as the boy you didn’t want to be assigned wasn’t assigned to anyone else yet. When the teacher eventually gets to your name, you hold your breath as he says you will be paired with someone named “Johnny” and you look along the models and see the boy smile and wave at you. Oh fuck. You give a poor attempt at a smile and a wave back and then fall back in your seat and look down at your blank laptop screen, refusing to look at anything but that.

“Before we start, just want to clarify that these people aren’t professional models…yet. They are only trainees and their companies generously lent them to us for this project and to also help them get experience, as at the end of this project we will be holding a mini fashion show. It won’t be anything too extravagant so don’t stress too much” Your professor clarifies, but as if that’s going to calm you down in any way. You wish you could be stressing over the actual project but sadly the only thing you’re stressing over is the fact that you’re going to have to talk to and style the most beautiful boy you’ve ever seen in your life, and now he’s walking over to you and you’re feeling nothing but dread for all the embarrassment you’re about to cause yourself.

“So, what kind of fashion style and trends do you like the most?” You ask nervously, unable to look up at him. This whole conversation has just been you glancing at his hands; which wasn’t really helping since they were just as pretty as his face, so big and the outlines of his veins protruding and visible. His fingers also so long and slender and the rings he was wearing made them appear even longer, as if that was even possible. You really needed to kick some sense into yourself right now, you couldn’t go the whole project not looking at him while you were talking to him. He probably thinks you’re weird and impolite, but you can’t just tell him you’re too scared to look at him because he’s the most beautiful man you’ve ever seen in your life… Could you?

“Hello?” Johnny waves his hand in front of your face and you nearly jump out of your skin and accidentally make eye contact with him for ½ a second. You feel your cheeks becoming hotter by the second as you quickly look back down at your notes you were writing down on your laptop. You quickly mutter a ‘sorry’ and start typing away hastily on your laptop.

“Did you even hear what I said?” He furrows his eyebrows in confusion. “Yes I-” you accidentally look at his eyes again and immediately feel defeated, “no… I didn’t”. You looked down at your hands resting on some random keys, you don’t even know where you were going with this entire thing and you just felt so embarrassed, you couldn’t even look Johnny in the eyes for more than 2 seconds and even that was a stretch, how were you supposed to style an entire outfit for him? And have it look good? You can feel tears welling up in your eyes and you’re trying so hard to hold them back even though you know they’re visible. “Woah, are you okay?” Johnny asks softly, reaching over to close your laptop and put it aside. He leans in close trying to get you to look up at him, great now you’re really going to start crying. You look at him, feeling the the intense nerves in your stomach again but this time you continued to look at him. “I don’t know honestly, this whole project is already so overwhelming and I really have no idea what I’m doing. I’m already enough of a nervous, stressed out mess and add this to the mix and… I feel like I’m going to explode” You ramble on, body falling back in your chair as your gaze falls back down to your hands.

“What about it is stressing you out?” He questions. Every time he speaks you feel like you’re about to start melting, his voice is so smooth and low and especially when he’s talking to you so softly like this and trying to comfort you, god it’s driving you insane.

“Well…” You look up at him, trying to decide if you should lie or just tell him that it’s him, “I-it’s you”. Your mouth spoke before you could decide if you were going to say it or not.

“Me? Really?” He leans back a little, giving you a shy smile. “Yeah” You don’t realise how wide-eyed you’re looking at him right now, “just working with an actual model, well trainee, but to me it’s basically the same thing, you know? And having the responsibility of dressing you and having such a high possibility of messing it all up and humiliating not just myself, but you as well. You’re the most beautiful man I’ve ever seen so I don’t know how I’ll make you look bad but with my luck I’m sure I will somehow” You ramble once again, having no idea what you just said.

“Okay firstly, you won’t mess it up at all, I’ll help you if you’re unsure even though I already trust you since you’ve been asking me detailed questions, so I know you’re thorough and passionate about your work and ideas. Secondly, I’m the most beautiful man you’ve ever seen, really?” He has a shit eating grin on his face and you feel your stomach sink. You’d bang your head against the table but you’ve already embarrassed yourself enough, all you can do now is at least pretend to be confident and own up to what you said, as if he’ll believe it at this point.

“Y-yeah you are, you’re a model so of course…. That’s the only reason why- Anyways!! Back to the questions!” You snap open your laptop and ask him the question again. At least you can make eye contact with him now without feeling like throwing up everywhere, for the most part. This project was already an emotional rollercoaster and you hadn’t even started yet.

It had been a week since the project started and much to your disbelief and low expectations, it was actually going quite well. Once you opened up to him, you found that he was a very down to earth guy, also surprisingly shy and very funny. He was very good at initiating conversation and keeping them going, so he kind of forced you to open up by making you talk with his never-ending conversation but you weren’t complaining at all. Especially at times like today, you two were at the shopping centre to look around and shop for clothes for the project. You were feeling so dead, since you were running on 3 hours of sleep and you woke up early to meet up with Johnny. He got mad at you for not taking care of yourself, even thought it wasn’t your fault and it was due to so many assessments being due at once. His conversation kept you awake though, (amongst a lot of coffee) even if it did irritate you at some points and you didn’t feel like talking, he still talked even if you didn’t answer. Purely because he knew he was helping you not fall asleep while you walked.

“Remind me why we’re here when we have work to do?” Johnny asks, looking at you confused as you stood in line for frozen yoghurt.

“Because there’s nothing more motivating and uplifting than your own personalised ice cream. Choosing my own flavour and filling it to the brim with candy and chocolate and jelly reminds me that the choices I make will make me happy and are good for me!” You glance at his face, “At least, for me, you know?”. He just lets out a huff of air as he smiles and looks away. “Sure, if it will cheer up and make you less tired. Maybe I’ll feel some sort of achievement as well!” Johnny smiles softly, squinting as he looks up at the menu. You chuckled softly to yourself as you smiled up at him, watching him look confusedly at the overwhelming amount of options. You felt a ride of that same nervousness in your stomach that you felt when you first saw him, you looked down at the floor quickly as your face fell. You suddenly felt very unworthy of being in presence, but at the same time it’s the only place you wanted to be.

Unfortunately, one thing you forgot with frozen yoghurt was that you could not go into any of the clothes shops until you had finished. So for 20 minutes you had just been sitting at a table that belonged to the dumpling place, and you were worried you’d get kicked out and told off for sitting there but Johnny insisted you wouldn’t. You rushed eating your froyo out of fear and finished within 5 minutes, but Mr. Seo over here took so long that you did end up getting kicked from the table.

“I told you! I fucking told you!” You yell, pretending to be angry. All Johnny could do was laugh in response, feeling butterflies rise in his stomach seeing how cute you looked with your face scrunched up in anger. He wanted so badly to kiss your pouty lips right then and there.

You’d passed a lot of shops now; even went into a few that you thought had the vibe that you were looking for, but sadly none of them fit the vision of the outfit you had planned out in your head. Johnny was happily following you around like a big, loyal St. Bernard as you hastily rushed about, anxiety clearly building. You stopped by a virtual map, scrolling through the possible shops you could visit and feeling discouraged when you see majority of the possible options would most likely push you over budget, which was a very high budget that was hard to go over but if you bought all the items from a high end brand it would very easily cross over. You didn’t want to let yourself be visibly stressed out in front of Johnny but you weren’t exactly hiding it very well, he could very well tell that you were about to launch yourself from the barrier right next to you onto the floors of the shopping centre below. Instead of doing that however, you just banged your head very hard onto the screen of the map in front of you, arms falling limp beside your body as you sighed in frustration. Johnny bent down below you, looking up at your face.

“What’s got you stressed out? I mean, I know what the general issue is but what is the tiny little obstacle that you are struggling with right now?” He quietly asks. You huff again, lifting your head off the map and sitting on the bench next to it. Johnny quickly follows, barely having to get up to sit down next to you.

“I’m just completely lost, everything we’ve seen so far isn’t fitting the vision I have laid out in my head, not even close to the vibe. Am I just being too picky? I don’t know. I’m just that kind of person that if I can’t have or get exactly; or even close to what I’m thinking of in my head then it just sets me off and I feel like a complete failure” You vent, not even realising that you were rambling.

“No you’re not picky, it’s good that you can come up with an exact plan and vision to follow along with in your head, it’s not a bad thing. What is bad is feeling like a complete failure if you won’t be satisfied with any other possible outcome, that doesn’t make you a failure at all. You always have other options, even if they aren’t as good as the one you have planned out. There’s always other ways to get it as well, whether it be thrift shopping or just switching the colours or patterns around” Johnny puts his hand over yours, feeling his heart race suddenly spike, “I’m here to help in any way I can, if it’ll help you be less stressed”. You just stare back at him, head blank and wide eyed. Your head’s screaming at you to lean in closer; to touch him, to kiss him, but there’s absolutely no way in hell you’re doing that. Johnny; amidst his trance of staring into your soul, didn’t realise that his gaze had fallen to your lips, not realising that something was pulling him closer, inch by inch. Thankfully (to him), an idea suddenly popped into his head. He shook his head out of his trance and stood up quickly, reaching his hands out to yours.

“Get up, I have an idea” He says excitedly. You can practically see his imaginary St. Bernard tail wagging a mile a minute. You grab his hands and hesitantly lift yourself up as he pulls you, a wary look on your face. He starts walking whilst pulling you behind him, not letting go of your hand; in fact, he was holding it tighter than necessary.

“You’re not even gonna tell me what this idea of yours is?” You say, a little out of breath trying to keep up with this long strides.

“I want to be a little bit of a surprise, but let’s just say that it will be both a break and inspiration all at once” He giggles, not even slowing down to help you catch up.

“Johnny this is stupid! It’s unfair for you to be dressing me up when it should be me dressing you up! I can’t expect you to do this for me, it’s not your project” You yell at him from inside the dressing room as if he could even hear you, he’s probably running amuck on the other side of the store with the clothes racks.

“You’re not expecting anything, I’m offering honey” He surprisingly responds, throwing clothes over the door for you, “It’s to help ~inspire~ you”. You can hear his dumb smile in his tone. You just roll your eyes in response, not realising the barely visible smile creeping onto your face due to the fact he just called you ‘honey’ and the fact that he’s just so endearingly silly. You took the clothes from him and hung them up on the side of the cubicle. “Oh, I- Are you sure this will suit me?” You stutter, feeling a different kind of nervousness rise in your stomach. “Yes, trust me. I didn’t choose just any outfit” He soothes from the other side of the door. It was a very different feel and different look to your usual outfits, you dressed more smart casual most days. In jeans and crop tops or tucked in shirts or comfy breathable pants and cute comfy jumpers or hoodies and you religiously wore sneakers, whether they be chunky and fashionable or just comfy and cute. Sometimes you wore boots if you had somewhere to be just to jazz up the vibe a little. You always dressed well and fashionable, but it was always a comfier and casual kind unless it was an event or special occasion, then you jazzed it up of course but even then it was never this stand out. You hesitantly changed into the outfit, feeling a little unsure of how you would look. However, once you saw yourself in the completed look you felt a tiny bit better about it. It was flattering but you were just worried about what Johnny would think when he sees you in a not baggy, comfy for once. He’d never seen you with an outfit that actually looks like efforts been put into it than just quickly thrown on together in the morning. You were checking yourself out in the mirror, seeing how you looked from all angles and fixing your hair, seeing how you could wear it with this outfit. You really liked it honestly, you were already envisioning what jewellery you’d pair with it and what makeup look you’d do.

“Is it on?” Johnny asks from outside, he must’ve heard your heels moving around.

“Oh-yes… Did you want to see?” You quietly respond.

“Of course I do, silly”. You gulp nervously, suddenly feeling a little self conscious as you reluctantly walk to the door of the cubicle. You unlock it and open it slightly, sticking your head out first and feeling your heart jump seeing Johnny in front of you so suddenly.

“Just keep in mind that I’m not completely dolled up right now so it might look a bit odd” You warn, but he just rolls his eyes at you with a small smile. You slowly open the door wider and step out, walking out into the hallway along the change rooms and looking at yourself in the full length mirror at the end of it. The whole time, Johnny is just watching you with wide eyes, trying to stop his jaw from falling open.

“Wow… You look stu- I mean; you look… Cool?” Johnny cringes at himself as he tries to save himself but just makes it worse. You bite your lip, trying not to laugh at his embarrassment as he turns away with a face palm.

“Thanks?” You tease. He had chosen really well, seeing yourself from this distance made it look so much better. He had chosen a two piece with a subtle black and white tartan pattern sewed into it, the bottom half being high-waisted smart trousers that ended just under your ribs and flared out just a little around your ankles; the top half being a singlet cropped just above your ribs. He also chose some plain black, shiny stilettos to wear with it. Johnny came up behind you with a hand on your hip, startling you and quickly causing a blush to form on your cheeks at the feeling of his tall, broad body against yours. He slides a blazer over one of your arms, making you instinctively lift up your other one for him to slide the jacket on. Once it’s on you adjust it and pat it down, taking the view in; the view being Johnny looking at you in front of him in the mirror in awe and you screaming internally at him towering over you (and just at his general otherworldly beauty). He was rubbing your shoulders as he smiled proudly at you in the mirror, proud of his little creation.

“Wow…” He accidentally blurts out in a whisper. You try to hide the massive grin that forms on your face. You reach up and grab his hands that are on your shoulders and turn yourself around to face him.

“This has just made me sad, I love it so much but I can’t afford to buy it since I have to get your outfit” You pout, looking up at him.

“Well yeah, that’s why I’m buying it” Johnny cheekily grins.

“Uh, no you are not” You gasp.

“Uh, yes I am. Why else would I have even had you try it on?”

“To get ~inspired~ just like you said?”

“No- well yeah, but not just that! If I’m gonna look fine as hell at the showcase, so do you”

“Oh shush, you’re already ‘fine as hell’ as is. And again, it’s about you not me”

“Okay firstly, I know but so are you. I can’t be the only one flaunting my looks and showing everyone up, I need everyone to know the girl who made me look this good is also breathtaking herself” Johnny smirks. You blush, scrunching up your face in anger that you’re lost for words.

“Okay you win, but still I’d feel horrible if you just bought me a whole out-” Johnny cuts you off.

“Just be quiet and give the clothes to me” Johnny sighs, closing the cubicle door.

You tried to race Johnny to the register and pay for the outfit yourself but all he had to do was reach out his branchy arm to cut you off and give the cashier his credit card. You huff in frustration, feeling genuinely bad that Johnny did that for you; yes, it was out of his own choice and want but you still just feel bad when anyone spends money on you. You didn’t say another word as you walked out of the store.

“Don’t feel bad please, I promise you it’s fine I wanted to cheer you up and make you feel better. I also genuinely wanted you to have a nice outfit to wear, it hasn’t affected my bank account that badly I promise” Johnny pats your head.

“I know, but I just can’t help feeling it. Thank you though, I do appreciate the gesture and to be honest I didn’t really have any outfit to wear to the showcase, I didn’t even think that far for myself yet but yes, thank you, really” You grab his free hand and squeeze it. You feel a rush in your chest, why did you do that? You try to let go as a reflex but Johnny quickly tightens his grip. The rush fades to a feeling of content and you realise, you actually do feel more ~inspired~ and calmer now, a million ideas come rushing into your head at once.

“Let’s do this!” You cheer, raising your hand with Johnny’s and jumping in excitement. Johnny, even though he almost drops the bag from the sudden fright, looks at you with such endearment in his eyes.

The showcase was tomorrow night and you were facetiming Johnny, making him suffer with you in your stress breakdown and making him go through a checklist with you to make sure both of you had everything you needed. You were going to spend all of the morning getting ready and then photoshoots, videos, setup, interviews and practice runs all day before the actual event starts. It was going to be so stressful, not to mention you had to get up even earlier to get Johnny’s outfit back from the drycleaners. You should’ve been asleep right now but instead you were running rampant around your bedroom trying to get everything ready so you didn’t forget a single thing in the morning. Johnny wasn’t even saying anything, he was all rugged up in bed, almost falling asleep watching you.

“Are you sure you have absolutely everything ready for tomorrow?” You ask for the 6th time.

“Yes, I’m sure” Johnny mumbles, struggling to keep his eyes open, “You should go to sleep, baby. I don’t want you to be sleep deprived tomorrow and even more stressed out”. He didn’t even realise that the word ‘baby’ slipped out of his mouth in his half asleep state. You couldn’t even process it properly or react due to the fact you were sorting out all the makeup you’ll need to bring tomorrow.

“I know, but if this day doesn’t go 100% perfect I’ll be so devastated” You sigh.

“Nothing’s ever going to go 100% perfect honey, and that’s okay because that’s life” Johnny slurs, eyes completely closed at this point. These nicknames were catching you off-guard and you just shoved to the back of your mind to think about when you actually try to sleep. You sigh, looking over at Johnny on your phone, he looked so cute and cosy; his cheek squished up against his pillow, causing his plush lips to be all squished up too. You felt your heart melting at the sight, maybe you should just relax a little and go to sleep. If you were sleep deprived it would just make the stress even worse, you would have time in the morning to double check everything and get any last minute things together. You needed to take care of yourself, for Johnny’s sake. You put the last of your makeup into the separate bag and cleaned it all off your bed and slid under the covers, turning the lamp off. You weren’t sure whether to hang up or not, so you didn’t. You set your alarm on your alarm clock so that you could stay on the phone with Johnny. You snuggled into your covers, smiling softly to yourself as you watched Johnny sleep, even now he’s still so beautiful. “Goodnight, see you tomorrow” You whisper as you close your eyes even though he can’t hear you, feeling a ton of emotions about the next day to come.

“Here you go” you pant as you carefully place Johnny’s Starbucks order on the counter in front of him, out of breath from rushing to the coffee shop and back. Johnny gives you a big smile as you sit back on the counter, watching the stylist touch up his hair, you had to admit you were kind of envious that she actually had an excuse to be able to touch Johnny for long periods of time. Especially when he looked so pretty; BB cream making his already soft skin look so plush and dewy, the lip tint making his already kissable & luscious lips look 100 times more so. The subtle eyeshadow on his eyes was really natural and not that noticeable but at the same time it brought his eyes out more.

“Thank you, now please relax. Everything’s going well, it’s okay” Johnny soothes, patting and rubbing your knee with his free hand as his other held his drink. He’s right, the morning had gone smoothly and his photoshoot/video was done and now he was preparing for the practice run and for the interviewers that were about to show up. Everyone at the university was using this event for their big assessments as well, the media students, the photography/ videography students, the beauty students, etc. it had actually become a pretty prestigious event over the years so a lot of people and media outlets actually showed up. You weren’t even ready yet yourself, still dressed in a hoodie and jeans for now and you probably wouldn’t get ready until you were left rushing at the last minute. The makeup artist started to touch up Johnny’s lip tint and you hate to admit that you actually felt a tiny pang of jealously fire up in you, Johnny must’ve noticed the way you were frowning while watching her do her job and he gave you a smile and wink once she’d finished.

“Don’t be stressed alright, your job is over for now. I hate seeing you so stressed out” Johnny says quietly, not wanting to disturb the stylists and other people in the room.

“I know, but I’m just nervous that something will screw up last minute or that people just won’t like the look I went with and then I’ll embarrass you as well by doing th-” You ramble on. Johnny cuts you off by quickly snatching your hand into his.

“Shh, it will be fine. Stop overthinking it, you’re great and you’ve done an amazing job” Johnny soothes again, rubbing his thumb over the back of your hand. You sigh, realising that he is right, overthinking won’t do you any good and you just needed to remain calm and believe in yourself; and Johnny of course. You knew the outfit looked good, especially on Johnny, you had him try it on 5 different ways 10 different times before all this to reassure yourself it looked as good as it could.

“All models please make your way to the runway entrance and prepare yourselves for the practice run” The lady announces over the speaker suddenly, causing you both to nearly jump out of your skin.

“Okay, I’ll go and get myself dressed quickly and I’ll come and watch you” You rush as you both stand up, Johnny squeezing your hand tightly before reluctantly letting go, not letting you out of his gaze with a sweet smile as he walks backwards to the runway.

It was starting to get hectic as the show was only half an hour away now, people were running around everywhere in the dressing room and you hadn’t had a chance to see Johnny since he left for the practice run. You were all dolled up now, in the two piece and stilettos Johnny bought for you and your hair slicked back into a high pony. Your makeup was also more glamorous now along with the hoop earrings, lace choker and other more fancy-looking jewellery you had on. Your stomach turned with both intense excitement and nerves at the thought of seeing Johnny’s reaction to your new look. Thinking about Johnny, you really don’t understand how you were struggling to find him; better yet, how you lost him in the first place. He was literally the tallest person in the building. Looking at the time, you started to feel a little worried, half an hour to go and Johnny; the most prepared person, is nowhere to be found? You immediately pushed your way out of the dressing room and out into the venue. There was press and audience members everywhere and avoiding them and trying to push through them while looking for Johnny all at once was really overwhelming you. You were going to be so mad with Johnny when and if you find him. You made your way to the bar and café with no luck, you went outside to the front entrance and also outside to the creepy back area to find nothing in either of those places either. You were really starting to panic and be at a loss for where to look, you assume he was going to come back to where he was meant to be before the show actually starts, but you also didn’t want to risk it and needed to settle your nerves now. How could he do this to you when he knew how stressed you were about this? You were finally feeling calm and feeling good about how it was going to go and he does this, you’re really going to beat his ass when you see him. You go back inside and right when you enter you see the door to the staircase that takes you to the upstairs areas, would he really be hiding on a completely different floor? You would have no idea why but your gut was telling you that he was up there somewhere and you didn’t like that feeling. You felt nervous about what was about to happen even though you had no idea what it was.

You didn’t even bother checking every floor on your way up the stairs, you just went straight for the rooftop, it just made the most sense that if Johnny was anywhere up here, it’d be there; and if he wasn’t, then you’d give up. The other floors were completely empty and to be honest, quite creepy. Just not in use at all. You took off your stilettos to walk up the stairs because there was no way in hell you were going to walk up nearly 5 flights of stairs in heels, it was already hard enough with your very lacking lung capacity; you did not want to add broken ankles on top of that. When you finally reach the rooftop floor (after taking a little break to get some air back into your lungs), you open the door and walk out to the breeze instantly hitting your face. You look around to see Johnny standing near the edge, watching the view from behind the gate they had set up to stop any risk of anyone falling. As soon as your eyes find him you start angrily stomping towards him.

“Johnny Seo you’re a dead man”, he instantly turns around upon hearing your voice “how dare you just leave me stranded like that with 20 minutes now left before the show starts?!”. His jaw drops upon seeing you, eyes widening as he takes in your figure.

“Holy shit, I- you look fucking stunning” he gasps, forgetting any thoughts he had prior.

“Seriously Johnny, I’m really upset with you what the hell were you thinking? You know how much I was and am stressing over this whole thing and after calming me down and making me feel better about it you just walk off somewhere when you’re supposed to be ready? You’re really about to make not just you, but me look bad and unprofessional and jeopardise my entire course and career? I’m never forgiving you for this I’m-” You rant on, pushing Johnny’s comment and the butterflies rising in your stomach to the back of your mind.

“Shh, listen. I was going to come back if you didn’t come up here, obviously I wouldn’t just ditch the show and leave you there to clean up my mess. I knew you’d come up here to find me, it’s what I planned” Johnny reassures you, grabbing both your hands softly and rubbing the backs of them with his thumbs. You didn’t stop him.

“I-… What? What do you mean?” You say, completely lost.

“I mean; I can’t hold it in anymore. I know it probably wasn’t the best idea to just ditch you without any word…and I’m sorry for that, but as I said; I knew you’d come and find me up here and I just needed to be alone with you for a few minutes so I can get all of this of my chest. And out of my head. And just… I don’t know- I’m nervous and my minds jumbled now that you’re actually up here with me I really thought you wouldn’t find me and my heart is going to explode!” Johnny rambles on, it felt weird seeing him like this. Usually it was you doing this. You were really lost for words, just staring up at him confused and waiting for him to say what he wanted to. Exactly what you thought he was going to say. You knew exactly that this is what was going to happen before you even walked up those stairs. Your heart was racing and you felt like you were going to pass out any second. This wave of different emotions all at once was way too overwhelming. Johnny sighs, intertwining your fingers together as he pulls you closer to him as his gaze falls to the floor.

“I… like you. A lot. I have really immense feelings for you. And I hate it. Not because of you! I just fell for you so fast and usually it takes a while for me to like someone, especially this much but… You. You’re just so amazing in every way and you inspire me and encourage me. You make me feel motivated. Not to mention how cute you are”, he finally makes eye contact with you to see you biting your lip in a shy smile “so fucking cute”. He smirks as his gaze falls back down to the floor. You let go of his hands to wrap your arms around his shoulders and intertwine your own hands behind his neck, heels still hanging from your fingers. He sharply inhales as his heart rate increases greatly, wrapping his arms around your waist as he tries to hide how flustered he was feeling by playing it cool.

“Continue” you bite your lip with a smirk, tilting your head as you make eye contact. You don’t know where this rise of confidence came from, but you like it.

“And seeing you like this, so beautiful and…sexy”, he whispers, clearing his throat “really makes my heart race and makes me feel so…. God I’m trying so hard to be cool right now but I am failing so bad”. You giggle as he sighs in embarrassment, this cute side to him that you’ve never seen before was really making your heart seize up.

“Anyways, just seeing you so stressed out this assignment was really making me so sad and knowing that I helped you feel better and calm you down made me feel so genuinely happy. Seeing you like that was really hurting me and I felt like I was just making it worse but seeing you calm down from me holding your hand, like that’s all it took, really sealed the deal for me… That I like you I mean. Especially last night when you fell asleep on Facetime with me, you really just didn’t want to hang up so badly that you got ready for bed and fell asleep on call with me? Even though I was already asleep? God, that really made my heart so tingly and warm”, Johnny smiles so big reminiscing on that moment and you blush, you don’t even really know why you did that “but yeah I. I really like you and something tells me you like me too but I don’t know… I don’t know. I hope you do like me”. His smile slowly fades; not to a frown, but a look that was waiting, no, hoping for an answer without asking a single word. You didn’t even have a chance to say your answer before your body answered for you, standing on your tiptoes and your chin lifting up to softly connect your lips with his. At first, it was just the one kiss. You pulling away quickly, afraid that you acted too quickly and scared him off, but your worries are just as quickly soothed when, after the initial shock wore off, he tightens his arms around your waist to pull you in closer as he leans down to kiss you again. Still soft but with a bit more need, leading you through the kiss as he moves his lips against yours. One of your hands unknowingly slides down to his chest, pulling him in closer by the collar of his trenchcoat. His lips were just as soft as they looked, even with a needy kiss like this they felt so soft and delicate and the feeling of them moving in sync against yours was making your head so foggy, like you were floating amongst the clouds. Johnny pulls away with a pant, having to stop himself before he gets too carried away. He rests his forehead against yours as he snakes his arms up yours, pulling your hands down and holding onto them tightly.

“I really want to continue but, there’s 10 minutes until the show starts and we’re already going to get our asses handed to us as is”, Johnny sighs, a cheeky smile forming on his face “I also don’t want to have to walk the runway with a boner”. You roll your eyes and smack his chest, threatening to throw your heels at him.

“You deserve it, this is all your fault after all, if you just waited until after the show to give me that horrible, messy confession of your feelings, we wouldn’t be in this position” You taunted.

“That’s completely fair” He nods in agreement. You put your heels back on as you grab his hand and start to walk back down the stairs.

“Just to be clear though, I would like to continue after the shows all wrapped up. Please” You stop, looking up at him halfway down the stairs. He rolls his eyes at you with a smirk.

“Of course”

34 notes · View notes

nagdabbit · 4 years

Text

A HANDY DANDY GUIDE TO WRASSLIN

For the lovely, the wonderful, the incomparable @gideongrace , may I present: Daggs’ Guide to the Wild Ass World of Professional Wrestling! (and it’s goin’ behind a cut because It Got LONG!)

So, here is the things. Wrestling is STUPID. And great? And fun as hell! And the most carny sport to ever exist. But, also SUPER inside baseball a lot of the time just because it’s got such a long goddamn history that it can seem daunting to get into. Like I’ve only been back into it the last four or so years, so there’s a lot of history that I’ve missed! There’s also a whole lot of gate keeping, just like comics or video games. There’s also the bitter truth that a lot of people in the industry are absolute shitheels that should have been fired long ago (and I’ll only be vague about a lot of that). So, yeah. A WHOLE LOT.

First things first: HISTORY. There’s just so much. But, conveniently? You don’t need it. It can be fun if you end up really like wrestling, but contrary to what a bunch of middle-aged, racist, misogynist and WILDLY homophobic, White American Men will tell you, you don’t actually need it to enjoy yourself. If you DO want history, might I suggest the How2Wrestling podcast! It is a cheerful, lovely show hosted by two goddamn delightful humans, Kefin and Jo (who are also just wonderful people to interact with in general)! There is also the Comic Book Story of Professional Wrestling by Aubrey Sitterson and Chris Moreno, which is a great read! Wrestlesplania is another good show for history of the sport and the wrestlers! They’re definitely, uh, hornier, but v fun!

Secondly: On the subject of inside baseball, wrestling jargon is a whole thing. The ONLY part of wrestling history that is 100% important: it is a carny sport. Like, some side-show, vaudeville ass shit, yo. And it has never evolved from that, so there are a whole lot of terms used that are very specific to like... early 1900′s carnival culture. Here is a wikipedia article, but there’s also a wonderful How2Wrestling episode about it all! I’ll try not to use much!

Thirdly: We can’t talk about wrestling podcasts without mentioning Colt Cabana’s The Art of Wrestling. A lot of the archives are behind a paywall now, but the show is great. If you DO get into wrestling and start to find wrestlers you enjoy, I highly highly suggest checking to see if they’ve done an episode. Colt is a goddamn delight of a human, deserving of support and a great interviewer on top of it. Even if you just bookmark eps you’d wanna listen to and then start a free trial to marathon them all. (See also: the Colt Cabana & CM Punk lawsuit(s), in which Colt got royally fucked over.)

Fourthly: Nobodies Watching Wrestling. Drag Queens watching wrestling. That’s all you need to know. Even out of context, they’re goddamn delightful humans. Might I recommend this episode with EFFY, because I sometimes just watch it when I’m having a bad day.

Fifthly: Tights & Fights is a great weekly wrestling pod, and is how I keep up on a lot of things that I might not be watching. PLUS, diverse group of (wonderful) hosts: Hal Lublin, Daniel Radford, Lindsey Kelk, Open Mike Eagle, and producer Julien Burrell. They’re just great. And horny, at times, but in a charming and respectful way.

Now... The boring part. I’m just gonna get some of the popular company introductions out of the way, and then the fun part of So Many Match Suggestions at the bottom. But, business first! (The Big difference between Larger Companies and Independent Companies is that the big guys have a contracted roster of people who sometimes can work with other companies [unless they’re the WWE, who have exclusive contracts and still call their employees Independent Contractors so they don’t have to offer health insurance or a union], and indie guys contract people usually show-by-show. ALSO, there is intergender wrestling [men vs women, which does bother a lot of people. I do side with support of it, but I do totally get how it can be hard to watch] in indie shows, whereas there is NOT in 90% of the big companies.)

(And, honestly, if you wanna skip this part, you can, but if I don’t do it first, I’ll forget..)

AN OVERVIEW OF THE BIG PLAYERS

WWE - Here’s the thing. The WWE kinda... is a terrible capitalist bastard of a company, run by a morally bankrupt, egomaniacal, shitstain, roid-rage cryptkeeper of a man. And, if you want my personal opinion, RAW and Smackdown are both (currently) TERRIBLE shows, despite having some truly phenomenal talent. BUT, but. NXT (and NXT UK) is probably the best, like, weekly wrestling show (on TV, at least, but we’ll get there). The talent is INCREDIBLE, the storylines are less bad bananas, and they’ve adopted a LOT of the best indie talent lately (because they want to directly compete with AEW, but that’s a whole other thing). WWE programming is also the easiest to get a hold of because they are the longest running and basically Disney, so there are some full matches on YouTube, and Raw and NXT are available on Hulu. They are also releasing a lot of free stuff on the WWE Network that you can watch without signing up for a paid account, but there is a lot of stuff behind a pay wall.

Cons: Real Talk, run by a bunch of terrible people. Responsible for covering up a lot of truly reprehensible crimes for which no one was held accountable, despite being well documented. A blatant disregard for the (physical and mental) safety and/or financial security of a lot of their roster--specifically the people you don’t see on TV. (If you want some history, you can look through the past tweets of the New York 64 Tournament, but a lot of it turned my stomach, so I would not suggest, but it’s there if you have the same morbid curiosity that I did)

Pros: The company might be run by terrible people, but their roster is good. A lot of my top wrestlers do work for the WWE, sure, but they do hire a lot of decent humans that I sometimes feel bad about not supporting. Also, it is the dream of a lot of people to join WWE simply because of the prestige, the massive audience, and job security. I might hate Vince but I can’t begrudge any wrestler currently working for them.

NXT Pros: On the subject of rosters, NXT is LIT. But they have also stolen some of the best indie wrestlers recently: Mercedes Martinez and Jake Atlas, two of my All Time Favs. Both of whom deserve the world, because being openly gay in the wrestling industry is the pits.

All Elite Wrestling - AEW is a very new company, and they are my favourite of the big promotions. They are a company run by wrestlers, rather than a millionaire with a writing staff. I like the wrestling style(s) better, I was a huge fan of a lot of their roster before they hit TV last October, and I like not giving the McMahons money. The storylines are better, if only because they don’t have a writer’s room dictating scripts and such, and the characters are more fun (for me at least).

Easiest ways to watch for free: Their YouTube channel! There you can find a lot of highlights, behind the scenes, AEW Dark (the “dark” matches, or the non-televised matches from TV tapings), PPV pre-shows and a lot of stupid stuff.

Cons: A bit of an issue offering equal match time to the women’s roster the way they SAID they would at the start. A bit more violent of a style as a lot of the wrestlers came up death match style wrestling, or are from Japan/wrestled in Japan and typically wrestle “strong style” (wrestling style with less theatrics and known for Real Real Strikes that Hurt A Lot), which some people can find off-putting. Also, they hired Jake Hager, who is a real piece of shit.

Pros: Have a wonderfully diverse roster. Orange Cassidy. Sonny Kiss. Good storytelling. Jake The Snake Roberts doing Hella Promos. The Dark Order, who we affectionately refer to as the Spooky Perverts. Chris Jericho yelling at a Drone, and Matt Hardy being a wizard. A bunch of wrestlers who are married to other wrestlers who work for WWE, and good jokes are made.

BUT THE BIGGEST PRO-AEW THING I CAN PROVIDE: NYLA FUCKING ROSE. They didn’t make her the first women’s champion like they should have, but they put her in the first championship match on the FIRST episode of the weekly show, Dynamite, and she is now the CURRENT women’s champion. I don’t wanna make a big deal, only it is a BIG DEAL, because Nyla Fucking Rose is the first openly transgender wrestler signed to a major promotion, and if you think I didn’t fucking CRY LIKE A CHILD when she won, you’re wrong. So, yeah, a NATIONALLY TELEVISED WRESTLING PROGRAM’S CURRENT WOMEN’S CHAMPION IS A TRANSGENDER, FIRST NATIONS WOMAN. NYLA. FUCKING. ROSE.

As of right now, AEW seems to be done filming, which is both Very Smart and also heartbreaking, but you can find all the ways to watch over here on their site if it looks like fun!

WOW Women of Wrestling - Have you seen GLOW? This is a show created by the IRL creator of GLOW (the promotion the show is based on, not the show)! And it is? Incredible? The characters are fun and portrayed as superheroes, the stories are CAMP af, and the wrestling is GOOD. They’re a non-traditional show, which is fun. Their roster is made up of wrestlers playing different wrestlers. Wrestling is a bunch of super talented people playing characters while doing acrobatics. WOW gives us people playing characters, playing other characters, while also doing acrobatics.

Cons: All male announce team? On an all women’s show? Excuse? And also: Tessa Blanchard who is, it turns out, a great big racist. Also a little harder to get full episodes it seems.

Pros: Literally everything else.

Ring of Honor - For awhile ROH was handily competing with WWE. And then they weren’t. And then they got better. And then they got worse. And now, currently, they are a company that I hate supporting.

Cons: Run by assholes who don’t care about worker safety, and don’t put anything into the women’s division.

Pros: Sometimes they partner with New Japan Pro Wrestling. They’ve recently released a lot of goooood old matches including some Kevin Steen (currently WWE’s Kevin Owens) vs El Generico (definitely, 100% not at all, no way, no how, of course NOT WWE’s Sami Zayn [he is, this is another inside baseball joke that I’m just obligated to make every time I mention El Generico]) matches which are BRUTAL. Oh, and Dalton Castle:

Impact! - It’s back! I don’t watch it, but they DO have Rich Swann, so they can’t be bad. There is an entire history to Impact that is BANANAS. Like AEW, a bit more rough and tumble, scrappy death match folks, and I like a lot of the roster, like Taya Valkyrie, Jessika Havok and Sami Callihan. Not a bad show, but the full show weekly doesn’t hold my attention.

Cons: Tessa Blanchard, mostly. She is an incredible wrestler, her matches are good, but.

Pros: Pretty easy to watch, actually? I believe they’re still on Twitch, and they have an entire channel on Pluto TV.

New Japan Pro Wrestling - NJPW is GREAT. Definitely not everyone’s cup of tea. The shows are long, and strong style just... hurts. Like, a lot of wincing on my end. But the wrestling. Oh, lordy, the wrestling is incredible. But it is brutal. Strong Style wrestling is much different than the typical American style that you see in WWE, and a lot more grounded than high flying lucha styles. (Though a lot of wrestlers do travel to Mexico and train in lucha style wrestling (which I am the least familiar with), so currently there is a lot of the very high flying flippty dos and the absolutely brutal strikes that you see in strong style wrestling.)

Cons: Show/match length is typically long and there is A Lot to See. The only way I know to watch full shows is through their streaming service.

Pros: Just the whole thing, really. They release a free match on YouTube every Monday. Also, Toru Yano, the best wrestler in the world.

Indie Promotions that I know less about because I can afford only so many streaming services

Firstly, here is a Wiki list of wrestling streaming services. I’m gonna name a couple below, but the wiki page has a handy list of costs of the bigger ones because capitalism knows how to get you. (Personally, I only use IWTV at the moment. They’re a good company run by good people, and a lot of indie promotions would have died out without partnering with/support from them)

Beyond Wrestling - Beyond is My Favourite Promotion To Watch, Bar None. Their weekly show (when in season), Uncharted Territory, is fantastic. Diverse talent, diverse styles. They do have a lot of death matches, which can suck to watch if you aren’t into that sort of thing. I am, it turns out, into that sort of thing. But listening to interviews with a lot of death match wrestlers, specifically Jimmy Havoc, can help understand the w h y of it all! Available on IWTV.

Chikara - Chikara is So Fun! They are a (mostly) family friendly promotion and training school. Their shows are filled with young/newbie wrestlers as they learn the tricks. Run by Mike Quackenbush, who is a delightful person, BRILLIANT wrestler/trainer, and someone who is willing to take the safety of his people into account. He’s good people, who trains good people, and supports good people, and gives them a safe, open place to learn. It’s also very fun! A lot of comedy matches. Watch on: CHIKARAtopia or some of their archive is on IWTV.

EVE - An all-women promotion, providing a safe working and training environment for women and girls. They have put their foot in it on occasion, but they seem to still be good people. (I would recommend the Tights & Fights episode with founders Emily and Dann Read for a little backstory on the company, but not needed.) Ways to watch.

RIPTIDE - YO, RIPTIDE IS DOING THE MOST BEAUTIFUL SHIT. Cinematic wrestling, and it is great. The matches are good, the promos are good, the people are good. But the way they film it oh my god holy shit. When everything is a little less hectic, they are people I am definitely gonna support as much as I can. Watch here.

A Matter of Pride - Here’s the thing. They have put on some very good, inclusive shows. However, some serious allegations have come out about Rick Cataldo, who is involved with the company, and I think it’s important to mention. They have done a lot of good in the world of prowrestling and they put on good shows and they have given a platform to people who might otherwise have been pushed aside, however bad things have still happened there. Watchable on YouTube.

OTHER NOTABLE INDIE COMPANIES

GCW (IWTV, Fite TV & Smartmark) * Black Label Pro (IWTV) * Prime Time Pro Wrestling (IWTV) * Uncanny Attractions * RISE (IWTV) * Bar Wrestling * PWG * Stardom * Bizarro Lucha (IWTV) * OTT

There is also NWA Power that is a good show on YouTube, however, they immediately hired (and now fired for being racist) Jim Cornette who is... just an absolute jackass. But I do feel I should mention them.

Is that over? Yes? Well..

NOW THE FUN PART. THIS IS MY MOMENT. THIS IS THE ONLY PART THAT REALLY MATTERS.

So. The thing is. Wrestling is A Lot. SO, I’m gonna give you as wide a variety as I can! I’ll point out some fun people, some fun gimmicks and HOPEFULLY won’t completely turn you off! If you enjoy any of these, then the dumb stuff up above is useful!

First! The most important wrestling match of All Time. Invisible Man vs Invisible Stan. This is everything you need to know about the beats of good wrestling, but also why wrestling is fun. There are two people in this match: Referee Bryce Remsburg and the audience. And that’s it. This is literally just a referee (but it’s Bryce, so the referee) miming a wrestling match, and an audience buying into the kayfabe wholeheartedly. (Inside baseball: Bad Boy Vision - “Bad Boy” Joey Janela’s [another wrestler] sunglasses)

One of my favourite matches in recent memory, AND one of the best matches sort of just in general! David Starr vs Jordan Devlin at OTT. Quintessential wrestling, fantastic storytelling, and one of the best promo packages I’ve ever seen. BONUS: David Starr is a GREAT human fighting day and night to unionize the wrestling industry. He’s the Bernie Sanders of professional wrestling.

I thought about putting an actual death match on the list, but the closest I will get is this Nick Gage vs Josh Briggs fans bring the weapons match. I chose this match because my very best friend does not like this style of wrestling at all, but he did enjoy this match. It’s a lot, obviously. But it’s not as bad as it could be, but there’s also no shame if it isn’t your thing. Hell, I don’t even know why it’s my thing! I don’t even like bloody horror movies! I will say that Nick Fuckin’ Gage is one of the most prolific death match guys still working today, and also one of the nicest, kindest, most beloved guys there is and I would die to protect him. MDK!

Okay, this is the single most beautiful match to exist. Cara Noir vs PAC (fka WWE’s Neville). This isn’t wrestling, this is art. Great story, no commentary, gorgeous camerawork. Bonus: Cara Noir has the most fantastic and well rounded gimmick (character) in the business. Have you seen Black Swan? That’s it. That’s his character. And it’s great. Nailed. It.

Oh, did you know David Arquette is a wrestler? HE IS! Here’s he and RJ City.

On the subject of WWE and NXT, this Halftime Heat match of Aleister Black, Ricochet & Velveteen Dream vs Johnny Gargano, Adam Cole & Tommaso Ciampa. These are six of the best wrestlers work, and definitely TOPS in the WWE system. SEE ALSO: Black & Dream put on a HELL of a program together at NXT, but it’s been boiled down to this highlight vid that gives me feelings. Gargano vs Andrade Cien Almas is one of THE BEST matches of all time and here is a shitty highlight reel, but it’s still good. Adam Cole is 1) incredible and 2) the prettiest possum in the Denny’s dumpster, have a Cole vs Finn Balor highlight reel. God, I wish it were easier to find WWE stuff on YouTube.. All these matches should be on Hulu, tho.

NEXT! Kris Statlander vs Davienne for Beyond. Kris Statlander is A Legend, despite being real new to the business. Currently wrestling for AEW, former stuntwoman and, most importantly, she’s an alien.

FREE FOR ALL TIME. Solo Darling vs Penelope Ford vs Veda Scott vs Ashley Vox. They didn’t have to go that hard, but they did.

SPEAKING OF. Kylie Rae, Penelope Ford, Kimber Lee & Skylar vs. Shotzi Blackheart, Harlow &Twisted Sisterz. I just? I love? All of them?

And not to mention Kris Statlander vs Priscilla Kelly. I mean, I mean. I cannot sing the praises of both of these women enough.

Okay, so I am really only passingly familiar with a lot of Japanese wrestling. Mostly got into it last summer, actually. I get it, I love it, but I’m not as well versed in the people involved. Two badasses I do know? Meiko Satomura vs Kana (WWE’s Asuka). Fucking legends, both of them. Hard hitters, too, jesus.

If you do get into NXT at all, Keith Lee and Donovan Dijak put on one fuck of a program together, but the story started long before they ever entered the WWE! Please enjoy this absolute hoss fight from a couple years back.

NOW, some intergender matches! If you think they aren’t your thing, feel free to skip!

A fun match of (current IRL romantic partners) Keith Lee vs Mia Yim from before either of them debuted at NXT. I believe they weren’t dating at this point, so the next part will really hit, cuz it’s romantic as shit... This was not the booked ending. Keith Lee didn’t kick out on purpose. (Which, I mean, is literally all wrestling endings, but.) Mia was booked to lose (at least they told her that), and he purposefully took the L and went out on his back, to surprise her and give her a MASSIVE push.

Leyla Hirsch vs David Starr. I just. I goddamn love Leyla Hirsch. A very young wrestler, very new to the industry and I just love her so much?

Two great, intense matches of Joey Janela, the patron saint of bad decisions. Versus Kris Statlander (I can’t get enough of her) and versus Jordynne Grace.

Orange Cassidy and Penelope Ford vs Shockwave and Veda Scott. Shockwave is a robot and Orange Cassidy is Paul Rudd in Wet Hot American Summer. I can give no other explanation.

COMEDY TIME, YO. Comedy wrestling is The Best. There’s a name, Orange Cassidy. Yeah, he’s very funny, and also the most divisive person in wrestling rn. He’s Paul Rudd. He knows he’s a wrestler. He’s lazy. And there’s one match that we need to get out of the way first...

Orange Cassidy vs David Starr. The thing is. Orange Cassidy can fucking wrestle. His gimmick might be that he doesn’t want to, but he can. And It. Is. Great.

Now we can get on with the funnies.

Orange Cassidy vs Colt Cabana. Not story needed. Just two dudes at a food festival. Oh, yeah, there’s also a Swamp Monster. We love Swampy.

Colt Cabana vs Toru Yano. It’s just. So. FUN.

You might know the name Joey Ryan as The Dick Flip Wrestler, or The King of Dong Style. His dick has magical powers, it’s a thing. Here’s he and Orange Cassidy.

Johnny Cockstrong is the opposite of Joey Ryan. Literally. Here’s him also vs Orange Cassidy.

Did you want to see a Dick Test of Strength between them? Well, it happened.

Back to RIPTIDE for (another intergender, kinda) Pete Dunne, Tyler Bate & Trent Seven vs Joey Ryan, Candice LeRae (the World’s Cutest Tag Team) & Colt Cabana.

Kinda almost but not really comedy but very funny and also full of good wrasslin’, here is EFFY vs Orange Cassidy. Pirated, technically, and in real low quality, but I Love It. EFFY is Daddy.

Now, you’ll notice not a lot of women in the comedy section. Real talk, women still tend to get treated as a joke by the wrestling industry at large, so they don’t get the luxury of being as funny as they want. But one woman out there doing the lord’s work is Session Moth Martina. Legend. Love her. Admittedly, another intergender match, but it makes me happy. Martina & Orange Cassidy vs Joey Janela & Penelope Ford (Janelope).

One of my All Time Favourite Matches to date, EFFY and Danhausen (Gaytanic Panic) vs Chris Dickinson and Pinkie Sanchez (Team Pazuzu). Yes, this is a Halloween show. Yes, the Ref IS dressed as Chris Dickinson. There are teeth, Jesus resurrects someone, Danhausen is in fishnets and Effy is in face paint. It’s great. Love that Danhausen.

And there we have it! A whole lot of information and a bunch of matches and some stuff. It’s real dumb, and sometimes the industry is dark, but there’s a lot of hella good people doing dumb things. I hope this was helpful?? And Fun! (But my feeling won’t be hurt if it wasn’t fun, I promise!)

I leave you with this, RJ City making coffee in his underwear with Danhausen. Completely out of context. Because I love it.

#for #gideongrace #please enjoy <3

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littleworldbigdreamsblog · 4 years

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Forgive Me-Chloe x Halle (A Review)

Introduction

I cannot describe how much I love this song and the entire Ungodly Hour album. I have replayed it countless times. So now that I have calmed down I could take this apart and appreciate it for what it is....ART. This song and video really plays on nostalgia, control and our generations idea of what a break up looks like.

The Artist(s)

So the first time I have ever heard or seen these beautiful girls was from Grown-ish. My friend actually described them as “little Beyonces”. At the time based on their content I agreed but after seeing what their music is like now I would say they are very different because of how much they have evolved.

So to the basics Chloe x Halle is a sister duo who have been singing since they were little kids and their range really proves that. Chloe the older of the two has a more soulful voice while Halle has an eerie, almost haunting voice. This is why their harmonies are so fire because of how different and unique their voices are. It just works!

The song

Listen to it here : https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Bc9Y58TeZk0

So the lyrics are so to the point where I feel everything was on your face. There weren’t much allusions and or symbolism but it was still very effective in conveying every single emotion. So the song explains being betrayed by an ex. As seen in most popular songs about exs they tend to be depressing ie see any Taylor Swift song (no shade) but this one had me feeling empowered. Like yes you lied but I can and will do better for myself.

The whole concept of “Forgive Me” is I am hurt as it is like you wasted my time and energy but I am not going to drown in it and you are going to be mad because I don’t want you back. For instance in the chorus Halle sings “ So forgive me, forgive me/I've been going too hard in your city/So forgive me, 'cause I'm not teary/Best believe I move onto better things” So in all it is this idea of the best revenge is showing someone that hurt you or left you behind that you are happy and doing well.

And y’all that just the chorus.

These verses and the pre-chorus is the build up. It shows what went wrong in this relationship. I assume there was some cheating and he lied to cover it up according to the lyrics when Chloe says “You ain't gotta tell me what it is/ 'Cause I saw the messages/ You must got me fucked up”. The guy seems completely silenced by being confronted about it because he attempts to “plead the fifth” but that doesn’t even work. She is already gone!

From the second verse also we see that it seems she knew about the affair and just watching the relationship fade. I am reminded of some people both male and female who stay in the relationship so when they break it off...they are somewhat emotionally detached. This is a means to protect yourself because it is a common thing in our generation to “win” the breakup. And maaaaan I think she won because we see evidence of him regretting what he did like in the lines “ Baby, don't you see, what you done threw away/Know it's hitting you, on the loop, on replay”.

I can appreciate this song a lot on a personal level because after a break up while it is easier to solely slander and criticize your ex, I think it takes so much more effort to put yourself first and try to be without. I mean getting back to who you were before being in love and then being betrayed is hard but it is healthier and more productive than bad-mouthing that ex who isn’t worth your time.

He or she is your ex for a reason right?

I don’t think I need to talk about how flawless the vocals and arrangement are but I still am going to. As I noted previously, their voices are very different and uniquely so. The very subtle harmonies with Chloe holding that melody and Halle doing the adlibs/ background vocals is perfect for this song and its arrangement. Now I ain’t no music major but the chords, the bass and the harmonies were so reminiscent of late 90′s and early 2000′s R&B Pop music with heavy hitters like Aaliyah, Tony Braxton and even TLC. I grew up on that music and it really brought me back to the feeling I had when discovering that music as a kid. I can’t begin to describe the type of nostalgia I felt.

The video

Visuals. Visuals. Visuals. My guy, the shots from this music video totally floored me. I mentioned earlier about the arrangement reminding me of Aaliyah and so did the visuals. I literally had like 3 Aaliyah videos in my head: Try Again, We need a Resolution and Are you that Somebody. This isn’t to discredit Chole x Halle’s creation, it serves to say it is so good it can stand next to Aaliyah’s aesthetic and say “hey sis” in the most loving way. I am not sure if that was their intention but it genuinely made us 90′s babies happy.

On another note I felt like the visuals aided the lyrics. I think this is where the big brain thoughts are going to make their appearance.

DISCLAIMER DISCLAIMER this is strictly my opinion/ 3 am thoughts based on some research.

In the video there is a consistent theme of Chloe x Halle being these sexy dominatrices ie strong dominant women (mostly in a sexual way). Being a dominatrix is mainly about having control and calling the shots during sex both mentally and physically with the submissive’s permission and kink in mind. The reason I bring up sex is their wardrobe, lots of black leather, chains and those skin tight pants. If you see a picture of a generic dominatrix outfit it is similar to their outfits.How does this tie back to the song? By moving on and being happy that leaves them in control and that is symbolized by their clothing choice. But why would they make it sexual? Because firstly sex sells and they look amazing in leather and this general aesthetic works for them. Secondly in a break up there is a huge power struggle or dynamic and the clearest way that depicts that power struggle was from the choice of clothing and props. Does it stay very true to BDSM culture? Based on some research I did yes it does aesthetically. Relating to the lyrics of the song also yes as it focuses on having that control and existing in a newly developed power dynamic. Do you see the parallels?

Aside from the wardrobe, the overall theme was dark. Like are they really digging this man’s grave? Yes ma’am!. This shows how dead that relationship is and as much as he wants her back, she has to think about herself and her well being. That is so incredibly powerful.

Also even from the pictures I chose, there is an underlying religious tone. What I understand from it from looking at the dance and certain visuals, it is maybe a play on going to confession. Like being happy after a break up is a sin and she should repent her sins but she won’t. She won’t say sorry for moving on. She will however say “forgive me for putting me first and not crying over you”.

So we have come to the end and I can’t explain to you my loves how amazing this song is to me. Amidst all the chaos in the world there was a certain calm when this video and album dropped. It is inspiring to see these young beautiful black female artists communicate their experiences through art. To be honest, it kind of got me writing again and this is the product. Hope you enjoy it :). If there is anything you think should be added, let’s have a conversation, I am open to hear your thoughts.

And please go listen to their album Ungodly Hour...it is amazing.

References:

Lyrics : https://www.azlyrics.com/lyrics/chloexhalle/forgiveme.html

BDSM info: https://www.huffpost.com/entry/working-as-a-dominatrix_n_5c66ea02e4b033a799423973

https://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/2018/mar/30/dominatrix-classes-be-more-assertive-work-and-life

https://www.shape.com/lifestyle/sex-and-love/what-is-a-dominatrix

#chloe x halle #forgive me #song review #music video review #ungodly hour

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hellzyeahthewebwieldingavenger · 5 years

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Secret Wars 2099 #1-5 Thoughts...kinda

As I have no memories, nor apparently any records, of covering this story when it originally released I figured I’d do it as part of my re-reading project.

So the first things I should make clear is that I DID read these issues cover to cover...but in the trade. So if the recap pages of the original issues did something wonky I don’t know about that. Also I’m not covering these issue by issue. There are a few reasons for that.

For starters that’d be more time consuming and whilst I’m never going to make this deadline I’m trying to blast through Spidey 2099 volume 3 as early into the upcoming 2099 event as possible. My pie in the sky plan was to get it done before ASM #833 but that’s not happening now because shit got in my way. Secondly I’ve already read these issues as they were coming out and so I wanted to make the experience more novel for myself and see how they held up as one big story not a set of individual ones.

Due to this I’m likely not going to get into the nitty gritty of this story as I would issue to issue, pulling out ‘this one panel was weird’ and so forth. I’m going to try and discuss the story as an overview.

And from that perspective this was very enjoyable but does have you scratching your head when trying to reconcile it within continuity. On that fro there are three ways to view it.

a) Within classic 2099 continuity

b) Within the then current 2099 continuity off the heels of Spidey 2099 volume 2

c) And within the continuity that’s yet to come. Maybe I even mentioned that in the posts I did for Spidey 2099 volume 3, I don’t remember and don’t want to spoil myself by checking. I DO remember Roberta/Captain America returns which makes continuity confusing

In fact continuity from all 3 POVs is confusing. I think the best thing to do is to treat this as kind of like the RYV Secret Wars continuity. That is to say it’s not about the ACTUAL versions of the characters you’ve come to know and when we next see the new characters introduced here those will be alternate versions of these guys.

In a sense this is a kind of conceptual part of PAD’s over all story. It exists so you know that there are/could be versions of these characters and concepts ‘out there’ and they could show back up in his main story. Similarly the All-New X-Factor issue that hinted at this series did so more conceptually. The idea being a big corporation who own their own superhero team. This series doesn’t directly pick up those plot threads but it’s conceptually similar, maybe even the intention is that Miguel got the idea for his Avengers from that story.

I don’t know though because this Miguel is drastically different to the one we’ve been following from Superior onwards. Now I’m not familiar with the 90s 2099 stuff much but IIRC Miguel does become the head of Alchemax and his father Tyler Stone is wheelchair bound so is this supposed to be diverging off that? I dunno.

Enough about continuity though, taking this story in isolation as I said it’s enjoyable. There isn’t much wrong with it beyond one notable thing and a few nitpicks.

Nitpicks would be stuff like how the ending feels kind of weird. It bookends the start of the story but I just feel outright showing us something that we already knew (that Black Widow 2099 acts like a literal black widow and kills her lovers) just wasn’t a fitting end for this story. It’s not that it is gross so much as it just feels odd and out of place. Like there was a more fitting coda for this story than following the minor exploits of a minor character amidst this story.

The more notable problem is a plot one. This isn’t a deal breaker but I just don’t really understand the relevance of Mordo 2099’s business card being in the Specialist’s pocket. It’s the instigator for most of the plot and yet the Specialist didn’t seem to have anything to do with Mordo. Was it just a coincidence? Was it planted there to throw the Avengers off Tyler Stone’s trail? It’s never explained. I suppose it could be a coincidence but then that’s rather lazy writing beneath PAD’s usual talents.

Beyond that the story is fun but fairly simple.

Essentially this boils down to the Avengers and Defenders meet, fight, interact a bit more, fight some more (with some Avengers siding with the Defenders) and then they team up to beat a bigger threat.

Not much else goes on, but that’s not a bad thing.

This story didn’t need to be Kraven’s Last Hunt or Watchmen.

It was just a fun superhero action story, which frankly is usually all that Avengers or Defenders stories ever amount to. Substance is a rarity for ether team, you want that check out the F4 or X-men.

What this series excels at is filling in some blanks from the original 2099 universe line, revisiting some old characters from it, introducing some new versions of old faces (like Silver Surfer and Hercules) and just giving you enough for each character for there to be some fun interactions. Maybe that’s all a bit basic but fun is fun.

We never had an Avengers nor Defenders 2099 back when the line exists, at least not as far as I know. And the idea that classic characters like Hercules, Valkyrie and the Surfer would still be around makes a lot of sense. The 2099 reimaginings of older characters are also quite fun. Black Widow literally being a woman who eats her lovers was obvious and yet novel. Hawkeye being a hawk/human hybrid was something different from the 616 version. Hercules being a standing for Thor was a brilliant balance of something new yet familiar. Iron Man and Vision 2099 were novel twists on the classic characters. The characters bounced off each other nicely (especially Hercules and Sub-Mariner) and there were some fun match ups.

The stand out (possibly because PAD had plans for her) though is Roberta Mendez, a.k.a. Captain America 2099. If anyone was the main character in this it was her. She was the most out and out heroic and a worthy heir to Steve’s legacy.

In recent years there has been much, shall we say, ‘heated debate’ regarding female characters, poc characters, female body depictions in comics and legacy characters.

Roberta has oddly been left unmentioned in this discussion which is strange as she ticks all the above boxes and yet is also one of the best examples of how to do such characters.

She is not stereotypically sexy, and the story points out the ‘wrongness’ of that. But it places it in the mouth of a minor character who is bad, and beyond that doesn’t dwell on the topic. I think this is smart because it acknowledges potential backlash but also doesn’t become self-indulgent in calling it out. I think that’s part of the umbridge a lot of people feel. The lack of subtlety and the frankly obnoxious degree to which a lot of modern comics attempt to call out bad actors or problematic views. PAD demonstrates the right way to handle this rather than Jason Aaron’s tactics in his Jane Foster Thor run for instance.

More importantly Roberta isn’t built up as heroic or better than her peers or anyone else through unearned tactics. This isn’t Riri Williams or Rey from Star Wars who’s acclaim in story is rather handed to them. She is a corporate stooge and a tool (one who’s literally activated and deactivated), but one with a conscience. And that conscience lets her fight back and make the right choices, but she isn’t a true blue enemy of ‘the system’. She’s morally and ethically compromised as Captain America and entirely clueless and vulnerable as Roberta. But she still saves people, she still helps people, she still has a moral code and she still believes in Steve Rogers’ values. She is a capable combatant and yet far from invincible.

In short...she’s a flawed super hero. It’s a feat of balanced writing that is worth of applause on PAD’s part as I count myself a fan of Roberta a lot actually.

The second most interesting character in this is Miguel.

Miguel’s portrayal here is interesting in general because it’s a departure from what you would expect having read volume 2 or possibly 2099 in general. He is absolutely the head of a big bad corporation. And he uses people. He is willing to enforce his corporate authority unethically. He is NOT a good person. In volume 2 you could describe him as anti-hero lite. He was more violent and clearly more willing to take life than Peter Parker but he wasn’t the Punisher or Wolverine. He was on the side of the angels but wasn’t one of them basically. Here though he’s definitely not on the side of the angels...but he’s also not on the side of the demons either. Rather he occupies this interesting spot in the middle as his Alchemax Avengers are doing good things and he does let the Defenders go at the end of everything. And yet he does safeguard Alchemax’s safety and legacy and manipulates Roberta.

This is another feat of writing as Miguel can’t be easily put into a box marked good nor bad or even anti-hero.

As for the art, I feel it’s a step down from what Sliney was doing in Spidey 2099 volume 2 but it’s still good, it gets the job done and the reinventions of older heroes works.

All in all if you have the time and cash, and aren’t expecting anything mind blowing I’d recommend checking this out.

#Marvel 2099 #Secret Wars 2099 #Secret Wars 2015 #Spider-Man 2099 #Peter David #Miguel O'Hara #roberta mendez #Captain America 2099 #Avengers 2099 #Defenders 2099

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rxcusant · 5 years

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wow hey more peopled liked my hoshimeguri sora sketch than i thought so

Hey, who wants some context!!! and further rambling of the au!!! its all about traveling the stars and theres a dragon and everyone has beautiful designs and my faceclaim is an assassin in it

[its a little long tho because of the Lore (TM) so uh. fair warning]

Hoshimeguri, or Star Tour Observer, was an original event and storyline in IDOLiSH7 like 4 months ago? I think? anyway if you wanna get a little glimpse over everyone and the stars you can go right here but otherwise im gonna quick run thru everything cause i rly love hoshimegu (the PV is gonna pop up first you can either watch it and rock out to Hoshikuzu Magic or click out and skim thru everything)

the prologue for hoshimeguri is, as roughly translated,

in the beginning a myriad of stars crystallized into a form known as the ‘Star Gem’. The gem contained the power to grant any wish. People prayed to the Star Gem for blessings and obtained joy and fulfillment in their lives. People prayed to the Star Gem for evil purposes and brought about calamities. People grew covetous of the star Gem, breeding hate and resentment. The Star Gem that had granted millions of blessings had instead become a vessel for millions of curses. the Guardian of the Star Gem prayed for the Star Gem to be sealed away. The wish was granted the Guardian fell into eternal slumber. The Star Gem could no longer hold its form and split into six pieces. A single massive planet split into six with it. On the verge of sleep the Guardian created a being to oversee the worlds in his place. To journey across the stars, watching. the ‘Observer of the Stars’ bore witness to countless moments, countless stars, and countless lives.

so.. in less fancy speak, there was a Star Gem that granted wishes but people misused it’s power for Bad Stuff. the Gem’s Guardian sealed it away and the Star Gem split into six little gems-- and created the six worlds i’m about to explain-- and the Guardian pulled a ventus and fell asleep, but the last thing he did was make a cool dragon to observe and watch over life.

so this brings us to the six planets/worlds/stars one thousand years later!

First off-- Eterno! aka where I shoved Sora and Riku, ill expand on them later

Eterno is a desert star, covered in sand and sunlight. the planet Alba once waged war with Eterno to steal their sunlight a dozen years ago and drained the planet of its resources in the process. During the war the royal family disappeared so Eterno doesn’t have any ruler or security. Being a wasteland Eterno is considered a worthless star so nobody bothers or troubles it beyond some trading at the port.

Secondly we have Bestia!

Bestia is covered in dense forests and jungle, inhabited by several types of animals. The people of Bestia have beast blood and animal parts like ears and tails so this is basically the furry planet. the people of Bestia are looked down upon for this though. Bestia is home to a large trading port and many from starts all over come to trade in Bestian goods.

Next is Alba!

Alba is a star covered in darkness as the other planets block the sun’s ray from reaching them. Alba's main specialty is minerals and so bright crystals are their symbol. the former king invaded Eterno to steal their sunlight however the current king, Carnelian, regrets that war and would like to set things right between the stars.

Then we have Lama, the star of steel! i love Lama, two of my favorites are from this star!!!!!

Lama is a star with strong military power, easily overcoming the other stars in terms of strength. Lama is currently recovering from a long civil war between the former king and the people. The former king treasured military might and soldiers above all else-- in particular, those that could provide weapons for warfare. Anyone who couldn’t was subject to a life of poverty and servitude. Eventually the people rebelled an the civil war raged on for years. the prince at the time, Orion, with the help of an assassin, Erin, faked an assassination of the king (instead locking him up) and when the news reaches the rebel forces they called off their forces. The rebels had no issue with Orion becoming king since he carried out the assassin order and thus Orions peaceful reign as King began, working to rebuild relations between the people of Lama and the royal family.

next up is Sirenia! this is where i put Kairi, ill expand on that later.

Sirenia is blessed with water and canals everywhere. Every year they hold a festival to celebrate the rainy season. The people of Sirenia are relaxed and laid back because their star hasn’t been attacked or invaded in many years (with the former king using most of his power to essentially cut off Sirenia from the other stars with a magic wall, and trading was regulated). The residents love the arts and music and living life freely and creatively. The residents also practice in hydromancy, using water to predict the future and learning tarot cards and fortune telling.

Lastly is Mistero which i admittedly remember the least about

Mistero is a mysterious star but faith in the Star Gem is strong. There exists a large temple on the star however divine energy prevents people from entering. Mistero was the original planet before the planet and Star Gem split into six pieces. Its on this world that the Guardian, Vega, still sleeps. His attendant, Capella, still waits for him to wake.

aaaaaaand those are the stars! oh my god that took an hour to type. WELL SINCE THIS IS ALREADY REALLY LONG WINDED I’LL TRY TO KEEP THE AU WITH SORA AND RIKU AND KAIRI BRIEF EVEN THO IM SURE THATS WHAT YOU’D BE HERE FOR INSTEAD OF IDOL JUNK djfgnks

i dont have anything concrete but my current concepts are-

Sora and Riku grew up on Eterno together. Having known about the existence of other stars but always being too young to travel themselves the two decided one day to leave and explore them all together. Eventually the day came where the two of them snuck onto a ship, not entirely sure where it was headed. Once the ship docked on Sirenia Sora and Riku made a break for it, not wanting to be discovered as stowaways.

Kairi lives a carefree life on Sirenia with her friend Namine and instructor Aqua. Aqua teaches the girls hydromancy altho Namine holds more of an interest in drawing and painting. Kairi however is extremely skilled in hydromancy and one day receives a sign about dual forces about to enter her life. She doesnt know what to make of the vague message tho and puts it to the back of her mind for a week maybe.

And then came the day she ran into Sora and Riku. the two of them stuck out like a sore thumb in their Eterno attire. Kairi warned them about how trade and visitors are carefully regulated and any intruders aren’t to be taken lightly. the boys apologize and explain they just wanted to explore some new worlds. Its with that Kairi agreed to help them out but only if they let her come with them, since life in Sirenia while carefree can get dreadfully dull doing the same thing over and over again. Kairi arranges passage under the guise of aiding other stars with her fortune telling and sneaks Sora and Riku onto her ship.

And thats how the three of them began their own Star Tours ha cha cha

also side note i bet Vanitas and Ventus are brothers from Lama raised by xehanort to be soldiers in Lama’s military but neither of them are really Cool with this idea and probably just take off one day jdfhgkjf dont ask me what terra or xion and roxas and axel are doing because i have NO IDEA what star to put them on

yeah. thats the hoshimeguri au right now. //jazz hands; if you made it this far thank you for indulging me i owe you my life

#outofxiii #this is kinda long and rambley under the cut but if you were Slightly interested then Yeah heres come info #i love hoshimeguri tho.........its been 4 months and it remains my favorite i7 event #if only because its a COMPLETELY ORIGINAL STORY with its own world building and lore like what!!!#all this for a freaking mobile rhythm game??? nice nice nice nice

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consilium-games · 5 years

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Genresick, or: Six Ways to Heartache

As I discussed allll the way back in this post in March, I've been working busily on the supplement to Lovesick. And at very long last, it's finally, finally done:

Genresick

Go on, click on it, I worked hard on it! I'll wait!

. . .

You're back? You took a look at least? Excellent. Cause I'd like to say a few things about it here.

First, "what could have been": my initial idea was a lot more weird and high-concept. I'll probably realize it in some form later, but it entailed a bigger focus on collaboration in storytelling, and in particular, loosening up the focus on "a few main characters (PCs) in the hands of cooperating players".

Instead, it was going to or will in the future use a whole ensemble of characters that players would make, terse thumbnail sketches at first, and maneuver together and against one another, striving for one of three 'endings' to the shared story. Still centered very much on passion, internal motivations, psychological damages, and unhealthy fixation, and still both very self-aware and very determined to tell its kind of story. But that concept needs to stew more.

I've been thinking a lot lately on some of the more abstract ideas involved in storytelling: how stories about ourselves often define us, how we build ourselves out of these stories, and how dissonance between stories can feel like you've actually entered some other kind of reality, where even the laws of nature don't match what you've grown to trust as much as gravity.

Heady, nerdy stuff, in short, and I think the untitled game I didn't make--because it basically would and should be its own full game--is both a necessary step to getting where I want to work on, and still a bit beyond my reach.

Second, "what is": Genresick is a few things at once. It's a supplement obviously, a pile of toys and backdrops for Lovesick surely, but it's also a kind of reassessment. I think characters by themselves can make for a really compelling story--as long as they want things, for reasons, and do things to get them, you have a story. So people wanting relatable things to an unreasonable degree and doing dramatic things to get them seems like a perfect pitch to me!

Not so much the people who find their way to click on my downloads.

Now, I'm not defeated or even disheartened by this, so much as attentive: "hmm, that didn't work . . ." So, let's see what people make of something packaged more in the traditional trappings and tropes of Geek Culture[tm]: science fiction, unpronounceable names, airbrushed paperback covers, the kind of genre fiction set-dressing that "stories for nerds" often comes with.

Thirdly--let me dig into that a bit.

Still inflamatory after all these books

I could go dig up citations and quotations from better commentators than I, citing the operation of a kind of "low-brow chic" in the many intersecting and overlapping orbits that enclose "people who read, buy, play, and make roleplaying games". I won't though, I trust that it's not a foreign concept, but I'd like to stake out how I see it a bit, and what I think it means.

To put it really briefly and only a little reductively, science fiction and fantasy as we know them today were very strongly influenced by being relegated to the gutters of culture. Most recently as Young Adult[tm] books and over-contracted mandatory-trilogy series and hypercapitalist conventions, but prior to that, low-budget TV series, three-color comic books, and before that, B-movies and 'cult classics'. You can even see a lot of that in the earliest incarnations of Dungeons and Dragons--there's an actual robot wizard in there. An actual robot that is an actual wizard.

This influence isn't any weaker today, it's just weirder: genre mashups and "what even is genre, really" sensibilities, and the slow dissolution of previously-stable subcultural boundaries mean that the idea of a "space western" isn't a radical new thing--it's Firefly. But, what hasn't left? The genre fiction domain, and the tendency to live entirely inside it.

When a piece of Geek Culture[tm] tries to articulate itself, to position itself and give itself context, to say what it's about and what it's doing, the points of reference are always firmly inside the spheres of genre fiction, the low-budget, the literarily maligned, the 'nerdy' rather than 'intellectual'. This has to include my own work, too--RPGs as an artistic medium live more or less entirely inside the geekosphere, and I credit FROM Software in my first book--a video-game company, who made the sword-and-sorcery game that inspired Succession. Good work can come out of the genre fiction ecosystem, but . . .

But. The fact that anyone needs to point that out, even as a defensive disclaimer, is not a very healthy sign. A story set in the future exploring the possible effects of technology on society can be a true work of art--just look at Mary Shelley. But when the wealthy and lettered at some point decided that the only good stories, worth studying, involve wealthy and lettered literature professors contemplating an affair--well. Two things happened:

Firstly the academics set the standard for Good Art[tm], which you've probably seen some reaction against, say, Duchamp's 'Fountain'. But standard it remained and to a large degree remains: severe attitudes, reserved speech, refined vocabulary, abstract and sometimes even indiscernible stakes and ideas and goals, when it comes to stories and how they're conveyed. The groove carved into (white Western anglophonic) culture's psyche at large is "this is what Good Art is, and if you wish to be a Good Artist, you must aspire to this; if you cannot appreciate this Good Art, you are no artist or intellectual at all!"

Secondly they deprived the rest of us of a vocabulary, half by claiming it themselves and using it only for their kind of "Good Art", half by everyone else identifying even trying to form such a vocabulary as one of those effete ivory-tower intellectuals here only to sneer on Bad Art or even Non-Art. So weirdos like me have to travel far and dig deep to piece together analytical tools to understand how "Bad Art" stories work, what they do, how they function, what makes them work and what makes them fail.

But, as a consequence of that second thing, in Geek Culture people kept making art! But they didn't have a vocabulary for the many new concepts they kept forming and inventing independently and from scratch, and then borrowing and elaborating from one another. I think this is both why application of basic storytelling techniques like foreshadowing and mixed motivations can be so captivating for a nerd-as-a-first-language audience even when bungled: they're the same techniques refined over centuries over there in "Good Art", good techniques that work--but that don't work without adjustment. Adjustment that outsiders lack the vocabulary to discuss, and thus can't really derive for their own needs.

All this boils down to Geek Culture more often than not tending to shy away from something that looks "intellectual" unless it first looks "sci-fi" or "fantasy" or some other identifiable public forswearing of the scary ivory tower. You can see a lot of this in video-games' audience: "it's just video-games, don't put politics in my video-games, can't it just be a video-game?!" Of course it can. There will always be games for the sake of games (Chess), and songs for the sake of songs (most any pop song), and now video-games and movies just for the sake of something flashy to look at and something to do for awhile after earning a daily wage. That's not what bothers a person making that kind of complaint.

What bothers them is a lot more complicated than I have the energy left to get into, but hey, I think if I can develop and popularize and expand that vocabulary we've been denied (and denied ourselves), we can use it to make some really wicked cool things. I'm not about to tell anyone to toss out their Dragonlance and instead read Dante's Inferno--honestly, I'd have to rate them on a par if you look at the work and not at the reception. Both are fantastical fan-fiction, though Dante's is a lot meaner in spirit and departs more from the source material, though it certainly has more technical execution on its side.

Instead what I want is for us to have, as a "Geek Culture", a way to understand something like Dragonlance as thoroughly as Dante's Inferno. And we're getting there! Meanwhile, if the only way to sell people on "intense character-study and focus on relationships" is to put on a space-suit, then suit me up.

So what's up next?

Aside from stirring the new pot bubbling over on r/consilium_games, and hopefully starting some form of discourse, next is a full RPG in its own right, in keeping with my self-appointed schedule of "full game and supplement"! And since I've implicitly asked my readers and/or the RPG community at large to stretch so much in looking at Lovesick, it's only fair that I stretch myself too.

Specifically, I'm working now on a very mechanics-heavy, combat-oriented game, applying the same mechanical components I've used since Succession and especially some of the ideas in Substitute Reagents, but building them around concrete, reified, 'gamey' interactions rather than purely narrative beats and character-focused stakes.

I also intend it to dig into identity formation, structures and systems of power, how people 'cast' themselves and one another, and a few other themes very close to my heart. Come for the crunchy cinematic action, stay for the pensive meditation on selfhood!

#lovesick #genresick #rpgs #books #commentary

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esselley · 6 years

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If @kkumri thought I was gonna forget the Ouija board AU, she was wrong. Happy birthday Ally! Thank you for your beautiful art, your humor, your kindness, and your friendship <3

(Now on AO3 as well!)

DISCLAIMERS: This fic is split between humor and feels, but KageHina are both ghosts, so definitely take that with a grain of salt if you’re averse to character death (which I am, so this is very soft to compensate).

Secondly, I thought about substituting the Kokkuri-san game in place of Ouija, but I felt like it might be harder to convey the story for people who aren’t as familiar with the concept, plus that game only pertains to one spirit. So please feel free to imagine ghost!Kageyama painstakingly spelling out basic English phrases.

To the best of Tooru’s knowledge, it all seems to have started off as a joke.

That’s how it always happens, he thinks in a long suffering inner voice; that’s why so many horror movies are kicked off by dumb kids with their dumb bets and their dumb bravado. And he is without a doubt dealing with two of the dumbest, currently.

Well—maybe former dumbest. Is he still allowed to call someone dumb when they’ve passed on? Whatever, he’s the one being haunted, so he’ll say whatever he wants. He lays his cheek on the table in annoyance and pushes some of his tarot cards around on his elaborately laid oracle’s table with its turquoise crushed velvet covering, it’s volleyball-sized crystal ball with the vines carved ornately around the base. He sighs.

“Okay,” he says. “Tell me, again—without arguing over each other, this time—what happened.”

To reconfirm: it started with a joke.

“Well,” says a warbly, wispy little voice, and the mist in Tooru’s crystal ball swirls and turns an intense, warm orange. “It was more of a dare, really.”

It was a dare, and not a bet, because Tsukishima was too smart to pay Hinata when he knew Hinata would do anything for free if he was challenged to it, and Hinata was dumb enough to fall for it every time.

This was how Hinata, Tsukishima, Yamaguchi, and Yachi ended up huddled around a Ouijia board late one Saturday night, candles lit around them. Yachi, hidden almost entirely under a blanket until only her eyes and nose were visible, the entire blanket shivering, said,

“Messing around with ghosts and stuff is serious! I don’t think we should do this!”

Yamaguchi looked as though he wanted to agree, but Tsukishima said, “We aren’t doing anything.” He smiled serenely at Hinata. “Hinata wanted to try this all by himself, because he’s so brave.”

Hinata was not brave. Hinata wanted to yank the blankets off Yachi and cower under them himself. But instead, he said, “Yeah! Those ghosts better come at me!”

Please, god, oh please, he thought, do not let any ghosts come at me.

Using a Ouija board, in and of itself, was not very exciting. It was just a wooden board with letters all over it, and a small wooden planchette with a little hole in it that slid across the board, to indicate the selected letters. Supposedly, once a spirit was summoned, it would use the board to communicate with them by moving the planchette. Hinata would be the one acting as a medium, letting the spirit guide him and show him where to move it.

“What if… Hinata gets possessed?” Yamaguchi asked nervously. Yachi made a pitiful grunting noise and burrowed further into the blanket.

“He won’t,” Tsukishima said. “Even if he does, the ghost will probably get so depressed to be in his body that it’ll leave.”

“Mean!” Hinata said, sticking his tongue out at Tsukishima, and then, “Are you sure it’ll leave?”

“Are you scared?” Tsukishima shot back.

“No!” Hinata yelped. He took a deep breath and put his hand on the planchette. “Okay, ghosts! Announce your presence!”

Nothing happened. Tsukishima snorted. “None of them want to talk to you.”

“Maybe they’re scared of me!” Hinata said.

Seconds later, he screamed. Yachi screamed. Yamaguchi screamed. Tsukishima looked annoyed.

“What?” he asked.

“It’s moving!” Hinata whisper-shrieked. On the board, the planchette had shifted, with Hinata’s finger still pressed on top of it.

“What’s it saying?!” Yamaguchi asked, trying to hide behind Yachi.

“Wh… Who…” Hinata read, as the words formed slowly, “are… you. ‘Who are you’! It wants to know who I am!”

“Oh, come on,” Tsukishima said, “you’re moving it yourself, it’s so obvious.”

“I’m not!” Hinata said indignantly.

“Don’t tell it your name,” Yamaguchi hissed.

“Right,” Hinata agreed. “Who am I? Who are you?”

They all stared at the board as someone—or something—formed the next answer.

I… asked… first… it spelled out, and then: Dumbass.

Hinata gasped in outrage as Tsukishima clutched his stomach in a fit of laughter.

“Holy shit,” he said, “you actually managed to summon a ghost… and it hates you.”

This is not how Tooru wanted to spend his day. It's not his fault he's so in tune with the spirits. He didn't ask to have his house haunted—he’s not even getting paid for this.

But unfortunately, they won't go away until he figures out how to help them be at peace.

“Okay,” Tooru says, “so Chibi-chan, you foolishly summoned Tobio-chan’s restless spirit, and he's still too clueless to figure out how to move on, hmm?”

Hinata, who mainly shows up in Tooru’s crystal ball as tangerine-colored smoke, but sometimes gives Tooru the vague impression of a small, excitable bird, yelps his agreement. But then the smoke in the crystal swirls blue-black, and a harsh voice barks out,

“I was fine until he summoned me!”

Kageyama, mostly, gives Tooru the impression of a large pair of angry eyebrows, which is fitting, because he is grumpy most of the time. Still, while his ire is usually directed at Hinata, there seems to be something more going on there. After all, Kageyama was the ghost that responded to Hinata's presence the fastest. And then, there are the circumstances surrounding Hinata's new state of being.

Because obviously, while Hinata had been alive the first time they'd encountered each other, this was no longer the case.

“Wait a moment,” Tooru says, realizing they've skipped over a crucial detail. “Exactly what happened to Hinata-kun, then?” An explosion of arguing follows his words, and he holds up his hand. “Tobio-chan, explain.”

Being a ghost wasn't bad, but it wasn't exactly good, either. Kageyama couldn't remember when or how he had become a ghost anymore, but he did know that the first time he could remember the boringness of it being shaken was when a voice had just called out to him, from nowhere.

The voice had demanded some ghosts pay attention to it, except really, it had seemed to be yelling right at Kageyama, and so Kageyama had come to see who it was, a bit like someone had started banging too loudly and insistently on his front door.

Except when he'd opened the door, he'd been met by an idiot who wouldn't even tell Kageyama who he was when asked.

It had been very hard to communicate through the contraption Hinata had chosen to argue with Kageyama through, but argue they had, late into the night, long after Hinata's friends had gone to sleep. Hinata whispered, but his voice was loud to Kageyama; it was the only thing Kageyama had been able to hear clearly in a very long time. And so Kageyama slowly spelled out his words:

You play sports? You're so small.

“So what if I'm small! I'm going to be the ace one day.”

What's an ace?

“The best player on the team, obviously. Did you die before sports were invented?”

I just died before they let people who suck onto the team, I guess. Do other people play with you?

“Yes! Well, kind of. Almost. They say I should keep practicing, and maybe I can play more then…”

I'd play with you.

“R-r-r-really?!”

Yeah. So you can see how much better I am.

“Bastard.”

Kageyama found that being disturbed, shaken out of the boringness a little bit, wasn't so bad. It was almost fun.

They spent a lot more time talking. Kageyama wondered if Hinata thought it strange—to spend so much of his time talking to a ghost, lying under his blankets with his cell phone used as a flashlight so he could see the Ouija board properly.

Kageyama wondered if Hinata could feel him there, too, lying beside him. Sometimes Hinata would shiver a little bit, when Kageyama's transparent arm brushed through his. Kageyama tried not to let it happen, but he liked lying as close to Hinata as possible. It made it easier to talk, to say what he was thinking. Even if half of it was insults.

The thing was that ghosts had a special relationship with those they were close to, and with that force which was always close to them: death.

Everyday, Hinata left for school, and every day Kageyama, tied to the Ouija board, waited for him to come home, and every night, they would talk until very late.

One day, Hinata got ready for school. And Kageyama watched him, feeling that something was different today. Something had changed. He tried to rattle the board, but Hinata just patted it absently; he'd overslept and he was late. He left, and Kageyama waited. And in the evening, Hinata came home. It was dark, as usual, when Hinata called out to him.

But nothing else was the same.

“Kageyama?”

Kageyama turned and saw him. Hinata stood in the middle of his room, only standing wasn't quite the right word. His little feet in his little sneakers passed straight through the floor on every step, like he was trying to walk normally and hadn't realized the ways the world worked for the living no longer applied to him. He glowed around the edges, a soft gold-orange, and Kageyama thought he looked more beautiful than ever.

Then he realized this must mean he'd been thinking of Hinata as beautiful for a long time.

More startling than anything else, he was looking right at Kageyama. Hinata had only ever looked through him before.

“You… dumbass!” Kageyama shouted, and Hinata flinched at the sound of his voice, because he could hear it now. “What did you do?!”

“I… it rained…” Hinata said. “And I was biking next to the river and I think I fell in…”

Kageyama swore. “Did it hurt?!”

Hinata shook his head. “No. The last thing I remember thinking before I fell was…”

“What?” Kageyama asked, incensed. Was it food, or manga, or sports? What stupid thing could have caused Hinata to lose focus like that?

“I was really excited to come home and talk to you,” Hinata said.

If Kageyama had still needed to breathe, he would have stopped. As it was, he could only stare. “Oh.”

“Hey, Kageyama…” Hinata said softly, “you really look just like I imagined you would.”

For the first time since they met, when Kageyama touched Hinata, Hinata didn't shiver, and Kageyama didn't pass through him. He hugged him tight and Hinata clung to him, and they stayed like that for a long time.

“I tried to warn you,” Kageyama told him. “Stupid, you never listen to me.”

“That's because you say dumb things,” Hinata said. His arms squeezed tighter around Kageyama's middle and he rubbed his nose against Kageyama's shirt. And Kageyama could feel it, could feel all the places they were touching. “It's weird, but I don't feel that sad. I'm kind of just… glad to see you, finally.”

Kageyama felt a lot of things. Maybe he was sad for Hinata; but he was also happy, even if that then made him feel a bit horrible. And he was also soft and warm, which weren’t really feelings, or at least he hadn't known they could be, until he'd found himself hugging Hinata.

“I'm glad to see you, too,” he said.

“Couldn't you always see me?” Hinata asked.

“Yeah,” Kageyama said. “But now you see me back.”

"Do you have a cold?” Kageyama asks Tooru, as he hastily wipes his eyes with the back of his hand.

“No, Tobio-chan, these are seasonal allergies,” he says. Where did he put that damn tissue box? “I have to admit—” Ah, there it is. Tooru honks his nose very loudly into a tissue. “I'm not really sure why you two need my help.”

“You can't tell us anything?” Hinata asks, dismayed.

“No, I mean,” Tooru shrugs, “are you actually unhappy? You seem…”

Head over heels for each other, is what he thinks, but doesn't say. After all, where would be the fun in that revelation? Some things are best left understood over time; especially when given all the time in the world.

“You seem at peace,” Tooru concludes, and he's not even lying to get them out of his hair. There's a hell of a lot of bickering back and forth, but in the end, it all amounts to a strange kind of comfort.

“Well…” Kageyama says, “yeah, I guess. But then why are we still here?”

“Where would you rather be?” Tooru asks shrewdly. There's silence.

“As long as I'm with Kageyama,” Hinata says, orange mist curling tentatively, “anywhere’s fine.”

“Dumbass,” Kageyama, predictably, responds. Blue fog puffs agitatedly. He sounds choked up. “You weren't supposed to die to be with me!”

“I didn't mean to!” Hinata protests. “But it's better with me around, isn't it? Now you're not so lonely. And I'm not, either!”

“Well, then,” Tooru says cheerfully, “it looks like we've solved your problem! I'll leave you two to your afterlife! Now if you'll excuse me—”

“Oh, don't worry,” Hinata says, just as brightly, “we'll live here for a bit so you don't feel lonely either!”

“What,” Tooru deadpans.

“Yeah, I already talked to Tobio about it,” Hinata reassures him. “We thought, in exchange for you helping us, we'd stay with you for awhile!”

“That really, really is not necessary,” Tooru tries to say.

“We don't mind,” Kageyama says.

“Besides, I was planning to stay around and haunt Tsukishima for awhile,” Hinata says. “So I have to practice moving things around and stuff.”

“I bet I can do it before you,” Kageyama challenges him.

“I bet I can move our crystal ball.”

“Do not break anything, or I will exorcise you,” Tooru threatens them.

The last thing he needs is two love-struck teenage ghosts making a mess of his apartment, but, what the hell, he reasons—maybe he can put them to good use. If they're planning on learning how to become corporeal, he can make them clean up the place and spook less affable guests into becoming true believers.

There's a knock on the door, a customer there for a reading, and he starts to rapidly straighten up his table.

“Stay quiet, pay attention, and maybe we can consider an arrangement,” he says. A thought occurs to him and he smiles slyly. “Do either of you know how to make the lights flicker?”

“Me,” Kageyama says, while Hinata whines and says he wants to try.

Tooru laughs in delight. The afternoon is looking livelier already.

And they all live (in a sense) happily ever after. Personally, I think Iwaizumi is destined to walk through that door pretty soon… And then it will be Kageyama’s and Hinata's turn to help two other big idiots realize they are hopelessly in love (presumably by poltergeisting the shit out of IwaOi). I wrote it >>

[For easy-to-find updates on fic, I have a writing-only blog: @esselle-hq!]

#kagehina #hinata shouyou #kageyama tobio #oikawa tooru #haikyuu!! fanfiction #kagehina fanfiction #haikyuu!!#esselle writes #tumblr fic #the haunting of oikawa tooru #kagehina are cute ghosts #slight angst???#happy birthday ally!!!! <333 #i hope i managed to hit some kind of balance between the humor and the feels #which you brought on yourself may i remind you #essie's hq fic

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latinegro · 5 years

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Sketchy

I am a brilliant asshole and not in a good way. I’m always putting myself in a situation that sounds great at first, but as it happens, it’s not so great at all.

I put the pencil on the paper and I begin to outline the basic layout of my model. Myra is laying on the couch in front of me. It’s old couch too, she’s probably the best thing that has happened on that couch in years.

She posed herself in a particular way so that the contours of her curves can be accentuated. I nervously erase the first mistake I make. It’s been a very long time since I’ve drawn a nude model. I’m acting like I’ve never sketched a naked woman before, it’s really not that hard. But, this is absolutely the first time I’ve drawn a woman that I’m acquainted with. It doesn’t help that I find her to be one of the sexiest women I know.

I can feel my heart racing because I know what I’m doing is wrong. I know that I shouldn’t be doing this but an opportunity presented itself and I had to take it. It does sound selfish but in a way, it really isn’t. First of all, the artist in me will not allow me to call this whole thing off. Secondly, I try to tell myself that she’s not a hot woman that I have been attracted to for a while but rather a future portrait for a client. I take a few deep breaths so I can maintain my concentration. Nervousness will only lead to a shaky hand and that’s not good for any sketch.

But, of course, I had to open my big mouth. I’m a writer at heart and by trade. I can describe what she looks like the best way I can use words and adjectives not with this damn pencil that I’m pretending was my hand going down those beautiful thick brown legs of hers. The thing is, I used to draw fairly regularly. I was one of those kids that would be so annoyingly good at drawing anything that I felt I didn’t need those pretentious art classes. I could freehand any comic book cover I see. I could draw anything or anyone if they were standing in front of me. My only weakness was I could never draw anything as I good as I wanted to from memory. My measurements were always wrong, at least that was what I was told.

At the end of the day it wasn’t big deal to me because no matter how good I was at drawing, my heart wasn’t in it. I didn’t love it like other people love it and that’s probably why I didn’t take it as seriously. I felt much more at ease using words to describe anything. I can perfectly describe how beautiful Myra is. She’s like a brown-skinned Athena from Themyscira that Wonder Woman would never talk about. Myra is the reason some would believe that God exists. When scientists talk about how we’re all made from stardust, they had Myra in mind.

I need to focus.

I have the basic shell of her body that fits perfectly on my old couch that should seat three people comfortably. Her black curly hair may be a problem for me. Myra chooses to wear it natural which makes her even more attractive but if I don’t shade it correctly this whole drawing would look like a caricature. But, alas, her big brown eyes look past me. She stares off into space truly hoping that I’m capturing this moment and indeed I am catching this very moment of her looking past me. I will consider that to be my fault. I may be good with writing words but actually speaking them to women is another thing entirely.

I met Myra first but I lacked the basic courage to kick it to her. We ended up being a little less than friends but more than just passing acquaintances. Of course, when Jules met her it was all downhill from there. I was always happy for them but mad at myself. Jules is a decent guy and when they first got together, all they did was fuck. Yes, I know that is normal because if it were me, I would hope that she would break me every damn day.

Another mistake. I may need a better eraser.

I get up and she asks, “Everything OK?”

“Sure, I just have to get another eraser,” I answer. She shrugs her bare shoulders as I walk to the desk and open the drawer. Jules is the real artist in all this. He’s one half of the team behind the independent Black comic book, The Insiders. We met at the NY Comic Con years ago and Jules and I became fast friends. Through the years we created our own comic book universe that has a plethora of characters. The excitement for this project is palpable because we’re building something important. In our universe, there are no meaningless black characters created for the sole purpose of being sidekicks. Together we’ve molded superheroes that matter; superheroes that look like us. There is a true meaning behind every page and we’re ready to take the industry by storm.

Jules has tons of different art supplies in this desk that it’s hard to keep track of all of it. But, at least I know where the erasers are. He stores most of his art supplies in my apartment since it has become our default workspace. It’s just easier this way since both of our day jobs make it hard to be the creators we are. We need a place to work and bounce our ideas off of each other. I pick one a small eraser and close the drawer. Before I walk away from the desk, my eyes focus on one of the sketches he was working on from issue #3. One thing about working with friends is, at times, it’s hard to come to a real agreement on the philosophy of a particular story. I really don’t think that the splash on page 11 is necessary but clearly, he’s working on it anyway.

I walk back to my chair and I smile at Myra before I sit down. I grab my pad and I keep going. My eyes scan slowly scan her from left to right. She’s laying on her right side with her right arm holding up her head and her left arm resting on her hip. Her breasts are a perfect size. They don’t sag at all and her tummy is a result of a lot of gym work. No visible stretch marks and no tattoos. This makes this sketch easier than what I originally anticipated.

I draw carefully. My pencil tries to mimic everything that my eyes absorb. I cannot believe that Julius’ wife is laying on this couch modeling for me. She wants this to be a present for him on their upcoming anniversary. Has it been two years already? It must be. That’s was around the time we decided to build this whole comic book company together. He’s the artist and I’m the writer. Now, look at me, doing a sketch that I may be getting more pleasure from than she is. Granted, this probably a bad idea, but how can I deny her this. I tried to convince her that perhaps it would be a better idea to dress up as a sexy gender bender of Grand Admiral Thrawn and I would make sure to get the colors right. She denied that, but I can, at least, convince myself that I tried to get her to wear the most clothes as possible.

I scan her navel trying to make sure that I can get the correct dimensions and diameter of the belly button ring. It looks like a small little pendant that sparkles from the light coming from the ceiling fan above. I scan further past her navel toward her vagina. Her legs are slightly crossed with her left leg slightly bent downward covering her right. It casts a shadow from the light.

My pencil breaks. Shit, was I pressing down that hard? She chuckles, “Having trouble?”

“Not at all,” I reply as I grab the extra pencil next to me. I want to try to be as emotionless as possible. Mentally I’m shaking my head. How did you get into this Zander? I will tell you how; I was cocky. I thought that I could talk enough shit in hopes to just flirt a little and now... my partner’s wife is my living room, nude.

Did I mention I was a brilliant asshole and not in a good way?

I remember staying over their townhouse in Brooklyn one night and while I have wondered what is that she does that allows her to own such a place, that was the night I got a glance of how skillful she was.

It was a late night of partying and they offered me a room to crash. I was so drunk that night that I just passed out as soon as I hit the bed. It must of been an hour or two later when I really had to use the bathroom. I got up and there was a long hallway that I had to navigate despite my lightheadedness. As I begin to walk down the general direction of what I thought was the bathroom, I hear noises. I slowly passed the room where it coming from and that is when I catch a glimpse of her reverse cowgirl riding Jules in a way that made me realize that twerking needs to a sport. I tried not to voyeur too long and thank God I had to piss, but all I remember was my heart beating so much that I felt it in my dick.

I need to continue on her legs and feet. I really do hate drawing feet. I can never get the right angle. I need to take my time and make sure the curvatures are correct. Shadowing will also be a problem. The lighting is pretty decent in here but I will need to at least need to define her curves with some type of shadow.

I can’t even imagine actually inking this. The good thing is that I can scan this into the computer and work on all the coloring there. I assume she wants it colored. Actually, I never asked. “Did you want this sketch in color?” I do my best to look at her eyes when I converse with her.

“Hm, You know, I think that would be a nice touch. Sure, if you can do it. But I will take one in black and white, just in case,” Myra chuckles a bit. I think she knows that coloring may be a tad difficult for me. Not only do I have to make sure that I color inside the lines, but how do I get her exact skin tone?

Then it hits me. I put the pencil down and I look at her. “So, I have an idea and it’s totally ok if you’re not willing to do it.”

“What would that be?”

I’m nervous to even suggest it. “You know what? Never mind. It’s a dumb idea. I don’t even know why I would even think of such a thing.”

“Just tell me.”

I take a deep breath, “Ok so, I want to get the shade of color just right and once I scan this in into the laptop I will need to..”

Myra laughs, “Zander, just spit it out.”

“I need to take a picture of you so that I can match your skin tone with the RGB color code.” I look down at my unfinished sketch as soon as I said it.

“You sly little devil!” Myra sits up and looks at me with a surprised look on her face as if she caught me red handed.

“What do you mean?” I ask

“Why the fuck you lyin?” She asks in a sing-songy manner. “You just want a nude picture of me!” I honestly can’t tell if she’s being serious or not, but she’s absolutely telling the truth. See how much of a brilliant bastard I am? This is how I get myself into trouble and once again I feel my heart coming through my dick.

“I mean, I would delete it as soon as I got the color correct.” Which is a lie.

“I don’t know about that. In all honesty, you can just take pictures of me with my clothes on and then screen-grab the color.” She was totally right about that. I hadn’t thought about it. Then she continues, “The reason why I am asking you to do this sketch is because I do trust you. That is why I never said anything to Jules when I saw you peeping into our room that night.”

“What are you talking about?” I ask nervously. I was never sure if she actually saw me and I assumed that since no one said anything that perhaps we were all just drunk. Of course, I cannot forget that after I went to the bathroom I returned to continue my voyeurism. Shit.

Myra gives me a smirk, “Please, do not insult my intelligence. I know you’ve seen me naked before and I am quite comfortable with my body. So I will save you more embarrassment by saying that I do want this drawing to come out correctly. So I will allow you to take a picture but I want you to delete the picture in front of me.”

I pull out my iPhone from my pocket and ask her to return to her original pose. Myra is right about this but I don’t care right now. Even if I delete all the photos from my device and the cloud, I will still have her body burned into my brain. If not, there is always the original copy of this sketch… for portfolio purposes of course. I take a few pictures with and without the flash.

Myra smiles and asks, “How many photos do you plan on taking?” I want to explain lighting and such but then she cuts me off, “I hope you have enough space on the cloud for all of these.”

I freeze, “Um…”

“I am not stupid, Zander. I fully expect you to find a way to try to keep pictures of me. Just know that…”

Bang. Bang.

We both look up. There’s a knock on the door. I look at Myra as she gets up quickly and covers herself with a robe I gave her.

“Who is it?” I ask cautiously.

“It’s Jules. Dude, let me in. We need to talk…about everything.”

Shit. I put my face in my palm. This could be four years and three issues down the drain.

#smut

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loststargrazer-blog · 3 years

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What Good Is Religion after the Lies?

Religion has a great grip on mankind, even though it is obscure, contradictory, full of re- or mis- interpretations. The inconvenient bits are often not discussed except when they come back into fashion after a crackpot fundamentalist revival. There are mysteries, and rebirths, and after lives, enlightenment, earthly torments, love, repudiation, judgements, forgiveness, and damnation. The whole crazy ferris wheel of lies is not going away and barely ever seems to be slowing down. Humans love this stuff. In the same way you have painkillers and heroin, so you have philosophy and religion. There is nothing better than religion for the euphoria of cult psychology, bad metaphysics, and misguided moral righteousness. Even before Christ, if you take a philosopher like Epicurus (who died in 270BC), it is clear that religion is a human failing, but nevertheless, despite being obviously nonsense, religion has permeated just about every society on earth quite completely. So what is it about religion that persists beyond the lies?

I suggest that much religion is based upon an analysis of the good. In blog 2 I looked at the meta-ethics of the good. Previously I have said good is what you want within the context of the greater self, but perhaps not all wants are equal. We have shifted the emphasis from what you should do to what you want to do, but this is incomplete. We can consider what we want to want, for example if I am hungry I want to eat chips, but I want to want salad. I want to want health, but perhaps I want to want to want something like contentment. This moving backwards may have more steps; they may not be consistent; but at the end is your most general and basic narrative want - this want is a prime good. Your prime good motivates your wants with normative statements, with all the little things you should do and want. It is your internal voice that carries the concerns of ethics into the domain of instincts and ways you navigate the world - so into the real you. Religion then, like the stories described in the previous blog 16, effects what you want to want. So religion is effective as a narrative, and, like a narrative, religion does not have to be true to function.

Now we have moved beyond the introduction, let us consider wants a little more. We can divide wants up, first by who has the wants and later by the types of wants. I don't think all the types of want are best discussed as philosophy, or religion for that matter. I would say that philosophy should cover what we should want (or want to want to want), while what others should want is covered by religion. This contrasts with what we actually want, which is psychology, and what others want, which is sociology; or contrasted with how we should get what we want, which is self-help, and how others should get what they want, which might be politics. The reason I think philosophy is so personal on this topic is that the discussion of the good in practice uses personally meaningful truths (see my blog 10 on truth); so philosophy is a bit limited structurally in what it can say about other people's notion of the good.

We can divide wants up by their type. Psychology has created things like Maslow's hierarchy of needs. This has focused on security, hungers, and prestige by putting wants into this list by priority. In reality, due to different narratives (including about the greater self), it is possible to challenge this ordered list. So a brave soldier might risk his security for prestige, or for the perceived good of the greater self with a local focus, like saving the lives of his comrades. Religion usually expresses views about what others should want and how these wants mesh together. For example, for security, protect others, particularly the weak and those in authority. For hungers, generally try to control them rather than be controlled by them. And for prestige, put religion and modesty first. This is a standard narrative, but can we redefine the debate?

While the religious narrative is not destructible, we can add narratives and instincts to it. Some common ones are the importance of helping others, or creating art, or preparing for death, or even becoming an important person. Different narratives might challenge the religious one, but perhaps more often they complement it, or even just blend together in a confused neural soup. The updated narrative may function as the new normal without much underpinnings or need for consistency. Even secular morality has much confused religious debate about concepts such as 'fairness'. Considering the religious narrative behaviour we can see two things. One is that you cannot falsify religion, you can only change it. Falsifying in this sense means proving religion logically wrong by providing a single counter example to reject the whole edifice. Secondly, as the religious narrative is expandable, it covers everything you could want to have views or direction or precedent on.

So religion is the narrative which covers topics beyond science, or even most literature. As religion is not science, to ask what is after the lies misses the point of religion. It is also impolite as religion maintains as part of its mystique an aura of ancient truth and validity, handed down on dusty parchments from the arcane words of mysterious prophets. Religion is the theatre production in the philosophical mind, and you probably cannot get rid of it, even by booing. Religion is a narrative about a narrative, itself, and with it an insinuation that it can solve all issues, desires, problems. There is no magic, but if there was, and it was organised, it would be religion. Religion lives within the fabrications of the hyper real (see my earlier blog 11 on the real); so its magic is tangible within experience. Religion is the lies that shapes your truth, your wants, your sense of the good. As religion manifests, it shapes your notion of the good so it cannot be just lies, even if factually incorrect. The more incredible religion is, the more symbolic it becomes of a deeper personal truth.

This narrative view of religion is post-atheism. I call myself a Secular Animist, and this is a form of post-atheism. There are ancient strands of post-atheism, even within some early strands of thinking in Buddhism and Hinduism, although it died out significantly from the 10th century until surprisingly recently. I am not really expecting too much interest in Secular Animism, but I do think post-atheism could be the way of the future. For post-atheism to flourish, there needs to be an exchange, a swap between theists and the rest. In order to create a harmonious social contract, atheists, agnostics, etc. would need to accept the realness within the hyper real of the personal truths of the religious narrative (see my blogs 10 and 11 on truth and the real); while the religious would need to accept that their religion is personal rather than absolute, also that their narrative is and should be open to change as society develops, including absorbing other narratives, for example like equality and feminism.

The idea of a social contract comes from Rousseau and normally it is a society wide political agreement enforced by the government. Having a wider post-atheist discussion of the good (or fair) within a society would be helpful if it lead to consensus and a healing of society. Less good would be claims that personal narratives were absolute truth and values, as this has totalitarian overtones and tends to sow discord. Discord is quite common at the moment, so the media and politicians should be discouraged where possible from too much conflicting narrative and instead focus on the solutions to regulatory and social problems that might fit within many narratives' themes (see blog 9 on capitalism for an example). Constitutionally, a clear division between the state and religions, with specific and influential dialogue, would be most helpful for calm post-atheist narrative management. Narrative management should reduce religious and sectarian conflict; so post-atheism could help religious communities work together better.

* * *

Now we can return to what we want, and to discuss what we should want and do want in contrast. I have compiled a list of wants, this list is probably incomplete and I am not going to define the items, but please consider the following for further discussion: Winning, money, power, pleasing authority, prepare for death, make the world a better place, help people, security, celebrity, to destroy things, pleasure, environmentalism, & experience love. It we consider these items, I reject that there is any intrinsic hierarchy or order to them, for example money leads to power, power leads to money, pleasing authority can also lead to money, helping people can lead to power etc. The wants are unstructured, so how we think about the wants may also have strange associations or ordering based on our personal experiences and narratives. So why do we have strong views on the good?

If wants are so chaotic, then it must be our personal narratives that are orderly for us to have an organised sense of what is good: How does this come about? I suggest that, along with the narratives we are exposed to, there is a pragmatic experience of whether approaches are rewarded in the real world. Of course, if for example a parent carries a particular narrative value system, this could be imposed both as a narrative explained to the child and what works with them as controller of the social environment. As social animals we fill niches in our environment, for example if winning is prioritised over caring in our environment, this may bring forward a competitive streak. Another child may not be practising winning at games as a social role, but may be more focused on expressing care and helping. Both of these may lead to a measure of success, as may other behaviours, especially in complex social environments. What we want may be a circular self-reinforcing system like a neural net that both categorises and trains itself at the same time, it gets trained with rewards, but often a success is judged a success because it is similar to a previous success.

What we should want then, and so what is good, may depend on who we are and our role in our social niche within the greater self. Consider the following matrix:

Matrix Spiritual Materialistic

Helpful Saintly Caring

Selfish Philosopher Winner

As a society we need winners; we need people to be caring. The example of saints may not be bad, and even the philosophical can be useful if they become the thinkers in society. So there is no one 'should want'; there is no justified moral totalitarianism and we still have avoided nihilism (the sense there are no values). There are lots of values.

* * *

I shall make a few concluding remarks. The values we hold are our religion, even if we are atheist or humanist. Our views on topics beyond science are likewise often religious depending on the topic. The narratives we hold, including our religious ones, define us. Narratives can be amended with difficulty. The 'should wants' or 'wants to want to want' we have are the good, and these goods are hyper real, but the goods are not each comparable without a personal narrative to interpret them by association.

Our final conclusion is that the good is real, but personal, very personal, and may be at the root of your personality. Your religion is a necessary part of that personality. So, what good is religion after the lies? Your religion makes you, and makes you function, despite the sometimes obvious lies.

#meta-ethics #ethics #philosophy #religion #religious #post-atheism #narrative #philosophical #analytical #postmodernism #nihilism #theism #psychology of religion

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