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pasta-in-the-pudding · 2 days

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Thank youuu, maayybbee a comforting headcanons about your choice of Creepypasta with a reader who is like uh like really really tired in all sort of ways that they won’t cooperate in anything, mind being so nice to give them a whole slideshow of their messed up childhood and

Y’know just a really fucked out reader

Sorry if it’s y’know too much or anything, you can do it whenever you want!

-🐰

I love writing comfort scenarios <33

Credits to divider goes to saradika-graphics! Go follow them and support their works

Thank you so much for requesting!!

Ticci Toby

He understands that sometimes, everything is too much and your brain just kind of shuts down

But he is also a very anxious person

So when he sees you laying in bed, the exact same position you were in when he left in the morning, he gets a little concerned

Have you moved at all? Have you eaten? Drank anything? Taken a shower?

But he respects your privacy and doesn't ask you about it, assuming maybe you just wanted a lazy day to yourself

So he brings his dinner up to you that night, sharing just in case this is in fact the first you've eaten all day

And when you continue this behavior the next day, he begins to panic

The other creeps know something's up too, or at least, E.J does, because once Toby gets home E.J approaches him about it

"Hey, I asked y/n to clean the equipment they used in the gym last time and they just said no. They also seemed pretty lethargic, barely moving or breathing at all. Nothing to worry about right now, but it is concerning."

And with that, he walks off, seemingly not even wanting an answer, just wanting to give Toby a heads up

So once again, Toby goes to your room once again, seeing that you still haven't moved

"You haven't moved." He says

"Mhm" you respond absently, scrolling on your phone

"Have you eaten today?" He asks, beginning to get nervous

"Mhm" you respond once more, though it's not a real response it's just one to make him happy

"Um. EJ said you didn't want to clean the gym equipment you used?" He fidgets with his fingers now, picking at the dry skin

"Mhm" Is the only thing you say, and the only thing you're going to say he realizes

So he comes to sit on the bed next to you, moving some of your hair out of your face (if you have any, if you don't he rubs your back) "Are you ok? You can talk to me, you know? I love you"

This seems to trigger something in you, because instantly a flood of tears happens

This startles him, but he continues to comfort you nonetheless

He pulls you up and drapes your arms over his shoulders, while his go around your body, rubbing your back and head

He doesn't talk because he doesn't want to overwhelm you, so he silently rubs you and kisses you until your sobs turn into sniffles

"Let me take care of you tomorrow?" He asks, pulling away to look into your eyes

You pull him back into the hug and nod "please"

Jeff The Killer

Jeff doesn't really know how to deal with his own emotions, let alone someone else's

So when he sees you in a funk, he decides to just leave you alone and let you deal with it yourself, because he doesn't trust himself enough to actually help instead of hurt

But this of course, it seen as him leaving you in your time of need from your perspective

So this only makes matters worse, causing you to snap at others for small things, like when Toby accidentally bumps into you while you are on the way to get another snack

He of course, apologizes profusely, but it just isn't your day so you yell at him and tell him to be more careful next time

When Jeff gets home, Toby is talking about the incident with another creep

Not in a malicious way, but in a concerned way

This peaks Jeff's interest "What are you saying about my partner over there??"

"I'm just worried is all. They totally blew up after I accidentally bumped into them" Toby says, putting his hands up defensively

Jeff scoffs and rolls his eyes, already tired of the mood you're in

So he goes up to your room and walks in angrily saying "Why are you being such a dick? What'd Toby ever do to you?"

You don't feel like arguing, so you snuggle further into your bed

He laughs at this "Seriously? You're gonna ignore me? Listen dude, I don't know who you think you are but I really don't like this fucking color on you. Fix your attitude before I fix it for you" And with that he slams your door

Next day, you bump into each other in one of the hallways, and he tries to talk to you obviously seeing you still upset, but you push past him

Or at least try to

He quickly catches you and pins you against a wall "Just listen to me, won't you?!" he yells

This is all too much for you, so you begin to cry, bowing your head so maybe he won't see it

He softens at this, loosening his grip and looking at you confusedly "Why....why are you crying?"

"Why are you being so mean to me??" You ask as you sob

He sighs and brings you into a tight hug "Ok.....Ok tell me how long you've been upset"

"A long time!" You say truthfully "It's not even about Toby!"

"Why didn't you say anything??" He asks, cradling your head against his shoulder

You grip onto his chest and try to catch your breath before talking "Because you left and I thought you didn't want to see me!" You whine in a fast, high pitched voice

Despite this, he seems to catch every word "No, baby, baby....I always wanna see you I just didn't wanna hurt you...." He whispers into your head

"But you did!" You say into his shoulder

"I know....I'm sorry" He rubs your back a bit before kissing your head

"....really?" you sniffle

"Yeah" He pulls away and lifts your head to kiss your forehead, before pulling you back into the hug

You are quiet for a while, standing in the hallway and holding each other before you finally break the silence "it did feel good to cry"

He snorts and pulls away "Well I'm glad you liked it, because now I have snot and spit all over my hoodie"

You smile and kiss his nose "You love it"

Ben Drowned

Barely moving himself, he probably won't notice for a little bit

But when he does, he just assumes you're in a lazy mood, So he tries to snuggle up with you in bed

You flip over, avoiding his touch which makes him raise an eyebrow "Hey, you ok? It's cool if you just wanna be alone but this isn't like you"

"I'm fine" you say quickly

"....oookay.....do you want me to leave you alone?" He asks, his face changing from confused to concerned

You don't answer for a long while, but when you finally do you say "no"

"ok" he says simply, staying to his own side of the bed while he plays video games

Eventually, you begin to cry softly, and you flip back over to snuggle into his chest, wrapping your arms and legs around him like a koala

He looks at you for a moment before putting the game aside for a second and petting your head "I thought you said you were ok?"

You shake your head and cling harder

"Alright, c'mere" he says, pulling you up into his lap and putting your head in the crook of his neck

You try to hide your face away in his shoulder, but he grabs your chin before you get the chance "Hold still, I wanna kiss you" he says

With this, he kisses anywhere he can reach, eventually letting you drop your head back onto his shoulder while he grabs onto your arm and kisses from your shoulder all the way down to the tips of your fingers

Once he is done, he looks down at you, seeing that you are now only sniffling he uses a knuckle to wipe away any remaining tears "now are you ok?"

You nod and wrap your arms around his neck, kissing his cheek "Good. I like seeing you happy"

He then pecks your lips and hands you another controller, so that you can play the previously discarded game together

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hazbinfallinginaspiral · 1 day

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Hey, sorry to trouble you. Unsure of your time zone so i hope this is sent at a good time! (Sorry if it isn't!)

Could you maybe do something with Vox and a Reader who saves him from a surprise attack via a Sinner or Angel?

Kinda the Reader just like 'Oh sorry i got blood on you. Glad you're okay.' With Vox unsure if he wants this person under contact or to kiss them. Or do whatever go nuts!

(I have no idea what timezone I’m in tbh, I’m too lazy to check. As I’m posting this it is 10:50 AM where I live, if that helps anyone. No worries, though! I love answering all your asks and writing out posts based on your requests!)

“Walking downtown, avoiding the paparazzi…” Vox muttered to himself. He’d really done it this time. He was trying to avoid being out of the Vee tower for too long, but he’d taken a detour with almost no Voxtek cameras. Now he couldn’t teleport. It made him uneasy. “God fucking damnit…”

“Stop right there, bitch,” a sinner demon said, pointing a gun at him. Vox froze, but not out of fear. He was surprised first, that a sinner demon would try to hurt an Overlord. This one must be new, or arrogant. But as he looked at the gun, he couldn’t help the tidal wave of emotions that over came him, all memories of compromising situations- similar situations- he’d been in when he was alive. “That’s right, now… put your hands where I can see them.”

Vox absentmindedly complied, still partially reliving every single time he’d had a gun pointed at him before. Every wound he’d received, every bullet he’d had to fish out of his own flesh.

“Good, now-”

The sinner demon was cut off brutally. With an axe. To its neck. Its head came off with ease and you stood behind it, looking surprised. Vox’s eyes widened. Now he was vaguely afraid.

“Oh. I didn’t expect it to be so… fragile,” you said, nudging the corpse of the demon lightly. “Huh. Well, in any case…” you looked up to Vox, an apologetic look on your face. “Sorry about that. Did I get any blood on your suit? I can cover the expenses.”

“I… uh,” Vox was speechless. He’d just frozen up in front of a lowlife sinner demon and had been saved by another, who was now apologizing to him. What the fuck. Something had to be wrong with him, especially with these weird feelings he had in his chest. Felt all fluttery and stupid like butterflies. “My suit is fine. I narrowly avoided the splash zone, I think. Thank you for your offer.”

“Of course! Not a problem,” you said with a smile. Vox noticed you hadn’t stepped any closer to him, you’d kept your distance. But you’d put your axe away. You knew who he was and how dangerous he was, how defenseless you were in comparison, but you were still talking to him. Did you feel superior to him just because you’d saved him? No, that couldn’t be it… you seemed so… genuine. “Seedy part of town for a business man like yourself to be in. I’m guessing the paparazzi were a nightmare today?”

“Oh absolutely,” Vox said with a grin. He was quickly regaining his confident demeanor. “It was absolute torture at that interview! Ah, but don’t tell anyone I said that. It wouldn’t be good for my image. I’m sure you can keep a secret,” he said, linking his arm in yours and walking with you. This was a test.

“Definitely,” you said, with a small laugh. “It’d be far more embarrassing for me, anyway. I mean, the fact I interrupted your walk through town? With murder, no less! That was quite rude of me.” You smiled, carefree and lighthearted as he walked you away. You didn’t even know where he was taking you, but you were still so upbeat. “No worries. If you don’t tell anyone about that little incident back there, I won’t say a word about your occasional distaste for public attention.”

“Wonderful! Sounds like a deal, then,” Vox said, looking down at you. He was pleased with how this whole thing had gone. You hadn’t even seen him as weak for freezing up in front of that other sinner demon! You probably thought he was annoyed or planning to kill the demon himself. His image was safe, you didn’t suspect a thing. You had no idea how vulnerable he’d been in the moment back there. “Say, how about we make another, more official deal? Something with some actual benefits.”

“Really?” You asked, looking surprised. “I mean, I don’t have much to offer. We only just met and-”

“And you’ve piqued my interest, dear,” he said with a smile. He held your arm tighter, more protectively. Whether you agreed to anything or not, he’d be keeping you around. “I have a feeling we’ll get to know each other very well.”

#hazbin hotel #vox #hazbin hotel vox #hazbin vox #writing #vox x reader #my writing #x reader #reader insert #thanks anon!

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russenoire · 8 months

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in response to this post:

ONE-sensei is a bit of a troll, not gonna lie.

but... i actually like this ending, at least for comedy's sake. the stark juxtaposition of

'boy gets hit by a truck and his unexamined jungian shadow self flattens a city before he finally makes peace with it'

with

'and everything was just fine six months later'

is funnier than spelling out exactly how we get from point A to point B, because we KNOW — as the audience — that it wasn't 'just fine'. after everything we saw, how could it be?

subverted expectations underpin a lot of comedy, even dark comedy, especially absurdist comedy. MP100 is practically built on both. this story wrings a lot of humor out of sad, if not tragic, situations: witness shigeo's 'who told you you could pass out?!' after his home has been reduced to kindling. or ritsu's admission that he only recently stopped crying himself to sleep at night over his inability to bend spoons like his big brother. while he's letting shigeo know just how much he supposedly hates him in that alley.

not expanding upon the real-life consequences of said city-flattening is funny precisely because dropping 'i wrecked my hometown after nearly dying in a car accident on the way to ask out my crush when i was a teenager' in a conversation and just... leaving it there? would be fucking horrifying in real life. here, in the elastic magical-realist context of MP100, it's more darkly absurd than anything else...

more to your point, OP: in this particular series, ONE-sensei tells so much of this story by implication. the answers to some of your questions are in the text, only... alluded to.

this might get long. bear with me:

the fact that joseph from the government exists? and that he's an esper working in secret? implies that the knowledge of destructive espers might need to be concealed from the public at large, perhaps to prevent wide-scale panic or ostracism of espers themselves. i doubt the government was forthright with its citizens about the confession arc disaster or the actual cause, for the same reasons.

that suzuki's broadcast-hijacking world domination announcement is met with public disdain and ridicule, especially over social media? outside of our cast, no one actually takes his threat seriously until it happens. reigen's trash-talking claw's seventh division down to earth also shows how little respect espers who don't make themselves useful to society actually get here. he is, after all, just another member of the public.

that reigen agrees to take on haruaki amakusa as a client after the world domination arc in part because he's worried about losing business? people have begun to move away from seasoning city in the aftermath; whatever the threat amakusa's hyakki present, neutralizing them as soon as possible is best for reigen's continued financial health. i can see even more residents deciding they've had enough and leaving after shigeo's last brush with death. would you stay?

how many people know shigeo is connected to reigen, apart from the people they both know? out of his own inflated and fragile ego, reigen presents himself as a sole proprietor on his website; it doesn't seem his business or its reputation would be directly affected at all.

and the injuries caused? possible deaths? we get a taste: early on in chapter 100, several people are trapped and unable to move in a 地盤沈下 (jibánchinka, literally: 'land subsidence', which can apply to a sinkhole, a landslide...) shigeo has left in his wake. we only find out because a cop is being briefed on this and its cause while trying to detain the suspect for questioning.

but like all other bodily harm caused in this story, we aren't treated to the fallout. did the elderly ishiguro survive shou plowing him into the earth? did miyagawa die after teruki flipped his barrier onto him and broiled him in his own flames? did those high school bully boys live after shigeo cracked their heads open on the pavement like eggs? like, these are good questions. (i'm inclined to believe that all these people died, but many would call me harsh for saying that about an otherwise kind story. we never see them again, either way.)

shigeo actually has a healing factor of sorts; his jungian shadow self keeps plucking him from death's arms. we have no way of knowing if this is true for anyone else, because that isn't the story ONE wanted to tell. if nothing else, the mangaka's lack of desire to engage with this question of lethal consequences is at least consistent across MP100.

any questions that aren't answered either directly or that can't be answered by easy extrapolation can foster continued engagement with the material.

for example: we don't know what shigeo's parents think about much of anything in this story, besides how little they expect from him and how ritsu sets a standard they feel shigeo should live up to. this boy goes through hell multiple times and is never shown to confide in either of his parents about it, instead suffering in silence for some time until he finds someone he feels safe enough to talk to. all this gives me the distinct impression that shigeo just isn't that close to his mother or his father. i can understand why. it's actually kind of sad, even as readers' frustrated expectations of real-life parental involvement with — and confusion over — his and his brother's shenanigans also generate some dark humor.

this also establishes a precedent: since we never check in with them, by the time the confession arc rolls around, their opinion hardly matters. (but i'm sure someone has written a fic fleshing that out! i'm somewhat curious myself.)

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daz4i · 1 year

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wait so chuuya has angel imagery about him in stormbringer. and dazai is referred to as a demon on more than one occasion. and. hold on. wait. I'm going insane. hold on.

#don't try to figure out the grammar of this post I'm too lazy and having too many thoughts for that rn.#ANYWAY are they literally an angel/demon ship. in a way. bc if so. the dan rights are insane #I've been thinking abt this for awhile idk why it took me so long to post abt it #I'm ngl demon dazai as a concept is already enough to give me rights personally he truly is just like me fr #and . you know how insane i am abt angels. tbh chuuya would make a really good angel he's loyal and has humanity issues doesn't he.#also he is a Fucked Up Creature :) love that about him. but yeah that's another part of it #i wish there was like. more of that. more than just that one time symbolism. i need more. so i can write an essay abt angel chuuya #(if there is and i just missed it PLEASE send it my way. i am asking nicely 🔫)#(ig you could argue he's like an angel saving the ada in this arc but... eh that's not direct enough for me)

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lostaziraphale · 6 months

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aziracrow au where they meet on a dating app on accident while they're each trying to either cause chaos or put more love into the world.

#is this inspired by my current use of a dating app? absolutely #which let me just say dating apps are the weirdest fucking thing #i'm having the deepest conversation with one person then with another I'm warning them about gomens season 2 lol #i'd write this but i'm so lazy #feel free to write it tho #aziracrow #crowley x aziraphale #crowley #aziraphale #good omens #good omens season 2 #good omens fanfiction

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saeshiraw · 8 months

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tired girl hours i’m just ranting bcos i don’t have enough time to cry

#tw rant #studying med is no joke. ik it was gonna be a commitment n that it wasnt gonna be easy n i thought i was prepared but im not #its my passion. i love what im studying and ive dedicated myself to this path but i just. its so hard n i just want to cry. everyday feels #so tiring. morning to night classes. when i get home i have to read 4 chapters MINIMUM n the books are so thick + exams almost everyday #i feel worse knowing there’s this 1 girl in my friend group that cant decide whether she likes me or not. one moment shes complimenting me #n asking where i get my outfits or my nails done or my earrings or whatever then praising me that i probably study the least out of everyone #yet still reach high student rankings but its not that im lazy im just so exhausted n its hard to have motivation... lowkey envy how my #friends study minimum 4 hours a day. we’re all tired n sleep deprived. even taking 30mins to eat makes me feel guilty. cant even watch 1 ep #of an anime bcos ill be thinking about the amount of work to do. and i have sm plans. i wanna be more active and have a healthier lifestyle #but i cant find it in me to wake up every 5am to go to the gym when i just wanna get as much sleep when im lucky to finish my studies today #i also dont see my bestest friends everyday anymore. some of us move to diff unis or some in diff majors. i just miss them so bad it hurts #and i miss the girl i used to be when i still had time and energy to indulge in my hobbies. i miss playing genshin and writing fics #just when i got back to writing and enjoyed it LOVED IT i had to go back to uni. i feel terribly lonely even when im always with people #im afraid ill completely lose grasp of the little things that make me happy bcos the weight of my responsibilities are heavier #im afraid ill be too focused on success again like i was when i was 17 and forget that its okay to relax too but idk #and i wanna meet more people make more friends have new experiences. i wanna feel alive again. and theres sm i wanna talk to or get to know #but im so afraid of people hurting me or disappointing me or people getting to know me only for the friendships to fail or we’ll dislike eac #h other. i wanna date and fall in love again and experience the romance my peers have. i wanna have someone to call my own person but the fe #ar of having someone only to lose them someday scares the hell outta me. im not ready for another heartbreak so i isolate myself and watch #people from afar. uni gives me sm freedom to do everything else and form my own identity but i dont wanna be Perceived. I wanna be heard and #seen n connect with people. but w my curreny state idt i can handle being vulnerable with others. it feels so lonely that the things i want #are out of my rrach but idt i can manage my time to meet new people and make new memories. i console myself by shopping a lot and going to #spas to relax yet i still find it hard to sleep. im afraid im wasting my time. im not as brave as i used to be. im not as efficient as i was #i get older and more tired and while i never questioned if studying med was the path i want i do question what will happen next #“is this all im ever going to be?” im good at what i do but day by day i lose sight of tje girl who knew how to laugh n smile. ik what makes #me happy but i rarely smile genuinely anymore. im so tired and want to sleep for a long time but i dont wanna fail. i dont wanna be NOT good #but it makes me cry when i know i can do many great things but i dont feel loved. people compliment me but dont approach me bcos they say im #intimidating or that im too quiet in class. i wish i could tell them i wanna join their parties too or i wanna meet their friends n hangout #but what if it doesnt work out? what if i wasted my time getting to know someone id eventually regret? what if im the disappointing one?#the days are getting shorter but it always feels like a long day. im ashamed to admit i want someone to hold me yet refuse to have anyone

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wraith-caller · 3 months

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vaguing

#sth really lazy and almost insulting about 'you ship 2 guys bc you hate women'#esp when the woman in question straight up murders one of the 2 characters i enjoy writing lol #and esp also when im not allowed to write said woman as anything other than a perfectly matronly receptacle for male sadness #or else that is also somehow misogyny #am i allowed to like women enough to make them interesting characters rather than the mommy the gamer bros never got #am i allowed to puke up my own trauma and neuroses through male characters so as to not see them inflicted on a woman ie me #so that i can see those things at a safe distance so that they become cathartic rather than another depressing rumination #what if you just said you dont like something instead of trying to make everything a value judgment about a persons moral integrity #what if ppl write the things they do for their own personal reasons and not bc they hate some marginalized group #i dont even hate fia but im not going to write her as anything other than cunning and manipulative and driven #every character in this game is some flavor of fucked up #and almost none of them have pure intentions #thats uh kind of the point in some ways #meh

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fordohyon · 10 months

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i am actually going insane should i make a smau or what, i have absolutely nothingh in mind and im thinking about adding bonedo and zb1 as a groups im writing for, i am too lazy to do anything but i still want to try and write something just so that i have something on this account,,, i completely ghosted my other account after a while since it was getting harder for me to write and since i was writing on a secondary account it made me soooo lazy 😭😭

I actually really need to try and have the motivation to write something or ill probably just ghost this account like my first fic account 😞😞

maybe i should write for x1 or nam dohyon but i barely see any nam dohyon or just x1 fans here in general ☹️🥲

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specialshinytrinkets · 1 year

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Literature teacher, to a group of my classmates: Could you explain to me why [my friend] is interested in America of 1950s and 60s?

Me, listening to this going down, with my interest in America of 1920s:

#random.dusty #life fabric snippets #i've been thinking in my head on how to explain to her why i am personally interested in this period without sounding #like a madman #context: there was an assignment to write 'which historic period i like and why'. i didn't do it bcuz i don't have the literature #material necessary in mind (the writings require at least two arguments from literature and i've just started The Great Gatsby)#and because i'm lazy #anyway. today we had the analysis/grading of those assignments and another group got my friend's work #the friend in question is the mvp in everything btw. hydrogen bomb of the school #she helped out with suggestions on material about 1920s this year! very knowledgable person #the main point of this story is that the teacher wasn't convinced by her argument (friend used The Catcher In The Rye as an #example of why this time period is interesting to her) and now i'm sitting here with Gatsby and gay casino workers like #*chuckles* i'm in danger

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becausegoodbye · 1 year

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A home to treasure, a home to flee

(**This post contains big-time spoilers for Citizen Sleeper and Life is Strange: True Colors. No way around it! **)

In the last year, I've had two experiences with video games that unearthed some interestingly divergent intuitions in me.

In one, the game let me make a precarious little home for myself, and even though it kept giving me opportunities to leave – it really seemed like it hoped I'd leave, to strike out somewhere in pursuit of a better life – I clung to the fragile little home I'd created, savouring its small earned pleasures.

In the other, the game gave me a home, aesthetically dazzling and too good to be true, with a hideous past which the game desperately wanted me to forgive and to stay – laying it on thick about how beautiful it would be if I stayed – and I found I couldn't flee fast enough.

It makes me wonder a bit about my relationship to home.

Citizen Sleeper is one of my favourite games I've played in a long time. It's quietly etched its place on the list I keep in my mind of "proper Hall of Fame indie games", along with Celeste and Immortality and at most a dozen others. It's a game whose ambitions are restrained, but the light touches of its writing are pretty much all paintbrush-perfect.

In it, you play a Sleeper, a degraded kind of worker-clone, carrying the emulated consciousness of a real person inside a crummy bio-android body that'll fall apart if it doesn't get regular injections of corporate-controlled medicine. Your entire existence is a method of skirting labour laws. You managed to escape your corporate labour-camp, but now you're on this random space station with no money or friends, and your biological meltdown-clock is ticking. Just gotta keep moving, keep working, keep trying to figure something out.

I won't give a full review of the mechanics and story; what I really want to talk about right now is the apartment. In Citizen Sleeper, you're always choosing how to allocate your limited time and energy, and if you want, you can choose to spend an irresponsible amount of both fixing up an abandoned apartment unit, using scrap metal to try to plug up the holes and make it livable. This is, frankly, the best thing. With how nightmarishly precarious every aspect of your existence as a runaway Sleeper is, just to be able to lay your head somewhere that's yours is blissful.

And then – most special of all – once you've fixed up the apartment, a stray cat will sometimes stop by, and you can spend some money to feed it some crushed-up crackers. The cat never becomes yours (it always maintains its independence, coming and going as it pleases), but you can know each other. You can become part of the weave of each other's lives. Even in this hostile capitalist hell-hole, even with a body constantly on the verge of betraying you: you can eat some delicious spiced fungus and have a cat stroke itself against your thighs. Things can be worth it.

As I got on top of my finances and found a steady source of medicine, I only found myself more and more attached to my apartment. Some missions take you right over the other side of the space station, and (because it can take ages to get back) the game frequently offers you places to crash that are much closer to where you need to be. I didn't use them once. Once I'd fixed up the unit, I slept every single subsequent night of the game there, even if it meant traveling a silly distance to get there and back. I wanted to get back because, first, it was my home, and second, I had to feed the stray cat. It might miss me if I were gone.

As you get further into Citizen Sleeper, the game offers you all sorts of ways to get off the station. You can work/cheat your way onto a huge colony ship that's set to begin populating a new and uninhabited planet. You can hitch a ride with a mercenary and start a more knowingly dangerous kind of life. You can fuse your consciousness with a cyber-organic plant-consciousness, 'Grow Vast and Strange', and lose your sense of a distinct self entirely.

I didn't go for any of them. I got my friends on board the colony ship and waved goodbye to them. I gave the mercenary the cold shoulder. I thanked the plant-consciousness profusely for the opportunity, but wistfully turned away from what it was offering. I kept choosing to return to my own small world on the station: to the apartment, to the stray, to Emphis' spiced fungus stand, to Lem & Mina & Tala & Riko, and to all the tiny meaningful markers of the life I'd built for myself here.

This was my life. I'd made it, and that meant everything.

Life is Strange: True Colors is a much weirder game, and one I'd recommend to far fewer people. I've written before about my complicated feelings about the Life is Strange series, which have a tendency to take huge emotional swings with subjects that they're not really mature enough to handle responsibly. That's part of their appeal, admittedly: these games absolutely go for it, and even when they stumble, it's usually pretty compelling.

In True Colors, you play as Alex Chen, a shy 21-year-old orphan with a kind of superpowered empathy. She can read people's thoughts a bit, sometimes even accessing their memories, and when somebody near her is experiencing a big emotion, she gets overwhelmed with a mirrored version of it. This got her branded as 'emotionally unstable' in the Oregon foster care system, so she struggled to be adopted. She lost touch with her older brother Gabe after he was placed with a different foster family, but eight years later, with his own life straightened out, Gabe was able to track her down, and invite her to come live with him in the idyllic little mountain town called Haven Springs.

I won't go beat-by-beat through the whole plot, because it's bonkers and byzantine, but the key points are these. (Again, full spoilers.) After Alex and Gabe's dad abandoned them when Alex was 11, he ended up working for a locally hegemonic mining company called Typhon in Haven Springs. Later, Gabe tried to track him down, and Haven Springs was where the trail went cold. This turns out to be because their dad died in a hideous mine collapse, along with several other miners. A local foreman named Jed Lucan got credited as a 'hero' for saving the miners who survived, but in reality he was the one who chose to abandon the others to their deaths, and Typhon conspired with him to cover it all up.

When Gabe came to Haven Springs looking for their dad, that same foreman, Jed, now the owner of a local bar, felt guilty about having left this kid fatherless, and treated Gabe with a lot of generosity. He set Gabe up with a job in his bar, let him rent the great loft apartment upstairs, and really just ensconced Gabe in Haven Springs life (obviously without telling him the murdery truth). Then, when Gabe is finally able to track down his little sister Alex, he wants to pass on the generosity, and offers you the loft. He’s moving in with his girlfriend, you and your brother are finally back in each other’s lives, and it all seems too good to be true.

It is. Almost immediately after arriving in town, Gabe is killed – by the very same mining corporation – while up in the mountains trying to rescue his girlfriend's kid. Typhon were told that there were people in the area and they needed to delay their blast, but they knowingly went ahead with it anyway, because (it turns out) they needed the noise to cover up a second, more illegal scheduled blast nearby. That second blast was to fully cave in the old mine and bury the evidence of the incident that killed Alex and Gabe's father, in preparation for a coming inspection that could have uncovered the deaths.

So essentially: your brother was murdered casually, incidentally, as part of covering up your dad's murder from years ago.

I'm delivering this information in a totally different order than the game does (there, the relevation that Jed let miners die and your dad was among them comes very late), but I'm laying it all out so you understand the chronology of events. Just lay it all out flat in your mind. You're Alex, and you find yourself living in this town that seems pretty wonderful – picturesque and warm, with an economy of little other than bars and flower shops and record stores – but you eventually discover that both your father and your brother have been murdered here. You also discover that the person who's been kindest to you, the surrogate father-figure who let you work in the bar and live in the loft virtually rent-free, is the evil fuck who killed your dad.

You do eventually empathy-detective your way to exposing all this, of course. By the end of the game, Jed is going to prison, and Typhon is facing the absurdly (but not unrealistically) softer consequences of 'their CEO resigning' and 'their stock price taking a hit'. But then – and this is the part I've needed to go over all this melodramatic plot in order to talk about – the game wants you to stay in Haven Springs.

Alex's final choice is whether to stay or leave. Somehow, you're still living in the loft of the murderer you put in jail, and it's implied that you can just keep doing that. The game gives you an option to leave – to go off on a scrappy music tour with your indie girlfriend Steph – but the game gilds the lily heavily in favour of staying. You have an entire conversation with an imaginary ghost-projection of Gabe, and he spins this whole fantasia about how wonderful your life could be if you simply stayed, let "time do its thing", and commit to transforming this place.

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But like ... fuck that, right? Fuck that!!!

As far as I'm concerned, this is a "noping out of a horror movie" situation. By the end of True Colors, Haven Springs feels cursed. This tiny pretty town is where every existing member of your family was murdered. What, you're literally just gonna stick around limply hoping they won't murder you too? While the hegemonic mining corporation is still stalking around, knowing you did this to them?

Like, Alex. Dude. These white people are not safe. The Chens are seemingly the only Asian-American family in a hundred miles, and the track record of Chens not getting murdered by the biggest and most powerful local employer is bad. Sure, that one guy is in prison now, but the problem was never that one guy. Underneath this town is a seam of raw murder and lies and evil, and everyone being so saccharine-sweet to you all game long only makes that fact worse. You can’t escape your trauma, you can’t escape your brother and father having been killed, and you can’t escape the horrorshow of capitalism – but you surely don’t have to stay here.

It's hard to overstate how repulsed I felt by the prospect of staying in Haven Springs. While Citizen Sleeper had me taking pride in the modest, scrappy life I'd clawed out for myself in the margins, True Colors felt like the complete opposite. It felt like a series of overbearingly loaded gifts, all lush and pretty and tailor-made, but with a violent catch spring-loaded inside every pocket. It felt like the bashful smile of a poisoner offering you a drink. All of my instincts were to run.

Some day soon, I'm sure I'll be able to write a thing about videogames without tying it back to transness, but look – I'm two months on HRT. Right now everything feels connected with transitioning, and I'd be lying if I said the trans-relevance of this little parable didn't occur to me immediately.

My body is the home I was given, and I’ve always lived here uneasily. I’ve never known what to do with the ‘gifts’ that came with being read as a guy (most of them are still half-unwrapped in the back of my closet). Everyone wanted me to like it here, expected me to like it here – why wouldn’t you like it here? – but I just didn’t. A seam under the surface was wrong, and kept itching. I don’t want this to come across as a matter of pure contrarianism, but being real: the amount of contrarianism at work here probably isn’t zero. The world tried to give me a gender I’d like – a whole sweet-ass loft if you just ignore the murders – and I’m leaving. I’m off to make my own thing. And even if it’s objectively shittier in tons of ways, I’m confident I’ll like it more.

Between Citizen Sleeper and True Colors, my inescapable conclusion is: I would rather sit alone in this cold empty abandoned apartment than live in Haven Spring's paradise. I would rather chew fungus and scrape for corpo-medicine as a girl than be the beloved centre of a twinkling idyll as a guy. Haven Springs is so pristine and gorgeous, so flush with friends and flowers and foosball, but at a certain point you just can't unsee the seam of wrongness under everything. Whereas the kind of life you can build in Citizen Sleeper – the crummy apartment, the stray cat, all the friends you make and all the people who pass you by – feels infinitely stronger to me. Infinitely more earned. Infinitely more durable and darnable and real.

#“a whole sweet-ass loft if you just ignore the murders” = my user review of masculinity #I have some writer friends who - when I write long and literary posts like this one - always suggest sending them to publications #and I've done that a bit in the past but mostly I just ... don't #partly out of laziness #partly out of a self-deprecating assumption that they're too idiosyncratic and personal #but also partly – I think – out of another limb of the exact same range of feeling as I'm talking about in this post #being published in someone else's publication is like ... oh #if you behave yourself very well you can get invited to dinner #put on a starchy shirt and try to be as sparkling and interesting as you can #y'know?#whereas ... this tumblr? my dinky little website?#they're shitty but they're mine #(tumblr as an abandoned apartment building that I get to squat in)#(that feels particularly apropros)#it's hard for me to feel like there could be a better venue for writing like this #it's so self-indulgent! and so absurdly niche!#so I end up just ... staying in this shabby little home I've made for myself #which I think makes sense given the content and context here #lol #citizen sleeper #life is strange: true colors

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