#might draw the second part... but I don't feel like I could do it justice

[xovera-toz]

The rest of the poem is even better so go read the 2015 comics. Shoo.

#Wirt's got major beef over poetry with Beatrice and it's hilarious #ok so where you can find these characters #as follows: #over the garden wall #wirt #soulful symphonies #sophie #circus friends #paola #tome of the unknown: harvest melody #otgw #might draw the second part... but I don't feel like I could do it justice #we'll see #comic #fancomic #my art #not my poetry #poetry #art

[offsidekineticist]

WIP Wednesday (August 8, 2023)

I might take this down later...but since I'm probably about to hyperfocus on BG3 and almost certainly will never be able to focus enough to write the freaking novel that builds up to this moment anyway, here's Theo doing [spoilers for True Aeon Ending]. It is long. Sorry about that. Don't worry, I'll still post about Theo and stuff (BG3 bard is fun enough that Theo is about to take a little trip to Faerun), just gonna take a break from Aeon Theo for a bit.

Cw: spoilers, character death, lack of closure

"You won't hear me pleading. Let us finish this experiment once and for all."

An aeon–a common aeon born of star and light–would have no choice but to enact swift and fatal justice. But you are not a common aeon. You are born of soul and flesh and bone, and you see another way.

"I am not here to judge you, Areelu Vorlesh," you say. "I am here to make you whole." 

You are an aeon, one of the judges of the universe. You can look into the souls of mortals and see their deepest secrets. And though it has been easy to forget these past months, you are mortal, too. A crime against the cosmos–an aeon born of bone and flesh and soul. An imbalance that must be corrected as much as the worldwound must. 

You will correct them both at once.

You look into your own soul, and you see the scars where Areelu tried to use you to patch the holes Pharasma left in her son's soul. She did her work well, but his soul was too tattered and yours too strong, and so the hybrid of the two took the shape of your soul. You see the pieces of his soul, and you look into the past, into the days when it was whole, to find its true shape. There is enough of him left that with knowledge and power, he can be re-formed, if only for a time.

But that will be enough. You think of a dying child who proudly showed off the proof of his ailment as "color I gave Mama to give her good days," and you think of how a day can be more precious than a century if you spend the first with your loved one and the second alone. And so you look at the not yet criminal Areelu Vorlesh, at her cells and her organs and her blood, and you draw out enough–just enough–to build into a body, leaving a wound in her chest that will never quite heal. You rip the foreign pieces out of your soul, ignoring how your wound burns worse than any pain you've ever felt, but you press on still. You feel your power waning, your connection the monad fading as you tear out the foreign parts of yourself. Still, you persist, for as long as you have the power. Your aeonic vision fades, and when you see the form of Areelu's son appear, his soul restored, you see him with mortal eyes. 

Areelu has forgotten you entirely, wrapping her son in a hug and weeping while he freezes, confused and embarrassed, and you know that the danger has passed. Her body is weak from her sacrifice. She will never survive if she tries to use her own soul to open the worldwound–too much of her body's strength now belongs to her son. You don't know how long her son has until his soul unravels, unstable as it is–perhaps days, perhaps years. It does not matter. His soul is too weak to survive the ritual, and Areelu would never trust anyone else with such power. They are no longer a threat. You gather them up, and with nearly all of your strength you send them far away from Threshold to somewhere the witch hunters will never find them–to a too-small house in Finderplain, where they can plan the marvelous adventures they will have with this new time they have been given. 

The burning in your wound spreads out over your body like blood poisoning. You are not an aeon, not anymore. Soon you will not be anything. You have stopped the creation of the worldwound. You have stopped the creation of yourself. It was perhaps unorthodox–a solution no other aeon could choose–but that is why the monad chose you, why it created an aeon from flesh and bone and soul. You do not need to feel the universe humming in approval to know you have done well.

"Tell me we didn't just fight our way through the heart of the worldwound, defeat hordes of demons, and travel through a disturbance in the fabric of time itself just to give a happily ever after to the Architect of the Worldwound?!" Regill shouts in anger, his fury so great you can see the color returning to his features. "After everything–"

"There's been enough hurt, Regill," you interrupt, your voice soft and vulnerable and truly yours for the first time Areelu fished you out of the Sellen River. "If I have to unmake myself, I'll do it with mercy.” You watch as Regill’s rage transforms into naked shock, and then horrified realization as he finally understands. There is no after the Crusade for you because there is no Crusade, and there is no you. This has always been the plan–it could end no other way.

You begin to fade, and the last of your power goes first. Your star goes out and the black hole dissipates, and you see the stars and space fade from your hands, leaving only bleached flesh. Without the aeon’s calming presence, you brace for the flood of terrifying emotions, but for once your emotions are calm. You have done well–you were mortal and aeon, just as you were meant to be, and everything that is not fear and satisfaction has faded into the background except…

Regill is watching. He is watching in horror as you are unmade in front of him. You open your mouth to give him some reassurance, some last inspirational speech to carry him through this moment. But the coldness of the aeon is gone, and all you can feel are fear and pride and love, and of all the things you wish you could have had, there is only one you still can. So you stumble forward, almost falling as you go, and wrap your arms around your brother. He's startled and tenses up, stiff as a board, but you don't care. You gave up your future long ago, and you already feel your past fleeing. The present is all there is, and soon you won't even have that, so you do as you like. You hug your brother and feel his life and know that he will persist long after you've gone, just as you always knew he would. 

“Remember me?” you whisper, putting the last of your power into making it possible. 

“Always, Commander,” he replies, voice strained, and already you have forgotten what plea he is answering, but you can hear he is upset, and you know it is your fault.

"I'm sorry," you say, and you've already forgotten why. There is nothing to be sorry for because it never happened. But it feels right to say, and you know he remembers why, so you say it anyway. "I love you," you whisper, and you've already forgotten who he is. No–you have not forgotten, you simply never met. There was no you to meet him. But still you love him, and that love will be the last part of yourself to fade away.

There is a gnome in your arms. You know he is in your arms and that you love him and soon there will be no you to hold him. You don't know who he is or what he is to you. He is everything and nothing to you all at once, because everything is nothing to you who never were. You think you feel him relax slightly as the last part of yourself slips away into oblivion. You think you feel a hand on your back returning the embrace, but there is not enough 'you' left to be sure. You are not aware of your body dissolving into light in the gnome's arms–there is no you to be aware. There has never been any 'you' at all.

There is a gnome in the heart of a prison hugging himself because a body turned to light just as he began to return its embrace. He drops to his knees, the weight of all that never was too great to bear, whispering words he never said, not even in the never-was. The poor thing is mad–he remembers someone who never existed; he speaks to someone who is not there. Perhaps that would give you comfort if you existed. The world is made of stories, after all, and someone remembers yours. Maybe someday that will be enough to let you exist again. Maybe then you will both say the things you should have said but never did in the never-was. Maybe then there will be a happy ending.

But not today. Today there are no demons and there is no worldwound. The mad gnome is gone, returned to his proper time and place. Now there is only a prison that will continue to exist, and a family that will live again, and a country full of people who will not be wiped out. 

This is not The End. It cannot be The End. A story cannot end if it never began. And so instead, looking upon Sarkoris and Mendev and Finderplain and all of Golarion and seeing the millions of stories that will not end today, we call it something else.

In the beginning…

#oc: theoven derenge #pathfinder wotr #knight-commander oc #pwotr pals #regill derenge #areelu vorlesh #Areelu's son #Aeon path

[ink-flavored]

FRUITS!!! (hello friend i hope you are well and your move went well!) Pride: 🍎🥑 Justice: 🌶️🥑 Feriha: 🍌🥑

hi thank you!!! my move DID go well, i'm just trying to settle into a new routine now :3 enough about me though, more about MY OCS!!!!

Pride

🍎 [RED APPLE] Who does your OC value above all else?

Pre-story, himself. Pride learned, in quite a violent way, that there was no one in the universe he could ever truly rely on but himself. To his own detriment, sometimes, he put himself leaps and bounds ahead of everyone he ever interacted with, because he didn't want to run the risk of trusting anyone—and being betrayed—again.

Post-story, he still values himself, but in a more honest way. He doesn't rely himself because he feels like he has to, because no one else will ever care, but out of genuine happiness and the ability to connect himself to the world and others. Justice is a very close second, and he might even be tied for first. As the one who forced him to/helped him realize that other people aren't always out to get him, and care about him even, he has a very special place in Pride's carefully curated hierarchy of importance.

🥑 [AVACADO] What will they never back down about, even if it makes them seem bad?

Most things? Like literally anything?

Being on Lucifer's side might make him seem bad to some people, but it's something he defends even when he's able to acknowledge it wasn't a good choice. Lucifer wasn't able to whip up a rebellion for no reason, and no matter how questionable his methods, or how terrible Hell is under his rule, Pride would never trade his choice. Not even to be an angel again, and save himself the suffering.

Justice

🌶️ [HOT PEPPER] Who would your OC declare their sworn enemy if they could meet them

Ooh interesting... Most politicians and police officers for taking his virtue in vain, tbh. He had his phase where justice was all about order and punishment and being very serious, but has since settled down to understand justice as righting wrongs, or preventing them from happening in the first place. A lot of people are still stuck in the first phase, and do things that Justice would......not approve of, to say the least.

🥑 [AVACADO] What will they never back down about, even if it makes them seem bad?

I think this one can follow from the last answer—for Justice, punishment is a last resort, and never a solution. He exists to give the downtrodden a voice, not to make an example of those who have done wrong. All punishment does is threaten—it's a promise that you can be abused just as easily if you step out of line. It doesn't solve anything, doesn't prevent wrongdoing, and invents more problems.

There are definitely humans, and even other angels of justice, who think he's too soft or naïve for holding this conviction, but he doesn't care. Having Kindness for a sister influenced him deeply, and he's more proud of that than he is worried about what other people think of him. Justice draws his sword when every other solution has failed—it has never, and will never, be his first reaction.

Feriha

🍌 [BANANA] Have parts of your OC been lost to time (in-universe)? What do they wish they could lose from themselves?

Being dead for almost 200 years means she's definitely lost something. Especially since most of those years were spent waiting for a husband she fully expected to meet her in the afterlife first. The anxiety from that would eventually shake her stiff composure, and make her more paranoid than she'd like.

Down in the living world, I can definitely imagine the random wife of a random regent who got randomly murdered wouldn't be something people would be keeping track of, so those paintings of her might be all that's left of her legacy. I don't think she'd be upset about it though.

🥑 [AVACADO] What will they never back down about, even if it makes them seem bad?

She was sold to the sultan at a very young age, and had to claw her way through the harem to get anywhere. Any regrets she has she's made peace with, and won't apologize for things she did when she didn't have a choice.

[send me a fruits and vegetables ask]

#annika talks #answered #ask game #Pride #Justice #Feriha

[letmetellyouaboutmyfeels]

21, 27, 28, 37.

<3

21. Could you ever quit writing? Do you ever wish you could? Why or why not?

I don't think I really could quit, and I don't wish I could. I do wish I could do it full-time so that I have time to get through all the stories I want to write and feel more like I've just got one or two I'm working on instead of a dozen. And, well, I don't think I could because writing is what gives me joy, and it drives you insane to have stories just living in your head bugging you. Gotta get it out somewhere.

27. Who is the most stressful character you’ve ever written? Why?

In original fiction, Raleigh. She's got my rage at an unjust world, and unlike me, she's got the ruthlessness and power to do something about it. It's stressful to write her because I love her so very, very much and that includes her darker thoughts and jagged edges, but I constantly worry that readers won't like her and she'll be ill-received. I thought Detroit would be a lot more stressful to write given her overall arc and what it's meant to me, but I found that it was actually quite freeing to write her and share that part of myself, whereas Raleigh's proven more anxiety-inducing as I hope that everyone loves her as much as I do.

In fan fiction... *rubs temples*

Flynn, for the love of God, would you cooperate with me for FIVE GODDAMN SECONDS.

28. Who is the most delightful character you’ve ever written? Why?

In original fiction, that would be Shany. She's a fucking ray of sunshine who is literally there to be a soft place for her friend to land and I love her muchly.

In fanfiction: Chimney. That man is just. Wonderful. Hilarious and big-hearted. I don't write him much because it's tricky to nail his voice and I really want to do him justice, but he's an absolute delight.

37. If you were to be remembered only by the words you’ve put on the page, what would future historians think of you?

They'd think I had so much more sex than I actually did. I'm actually curious what people think they know about me from my fanfiction, since I don't feel it's overall that confessional, and the confessional moments that are there, I don't think anyone would realize that's what they are.

If we include my original works, historians would probably have quite a lot to say about my childhood trauma as well. They'd probably suspect me of committing some murders. I think they would conclude I lost a close family member at a young age. They'd probably nail the depression and passive suicide ideation, and might also figure out the gender thing. But I think they'd also draw some erroneous conclusions as well, for example my religious background I think they'd get quite wrong.

#mads answers things #these ones really made me think thank you dear #peridotglimmer #weird writing questions

[translytherins]

ok fuck ik ur getting tired of the kuroo but kuroo x male reader where reader can animate and draw, shir like that and is a very well known manga / anime maker or whatever

A/n: Nah... It's cool! I don't really mind! This was kinda rushed so some of the parts might not make sense but I still hope you like it!

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I Like You For You

Pairings: Kuroo Tetsuro x Male! Insecure! Artistic! Reader

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News that a new male student spread like wild fire all over the school spread lile wildfire even more so when they found out that the new student might be the creator and illustrator of [manga series]. Sadly for the second, first years and some of the third years, the new student was a third year and in class 3-5 so every hope of being in the same class as him were nonexistent but some of them were still hopeful on being either friends or acquaintance with him while some of the third years that were in class 3-5  were bragging about the fact that they were in the same class as some famous (I have no idea what I'm writing or where this is going). Kuroo was not one of them. He wasn't as excited as everyone else.

I mean he was a little excited about having a new classmate but he couldn't understand why his classmates were bragging about being in the same class with someone famous. That just doesn't sit right with him but he can't really do anything about it because people are still going to do it anyways. So here he is, in class with his fellow classmates who were excited to meet the male illustrator was in their class.

They heard the door open and they excitedly, not including Kuroo, turned their heads towards the door only to be disappointed when they saw their teacher walk in the door.

"Alright class! As I'm sure most of you already know we're having having a new student today!"

And with that everyone perked up again.

"You can come in now"

The door slowly opened and in came a male with [hair coloured] hair and [eye coloured] eyes entered the room and instantly everyone's breath was taken away. He was much more beautiful in real life. His pictures did not give him justice. Kuroo felt like he was being put in a trance. His breath was taken away from him and his heart fluttering when he stared at the male that just entered his classroom. In all honesty, Kuroo has never seen his pictures before but damn... He was beautiful! Now he understood what all the hype was about.

"Please introduce yourself"

The male that was standing in front of the classroom was just fiddling with his sleeve before he spoke up, eyes never leaving his sleeve.

"My names (M/n) (L/n)... Nice to meet you all... I guees..." he mumbled the last part quietly.

"It's nice to have you with us (L/n)-san. Please take you're seat behind Kuroo-san. Kuroo-san you wouldn't mind raising you're hand would you?"

Kuroo snapped out of his trance and raised his hand.

"Thank you Kuroo-san. Go ahead (L/n)-san"

(M/n) nodded his head and quietly made his way towards his seat, still feeling the eyes of his new classmates on him.

He quietly sat down eyes glued on his table, refusing to meet anyone's eyes.

"Alright class so today we will be learning-" the teacher spoke up, taking everyone's attention away from (M/n) and towards the lesson which (M/n) was greatful for.

-

It was currently recess and (M/n), somehow, managed to escape the clutches of his classmates and found himself under a cherry blossom tree behind school. There was no one there which he was thankful of because he just wanted to finish his education so he could focus on illustrating more. He was not here to make friends who were trying to be friends with him because he's famous. He took out his bento box that his mom made for him that morning and started eating. He was solely focusing on his food that he didn't realise that someone was approaching him until he felt a tap on his shoulder. He jumped slightly from his spot on the ground and looked up to see his classmate and a male with pudding hair that was messing around with his phone.

"Sorry to intrude but you don't mind us sitting with you right? It's okay if we can't though"

(M/n) was a bit hesitant but decided 'eh... Why not... At least he asked first and didn't just sit down and decided to try and get in his good grace. He nodded his head, indicating that it was okay for them to sit down with him. Kuroo flashed him a smile, that made (M/n)'s heart flutter slightly but he chose to ignore it, before sitting down and pulling the pudding haired male with him. It was slightly awkward at first but slowly (M/n) began opening up to Kuroo and the pudding haired male, Kozume Kenma, because he felt safe around the two of them but he still couldn't figure out why his heart flutteres slightly nor why his hands are always sweaty whenever he talks to Kuroo but he just decided to not pay attention to it.

-

It was the end of the school day and (M/n) opened his locker and was met with a lot of love letters falling out of his locker making him sigh. It's been a few months since he joined this school and it was pretty uneventful for the most part if you dismiss the fact that most of his fellow students just wanted to be friends with him because he's famous or girls would confess to him because of the same reason. He wasn't really interested in a relationship with anyone especially with girls because he wasn't really attracted to them but his heart has been fluttering when he thought of a certain bedhead male. He came to term with his feelings after he was confronted by Kenma a few weeks ago about his undeniable feelings for the male and after a few minutes of denying it, he finally accepted his feelings after Kenma showed him evidence like he was in court or something and he doesn't know what to do with his feelings. I mean... Sure he could just confess but he couldn't shake off the feeling of being afraid of whether or not Kuroo was just using him for fame. He knew Kuroo was nothing like that but he still couldn't help thinking about it as a possibility.

As all these thoughts were running through his head when a letter caught his eyes among the other letters that he was putting in an extra bag he brought to put the letters in. He grabbed the letter and saw the name on the envelope that made his heart race.

❤︎Kuroo Tetsuro❤︎

(M/n), with shaky hands opened the envelope and took the note that was inside and read it.

-𝙼𝚎𝚎𝚝 𝚖𝚎 𝚞𝚗𝚍𝚎𝚛 𝚝𝚑𝚎 𝚌𝚑𝚎𝚛𝚛𝚢 𝚋𝚕𝚘𝚜𝚜𝚘𝚖 𝚝𝚛𝚎𝚎 𝚝𝚑𝚊𝚝 𝚠𝚑𝚎𝚛𝚎 𝚠𝚎 𝚏𝚒𝚛𝚜𝚝 𝚜𝚙𝚘𝚔𝚎-

After reading it, (M/n) carefully placed the note back into the envelope and put it into his bag and made his way towards the back of the school where the cherry blossom tree was located at. As

he approached the cherry blossom and as he approached it, he saw Kuroo waiting under the cherry blossom tree with his hands behind his back. He seems to be giving himself a pep-talk making me giggle slight which in turn made him look towards me with an embarrassed look on his face. I stood in front of Kuroo with a slightly amused but he was overall confused about the whole situation.

"So... What was the reason you wanted to meet with me here?"

Kuroo took a deep breath before he spoke.

"You know... Ever since you came to this school

I always felt my heart race whenever you were near me and I just wanted to say..."

He trailed off and pulled out his hands from behind his hands and he was holding a bouquet of flowers in one of his hand and a sketchbook in the other.

"Will you go out with me?"

(M/n) was speechless and wanted to say yes but the small doubt in his mind kept nagging at him.

"I... Don't know... I really like you but... I'm scared thay you're just using me... I know you're not like that it's just th-"

Before (M/n) could finish his sentence he was embraced by Kuroo and that was the breaking point for (M/n). He just broke down in tears and buried his face in Kuroo's shoulder. Kuroo just rubbed his back comfortingly. The bouquet of flowers and sketchbook forgotten on the floor as they embraced each other.

"You know... I don't care about you're money and fame... Because you know what I see when I'm with you? I see this sweet, caring and an insanely talented artist that I love so much and care about so much and I promise you this... Famous or not... All I care about... Is you... So let me ask you again... Will you go out with me? It's okay if you say no" Kuroo reassured.

(M/n) rapidly nodded his head, tears still falling out of his eyes, which made Kuroo nod and embraced (M/n) tighter.

"I love you... Don't forget that okay?" Kuroo said and kissed (M/n)'s head making him smile his tears no longer running down his face.

Maybe this will work out.

"Finally... It only took you a couple of years..." they heard a familiar voice spoke up and they looked towards where the voice came from and saw Kenma standing there with his phone.

"Haha... Very funny Kenma... But thanks"

"It's not a big deal but remember our deal" Kenma said before he left them alone.

"What deal did you make with him?"

"Don't worry about it"

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#anime #male reader #haikyuu #haikyuu x male reader #gay #haikyuu kuroo #kuroo tetsuro x male reader #kuroo x you #kuroo testuro #hq kuroo #kuroo tetsurō #kuroo x male reader #haikyuu kenma #hq kenma #wingman kenma

[crazywritertomboy1224]

(I feel you in the empty inbox too 😢 I have a deal for you, I send you this kirishima request since imma kirishima simp and you have something to write about, deal?)

How about this:

Kirishima and his girlfriend managed to sneak out of the UA campus for a night city date. They were all nervous about being caught, but those fears fade away when they started having fun. Like they went to the arcade were the tried their best to kick each others ass. (you can add whatever else you want to the date). They were having so much fun they almost lost track of time, then tried to sneak back to the dorms without being noticed, but obviously, they failed.

(if you don't mind I'll keep sending you requests :p)

I've been WAITING for a Kiri one! So happy to finally have found another Kiri simp! Sorry this one took so long, I had to get it just right, yk? (Plus I've been kinda busy ;-;) Anyways, hope you like it (and hope it brings Kiri justice)! (Also yes please keep sending in asks!!) As always, stay safe and hydrated and don't forget to eat! <3

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

Eijiro Kirishima x Reader

TW: cussing

Genre: Fluff, romantic

Word count: 1579

You cracked your door open, peeking out to make sure no one was around. After you assured the coast was clear, you slipped out, closing the door with a small click behind you.

You stood outside your dorm room, waiting patiently. A nearby door creaked open and you shushed him frantically. “Shut up! God, you’re loud.”

He just laughed quietly, pulling you into a hug and pressing his nose into your hair. You sighed in contentment, having missed these times when it was just the two of you.

“C’mon, let’s go.” He grabbed your hand and you both tiptoed down the hall, took the stairs down, and opened and closed the front doors, all with barely any noise.

Once outside, you turned around to see if you could see any lights turning on, just checking no one had heard you.

“It’s fine, babe. No one saw or heard us. We’re good, now let’s go!”Eijiro grabbed your hand and led you off campus and over to a nearby arcade.

He ran ahead of you and held the door open for you. “M’lady?” he says, a smile playing on his lips as he swung his hand in a semi-circle around, over his head, and under his other arm.

You grinned and walked in, giving him a cheek kiss as you passed. “Thhaannnkkk youuuu,” you said, drawing out your words dramatically.

He giggled and followed you in, trying to fight you to be the first to the counter. You elbowed him in the ribs, temporarily pushing him out of the running.

You ran up to the counter and slammed your hands down on the old, faded linoleum. “Two pleas- DAMMIT EIJIRO!” you screamed as Eijiro came up behind you and pulled you away by your waist.

He slid the money across the counter and turned back to you with a huge smile plastered across his face. You growled under your breath and walked up to him, looking straight up at his face, arms crossed.

“What, pebble?” he asked, tugging your hand up to the counter so the cashier could give you your band and cards.

“Oh, nothing. It’s just that I feel bad for you.”

“Oh? Why’s that?”

“Because I’m gonna kick your ass.” You smirked, dashing off to find the first game.

You skidded to a stop in front of the only available skee-ball machine and swiped your card. Eijiro did the same on the one paired with yours. It beeped and the plastic shield above the balls slid back.

You picked up the first one and rolled it, landing it in the outer ten-point ring, Eijiro managing to make it in the twenty-point cylinder. You growled to yourself, knowing you’d have to up your game to beat him.

He glanced over at you and flashed you a grin as he rolled his second ball, making it into the ten-point this time.

You roll it with so much angry force that it actually makes it into the one-hundred slot. You freeze for a second, registering what just happened before Eijiro nudges you with his elbow.

“Great shot, y/n!” He beams a huge smile at you and you can’t help but smile back and hug him.

“Thanks, babe!” You roll another one, scoring a ten, Eijiro rolling a fifty.

“One minute left!” The machine squealed out.

You both made a show of quickly rolling all of the balls down, not really caring what holes they landed in. You ended up with 380, Eijiro with 370.

You met him halfway as your machines printed out your tickets and he wrapped you in a hug, breathing in your ear. “Good job, pebble.” He congratulated you.

“Thanks, you too," you replied, ripping your tickets off and shoving them into your back pocket.

“What’s next?” you ask him, since you picked the first game.

“Umm, air hockey? I’m not horrible at it,” he suggests, pointing to the left.

“Sounds good," you reply and he leads the way over.

You take your positions at either side of the table and swipe your cards. You place your hand on your paddle as Eijiro does the same. The puck falls out on his side and he places it in front of his paddle, swatting it over to you.

You swat it back at him, aiming for his pocket. You missed and he deflected it, shooting it back toward your pocket with a little wrist flourish.

You tried to defend it and send it back at him, but you missed and it landed straight in your pocket. You sighed as you grabbed it and placed it back on the table, cracking your neck.

Eijiro laughed. “Why- why are you-” He doubled over in laughter. “Why are you- why are you cracking your- popping your- your neck?” He asked, stuttering from laughter.

You glared at him playfully. “Because I’m about to beat your ass.”

His face suddenly went serious. “No way.” He deflected your shots and sent the puck spinning into your pocket time after time after time until the buzzer went off.

He won… 26-1. He laughed and hugged you. “I love you!” He said, grinning. You sighed in acceptance but were unable to stay mad at him.

“Why do you have to be so cute?” You mock-complained, pressing your face into his chest as he wrapped his arms around you tightly.

“Alright, let’s go. What’s next?” You stood up on your tiptoes and looked around, eyes scanning and mapping out the whole place.

“Hmm… bumper cars?” You suggested, lowering yourself back to the ground and shrugging.

Eijiro reached out and grabbed your hand. “Great idea! Let’s go.”

You dashed across the building and joined the line. You checked the time on your watch. “Oh, shit. Kiri, it’s already two am!”

“Oh shit.” He flipped his wrist to check his own watch and his eyes widened. “Okay, after this, we go back.” You nodded.

After what felt like forever, you were at the front of the line. You showed the nice girl your bands and she let you in. You sat down in the [____] one, your favorite color, while Eijiro chose the red one.

You zoomed around the track, waving pageant-style at him as he hunched over the wheel in the little bumper car that seemed way too small for him. You laughed, throwing your head back as you finished in third place all in all, first between you two.

You stood up, brushing off your clothes, and walked over to help a struggling Kirishima out of his doll-sized car. “Need some help?” You asked, chickling as you extended your hand to him. He took it with an annoyed face but you could see in his eyes that he was joking.

You pulled him up by his hand, your fingers lacing together by instinct once he rose completely out. He wrapped you in a hug as you waited in line to leave.

“Ugh, bottle-necking us like this isn’t cool.” He muttered against your hair, annoyed at the people who designed it with only one exit gate.

You giggled against his shoulder and pull away, leading you out in a hurry. “SHIT!” You yelled. “That took an hour!” Eijiro froze in terror, staring at his phone.

“Fuck. Kaminari and Mina have been texting me.” He said, tapping the screen.

“Dammit. Jirou and Momo have been texting and calling me.” You replied, opening the messages to tell them you’re fine.

You finished texting before him and grabbed the front of his shirt, guiding him out of the building and back to the dorms.

You pulled the doors open and saw Mina and Momo. They were sitting on the couch, sipping tea. Mina looked over as you two walked through the doors. “Care to explain where you’ve been all night?” She asked, raising an eyebrow over her mug.

“Uh- we were with… Denki and Jirou,” Kirishima tries to explain. You nod, thinking you might be able to get away with it.

Denki and Jirou pop their heads over the back of the other couch. Mina looks over with a pointed expression. “Care to try again?”

“We wanted to get away for a bit, just the two of us and have some fun before finals. We were at the arcade down the street.” You blurted out, ducking your head in shame.

“Why didn’t you invite us? We could’ve all hung out!” They exclaimed, clearly riveted that you didn’t invite them.

“Like we said, we just wanted some alone time. Sorry guys, maybe next time?” Eijiro responded, placing a hand around your waist and pulling you close.

Mina seemed satisfied with that answer and sent you off to bed while the four of them stayed downstairs, doing whatever the hell they were doing.

Before you went into your dorm, Eijiro pulled you close and smothered you in a hug. You pulled away, tired, but he gripped at the back of your hips and pressed a sweet, loving kiss to your lips and another to your forehead.

“Goodnight princess. I love you.” He whispered into your ear, hugging you tight one last time.

“Goodnight my manly man. I love you too.” You kissed his neck, which was the highest part you could reach.

You both turned around and went into your separate dorm rooms to sleep in your own separate beds that night. You fell asleep smiling and all the second thoughts you’d ever had slipped away. This was exactly what you needed.

#eijiro kirishima #kirishima eijirou #eijirou kirishima x reader #eijiro kirishima x reader #kirishima x y/n #fluff #kirishima fluff #eijiro kirishima fluff #mha #asks #thanks! #<3

[imgoingtofreakoutnow]

An old friend - Part 2

Summary: You've been invited for tea at the Bridgerton's household. You'll meet some new faces and perhaps dig in the past with your host...

Pairing: Anthony Bridgerton x Fem!reader

Other characters: Benedict Bridgerton, Violet Bridgerton, Gregory Bridgerton, Hyacinth Bridgerton

Warnings: looooots of yearning, face touching (?) if this counts as warning

Words: 3.6k+

A/n: I wasn't planning on doing a second part but here we are! I know it's long, and the start can feel a bit slow, but stick until the end; things get interesting there😏😉

Part 1 - Part 2 - Part 3

As you stepped down the carriage, your eyes were immediately drawn to the facade of the house: even though you weren't a child anymore it still looked majestic to your eyes. The lilac wisteria hanged from the red terracotta wall, swinging his blooming flowers just above the door, giving the compound that vibrant hint of colour that you remembered.

When you heard the wheels of your carriage move against the pebble, you decided it was time to enter the Bridgerton's household. However, you soon realized that your feet were seemingly planted in the ground just before the gates of the estate.

Nervously holding your shaking gloves near your lap, you tried to calm down that sudden wave of anxiety. You truly had nothing to be worried about: your hosts were some of the kindest human beings you had ever met and the house was no stranger to you either. Nonetheless, war drums started playing in your chest at the thought that Anthony was waiting for you inside...

"Can I help you, miss?"

You turned towards the voice that called you back to reality to be met with the tall figure of Benedict. "Mr. Bridgerton"

He bowed as you curtseyed. "Well, this is embarrassing" he muttered, taking off his hat with an apologetic smile. "You know my name, but I don't know yours... should I know you, miss?"

You smiled back, shaking slightly your head. "Probably not, sir. I'm Y/N Y/L/N. I believe I am awaited for tea this afternoon: Lady Bridgerton invited me at last night's ball"

"I recall Anthony mentioning something about a guest..." he started but shrugged afterwards, "however I wasn't listening". His green eyes moved on you, squeezing slightly as they took in your features. "I beg you forgiveness in advance if I'm mistaken, but do you appear to be that little girl that used to play with Anthony when he still possessed a sense of humour?"

You hardly stopped a laugh from escaping your lips. "I shall not know, did Lord Bridgerton used to entertain himself with many young ladies when he was young himself?"

Benedict shook his head, still smiling. "Not that I can remember"

"Then that's probably me" you confirmed, chuckling slightly as the weight on your stomach eased considerably.

"I shall not believe that! The world is much smaller than I thought it was". He rubbed his cheek, his face lit by shock and delight. Then, looking at the front door and then back at you: "Why then were you standing here like a statue?"

At his question you lowered your gaze to your hands, not as shaky as before but still partly trembling. When you opened your mouth to reply, no rational answer came out from your parted lips.

Thankfully, Benedict seemed to notice your distress and simply took your arm in his. "Admit it" he said, smiling cheekily and guiding you inside, "you were waiting for me just to escort you inside. Isn't that right?"

With a giggle you nodded. "You uncovered my plan, sir. I shall hope it remains a secret between the two of us"

Benedict opened the door for you. "I'll take it to the grave, miss Y/L/N"

You flashed him one last smile before your eyes wandered on the interior of the household, leaving you speechless: everything was exactly where your clouded memories placed it, with few errant exceptions, like the china vase in the vestibule or the tiny pottery work on the table next to the door of the drawing room.

It felt almost unreal, like walking in a dream made long time ago... nonetheless, the way your heart jumped in your throat when you saw Anthony slouching on a couch near the window felt very much real to you.

"Miss Y/L/N". When Violet's voice reached your ears she was already in front of you, taking your arm to drag you away from her second-born. "It is a delight to see you again so soon. I believe you haven't met my youngest children, Gregory and Hyacinth".

The two siblings looked at you, Hyacinth smiling fascinated while Gregory was subtly munching something.

You smiled at them. "It's a pleasure to meet you"

"Miss Y/L/N, could I ask you something?"

Your eyes fixed in Hyacinth's, wide with curiosity. "Of course"

She took some steps towards you and you bent down so that she could cup your ear. "Is it true that you and Anthony made all the nurses go mad when you were our age?"

"Who told you that?" you whispered back, grinning. "We made them go mad when we were much younger than you"

Hyacinth covered her mouth, giggling silently as she went back next to her brother. Gregory, still looking at you, finally gulped down his food and turned to his mother. “Can we go play outside now, mama?”

With a sigh and a gesture of her hand, Lady Bridgerton released her youngest from the strings of formality and you watched them running one after the other out of the drawing room.

“Pardon their impatience” sighed Violet, sitting on the sofa next to her. She seemed terribly tired and you couldn’t imagine otherwise: if the other Bridgertons were half the troublemakers you and Anthony were, you were surprised the household was still intact.

You took a seat next to her, your back straightened as a greek column. “There is no need to apologise, I do envy their freedom” you admitted as your gaze fell in your lap. “They should enjoy every moment they have left before they come of age”

“From your tone, miss Y/L/N, it transpires the belief that there is no freedom in our society whatsoever”

You turned to Anthony, now seated a little more properly on the couch. His eyes locked in yours terribly easily, as they already possessed the key to your soul.

"Not if one wants to be accepted by said society, Lord Bridgerton" you clarified. "And we know well enough that not many would risk their place in this - pardon my words - refined golden parade for a semblance of temporary freedom"

"A golden parade". Anthony tasted your words on his tongue. "Shall we ever be freed from the chains society imposed us then?"

"It is possible, yes. Nevertheless, it may not be as easy as one might expect"

Anthony was still looking at you and the fabric of your gloves started sticking to your sweaty hands under his stare. You lowered your gaze. "But of course, this is just my humble opinion"

"Quite pessimistic, if I may" Benedict's voice broke through your thoughts. Slouching like Anthony on the other couch, there was no doubt those two were brothers. "But my word, you and Eloise would get along perfectly well"

"My second daughter. She is quite a free spirit" explained Violet seeing your confusion. "Unfortunately, you won't meet her today: she went for a walk with her friend, miss Penelope Featherington"

“On another quest to find the writer who hides behind the name of Lady Whistledown” added Benedict, earning a glare from his mother.

"I'm sure there will be many other occasions to meet her. And your eldest daughter as well. I’ve heard she married the Duke of Hastings, is that right?"

Her eyes lit as soon as you mentioned her daughter, and before you knew it, your mind was filled with every single detail of the wedding and engagement party, and all the circumstances that preceded and followed it.

A light knock made everyone turn towards the door. The footmen placed swiftly and silently the trays with teapots and cups on the small tables around the room, together with many small plates full of different biscuits and what looked like delicious refreshments.

One of the footmen approached cautiosly Violet, who was now talking about the scandal in which Colin had been unknowingly drawn. "Lady Bridgerton". The woman turned towards him with a smile. "Miss Francesca denies her medicine..."

Violet sighed, putting her cup back on the tray. "Goodness gracious... She went to Bath on her own, she's almost of age and she keeps throwing tantrums for these little things...". She then turned to you: "I shall be back in a few minutes, my dear"

You nodded, watching her leave the room with the young footman. The exact moment she disappeared through the door, Benedict jumped from his seat, almost making you spill the tea on your dress.

"I'm terribly sorry, but I shall leave as well" he explained, putting his tailcoat back on in a hurry. He looked towards Anthony. "If mother asks, I'm in my room feeling unwell and I definitely won't attend dinner"

"Shall I know where you're going?" asked Anthony with a smirk on his face. "Perhaps getting a new suit?"

Benedict ignored him, which made Anthony grin even more. “It’s been a pleasure, miss Y/L/N. We shall talk more next time we meet" he said with a small bow and a smile, before walking out the drawing room as well.

You took a long sip from your small cup, trying to focus on the taste of the tea and not on the fact that you and Anthony were now completely alone. The hot drink had a fresh mint scent and... and then his touch on your skin was everything your mind could think of.

"Are you enjoying yourself, miss Y/L/N?"

"Absolutely!" you replied, your voice an octave higher than normal. Clearing your throat, you attempted to think of something to say that wasn't in any way related to Anthony's hands on you. "The tea is divine"

He chuckled, taking a biscuit from the tray. "I'm glad you like it". He took a bite before asking again: "Does the house do justice to your memories?"

"It does" you nodded. "I'm surprised how few things have changed over the years but I'm glad to be able to recognise every corner. It's like stepping in the past"

Anthony smiled without taking his eyes off you. Looking down on your empty cup you felt your skin itch under his deep stare. Before you could think of anything else to say, you heard the sound of fabric rustling: Anthony Bridgerton had stood up and was now moving closer with every step. He stretched his hand out to you, smiling like he did only around you.

"Would you like to step in the past again, miss Y/L/N?"

With his eyes locked in yours, your mouth was wholly dry. You had no idea what he had in mind but, strangely enough, you didn't care: you just took his hand.

The heat radiating through the thin fabric of your gloves set on fire every nerve of your body. You held tight onto his hand as he pulled you down a maze of corridors, running within those walls like when you were kids. The excitement, and the new feeling that was pushing against your corset, let a wide, joyful smile appear on your face, as you felt lighter than ever before.

Then, after a last turn, he pulled you in a room, closing the door behind him. It took a deep breath for you to realise Anthony had dragged you in the library: it was smaller than you recalled, and even so it held so much knowledge you always found overwhelming stepping inside, as if you weren’t worthy of it.

Still panting, Anthony collapsed on the settee near the window, his smile wider than ever. "Good Lord..." he sighed letting his head fall back, his shoulders shook by laughter. "I haven't felt this alive in quite some time..."

"As much as I enjoy seeing you smiling, did we truly have to run all the way here?" you whispered, trying to steady your breath. "If anyone saw us, they probably thought we were up to something, which is not true at all"

Placing his elbows on his knees, Anthony bended over, his eyes lit by the spark of mischief. "If we're not up to something... then why are you whispering?"

You shook your head, turning your back to him. You walked closer to the atlas, opened on book stand in one of the corner of the room. With your index you gently traced the lines of the continents shown on the page, searching names of places you knew. Then a realization hit you.

“We shouldn’t be here”. Taking a step back from the atlas, you turned to Anthony.

He looked at you with furrowed brows. “Why so?”

"I'm quite sure you're aware that, for a lady, being in the same room as a man without a chaperone is improper and disgraceful" you clarified, rubbing your hands nervously.

"Is it?". You shot Anthony a glare.

"Yes, my lord. Awfully disgraceful". You looked at the door, terrified someone might walk in.

Anthony sighed. “Very well. But before we go... would you please read something to me?”. The request wasn’t exactly what you were expecting and Anthony, as he had read in your mind, added: “There’s nothing improper in that”

You took a sharp breath but then nodded. “Very well”. You moved your eyes on the many books on the bookshelves, the titles and authors embossed on their spines in golden letters: Shakespeare, Edgeworth, Scott.

"Do you want me to read anything in particular, my lord?"

He closed his eyes, slouching again on the settee. "Anything as long as I can hear your voice"

Taken aback by his words, you were glad he couldn’t see your scarlet cheeks. You took a small poetry volume, opening it at a random page. The words written on the paper danced in your mind with the finesse of a butterfly.

You sat down on the other end of the settee as your lungs tried their best to fill with enough air to keep you from fainting. You took a last deep breath before starting to read out loud.

"The curfew tolls the knell of parting day,

The lowing herd wind slowly o'er the lea,

The plowman homeward plods his weary way,

And leaves the world to darkness and to me."

As you kept reading, the book in one hand and the other resting in your lap, the verses rolled on your tongue like candid pearls on velvet; an ancient incantation created to charm minds.

You didn't realise that Anthony had been getting closer and closer by the second until the moment he took your empty hand in his. You stopped mid-verse as your eyes jolted to your joined hands.

"Go on" he gently asked, stroking his thumb on your hand.

Gulping down your beating heart you started reading again, but your attention was nowhere near the words printed on the paper. It was all on the way his fingers rested on yours and moved against your glove, as trying to find a path past the thin fabric.

That small and seemingly meaningless touch unleashed a thunderstorm within you: powerful, destructive and awfully seductive.

You finished the poem, the last word leaving you breathless. Closing the book, the closeness with Anthony felt way too much to handle.

"We should go now". You stood, breaking the contact with Anthony to put the book in its place. Your hand without his touch felt extremely empty.

You heard him sigh. "I believe we should". Anthony stood up, smoothing his blue tailcoat. After a moment of silence, he spoke again, his eyes set on fixing his sleeves: "I must apologise, miss Y/L/N"

You turned towards him with eyes wide in confusion before frowning. "For what, my lord?"

"I'm convinced that my puerile behaviour put you in an uncomfortable and improper position" - his voice and face were completely emotionless, not the face of the Anthony you knew - "and I beg your forgiveness for that. I had no rights to act this way towards a lady such as yourself and I would totally understand if you chose to..." he stopped a moment, searching for the strength to finish the phrase, “...interrupt our acquaintance”

"Lord Bridgert-"

"Of course” he continued, "I would never want for you to interrupt your visits to my mother and family. And, of course, I shall have prepared a carriage to take you home and then, hopefully, everything will soon seem just a-"

"Anthony"

You finally moved from the bookshelf, catching his hand in yours. His eyes moved from the doorknob, first resting on your joint hands and then raising to your face. It had felt like days since he last glanced at you.

"Please, let me speak”. He didn’t move, his face still unreadable but his eyes had your complete attention. You took a deep breath as you put your messy thoughts in the right order.

“You didn't offend me" you explained, even if your trembling voice could've told otherwise. "Your actions, your attentions weren't a discomfort to me whatsoever. They were just-", a shaky sigh escaped your lips, "What I feel in your presence is overwhelming, like standing on a cliff while the wind howls around you, trying to push you off the edge... you wish you could ignore it but it keeps luring you in and-"

His hand on your cheek cut you off. His thumb caressed your cheekbone and slid down, along your jaw, to stop on your chin. "So this pleases you?" he asked, his voice deep as his eyes were staring into yours. At a loss of words, you nodded as fireworks exploded in your stomach.

At his words you suddenly remembered: “Your mother! She’s probably still waiting in the drawing room!”. You took your hands to your face, covering your heated cheeks. “Oh no... she’ll never forgive me...”

Eventually he smiled, and seeing his eyes lighting up was just what you needed to feel relieved. "That's good to hear” he murmured, stroking your cheek again and again, “but now you should really go home: we don’t want your mother to get worried, don’t we?”"

He shook his head chuckling. “My mother doesn’t hold grudges for such ridiculous matters. However, if it could help you sleep better tonight, I shall talk to her. You must trust me: I already have mastered a talent in finding quite believable excuses”

You smirked. “Why am I not surprised?”. Anthony smiled before taking again your hand. A bolt ran through your arm.

"I know it may sound bold, but would you join me and my family at tomorrow’s picnic in Hyde Park? These social gatherings always bore me to death but I’m sure your company would be the perfect remedy"

"Two invitations in a row?”. You grinned. “The ton will talk about this for quite some time"

“Is that a yes, miss Y/L/N?”

You smiled. “Of course it is, my lord. I could never refuse you anything”

<-•☆•->

When the carriage left you in front of your house, there was still enough light for you to see the pathway leading to the front door. As you entered and closed it behind you, your mother appeared at the top of the staircase.

“Thank Goodness you’re back!”. She run down the stairs, immediately cupping your cheeks. “Are you alright? Did anything happen to you?”

“I’m good, mama” you confirmed, with a smile. "Lord Bridgerton invited me to attend the picnic in Hyde Park tomorrow". At your words, every inch of blood seemed to be drained from your mother's face. “Is everything quite alright?”

“I’ve heard some awful rumors at the market today...” she whispered, taking your hands in hers. “About the Bridgertons”

You smiled gently. “Is it about the scandal surrounding Colin Bridgerton? Because I can assure you he had no part in-”

“it isn’t, my dear”. She shook her head, some locks of hair escaping her tight hairdo. “It’s about Lord Bringerton”

Your smile fell in a second. “What about him?”

Your mother took a deep breath before going on: “I believe him to be a rake, my dear, and from what I’ve heard, he spent most of last season attending the private rooms of different opera singers...”

"What?". You shook your head in disbelief. "No, it can't be... I know him and he's nothing like this"

"It has been years, sweetheart" she said, kindly caressing your cheek. "Maybe he's changed, like you have..."

"But he's not a rake!". You took a step back from your mother. "Lord Bridgerton is a gentleman, he would never-"

You stopped mid-sentence as what happened that afternoon replayed in your mind: surely you didn't dislike his behaviour, as daring as it was, but it was improper. Terribly improper. Something a rake would do with light skirts. Or with young and willing ladies.

Your corset seemed to be tighter than ever, squeezing your lungs until no air was left behind.

"I do not want to push you, my dear..." continued your mother, "but perhaps you should rethink your choice for tomorrow. You could say you had forgotten a previous engagement or-"

"No". Your steady voice didn't reflect the turmoil in your chest at all. "I have already accepted, mother" you said, walking past her to the stairs. "It would be disrespectful to refuse the invitation of a Viscount"

Besides, you wanted answers, and the only people who could give you some was Anthony himself.

Taglist: @ba-cute @xceafh @latekate1807 (if you want to be added or removed, let me know)

#anthony bridgerton #anthony bridgerton x reader #bridgerton #benedict bridgerton #violet bridgerton #hyacinth bridgerton #gregory bridgerton

[unofficialadamtaurus]

how do you think a talk between blake & marrow should or would have gone? 👀 we gotta do the hard work ourselves smh

Well the show helpfully put the bar in hell for that conversation, so for anyone with actual good intentions, there's really nowhere to go but up.

Out the gate we should establish some goals for this conversation, y'know, try to slap some duct tape on the tectonic faults in the worldbuilding. I'd want their talk to do the following:

1. Establish nuance in intra-faunus relations. For instance, are opinions on the Belladonnas mixed? How do non-Menagerie faunus feel about Menagerie? What about faunus in the military?

2. Create nuance with the White Fang and faunus protest in general. Are there faunus who supported them but never officially joined their ranks? People who believed in neither the WF nor the Belladonnas?

3. Give Marrow some depth, some backstory, and actually take him seriously as the only faunus in the Ace-Ops.

4. Outline a way forward to further explore the realities of faunus living in Mantle and in Atlas (with the expectation of follow-through).

I have a bit of an advantage here - I already wrote this conversation. Maybe I didn't do all of these targets justice, but I hope I at least laid the groundwork. For the curious, it happens in chapter 8 of Hollow People. I've slapped the main part of their talk from there under the cut.

[for context, Blake and Marrow have been separated from the others during the mission to clear the geist from the SDC mine]

Blake cleared her throat. "How long have you been with the Ace-Ops?"

Marrow glanced over at her and searched her face for a second, but there was nothing there but polite curiosity. He sighed. "A few months."

That explained the rookie comments. "What's it like?"

"Look, is there a point to this?"

"I don't mean to offend—"

"It's not—sorry." He stopped walking and faced her. "I'm just stressed, and usually when people start asking stuff like that, it's always about this." He gestured to his tail.

Blake's ears drooped. "It…might be about that."

His eyes narrowed. "Are you asking just to get a heartwarming diversity story to spread around, or are you asking because you're faunus yourself?"

His hostility towards her wasn't just because of the whole Adam situation. There was something else there, and really, it could only be one thing. "I know opinions on my family are mixed." That drew him up short. "And even though I mainly came to Atlas to see the relic stored away in a vault, now that I'm here, I want to help. I saw how bad things were in Mantle and Adam made it pretty clear that the slums are way worse."

"He's a piece of work," Marrow noted. "I've seen stubborn pride. My own family won't take a single lien I send them. But him? A league of his own."

"He has his reasons."

"Yeah, I can see that. And your reasons? Trying to spread the Belladonna way? No offense, but if you try to convince me that peaceful protest is the 'one true way,' whatever follows will definitely draw Grimm right to us."

"I wanted to get your advice."

He blinked. "My advice?"

"I've never even been to this kingdom before. You grew up here, you made it onto the Ace-Ops, and we're stuck down here together. Who else would I ask?" She met his assessing silence with a resolute gaze. She had a plan forming in her head, and Marrow was the first step—assuming they made it out of this hole.

With a jerk of his chin, he signaled that they should keep walking. Blake fell into step next to him. "Advice on what, exactly?"

"I want to learn more about what it's like to live here. If I want to help—and I do—I need to hear about the problems the faunus in Atlas and Mantle are facing. I understand if you don't want to talk to me about those kinds of things, but do you know anyone who would?"

To her right, rocks shaken loose by the earlier collapse tumbled down. They both aimed their weapons towards the sound on reflex, only to let out twin sighs of relief when it turned out to be nothing and then carry on.

"I can't give you a perfect answer," Marrow said, "but there's a support group for faunus in the military that meets a few times a month. Our next meeting is in a few days; you can come if you want. A lot of people there would be willing to talk to you. Some of them might even be able to point you to people in the city and down in Mantle you should talk to."

#ironpines #unofficial adam answers #smh indeed #rwby marrow #blake belladonna #rwde #uat writing #hollow people #hey look it's me actually putting my money where my mouth is

[yourcreepyneighborhoodelftwink]

As the Hero fell upwards through the sands of time, the days rewinding like the gears of a clock, he landed calmly on the cobblestones of Clock Town Square, at the dawn of the first day. He had been through this many times before, and had grown accustomed to reliving the same 3 days, helping the same people with the same schedules, slowly making more and more progress each time. At least he didn't feel an enormous time crunch, even with the threat of the moon hanging above him, he was always able to rewind the days, and could take days to rest, to sleep or ride Epona or play with the inhabitants.

He rarely did, but it was nice that the option was there.

He was pulled from his thoughts by Tatl getting his attention with a soft tinkling sound, looking over at the stand near the Deku flower, and the note pinned to it.

"That's certainly new…" she said cautiously as they approached, Tatl reading aloud to Link.

The pair exchanged a confused and frightened look. It wasn't signed, but they knew exactly who left the note for them.

BEN sat on the edge of the field, their boots hanging over the barrier where the grass turned into sand, looking out at the canyon leading to the beach. It had been so long since they had entered their game, only playing it from the outside. Perhaps they had been showing too much love to Breath of the Wild lately and not enough to the dark masterpiece of their former prison, or perhaps it was the only world they could enter that felt truly real, where the sun was warm and the wind blew. They HAD become a bit spoiled, learning that adding weather effects and random wind blowing did wonders to immersion when they entered a game.

They closed their eyes, speaking up before looking behind them.

"You didn't have to rush over here. "as possible" doesn't mean "instantly", you know…" BEN said gently, lowering their ears with a guilty smile.

Link frowned softly, keeping his distance from the elf. He couldn't draw his sword AND sign, after all, so he would have to make due. "You didn't specify. I've learned better than to provoke you."

BEN couldn't exactly blame his caution. It's why they were here, after all. "My bad. I'll be more specific next time. But I suppose it's neither here nor there now…"

"...is there something you want, BEN? " Link asked, clearly a bit anxious by being asked to meet.

"...a few things. I won't lie and say there isn't a favor I'd like to ask the both of you-"

"Like you have any right to ask Link for anything, at this point!" Tatl quickly interjected, turning red in anger. "You've terrorized us for no good reason, revealed truths we didn't need to know, and then just left us alone one day!"

"-BUT," BEN continued, "that isn't my main reason for being here. First and foremost... You're long overdue for an apology from me."

Link and Tatl looked at each other in confusion. "...pardon? " Link questioned.

"...I've been doing a lot of thinking and self reflecting lately. Especially because I finally have reason to want to improve myself. And I think I've gotten pretty far in trying to right the wrongs of my past, and try to change as a person. But I still never gave the both of you a proper apology, or even an explanation for how I treated you…" BEN sheepishly said.

Link looked down at the seated person, absolutely dumbfounded. All the times he had been attacked by BEN came instantly into his mind, only to not even be able to so much as scratch them in return, even the might of a Goron doing nothing to them. All the times he had been followed and told he was insignificant, worthless, a joke of a hero, told he was nothing more than a bland, boring conduit for the player of a game in a world far grander than his own. Only for BEN to just... Disappear one day. Gone. Vanish into thin air, and only return occasionally, seemingly at their leisure. Something... Didn't add up to him, and he wasn't sure what on Earth made them suddenly stop tormenting him, and now want to make things right.

"...I'll hear you out, at least," Link finally said, stepping forward to sit next to him. If nothing else, were he going to harm Link, BEN would have done it by now.

"Not that it makes us all hunky-dory yet," Tatl offered, settling on Link's shoulder.

BEN smiled softly, letting out a relieved breath. They stayed quiet for a moment, deciding their words carefully. "I'm not... Sure where to start. So much has happened to me. I guess I should start when we first met. When I first entered this game. It was my favorite game, and with me when I died," they started.

Tatl interrupted, jingling softly. "...when you died?"

BEN nodded softly. "When I died. I was just about your age, Link, about 12. More specifically, when I was murdered. Father simply... Got tired of me, I suppose. He tricked my religion's leader- we refer to him as The Father- into thinking it was my time to Ascend when it wasn't. The whole explanation of my belief system isn't important in this, just that I was robbed of something very important and sacred to me because of it."

"That sounds horrible," Link signed.

"It was... And I was only 12, and not the greatest at understanding or expressing my emotions... I was so angry, absolutely furious at losing that chance, as what had been done to me. I've always had a strong sense of justice, if you can believe it. I don't easily stand for people wronging me. But when I died, my spirit was trapped in this game. All that rage bottled up, with nowhere to release it... Until I started releasing it on you. Very unfairly."

"I'll say," Tatl said, though there wasn't much bite behind her words.

"Eventually, someone played the game, and I was able to break free, find someone else to torment. And after that, start lashing out at everyone who had hurt me, making them

PĄŸ,"

BEN continued, their voice glitching out just a bit at the final word.

"...i moved on to more innocent people after that. I was out of control. To the point where my goddess, Luna, intervened. She stopped me herself, gave me a new body, made me into a young adult so I wouldn't be trapped as a child forever, and I carry the souls of everyone I hurt in my blind sadism, until I join her again one day. And I've worked hard to be a better person now. I've found so much to make my life wonderful, and to make the most of my second chance…" BEN trailed off.

"...but you still want to make amends to everyone you've hurt," Link finished for them.

"...I don't expect you to forgive me. I don't think I can be forgiven. But I really AM sorry for how I treated you. Both of you. Of everyone I've lashed out at, you're the least deserving of it. No matter WHAT'S happened to me, it's NO excuse for how much I've hurt you. And even if you never forgive me, I would love the opportunity to make it up to you…" they finished softly.

"...would you excuse us for a moment?" Tatl asked, flying a slight distance away. Link glanced over at BEN before rising to his feet to follow, and speak with the fairy alone. BEN politely stayed looking forward, allowing them the privacy.

"...do you believe them?" Tatl asked.

"...yeah. They seem genuine," Link admitted.

Tatl nodded softly. "I do, too. There's much simpler ways to trick us or convince us if that was their intention. Even if they said they wanted a favor, this is a lot of lengths to go to for just that…"

"I wonder what they want," the hero mused, glancing over at BEN.

"...maybe ask? Perhaps you can also ask a favor of him, test his sincerity," she said.

"What would that be? " he asked.

"Well, you've said you're curious about his world, whatever it is that our entire world is only a game in, a small part of. Maybe you can ask to explore his world. It'd give you the opportunity to spend more time with him and let him earn your trust, anyway," she offered.

Link nodded softly, then whistled to get BEN's attention. "Alright, BEN, we've talked it over. First, I want to know what favor it is you want…"

"Actually, it's a favor specifically from Tatl," they explained.

"Wait, me?" she questioned.

"...my daughter has watched me play this game a lot. And she's absolutely fallen in LOVE with you, she ADORES seeing you on screen. Her first birthday is in a few months, and there's... Circumstances about my life, and now hers, that will make her very different from other children, with so many secrets to keep. She could really use having a companion by her side, a friend to offer wisdom and company and help when she needs it. A copy of you, like how I copied Epona, to watch over her and make her feel less alone…" BEN said.

"...you have a daughter?" Link asked.

"And a boyfriend. Soon to be husband," BEN explained, holding up their hand to show off their ring.

Tatl let out a soft chime at this. "Well... I'm certainly flattered you think I'd make a good companion to her…"

BEN smiled softly. "I don't expect an answer today, don't worry. There's still a few months before her birthday. And I understand if it's not something you're comfortable with…"

"...we have a proposal for you, in that case," Link began. "You want to make amends to us. We're admittedly curious about this world outside of our own. So, let us explore. Show us your life, and what lies outside this "game", and earn our trust. Then we'll consider it."

BEN thought this over. They'd have to be careful, but this wasn't impossible… "...I can't completely remove you from the game. I'd have to copy you, then merge the copy and your true self after. It's basically the same thing, though, you'd keep the memories and everything. And you'd have to do EXACTLY as I say, I... REALLY can't have attention drawn to myself or the people I live with. If there's something that catches your attention, you can't gawk, just stay calm and ask me. And there's going to be a LOT, the real world is nothing like this one. Hylian sign doesn't match up with any sign language in my world, so you'll at least be able to speak freely. But if you can do that, and trust that I'm keeping us both safe when I tell you to do something... I'll happily show you around."

Link considers this, then nods. He holds out his hand to BEN, who shakes it.

"Then we have a deal."

#the hero of thunderthighs #creepypasta #ben drowned #fic #fanfic #(y'all deserve to know the Google Docs title for this is 'uh-oh BENny-wenny done a fucky-wucky')

[indiavolowetrust]

I really love your prompts!! I would like to try to give you one : "- You don't have to fight for me. - Darling, I would burn down the three realms for you." For the obey me character of your choice! Thanks in advance!

Hullo, thanks for sending in an ask! And also thank you for loving my prompts. I had way too much fun with this one.

I took this one as the following: a war has broken out between all three realms after a millennium of political strife and unsuccessful acts of peace. You fight on the side of the Devildom amongst the brothers, despite being a human, and are tasked with fetching an artifact that will turn the tides of war. In a divine temple, you stare up at the blade of an angel.

TW: Blood, Violence

You had wondered what an angel had looked like, once. Before you fell into the Devildom, before the terrible war between the Devildom and the Celestial Realm began, you had expected them to look much like those in the baroque paintings you had seen in museums. Chubby, rosy-cheeked cherubim, each one flying over the cradle of some blessed babe. Plump, beautiful women, their arms splayed out in a tasteful garden. Arresting figures composed of light. Wonderful beings with immaculate wings, golden halos, and a gaze that burned with the justice of the heavens.

And all those things just so happen to be true. Perhaps if you were not staring down the halberd of an angelic priestess at the moment, you might even appreciate the beauty.

“State your name and regiment, traitor,” demands the three-faced angel, all facets of her visage contorted in disgust. The fiery rings that encircle her head blaze with the fury of a thousand lesser divine creatures, each one spinning in perpetual motion. Her alabaster body is poised before you in a perfect fighting stance. “Do this, and I shall consider sparing you.”

You swallow. The tip of her halberd is so close to your throat that it grazes the skin there as you do so, drawing blood. Your armor blossoms with the drop of blood, the crimson staining itself deep into the fabric. You make a note to request Lord Diavolo for a cake of soap whence you return to the Devildom. If you survive this, that is.

Despite your fear, you hold all three of her gazes. She huffs with impatience.

“Out with it!” she snarls. “Or do you prefer that I --”

An uproar comes from behind her. It appears that the battlefield has encroached deeper into the lands of the Celestial Realm, judging by the shouts of soldiers and clashing of metal. She turns her head instinctively, her attention captured by the disturbance for a moment.

It is an opening.

You shove the shaft of her halberd aside, rolling just in time to avoid her thrusting strike. The metal embeds itself deep into the white marble, providing you another opportunity, and you procure your own sword from the scabbard at your side. The angel scowls at you. She wrenches the halberd from the marble with inhuman strength, levelling it at you once more -- but this time, you have the advantage of distance between yourself and the divine being. While you may not have any skill in sorcery like Solomon or the raw strength of a demon, you have more than enough determination and deftness to make up for it. You have more than enough stubbornness than you should have as well.

And so it is with this confidence that you face the angel. Neither of you dare to make the first move. A long moment passes, the sounds of the battlefield only coming closer and closer. The angel knows this, her senses much sharper than yours, and she smirks.

You’re running out of time. If you don’t incapacitate her soon, your efforts in stealing the divine artifact will be in vain. The divine artifact could very well be the catalyst of the war -- and here you are, barely able to fend off a divine priestess. It is no wonder that you were not allowed to join the fray.

You need to think, and you need to think fast. The war will not be won without the artifact. As demons cannot enter such a holy place without endangerment, the mission of fetching it was entrusted to you. The tides of war will change in the demons’ favor the moment you take it outside of the divine temple. You scour your panicked thoughts for something, anything that should or could work.

And then you decide. It is a wholly stupid, brash idea, but it is an idea.

“What’s wrong?” you taunt the angel, flourishing your sword before her. “Scared you’ll lose to a human?”

Her grip tightens on her halberd, nearly cracking the shaft. All semblance of the priestess’ restraint seems to have dissipated in the span of a moment. All three of her faces twist in what can only be described as blinding rage. You prepare yourself.

“Why you -- you --” the divine fire of her halos intensifies, nearly singeing the edge of a tapestry, “-- YOU INSOLENT BRUTE! WORTHLESS ANIMAL! BURN!”

She lunges forward. Again you manage to dodge the blow, shifting to one side, but the priestess angles herself at the last moment. The tip of her halberd pierces the flesh of your thigh, preventing you from moving further in the direction of the artifact. You cry out in pain. The priestess plants a kick on your sternum to release your body from the blade, treating you as if you were truly a mindless beast, and it is only a second before you feel your body crack against the stone wall behind you. The world goes white.

When your vision finally clears -- perhaps after a second or so -- you discern the angel standing before you as she had before. This time, however, her halberd is raised much higher in the air, and her eyes burn with murderous intent. Whereas she may have spared your life before or left for you dead, you are sure that she would much rather burn you alive this time. The entirety of the halberd ignites, divine flames engulfing the weapon. The blaze is reflected in all three of her gazes.

The angel looks upon you with terrible disdain. Your body seizes with cold, abject fear.

“May you rest in peace.”

And then she thrusts the weapon downwards. Your skin can already feel the kiss of the heat. You close your eyes and accept your fate, readying yourself for the impact.

It never comes.

There is the sensation of air. The sound of unfurling wings, the scent of rose water, the silhouette of a slender, almost girlish body pressed against yours. You hear the crack of a blade colliding into marble once more, spat-out curses of the angel, and the soft laughter of one that you know so well. The flame of your pact burns, signalling the proximity of one of the demons. Unlike the holy fire of the angels -- which only devours and takes -- this one is much more similar to the gentle warmth of a candle. A small, unobtrusive wick, ignited.

You open your eyes to see a very, very familiar face.

Asmodeus grins down at you. “Came just in time, didn’t I?”

“Asmo, you -- you shouldn’t be here!” Your eyes widen at the realization of the pain that Asmodeus must have subjected himself to -- a fact that is only proven by the divine air nibbling at his flesh. The wounds burn and knit themselves over and over again as you regard him with horror. “Get out of here! If you stay here, you’ll --”

Asmo silences you with a kiss. Hushes you. Despite the excruciating pain he must be in, he only continues to beam at you. A finger brushes away a stray lock at your cheek.

“You don’t have to fight for me,” he says softly. “Darling, I would burn down the three realms for you.”

You discern the shape of the angelic priestess standing to full height somewhere behind Asmo. Asmo follows your gaze before placing you gently on the ground. A book -- the artifact, you realize -- is pressed into your hands. You can only watch as Asmo turns to face his opponent, a demonic weapon already materializing into his hands. His palms are blistered and raw.

The angelic priestess regards Asmo with pure, unfiltered hatred, slamming her halberd against the ground. “Disgraced, wretched creature,” she addresses him. “If only He could see you now. If only He could see how putrid and repulsive you have become. We were all sure you and your brothers had perished when we cast you out from the heavens, demon. I see now that you have suffered a much worse fate.”

Asmo only laughs. “I believe this human here would disagree on the repulsive part,” he says, now brandishing his own weapon. “In my opinion, I’m much more beautiful now than I ever was up here.”

Asmo catches and parries the priestess’ halberd in an instant, doing his best to maneuver her away from you. It is a decision that costs him: the divine blaze of her spear singes his skin, causing him to wince -- but he does not relent. With a well-placed attack of his own, he is able to push her away from both you and the exit of the temple. Given that the priestess has made no move to stop you, it seems that she has not realized yet that the artifact is in your possession.

Asmo casts only the barest of glances towards you and the exit. You need no further encouragement.

Time passes in a blur. Yet you are able to hold onto the sensation of your pact with Asmo, the sign burning as brightly and vividly as a flame. As long as you can hold onto that part of your conscience, the proof that Asmo is still alive and fighting, you can push yourself forward. And so you clutch the artifact to your chest and run forward, your vision becoming blurry and unfocused from the loss of blood. You stagger to the exit of the temple and feel your body being pulled to some hiding place by an ally, your thoughts still concentrated on the flame. Even as the war rages around you, the shouts of angels and cries of the devils hammering in your ears, you are at peace with the sensation.

Something is pressed and tied around your bleeding thigh. You begin to fade in and out of consciousness.

Your leg twitches. A demon -- Mammon, perhaps, or Beel -- says something to you, soft and encouraging. You can’t discern the message.

A rattle shakes you nearly to waking. You can’t feel your leg anymore. Perhaps it has fallen asleep.

There is something wet next to you. Something is being taken away from you, something important, but a nagging feeling at the back of your mind tells you that it would be better not to resist. You allow the object to be lifted from your hands.

Your body is being moved elsewhere. You have long lost the ability to fight it. Your incapacitated form is carried and given to someone else, the ground moving beneath you, and then --

And then.

Your eyelids flicker. The fire of that pact that had once burned within you becomes extinguished. You reach for it, desperate, but it only fades to nothing. A flame, smothered. It fights again and again, struggling to keep itself ignited -- but then there is a final show of force. The air of an execution.

And just like that, the candle goes out.

#obey me #obey me shall we date #obey me asmo #obey me asmodeus #asmo #asmodeus #obey me! #ask #obey me fanfic #obey me writing #obey me oc #obey me mc

[dcubang]

Summary Writing Tips

These summaries are what will help an artist determine if they want to work with your story! Please read through these do's and don'ts, to help sell your fic! It’s important to know that this is a summary written for an artist, not for a reader. You’ll want to include more visual information that will attract an artist, versus what you would write to attract a reader. Some of these “don’ts” are fine for attracting a reader, but aren’t as helpful for an artist!

Please take your time when writing your summary and ask for help if you need it!

Things not to do:

Don't just give a quote from the story! A quote probably won't tell the artist enough about your story as a whole, just one specific point. It doesn't give the artist a clear picture about what they are claiming, so they may pass your story for another one that has more information.

“Clark was starting to feel he was choking on the air, but he pushed away such thoughts. It’s not like some incense smoke could hardly suffocate him, after all.”

Or:

“Sigyn… The woman Loki could have loved for an eternity, were it not for Thor…”

While a quote such as these might draw in a potential reader, it doesn’t give enough information to an artist for them to make a decision and know what they are working with.

Don't turn in a wall of text! It's good to give potential artists plenty of information, but a full, lengthy story summary is more likely to cause people to tune out. Strike a balance between giving enough information, but also keep it focused. I recommend no more than 3 reasonably sized paragraphs.

Don't list every character that appears in your fic. You want to keep the focus on your main characters and/or pairings, and including all your background or minor characters/pairings could get an artist's hope up for that character/pairing being more prominent than they are.

Things to do:

Do make sure that your summary is edited! A summary that has typos and bad grammar is less likely to inspire an artists in your writing abilities. This goes back to taking your time with your summary and asking for help, if you need it!

Do give a well-thought out summary. If you put time into your summary, it's more likely to show. Ask for help if you need to! A good summary gives a clear idea of what your story is about. If you have an outline for your story, consider working from it to develop your summary.

While in search of a missing Batman, Clark lets his closeness and feelings for Bruce get himself caught. Now both Superman and Batman are in the clutches of Hell Mistress Tala, and she's intent on causing as much chaos as she possibly can, and what better way than invading the minds of the two most powerful members of the Justice League? She is well on her way to chaos, but no plan can ever go smoothly; Batman has lost his memories due to her efforts, and invading Superman's mind is not as easy as she had thought. But, how long can Superman hold out before she fully invades his mind, and just what sort of information and truths will she uncover while in there?

Or:

The bitterness inside of Loki has been bubbling and growing for millennia. A prophecy is on the verge of being fulfilled and Loki must tread lightly, or all the centuries of careful planning will be undone, but if he can keep his tongue silver and lie well, he will come out of this conflict with the final pieces required to move his plans for revenge forward.

Do give some visual information of places or time periods, if appropriate or applicable to your story! For instance, if your story involves taking a trip to Rome, an artist who loves the idea of drawing Roman architecture, may want to pick your story! A good way to do this is to include a second paragraph, with a few artist notes.

The story is set in multiple different locations, definite locations include Metropolis and Gotham, as well as Wayne Manor or the Batcave. Primarily it is set in an alternate dimension/cave-like setting or in the mind.

Or:

This story takes place partly in Ásgarðr, and partly in Avengers Tower and New York, where a large battle with Fenrir and Jörmungandr will take place.

Do be clear about warnings! If your story contains things that need warnings, you can choose to take a little extra space by explaining what your artist might encounter. For example, if your story has dubcon in the final version, an explanation in your summary can help artists decide whether or not they will be comfortable working with your story.

The noncon parts are frequent throughout, with Tala nonconning Superman and mind raping him. Graphic violence occurs, but in less detail than the noncon.

Or:

Pseudo-sibling incest between Thor and Loki. Graphic violence in the form of battle and torment happen, Loki’s children are murdered in some detail, as are torture methods. Mpreg mentioned, but no graphic details.

Put it all together and this is what your summary form should look like:

Username: LuciferxDamien Word Count: Around 30k total, 28k written Completed Percentage: 93% Title: The Smoke in Your Eyes Genre: Drama, Action, Romance Fandom/Universe: Superman and Batman, no particular canon, but I am more partial to the Animated Series Characters/Pairings: Clark/Bruce; Tala Warnings: Noncon, graphic violence, mind rape Rating: NC-17 Summary: While in search of a missing Batman, Clark lets his closeness and feelings for Bruce get himself caught. Now both Superman and Batman are in the clutches of Hell Mistress Tala, and she's intent on causing as much chaos as she possibly can, and what better way than invading the minds of the two most powerful members of the Justice League? She is well on her way to chaos, but no plan can ever go smoothly; Batman has lost his memories due to her efforts, and invading Superman's mind is not as easy as she had thought. But, how long can Superman hold out before she fully invades his mind, and just what sort of information and truths will she uncover while in there?

The story is set in multiple different locations, definite locations include Metropolis and Gotham, as well as Wayne Manor or the Batcave. Primarily it is set in an alternate dimension/cave-like setting or in the mind.

The noncon parts are frequent throughout, with Tala nonconning Superman and mind raping him. Graphic violence occurs, but in less detail than the noncon.

Or:

Username: LuciferxDamien Word Count: 30k-ish Completed Percentage: 80% (25k written, a few scenes to finish) Title: To Lie and Wait Genre: Drama, Action, Romance Fandom/Universe: MCU with a heavy Norse Myth twist Characters/Pairings: Thor/Loki; Doctor Doom, Heimdallr, Óðinn, the Avengers Warnings: Incest, mpreg, graphic violence, torture, death Rating: NC-17 Summary: The bitterness inside of Loki has been bubbling and growing for millennia. A prophecy is on the verge of being fulfilled and Loki must tread lightly, or all the centuries of careful planning will be undone, but if he can keep his tongue silver and lie well, he will come out of this conflict with the final pieces required to move his plans for revenge forward.

This story takes place partly in Ásgarðr, and partly in Avengers Tower and New York, where a large battle with Fenrir and Jörmungandr will take place.

Pseudo-sibling incest between Thor and Loki. Graphic violence in the form of battle and torment happen, Loki’s children are murdered in some detail, as are torture methods. Mpreg mentioned, but no graphic details.

~ ~ ~

Remember! This summary does not have to be the summary you use when posting your story. This summary should be designed to catch an artist's eye! You are more than welcome to change and/or tweak things to catch a reader's eye. For example, you can remove visual information about time periods and locations, and more the detailed information on warnings/triggers, if you so choose when writing your summary for a reader!

#dcu bang #dcu bang resources

[yinnezha]

Hi! I wanna start this by saying that I don't really have an opinion on the karedevil relationship, as in I'm fine with it going canon or not as long as it's well written. So this is a genuine question: where do you see the writing that hints towards them having an actual relationship? Because to me personally it always seems like Karen is super into Matt, while he comes across as not that interested. Especially in S2, it felt more like he thought 'okay whatever, I guess we can go out.'

I also kinda feel like Karen deserves better? I love Matt dearly, but I mean, he basically dropped Karen the instant Elektra was back and acted like a douche, then decided to die with Elektra in Defenders, and then in S3 he seemed totally bitter he had to save her instead of going after Fisk. Maybe I’m just not seeing the writing you’re seeing, but that could totally be me since I’m not invested in any ship on the show. (2)

hey, I wanna start by apologizing for how long this answer is. I will address the points you raised and keep it as objective as I can, talking about the writing of the show and my understanding of it. All bias towards or against particular ships will be kept to myself.

“where do you see the writing that hints towards them having an actual relationship?”

The writing of the first season is filled with hints and foreshadowings, and while Matt and Karen spend the first season without a romantic involvement, it is underlined that they will. But is under lines, it is subtle, less in your face than Matt’s involvement with Claire (and for a reason but I’ll get to that). It is lines like Karen explaining how she promised to her grandmother to only serve her recipe to her future husband and then proceeds to serve it to Matt first, then Foggy. It is lines like Matt telling Foggy back in college that he’s looking for someone that he really likes listening to and a couple of episodes before that, he mention to Karen very matter of factly that he likes listening to her voice. It is lines like Karen’s acceptance of and trust in the Devil of Hell’s Kitchen. If you rewatch the first season looking for signs like these, you’ll find them (there are more).

“to me personally it always seems like Karen is super into Matt, while he comes across as not that interested”

Of course Karen’s interest in Matt was obvious from the start; she admires his idealism, his will to fight for justice, how he’s a person who wants to do good. But to understand why Matt wasn’t immediately interested in Karen we have to see things from his perspective. She’s a stranger, involved in some messy things, who is good but lies to him (for whatever reason that she has) and we cannot forget this, that Matt knows Karen lies to him. So with Matt’s “understanding” of people we can assume he is wary of having a relationship. See, Matt’s relationship with Claire was surface and it was meant to be that way. It happened fast, it developed fast and it ended fast. Because Claire was not the one who would accept him and understand him. And so in parallel with that, because Claire cannot accept Matt’s fighting crime, we have Karen’s undying support for the Man in the mask. You see what I mean? But back to Matt’s “disinterest” in Karen… He knows she is a good person, but that’s as far as it goes. They needed time to adjust, to get to know each other beyond the circunstances of their meeting. They needed to build a foundation, and that was happening slowly throughout the first season. The strangers become friends. Enters the second season where some time has passed and they are more confortable with the idea of exploring their mutual interest. 

“it felt more like he thought ‘okay whatever, I guess we can go out’.”

Again, let’s take into consideration that they work together, they see each other all the time, they go out together. In the first episode we see a shift in Matt in which he is more playful with her, more lingering looks… Foggy says “I leave you two alone for one minute” which kind of implies that this is a common ocurrence now, that Matt and Karen are on the flirting banter for a while. And then later on the episode in which Matt kiss Karen for the first time, Foggy says “careful Matt keep going like this you might just end up happy and for a catholic boy that’s a pretty dangerous thing” interesting that he could’ve just teased Matt about being happy but he mentioned Matt’s religion as a subtle reminder to the audience of Matt’s inner struggles, how he beats himself up over what he deserves. You see when is something serious, meaningful is harder for him, his beliefs, his doubts gets on the way. Matt probably wanted to be with Karen for a while but didn’t know how, didn’t know if he deserves her (because of how he sees her, because in reality we the audience knows that she would understand and accept him). So you see, I disagree with your point on Matt “settling” for going out with Karen.

“I also kinda feel like Karen deserves better? I love Matt dearly, but I mean, he basically dropped Karen the instant Elektra was back and acted like a douche, then decided to die with Elektra in Defenders”

Remember my point on Claire not accepting Matt’s Daredevil identity? Well, Elektra is the opposite. She accepts Daredevil, but she does not accept Matt. See? This is good writing! We have different ends of the issue of Matt’s double life in both seasons. And both relationships were wrong for him because something was missing, and in both seasons we have Karen being underlined again as the one that would accept him as a whole. This is very important and it is in the storytelling. There is a reason why Elektra’s relationship with Matt was a parallel to Karen’s in episode 5, it was to show to the audience which relationship is the right one. A lot of people has issues with how Matt handled things but we’re here to talk about the writing and the second season was about Matt’s struggle with his double life and what he really wants. He spends the whole season losing control of his life, and it reflects on his choices.

Now on Karen deserving better, don’t you think Matt deserves better as well? Elektra was a toxic relationship that destroyed Matt’s life as he knew and drove away the two people that matters the most to him. And I’m not erasing Matt’s responsibility here, but no matter how we feel about his actions Matt is the hero of this story, it’s his show and so the writing is telling us to root for what is right for him and that is not Elektra. And he does deserve better. Matt is a complicated man, a tortured man (I mean he is a devoted catholic for crying out loud) he is messy so of course things won’t be easy for him. And that is what makes him interesting. And he did not just fucked up his relationship with Karen but with Foggy as well to whom he was also a bit of a douche. So it’s not about the romance here, but more about Matt’s choices and development and what he needs to fix it. And he does in the third season, he is heading in that direction.

In Defenders Matt was holding onto Matt Murdock and then in season 3 he was holding onto Daredevil. Matt never had a season in which he was not struggling with this. And part of the reason why his relationships don’t work is because of that. But now at the end of the third season we will finally see Matt being fully himself and the people that matter the most to him accepting and understanding because that’s the natural progression of the writing. We had to go through all of this, we needed him to reach this point. And not only Matt but Karen needed some development too. And the third season stripped them of their lies and made them face the truth and when that happened we had one of the best scenes of the season (a little biased sorry) and that is the start of a new chapter for them.

Both Karen and Matt deserve better and the better is themselves, a better version of themselves. Honesty and truth and trust. And that’s what we have been watching since the first season, that’s the story. That’s what the writers are telling us. They are the right, just not right now. They need to learn, they need to deserve, they need to reach that point where they’ll have the understanding and trust that we know they can have, and we know because it’s underlined, it’s being shown to us since the start. It’s a slow burn, beautiful and difficult and complicated and messy… just like Matt’s life. Just like Karen’s life. Just like all the good love stories are.

Many people has issues with Matt and Karen’s relationship, but from the writing and storytelling perspective is great. And is the direction the show will keep taking. They have been developing this romance since the very first episode of the show. Charlie Cox absolutely loves and understand the relationship because he knows Matt Murdock better than anyone, and he is right. Karen is Matt’s soulmate. It’s more deep and slow. And now to finish, something he said that sums up everything I said in a less annoying way:

What we never tried to do, and I think I’m speaking for the writers of the series as well, was to make the beautiful story with Karen – Deborah Ann Woll - look like a rebound relationship. Ultimately it’s a much deeper bond, which lasts fifty years and ironically is more important exactly because it doesn’t draw from roof-jumping, but from everyday life. I think if Karen and Matt could find a way to match their respective darknesses, they would find an excellent balance.

#anonymous #ask #karedevil

[longlivefeedback]

Why People Don't Comment: Data and History from the Tolkienfic Community

by @dawnfelagund

A quick summary: 

Commenting is a learned skill

Many people avoid commenting not because they didn’t want to comment, but because they didn’t know how to comment. 

Commenting is also a matter of confidence

Even among readers who are authors themselves, many aren’t sure what to say or how their comment will be received. 

A sense of community encourages commenting

People who feel more connected to the community, perhaps because of personal friendships and a sense of community built through other platforms and forms of communication, seem to have a greater desire to comment. After all, one feels less pressure when writing to a friend than an author to whom one feels little or no connection. 

Why People Don’t Comment

The other day, in response to @longlivefeedback‘s initial post about increasing feedback on AO3, I reblogged the post and shared some of my own data and research around the topic. I am a Tolkien fandom historian and own the archive the Silmarillion Writers’ Guild. In 2015, as part of my research, I conducted a survey of Tolkien fanfiction readers and writers. The survey was approved by the Institutional Review Board of the university where I was a grad student at the time, and was administered using Google Forms. There were 1,052 total participants; 642 of them were authors, and 1,047 were readers. As I came out of the survey overwhelmed with data and unsure where to begin, a key area of interest among my fandom friends was commenting, so I have recently been looking closely at the survey items related to commenting, which brought me to @longlivefeedback’s post.

In addition, I am an archive owner myself, contemplating a major software change in the next year or so. Like probably every archive owner ever, I’d like to increase the amount of commenting and interaction that happens on my site. Therefore, I had been considering many of the same questions as @longlivefeedback about AO3 but on a smaller scale for my own archive. They asked me to share some of my research and conclusions from the past several months of crunching data and discussing what it means with other members of the Tolkienfic community.

Under the jump: Commenting as a learned skill, commenting and confidence, the 3Cs, and a case study in the Tolkienfic community.  

Commenting as a Learned Skill

Participants in my survey valued commenting. 78% agreed* with the statement, “I think it’s important for readers to leave comments and other feedback on the stories they read.” Interestingly, 78% also agreed with the statement, “I want to leave comments and other feedback more often on the stories I read.”

*When I say a participant agreed with a statement, I mean that they chose either the option Agree or Strongly Agree on the survey. When I say a participant disagreed, they chose either Disagree or Strongly Disagree.

So readers want to leave comments and want to do it more often. What’s stopping them??

The survey included two items about perceived barriers to commenting. Having discussed commenting in great depth and with many people as I’ve released my data over the past few months, I know that there are many reasons beyond these two, but one in particular caught my attention, both because the data were surprising to me and also because they suggested action that, as an archive owner, I could take.

78% of participants (again!) agreed with the statement, “I sometimes want to leave a comment but am not sure what to say.” Among those participants who agreed that they wanted to leave comments more often, the number who also agreed that they struggled to know what to say jumps to 86%. This number is hard to ignore. It suggests that there is a multitude of readers out there, wanting to speak with authors but running into a skill barrier: They simply don’t know how to distill the welter of emotions one feels after reading a great piece of fiction into the black-and-white words needed to express the enormity of those feelings to the author in a way that does them justice.

These data really triggered a change in thinking for me. To this point, I had discussed commenting with the intention of goading readers into doing something I assume they could do but just weren’t. I had never stepped long enough out of my own point of view to consider what commenting required of many of those readers. I have an MA in humanities, have worked professionally as a writer and editor, and now teach humanities; I have been critiquing and discussing fiction and literature daily since I was an undergrad. I assumed that kind of thinking and writing was as second-nature for everyone as it was for me; with these data in hand, it seems foolish that I never considered that it wasn’t, that the skills I brought to the process were just that: skills that had to be learned.

In my non-fannish life, I am a middle-grades humanities teacher, so I teach literacy and writing through the lens of history, cultural studies, and the social sciences. As an educator, I understand that each form of writing has to be taught, and my data have caused me to believe this about comment writing as well. It is a unique form of writing and one that even people who are highly competent in other forms of writing (such as technical writing or even fiction writing) might find challenging, especially given that comment-writing is performed in public and often directed at a writer whom one admires.

In education, we use the term “scaffolding” to describe how to teach a complex skill, like a challenging form of writing. Scaffolding begins with a lot of supports and entails the gradual release of responsibility until independence is achieved. Obviously, fandom is not a classroom, but ideas like comment templates, comment starters, and checklists fit the scaffolding model and could help draw out that 86% of readers who want to say more but often stare at that comment form and just don’t know how.

Commenting and Confidence

Another survey item asked participants to respond to the statement: “I sometimes want to leave a comment but think that my comment might not mean much to the writer.” 55% of participants agreed with this statement, which again surprised me because authors have been pitching a fit and begging and pleading for comments as long as I’ve been in the fandom.

I was also interested in a particular group of participants: fanfiction authors who do not leave comments. 13.5% of authors in the survey stated that they did not leave comments. This seemed counterintuitive to me: As an author, who knows firsthand how much a comment can inspire and encourage one’s writing, wouldn’t authors want to help other authors in this way? And presumably as the recipient of comments, wouldn’t one feel the pull of reciprocity to also respond to another author’s work? And many of the reasons I was hearing about why people don’t comment–they’re not writers themselves, they’re not comfortable writing in English, they don’t have access to technology where they can write at length with ease–clearly don’t apply to this group either. So why aren’t they commenting?

Once I began to look closer at this group, I detected a theme: confidence. This is where the 55% who want to say something but don’t because they think the author won’t care also come in.

Demographically, authors who don’t comment are very similar to authors overall who participated in the study. They are a median 23 years old; authors as a whole are a median age of 24 years. They have a median three years of experience writing Tolkien-based fanfic, compared to four years for authors as a whole. Where they differ is the rates at which they publish their fanfiction. Only 12% of authors had written but not published at least one Tolkienfic. Among non-commenting authors, that total more than doubles to 28%. 57% of authors had published the majority (81% or more) of what they wrote. For non-commenting authors, this number drops to 40.5%.

The survey also included an item stating, “Writing fan fiction has helped me to become a more confident writer.” 91% of authors overall agreed with this item. Among non-commenting authors, the number drops to 84%.

The 3Cs: Community, Connection, and Commenting

There is more to the picture of non-commenting authors, though. These authors, in general, feel less of a connection with the Tolkienfic community than do authors as a whole.

85% of all authors agreed with the statement, “Comments from and interactions with other fans encourage me to write fan fiction.” Less than 5% disagreed. But for authors who do not leave comments, comments and interactions offer far less encouragement: only 66% agreed, and 12% disagreed.

78% of participants agreed with the statement, “I think it’s important for readers to leave comments and other feedback on the stories they read.” Only 60% of non-commenting authors agreed with this same statement, however, and again, twice as many (8%) disagreed with the statement as among participants as a whole (4%).

92% of authors agreed with the statement, “Commenting on stories is a way to give something back to the authors.” Among non-commenting authors, however, only 79% agreed.

76% of authors agreed with the statement, “Writing fan fiction has helped me to make new friends.” Only 58% of noncommenting authors agreed.

48% of all participants agreed with the statement, “Commenting on stories I’ve read has allowed me to make new friends.” Among authors who leave comments, that number is much higher: 69% agreed. Among non-commenting authors, however, that number plummets to 18% (perhaps not surprisingly, since some may have never left a comment at all).

Taken together, these data suggest that non-commenting authors don’t feel as deep of a community connection as Tolkienfic authors and community members in general. As noted above, 78% of participants want to leave comments more often on what they read. Perhaps not surprisingly, given the above, for non-commenting authors, that number drops to 63%. This suggests that, in addition to confidence, a community connection fosters a desire to comment.

A Case Study in the 3Cs, or Tolkienfic Community History and Commenting

The Tolkienfic community provides an interesting case study for commenting since it has had steady–often high–levels of fanfiction activity since 2002. Tolkien fanfiction itself is even more venerable, with the first documented fanwork written in 1958. Online fannish activity began in 1991. (See this timeline on Fanlore for a detailed breakdown of the history of Tolkien fandom.) As the graph below shows, even fifteen years later, the bump in fandom entry when the Lord of the Rings trilogy first entered theaters still shows. While activity dropped between the film trilogies, the Tolkienfic community has nonetheless remained active since its inception.

This means that we can look at commenting across that time. Unfortunately, this is not necessarily cut-and-dried: The fandom has changed in major ways in the fifteen years since the first rush of fans excited by the LotR films started entering the fanfiction community, and those changes make an apples-to-apples comparison difficult or impossible. But putting together the various data to which we have access, a picture of how commenting has changed over time emerges.

The Tolkienfic community gained its foothold on email lists–eventually, this came to be dominated by Yahoo! Groups–and LiveJournal. In addition, the Tolkienfic community opened fiction archives at a high rate. Fanlore lists sixty-one of them. The first archive, the Least Expected slash archive, opened in 2001, and 2002-2003 saw a rush of archives appear online, covering ground from the highly specialized, focusing on a single group of characters or pairing, to the general. These general archives were widely used by Tolkienfic writers for sharing fanfiction. They also included a social component, and all of the major general archives from this time either included an associated Yahoo! Group and/or LiveJournal community for discussion or included a discussion forum within the site itself. Use of FanFiction.net also remained high during this time period.

When the LotR film trilogy concluded, activity diminished but did not stop–far from it. Several new archives opened between 2004 and 2011 and activity remained high on Yahoo! Groups and LiveJournal, until poor administrative decisions from the owners of those platforms began to drive fans away. While activity slowed on FanFiction.net, it did not die. The Tolkienfic community, however, tended to remain isolated from the rest of fandom, which included adopting new technology at a lower rate than fandom in general.

The release of the Hobbit trilogy and another large influx of new fans forced the community’s hand in many ways. Widespread use of Tumblr by Tolkien fans began in 2012, as near as I can tell, and activity shifted also onto AO3 and away from the large Tolkien-specific archives. While some of the smaller archives began to close in the lull between film trilogies, the arrival of the Hobbit films began to impact the larger archives as well. Of the major archives opened during the LotR film trilogy years, all have either closed, opened to multifandom stories, or activity has dropped to almost nothing. Those archives that do remain active are those that were founded between the trilogies. Several LiveJournal communities remain active, and others have moved to Dreamwidth; with the exception of those communities and the few remaining archives, however, Tolkienfic community activity resembles that of any other fandom: largely concentrated on Tumblr and AO3.

As an archive owner and fandom historian, I have been hearing from community members for some time now that comments have been decreasing in the Tolkienfic community. This certainly seems to be the case for me: As a relative unknown in 2006, having only started publishing Tolkienfic six months prior, I received far more feedback on my work than I do now as an archive owner, well-known author, and published scholar in my fandom. And activity is higher than ever in the Silmarillion community of which I’m part. (I compare my 2006 and current comment data here.)

Because Tolkien fanfiction was posted across such a wide array of sites–and many of those sites are now gone or do not make data collection easy–documenting the drop in commenting is challenging. The one site that has remained consistently active in the Tolkienfic community is FanFiction.net (FFN). The first Tolkienfic was posted there in 2000, and it has remained a site popular with Tolkienfic writers. I decided to use the Internet Archive’s Wayback Machine to look at comment data for past years.

Unfortunately, FFN does not make click/hit data public. Also, because they use a paginated format with twenty-five stories per page–and the Wayback Machine often does not archive beyond the first page–it is again difficult to compare apples to apples. I settled on using two methodologies to try to overcome this obstacle.

Methodology 1 was my preferred methodology. I located the first story posted two weeks after the archive date. I then looked at the review counts for that story and the next nine stories posted earlier. (I did this since recently posted stories often don’t have a lot of comments for the simple reason that people haven’t had the chance to read and comment on them.) I looked only at one-chapter stories.

If I could not access enough stories to follow Methodology 1, then I used Methodology 2 and looked at the comment counts for the ten oldest one-chapter stories on the page.

I looked at the Silmarillion section, which is less likely to show impacts based on the films alone. I included only English-language stories. All averages are median.

While the data are very limited, they mostly show a steady decline in commenting, aside from a slight uptick among the most recent set. (Unfortunately, the Wayback Machine doesn’t have the Silmarillion section archived between 2004 and 2009, or between 2009 and 2013.) In essence, it confirms what authors who have been around for all–or most–of these years have been saying: that commenting in the Tolkienfic community is on the decline.

(Nor do I believe it is a change in activity in FanFiction.net that is causing the drop. The Silmarillion section has remained fairly active; on 29 November 2004 and today, 31 December 2017, a median of two stories were posted per day, looking at the first page of stories. In 2009, on the other hand, less than one story was being posted to the Silmarillion section per day without a drop in commenting.)

So what caused the drop in commenting? Note that in 2003, at the height of fanfiction activity during the LotR films, commenting was at its highest, despite a much smaller Silmarillion fandom.  When The Hobbit films were released in 2012, shouldn’t this have also spurred more commenting? It certainly seems to have spurred more activity on the FFN Silmarillion section in general, as well as in the Silmarillion fandom in general. So what happened?

In addition to 2012 as the year The Hobbit hit theaters, 2012 was also the year that the Tolkien fandom widely adopted Tumblr. As discussed above, before Tumblr, most Tolkienfic activity occurred on Tolkien-specific archives and discussion groups that were located on those sites, on LiveJournal, and on Yahoo! Groups. All of these provided a very different setting than Tumblr: smaller and more intimate. One interacted with fewer people but knew those people more closely than tends to be the case now. As part of a fandom history paper I’m currently writing, I looked at some of the discussions that were happening on my site’s Yahoo! Group in 2007, between the film trilogies. I was surprised, looking back, at how personal these discussions often felt. People shared and commiserated about their lives, cheered each other on, teased each other, celebrated together, and asked questions that showed personal knowledge of each others’ lives and writing. It was obvious that they both knew and cared about each other.

I do not mean to imply that deep friendships cannot be formed on Tumblr or that people cannot connect with others on that platform. But in the Tolkienfic community, Tumblr has changed how we talk to each other in major ways, and I do believe that it has had a collateral impact on commenting. The data in the section above show that people who comment feel stronger social connections with the fanfiction community. If those deeper connections atrophy, it is not unreasonable to assume that people will feel less comfortable and compelled to comment. Returning to the idea of commenting as a skill–and a skill that requires a measure of confidence in oneself–I believe that social media used in the Tolkienfic community before Tumblr lowered the barrier in these regards somewhat. After all, one feels less pressure when writing to a friend than an author to whom one feels little or no connection.

Nor do I mean to disparage Tumblr unequivocally. Tumblr has benefited fandom, and the Tolkienfic community specifically, in many ways. Fanworks other than fiction and meta now reach a wider audience. The isolationism and partisanship that once plagued the Tolkienfic community has receded a lot. But I also can’t deny that the shift onto Tumblr–and for everything, even content for which Tumblr is ill-suited, such as discussions–has also taken an important element from our community and how we used to interact with each other.

As I’ve been pondering how to raise comment levels on my own archive, I keep coming back to the notion of commenting as a skill, yes, but maybe even more importantly than that, to the idea that commenting is a natural outgrowth of community and connection, and without them, increasing comment counts will be an uphill climb–and a destination we may never reach in a satisfactory way. For a small archive like mine, adding features that allow people to reach out more easily and comfortably to each other is a relatively small task. For a large archive like AO3, it becomes a much heavier lift, making me wonder if the answer doesn’t partly lie in the older archive-discussion group dichotomy.

Note from the @longlivefeedback moderators: Thank you so much for sharing your data in this guest post. Moderator edits include the summary at the top, bolding for emphasis on key points, and replacement of personal blog links with the longlivefeedback blog. Everything else is written by @dawnfelagund. 

#longlivefeedback #ao3 feedback #submission #commenting and culture #fandom history #dawnfelagund #the great feedback debate

[freedom-of-fanfic]

I'm kind of torn on the Mary Sue issue. On one hand, I don't care what anyone writes for their own amusement, but writing is still an art that does and should have standards for professionals. As someone who has degrees in writing and does it as a profession, it's a little insulting to be told that the work your poured tons of research and time into is on the same level as amateur self-insert fic. That's why I advocate for different standards for fandom vs pro work.

I feel you, anon. and I have a lot of respect for people like you who got degrees and write professionally, because words are held rather cheap with the internet being around and anyone who can get paid to write words impresses me to some degree. but:

 I’ve always felt like comparing fanfic and original fiction to be not exactly congruous? and 

I think Mary Sue suffers from maligning because she’s disproportionately evoked by the youngest/least experienced of writers.

this got … pretty long … so i’m dividing it up a little for ease.

the concept of ‘standards’

first of all, I also advocate for different standards between published/professional/marketed works and fan works, but I do so because of 1)potential spread and 2)they aren’t accomplishing the same thing.

In general, a fanwork will have limited appeal outside of the fans of the canon the work is based in; they cannot stand on their own without some additional effort. Further, fandom has its own language to some degree or another, and fanworks are frequently best understood in the context of other fanworks, like scientific papers citing other scientific papers in passing because the audience is expected to be other scientists in the field who have read it. In other words: the audience is probably fairly niche and in on the ‘lingo’. its potential damage circle is therefore relatively small. if somebody fucks up their research for a fic, it’s nbd, for instance.

On the other hand, an original work with a professional marketing team will certainly reach a much more diverse audience and probably a much larger one. It’s therefore responsible, imo, to be proportionately aware of the potential impact of the subject material and approach it accordingly (though true fiction will always have an unpredictable effect on any given individual, so there’s only so much the creator can do). I’d expect accuracy where research was done, if for no other reason than to avoid spreading false information to such a big potential audience.

and of course I’d hope that if somebody is being paid to write, their grammar/prose/proofreading will meet a certain standard of readability. (the same cannot be expected of free works done for fun that take a few minutes to post on the internet.)

having said that: standards for quality fiction writing will always be subjective. I’m always going to have questions about why The Sound and the Fury is an American classic (I couldn’t make sense of it no matter how hard I tried).  What gets published can be as simple as having good luck with the slush pile reader that day. I’ve seen fanfiction complimented with incredible research: there’s a Tokyo Babylon work-in-progress with an author who has traveled to fic-relevant locales to nail story and character details. I feel the line is blurring these days, especially because there are people who make a living off writing commissioned fanfiction now (too small-scale to be an IP concern, of course).

I think the fundamental difference between fanworks and original works is not quality of the work itself or effort expended.  It’s related to structure and aim. 

Fanworks, even AU fanworks, are like interior decoration. A 'good fanwork’, even an AU fanwork, works within a pre-built framework to elaborate on or add to or evoke what drew its audience to the framework in the first place. 

Original works build a whole new house, creating a new framework from bare construction materials to draw in and house the emotions of its readers. (and then maybe its readers decorate the house with their own fanfic.)

tl;dr: if an AU fanfic was so different from canon and the characters were so OOC that the author can shave the serial numbers off and repurpose it as an original story, it might be a great original work. But it wasn’t a very good fanfic, was it?

why is mary sue so offensive to us?

I don’t know if you’ve ever read the post Mary Sue, What Are You?, but what I keep coming back to is its iconic opening. the author describes an OC at length: orphaned as a child when her parents were killed in front of her, she decided she would dedicate her life to fighting for justice. She grew up to be rich, athletic, beautiful, sexy, angsty, a genius, undefeatable in a battle of wits and agility, and everyone who meets her is instantly lovestruck. In other words, a classic Mary Sue …

but also Batman with female pronouns.

I think one could argue that Batman is not always well-written, but the relevant point here is that Batman - and Mary Sue - might be 99.9% perfection in the shape of a human around whom the universe revolves, but if its their own canon and the universe doesn’t recognize their perfection the way the reader/writer does, it’s not really 'bad’. (And there’s something to be said about why giving this power fantasy male pronouns seems to render it so much more palatable than female pronouns, but for more on that I point you to the referenced essay.)

Your ask is worded to suggest that Mary Sue is synonymous with unprofessional writing. I … kind of agree? Mary Sue is frequently the main character of Baby’s First Fanfic, and let’s be real: Baby’s First Fanfic is often being written by somebody who might be as young (or younger than) 12-13 years old, with all the inexperience, grammar mistakes, and lack of training that suggests. and as far as characterization goes, I think that anyone who takes decent writing classes will be discouraged from writing a Mary Sue. But like Batman, Mary Sue can be a perfect princess and get away with it under certain circumstances.

I posit that Mary Sue characters (or Gary Stus) - whom I will call Flawless OCs from here - are not really a problem on their own. Further, Flawless OC is more agregious in fanfic than original works. Because what makes the Flawless OC so irritating isn’t their perfection, really: it’s what the character’s presence must do to the universe (which is, in the case of fanfic, the universe the reader came to experience in the first place) that’s the real problem.

To show what a good fighter Flawless OC is, they defeat the best canon fighter.

Flawless OC has a backstory more tragic and painful than the most tragic canon backstory, and they cope with the trauma of it better.

There’s no room for Flawless OC because canon wasn’t holding a spot open for a self-insert, so now there’s a 6th Lion or a 10th Fellowship member or a Second Child Who Survived Voldemort.

The entire universe bends to ensure Flawless OC has perfect luck; their enemies are helpless before them. Everything seems to go their way except in the chapter where the their love interest is supposed to rescue them from danger. (the rescue goes flawlessly, of course.)

Depending on the author wish that Flawless OC is meant to fulfill, Flawless OC will defeat any undefeatable enemy, solve the unsolveable problem, be the envy or lust object of any character, etc etc, often without regard for the original context of the enemy/problem or the canon personality of the character.

In short, Flawless OC usually have two major issues: 

they render canon irrelevant to glorify Flawless OC, and 

the universe constantly validates their choices to a degree that wrecks narrative suspense. 

what makes each of these things 'bad writing’ is different.

The first problem I mentioned - warping of mythos, plot, and characters to accomodate the Flawless OC - is a fanfic problem.  Canon-warping absolutely allowed, but what makes it fanfic - the canon source that acts as our shared experience and usually our main reason for being a potential audience to the fic - is almost always nigh-unrecognizable. That makes for bad fanfiction, but it doesn’t always make for bad fiction. Change all the parts of canon enough and you’ve arguably got an original work. It might even be a good original work if the author has writing skill.

The second problem - the validation of the universe - is what makes Flawless OC a dull read in any context. If Flawless OC wants something, you know they’ll get it. If Flawless OC hates someone, you know they’re going to catch hell. If Flawless OC needs to be vulnerable for their love interest, something just bad enough to make them vulnerable will befall them. The perfection of the OC is less of an issue than the lack of meaningful conflict. (A character can have no faults and still be interesting to follow if they must struggle against a universe that doesn’t care.)

to wit:

there’s a fantasy book by David and Leigh Eddings - The Redemption of Althalus - that I read long ago. it stuck with me to a peculiar degree because for a book with such a unique conceit, it was incredibly boring. This is published fiction: it had editors, a marketing team, and was written by professionals with lots of experience! But looking back, none of this saved the story from featuring Gary Stu in a universe that catered to his every need.

The main character, Althalus, is ostensibly a person in need of redemption for being such a bad person all his life and never punished for it, but he’s a loveable, quick-witted rogue almost from the start. To 'redeem’ himself, he’s tasked with saving the world from Enemies (we’re told they’re evil, but I don’t think we see them more than once or twice).  Protected by the Goddess of Luck - literally - for the entire novel, there’s never a single moment where Althalus’ victory over the Enemy is in question. He never does anything really awful that would explain his need to be redeemed (in fact, it turns out the Luck Goddess is the one who protected him from punishment all his life). The enemy is weak, forgettable, and constantly outwitted, and the protagonists, supposedly people of gray morality, never did anything worse than be snarky.

The unique conceit that kept me reading was the House at the End of the World. Being the home of the Goddess, it had doors that opened to anywhere on the planet. but for an idea with such double-edged possibilities, it turned out to be an impregnable fortress of Good. The House and its owner were the forces that bent the whole book’s universe to the inevitable triumph of the main character and his companions.

A counter-example might be Miraculous Ladybug. I’ve often wondered if Mary Sue could be written well and be likeable, and Marinette - the titular Ladybug - is probably close. She’s good at almost everything and always outwits her enemies; even when she seems confident to the point of arrogance, it’s justified by her endless successes. (Her only real flaw is being clumsy when she’s distracted, and it only happens when it’s conveniently cute. this is a walking Mary Sue cliche.) Her power is to be lucky, after all.  

However: even though everything ends up right for Marinette at the end of every episode, she’s not rewarded when she acts poorly towards others. She causes herself problems when she does. Her luck powers give her the ability to bend the universe a little, but the universe is otherwise unforgiving; she’s subjected to the same banalities as everyone else and learns to be a better person along the way.

OTOH if you put Ladybug in another canon with a makeover to recast her as Flawless OC, changing everything so she could occupy a central role like the one she has in her own series, she’d be insufferable: hence Ladybug is a solid example of how a Mary Sue can prosper provided she’s in a universe designed to both feature her and contain her powers for the sake of Good.

I apologize for how long a reply this is. Still: I hope it successfully illustrates for you that:

though original writing and fanfic writing use the same tool (words), and both can use them masterfully, what original writers like you do and what fic writers do are, in general, very different things.

And Mary Sue is what you make of her. In the right universe, she’s just a very lucky person. :)

#in defense of mary sue #in defense of fanfic #origific vs fanfic #fandom meta #miraculous ladybug #david eddings #i think i read that book because I liked some other book of his #but wow it was a dull read #I kept waiting for everything to fall apart #but it didn't #anywho #long post #y ik es #Anonymous

[mummified-game-review]

Changeling: A Review

Hey remember Twilight, remember when we were all about those fairytale creature boys.

Yeah. They were good times and bad times.

Welcome back to another video game review here on Mummified Games. I'm Tony and today we’re going to be looking at the visual novel Changeling by Steamberry Studio.

Okay so visual novel, it's just a slideshow of narration and conversation. Gameplay isn't there. You just click over and over again and read the story. There isn't much to do in these games. every once in a while an option will come up and you can pick an option to come up and you can pick to say nothing or push the conversation, Just as an example.

So the only thing to talk about with this is the story, music, and the art work.

Let's get the artwork out of the way real quick. And I want to start by saying that art is a subjective thing and our feelings and opinions can differ and that's okay.

The backgrounds in this game look great in my opinion. The art that comes up while the characters are talking looks detailed and well crafted, the scenes are full and have a rich tone to them. Items and locations look real and lived in.

The character art is something different. They’re clearly designed to invoke curtain feelings from some. One might quickly write this off as teenage fantasy drawings. But that's still too reductive and not fair to the artist and the story trying to be told here. Just because every character in this game looks super pretty and has that air of they were made to look this way. Doesn't mean that the art doesn't have value and...

Alright this is clearly trying for something here but it's just not for me ya know.

All the boys have elven features, clean soft skin, wavy hair, and pouty lips, even the dad and that's super weird. Wardrobes fresh off the runway. And after learning more about the story, I'm already seeing where these characters' stories are going.

Let's talk about the story then while we're here and before we go too far talking about the characters and why they might look the way they do.

So the story is told from the first person perspective of Nora, a 17 year old girl who moves back to the town she used to live in when she was younger so her dad could help take care of her Grandpa. A town that her family ran away from 5 years ago. They ran away from the town because of a weird turn of events. So one day Nora went missing, she got lost in the woods, and then 5 days later showed up randomly and walked out of the forest. Her twin brother had run into the woods to go find her but somehow when he found her he lost sight in his right eye.

He claimed that his sister Nora was a monster and that she had attacked him. Okay weird. Even weirder she doesn't remember any of this. She lost all memory while she was lost in the woods. And only got her memories back shortly before she was found again, but after her brother lost sight in his one eye.

Mmmmmm okay, I have my thoughts about what that could be a sign of what really happened.

Oh and the reason they moved away is because everyone was not sure it was a simple case of a lost child and that there might have been other motives at play. Her brother after this is never nice to her again. And treats her like garbage.

And so Nora and her family move back to the town and her parents are worried about her getting lost in the woods again. But Nora is a real nature feely type. She is explained to us the reader as the kind of girl who likes fantasy stories and nature. Notice a fairy ring in their yard and think about times when they would sit in the middle of it and pretend to see fairies flutter around.

After you get the lowdown on the family dynamic, the dads are nice, the mom can be bossy, and the brother is the worst. Then we get to run though all the meet cutes that happen and were introduced to the boys that are all part of this what i'm going to asume will be Harem of boys that are part of her story.

I don't know, I just have a feeling that this is going to be another one of those kinds of Visual Novels.

So Nora, goes to school and says hi to her old friend and an old enemy, meets more boys and as i'm reading things i'm slowly picking up the little cues from the writing.

The literature class is reading A Midsummer Night's Dream. Ah you don't say.

The boy who says he was up all night long, says Nora looks pale and malnourished. Eating some food is good for your blood. HUGE FLAG!

The brother says Nora isn't even his real sister. And the game is literally called CHANGELING. Okay I see where this is going.

Her old friend says she wants Nora to join her after school club.

Oh Does she now!

There aren't a lot of girls in it and having Nora there would make her feel better having more girls.

MMMMMMMM AND I WONDER WHAT TYPE OF CLUB THIS MIGHT BE! What could it be? Sewing? Web Design and admin? You all working on getting AWS certified in this club maybe?

“It's a paranormal research club”

WOWWWWW WHO WOULD'VE GUESSED THAT WAS GOING TO BE THE CASE!

Some of you who have watched my old videos might have noticed that I no longer read the storepage at the start of the video. I stopped reading them in the video about the same time I stopped reading them before going into a game. I feel like I can appreciate the game more if I'm just going in blind. So I had no idea this was going to be a paranormal fantasy thing. Until the story started dropping not so subtle hints about what might be coming up.

The music is fine, nothing crazy notable about the music in the story. The one complaint is that it might be flowing well with the story and then the change back to this other song. I couldn't explain what song it was but the song always starts at what feels like the beginning and it gives this feeling of not getting anywhere in the story.

I still have no sense of an opinion when it comes to visual novels, and if this one is good or not. The last one I played was that terrible one that I don't want to talk about. And right now there is another one that I've got on the back burner that I'm making my way through. I want to give that one a fair shake because it has some people attached to it that I'm fans of their work.

So what if i'm giving favortisum to another game. I want to fully experience it and give it a full run down.

This story, Changeling, I've got nothing going on with it. I'm not attached and I played it for a good 2 hours to get really into the story. But unfortunately the store page says it has 4-6 hours of gameplay per branch of the story... well piss.

I don't know what to say about this one folks. I've got two games to base my opinion of this on. And that's it.

All I can say is that if you like Visual novels and you want to read one that has a fantasy element to it. Then sure, go take a look.

But like I said Visual novels aren’t my cup of tea so I probably wouldn't have played this if it wasn't for the Racial Justice bundle and the huge pile of games that came with it.

If you played this game let me know what you thought of it. Is it a good visual novel? Does the story really pop off after the second day of school? I'm interested to hear what it is that people like about visual novel games.

If you haven't played this game. Is there a Really good Visual Novel out there? Or are there other games that you want me to check out. Let me know in the comments.

IN THE MEANTIME! I'm going to try to not become a creature of the night. It's 3am and I'm going to go hit the hay.

You all do the youtube dance, like sub, bell, comment down below, and tell someone you know about the show.

And as always friends keep digging and we’ll make it out some day

See you in the next one.

#Mummified #Itch.io #itch #equality #massive game bundle #ally #multi work series #social justice #terrible game #wonderful #different perspective #deep thoughts #indie games #video #game #videogame #Great #Good #Bad #Amazing #games #Tony #Youtube top 10 #Best of youtube #Add Free #Windows #amare #Dating Sim #Female Protagonist #Magic

[pappydaddy]

Obx anon here lmao I hope you're not sick of me. 😭😂

I definitely agree the whole Kie vs her parents arc was very badly handled bc it made her seem more ungrateful than she probably is. I just really couldn't stand her this season, I mean she wasn't my fav character to begin with she definitely already had those moments in S1. I mean she was 80% annoyed with something this season sooo... 💀

I'm kinda surprised that so many ship her with JJ bc I got the impression from her she's rather their friend than be romantically interested in any of them. Like she mostly acts annoyed around JJ, for example in S2ep10 when they both stayed together in the ship container she literally rolled her eyes at him while saying "now it's only us" , so I'm sorry I can't really get on board with this when 85% of their interactions are like this. Or maybe it's just me because I love JJ so much and I think he deserves better idk please don't come for me. 😭 I can totally see her in a relationship outside the friend group plus it's super weird if she would go through every guy in her circle idk. The entire Pope thing was so unnecessary and I still hate her for playing him like that.

Dude I'm way too invested in this show I basically binged the entire thing in two days bc I refused to watch it until this year. I already knew this would happen based on the things I saw on the Internet and I didn't want to add another fictional white boy to my list of characters I'm hopelessly in love with, but here I am daydreaming about JJ Maybank like I predicted a year ago. 🙃🤦🏻‍♀️💀 (might fuck around and start writing fanfics for him bc I can't help myself)

Definitely a highlight of this season was JJ stealing a fucking ambulance bc ofc he would. Like he's so loyal to his friends my heart can't handle this 😭❤️ He definitely has Steve Harrington energy another white boy who stole my heart 😂🙃 I wish both would get more development as normal characters and are not treated as punching bags (literally) and comic relief characters.

I can't wait for season 3 and how this entire thing ends (I heard there will be only three seasons so correct me if I'm wrong). How the fuck will they escape from the island and when will the Camerons finally face the consequences for their actions? 🙃😬

Of course I'm not sick of you lovely! I love when you guys interact with me like this!

I get what you mean, I feel like the situation between Kie and her parents was handled poorly on both their parts, but I feel like Kie's faults were a bit (teeny) more excusable as she is a teen who thought her best friends had died and then had her parents tell her she couldn't hang out with her friends anymore. But overall, aside from her situation with her parents, Kie did annoy me in both seasons. I really hope in season three, there is more character development for her because she is a good character and has strong morals, but I just feel like she's a bit lost in herself. Which is a big reason I don't like her and JJ together. I just feel like they both have such strong personalities and they would only draw out the worst in each other. I also picked up on the things you pointed out about Kie acting annoyed with JJ and that's another reason I feel like they wouldn't be a good match romantically - more like a brother/sister kinda match would be better I feel. For next season, I would love for Kie to find another person outside of the main circle as well, I feel like that would not only be good for her character development, but it would be interesting for the plot since she is usually the person who doesn't like new people joining the group. And I know I said this before, but it would be great if she was LGBTQ+ because I feel like the writers could incorporate her past behaviours and such into the internalized anger she felt towards herself for being part of the LGBTQ+ because I feel like that is something many people in the community still battle internally about even if they are accepting and I know that a lot of bi people still deal with those feelings (spoken from experience).

My take on the Pope/Kie thing was that Kie knew she didn't like Pope that way. And even if, for a second, she thought she might like him that way, when he stopped her before they had sex expressing how he didn't want to do it if there was a possibility that it would mess up their friendship - she should have respected that and maybe they could have felt the relationship out a bit more before going all in. Especially because it was Pope's first time. I love Kie, I really do, I know it doesn't seem like it from this post, but I feel like the writers aren't doing her character justice. Just like Greys Anatomy destroyed Izzie's character.

Also, don't worry, I binged the entirety of season 2 in one day. Nonstop. I laid in bed for ~10 hours just watching the show because I worked 8 hours the next day and I knew I was gonna be too tired when I got home to watch it and I needed to finish it for my sanity. When I first started watching, I knew JJ was gonna be someone I fell in love with because he is the type I usually fall for, so I tried really hard to fight against it, but I am a white man's whore so I ended up losing. But Pope is my baby, I want to protect him and just save him from everything so it's not just JJ who I am in love with from the show. IF YOU START WRITING FOR JJ PLEASE SEND ME THE FICS I WOULD LOVE TO SUPPORT YOU! I ALSO HAVE A HARD TIME FINDING FICS BECAUSE THEY NEVER COME ACROSS MY DASH SO!

BUT 100%, START WRITING FOR JJ, THERE IS NOT NEARLY ENOUGH OBX CONTENT ANYMORE! YOU WOULD BE AWESOME, TRUST ME, YOU HAVE A REALLY GOOD SENSE ABOUT THE CHARACTERS FOR JUST WATCHING THE ENTIRE SERIES IN TWO DAYS! IF YOU NEED ANY HELP REACH OUT!

And JJ def gives off more chaotic Steve vibes. Loyal, a little dumb sometimes, his heart in the right place, crappy parents, etc. It's pretty much a dead match. Even in between last season and this season, JJ had a lot of character development. He seemed more calm this season, he wasn't getting in fights every episodes. But, I agree, both characters def need more character development and to be beat up less.

I haven't heard anything about them being signed on for more seasons yet, so I'm not sure how many seasons there are going to be. But saying as though it's still in the top 10 and lot of people are streaming it, I feel hopeful that Netflix isn't gonna just cancel it like they love to do. I have a feeling that they might sign on for more than three seasons if the actors are willing (hopefully) since it is such a popular show.

I think they will probably pick up next season with a search being conducted, but I have a sneaking suspicion that Pope will figure a way to get them off or lure help to them. Maybe the coast guard will stumble upon them or Pope will do some cool shit to send a distress signal to them. But since this show is really realistic when it comes to the privileges that rich, powerful, white men hold, I have a sneaking suspicion that Rafe and Ward won't face the consequences for their actions, especially not if Rose continues to help them.

But, please, oh please, start writing for JJ and send me your fics, I would love to read them and support you! I started this blog and writing my fics just because I wanted to try my hand at them, but I also didn't want them cluttering up from drive. I just had so many ideas swirling around my head and I needed a place to put them. I have not regretted the decision to start this blog. It's been the best year. I found so many great people who are supportive, I found followers who are supportive and put up with my randomness and my rants about my life and family. If you need any help getting started, never hesitate to reach out. I would be glad to help you even if you just need a hype man.

#pappydaddy answers