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#I could go on and on about books for several more paragraphs
maniculum · 1 month
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A post of mine from several months ago about the Perlesvaus self-rearranging forest just wandered across my dash again and made me think about it some more, so I wanted to talk about it a bit.
Perlesvaus, for those who don’t know, is a 13th-century French Arthurian romance. It’s intended to be a continuation of Chretien de Troyes’s Perceval, but it’s mostly known for being completely batshit when it’s known at all. (There’s an old book on Arthurian texts that dedicates a chapter to Perlesvaus and repeatedly speculates that the anonymous author had Something Wrong With Him. This is the longest scholarly treatment of Perlesvaus I’ve been able to find & read.)
Anyway, there’s an odd worldbuilding detail in the text. See, it’s a Thing in chivalric romances that the questing knights happen upon castles & lords & damsels & such that are unfamiliar to them and have to be explained. You know, “this is the Castle of Such-and-Such, where the local custom is as follows. It’s ruled by Lady So-and-So, whose character I shall now describe to you.”
This is a genre convention that largely goes unquestioned, but it’s a bit odd if you think about it. All these knights are at least minor nobility. They don’t know the other nobles in their region? They don’t know what castles are where? Don’t they have, like, diplomatic relations with these people or at least attend the same tournaments? Even if they’re all fully committed to the knight-errant lifestyle and don’t really engage in courtly diplomacy, you’d think they would share information with each other and get the lay of the land. But instead, to use TTRPG terminology, it’s like they’re all on a hexcrawl that was randomly generated just for them to have these adventures.
The author of Perlesvaus decides to address this. In what’s kind of a throwaway paragraph late in the text, he explains that God moves things around so knights always have new quests to do (and, presumably, is also making sure they always arrive at the right narratively-significant moment). So the reason they’re always encountering people & places they have no knowledge of is because those people & places really weren’t there yesterday. They didn’t know about the Castle of Such-and-Such because it’s normally a thousand miles away and the forest path they followed to get there used to lead somewhere else.
And I think that would be a really interesting thing to stick into a novel or a TTRPG or something. When a knight rides into the forest with the intent of Going On A Quest, at some point they go around a bend in the path, cross an invisible barrier, and wind up in the Forest of Narrative. This is a vast forest with no set geography, filled with winding paths and populated almost entirely with questing knights, damsels in search of questing knights, friendly hermits, strange creatures, and allegorical set-pieces. Then, at the narratively-appropriate time, they cross back over the invisible barrier back into the regular world, and find themselves wherever the Narrative has decided they need to be. This could be a different country, a different continent, or a different world entirely.
Whether anyone involved is actually aware that this is how it works is… optional, really. Though if it’s not a Known Phenomenon, the people whose jobs it is to handle trade & diplomacy & god forbid, maps, are going to end up tearing their hair out in frustration.
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shockercoco · 3 months
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There We Go
Farleigh Start x reader
Warnings - 18+, fingering, overstimulation, drinking, farleigh being dominant when we all know he's not
Word count - 2366
a/n - this is my first time writing smut I wanted to give it a try, and it was hard for me idk how y'all do this lol. enjoy :)
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Last night, you had your hands in between your legs scrolling through videos trying to find the perfect one, while Farleigh was outside smoking with Felix. You and Farleigh have never had intimacy problems, it’s just you having a hard time asking for or initiating the intimacy – even Farleigh has told you several times before that he’s always willing.  You hadn’t gotten too far in your journey when you started hearing those familiar footsteps outside the bedroom door getting closer. You hurriedly took your hand out of your pajama shorts, switched apps, and readjusted yourself like you had been lying like that the whole time. Farleigh opens and closes the bedroom door, kicks off his slippers, and crawls under the covers next to you.
“Can’t sleep?” he asks as he lays his head on your stomach and you just hum in response.
So now here you were sitting in a pool chair underneath the hot Summer sun watching Farleigh, Venetia, and Felix messing around in the pool, and you can’t seem to control your thoughts – mainly because you never got to finish last night. You throw your sunglasses on and try to distract yourself with the book in your hands and hope you weren’t making yourself obvious to him,  even though you could care less what Jane Austen has to say at the moment. You take a peak over the edge of your book and notice Venetia is talking to Felix, Felix is leaning against the edge of the pool with his head towards the sky not seeming to be really listening, and Farleigh is now swimming towards you.
You cross your ankles as if he could sense or see the arousal growing between your legs while he pulls himself out of the pool leaving the bottom of his legs to dangle in the water. Water drips off of him onto the concrete surrounding the pool and also forms into droplets on his chest and arms. Your sunglasses are pretty dark so you’re pretty sure he can’t see you checking him out.
“Are you okay over here?” Farleigh finally looks at you with his own sunglasses covering his eyes, and places a hand on your ankle. He always randomly does this, but at the moment you’re not a fan. You clear your throat before answering.
“Yeah, why wouldn’t I be?” you ask looking up from your book as if you had been reading it the whole time.
“Just asking since you normally start complaining about it being too hot if you’re outside too long,” he jokes with a shrug of his shoulders. “As if we’re not all hot.” He now starts caressing your ankle, which any other time you would love it, but now all you want to do is push his hand off.
“Excuse you, you complain more than me. Plus it’s not too bad right now, as long as we get to go inside soon,” you say, looking back down at your book and start pretending you're reading again. You hear him let out a laugh.
“We’re going out into town for drinks later, do you want to come?”
“You guys are driving all the way out there just to drink?” you raise an eyebrow at him.
“That’s what they suggested,” he tells you, referring to the two siblings still floating in the pool. “We don’t have to go if you don’t want to.”
“No, no. It’s fine.”
“That’s the book I told you about, how is it?” he asks, still rubbing your ankle.
“It’s pretty good,” you answer not knowing what else to say and wishing the conversation would just be over.
“Where are you at in it?”
Oh my god.
You skim through a paragraph on the page and quickly paraphrase it for him. He gives you a look with a smirk on his lips, but with his eyes also covered in dark tint you can’t tell what he’s thinking. Or maybe he’s not thinking anything and you’re just overthinking. Once he eventually leaves you alone and goes back to swimming with Felix and Venetia, you let out a breath you didn’t even know you were holding.
Later that night when you all are at the pub, including Oliver who decided to come at the last minute, you’re no longer feeling like your head is going to explode. Well, you do, but that’s just because of how packed it is inside the pub. Everyone in the bar has to raise their voice to communicate with one another, but no one seems to care. The group is several drinks in and are talking about the most pointless things, especially Venetia who is asking Oliver what color she should dye her already fried hair next, but you’re still enjoying yourself. Not Felix though, since he declared himself the designated driver because he doesn’t trust anyone else driving his truck. You’ve only had a couple drinks since you were never a huge fan of drinking to the point of getting drunk. 
Farleigh, on the other hand, is on his way there along with the rest of them, and is constant with his nagging towards Oliver. You nudge him every now and then as a warning and he gives you an innocent look every time. Thankfully Oliver doesn’t seem to mind – or doesn’t make it obvious – that he cares about what Farleigh has to say.
When everyone has decided they’ve had enough, you guys make the drive back and blast music loud enough to sober up an alcoholic. Felix, Farleigh, and Oliver don’t seem to have any problem screaming their lungs out to it. Venetia complains about the music being too loud, probably because the music is ruining her buzz,  and you just shake your head in amusement.
Once you guys arrive back at the estate, and do a terrible job sneaking into the house, everyone goes their separate ways. Felix helps Venetia to her room, Oliver stumbles to his, and you and Farleigh make your way to your shared bedroom. You tell Farleigh you’re going to take a bath to which he asks to join, and you decline. He whines in response and plops down on the bed as you head into the bathroom with a laugh to start running the bath water. 
After undressing and climbing into the tub, you lean back and close your eyes until you hear familiar footsteps enter the bathroom. You open your eyes and turn your head to see Farleigh starting to undress himself. Someone’s obviously sobering up.
“And what do you think you’re doing?” you sit up, obviously knowing the answer.
“What does it look like I’m doing?” he responds. 
“I thought I told you no,” you tell him as he gets down to his underwear and shimmies them off. 
“Yeah, but this way we’re saving water,” he smiles like it’s the best idea he’s ever had, even though he uses this trick every time, and for some reason you fall for it everytime. Plus it’s obvious the Cattons would never worry about something like water.
Farleigh makes his way over to the tub, all the while you’re trying to avoid eye contact with his slightly hard length causing him to smirk. You roll your eyes at him as you make room for him, and he climbs in behind you making the water level slightly rise. Once he’s comfortable, you lean your back against his chest, and he loosely wraps his hands around your waist.
His fingertips tickle your lower stomach, reawakening that familiar ache you had earlier at the pool and last night that you didn’t finish satisfying. You hope he doesn’t notice your breath catching in your throat. Feeling him against your back doesn’t help much either. 
“See, this isn’t so bad,” you hear him say in that playful tone of his. You elbow him in his stomach, and you hear him let out a small grunt. “Hey, did you notice Venetia flirting with Oliver the whole time tonight?”
“It was kind of hard not too, I feel like she gets hornier when she’s drunk,” you say as you start to gently move one of your feet around in the water.
“Well, duh, doesn’t everyone? I’m just surprised she did that in front of Felix,” he laughs and starts to lightly rub your lower stomach..
“Speaking of Oliver, wh-,” you start, but Farleigh cuts you off.
“We’re not.”
“Speaking of Oliver,” you try again, “why do you give him such a hard time?”
“Because he’s weird.”
“You’re weird, Farleigh,” you angle your body and turn your head back to look up at him. He gives your side a little pinch making you jump and let out a giggle.
“You know what I mean. Don’t tell me you’re growing a soft spot for him just because of those big blue eyes,” Farleigh lets out a scoff.
“No, I’m just saying to ease up on him a bit. You can be a little mean sometimes.”
“Well, I don’t trust him,” he shrugs.
“Farleigh-.”
“Can we talk about something else,” he cuts you off once again letting out a dramatic groan and throwing his head back.
“Of course. When we’re done with this conversation though,” you give him a forced smile. He looks down at you and gives you a little glare. “Just say you’ll be nicer, and we’ll be done.”
All of a sudden you feel the hand that was grazing your lower stomach dip lower, and you feel a finger start to lightly rub up and down your slit causing you to tense. You widen your eyes once you realize what he’s doing, your jaw falling slightly open.
“Are you trying to shut me up?” you furrow your eyebrows at him, and he gives you a smirk. “The audacity.”
“Whatever helps.”
“Farleigh, I’m serio-,” you try to get out, but he starts to rub circles into clit. You hold back a moan that threatens to spill out from the sudden touch, refusing to let him win, even if this is how you wanted your night to end in the long run.
“Sorry, what was that?”
“Farleigh-,” you try again, but this time he dips a finger in you causing you to let out a gasp at the intrusion, your eyes closing on instinct.
“Hmm?” 
You reach a hand down to wrap around his wrist as he curls his finger and starts to slowly pump in and out, but he uses his other hand to take it away and hold it. He adds another finger, still going the same deliberate pace along your walls on purpose to tease you. You bite your lip enjoying the stretch that his fingers bring, but still wanting to hold the noises in your throat back. Farleigh notices this and pushes his long fingers deeper into you, and then uses the hand holding yours to wrap around your waist holding you close to him. 
“If you want me to go faster, all you have to do is let some of those little noises come out for me,” he leans down and whispers into your ear. You love it when he does that, and he knows that, but you still didn’t want to break. “You know I saw you staring me down at the pool earlier.”
You knew it.
You feel his breath on your neck before he starts his trail of kisses making you clench your teeth. You make the mistake of looking down at his hand between your legs right as he finds his favorite spot on your neck, forcing a moan to accidentally slip out. You feel a smile form on his lips while they still attack your neck, and at the moment there’s a part of you that wants to strangle him, but you just give in to him.
“There we go,” he murmurs, and you finally feel his fingers speed up inside of you, causing your face to contort and lean your head back against his chest. He lets go of your waist using that hand to start rubbing your clit again, but this time rougher. This causes you to arch your back into him. If your body wasn’t submerged underwater, you guarantee you both would be able to hear your wetness with every movement.
Eventually, you feel your pleasure come to a powerful end, and Farleigh helps you ride it out as long as possible. You roll your hips into his hand until you’ve had enough, and just when you're about to motion for him to stop, Farleigh picks up a rapid pace forcing the water to start sloshing around. Your eyes widen and you let out a small squeal as you reach both of your hands for his wrist.
“Let go,” he says strongly.
“Farleigh,” you whimper, and it’s all you’re able to get out.
“Let go,” he says again, and this time you do. Instead you put one hand on his thigh and the other on the edge of the tub.
He continues his vigorous torture inside your cunt with you squirming and litterally gasping for air until you can both feel yourself gushing. But, of course he doesn’t stop there, not letting a beat pass. You bring your legs up to your chest with his hand still between, and he pushes them both back down. You let out a cry as he puts his legs over yours pinning your body to the bottom of the tub. It doesn’t take long for your third orgasm to come with a wail, and this time Farleigh stops.
Your heavy panting bounces off the bathroom walls as you finally have a chance to collect yourself, and Farleigh just chuckles from behind you. He slowly slides his fingers out and out of the water, but not before giving your clit a light tap, making you practically jump out of your skin.
“How are you doing down there?” he asks, as he wraps his arms around your waist. You can’t tell if he’s being sarcastic or genuine with your eyes closed, but at the moment you don’t care.
“Honestly, Farleigh, just stop talking,” you tell him, and he lets out a loud laugh that makes your body move against his chest.
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ecneremili · 3 months
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The One With The Proposal
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Pairing: Spencer Reid x Fem!OC
Warnings: smut, fingering, oral sex (m receiving), slight BDSM (use of cuffs), delayed orgasm, P in V sex, unprotected sex (people pls be safe), creampie, no use of Y/N
Word Count: 4.1k
A/N: Well... Okay. There's a few things you need to know about this piece of work you're about to read. This is actually a part of my series that I'm writing on Wattpad. I will put the link below in case you want to read the whole thing. It's not finished, I'm still writing it. This chapter, however, can be a standalone and can be viewed as a one-shot, so I decided to post it here, too. I wish you an enjoyable reading. Oh, and this is not read through, so if you find some mistakes, pretend that you didn't.
Wattpad acc link: here
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Spencer Reid. A man known for several things. His knowledge. A brilliant man, whom the FBI owes many thanks. Uncountable cases that he helped solve that would probably stay unsolved without him. His blabbering. He had a whole paragraph ready to shout out on anything you say. The sky? Fun fact... The book you're looking at? Fun fact, the author actually... A specific person who's dead or alive or never surfaced for something they did? Fun fact about them...
You will never see him wear anything outside of professional clothes. Comfortable professional clothes. Sweaters, cardigans. He sometimes reminds me of older women who wrap themselves in their cardigans. You will never hear him swear. Not in public, anyway. The most he said once was goddamn it. The entire team was left in shock. Penelope was even scared of him that day.
He will stutter in conversations and situations that make him even slightly uncomfortable. He has a germ thing. He never shakes hands or hugs with random people. He makes contact with his friends, me, and some close people like his mother, Diane.
Now put all that into an image and try to picture that man. A shy, uncomfortable, boyish man. Stuck reading books when he has free time. No, no. He cancels plans to stay indoors and read books. Even re-read them.
That same man proposed to me half an hour ago. It was small, intimate, and sentimental. We walked by the restaurant where we confessed we loved each other. He let my hand go and I took a few steps ahead. When I turned back, he was down on one knee and held a small box in his hands.
I said yes.
I said yes more than once.
He was the sweetest man. He was mine. I loved to be loved by him. Delicate, heartwarming, caring and sweet. The man I just described above.
That same man was driving us home at the moment, his dick hard, bulging in his pants, one hand or the wheel, the other deep in my cunt while curving his knuckles at a new angle as he fucked me.
Every person has two sides.
And boy, oh boy, did I love his other side.
Everything anyone knew about Spencer, they would say he would be a sweet, whiney, submissive man during intimacy. I beg to differ.
His fingers twirling inside me, I huff as I refuse to moan just yet. I hated the way he could make me fold so, so easily. Deep breaths. Deep breaths. My mouth is open and I can't hold in pleads from him. His fingers are long. I love his fingers. But his cock is bigger.
He pulls into our parking space and he removes his hand from under my dress. He walks out and comes around to open my door. I begin to come out when he stops me, picks me up and tosses me over his shoulder. I yelp, feeling almost powerless. He slams the door and locks the car and continues to carry me up almost three flights of stairs. The apartment door flies open before we go in. He closes it with his leg and heads directly to our bedroom.
I can't help but blush. I felt like a tiny girl. How disgusting that the tiny girl imagined all the things he would do to her in a few moments. He slides me down and steps back to look at me. His eyes scan me, from the smallest hair on the top of my head all the way down to my toes. There's a devilish desire in his eyes, his mouth parted ever so slightly. His eyes come back to mine and he, almost growling, says, "I kneeled for you, now go ahead and kneel for me."
Tingles run down my entire body. I don't hesitate to obligate his request. Not a request. He demanded. And I wasn't going to defy this. I wasn't going to defy him. Not breaking eye contact, I slide down on my knees, perfectly aligned with his belt. I look ahead, seeing him painfully hard in his pants. I slide my hands up his legs and start undoing his pants. Every clank makes me tingle between my legs.
There was a specific time when a powerful, strong and independent woman only wants, no, only needs to be told what to do. I raised myself from nothing. No one helped me. I could only thank myself for everything I have accomplished in my life. I would listen to no man. No man had the power over me. No man could take nothing from me. Except him. He had all of me wrapped around his little finger.
And I didn't mind.
Being submissive to someone means so much more then people think. It means trust. It means love. Truth be told, not every submissive person tends to be like that in everyday life. Don't get me wrong, I know what comes to mind when you think of someone like that. Porn taught us so wrongly. And this? This was so much more intimate then just porn. This was desire, lust, and pure neediness.
After undoing his belt, I pulled down his pants, tugging his underwear to, removing them to. I would skip everything just to feel him. Being released from his clothes was hitting him sweetly as he took a sharp breath when my eyes fell to his dick.
I look up, almost lustful, maybe waiting for him to tell me to touch him, maybe even to beg me, a whole 180 to what I just described myself as. His eyes were dark and watching me from a high. He simply smirked, almost reading my mind and what was going through it.
"Go on," he half whispered, voice deep just like the darkness around us, "be the slut the outside world has no idea you are."
And that was all it took. My hand takes his base before I stick out my tongue and slide it up his entire length. There was a lot of length. He inhales, pushing a groan down his throat at the first touch I plant on him.
This was going to be a long night.
The kiss I leave at his tip as I start stroking him with my hand sends his head falling back. The motion pushes his curls off of his forehead. I loved when his hair fell on his face. It made him look messy. It made him look more flustered. And the image of him like that made me throb between my legs.
After enough slow-play, I stick out my tongue and take him in my mouth, slowly, reaching as far as I could before I feel him touch my throat. He feels he reached far and he groans. The funny thing is I had taken only half of him. He looks down again, his hairs flying back to his face. His fingers twist around in my hair and tug slightly, almost like he was checking the grip he had on my head.
But I soon found out it wasn't the grip why I thought he wanted it. He held my head in place as he started to rock back and forth. He was using me. Using my mouth to be precise. And he started fucking it. At first it was slow, almost shallow thrusts, reaching where he first did. But as time passed, he became more fierce. He started going deeper, hitting the back of my throat with more force making me gag. My eyes started to water as I had no control over anything. His hand held my head in place as he now almost pounded into my mouth.
As he continued, I could feel him twitch on the top of my mouth. And so did I. I felt my panties dampen with every second that passed. I was horny because my boyfriend, my fiancé, was fucking my throat like it was just something for him to use.
Muffled moans and occasional groans escaped his mouth. He was about to finish. I could easily tell by the increased speed of his thrusts and their force. Finally, he pushed himself almost the whole way, deep into my throat and let himself release there. I gagged pretty hard, trying to keep him down and not throw out his cum.
He pulled himself out and let go of his grip on my hair. His hand slid from behind to my chin and he lifted my face up. He was taking deep and long breaths, his chest falling and rising every time. His eyes scanned me, a fucked mouth, watery eyes and bright red cheeks. Must have been quite a sight.
"Swallow, baby." he said and left his mouth slightly opened, watching as the small bulb went down my throat and he smiled in satisfaction. "Good girl. Your turn."
He bent down and picked me up to carry me to the bed. Back facing the mattress, he climbed on top and roughly kissed me. I loved when he did that. After what I just did, he didn't hesitate to kiss me. He didn't get disgusted to do so. His fingers hooked around the hem of my dress and he pulled it off in one quick motion. I was left in my bra and panties that were already soaking wet. Every time he saw me like that, dressed but not dressed, I'd get shy.
I never liked my body. And yet he worshipped it.
"God, you're so gorgeous." he hovered over me, his eyes trailing over every inch of my body. I shivered from his words that sounded like a prayer. It was half whispers. Like he was afraid that if someone heard what he had, it would be stolen from him.
His lips come down and start kissing my neck, my weak spot. Just the warmth of his kiss makes me moan, eager for more as I buck my hips up towards him. I feel that I caress his cock against my thigh, and as soon as he feels it, he pushes my hips down with his hands.
"Needy, are we?" he chuckles against my skin as he now slowly moves lower and leaves a trail of kisses at my collarbone.
"I hate when you do this." I whine, my fingers roaming through his hair.
"You hate when I kiss you?" he says between kisses, one on my shoulder, one at the base of my neck, one directly in between my breasts.
"No, I-" my words get interrupted when I moan. I feel him smile when he hears me. "I hate when you make me wait. You tease. Every time." I take a deep breath in between every sentence to take in his kisses. As much as I did hate the delay of the actual sex, I loved feeling him everywhere. I didn't know what I wanted more.
He continues kissing, his lips reaching my stomach and he stops. I look down to see him slightly smirking as he is settled just between my legs. I feel shivers. He lets go of my hips and slowly pulls down my panties, sliding his fingers down along my legs in the process. He is continuing to tease me with every touch he leaves on my body.
When I finally think that he is going to stick his tongue at my cunt, I am yet again met with disappointment. He comes over me and trails his hands, slowly, around my back as he keeps looking me in the eyes to catch every whiney face I make as I plead him to fuck me already using no words. But he knows. Oh, he knows that's what I'm asking of him.
He unhooks my bra and I am completely naked. His shirt comes off as he makes us even. Again, I hope that he will now go down. It doesn't have to be his mouth, I'll be happy if he would just stick his fucking fingers into my pussy and rummage through it. But, no. He bends down and kisses my breasts, moving from one to the other. Kissing it, sucking on the nipples, squeezing them with his hands.
If he was kissing and/or sucking the right he would be squeezing the left. There was no space left for me to catch a breath. Then, he bit down on one, just enough to make me squeal. He chuckled with my tit in his mouth. I had enough. I gripped his hair and pulled him up to my face.
"What do you fucking want from me?" I say with a whiney voice. I sounded desperate. I hated it. I loved it, too.
His face had a drunk smile across it. He was enjoying this. My torture was satisfaction for him. Fucking great. "I want you to beg." he said through a whisper. His head was tilted back as I was pulling his hair.
I hated to beg him. Especially to do what I wanted. I knew he knows what I want, but he loves when he makes me break and I have nothing left but to fucking beg him to do the most unholy things to me.
I roll my eyes. "No." I simply say.
He smirks and bucks his hips so his dick slides over my dripping cunt. My entire body arches and he smiles again. "Beg, my love. Use that mouth for something else then a place for me to dump my cum."
That mother fucker. "You assh-" he bucks his hips again and breaks me mid-sentence. I growl at him.
"I don't think that's how begging works. C'mon. Beg me to fuck you. I know you want to."
It was weird hearing him swear. Not just swear, but use vulgar words in general. I used them everyday. It was like saying 'hi' to someone. But Spencer? Noup.
I gave up. I close my eyes and just make peace with my fate. "Please, Spencer."
He bends down and kisses my lips. "You have to be specific, my love. What do you want from me?"
I'm boiling at this point. Do I have a choice? If I want to be fucked, not really. "I want you to fuck me, please me, make me cum. I'm fucking tired of being teased." I practically cry out the last part.
He smirks and I let go of my grip on his hair. He doesn't move, he is still looking me directly in the eyes as he slides one hand down and caresses my inner thigh. He goes over my cunt with his entire hand and I loudly gasp. He watches, enjoys the reactions he gets as he touches me. He brings his hand up and licks his two fingers and then slides them down again.
Baby, you don't need no more moisture, I'm wet enough.
His hand finally connects to my core and he starts making circles around my clit. My body erupts. I no longer have control over my reactions. My eyebrows furrow, my mouth is wide open and it's letting out moans, whines, sounds I didn't even know I could make. And he simply watches. From time to time he would bend down and kiss my neck, maybe even bite down on it, making me buck my entire body up.
"God, you're so fucking wet." he says and starts rubbing up and down my entrance. "You're so pretty. My pretty girl."
I'm melting. Melting into his sinister hands that are touching me in the most horrid ways. And I wouldn't stop him even in a million fucking years.
He slides the fingers in, gently, slowly, caringly. I let out a loud moan, slapping my mouth after I do. Just as I did, his other hand takes my wrist and pulls it off. Holding it, he collects my other hand and pins both of them above my head. "Why would you do that?" he asks. But I don't answer, it's a rhetorical question. "You sound so beautiful when you moan for me. You sound so pretty."
His knuckles are now buried deep inside my pussy and he starts to pump them in and out. When he slides them back in, his thumb hits my clit and he curls his fingers inside just enough to hit that little spot. Every movement he made was followed by that wet sound. I just knew his fingers were drowning in my arousal, and I just knew he was so eager to put his cock inside there too.
He kisses my jaw, my neck, my cheeks. He is enjoying this. Pleasuring someone you truly love is pleasure to you as well. His other hand in on my thigh, pulling it away so he has better access and can slide in deeper then he usually could. In between my own sounds, I can hear him groan whenever I jerk my hips upward and slightly stoke him against my leg.
I want more. Now, I'm just desperate because I don't want to finish now. I want to cum over his cock while he is buried all the way inside. I want him to see that little blub in my stomach appear and disappear as he fucks me.
Like on cue, as if he heard me, he pulls his hand away and climbs the bed again. Pushing my legs fully apart, he aligns himself at my entrance. He pushes, but purposefully jerks himself up so he slides against my clit. I see him place himself on my abdomen as if he is looking how far he goes when he's inside.
"Look at how deep I can bury myself in you, love." he admires and glides his fingers over my skin. He pulls back and leans over to the drawer next to our bed. For a moment he rummages through it. "Shit."
I look over, trying to figure out what was going on. "What is it?"
He pauses and looks at me. "We don't have any condoms."
Well shit.
But I put on my big girl face. "And?"
He looks slightly surprised by my reaction. "No protection?"
I shrug. "What's the worst that can happen?" I smirk, moving myself lower on the bed and connecting myself with him. He really was hard.
He says nothing and just enters. He pushes in with quite a bit of force. I let out a quiet scream at his motion. I still needed time to adjust to his length. But he didn't care. He was already in full force, starting to pick up the pace of his thrusts. His hands go down and wrap around my hips and he uses them to pull me on himself as he continues to pound me.
The room is filled with my whines and moans, the sounds of our hips connecting and slamming against each other, and his groans. I love when he groans. I know he feels good. I make him feel good.
"You're so tight. It's so warm inside." he says through rough groans.
His fingers are diving inside the skin of my hips. I feel pain as he squeezes them. I push the feeling away, I even don't have to. The feeling of his dick hitting my deepest point is strong enough to push it away almost instantly.
The repetitive slamming into me lures my finish to approach. It's forming in my gut and I feel it slowly coming as he continues fucking me mercilessly, rough and fast thrusts.
"I'm gonna cum- Oh, God, Spence." I saw, although I'm not sure how I managed to.
Just as I said that, I felt my climax get at its highest point, and I was about to finish-
He pulls out.
What the fuck?!
"Wha- what are you doing?" I stutter, the high still in the air but it's fading away.
He looks down and has a wicked smile on his face. His cheeks are deep red and his hair is damp from his sweat. "I'm not done with you. Turn around."
I'm mad. Furious. I want to defy him so badly, I want to say 'no', maybe even flip him off. But I want to finish. I was just about to. So I do as I'm told. I prompt myself up and turn around and stand on all fours on the bed. Might I add that this is my favorite position.
I expect him to align himself again and continue to thrust like he did, but he gets off the bed and walks over to the corner of the room. The corner where he keeps his bag for work. I hear a clank before he walks back behind me. He places his hand on my upper back and slightly pushes, indicating for me to lower myself even more. My face and chest lay on the mattress. My ass is now the only thing in the air.
This position gives him more access. I am ready for it to hurt before I can adjust myself to his length again at this angle. Yet again, I don't get what I'm expecting. He takes my wrist and places it behind my back, then the other and connects it with my other one. I hear that clank again. He takes one of my wrists again and puts the metal around it.
It's his fucking cuffs.
He puts his cuffs on and thugs on the chain between them to pull my arms back. He pulls so much that I have to lift myself slightly off the bed. I tremble. Out of excitement. Our of slight fear. Out of horniness, simply.
I feel him bend down and kiss my back. He knows I love that. It feels very intimate to me. He kisses down my spine and then slaps my ass. I yelp, not just by the sudden contact, but also because he slapped it pretty hardly. Not enough to leave a bruise, but it will definitely go red in a few seconds.
"You ready?"
There are certain points in our sex life when he asks, or even simply warns to hold on tight to anything. Since I was obviously restrained, he's asking. That is enough to know this was going to be really good.
"Yeah." I whisper, my face buried back into our bed.
"You know I love you, right?" he whispers again and pushes his tip into my cunt.
My breath trembles since I was still sensitive from the high I missed a few minutes ago. "I know."
"Good. Because for the next few minutes it might not look like I do."
He didn't give me time to respond. He slammed himself inside, making me scream out. This was enough for the neighbors to hear. He started thrusting. I still wasn't adjusted to this position, and his cock was hitting from a new angle that allowed much better access. I felt pain. But, God, was it good. My eyes started watering from the pain as I couldn't take it. I prayed that my pussy would stretch just slightly so I could take him a bit easier.
After a short while, I did. The slight pain was still there. It couldn't really go away from the force he was driving himself in. And then it happened. He slapped my ass again. It was a strong slap. His hand was big enough to cover my entire cheek. I yelp at the sudden pain.
As he continues to thrust, I feel him occasionally twitch. That can mean only one thing. He is about to cum again. Just when I realize that, he speeds up. He pulls on the cuffs and makes me get up from the bed. He's pulling hard enough to hold me in the air.
He hits again, going back to squeeze after. I feel the slight burn of his slaps. Another one connects to my skin and with it I feel that high again. I don't want it to escape again, so I bend slightly so he feels me letting him slide even deeper.
Spencer quickly realizes what I'm trying to tell him, but there's not much left before I feel him hammer himself once, then again, just as I feel my climax release. I scream out, and I feel him empty himself inside.
It takes him a few seconds to calm down before he lets me fall down on the bed again. I'm a fucking mess. He takes off the cuffs and places my hands on my sides before he bends down and removes my hair from the back of my neck and kisses in that spot.
"My perfect girl." he cooed. "You're so fucking special."
I breathe deeply. "Well..." I begin as he lays down next to me. "That was fun." I feel his cum drip down out of my cunt.
He chortles. "That's one way to put it."
I was about to marry this man. I loved every inch of him. Every version there was of him. There was nothing that could take that away from me.
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spnhunter4life · 4 months
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Not So Bad
Summary: Bad information on a hunt leads to a tense situation that ends in confessed feelings.
Word Count: 3.8k
Warnings: none
Masterlist
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I sighed as I flipped through the pages of the dusty old book I’d picked up out of a mix of nerves and boredom. The Winchester boys and I were in New York of all places. I hated it here. The constant loud noise of the bustling city, the air that was so far from the fresh country air I’d grown used to at the bunker, and, worst of all, the tall buildings that blocked out the sky mixing with the thick crowds of people made me feel severely claustrophobic. 
But there was a monster here that needed to be killed, and the Winchesters always went where they were needed. And wherever they went, I went. So here I was, sitting in the library while the brothers went off to kill the thing. It was some sort of demi god named Daemon. 
I’d never been much of one for fighting. I preferred to be the designated researcher, helping out in a mental capacity instead of physical. Both brothers insisted I at least learn basic self defense and worked with me on occasion, wanting me to be able to defend myself if the worst were to happen, but they never pushed me to come face down monsters with them.
The book I was currently looking through was one of the three I’d been able to find in this library about Daemon. I’d already found the information I was looking for and reported it to the Winchesters. But now my options were to sit here and wait for the hunt to be over so the boys could come pick me up, or make my way back to the motel on my own, and I was perfectly comfortable where I was. Or at least, comfortable enough that it wasn’t worth braving the crowded streets.
I turned another page, skimming the words quickly, barely absorbing what I was reading. Somewhere in the back of my mind I made the distant realization that I was in a library and could go find a more interesting book to pass the time. I didn’t give the idea much thought, knowing that it would be difficult to lose myself in a book when my boys were in danger. I knew how long they’d been living this life and how capable they were, but that didn’t make it any less scary anytime they took off. I knew every time could be the last, and I didn’t take that for granted. 
I was about to close the book and at least find something to occupy myself that wasn’t a detailed explanation of the very thing the boys were facing down, when the sentence I’d just read actually registered in my mind. With a sharp inhale, my eyes darted back to the beginning of the paragraph.
It is a common misconception that Daemon is susceptible to oak stakes dipped in lamb’s blood – a rumor no doubt started by the mischievous deity himself – which is actually quite harmless to him. What most do not know is that Daemon is not a demigod at all, but the offspring of a demon and a faerie. As such, his one and only weakness is a silver blade dipped in holy water.
The blood drained from my face. I’d given the boys the wrong information and now they were off to face an angry demigod – or faerie demon hybrid, apparently – with weapons that may as well have been toothpicks for all the use they would be. 
How could I have been stupid enough to not double check the information? I should know better than that!
I didn’t have time to wonder if maybe this bit of information was the incorrect one. Something in my gut told me it was right, and even if it wasn’t, I couldn’t risk letting them go to their deaths, thinking they had the upper hand. I pulled my phone out and immediately dialed Sam’s number. It rang a few times before going to voicemail. Cursing quietly to myself, I tried Dean instead. Voicemail again.
Fear for my boys overrode everything else. They were all I had left in the world and I absolutely could not lose them. I couldn’t live without my sweet, steady Sam. He was an invaluable source of knowledge on all topics imaginable and he had a calm, comforting disposition that seemed to instantly ease everyone in his vicinity. His sense of humor may not have been as pronounced as Dean’s, but I appreciated it just the same and wondered what would happen if I never got to hear his laugh or see his smile again. 
And Dean. I couldn’t even let myself think what all I would be losing if he was gone. To an outsider, our relationship looked perfectly polite and comfortable. And it was, I suppose – we always got along well and never had a bad word to say to each other – if not a little strained. Although, that may have been just on my end. He never did seem to feel the tension that I did. I couldn’t blame him for not noticing either. After all, I did everything I could to keep him from knowing just how much I cared for him. Just how much I loved him.
Without stopping to think about it, I quickly exited the library and rushed out into the crowded streets I so despised. I ran in the direction of Daemon’s lair – we had known its location since early in the investigation and had only been working on the details of how to kill him – roughly shoving through crowds of people when necessary. 
I was severely winded by the time I reached the abandoned building that Daemon resided in. I was panting in short breaths that seemed to fill my lungs with fire. I didn’t have time to stop though. I spotted the Impala parked in the alley and fumbled a key out of my pocket. I threw the trunk open, grabbed a silver knife and poured a generous helping of holy water over it. I barely remembered to slam the trunk shut before rushing inside. 
I slowed down once I was inside. The building was large and I had no idea where any of the current occupants might be. I was just peeking around an open door, knife held at the ready, when a huge crash followed by a yell of pain sounded off to my right. My heart stopped. That was Dean. 
Please let him be ok. Please let him be ok. And Sam too. Let them both be ok, I pleaded to any god who would listen.
I crept as quickly and quietly towards the sound of distress as I could, sounds of a fight leading me there. Fear like I’d never felt before ran like ice through my veins, but kept me moving forward. I rounded a corner and felt my heart stop again before picking up a racing rhythm at what I saw. Sam was sprawled on the ground. He’s only unconscious, I told myself. The alternative was unacceptable. Across the room was Dean, pinned to a wall by Daemon, straining to break the hybrid’s grip and thrust his oak stake into its side. Daemon clearly had the upper hand and wrenched the stake away from him, throwing it behind him. I barely stopped myself from calling out Dean’s name. 
“You think you can kill me? A puny man, kill a god?” Daemon spat, the rage clear in his voice. 
I charged towards them, knife raised and ready. I was only a few steps away when Dean saw me over Daemon’s shoulder. His eyes widened in surprise before he could stop the involuntary reaction. I saw him immediately look away again, not wanting to give me away, but it was too late. Daemon had seen it. He whirled around to face me and knocked me aside without a thought. It was as easy as if he’d been swatting at an irritating fly. Dean yelled my name just as I collided with the wall. My breath, which I hadn’t even quite gotten back after my long sprint here, left me in a whoosh. 
I watched in fascination and horror as Dean took advantage of the momentary distraction to rush at Daemon. He kicked his legs out from under him before climbing on top of him, pinning him to the ground. They struggled for a few seconds before Dean was able to snatch the oak stake from where it had been discarded on the ground. 
“No, Dean! The knife!” I yelled to him. I had dropped it at some point between Daemon’s blow and hitting the wall. Dean didn’t question me, didn’t hesitate before dropping the useless weapon and searching for the knife. But it was out of his reach and it was clear he wouldn’t be able to hold Daemon down much longer. I started to struggle to my feet to grab it for him, but before I was able to, a large body ran into my line of sight, blocking my view of Dean, and stooping to pick up the knife. 
I tensed, terrified that there was some unknown second thing to deal with now, but soon realized it was only Sam. He picked up the knife and turned to his brother. Without speaking a word to each other, Dean rolled out of the way just as Sam plunged the knife down into the heart of the monster. 
Dean was red faced and breathing hard – and who could blame him after wrestling with a being with supernatural strength – but otherwise seemed alright, so I turned my attention to Sam who was closer and who I worried could have any number of injuries after being knocked unconscious. 
“Sam, are you-”
“What the hell were you thinking?” Dean demanded. Stunned at the hardness of his voice, I turned to look at him and realized that what I’d mistaken for exertion was actually anger. He was livid. I’d never seen him so angry, at least not with me. Why was he angry? This completely unexpected reaction left me feeling small and confused.
“What?” I asked. “What do you mean? I was just trying-” 
“You could have gotten yourself killed!” He yelled. He took a step in my direction and a grimace crossed his face as his leg seemed to struggle slightly under his weight. He grunted, the only sound he would let escape. I remembered his yell, the noise that had guided me in this direction to begin with. He was hurt. Dean, who sat stoically with teeth gritted, never letting more than a grunt escape while Sam dug bullets out of him or sewed up horrible gashes, had cried out in pain. That had scared me more than anything else tonight, the idea of how badly he must be hurt to not be able to hide it.
“Dean,” Sam started in a warning tone. He might have been about to defend me or to tell Dean to cool his temper so we could talk calmly, but I would never know. Anger flared up in me, completely overriding the confusion and uncertainty Dean’s words had caused. 
“Well you nearly were killed! So I guess it’s a good thing I’m here, isn’t it?” I shouted back. I wasn’t actually angry, I knew, just reliving the terror of the last half hour mixed with the relief of seeing them both ok and the worry at their injuries. In short, I was overwhelmed and Dean yelling at me had frayed my already shot nerves. 
“We would have been fine.” Dean deflected.
“No you wouldn’t have! When I got here Sam was on the ground, dead for all I knew, and you were hardly about to win in a battle of strength. And even if you had, your weapon was useless. You would have died!”
“You’re the one who decided you didn’t want to fight! And that’s fine, you know we’re ok with that. But you can’t just not train and then run into a fight with no idea what you’re doing!”
“Guys, maybe we should-” Sam tried again.
“No!” I yelled. I saw a look of surprised hurt in his eyes. I felt bad for snapping at him when he hadn’t done anything wrong, but I was too fired up to backtrack now. “If Dean hasn’t had enough of a fight tonight, then let’s fight! I may not be trained in hand to hand and weapons the way you are, but I assure you, I can yell at you all night long.”
Dean’s eyes narrowed and I saw the muscle jump in his jaw. 
“Sam, can you give us a minute?” He asked in a forced calm tone. 
Sam hesitated, looking back and forth between the two of us before agreeing. “Alright. But you’ve got ten minutes before I’m coming back in after you to make sure you’re not strangling each other,” he warned before leaving the room.
We glared at each other for a minute, neither of us speaking. After what felt simultaneously like an eternity and only a moment, Dean started talking again in that tone that was an attempt at being calm, but I could clearly hear the tenseness and anger underneath.
“You can’t just-”
“You said that already,” I interrupted immediately. His jaw ticked again, and I knew shouting at him when he was trying to deescalate the situation was not appreciated. He tried again in that same infuriating tone, a little more strained this time.
“Sam and I hardly need you jumping in to protect us. We know what we’re doing.”
“That’s not the point!”
“Then what is?” He yelled back, patience worn thin.
“It doesn’t matter if you know what you’re doing or not because you couldn’t have won! I was doing some more reading after you guys left and I realized I gave you the wrong weapon.”
“Then you call us! You don’t come running in after us!”
“I did call you! Neither of you picked up! I couldn’t just sit there and wait for you to die!”
“Of course you could have! Don’t you think we’d rather take our chances with bad weapons than to have you in the line of fire?”
“What would you have done Dean?” I screamed at him. “If it were you sitting around knowing that I was going after a monster with a weapon that wouldn’t kill it? What would you have done?” I felt confident this would be the end of it. After all, there was no doubt in my mind what he would have done, and he couldn’t possibly deny it.
“That’s not the same thing,” he said. He was still angry, but he said this in a quieter voice, the kind of quiet that meant I’d truly struck a nerve. 
“Why?” I asked, ready to swoop in with the metaphorical killing blow and win the argument. “Because I can’t fight, so of course I’d need you to come save me?”
“No.”
“Hypothetically saying I was as well trained as you then. Or that it was Sam. The point still stands. You would have done exactly what I did. You wouldn’t just sit back and let us die, so why would I?”
“I told you, that’s not what I meant,” he snapped. “How do you think we would feel if something happened to you? What if we couldn’t protect you and you got hurt?”
“How do you think I felt, Dean?” I stomped over to him, getting right in his face, letting him see how much I meant what I was saying. “I didn’t know if you would be alive or not when I got here.” I stopped for a breath, the intensity of the emotions I’d felt in that moment hitting me once again. “Don’t tell me I don’t understand what it would feel like. I know exactly what it feels like.”
“It’s not the same,” he said again, stubbornly.
“How is it not the same? If anything, it’s worse for me. You and Sam at least have each other. If I lose you guys, I have no one. I will not lose you. Do you understand me? If that means putting my own life on the line, I’m ok with that.” 
“I’m not!”
“Well that’s just too bad, isn’t it, because it’s my life, not yours!”
“You’re not understanding me! If you would just let me explain-”
But apparently I wouldn’t. I wasn’t doing it on purpose, but I just needed him to understand what I was saying. So I cut him off in the middle of his request that I not do so.
“No, I told you that I understand perfectly. It’s you who isn’t understanding! I’ve never been more scared in my whole life than I was when I heard you yelling in pain.” In the back of my mind, I registered that Dean’s expression had turned from anger to determination. But my brain didn’t seem to fully process this fact, not that I would have known what to do with that information even if I had. My emotions were driving me now, and there was no stopping the words pouring from my mouth.
“I thought that whatever happened, it must be really bad. And maybe I was too late to save you. And it’s my own stupid fault you needed saving in the first place. How could I-”
This time, Dean cut me off. It was only fair, after all I’d done the same to him. This was a much nicer, much more pleasant, much more unexpected way of interrupting though. He leaned down, crashing his lips against mine. As my body seemed to be running on instinct and adrenaline right now, I responded immediately, wrapping my arms around his neck, meeting his demanding kiss with enthusiasm. 
I ran one of my hands through his hair, enjoying the feel of the soft strands between my fingers. My other hand ran down over his shoulder, to his bicep, then over to his chest, loving the strength I could feel in all those hard earned muscles. His hands were wandering too, in my hair one second, traveling over my back the next, and then on my waist.
My brain, which seemed to have shut down for the past few moments – minutes? – decided to start working again, practically screaming at me that this was Dean I was kissing. Dean, apparently experiencing the same returning brain function as me, pulled away. He took a careful step back, creating some space between us. That was probably good. I couldn’t think with him so close. Not after that. His cheeks were flushed red for a whole new reason now and his hair was sticking up in an annoyingly attractive way. I could see by the surprise in his eyes that he hadn’t been planning on the kiss being that intense. 
“It’s not the same,” he repeated, his voice as calm as if we were having a normal conversation on any old day. As if we hadn’t been arguing minutes before. As if he hadn’t just given me the most mind numbing, spine tingling kiss of my life. “Because I love you. And I know that that probably wasn’t the best way to go about telling you, but I need you to understand what it would mean to me to lose you. If you lost me, you’d lose a friend. It would suck, but you would move on. But you’re more than that to me, and I don’t know how I could survive losing you.”
“Have you not paid attention to a thing I said?” I asked him, taking a step forward to eliminate the space he’d put between us. “I told you, if I lost you and Sam I would have nothing.”
“Yeah, but that’s not really true. You could make more friends easily enough.”
“But you’re not just my friends. Sam is my best friend, true, but I love him like he’s my brother. Losing him would hurt me just as bad as losing an actual brother. And you… I couldn’t move on from you any easier than you could move on from me. I love you too.”
“Yeah,” Dean winced. “Like a brother. I know.”
“Not like a brother,” I said, wrinkling my nose a little. “Do you really think I would kiss you like that, or at all for that matter, if that’s how I thought of you?”
“I would hope not,” he agreed. 
“So, basically, you’ve been yelling at me this whole time about not understanding you when, in reality, I understand perfectly, just like I said from the beginning.” I couldn’t help but gloat a little at being right.
The corner of Dean’s mouth twitched slightly in a repressed smile. 
“You know, I think you owe me for scaring me nearly to death earlier,” he said happily.
“I owe you?” 
“Yes. When you came running in here I swear my heart stopped. And then I had to watch you get thrown across the room…” He winced at the memory and I could tell how upset it made him, but he quickly shook it off and kept up his cheerful tone. “I think you took at least three years off my life. Lucky for you I’ll take payment in kisses. One for every year less I’ll live thanks to you.”
Part of me wanted to argue, but the other part was too giddy to even care. 
“Alright,” I agreed easily. I stretched up onto my tiptoes and pressed a soft, lingering kiss to his mouth. I wanted to continue the intense kiss from earlier, but there would be time for that later. This seemed like the appropriate response to his gentle, teasing tone. “There’s one.”
I kissed him again, and then once more, feeling like I could burst with joy the whole time. 
“There,” I said after the third kiss. “Does that make us even?”
“For now,” he smiled. “I have a feeling I’ll be finding lots of excuses for more in the future.”
“How’s this for an excuse? I think you took at least five years off my life. I’ll be needing some compensation here as well.”
He grinned. “And I fully intend to pay up. Once we’re home though. I don’t know about you, but I’m ready to get out of here.”
I was a little disappointed to have to be done kissing him. But I knew he was right. We should get out of here. I knew he was in pain, and I still didn’t know how Sam was doing. Besides, it was only a temporary stop. Once we were home I would have as much time with him as I wanted.
Home. Just the mention of it made me long for it even more. But even though I couldn’t wait to be back, even though I’d spent the whole time here waiting for the moment we could leave, the past few minutes with Dean had made the whole thing worth it. 
Maybe New York wasn’t so bad after all.
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Tags: @123passwort @buckybarnes-1917 @chicken-nuggs-and-cozy-hugs @globetrotter28
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ohcorny · 22 days
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hey corny. so i always see people recommending to outline their story before starting it, but could you talk a little bit more about what that means? what is an outline and how do you structure one? how long are the ones you write, depending on the project? do you focus on plot beats or feelings? how specific do you get? can u recommend any readings for learning more?
up front i don't have any resources for this, only experience. and outlines feel like one of those things where it's like... there are a million ways to do it and the way that works for me might not work for you. i have a friend who writes out all his ideas on index cards and that, for me, is insane. but he's also a better writer than me so who can say what is right or wrong.
anyway an outline is essentially a sketch but for a story. you go through the whole thing, start to finish, and figure out what goes where and what happens when. the idea is that this is the stage where you work out all the big picture stuff and make sure it all fits together, now, and not after you've drawn twenty pages and suddenly go "wait shit that doesn't work" and have to do it over. it is much easier to delete and rewrite a paragraph than to redraw several pages.
doing anything more, ie including dialogue or feelings, depends entirely on how useful that information is to you at that point in the process and whether the purpose of the outline is for your own guidance, or so somebody else can tell what you're trying to achieve.
this got really long with multiple examples
here is an excerpt from the original outline i used to pitch Hunger's Bite to publishers. this one had to be polished to a professional standard, because somebody else was going to read it and decide whether they wanted to give me thousands of dollars to tell this story. (also several of the details are no longer accurate. for instance it now takes place 9 years earlier lmao)
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this paragraph represents the first eight pages of the book. the final book is 264 pages long, and the outline was 12 pages of paragraphs as dense as this one.
it establishes where we are, who's there, and what they're doing. i describe their conversation, but i don't commit to the dialogue. i will occasionally include snippets of literal dialogue, but usually only if it's Important Dialogue, or i just don't want to forget a good idea i had while outlining. it's not expected at this step.
an outline written as part of a pitch to a publisher should tell the whole story, with all the important details, and leave nothing ambiguous. they need to know the tone, shape, and the arcs. no secrets! all the spoilers. outlines for yourself should do this too, but outlines for others need to be as clear about your vision as possible. again, an outline like this exists for the purpose of getting you paid thousands of dollars. you should write it like that.
in comparison, here's an excerpt from the outline i wrote for revisions to my WIP prose novel, so i could show it to my agent (who already read the draft) to be like "do these changes sound good?" i'm not selling it to anyone yet, just making a guide so i can have a conversation about it. so it doesn't need to be neat, it just needs to be functional and clear. the first chapter was entirely new stuff. the second bit was just writing down what was already in the chapter that existed.
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i have historically been very bad at outlining things when i don't think i "need" to, and only wrote this one after having written like 60k words of the book without any overall plan. i gave what i had to my agent for feedback and then sat down and figured out how i could apply it. it's made the whole revisions process significantly less daunting. now i have a checklist for things i need to do! this one was a paragraph or two for each chapter, with the ones that needed a lot of rewriting given a bit more detail.
lastly, here's a bit of the outline for the first roger crenshaw book. i was the only person who had to see this, and since the story was planned to be very short i didn't have to worry about a whole lot. as long as i knew what was supposed to go where, it would work. honestly it's not a whole lot different from the previous example.
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this one was like five paragraphs and it did the job, and this story was like 15k words. you only need as much or as little as will actually help you on the page.
basically if you take nothing else from this, it's that there are multiple ways to write an outline, that it does not need to be perfect if you're doing it for yourself, and that it only needs what you think is important (unless it is for other people. then it should have everything). and also it's a good idea to do it earlier in the project than after you've written 60k words or drawn--jesus christ i got up to 12 chapters in never satisfied? it's amazing i didn't quit sooner
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keystonepublishing · 7 months
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The Saga of Hermitcraft on r/Place (1 April 2022 - 4 April 2022)
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On the 1st of April 2022, Reddit unveiled a white blank canvas where every user had the ability to place one colored pixel in every 5 minutes. At its height, about 4 million people participated in one of the biggest internet collaborations ever made. The ripple effects reverberated into news reports as far away as Turkey, and the final canvas represents a snapshot of the multiple communities, events, memes, and what was popular around the world at that time.
This is a documentation of the Hermitcraft mural on r/place 2022.
aka.
Remember what I said about my latest ficbind being a distraction? This is what I wanted to be distracted from.
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After Reddit's API fiasco of this year and the subsequent controversial event that was r/place 2023, I decided to save as much documentation about the 2022 event as I could. Luckily, I remember how there are already a series of posts by @riacte who documented the progress of the Hermitcraft mural throughout the whole event, from beginning to end. Her blogposts form the bulk of this book (like, 95%!) and I cannot thank her enough for preserving the happenings of the block men mural.
With that said, I quickly realized that someone who's not a Hermitcraft fan - or me if I'm older - might not get the gist of who's who on the mural. The solution? Make several pages dedicated to just listing who's who on the murals! Because of the sheer number of heads, the mural was divided into several pieces for easier labeling. As a bonus, I also threw in another mural nearby which was connected enough to the Hermitcraft community.
For consistency's sake and preserving focus, I decided to not label the peeps from Dream SMP or the MCC secondary mural. Wrangling Microsoft Word to create an infographic was hard enough, let alone 3! If I inadvertently left out a few bits of extra context from this decision, mea culpa.
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When it came to typesetting the entire text block, I decided to make some consistent rules. Titles denoting each day or stage of the mural are on their own pages. New sections are titled using the Bahnschrift font and colored blue, while the first paragraph has their beginning lines look Minecraft-coded and topped with a drop cap (aka. those super-large alphabets).
The names of Hermitcraft and Minecraft players in general are bolded when they first appear in the text. Afterwards, they are bolded if they are contextually important to what's being said.
Extra context would be placed in the footnotes section at the bottom of the page. This is also where I dump some background information that would be invaluable for any readers who aren't Minecraft fans, which is why the SpaceX page looked like... uh, that.
My image policy is to go with the flow; I used as many images from riacte's posts as possible, but I also added-in some of my own if more context is needed. Placing them to look smooth with the text was harder - some are small enough to not cause any problems, others are large enough to fill entire pages without any problems, but a few like the Dream SMP mural (hey there! I managed to put you in!) are too wonky to fit perfectly without leaving no empty spaces.
So in that mural's case, I placed them to the side and let the contextual text flow around it. This principle was also used for the Dota2 / Love Live images and in a few other places throughout the book. The biggest case of this are the few images that are just too wide.
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Like this one.
Making double-page spreads is not the easiest thing to do in Microsoft Word, and there are a few r/place images that are too wide to fit perfectly in a single page. Confining them to one page would also mean losing all their details, so making them a double-page spread was necessary.
Didn't make it easy though, especially when there are paragraphs of text and other images that needed to be shuffled around. Mess up the double-page images, and they won't meet in the middle. Mess up the text and other pics? There goes the layout and overall flow!
In the end, making this book took a lot longer than I expected, but I am still grateful to have made this as I have now read through many posts from Tumblr, Reddit, and even Youtube - people expressing joy that they have collectively made something together. I can only hope I have made some justice to them by compiling their work and (even if a small sliver) preserving their testaments.
May this r/place be remembered.
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probablynoposts · 10 months
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I’ve Been Reincarnated Into The Male Lead! (Part 3)
Malleus Draconia x Gn!Reader - Isekai AU
I’m back finally, this will probably be quite short but whatever part 1, part 2, masterlist
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Malleus followed you. He couldn’t help himself. To him, you are the brightest lantern on a moonless night. He would be the butterfly that can’t help but be enticed and drawn to you. But you were quick. Just as he reached you, you were in a room with the door already closed.
“Insolent child!” Malleus pauses, quickly noticing it’s not your voice. Instead, it was your father’s. “How can you not do the one thing I ask of you?!”
“But-”
“Shut up! You had a chance to do it!” Your father hisses. “My brother was an idiot, having a child with a commoner. I suppose, if he couldn’t do anything right, neither could his child.”
“Hey-!”
Slap. Your face stings, and your voice goes silent.
"Now, there will be consequences for this failure and disobedience."
Your 'father' pauses. "You and Prince Malleus will have tea together in three days. I think you know what I expect to happen." As he says that, he takes out a small vial. Though it’s far away, Malleus knows what’s inside. Poison.
Malleus wants to go in, to hug and save you from that monster of a 'father'. But he heard Sebek, one of his bodyguards, who despite having trust in you, very little, little trust, would arrest you(and your father) for treason. So Malleus leaves before he can be spotted.
When Malleus took you to look at the stars that night he saw your injury, he tried to comfort you. He also wanted to ask many questions and questions. Varying from ‘Has everything been fake?’ or ‘Are you okay?’ and ‘Will you really kill him?..’
Over the next three days, Malleus does several things. 1) Not tell Lilia about the assassination. 2) Try to keep you away from your ‘father’ and at the palace. 3) Clean up the ball, and finally…. 4) Prepare to be poisoned and meet the female lead..
When it was time for you and Malleus to have tea, he was prepared. While saddened at what he knew what was going to happen, he was still grateful to see you. You had been avoiding him. His eyes light up as he sees you, though they dim slightly as he sees your father is escorting you. Your ‘father’’s grip on your shoulder seems tighter than usual. While Malleus is trying to not swat that traitorous hand straight off your shoulder.
“Why are you here, Duke?” Malleus asked coldly.
“I’m just here to look after my lovely child.” Your ‘father’ said ‘lovely’ as if he was trying to convince himself as well.
“I’m sorry, but you weren’t invited. Now why don’t you leave before you offend me more than you have already.” Malleus ordered. With that, your ‘father’ stepped out, seething at the power Malleus has over him. Malleus then showed you to the flower gardens, where there was a table and chairs set up.
As you and Malleus sat down and started a conversation, he notices that you seem upset.
“Are you okay?”
“Hm?” You seem slightly surprised that he asks “Just…looking at the flowers.” You gesture to the plethora of different colored flowers surrounding you and Malleus.
“They are quite beautiful, aren’t they?” Malleus responds, looking around at the flora, calmly smiling.
“Yes, they are.” You answer, still not meeting his eyes. Despite you avoiding his initial question, he doesn’t press on.
Malleus then picks up his tea cup, realizing the tea had been delivered. He blows on it slightly, as to not burn his tongue. He realizes something.
“Hm? The tea must have been placed when we were looking at the flowers, it’s not as hot as it usually is.”
“Yes, it must have been.” You murmur quietly, glancing down nervously at your cup of tea.
“Cheers.” Malleus holds up his tea cup.
You pause, then a small smile creeps upon your face. “Cheers.”
The two of you clink the glasses together and then put them to your lips. As Malleus takes a sip of his tea, he waits for the pain to hit. A whole paragraph was used in the original book to explain how the excruciating the pain was. Not looking forward to ‘it felt like the world was shutting down, and that everything inside was failing.’ But nothing..?
He’s then looks up at you and sees blood dripping from your mouth. Though a hand covers it, it also seems to be trying to keep in the coughs that bring the blood with it. But instead of a look of fear in your eyes, like the look in Malleus’, there is only sadness and resignation. Malleus’ felt like his world was shutting down as he saw you collapse to the floor, with an empty tea cup..
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Yeah, surprisingly, I’m not dead. This is really short(I’m sorry), but I’m surprised I actually got this much done. Again, sorry if characters are ooc and hope you enjoyed.
[taglist]: @naroshinozaki @animesimpanon@starriwonderland@jumiver @thedianaclark@younganarchist-blog @aixaingela@ztracker
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foressfaction · 21 days
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Toby Headcanons
First things first, rewrite link —> https://www.wattpad.com/story/330185513-ticci-toby-a-rewrite?utm_source=android&utm_medium=link&utm_content=story_info&wp_page=story_details_button&wp_uname=foressfaction&wp_originator=4ym0kekpamjg%2byu500owdfcdlnhtpkigcby1thrmnvj95d4u%2f2vtey8ihglpowcvuy8icvezeljevfn%2fbufrp
Fair warning, I am the Toby enthusiast so you’re in for a long read. If you actually care enough to read all this, keep in mind there are some triggering topics for well… everything. That’s also including the other links leading to other posts of mine. Read with caution. I go into heavy detail about topics that are usually pretty sensitive.
Family headcanons—> https://www.tumblr.com/foressfaction/734266713806405633/basic-family-head-canons-for-toby
Operator headcanons—> WIP
Him with Jack—> https://www.tumblr.com/foressfaction/735560061461594112/my-jack-and-toby-headcanons-theyre-bfs
Him with Natalie—> https://www.tumblr.com/foressfaction/746264454600278016/toby-and-clockwork-some-headcanon-takes-on-this
Him and Lyra —> WIP
Him and Cross-X—>WIP
The main basics
He can't read, he has always had trouble reading. He can get simple sentences and phrases but actual literature like books, newspapers, or anything over half a paragraph long, he can't read it.
Due to losing his memories, he lost knowledge of what normal people do. He doesn't know social cues that well. You could come up to him and say that you want to be his friend and he'd look like a clueless child.
Never having a friend before, anything of the sort now would make him suspicious of you, or just not trust you.
He has very very bad trust issues, meaning he thinks everyone is out to get him. Which may not be true, though he can't help but think it due to his anxiety.
He is terrified of vehicles, and riding in them. Though he doesn't remember why. His body still reacts with trauma he doesn't recall experiencing.
This is kinda annoying for him.
He can run incredibly fast and has almost unlimited stamina. He knows his limits though and never pushes his body to the extent due to the fact he will lose mobility for the next hour or so trying to regain his breath.This may lead to him potentially passing out.
He will only run to his full abilities if he is in severe danger (or feel he is)
He loves the smell of lavender, it makes him tired and relaxed. It is the only thing that will help him sleep.
He still bites his nails so he sometimes will coat his nails in either nail polish (yes he paints his nails sometimes) or will get that nasty tasting polish. It depends. He's very insecure about his hands and so he will paint his nails to make them look a little better.
Along with the aid of sleep, basic company helps a lot. It would have to be someone he's close with or at least knows to an extent. Just having someone there, regardless of distance or their position in the area, really helps him sleep.
He's easy to make friends with but it'll take some time for him to get used to you. He'd want to know a lot of things first and learn more about you.
His favorite season is fall, and his favorite spice is Parsley. He loves the smell.
He can't cook but if he was to ever help someone with cooking (which…Is a bad idea anyways) he'd probably sprinkle a little parsley in secretly.
He is of German descent but can't speak it. (unless operator is controlling him, in that case he ONLY speaks it)
He has two marks in the shape of the operator symbol on his upper left arm and lower right side. They are scars as they were once carved into the skin and slowly scarred over.
He would be the type of person who would lay his forehead on your cheek and stare waiting for an apology or just if he was in a playful mood.
He also sucks on his candy canes until they are quite literally a deadly weapon.
I feel like he would run up stairs so fast he literally trips up them. This also goes with anytime he needed to run, it's an immediate sprint, no working up speed, no preparing his legs, literally gone- this might cause trip ups occasionally. Imagine getting hit by an axe then you hear footsteps with a loud thud following after.
He isn't very picky with food, I feel he'd eat what normally people wouldn't, like the top piece and last piece of a bread loaf, or spaghettios cold, not warmed. Same with hot dogs, he may not boil the weenie, who knows it depends.
If anyone took the bread crusts off their sandwiches he would eat those alone- i think he likes bread guys.
He probably wets his socks or pillow in the summer to feel cool, sometimes would probably just walk around with a cold wet towel draped over his head.
Lyra would occasionally make fun of him for being shorter than her for most of their childhood until he would have eventually grown taller if she hadn't passed.
He would've gotten back at her.
She definitely picked on him a lot in a playful manner and he'd always overreact. Definitely a stereotypical 'get out of my room' emo kid. He'd definitely be a stoner if we're talking normal mansion au thing. Bro would probably be high 25/8, mainly so he doesn't feel like shit all the time.
He'd meow back or bark back at animals who do so to him. He'd growl at anything growling at him and eventually these would plainly turn into tics. Now he'd just meow or bark/growl out of absolutely no where.
He'd definitely be pretty flexible, upon somehow squeezing into places like cabinets and tiny closets to avoid capture or getting spotted, he had always been pretty maneuverable-?? He'd probably purposely freak people out by doing literal gymnastic poses just out of the blue. I'd imagine he'd break, fracture or pop out of socket bones without knowing it due to not feeling the actual pain of the strain he puts on them. Therefore he ignores it and one day if he just decides to do a backbend then he just goes for it.
He loves peaches and anything peach flavored. Usually when savaging for food, canned peaches are his main target. He would almost completely avoid a store if they had none. He isn't picky at all, of course, but he'd like at least one thing of his personal liking if he's going out of his way to steal it. It HAS to be the canned ones. He doesn't fuckin know how to peel an actual peach? And I figured if anything he'd HATE the fuzzy skin on it and would absolutely have a meltdown. ( based on me). If someone handed him a FULL ASS UNSKINNED peach. He would look at you like 'What am I supposed to do with this….'
I also headcanon that he got his hat from Lyra as when they were younger and she was still alive, she worked at a mailing company sorting the mail. The symbol on the hat looks like a yellow envelope. She gave it to him when she quit so he could wear it and stuff.
He'd absolutely love spiderman and silly things like star wars and transformers. He's definitely more of a Marvel guy and probably owns/owned tons of spiderman themed clothing.
Toby would always comfort Lyra after her rough days at work. I feel she'd fall asleep on the couch immediately after sitting down. He would crawl up beside her and just curl up against her, also falling asleep. She'd always wake up before him and take him to bed soon after.
I feel he would have trouble making eye contact but it's for a completely different reason than most. It's not because he's awkward but because he genuinely doesn't know how to look at someone. Unless its a partner or a really close friend. He will avoid eye contact at least for too long. If he's actually able to hold contact with someone that's a sign he's growing comfortably that they wont hurt him.
It stems from his father shaming him for just looking at the man the wrong way anf sometimes that led to physical disputes that he wishes to avoid from any possible individual. He has a natural resting bitch face so it's not hard to mistake his look as something spiteful.
When he stutters it's not a tic, it has nothing to do with his TS, it's just a speech impediment and is very VERY insecure about it because of how many times he's been called annoying or told to just 'hurry up and say it, i don't have time for this', something along those lines.
- His tics include facial grimaces, snapping his fingers or jaws every now and then, hitting himself, or others around pretty hard, tapping his foot or whistling. He will blurt random ass shit as well (this i will sometimes add into the rp, it can be kinda funny, sometimes inappropriate) ex: "suck my loli" or "shitty shoe" shit like that.
- Appearance wise, nothing really changed. His eye color did however. Instead of that dark brown, it's a hazel green. He's probably around 5'6 overall. Plus he's extremely frail and unhealthy. He is covered and when i say covered, I mean covered in freckles. Shoulders, arms and his face are where they really are noticeable. Like normal, his hair is the same, dark and frizzy. It has a little bit of curl to it but mainly it's just wavy and fluffy.
-He still bites his hands since he's never really broken that habit, so you'd never really see him without bandages on his hands.
-Personality wise, he's pretty feral. Even as a teenager. He can be stalker-ish and weird. He's still pretty damn timid though since..hello social anxiety.
Toby is extremely neurodivergent. He stims and tics all of the time. He can't handle certain smells, tastes, textures. Specifically wet hands on any cold dry surface, or per say, chewing on a piece of steak or anything chewy for more than 6 seconds MAX. He can't have food touching and has to use multiple forks/spoons/knives when he has a meal.
-Toby can't stand the sight of his own blood. It causes him to break down and literally freak out. He has a strange phobia of organs and bones of his own coming out of where they shouldn't be. He is very sensitive with wounds in the torso area due to this exact organ phobia.
(He's had dreams where he literally had to hold his organs inside so they wouldn't fall out.
🌿Appearance Headcanons🌿
[F]He pretty much stayed the same, originally, he started with just a few freckles here and there, but how i see him, a full face of freckles, and all over him, arms, back, neck, just everywhere. This also goes for scars. He has lots of rather unique ones. Especially on his back. He has two deep gash scars right on his shoulder blades that look like he once had wings. At least that's how he wants to see it.
[F] His teeth had kinda been crooked from all of the pressure onto them throughout his childhood and due to his teeth actually getting knocked out when he was little. (his baby teeth of course) his adult teeth never really wanted to grow in right.
- I find it better if he is 19-25years old, him as any older kinda feels weird to me since i am used to portraying him as a late teen or in his early/mid twenties. This really depends on how he'll be used and the story i will go by
- His hair is still the same. Still a dark chocolate brown. It's just a lot messier, or well, very fluffy With a few curls.
- He is still very pale but still slightly more tan than how he is originally, his skin has a pastel peach light tone (just a normal pale person) and not like the light grey people usually see him as.
-His face is very scarred, but the one that stands out the most is the iconic tear, or gash in his right cheek. It exposes muscle, and his teeth from the side. It's very disgusting so he keeps hidden with masks, or bandages.
Visage and wardrobe
Adding this in last second but I feel his closet is FULL with brown grunge grey and green flannels and layered shirts and grandpa sweaters. He’s your average grunge Pinterest guy you’d find on every corner of the internet but he’s stylish unconsciously. He throws shit together he thinks looks good and apparently it actually does. One day he’d be rocking a fire fit and the next he looks like he came right out of a dumpster as most of his older clothes are torn and sheared up from well… living where he does. He prefers layers no matter what season it is but will occasionally wear sleeveless stuff and shorts. Probably owns a few shark themed pieces and along with what I said earlier. Some marvel and other stuff. Probably from the kids section who knows honestly. All of the tags on his clothes are faded.
- https://www.tumblr.com/foressfaction/743158587608727552/while-im-on-art-block-heres-some-stupid-shit-toby
Persona🌿
His personality is pretty much the same. He's a little more timid though. He actually has a big heart, despite him being a potential serial killer, he still has a few soft spots and a heart. He will care and love for someone, but in order to really earn his trust, someone would have to repeatedly prove that they are worthy of it. He's literally insane, meaning he can be really up and active in a hypomanic way. He's pretty childish around those he knows, but doesn't trust those he doesn't, in fact, those he doesn't know will most likely be ignored or get small, nervous/annoyed responses. He's easy to make friends with since his persona is very passive, he's really sweet in some situations and the next he'd be having a mental breakdown or some kind of manic attack.
-He's very jumpy and easily startled, and would most likely flinch or try to shield himself if someone moves too fast around him. This is due to his trauma and slight PTSD.
-He is touch starved, meaning when he does get affection he'd get extremely confused, weirded out or just plainly get emotional. He didn't get much love and was reminded daily that he was a sack of shit and he finds it hard to believe anyone would love him.
Canonically, he never had a sexuality, meaning he could be any sexual orientation you want. For me, he is Biromantic/Asexual. For him, relationships would have to move slowly, not just kiss kiss fall in love type of shit. You'd have to become his friend first, and of course be loyal and such. It isn't easy at all for him to fall into a relationship, in fact that's the last thing on his mind. Since he believes he is unlovable, no one would even like him in such a way, so he gives up and just sticks to what he has to do.
[Fluffy HC!]
-If the whole mansion concept is being used, he would definitely be very dramatic and really in character if he was to roleplay or play a game with Sally. If he was given a role he will make sure he fills it as accurately as possible just to make her happy. He has a soft spot for children obviously. Unless The Operator is in control.
-If he is good friends or in a relationship with someone, he will generate a nickname based off of your appearance. It would usually consist of cute characteristics he sees in you, and sometimes he'll base it off of your personality. If not, if he's feeling silly, he'll call you a nickname based on random objects. "How's my favorite frying pan this morning?"
Romance?
Toby thinks love is just a fantasy, and no one could love him, much less return the feelings, so love is the last thing on his mind. Though he thinks about what it would be like to have a partner
-He would be so emotional if he even gets a hug, much less feelings being confessed, or confessing his own but Toby may accidentally slip it out, or tell them just to get it off his chest and carry on like it means nothing but on the inside he knows it does and will beat himself up about it
-I think he'd definitely act differently as well, especially his tics would act up more as well around them because he's really nervous and maybe say random things to shoo off the feeling like nothing was there to begin with.
Habits
- He still bites his nails and inner cheek but does it when he's really stressed or nervous. He's really fidgety so he'd mess with anything loose or even would twirl his hair, soon he did it so much his hair got used to it and began to get slightly curly but mostly just wavy.
- [F]He grits his teeth a lot. He'll do it randomly.
-[F] His ADHD still affects him now, so it's hard for him to focus on one thing at once and gets easily distracted. Its a bad habit
Mentality🌿
- Nothing really changed. He still suffers with his disabilities, just some stopped affecting him as much after he reached 17 originally. Being schizophrenia and Anxiety. But this headcanon still suffers with those two despite his age. This explains why he can see the operator, which brings me to the next change.
He had suffered from Schizophrenia since he was 7 years old. So he's been seeing this entity his whole life. Making so much happen and of course all of the deaths in his life was blamed upon the entity.
- [F]Since he cannot feel pain, there is a high chance that he could have hurt himself very badly and not know. So every now and then he does check ups on himself, especially after something brutal happened or had gotten into a fight. He could be perfectly fine one second ago then faint due to blood loss and wake up not even knowing what happened. This is really hard for him since a really bad wound that could grow fatal could be anywhere and he wouldn't know. So a check up on himself here and there could really save his ass.
Story🌿
- Everything pretty much stayed the same. The deaths, the conflicts. The only thing that really changed was the cause of the deaths.
- However, after the ending, where the fire nearly took his life, he couldn't remember anything on why he was there, or how he ended up in this situation. He blacked out and woke up in a whole different area of the dense forest. He no longer remembered a thing but every time he'd try and get close to coming back to the past, it would all happen again.
- He never remembered anything, even after he had murdered someone, in fact he doesn't even like doing that. He despises the fact that he should murder innocent people, however sometimes, he will see the face of a man he hated so dearly but didn't remember why.
-Amongst the crime scene, after he had murdered someone, he'd sit and stare at what he had done, a huge moment of lucidity would take over him, making everything come back for those few moments. Then his mind would wipe blank once again and he'd go on like nothing ever happened. During those moments, he'd regret spilling the blood of the victim, and hate on himself even more, while violent memories and thoughts ran through his mind, making him feel less and less stable. This sometimes knocked him out, and he'd be there, unconscious at the scene which isn't good since that's how ya get caught and arrested.
He lives in a small shed in the middle of Rosswood Park/forest. His shed is deep deep in the woods, he had never lived in the mansion. (might will make something work for roleplay use)
Before anything, these are just my changes and adjustments I made to either fit a better way of my liking/needs and to just plainly make more sense.
Disorder list and how it all affects him.
Tourettes Syndrome
A shared headcanon: Toby has coprophilia (uncontrolled cursing), which is actually an uncommon symptom, but seeing that he was unfit for public school, it would make sense in his case. Most tics are not debilitating (but can be discomforting, obviously), so Toby’s TS must be an extreme case. So my headcanon of his verbal tics being coprophilia makes sense. He is an extreme case and has complex verbal tics (coprophilia is classified as a complex phonic tic and not a simple phonic tic). This was one of the reasons he was unfit for public school, along with being bullied for his motor tics. It doesn’t mention anything about him having verbal tics in his story or implying that he has coprophilia—but again, Wade did not know much about TS, so I headcanon him to have it as it makes more sense. He also seems to just have simple motor tics (generally brief movements involving spasmodic, non-rhythmic muscle contractions) ie. jerking his head and other limbs occasionally. However, since he was unfit to go to normal school and therefore should be an extreme case, I headcanon him to also have complex motor tics (more purposeful movements such as: grimacing, tapping, walking in a specific pattern or circling, jumping, kicking, or punching), mainly kicking and punching/hitting and slapping. This would make much more sense because tho he still would probably get made fun of for just simple motor tics, that alone shouldn’t stop him from being too unfit for regular school. His are obviously chronic and do not disappear as he gets older, unlike with many cases.
-So there are my headcanons on his TS and tics. They make much more sense, and if Wade had actually known about TS more, would probably be what they would have given him. I’m not entirely sure if you can have both simple and complex tics of the same type, but I don’t see why not, so I headcanon him to have both simple and complex motor and phonic tics. His simple verbal tics include clearing his throat, grunting and other short repetitive noises. Typically he usually grunts and makes said repetitive noises more but will compulsively clear his throat, sometimes with coughing, from time to time. Said repetitive noises often happen while trying to speak and will act up if he is nervous or very excited. His complex phonic tics, like I stated before, is coprolalia along with sømetimes muttering or shouting random words spontaneously.
Again, his complex verbal tics act up when he is nervous or very excited etc. He tends to curse randomly while talking and sometimes will say random words which sometimes makes it very difficult for him to talk and make coherent sentences. Cursing is his more common complex verbal tic while sputtering random words is less common for him. Most days it isn’t too bad and he mostly just swears when talking (along with all his other tics but I’m focusing on how it affects his speech right now), but sometimes he’ll have days where talking is very difficult and he stutters trying to get the words out and can’t make coherent sentences. Again, it gets even worse when he’s nervous or very excited. For his simple motor tics, he mainly jerks and cracks his neck along with jerking his other limbs in weird ways that often cause his joints to pop and make a cracking sound.
Sometimes they’re violent enough that if he could feel pain it would hurt him and occasionally injuring himself cause ie. tearing or pulling a muscle (which is shit as he can’t feel pain so doesn’t notice anything is wrong most of the time). Again, like always, these tend to get worse and act up when he’s nervous or very excited. Often when cracking and jerking his head he will also grunt or make said repetitive noise as he does so. His complex motor tics include throwing things, punching, slapping, hitting and kicking either himself, anything and anyone he can reach or is close to him, and if nothing is around, the air itself. These are less frequent than his simple motor tics, but as he is an extreme case, they are still a common occurrence for him. Again, like all his other tics, they tend to act up when he’s nervous or very excited, but not as much as all the others. His simple motor tics act up more when he’s nervous or very excited more than his complex motor tics. When they do act up more, which ones tend to depend on how he’s feeling. If he’s feeling stressed, nervous or sad, he tends to hit or punch, kick slap, ‘hurt’ himself more. If he’s angry it’s a mix of hitting, slapping and punching himself along with kicking, punching and throwing nearby things. If the emotions are positive he tends to backhand anything that might be nearby, just doing that motion if there’s nothing to hit, throwing things, kicking his legs out or slapping himself in the face, and occasionally punching if he’s really happy or excited. He must be careful cause he tends to punch nearby people in the face when that happens, most of the time pretty hard. He always feels super bad whenever that happens and tries to hit himself instead so he doesn’t punch someone in the face when excited. Sometimes if his tics, mainly his complex motor tics, are acting up badly, he’ll drop down on the floor and roll around a bit as he hits the ground and air and lets everything out in a little fit. It’s best to quickly move him to an opener area if he can feel a bad tic fit coming on so he can lay down where he’s not going to hit or throw anyone/anyone. It’s best to just let him get it out unless it’s partially violent and he’s in danger of hurting himself (jerking too hard etc.) or if he’s doing it to himself particularly hard and violently. He is an extreme case so he tics everyday, but some days, if he’s really lucky, it won’t happen too often and will mostly just have simple tics that don’t get in the way of day to day life too badly. On the other hand, he can have very bad days where his tics act up, his complex tics especially, where they happen very frequently and he can’t make it stop or slow down and has multiple violent tic fits where he usually ends up breaking and destroying a lot of things and hurting himself, sometimes pretty badly, especially since he cannot feel it and will try to direct things towards himself instead of whatever’s around him. And yeah, those are my headcanons on Toby’s TS and different tics. I headcanon him to be an extreme case (since that would make the most sense given how he’s supposed to not be fit for normal school since it’s that bad). I also headcanon it to actually get worse as he grows up, especially as his mental health deteriorates. I could probably go on about this more but I’ve rambled enough and I think I kinda went on a bit long, so I’ll try and stop myself here now.
ADHD
He does have ADHD, meaning he usually has sudden outbursts of energy. He shows this by getting easily distracted during times he should be occupied by one thing, instead he'd be interested in literally everything else but what he should be. Because of this, he wasn't fit for school, or anything of the such.
He doesn't take medicine for this, since he can't exactly get his hands on it, or thinks that he needs it.
He lets out his energy by running around in an open space, pacing back and forth, tapping or scratching with his fingers, or tapping his foot/bouncing his leg. Usually his ADHD acts up more when he's excited or trying to concentrate. He bites his nails because of it as well.
He can't focus on one thing at once, and would be distracted by the littlest things like a lizard on a tree, or even a bug flying around his face. He'd stop what he was doing before and focus more on that other than what he should be focusing on. He never exactly thought of it as something bad but usually he'd forget what he was doing before and that something could have been important.
Dermatophagia
note: Dermatophagia is what's known as a body-focused repetitive behavior (BFRB). It goes beyond just nail biting or occasionally chewing on a finger. It's not a habit or a tic, but rather a disorder. People with this condition gnaw at and eat their skin, leaving it bloody, damaged, and, in some cases, infected.
This was a lot worse when he was younger, but he still does it as he grows up. It can get so bad that he has to wrap his hands up by himself and fight the urge to feel the skin in between his teeth. He doesn't just bite his own hands however, he does it to his arms randomly. He'd bite into any of his arms for some odd reason but never hard enough to make them bleed. This of course depends on how hard he bites into them. This happens when he is usually upset in any way, and takes the anger out on himself or a nearby flat surface, like a wall or table.
This harms him badly, but since he can't feel it, he doesn't know when to stop, making this 10 times worse than any normal case. He's gone as far as to nearly gnaw off the skin of his knuckle, exposing the muscle underneath, almost to the bone. This isn't as bad as when he was younger, but when he gets upset in a way, he will still struggle with the problem of gnawing on his hands
I am missing some here, that being BPD, Schizophrenia, psychosis, and autism. I’m aware some are just mere disabilities but I want to do more research before I go into these sensitive topics.
Some more smaller posts with undocumented headcanons
- https://www.tumblr.com/foressfaction/746629900867371008/so-i-headcanon-toby-to-be-a-phat-stoner-so
- https://www.tumblr.com/foressfaction/744151888116711424/i-have-so-much-on-this-dude-hes-been-through
- https://www.tumblr.com/foressfaction/748800526075985920/another-day-another-essay-toby-is-a-closed-off
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writerthreads · 2 years
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How to write a gripping beginning
by Writerthreads on Instagram
Personally, I find beginnings to be one of the hardest parts of the whole book because it's so important. The beginning is what makes or breaks your book. It's what keeps readers interested after they pick it up at a store, or when they first download it on their Kindle. Below are some tips, as well as some analyses, on how to perfect a story's beginning.
Introduce your main character and the setting: Mrs. Dalloway
By "introduce", I don't mean a giant 10-page info dump on royal family tree or the ten kingdoms the world is made up of. Rather, I'm thinking of a character in a place, or doing something. The best, and one of the most famous examples would be how Virginia Woolf started Mrs. Dalloway:
Mrs. Dalloway said she would buy the flowers herself.
Already, you have the titular character, Mrs Dalloway, introduced. She's doing something, too. She's saying that she's going to buy flowers herself, setting up a scene later where she's probably going to, or back out of, buying flowers. The pronoun "herself" suggests to the reader in Woolf's era that she's of a middle-class background and that somebody (eg. a servant) would normally be running errands for Mrs. Dalloway, but the character wanted to do this simple task herself.
I could go on forever about how each word in this simple sentence has implicit meanings and my ex-A Level Eng Lit teacher will probably be very proud of me, but that's not the point. The main idea is that in just a single sentence, a lot is being revealed to the reader without the writer having to info dump anything.
Allow me to continue to the second paragraph of the book:
For Lucy had her work cut out for her. The doors would be taken off their hinges; Rumpelmayer's men were coming. And then, thought Clarissa Dalloway, what a morning-fresh as if issued to children on a beach.
More characters are introduced now: we have Lucy, Rumpelmayer and his men. Mrs. Dalloway's full name is revealed, and so is her personality through her thought. It's childlike, whimsical and light, and that's why her name "Clarissa Dalloway" is used here instead of the stiff "Mrs. Dalloway".
In just two paragraphs, we are introduced to the titular character and some minor characters are mentioned. We also know bits and pieces of what's going to happen. Woolf artistically starts off the book with simple prose. Everything is well thought out, yes, Virginia Woolf is a literary genius, yes, but this is something that we can all do: write a simple introduction without weighting readers down with lots of detail we don't need, and get straight into the story.
Start in media res
Fun fact: "in media res" is also the name of our Discord Server!
When you start in the middle of an action, readers are transported straight to the story, hooking them in. For example, if you were writing a rom com, you could start with the main character bumping into a long-lost friend:
Emma saw a familiar cowboy hat bobbing in and out of the crowd in front of her. Emma found herself pushing through sweaty limbs into the crowd, trying to catch a glimpse of the person who wore the hat, trying to see whether it was really her friend who had ghosted her five years ago.
Obviously this isn't the best beginning in the world, but you get the point.
Try something interesting
A strong story opening makes you want to know more. Donna Tartt does this perfectly in A Secret History:
The snow in the mountains was melting and Bunny had been dead for several weeks before we came to understand the gravity of our situation.
What is up? Who is Bunny? What's so serious about their predicament? Tell us more!!! Bunny's death makes us want to know what has happened, while mentioning the characters' situation wants us to know what's going to happen. Tartt forces us to continue on to find out the full story.
Lead with a strong statement
A Tale of Two Cities by Charles Dickens:
It was the best of times, it was the worst of times, it was the age of wisdom, it was the age of foolishness, it was the epoch of belief, it was the epoch of incredulity, it was the season of Light, it was the season of Darkness, it was the spring of hope, it was the winter of despair, we had everything before us, we had nothing before us, we were all going direct to Heaven, we were all going direct the other way – in short, the period was so far like the present period, that some of its noisiest authorities insisted on its being received, for good or for evil, in the superlative degree of comparison only.
Anna Karenina by Leo Tolstoy:
Happy families are all alike; every unhappy family is unhappy in its own way.
Tolstoy’s first line introduces the domestic strife that drives the story’s tragic events, using a bold, sweeping statement, while Dicken's catchy first sentence introduces us to the book's main themes.
There are way more examples of good beginnings that you can only learn from by reading. If you're a beginner, literally comb through a library shelf of the genre you're writing in and see how published authors have written their beginnings. Alternatively, you could go check out our post on the best story beginnings for more ideas!
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binaural-histolog · 4 months
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Zotoro, Scihub, and more Cool Hypnosis Papers
CW: severe nerdery
I don't have an academic background, and while I've been poking around at hypnosis nerdery for a while, I was limited to an extent by what I could get my hands on.
This is especially important when it comes to the academic texts. There's only so many books out there on theory, and a bunch of it doesn't make sense until you go back and read the actual papers.
For example, I knew that Kirsch had something to do with placebo and expectations, but I only had a vague understanding of what and how. A paragraph critique in Theories of Hypnosis wasn't enough to give me the proper context.
Until I decided I was going to rewrite the newbie guide to explain hypnosis from a modern neuroscience perspective and then I was committed to pulling the citations and digging up the actual papers.
At first I was doing it by hand by pasting things into Scihub and downloading the PDFs. This sort of worked, but at some point there are just too many PDFs and it's work to keep them consistent.
This is where Zotero comes in. It's a PDF database that is set up to scan for academic fields and give you a UI for finding, reading and annotating the PDFs. It syncs between MacOS, Windows, and iOS and keeps the annotations and highlights. And even better, it's got plugins.
Specifically, it's got a plugin for Scihub. You can add a DOI number and it'll pull the abstract data for the paper, and then you can right click and it'll download the paper from Scihub automatically.
It doesn't cover everything. Some stuff is too new for Scihub, and I've had to fallback to https://reddit.com/r/scholar to request articles, but there's so much stuff.
In particular, you get the sense of how academic papers can be a conversation, an argument, or a lawsuit. You get to see the most brutal putdowns phrased as passing comments. And the grudges and ego can go on for decades.
There are a couple of papers that I recommend everyone read, because they're just great at summarizing the field and current thinking.
The response set theory of hypnosis reconsidered: toward an integrative model
I love this paper not just because it goes over response expectancy theory from the inception to the general whittling down from "Once expectancy effects are eliminated, there may be nothing left" to response expectancy as 25%-35% of suggestibility and the addition of a "readiness response set" to cover the rest of it... but also because despite Kirsch's hand in response set theory and response expectancies and being in a journal issue devoted to Kirsch's career and achievements, he is not an author to this paper that is reconsidering his work. Instead, he gets a hand clap.
In closing, Irving Kirsch has greatly advanced our understanding of hypnosis. The construct of expectancies that he articulated and championed for decades has well withstood the test of time and replication. We extend our personal gratitude to him for his shaping influence on our personal views of hypnosis and for his many contributions to the field of hypnosis that he so immensely enriched.
I'm not sure what I'm looking at, but I love it.
How Hypnotic Suggestions Work – A Systematic Review of Prominent Theories of Hypnosis
This is a preprint, but it's comprehensive not just in how it picks out theories of hypnosis that are more recent than the book, but also in how it pokes holes and points out weak points in the various theories. It's also recent enough to talk about fun new things like predictive coding and interoception and somatosensory feedback.
Hypnosis and top-down regulation of consciousness
Devin Terhune's papers are always good to read. His papers read like a story where every chapter builds on the last one. This one is a "synthesis of current knowledge regarding the characteristics and neurocognitive mechanisms of hypnosis" and I can't tell you how many times I've read through this paper by accident because I wanted to pick a point out of it and got sucked into it all over again.
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sunnynwanda · 4 months
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hello!! i hope your day is going well <33 :D
could you please write a story about a hero and villain who are academic rivals? and one day before their final exams the villain finds the hero in the library late at night, really stressed about their exams. maybe the villain comforting a panicking hero?? :'))
i would really appreciate it if you could write this!! its completely fine if you don't want to :D
p.s your work is amazing!! 💙
Even Odds
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Hero shivers and shifts in their chair, folding their legs under them for warmth. They look up for a moment, noticing the snow cap on the lamppost outside the window, and rub their red eyes. It had been snowing for several hours now, and they had no idea how they were going to get home in their light coat and sneakers. It was warm in the morning when they ran out of their dorm room - not that they had time to look for winter clothes in the mess that was their wardrobe. The last month has been hectic, between classes, work, confrontations with Villain and all the catching up they had to do because of it. Not to mention that the smug bastard kept teasing them in class. They had no problem fighting Villain outside the classroom, yet facing them in class seemed infinitely more challenging and infuriating. All at the same time.
Christmas is coming up. Hero shakes their head at the thought. So are the finals. They close their eyes for a moment to let the wave of panic flash by them before returning to the subject matter. It takes Hero another two hours to realise the letters are blurring in front of their eyes. They can no longer discern the lines, and the paragraph looks entirely unfamiliar. They are doomed. Villain is going to destroy them with hungered passion, tearing into their flesh with snide remarks until Hero is left teary-eyed and defeated. And to think they enjoyed all of it once. They even went so far as to await the bickering arguments that followed after every class they shared.
With an exasperated sigh, they let their head fall onto the book. The panic returns with a fresh vigour, as do Hero's doubts. They want to cry from the helplessness that overwhelms their entire being. Their ears start ringing, probably from lack of nutrition. Hero presses their hands to their temples, trying to remember when they ate for the last time when a cough interrupts the flow of their thoughts.
"You look desperate," Villain muses, seemingly satisfied with the atmosphere in the 'enemy territory'. "I like it."
Hero has nothing to offer them but a deadpan look. They are too exhausted to muster any expression other than utter fatigue.
"What? Still trying to beat me?" They quip again, turning the chair to face their rival despite taking the seat right next to them. Hero doesn't react, much to Villain's dismay. They sigh, choosing another tactic - one that never fails to unnerve Hero. "Drop it, babe. No one can top me. Not in physics, at least."
Hero's eyebrows twitch, and Villain can't help the triumphant smirk that graces their thin lips. Gotcha.
"Sod off," Hero scoffs, flustered by their flirting and, more so, by their proximity.
Villain places their hands on the table and lays their head over them, mimicking Hero's position. "Says the one desperate to compete with me."
"Bold of you to assume I study for you," Hero's retort sounds surprisingly genuine. Villain isn't sure if they should find that offensive or not.
"Oh," their mouth forms a perfect round shape, and Hero almost reaches to touch their lips. Almost. They drop their hand over their eyes, trying to shake off whatever haze took them over. Sleep deprivation must be getting the best of them. It's sheer luck that Villain doesn't seem to have noticed. "Then why are you still here?"
"Because I have a lot of catching up to do, dimwit!" They don't mean to be mean, but they are just so tired, and Villain's nagging doesn't help. Not to mention that Hero is not ready for the exam, and both Villain and their professor will take their sweet time chewing them out tomorrow. Amazing start to the holidays!
"Shouldn't have missed the classes in the first place," Villain snaps back but softens upon spotting Hero's distress. Come to think of it, they had no idea why Hero would need to be absent so often. It's not like their confrontations took that much time out of their own week. So what was Hero so busy with? "Why did you miss so many, by the way?"
"None of your business!" Hero cuts them off rather harshly. They seem riled up for no reason, so Villain turns away towards the window, scrolling through possible distractions Hero might have been facing this semester. They're not fighting anyone else, and Villain was pretty damn sure they weren't dating. Or were they? Did Villain miss something? Should they be jealous?
Hero's low mumble draws their attention back to the matter at hand. "I'm still gonna score higher than you."
"Keep telling yourself that," Villain chuckles. Their brain is working overtime, trying to figure out how the smartest person they have ever met was behind the programme. "How long have you been here anyways?"
"I... don't know," the conclusion stuns Hero enough to get off the desk and sit straight. They have no time for conversations, but they also have no energy whatsoever to get up and leave. "What time is it?"
"Almost eleven..." When Villain glances at their watch, their eyebrows furrow in concern. "Wait, have you spent the entire day studying? Have you even eaten anything?"
Hero shakes their head instead of replying. Villain's eyes turn awfully round, and Hero smiles softly. This shouldn't look this endearing! They must have lost their marbles.
"Are you an idiot?" Villain questions, shaking their head when Hero attempts to answer. "That's not even a question, it's a statement."
"We have finals, dammit!" Indignation colours Hero's features, shading the weariness away. "I can't afford to fail, not after all the effort I've put in!"
"You won't fail," Villain sounds absolutely sure of their statement. They believe it, too. Hero, however, does not.
"How do you know?!" They break character, looking more panicked than Villain has ever seen. In fact, they haven't seen them scared, ever. Not even when they were hanging upside down from a skyscraper because Villain dared them to.
"I just do," they reassure, placing their hands on Hero's shoulders to get their attention. "I know."
"How?" Hero asks weakly. They look drained of life, and Villain hates to see the most cheerful person they know like that.
Fuck, is it them? Did they overdo it with the battles? Maybe they shouldn't challenge Hero so often. But then again, they only do that because they miss seeing their rival, and Hero has been skipping classes because of their job.
And then it strikes them. Their job. How could they forget Hero has to work? Ever since they lost their father, they took it upon themselves to support their family. And Villain had to go and add more to their plate - as if balancing classes and work wasn't bad enough. Shit.
They sigh at their stupidity, shaking their head to collect their thoughts before speaking.
"I've seen you ace every test, Hero," they cup Hero's chin, urging them to meet their eyes. "Not a single mistake, no cheating, nothing. You've got this. Trust me."
"What?" Hero's mouth is agape. Villain assumes their unexpected sincerity to be the reason but is proven wrong sooner than they can justify themselves. "Wait, do you cheat?"
"'Course not." They wait for Hero to nod before continuing. "I don't need it. You don't either."
"Well, I might this time," the claim makes Villain chuckle, baring the neat row of their teeth with slightly prominent fangs. Why the fuck do they keep noticing all this about Villain, of all people?
"Stop, Hero, stop," Villain catches their chin again, their stare intense when they speak. "You're not gonna fail. I promise. Now come on, you've got to get out of here, or your brain is gonna melt and drip out of your ears."
With that, they let go of Hero, and get up. Hero scrunches their nose at the graphic images that flood their tired head and starts collecting their books and countless pages of notes. Villain takes the last heap, shoving it into their bag while Hero fetches their jacket.
It's only later, after running through the showy courtyard back to their dorm and taking a hot shower to warm their limbs, when Hero pulls everything out of their bag to begin their night of studying, that they notice a few stapled sheets of unfamiliar notes. They are expertly organised and precisely what Hero needs to learn to pass the test. They stare at the pages for several seconds before shaking their head with a lopsided grin at the obnoxious and frustratingly sneaky little shit that slipped their notes into Hero's bag while they weren't looking.
They pull out their phone, sending a short "Thank you." text to their rival, only to receive a cheeky reply in mere seconds.
"Simply wanted to even out the odds. Let's see if you can top me now, babe."
Masterlist
Hello, dear!
Thank you so much for this request! I've wanted to write academic rivals for some time now, and this was the perfect opportunity for it. So yeah, thanks xD I hope you enjoy reading this as much as I enjoyed writing it :)
xo Sunny
P.S. I wasn't able to find the owner of the photo, credit to the owner.
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“Crowley is Malleus’s long lost father” theory is popping off right now in like every twst social media community so I wanted to know what your thoughts on it were?
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I briefly discussed this theory in the final paragraph of this post (although it is full of spoilers, so please be cautious of that). To reiterate (and to add more details), the main pieces of evidence that come up when discussing this idea are:
Malleus’s dad is confirmed missing, but we never saw a body or have confirmation of his death so we can’t 100% trust that.
Crowley’s past and motives remain a total mystery. (The crow mask he wears is also highly suspicious; why does he never remove it? Why does it resemble the masks worn by Briar Country soldiers? Because Malleus would recognize his father? Because Lilia might recognize his old friend?)
The name of Malleus’s dad may be romanized as Levan/Revan (we don’t have an official English localization for book 7 yet, so we don’t know for sure how it would be written). The former looks like the word “raven”, just with the vowels swapped around. And you know who else is a black bird?? Diablo, Maleficent’s crow and right-hand man, similar to how Levan/Revan was Mallenoa’s right-hand man. Who else do we know that’s a crow? Crowley.
Levan/Revan is described by Lilia as someone who “always dumped their work onto others/him”, which is something that Crowley also does to his own students.
So I guess the conclusion is that Malleus’s dad went into hiding to protect himself (especially if we assumed that his wife got killed off shortly after his disappearance; his own life may be in danger as well)?
I think the idea is definitely… interesting??? It would also be a big rug pull since players have been joking since day 1 that Crowley gives the vibes of a deadbeat/absentee dad or someone who went off to buy milk and never came back 😂 But in terms of how likely I think it is to become a reality??? I think it’s definitely kind of shaky if we’re going with only what we know right now.
The problem I have with this theory is twofold. Firstly, it’s counting a lot of omission of information as proof rather than details present as proof (which really could be spun any which way you like if you tried hard enough). Secondly, the main thread of logic here is basically the same as “Ace traitor” theory. We’re drawing conclusions from… a name (in Ace’s case, the fact that his surname isn’t “Heart” like the other card soldiers but is “Trappola”), which isn’t a lot of solid evidence in of itself.
I don’t know if I totally buy that Malleus’s dad would go MIA for literally 400ish years either? Like… he was the princess’s confidant, right? So he must have cared for her very much. Why would he up and abandon his wife (rather than coming to her rescue), his friend (Lilia), his country, AND his unborn child who NEEDS his love magic to be hatched? Why wouldn’t he return once the war was over?? Why would he run off to Sage’s Island and become the headmaster there??? If he doesn’t want to be a present father figure, why have a child at all or put himself in a position where he now has to monitor several hundreds of children every year instead of the one child that is actually his? (I know that Lilia started off not wanting kids and then became more open to the idea over time (ie people can change), but I don't think we can conclude the same happened to Crowley given how dismissive he still is in present day and how little we really know about Malleus's dad's true personality.) And surely if Crowley was Malleus’s dad, he’s not so ignorant as to not know Malleus is his son, right…? But then why forget about his existence 90% of the time and forget to invite him when he knows Malleus is on campus and he had not been there for him all his life???? Why actively be such an asshole???
The mask thing on Crowley is suspicious as heck, yes, but I don’t know if Malleus would be able to identify his father on sight since he never saw him or got to know him before hatching. On the flip side, how would Lilia not immediately notice his friend by voice??? Or by the mask if it is, indeed, his friend’s trademark or a custom from Briar Country? Are we arguing “characters made dumb for the sake of plot”? 😭 (Believe it or not, this is actually the most credible piece of evidence to me just because of how often TWST has employed cases of mistaken identity for the sake of convenience; I wouldn’t put it past them.)
Lilia does describe Levan/Revan as someone who dumps work on others, but he says Mallenoa does the same thing. Yet there are other aspects to Mallenoa which we also learn about. Shirking work is not the entire personality of Malleus’s dad and while his overall character may be inclusive of that, there are tons of traits unaccounted for; we barely know the guy. The Crowley = Levan theory feels like taking a conclusion and working backwards/retroactively changing the interpretation of other details to prove the conclusion we began with, instead of taking suspicious details and synthesizing a conclusion from it.
Anyway! You can see that I’m hesitant about this theory. I’d like more concrete details before I get on board with it because there isn't enough to implicate Crowley specifically—but hey, that’s not to say the idea isn’t interesting or funny 🤔 I’d personally love to see Malleus’s reaction to Crowley Darth Vader-ing him, haha 😂
Side note: It’s also sort of funny how people don’t believe Crowley is Malleus’s dad simply because they think Mallenoa is “too good/hot” for a man as bumbling as Crowley www
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taylor-titmouse · 9 months
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kink that doesn't say it's kink 2, the sequel, where we abandon saying anything at all
so if you've been following for the past what, two weeks, i've been posting a lot of art with cherry, the perpetually imperiled farmhand and a host of barnyard furries having a go at her while she's tied up one way or another. and if you haven't seen it, by golly i have a tag for it on my patreon that you can peruse, including exclusives.
but i digress.
this series came about from me wanting to do SOMETHING with bondage, barnyard animal furries, and breeding kink. you'll remember from my previous post on the subject that i was struggling with tying this concept together into a narrative i could write, and ended up thinking about how kink and narrative should work together in a way where the kink is a natural consequence of the narrative, rather than the narrative being obviously constructed for the kink. have i said the word narrative enough times in this paragraph. i'm going to say it a bunch more times.
the solution i eventually landed on: don't bother with a narrative at all. the concept i wanted to explore was mostly visual spectacle: rope bondage, barn/farm aesthetic, exhibitionism, public use type stuff. and you don't really need a written story to enjoy those concepts. they are very much about the image of the scene. thus, barnyard bound is going to be a collection of illustrations, an art book, rather than a story. there's no narrative between them, no thread. just a hot girl in her cowboy boots getting roped up and rawed by animal boys for 20+ pages of pictures.
but what's INTERESTING and what's the POINT of this post i've been taking such a long way to get to, is how there is still an expectation of narrative created by the images. i've been asked several times "who is tying her up?" or "is this her farm?" and so on. requests for context as to how and why. and i would argue that you don't need a how or why, but i find it so fascinating how much the audience wants one, as opposed to a comparable image of real bondage.
you see a video of a naked woman tied up in some ropes in a studio and you're unlikely to ask why she's there, why She specifically is there, or who did it, or why. you might assume she's there because she's an actress paid to be, She specifically is there because she was willing or had the right appearance, and the who and why is presumably the person paying her to do it, for whatever reason that person has. or she's there because she wants to be and she's into it and it's a homemade porno. either way, that isn't so much a narrative as it is an explanation.
but you see a drawing of a naked woman all tied up in some ropes, and suddenly there must be a narrative reason. she is a fictional construct, and therefore she and her world must be constructed for a purpose. she has a design, and that design is serving a purpose. she's in a location, and that location is serving a purpose. it's entirely created by a series of deliberate choices from the artist. in art, we crave answers and explanations in a way we usually don't with real life pornography, because real life pornography is constructed within the limitations of real life, but illustrated art does not have those limitations.
and i'm just interested in the why of why a viewer might want this information about the art. why do you need to know exactly why she's tied up? it doesn't change that she is--but it might change your interpretation of the image and what you get out of it. for one viewer, the image of a woman tied up might be ruined by the idea that she didn't ask to be--that it's a punishment, that there's no explicit consent. the image won't arouse them if it comes with that context. for another, the image would be ruined by a context where she did consent. for them it becomes less thrilling when they're made to think about the necessaries of consensual bondage rather than the erotic fantasy of being held against one's will.
but if the image is presented with no narrative, no word of god, no explanation, the viewer has only their own ideas for how they feel about it. the viewer has to decide themself if the woman wanted to be tied there, who did it, and why. how you feel about the image is left entirely in your hands, making you responsible for your own interpretation. and i think this aspect of art is part of what makes doing non-narrative illustrated erotica so fascinating to me, as somebody who has Always prioritized narrative in his work. deliberately abandoning it has made it clear how much we desire it--perhaps to justify to ourselves that we're allowed to desire what we see in the work.
but that's a different essay
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haizediz · 7 months
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Fire on Ice.
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Hailee Steinfeld x female Reader
Summary: Depression is cold but not the love you both hold.
Warnings: depression; panic attack; fluff explotion; Hailee being the cutest person on earth; soft and comforting Hailee (we love her sfm)
a/n: Y/n (Reader) is an image of me and i don't have anyone like Hailee and how i described her in this fic, so i decided to write this. [i'm so freaking proud of my title and summary for this fic lol]
[Also one of the paragraphs is inspired by euphoria.]
P.s. Thank you for all the support! Notes and Reblogs are highly appreciated, love you <3
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"Life is hard" That's what everybody says. As a kid you don't really understand why everybody says that. But at some point the vision gets more and more visible..., or invisible. It's always different for every kind of person.
You don't know why, but your Life is not just hard. Sometimes it's beautiful and you enjoy it and at other times you feel like you can't breathe. Like you're stuck in a hole and you can't get out. Like you're depressed.
The other thing about depression is it kinda collapses time. Suddenly you find your whole days blending together to create one endless and suffocating loop. So you find yourself trying to remember the things that made you happy. But slowly, your brain begins to erase every memory that ever brought you joy. And eventually, all you can think about is how life has always been this way. And will only continue to be this way.
Of course your girlfriend knew about your mental illness. She reads you easier than any open book. The moment you told her that you were not always onehundred percent happy. And with "not always" you mean never. Hailee began to spend more time with you than she ever did before. You didn't even knew that was possible, but it was.
She started cuddling with you longer. Mumbled I love you's before you fall asleep. Holded you any time she could. Bought more often your favorite snacks. And the list goes on and on.
She made you fall in love with her more and more every day. Like she did with you. But you never really realized this. You were grateful for her and what she was doing for you. Yet there was always that one ulterior motive back in your head.
You're just a burden to her.
......
Today was exhausting. Not physically but mentally. About an hour ago you said to your girlfriend that you were going to go for a walk alone. Whatever you did. You tried to clear your head, enjoy the chirping birds and it worked a little. At least for the first few minutes. After a while you started missing the physical touch of Hailee. Your hand was empty and cold. Maybe it wasn't very smart to be without your comforter on a bad day.
As your eyes started to tear up and your body started trembling, you walked without hesitating back to your and Hailees apartment. Or better said you tried. Breathing was difficult and you strolled slowly.
Finally you saw the door to your home. It felt like several hours before you got here. Thank God you took the key with you. You didn’t want to wake Hailee. She's probably sleeping right now because before you left she said she was already going to bed.
You unlocked the front door and made your way straight to the bedroom. A lightly snoring Hailee filled the room with comfort, exactly what you needed. You took off your shoes and you softly layed onto Hailee. Your head hid in the back of her neck where the sharp note of her perfume stung your nose. It smells like vanilla and cherry blossoms. Like Hailee. Hailee who wasn't really in a deep sleep. She could feel the tears running down your cheeks onto her shoulder. She heard your quiet sobs and above all she felt your body trembling and shaking.
Suddenly you felt her arms wrapping around you and her head slowly turns to yours. She shared you a sweet kiss onto your forehead and afterwards she took the blanket near to her and pull it over you both. You were still shaking from the panic attack you had minutes ago. That's why Hailee softly placed her hands under your hoodie and drew randomly little circles on your back. Her touch was smoothing and it felt like fire on your freezed body.
A little while later your crying became quieter and you calmed down. Hailee and you are still in the same position as before. Only your head moved further down from her shoulder to her chest. Your ear right over her heart. Hailee's heartbeat, which you heard clearly, filled your soul with peace. Your hands wrapped around Hailee's body and her hands wrapped around you. None of you made a sound. You both knew exactly how the other person was feeling right now. Words didn’t have to be spoken. Except those three. Those three words you and Hailee share every day, every hour and always mean it.
"I love you."
She whispered to you. Her voice was raspy and you could hear that she was crying too. Your grip became tighter but also softer at the same time. Which maybe doesn't make any sense at all. But it was true.
You fell deeper into Hailee's touch and again a tear fell from your eye. "I love you too."
You slowly sat back up and looked down at Hailee. "I'm sorry to be such a burden to you, Haiz, I just made you cry and I, I don't want that-" Your body started shaking again and you felt a lump in your throat from holding back the tears. Hailee quickly sat up and placed both of her hands on your cheeks. "Hey, hey, it's okay, I know that you're not feeling well, y/n. And I'm crying because it hurts so much seeing you in this state, I'm not crying because you made me." She comforted you, her hazel eyes meeting yours. And you could definetely tell that she's saying the truth as always. Hailee never lies to you, but your brain told you the complete opposite. "There's literally no difference between making you cry and crying because of my state." "Yes there is!" She shouted, which really surprised you. Hailee never yelled at you before. You looked at her without saying anything. "Sorry." She whispered after realizing. "I'm just- I'm just so worried about you, y/n."
You sighed deeply and lost yourself in her eyes. Eyes that were filled with worries, love and fear. A layer of water was placed over them, which made them shine. "I'm sorry, Haiz." You flustered and you fell again into her arms. She held you tight and you enjoyed the warmth of Hailee's body. She warmed you, and your freezing heart started to melt from the fire of love you both have for eachother.
Warm Love that is bigger than your cold Depression.
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tagging again my dear friend here: @hard-core-super-star
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greencways · 8 months
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Fic Name: Library date
Paring: Jennifer Jareau x Reader
One shot or Multiple Chapter: One Shot
Warnings: slight miscommunication but nothing much, other than that,, pure fluff
Content: JJ and Reader go on a little library date
A/N: new layout not sure yet but tell me what you think
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It was 9am on a Saturday, It was the middle of September so it was fairly sunny but the weather wasn't as warm as it usually was, and you were bored, there wasn't a case today and you were done with all your paperwork, so you decided to go into town to go book shopping.
"Ugh I really need this book for my class but I can't find it anywhere" You sighed out loud walking down the street after coming out of your 3rd book store. "How hard is it to find one copy of 'To Kill A Mockingbird'?" you said out loud again before turning a corner to find a Starbucks.
"What can I get you?" the woman enquired.
"A hot vanilla latte and a copy of 'To Kill A Mockingbird' if you have it" you joked.
"The vanilla latte I can get you no problem, but the book you want might be better in that shop over there" she pointed to a bookstore that you hadn't been in yet "There's only one left though, must be popular this time of year" she shrugged as she handed you your coffee, you said your thanks and goodbyes.
You finished your coffee as you entered the bookstore, you sighed dramatically as there were so many people there, selfishly you were hoping it would be just you but that would've been unrealistic.
You looked in every genre until you found books similar, you were so quick to find the book and leave that you didn't notice anyone near you, as you reached up and grabbed the book another hand layed on top of yours.
"Excuse me-" you started.
"Oh hey Y/N" you quickly turned to see who recognized you.
"Hey JJ, what are you doing here?" you asked your friend from the BAU.
"I'm uh- Henry dropped my old copy of 'To Kill A Mockingbird' and it's severely damaged" she laughed "What about you?"
"Oh Uh- classes start back next week and we need the book" you smiled, her hand still on yours.
"Are you doing anything today?" JJ asked gently.
"No I'm not I'm actually kind of bored" you laughed.
"Do you um- would you want to stay here and we could read this book together?" Jennifer Jareau didn't get flustered easily so you could tell she was genuinely nervous to ask you.
"Sure" you agreed with a gentle smile.
"Great"
JJ wasn't much older than you, you were 21, you still had university classes, your eidetic memory helped you pass your degree to become a member of the FBI a couple of months ago, but you still wanted to educate yourself more and more, this one would be your forth degree, JJ who was 24, had a son, he was 1 and his name is Henry, you knew that she split up with Will but you would never pry.
You both sat on the floor, your backs leaning against the shelves of the multicoloured piles of books behind you.
"Your turn" you took turns to read but you got distracted by her, her beautiful blonde hair falling just beneath her collarbone, the way she talks about things she's passionate about, her laugh, and the way her voice sounds when she's tired, you were falling for her.
"Sorry um, where were we?" you laughed, she playfully shoved you.
"There!" she pointed to a random paragraph in the middle of the book, your face told her that you had no idea how you got there.
"What's going on in that beautiful little mind of yours?" she asked curiously.
It was now or never you deeply sighed "Has anyone ever told you pretty you are?" you asked.
"A few people, why?" she asked with the same curiosity as earlier.
"They're right JJ" your faced blushed lightly "You're one of the prettiest girls I have ever seen" you finally admitted "I don't want to ruin our friendship though" you added sadly the realization setting in.
JJ grabbed your hand and rested her head on your shoulder "I think that about you too" she added.
"You do?" you craned your neck to face her still holding her hand and still careful to not move JJ's head.
"Yeah I have for a while actually" she said.
"Why didn't you-"
"I didn't want to say anything because I didn't want to ruin our friendship too" she laughed.
"I like you JJ, I like you a lot" you sighed.
"I like you too, a lot" she added
"I can't believe it, we could've been kissing this entire time" you laughed.
"It's not too late?" JJ suggested
You both smiled at each other knowingly and kissed her, this was everything you ever wanted.
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goodbye-aliens · 3 months
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The Untold Origin's Angel Play analysis and why Natsume is Fyodor's Judas (or something like that)
I don't know how much sense this will make, but the play always made me curious and I've been wondering if it might have a connection to future and past events, so here are some ideas. Also, please ignore my wonderful screenshots's quality.
Credit to my friend @keygalley because it was from her that I got the theory that Natsume is "that man".
The play opens with twelve fallen angels (one of them already dead) speculating that they are about to be killed by true angels from heaven. They also speculate that the killer might not be an angel, but one of them.
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The middle chair is covered in blood. You could say that a murder has already occurred and it's the one that started this whole discussion of the angels from heaven coming after them in the first place.
The fallen angel who is their leader believes that the punishment is because they fell for adoring humanity, and so they must be purged.
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The leader refers to the angels from heven as "gifted," another way of referring to ability users. Fukuzawa himself later calls Rampo this way.
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The fallen angels are now mere humans. They dream, they love, they seek fulfillment because their existence is limited. Here I feel this could relate to Fyodor, not because he shares these characteristics, but because he lacks them because here he would represent an angel. For him nothing exists but his mission, that is why he is capable of the greatest atrocities.
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Also, in this speech it is said "And we do not regret that decision. To choose one's own way of being is the truest form of the soul". Several theories have already been seen about characters being nothing more than that: characters in a work of fiction struggling against a predetermined destiny. Later it will be seen that there is a similar view on this subject.
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Rampo saying "Why doesn't anyone get upset at being forced to sit through a show with such an obvious ending" could have double meaning as the author questioning why we, his audience, are watching BSD in the first place. Basically metafiction, something that is a constant in this play.
If Ranpo points to a random fallen angel as the murderer it is because it is true; that man was the one who committed the first murder that triggers the whole conversation. It is later revealed that the murders were committed among the fallen angels themselves.
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“Angels cannot have the fulfillment which is the realm of humanity, and humans are incapable of the supremacy of angels. Those who control humans from the outside and those who enjoy fulfillment on the inside are like an author and their character: never shall they intertwine”. Funny thing to say, because angels and humans do end up intertwining. There are humans who possess angels' powers, in other words, the abilities as we will see later with the phrase: "There are those who, despite being human, have some fragment of angels’ forbidden supremacy". So, if such a comparison is given later in the next paragraph… don't the author and the characters end up intertwining as well? Metafiction, again.
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Remember that scene where Nikolai gives his speech about freedom and there is someone writing down his words (maybe in The Book)?
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To go against the destiny written by the author, who is your God, is not to be conscious of it and therefore to have these two separate realities intermingle? Is it not, in its very essence, a rebellion against God like that of the fallen angels? Which reminds me of Fyodor's quote about Nikolai:
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That the angels then say "And yet... And yet?" seems like a joke.
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“Why is everyone watching this play without complaining?” again, metafiction (I'm tired of saying this).
Now, the Leader asks a specific angel to appear before the humans. The Leader knows what this angel wants, so it seems that the angel might have something specific against him.
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It could be interpreted that of the 12 initial angels, only one remains: the leader, who was condemned to see how his friends eliminate each other thanks to their new quality of being human.
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What does the leader wish to expose about the angel? What sins did this angel commit? Before he could say more, the leader dies.
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After all this interpretation, what do Natsume and Fyodor have to do with all this? Their roles in BSD could be represented in the play:
The angel is Fyodor. The murders that occur are between the same fallen angels who betray each other (hello? arc of cannibalism?). This could be one of Fyodor's many strategies to accomplish his goal: to purge the fallen angels who betrayed God. But he tortures the leader in a special way and forces him to watch his friends kill each other, as if he has some special resentment towards the leader, that is, towards Natsume.
The leader is Natsume, for whom this whole work was written. And he might know Fyodor's secrets that could be considered his sins.
Fyodor has talked about only "that man" being able to hurt him, besides now Dazai, and Natsume is referred to as "that man" to my knowledge for two times: in this image and multiple times by Oda in Dark Era.
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Rampo says that angels do exist. That angels exist and it is the audience could again be metafiction. In anime it is metafiction, but it could go further as the audience is on a higher plane to the characters, but below God, the author.
This is a reversal story is something that confuses me because it could apply to both the play and the murder. In the murder the roles are reversed because Murakami is not the victim, he is the murderer, and Natsume is not the murderer, he is the victim. Is it just because of this that it is a reversal play or is there more to it? My possible theories about other inversions that the play could represent:
In the past Fyodor lost to Natsume. In the play the angel, Fyodor, kills the only fallen angel left to punish, Natsume.
At the end of the play, the roles are reversed: the angel ceases to be Fyodor to be Natsume and the leader ceases to be Natsume to be Fyodor. In the play, the leader dies, but fakes his own death as Fyodor might do in the future (copium). Also at the end, the leader is referred to as a fallen one, could Fyodor be nothing more than a fallen angel trying to redeem himself by hunting down other traitors to punish them? Something like "crime and punishment are two sides of the same coin".
Now, what Murakami says at the end, could it be Fyodor's realization about his mistakes in a future? As if all his killing really wasn't justified, wasn't for ridding the world of sin, but for selfish motives. And if in the end he looks at everything he has done and looks at the audience, at us, he will discover that in the story his role was not one of a savior, but one of a villain.
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And my most bizarre opinion: the characters are an angel who is mentioned and twelve fallen angels. The angel seems to have something against one of the angels in specific: the leader. The angel is Fyodor and the leader is Natsume. Fyodor has been compared to Jesus, the twelve fallen angels are his apostles and the last fallen angel is the man with whom he has a special grudge: Natsume, his Judas.
Now there's only one thing left… what's up with the crucified man at the beginning? Something to note is that while everyone is speculating about the murders, the leader who represents Natsume is observing the crucified man which doesn't necessarily mean that Fyodor was once crucified... but could mean that Natsume is the one to blame for Fyodor's "crucifixion" and that's why Fyodor is resentful with Natsume. Could this be related to exposing the alleged sins of the angel?
Natsume betraying Fyodor in some way could explain why he doesn't trust anyone.
Cat and mouse
I could imagine this whole play as a message from Fyodor to Natsume.
Edit because I added more things to think about:
We don't know why "V" wanted to kidnap Natsume, but we do know they used this play to do so. If we assume that Fyodor belongs to this organization (or used them), then it could mean that he wanted to kidnap Natsume. Also, Murakami said: "The gentleman in the suit rarely appears in public. Apparently, capturing him was one of the objectives." Why did Natsume risk himself to watch this play? Was there something in the plot that caught his attention? Perhaps the plot in this play was known to both Fyodor and him because it was their story.
I never mentioned the play's title because I don't know what to say about it. The name is "The Day is a Dream, the Night is Real". It's the play's name therefore it has to be important but... why? Yes, like in the play, a crime that was only fiction became a reality, but... that's all?
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