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thebirdsandthebats · 7 months

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Okay @s-p-r-i-n-g-t-i-m-e I’m sure you know plenty BUT I’m going to use your wonderful and hilarious comment on this as an excuse to talk about Bernard, bc I realized recently that there are plenty of ppl who haven’t read most of the comics he’s been in. So get ready for my long overdue:

UNPACKING BERNARD DOWD + HIS TRAUMA (for those who cannot keep up with comics but want to get to know him)

So to start, Tim met Bernard years ago ofc, when they were in high school. It’s established pretty quick that Bernard is an extremely Unserious guy LMAO, the first thing he does is literally circle Tim and try to feel him out socially, see what kind of guy he is. He’s the kind of guy who gets himself in trouble with his big mouth, and seems to enjoy poking at Tim and testing his patience. By the time we meet Bernard again in the recent years, he’s grown a lot, but at his core he’s still the light-hearted, fun, goofy guy with very strong opinions. Just less stand-offish, maybe

Throughout the time Tim spends at this school though, Bernard does experience some wild shit. He lost Darla (somebody he really cared about), he experienced a shooting at his school, and then Darla came back from the dead, kind of scared the hell out of him, and used him to contact Tim again. It was kind of played for laughs, but like. That’s gotta fuck you up. (Robin #140)

Obviously this is the kind of thing that maybeee has a lasting effect on you. And BECAUSE Tim Drake: Robin got cut so short and the writer had to rush to wrap up the series, we’re left to fill in a lot of gaps and draw conclusions about the years we didn’t see Bernard ourselves. But we absolutely get some insight as to his life after Tim left that school and we stopped seeing him in the comics. Spoiler alert: it was hard.

In TDR, Bernard discusses the the cult that he’d been in that Tim saved him from in Urban Legends. He says that “he’d accepted himself”, but others hadn’t. Obviously there’s the natural reading that he means his queerness (which has me chewing through drywall), but I think that he’s speaking very broadly too. Bernard is a very odd example of a civilian, because he’s always getting dragged into things much bigger than him. And even before that, he had his big ideas, his conspiracies, his loud personality. He tended to rub people the wrong way in high school. Then in issue #7 of TDR (the Bernard pov issue my most beloved, weird pacing aside) Bernard refers to this “oozy, sticky feeling” that he ALWAYS feels when Tim isn’t around. He says when he’s alone it’s harder to put one foot in front of the other. To keep GOING. To wake up every day.

I think that Bernard has always felt like an outcast. (Robin #121, he doesn’t fit into any clique). He wasn’t as okay with it as he acted. And I think he wasn’t getting any attention from his parents. (Batman: Urban Legends #5, Bernard’s parents nonchalance to the days leading up to his kidnapping)

So just like Bernard explained to Tim, that feeling got bad. and he wanted to let go. The chaos monsters, the cult, all of it was a means to an end. But then Tim agreed to see him again, and I think that sparked something in him. Because he started learning to fight. When he was tied down to that alter and Tim was saving him, I think it fully sank in to Bernard that he didn’t want to die. Reconnecting with Tim gave him hope and made him really feel something good for the first time in ages.

So now that they’re dating after the cult fiasco, we get to know this current Bernard. A less goading, maybe calmer Bernard. But he’s still himself, of course, rambling about his ideas and making bad jokes and sticking to his guns (he has NEVER been a pushover, no idea where people get that idea?). I think a lot of people complained that Bernard mellowed out too much in terms of attitude, but I think if he seems “nicer” it’s because 1) he’s grown now. It’s been a while since we last saw him, and he’s clearly changed a lot. And 2) because he’s dating Tim now. He likes him a lot, and he’s an affectionate partner. He wants to lift Tim up.

But the fact that he was pulled into a cult still remains. And as lighthearted as Bernard tries to be, that traumatic experience still happened. It said in Urban Legends #5 while Tim was searching for him that Bernard had welts on his arms and legs and had been acting different, so it’s not like he was just snatched up on a whim. He’d spent significant time there. For those who haven’t read much abt the ways cult trauma specifically can fuck you up, I recommend doing a search if you’re in a good headspace for that and want to understand him more. because it’s pretty bad.

And then! yeah. you guessed it. Bernard gets kidnapped again. Chained up next to a BOMB that’s counting down. RIGHT WHEN HE’S WORKING ON HEALING FROM ALMOST BEING SACRIFICED BY A CULT.

And surely this can’t get crazier. He’s almost died twice in the past 6 months. except, remember his parents? In TD:R #7, we really see a little more of his relationship with his parents. He doesn’t live up to their standards, and his dad specifically seems to just want to argue with him. The restaurant they’re at is attacked, and everything goes to shit, and. you know, I think these panels really speak for themselves.

And for the record, when it’s revealed that everyone is seeing their worst fears, Bernard’s parents fears are not about him.

So now Bernard has to deal with that. And we start to see that Bernard is really not as okay as he’s tried to be. He keeps a baseball bat by his door because he’s been kidnapped twice now. And just when he’d likely thought things couldn’t get worse, he heard the Chaos Monsters were back. I can’t imagine he feels safe. He lashes out for the first time since all this has happened and yells at Kate and Tim, because while they’re doing what they feel is necessary to save more people (AND I DONT BLAME THEM AT ALL), Bernard can’t talk about it.

And I will forever be sad and insist that TD:R got cancelled too soon, just before we could get into the really juicy stuff, because things had to be wrapped up pretty quick and this was the only comic Bernard was consistently appearing in. But when Tim is giving himself up to the chaos monsters, Bernard goes out and rallies anyone he knows can help. Things were rushed because there was no more time to flesh out the story the way it could have been, but I’m including these panels just because I love Bernard Audacity Dowd using a fucking flashlight and shadow puppet to call Batman. geeking out for a minute. And then leading the battalion to save Tim with a SLEDGEHAMMER. gay people rule.

So yeah! While I see the vision of how a lot of Bernard’s trauma was meant to be semi-resolved and let him come to peace after saving Tim back, we just didn’t have the time for him to heal properly. I’d give anything to get inside his brain again. UHH IF YOU READ THIS I HOPE YOU LOVE BERNARD NOW and don’t come at me if I left something out, some of my comics aren’t with me rn. Bonus TimBer for the road:

#WHEW IT TOOK A WHILE TO ORGANIZE THESE PANELS #Hes NOT BORING he is SO FASCINATING TO ME #i think his character is just not being utilized the way it could be #I didnt source every panel so just ask if you want to know where something is from!#bernard dowd #batfamily #dc comics #tim drake #timber #timbern

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snotbuggle · 24 days

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Omega when she gets to jail and realizes that she now has to big sister four other children. One of which is nowhere near her age.

Going to try and condense some more serious thoughts about these episodes down below so I can avoid spoiling someone as much as possible and not post a dozen times. I don’t want to miss tag any one of those.

Jex/Jek?? I can’t completely remember his name, but the mirialan kid is for sure not going to trust her at all. Can’t say much for the pantoran kid since they haven’t shown much of them so far, but Eva is going to love her.

I think the mirialan kid is definitely going to be skeptical of Omega’s prior knowledge of the facility, Emerie, and why they’re there. Although he might overlook these things hanging on her promise that her brothers will get her, and in turn them, out of there. I can’t help but wonder what Omega and the others will think after about a week and there still not being a rescue. (These two are assuming that she will be placed with the other force sensitive children. Although she may be moved since her blood actually works for project Necromancer)

Crosshair is definitely going to hear it from Hunter. ESPECIALLY after he threw Hunter’s past failure to keep her out of Tantiss in his face. What I think will weigh on his conscience more though is the fact he thinks she’ll be alone this time. In a way she definitely will, but I have no doubt that he realizes he was probably the highlight of her day. He was probably the one thing that kept her hopeful even if he tried to talk down on her and get her to leave. Yes, she had hope that Hunter and Wrecker would find her, but she also needed someone there with her. A familiar face and not someone who just revealed they were your sister out of the blue. Her situation has changed, but Crosshair doesn’t know that. The Crosshair guilt is going to be so real in these last episodes.

Switching gears, CX agents are always a cool and interesting topic for me. While the identity of CX-2 isn’t usually as engaging, I have to say that I’ve drifted from the standpoint of “there’s no way that’s Tech” to “it’s a possibility” over the course of the last two episodes. I’ve seen some fun ideas for who it is otherwise. Personally, I think that they’re probably just another copy paste man with no autonomy anymore.

ANYHOW! I haven’t seen anyone talk about it much, but the scene with Hemlock reviewing the CX agent data and the capsule has me thinking a little harder on their creation/conditioning. The way Hemlock talks about the other operatives as well. “The others aren’t ready to join you” (paraphrasing) seems to show that after the mental conditioning through obviously brutal means, it takes a load of time to physically condition the agents. Seeing as CX-1 was most likely initiated around the same time as Crosshair (I choose to believe that they were near each other’s tables which is why they’re familiar), that took around five months to half a year. In that time span there had to be a lot of soldiers who Hemlock saw fit to be “reprogrammed” but we see very few operatives throughout. This means that if they make it out of mental conditioning, physical conditioning is most likely very dangerous and often times fatal. I’d like to draw attention to the capsules as a part of that physical conditioning. There were several capsules that Hemlock was observing, along with the foggy one that is most likely that new Huyang-lookin-ass operative. If these capsules are the final stage of physical conditioning, it adds meaning to CX-2’s first line, “Why have I been activated?” (Once again paraphrasing). Although the capsules could be for something else entirely.

Also a bit of a gripe, why in the world do you need a new secret-secret operative, Hemlock? You have the commandos, and then the first X troopers, now the CX’s, and what? You wanted a new one? I can’t tell if this man is an overachiever or just way too absorbed into the advanced trooper rabbit hole. Also for you Tech theorists, it’s kinda suspicious that he makes a new version of agents isn’t it? Almost like there’s something…deviant about him?

Completely side tracking here, I really like Phee’s awareness in the station. Yeah she didn’t hear the blaring alarm, but she was in a room where it’d be hard to hear anyways. However, when she got back she felt something was off about the ramp. We’ve seen how slick CX-2 is, so her noticing something is up was a nice touch imo. Also was very appreciative of her caution and readiness with her knife. I love when female characters get to be aware of their surroundings and ready to throw hands if things go south.

In conclusion, thank you for listening to my dump-rambling. I’ve been trying to keep my lips shut so I don’t miss tag anything and spoil it for someone (because I know that I’ll forget to tag everything right). I hope Wrecker is okay. And even if I’m not a Tech CX theorist, I have to admit that I’ve been seeing some fairly strong parallels.

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steftastan · 10 months

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Carian Stroll

“Tell Blaidd, and Iji…I love them.”

Before this piece, I had been wanting for a long time to create my own piece of Elden Ring fanart featuring Ranni. I had tried several sketches unsuccessfully, just wasn’t particularly feeling the ideas I had sketched up until that point.

One day of usual internet scrolling, I stumbled upon this gorgeous piece of art by Shimomura Kanzan.

I knew immediately I wanted to do something like this for my Elden Ring fanart. In fact, if you look at this piece, there is tons of inspiration that I drew from the original artwork, such as the style of the yellow leaves and the main subject matter being a prominent silhouette of the brightest value, placed at approximately the bottom third of the image.

The main character is cleverly shrouded amidst various layers of trees and foliage, giving us the impression that we're peeking into candid moment of their life. In the case of the fox, we caught it during a mid-day snack. In the case of Ranni and her party, we caught them in a leisurely stroll, while Iji outfits the dreaded Fingercreepers with their iconic rings.

I wasn't sure if I wanted to capture a happy moment, but Ranni goes as far as to ask us to deliver to Iji and Blaidd the message that she loves them dearly as her quest draws near its end. I would imagine they all must have had fun moments together as a family. Hey, maybe even the hands liked to be around them?

The process

youtube

I started this on my iPad using the procreate app. Sadly the full process is not captured on video, as I switched to Photoshop for the rendering phase of the illustration. This video is a fun window into my chaotic process and how I iterate on the fly on the same canvas. I probably wouldn't do that in a professional setting where you often need to have color keys and iterations to be reviewed and analyzed. I like to I cut myself some slack when doing personal art to keep things fun.

Trying and failing some more

This illustration was not a straightforward path. I haven’t been very diligent about personal art, and at some point I started deviating too much from my reference by adding too many levels of depth to the background and suffocating the piece. I got into a weird loop where I would randomly open the PSD, play around with the values, pushing Iji to the back, then bringing him back, cranking all the levers on Ranni, etc., decide it would look horrible, then begrudgingly determine I’d never complete this image and go on with my life.

As artists we likely have unfinished work sitting everywhere, be it in our sketchbooks, canvases, or hard drives. But it’s a different kind of sting when you feel like you can’t even nail the fundamentals.

Anyway, so a couple weeks ago, I decided to give it another go, but this time I would get rid of all the unnecessary stuff, even stuff that I had been trying to render for ages. I would not hold on to anything, I would try and recapture what drew me to Kanzan's beautiful painting to begin with.

After it became a matter of pushing and pulling pixels until the image was finished!

That’s about it. I didn’t go crazy in depth but lately I’ve been enjoying reading into artists’ processes and I’d be remiss to not share my own thought process also.

Thank you for viewing!

#elden ring #lunar princess ranni #blaidd the half wolf #war counselor iji #illustration #artists on tumblr #fromsoftware #digital art #video game #fanart #Youtube

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am-i-the-asshole-official · 5 months

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Am I the asshole for blocking my friends who I suspect wrote mpreg about “me”?

I (21ftm) have two friends who have recently been writing a story together, I’ll call them O and S, O and S are both cis woman my age. They openly discuss the story on our friend groups discord server in a channel dedicated to this story. O draws the character designs while S primarily writes and they added a character into their story a few months ago who I believe was meant to be me, or at least inspired by me, they’ve done this in the past with other friends of ours who have side characters and cameos, I can usually tell because the character has a name similar to their real life counterpart and a design similar as well, such is the case with “my” character, he is a trans man who looks like me and his name is a shortened nickname of my chosen one.

I wouldn’t have an issue with a character inspired by me but they made him gay and began shipping him with a pre-existing male character which made me uncomfortable because I am very much not gay, the other characters inspired by our friends weren’t given love interests or anything so I can’t say they’ve changed the sexualities of those tribute characters. I don’t care if a character is gay, but this character is clearly meant to be representing me and I’m very uncomfortable with this. People assuming I’m attracted to men is a BIG dysphoria trigger to me and they KNOW this because I told them in the past and when they first wrote this in, all my life I’ve had people assuming I was into men because I was AFAB and I’ve dealt with a lot of “comphet” stuff, I’ve been harassed and haven’t been believed when I told people my actual sexuality, the expectation that I would one day get into a relationship with a man and have children with one was treated like an inevitability by the people around me and it scared the fuck out of younger me.

When they first wrote this relationship, i asked them to change it, i said that if they wanted to put this character into a relationship he could have one with a woman instead, they refused and said they liked the rep it gave, though there is already lots of gay rep in the story and I said that it would still be rep because the character is trans but they didn’t change it, so I then asked that this character could be changed so he wasn’t actually related to me in looks and name and they again refused, which made less sense to me because I didn’t (and still don’t) understand what they got out of writing someone who was basically me into a gay relationship. I gave up because I didn’t want to cause drama in the friend group and other the next weeks I spent less time on the friend groups server and never checked the stories channel because I was still extremely dysphoric and upset. It made me feel angry that they didn’t consider how I felt and dismissed my suggestions.

The next time I checked on that server was a month later and they were discussing the future of the story where some of the characters had children, among those characters that had children were the male character my tribute character was in a relationship with, I came into the chat and asked them how that character had kids, O posted a blushing emoji and said he had kids “the fun way”, I asked further and they said my character also had children and at this point I got really angry and just left the server and blocked them.

Later on one of the friend group J (22nb) dmed me saying that I was being dramatic and that I had no right to control what they put in their story, we had an argument and two of my other friends said I was “ruining the fun” and trying to censor their story and it wasn’t “explicitly clear that it was me”. I originally thought that if you are writing something inspired by someone and it’s making them upset you should stop right? But now I’m not so sure and I’m still feeling very down, I don’t know why they decided to write that in, and especially about someone meant to be a tribute to me, it feels like they’ve taken everything I told them about my dysphoria and distilled it down into something to hurt me.

Aita?

What are these acronyms?

#aita #am i the asshole

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quillthrillswriting · 10 days

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sooo.... anyone else ever wondered how different ATLA would have been if aang had been frozen at age 16 instead of age 12?

yeah... me too 😌 my new fanfic "the teenager in the iceberg" follows the events of the show, but with only aang aged up, while everyone else remains their canon age.

also...cmon....how funny is it to switch zuko and aang's iconic dialogue to "you're just a teenager!" "...so are you?"

this idea was originally inspired by the talented @allgremlinart's aged up aang drawings, so please go show them some love!!:)<3

enjoy the excerpts from chapters one and two!

⁎⁺˳ ✧༚ ˎˊ˗ ♡ ˗ˏˋയ ✩

Aang chuckled, pushing himself up with his hands on his knees. He was… taller than Katara had realised, taller than Sokka. He rubbed a hand on the back of his neck, turning to look over his shoulder at the remains of the boulder-sized chunk of ice he had just been blasted out of. “Aang. My name’s Aang.” He hesitated, momentarily seeming to puzzle something over. “And honestly? No clue. Don’t remember how me and…Appa!” He yelped, suddenly scrambling back over the hill of ice and snow. Katara followed him without thinking, and Sokka, grumbling under his breath, followed moments later.

⁎⁺˳ ✧༚ ˎˊ˗ ♡ ˗ˏˋയ ✩

“So, you’ve brought a monster to invade the village, then? You’re some incognito Fire Nation soldier sent in as an undercover scout? Well, I’ll have you know that I’m the village’s strongest warrior, a-”

“The only warrior,” Katara chimed in, lightly elbowing Sokka’s side, earning herself a responding glare.

“The strongest warrior.” Sokka reiterated. “And I don’t much like firebenders.” He added the words pointedly.

“Ah.” Aang titled his head. “That’s a shame. Some of my closest friends are Fire Nation.”

“Of course they are,” Sokka glared, hunching over into a defensive position and adjusting his fishing spear until it pointed directly at Aang.

⁎⁺˳ ✧༚ ˎˊ˗ ♡ ˗ˏˋയ ✩

Katara still wasn’t quite sure what to make of Aang. The Water Tribe boys had always been all flashy muscles, seal-jerky breath, and overconfidence, so Katara had never seen someone move, carry themself, the way Aang did.

⁎⁺˳ ✧༚ ˎˊ˗ ♡ ˗ˏˋയ ✩

Katara had admittedly forgotten how much fun penguin sledding was. “Spirits, I haven’t done this since I was a kid!” she called to Aang as he raced past her, surprisingly skilled considering that he’d never even seen a penguin until half an hour before.

“You still are a kid!” He called back over his shoulder. “A kid who’s losing this race, badly !”

Katara’s competitive streak reared its head, her eyes narrowing as Aang stuck out his tongue. She sat up slightly, no longer gripping the penguin’s fur as tightly. “You wish!” She shouted back the words as she raised her hands, breathing deeply. Her hands moved through the positions she had practised from the few bending scrolls the tribe still held on to, and before Aang knew it, the snow in front of Katara turned to ice, and she shot past him as his own ice trail suddenly became dry snow with too much friction to slide on.

She made it to the bottom of the hill, beaming, breathing heavily. The wind had whipped her hair out of her bun, and she knew without checking that her hair must have looked like a lion-turtle’s mane. She watched as Aang made a show of drying himself off with a gust of wind that he then redirected at her, messing up her curls even more.

“You’re a cheater !” Aang gasped, mockingly clutching imaginary pearls at his throat. “I demand a rematch.”

Katara strode past him, only turning her head to cast him a smug smirk. “Maybe you’re just not as good of a penguin sledder as you thought .”

“Oh, not so fast!” Aang grabbed her wrist, tugging her back towards him, and she internally questioned why the momentary brush of their skin made her heart flip. He tried to trip her, she tried to flip him, and they both ended up on their backs in the snow, giggling, cheeks and noses bright pink from the cold.

⁎⁺˳ ✧༚ ˎˊ˗ ♡ ˗ˏˋയ ✩

“Trouble sleeping too, huh?” Aang cocked a grin, tilting his head to Katara. She kept her eyes fixed upwards, trained on the moon and the stars, worried that if she looked away, she’d end up staring into his eyes like a weirdo.

“I always feel so awake with the moon’s light on me. Sleeping under the stars has never really been a thing that works. It’s too energising, too… too much. It’s hard to explain.”

“No, no… I get it. I feel the same way in a windstorm, all those breezes and gusts of wind, it feels… exhilarating.” She watched through her peripheral vision as he looked up at the moon. “In times of war, I think we all tend to forget how spiritual bending is at its core. I’d say it’s a good thing that you’re in touch enough with the origins of your abilities to feel the moon’s pull tug at you just as much as it does on the ocean.”

⁎⁺˳ ✧༚ ˎˊ˗ ♡ ˗ˏˋയ ✩

Aang smiled back. “Now is our time to try to make up for that. I can’t bring back everyone who was hurt in this war, and you can’t bring back your mother, but together, the two-, three of us can make sure it doesn’t happen to anyone else.”

“I’d like that,” Katara exhaled, her breath calming down and tears dissipating. The two spent hours talking back and forth, exchanging the stories of their respective childhoods. Katara learned that Aang had invented several new bending moves and had been a big fan of fruit pies, while Aang learned that Katara had always been the bossier one between her and Sokka and that she had almost chipped a tooth on seal jerky when she was six. They continued talking back and forth in increasingly hushed tones until the world faded away under the cover of clouds and sleep.

Katara awoke to the loud shout of her brother.

“Wakey wakey, lovebirds!” he yelped, chucking a rock-hard stick of seal jerky at both of them.

“Ouch, Sokka !” Katara snapped at him, rubbing her head at the spot where she had been hit, before realising that she was leaning against Aang and immediately jumping away, blushing furiously.

♥ check out the two chapters of this (ongoing) fic & my ao3 here! ->

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guywithn0name · 3 months

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-Alphabet headcanons-

;Miles Morales

Miles Morales x any gender reader

Main masterlist

Spider-man: spider-verse Masterlist

Warnings: none

-‘A’ is for AFFECTION (how affectionate are they?)

Miles is a pretty affectionate guy, even if he doesn’t show it as much through physical affection. He expresses his affection through quality time and words of affirmation, he also makes drawings for you as a way to show how much he cares for you.

-‘B’ is for BESTFRIEND (what are they like as a bestfriend?)

Miles is definitely someone who sends a lot of TikTok’s or some random memes he finds funny. If you two have the same clothing size, he’ll borrow some of your clothes from time to time. He also likes to hang out often in either silence or you two talking nonstop about something random together. Y’all definitely have game nights together.

-‘C’ is for CUDDLES (how and do they like to cuddle?)

He likes to cuddle when you two are alone, but he won’t outright beg for it. He doesn’t need cuddles, but he likes them. Miles can be the little spoon or big spoon, he won’t care. Just as long as you to spend time together.

-‘D’ is for DOMESTIC (if they settle down, how will they help?)

Miles’ a messy boy, have you seen his room? He’d throw his clothes all over but he can definitely cook well. Rio is a fantastic cook and Miles definitely got his great cooking skill from her. Miles will clean the house with you if a special event like a birthday or Christmas happens (if you celebrate Christmas).

-‘E’ is for ENDING (how would the break up go?)

Tears. A lot of tears. He’d definitely cry if you broke up with him, and even probably if he broke up with you. Miles would probably distance himself from y’all’s mutual friends if you have any. Miles would probably ends up drawing you in his sketchbooks in a way to cope with the breakup. Y’all would still probably be in good terms, but that depends on the breakup.

-‘F’ is for FIANCÉ (how do they feel about marriage)

He wants to get married, but in his 20’s. But if you don’t want to get married, he’ll respect that. But y’all would definitely get matching rings or promise rings. He’ll probably would wear his ring on a necklace so he wouldn’t loose it during his Spider-man fights and all.

-‘G’ is for GENTLE (how gentle are they?)

Miles is a literal angle, honestly. He’s always so sweet and nice to you. He loves that slow and sweet kind of love. He’s the type of guy who’ll bring you flowers when he’s sorry.

-‘H’ is for HUGS (do they like hugs?)

He really likes hugs. They’re not mandatory but Miles will absolutely love them if you two haven’t seen each other for some time. He also will hug you when you’re sad (only if you’re comfortable with it, of course). Miles also enjoys getting hugs when he’s upset.

-‘I’ is for I LOVE YOU (when do they say I love you for the first time?)

Miles probably said “I love you” in the first month of you two being together. He probably said it during a date you two had.

-‘J’ is for JEALOUSY (do they get easily jealous? And if they do, what will they do?)

Miles doesn’t get jealous easily, but when he does. He actually doesn’t express it very much. The only time he’ll get jealous is if someone touches you inappropriately or if you’re telling about some guy in a way that kinda sounds like you two are closer than friends.

-‘K’ is for KISSES (how often do they like to get or give kisses, and where?)

He loved giving and getting kisses. Miles’ definitely a guy who loved giving and receiving cheek kisses. He gives about 5 kisses a day, or around that number. But he gives a lot more kisses if it’s been a while since you two last saw each other.

-‘L’ is for LITTLE ONES (how are they with kids?)

Miles is definitely good with kids and they really like him too. Being spider-man also plays a part on this since he has to save people from all age groups, plus. He finds kids fun to be around.

-‘M’ is for MORNINGS (how are mornings with them?

Miles need like 10 extra minutes in the morning just to get up. He’s super groggy every morning. He takes forever to get out of bed. He’s also super cuddly in the mornings, just refusing to get up and get ready for the day. This man does not have a skin routine, I have no idea how his face is so clear, but he got nothing.

-‘N’ is NIGHTS (how are nights with them?)

Just like in the mornings, no skin routine. He washes his face with water from time to time. He loves taking showers before going to sleep. If you two are sleeping in the same bed, he’ll have a hand on your stomach or something tiny like that. Definitely kisses you goodnight.

-‘O’ is for OPEN (how open are they about themselves?)

Miles was pretty awkward at first, but as you two spent time together. He warmed up to you. He told you about him being spider-man at the month and a half mark of your relationship.

-‘P’ is for PATIENCE (how patient are they with you?)

Miles is super patient with you. If you don’t feel comfortable with something he’ll understand. He will try to get you out of your comfort zone sometimes but not in a overly pushy way.

-‘Q’ is for QUIZZES (how much do they remember about you?)

He doesn’t have the perfect memory since he always has a lot of things going with being spider-man and all. He does try to remember as much as he can, Miles will even write some things about you in his sketchbook next to drawings of you.

-‘R’ is for REMEMBER (what’s their favourite moment in the relationship?)

Miles’ favourite moment in your relationship is either when you were patching him up after a fight against a villain while he was spider-man. Or when the two of you were dancing in the rain as music played.

-‘S’ is for SECURITY (how protective are they?)

He isn’t super protective, but if you’re in danger he’ll be there as soon as he can. He’ll always be there for you and he’s definitely ready to fight anyone rude or stupid for you when he’s spider-man (even as just Miles if the person being rude and dumb is extra)

-‘T’ is for TRY (how much effort are they putting into the relationship, dates and ect?)

He always tries to be a good boyfriend and be there, but his Spider-man work gets in the way from time to time. As for dates. He likes to have chill dates that are you two just cuddling while watching a movie or you in the subway spray painting together. As for more special events like Valentine’s Day and an anniversary, he’s gonna try to do something special for you.

-‘U’ is for UGLY (what’s a bad habit of theirs?)

He has a bad habit of showing up late, but normally it’s because of his Spider-man things. He also has a habit of biting his nails or the inside of his mouth/lips.

-‘V’ is for VANITY (how insecure are they?)

He isn’t super insecure but he’ll get kinda insecure if you two haven’t been able to spend time together or talked for a while. But appearance wise, he isn’t that insecure.

-‘W’ is for WHOLE (do they feel whole without you?)

If you two were separated for a while, he’d definitely miss you like hell. And if you die at any point. He would visit your grave at least once a week. So, he wouldn’t feel whole without you.

-‘X’ is for XTRA (extra headcanon about them)

Miles 100% has a sketchbook dedicated to you. It’s full of drawings of you in different poses, styles and backgrounds. I think he’d also have some light lighting scars on his body from his venom blast. (Especially on his arms). He definitely has spray painted your face somewhere where other people can’t find it, it also had spray paintings of other people who are important to him. Miles has definitely made a playlist that reminded him of you, and you also have a shared playlist.

-‘Y’ is for YUCK (what can they not stand?)

He can’t stand when someone has their shoes in bed. And he finds it super annoying when someone touches his collectables or sketchbooks.

-‘Z’ is for ZLEEP (how is to sleep with them?)

Miles’ a cuddle bug while sleeping, he doesn’t even know it. He also snores lightly in his sleep, it’s super quiet tho. He’ll wrap himself fully around you while sleeping. Sometimes Miles will even drool, it’s not a big amount tho.

#miles morales x male reader #miles morales 1610 #miles morales x reader #miles morales #spidervese #into the spider verse #across the spiderverse #spiderman #Miles morales x gender neutral reader #miles morales x gn reader #spiderman across the spiderverse #spiderman into the spiderverse #itsv #atsv #Alphabet #alphabet headcanons #headcanon

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putellas11 · 2 years

Text

A/N: I’ve had this in my drafts for ages! Since I really haven’t had anytime to write (and probably won’t for a little while longer) I figured I’d release this hot mess in the meantime. I hope I’ll be able to come back in full force soon! Hope you enjoy!

Revenge is Sweet (Alexia Putellas x Reader)

You wake up to ice-cold water being poured all over you.

“What the fuck!?”

Gasping and shivering from the cold, you glare through blurry vision at the woman towering over you with a bucket in her hand.

Alexia.

She’s the last person you wanted to see, and a sense of impending doom begins to creep in at the inevitable lecture that awaits you.

“Seriously? Again?” Her tone, posture, and expression all reflect a deep sense of disappointment and genuine anger.

Anyone else would cower under her glare, but not you. Alexia implied it with her words— this is not the first time this has happened, so you know what to expect. She’ll lecture you about responsibility and commitment to the team, and you’ll nod your head pretending to listen, but really, you’ll just be focused on not throwing up all over her shoes.

“Hey, at least I’m not late to training this time,” you argue, slowly lifting yourself from the wet floor, droplets of water splashing down with your every movement.

“On time but you’re fucking drunk!”

Her voice rings out in your ears and you can’t help but flinch. If you lacked any common sense you’d ask her to quiet down, but you know better.

“I’m hungover, actually. There’s a difference.” You point out, but with little to no conviction in your words.

It’s not just that you have no strength to plead your case, you also don’t care enough to do so. It’s always the same argument with Alexia and it never fails to end the same way, so you don’t see the point in engaging in the usual back and forth. The sooner you can get her to go away, the better.

“I’m so sick and tired of covering for you,” she says, hands on her waist and that annoying look of disapproval in her eyes she has reserved just for you.

“Ok, so stop. It’s not like I ever asked you to anyway.” You’re growing more and more frustrated by the minute, feeling suffocated by the wet clothes sticking to your body.

Alexia may be the captain of the team, but her threats matter very little when you have Jona wrapped around your finger. As long as you keep on producing results on the field, he’ll continue to turn a blind eye to whatever you do off it. Alexia, of course, is not happy with this little agreement you have with the manager.

“I’m being serious! What you’re doing is wrong and it’s setting a horrible example for the others. Por dios, I don’t know how many times I have to tell you. This behavior is going to bite you in the ass, and when that happens, I won’t stand in the way.”

You try so hard to not roll your eyes but you’re sick and tired of all the lectures and threats. “Oh, that doesn’t surprise me one bit, babe. Let’s not pretend like you haven’t wanted me off this team from the moment I got here.”

Alexia takes a step back, surprised by what you said. “That’s not true.”

“Bullshit,” you counter, not afraid to call her out. “You’ve done nothing but give me a hard time, and for what? Because I like to go out with my friends? Jona doesn’t care and that’s all that matters. So, with all due respect, reina...,” you draw out the title you know she’s not too fond of, “either take it up with the big man or fuck off and leave me alone.”

If looks could kill, you’d be dead right now.

With her hands in tight fists by her side, Alexia takes a deep breath to regain control of her emotions. “Get changed, eat something, and get your act together before everyone else gets here.” Spoken through clenched teeth, her words are edged with anger.

“Yeah, yeah” you dismiss her, waving her away as she stomps out of the locker room.

The second Alexia is out of sight, you run to the nearest trash can and throw up all the fun you had last night.

“Fuck me, this is not going to be fun.”

Once you take your second shower of the day— thanks to Alexia, and get something in your stomach, you start to feel somewhat human again. There’s still someone inside your head going crazy with a jackhammer, but you’re confident you can push through it. After all, this isn’t your first rodeo.

Every once in a while, you have trouble saying no to a good party. Sometimes the party just so happens to fall on the night before a training session, and it is what it is.

Life is too short to make it all about football.

Alexia, on the other hand, can’t seem to wrap her head around that. The nagging is never-ending, the lectures make you want to slam your head against the wall, and her ‘better than you’ attitude has you wishing you never signed with Barça in the first place. If it was not for the fact that you’re playing the best football of your career, your agent would already be in contact with another club.

Under the blistering Barcelona sun, the team is huddled up in a circle listening to Jona’s instructions on the training session. Unfortunately, the pounding inside your head has only gotten worse which makes it difficult to pay attention to anything that is being said. All you want to do is crawl into bed and sleep for a week and a few days.

“You look like shit,” Mapi whispers in your ear rather matter-of-factly.

“Really? Because I feel fantastic.” Sarcasm drips from your lips and Mapi has to suppress her laughter in order to not draw any attention to the two of you.

Jona blows the whistle and you can only send a little prayer that he’ll take it easy on you today.

Alexia, however, seems to have other plans. Today of all days, she has decided to train with an unusual intensity. Your prayer clearly not answered as Alexia demands that very same intensity from the rest of her teammates, and especially from you. On the surface, it seems that all she wants is for the team to work hard, but deep down, you know this is nothing but a ploy so she can make you suffer.

Despite your current state, you’re determined to refuse her the satisfaction of seeing you on your knees, defeated. When she screams at you to run faster, you run faster. When she tackles you again and again, you make it a point to not stay down for too long. You do all of this through gritted teeth and a body screaming and begging for it all to stop.

The training session ends with free kick practice and your first attempt goes over the crossbar.

This gives Alexia a brilliant idea.

“For every shot missed, you’ll have to run the length of the pitch and back,” she commands, a smug smile on her lips.

You can feel everyone's eyes on you and this only makes your blood boil. It’s clear that you’re on the verge of passing out but no one dares to go up against Alexia and you can’t exactly blame them. She has the respect of everyone in on the team, coaching staff included, of course no one comes to your aid.

So, you have no choice but to run. Something you have done a million times before is now nearly impossible to accomplish. When you make it back, your vision is blurry and it’s a struggle to catch your breath— factors that only make it all that more difficult to get the ball in the net.

It’s no surprise when you miss.

“Again!”

With your hands on your knees, you shoot daggers at Alexia, hoping to convey with your eyes all the words you can’t say out loud. In return, she challenges you to speak up— her expression daring you to admit defeat so your punishment can come to an end and she can claim her victory.

The desire to prove her wrong outweighs your need for rest. Even with your heart aching in your chest, you manage to touch the goal post on the other end of the pitch but this time, barely manage make it back.

Black dots start to infiltrate your vision and you’re not sure you have any fight left in you. A free kick drill has now become a matter of life and death.

“Come on, you got this!”

Surprisingly, Claudia is the one who dares to speak up but she quickly has to hide behind Patri when Alexia shoots a deadly glare in her direction.

Pina’s interruption earns you a few more seconds and that makes it possible for you to get one good breath in. Her words of encouragement settle in your mind and feed your confidence.

You take three steps back and one to the side— as is your custom. A bead of sweat trickles down your forehead and its path leads dangerously close to your eye but you pay it no mind.

The moment you make contact with the ball you know it’s perfect. It’s the right amount of power and curve, making it drop under the crossbar just in time and into the back of the net.

Everyone seems to breathe out a sigh of relief with Alexia being the only exception. There’s so much you want to say but you know it’s not the right time nor place.

One thing is for certain; your revenge will be sweet.

Alexia leads the team to the locker room but you decide it’s best to stay behind. There’s a rage building up inside of you that needs to be controlled. So, you seek out a little bit of shade and take some time to calm yourself down before you do or say something that will surely get you in a lot of trouble, but you certainly won’t regret.

“You look like shit” Jona’s voice disrupts your thoughts. The young manager kneels by your side and offers you a bottle of water.

“So I’ve been told.”

Aware of your difficult relationship with Alexia, Jona has had to assume the role of peacemaker more than once. While he has often come to your defense when you’ve needed him the most, there have been times he has had to take a step back and allow you to feel the full extent of Alexia’s wrath.

“You deserved it this time, you know,” he says, and you have no strength to argue.

“I deserved to be punished yes, but that little stunt was so much more than that.”

It was one thing for Alexia to punish you for showing up hungover to practice, but it was another thing entirely to intentionally embarrass you in front of the entire team.

All you can think about is revenge.

______

A few weeks have passed since your altercation with Alexia and since then, the two of you have not said more than two sentences to each other off the pitch.

On the pitch it’s a slightly different matter. Despite what Alexia might think, you know how to be a professional. When the whistle is blown, you’re able to put all your anger to the side and follow your captain's orders without a second thought. Once the 90 minutes are over, however, you don’t bother to give her a second glance.

Since you haven’t been in the greatest of moods lately, the plan was to stay in and have a quiet night in, but your friends don’t really believe in such a thing. All it took was one text for your night to take a very different turn.

📲: Otto Zutz tonight 😈

A favorite among your friends, Otto Zutz never disappoints. You’re no stranger to the club so you feel right at home surrounded by the steel pillars and cement walls.

One drink turns into two and you don’t bother to keep count after five. Under the influence of alcohol and of your mischievous friends, you ordered a bottle of Cristal only to shake it vigorously and spray it down to everyone on the dance floor. The huge roar that reverberated around the club was music to your ears.

The crowd below demands your attention so you make your way to them. The space is clouded with artificial smoke and fog, strobe lights flashing in sync with the music. You mix into the crowd and become one of many the bodies on the dance floor controlled by the onslaught of drumbeats.

It’s all going to perfection— until you spot her in the crowd. All the alcohol you have consumed has blurred your vision and the lighting in the club certainty doesn’t help, but you’re certain it’s her.

“Alexia,” you say to yourself.

You should turn away from her and ensure your night ends on a high, yet, you can’t fight the urge to talk to her. Somehow you manage to get through the sea of bodies in your way but now with her back to you, Alexia doesn’t see you approach her.

“What are you doing here, Putellas?,” your voice slurred, a hand on her shoulder to get her attention.

When she turns around, you have to take a step back.

“Alba?”

Definitely not Alexia.

The sisters share a few similarities, but you have always been able to tell them apart. It’s a mistake you can only blame on the alcohol coursing through your veins.

“Well, look who we have here,” Alba, who has clearly had just as much to drink as you, pulls you in for a tight embrace and her hands waste no time settling on your lower back.

Unlike Alexia, Alba has always been particularly fond of you. It was innocent at first with just the occasional DM on Instagram, but it eventually progressed to lingering touches and suggestive whispers behind Alexia’s back. You haven’t dared to take it any further, but that doesn’t mean you haven’t entertained the possibility.

Just the idea of you and Alba getting together would be enough to drive Alexia crazy. If that idea were to ever become a reality…

With a hand on Alba’s waist, you lean in so she can hear you over the music, “dance with me.”

Her nails dig in ever so slightly into your back and her lips brush against your ear, giving you all the confirmation you need.

Revenge is sweet. ______

Spirits are high inside the locker room. The team is feeling extremely confident after a streak of great results, so there’s laughter and a lot of teasing as you get ready for training.

It’s the calm before the storm.

There’s a very notable absence in the locker room. Alexia, who is usually one of the very first to arrive, is nowhere to be seen.

Alba texted you last night to give you a heads up that Alexia had somehow found out about the two of you planning on going out on a date, and according to Alba, Alexia was not at all pleased with the idea. This, of course, didn’t surprise you. In fact, it’s what you wanted all along.

There is no doubt in your mind that going on a date with Alba is a horrible idea. You know it can only bring you trouble, but you still haven’t quite gotten over Alexia’s so called punishment. Not only that, it’s how much she seemed to enjoy watching you run back and forth, fighting for your life. For you, that moment was a declaration of war and as they say, all is fair in love and war.

The impact of the door crashing against the wall startles everyone in the locker room. The door closes itself with force behind Alexia as she zeros in on you. Her face a ferocious red, eyes burning with rage.

You love it.

Alexia marches in your direction, takes the cleats from your hands and throws them against the wall. “Stay the hell away from Alba!”

Everyone around you is frozen in shock at the scene that’s unfolding before their very eyes. It reminds you of the previous clash with Alexia, but this time, you have the upper hand.

“I don’t think Alba would like that very much,” you say, tilting your head slightly to the side with an arrogant smirk.

“My sister is off limits!”

You scoff at her words. “Alba is allowed to date whoever she wants,” you say, keeping your eyes on Alexia, “isn’t that right, Mapi?”

Mapi, completely taken off guard, immediately puts her hands up in defense, “I’m innocent in all of this.”

The fire in Alexia’s eyes continues to burn bright but you refuse to look away and you refuse to back down.

“Everyone out!”

Like loyal soldiers, everyone in the locker room packs up what they need and practically run out of the locker room. You get a few looks from some of your teammates on their way out, almost as they want to get their last look good look of you alive and breathing before Alexia gets her hands on you.

“I don’t think you understand how pissed off I am right now,” she says, her jaw set.

“Oh, believe me, babe. I understand.”

A wave of recognition crashes over her, and Alexia finally understands that all of this is just your way of getting revenge. “You’re doing this on purpose,” she breathes out, and she almost can’t believe her own words. “You’re seriously using my sister to get back at me?”

A shrug of the shoulders is all you give her as a response.

Alexia runs her fingers through her hair in frustration and begins to pace the room. You watch in amusement as she covers her face with her hands and lets out a muffled groan born out of frustration.

“You know training is about to start, right?”

Alexia stops in her tracks and finally looks at you, “what do I have to do?” she asks.

Your eyebrows furrow in confusion, “what the hell are you talking about?”

Alexia takes a step closer and you notice the rage in her eyes has been replaced with icy determination. “Tell me what I have to do for you not to go on that date with Alba,” there’s a slight hesitation before she says, “I’ll do anything.”

“Anything?”

“Anything.” Alexia nods once and for a brief moment, her expression falters revealing her fear of you actually taking her up on her offer.

You’re overwhelmed by the possibilities, but one thing is for certain, you want to keep this going for as long as possible.

“Fine,” you say, crossing your arms across your chest. “If I can’t go out with Alba…” you take a pause, building up the anticipation much to Alexia’s displeasure, “...you’ll have to do.”

“What?”

“You heard me. If I can’t go out with Alba, you’ll have to go out with me instead.”

Alexia’s eyes open wide, her lips parted in disbelief. This is the first time you see her truly vulnerable and you have to fight the grin threatening to spread across your face.

“No, no, y-you can’t be serious,” she stutters, forcing herself to take a step back.

“Oh, I’m very serious,” you say, “but, you can always so no and I can just go out with Alba.”

This is a win-win situation for you and Alexia knows it. There’s no getting out of this one, so it’s all a matter of how far she’s willing to go to ensure you stay away from her sister.

“Ok,” she says, “I’ll do it,” her words spoken so softly you can barely hear her.

“I’m gonna need you to speak up.”

Alexia takes in a deep breath, draws her shoulders back, and looks you dead in the eye. “Fine, I will go out with you,” she finally says, and this time you can hear her just fine. “But, Alba can never know about this.”

You expected her to put up more of a fight, but it seems she’s desperate to make sure you stay as far away as possible from Alba. If it were anybody else you’d be offended, but you don’t care much about Alexia’s opinion of you.

Your smile makes her eye twitch, her jaw clenched so tight that it’s a little concerning. Still, Alexia stands her ground and accepts her fate.

“Well, that’s settled then,” you say, closing the distance Alexia created.

There’s a pause. You scan her features, watching the subtle signs of tension around the corners of her mouth. When her tongue darts out to wet her lips, an unexpected shiver runs down your spine.

“You’re all mine.”

—————————

Part 2

#alexia putellas x reader #alexia putellas imagine #woso x reader #woso imagine

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writeyouin · 10 months

Note

Would you mind continue the one about the lonely reader on lost light?

Transformers MTMTE/LL Reader Insert – Attention Part 2 of 2 – A Friend in the Darkness

A/N – So, part one of this fic came out ages ago. It’s so funny to me that I was asked for angst, then when I delivered, people were like, “No, get back here and fix this right now.”

Welp, like a cat that smashed a glass, I’m finally home, with a dead mouse as an apology for the mess.

Warnings – Themes of depression (with a happy ending though).

Rating – T

You had been on your own for a while now. At first, you had tried to keep in contact with the other bots on the ship, but there was always so much to be done. Repairs had to be made, the bots all had jobs, and while you had known the crew for little over a year, they had known each other for hundreds if not thousands of years, meaning that they each had groups of predetermined friends, all with their own inside jokes and banter you couldn’t begin to comprehend.

When it became obvious that everyone was currently too busy to spend time with you, you retreated into yourself, making little effort to communicate further. You supposed that eventually somebody would seek you out, but it didn’t happen.

All alone, you began to think about what being the only organic aboard a non-organic ship meant. It never seemed to matter much before, but now you were realising just how different you were. The worst thing seemed to be that if you had been lonely on Earth, you would have surrounded yourself with nature, finding solace in the steady breaths of fresh air, but that was impossible on the Lost Light; the mechs didn’t need organic matter for their mental health, but you, on the other hand, were learning what it meant to be deprived of such things.

Soon enough you started getting out of bed later than usual, finding little enthusiasm to face the long days with nobody to talk to and nowhere new to go. You lost interest in most of your hobbies, unable to continue drawing, reading, or writing as you once had purely for fun. It seemed that your world had turned grey, leeching your life and soul of any colour and vibrancy it had once held.

It was on one such day wherein you had chosen to stay in bed that there was finally a knock at your door. You didn’t get the chance to answer it as Cyclonus let himself in, having stolen a passkey from Rung’s office.

“So, you are here,” Cyclonus stated matter of factly, as if it wasn’t your room he was standing in.

You regarded Cyclonus carefully, unused to the usually sombre bot. He hadn’t been among your old friends and you weren’t sure what to make of him now, especially due to the strange way he had come to seek you out.

“Uh… Hi,” You said dazedly, your voice small and quiet as if you had almost forgotten how to speak in your solitude.

“You haven’t been around recently,” Cyclonus stated, his steely gaze cutting into you.

Until then, you hadn’t been aware that Cyclonus had been keeping tabs on you; you wondered why he had bothered to do so.

“I’m- I’m not well,” You whispered sheepishly, feeling somewhat guilty that he should find you in such a state, even though you technically didn’t have anything to feel guilty about.

Cyclonus stared hard at you. He didn’t know much about humans, but it was true you didn’t look well. Your skin was pale and your face was drawn into an anxious, closed-off expression. Your hair lacked its usual sheen, and you seemed somewhat dry as if you were dehydrated. Yet, despite the evidence before him, Cyclonus didn’t believe it was a physical illness that plagued you.

“That may be true,” He said evenly, “But your illness is in your head, and your spark. Your friends have been negligent of your needs.”

“They’re busy,” You replied feebly, unsure as to why you were currently defending them against Cyclonus’ accusations.

“And you’re the one suffering for it.”

You looked down at the blanket, unwilling to meet Cyclonus’ gaze as your eyes burned with unshed tears.

He bent down, getting into a sitting position in an attempt to get closer to you. He wasn’t the best at making conversation, but some things needed to be said.

“Being alone is hard. Telling yourself that it’s your fault is harder. You and I… We deal with things in different ways, but I can still tell true loneliness when I see it.”

“Why are you here? We’ve never even spoken before.”

Cyclonus thought of Tailgate, the small blue bot who had spent all his time trying to get Cyclonus to open up. Even when Cyclonus had acted utterly vile towards him, Tailgate hadn’t given up hope that they could be friends; it had improved Cyclonus’ life exponentially.

“Because I don’t ever want you to turn out like me. Now get up, washed, and dressed. I’ll wait outside. We’re going out and I want you to tell me all about your life.”

Initially, spending time with Cyclonus was somewhat disconcerting. He left most of the conversation to you, listening more than he spoke. You weren’t used to such attentiveness; usually, conversations with friends were all about give and take. Yet, slowly as the two of you sat in the Observation Deck, you started to warm up to him.

He had gotten you out of your room which had unintentionally become your cell, made sure that you took care of yourself, even going so far as to ensure you ate and took two full bottles of water out during your excursion, then he simply listened.

In the following weeks, he made sure to check on you regularly, and shortly thereafter the other bots had found time for you again, apologising for the long time it had been since you hung out. You weren’t sure whether Cyclonus had been the one to tell them of your need for social interaction, or whether the others finally had some free time to fraternise, but either way, your life was getting back to normal and you no longer felt isolated.

You joined clubs that some of the other bots set up, including an Art Class which Rodimus insisted on being the model for; that wasn’t a good arrangement since he couldn’t seem to sit still long enough for any serious artist to capture him and he was highly critical of any abstract art that ‘didn’t fit his image.’

Swerve started a film club and every other week you were allowed to pick the movie. Sometimes, you picked something you had seen a million times over, and sometimes you tried something new so you could share in theories and surprises with your friends.

There were still rough days, and even weeks when you would struggle with ship life, but there was always someone to go to on nights like that, and on the few rare occasions that everyone was seemingly busy, Cyclonus would show up at your door unannounced, making sure that you had someone who would always be there to listen to you.

Sometimes, all one needs is a friend who has suffered the same darknesses as yourself, since only they can truly understand how difficult it is to claw one’s way out of the darkness alone, and those who have suffered alone will always make sure it doesn’t happen to anyone else.

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midorisudachi · 2 months

Text

"Konohagakure Fuyu Matsuri (Hidden Leaf Village Winter Festival)"

I felt like drawing something pretty (that had a winter theme), so here is Sakura with a little Sarada wearing their best kimonos on a winter day. I imagine Konoha must have all sorts of festivals, especially during their peaceful time period (after Naruto Shippuden and before the Boruto series). I based Sakura’s kimono on a tomesode (kimono for married women), and for Sarada, a style of kimono that a small child (girl) would wear on a special occasion.

I haven’t drawn in an anime/manga style in a while, so this was fun to create. I hope everybody likes this!

I actually haven’t watched Boruto in…well…gee…a year and a half? I’m so behind on the series. I’ve been wanting to watch Shippuden again. Last anime I recently watched was Kimetsu No Yaiba season 4.

Drawn with Sakura Pigma Micron pens, and then coloured in with a mix of Copic Markers, Ohuhu markers, and Koi Watercolours.

Sakura/Sarada/Boruto Series © Kishimoto Masashi

Fanart © Jacqueline E. McNeese (me!)

P.S. Fellow artists, do you ever hit an “Artist Block”, or just feel super unmotivated to create anything at all? That is how I have felt since March of last year. I haven’t worked on cosplay since then (when I always have made so much cosplay, since 2003) but I reached a total burn-out. Same came to artwork. I need to (and would love to) create more artwork, yet I don’t want to force myself when I feel unmotivated. I find myself gaming (Skyrim and Dragon Age Inquisition) more than creating, but I only play games when my son is visiting his father (which is usually twice a week). Even my son has reached an “art block” and unmotivated stage…he used to draw so much, non-stop. There must be something in the air. I’m also super exhausted (due to work and also having Fibromyalgia), so that contributes to being unmotivated. I need to get out of this mode…time to create more artwork and cosplay! Please send me extra energy!

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daphnaie · 2 years

Text

*~ spin the bottle. steve harrington x reader

Summary: Steve can't stop thinking, fantasizing, dreaming about you but when it's his turn to kiss you during a game of spin the bottle, his mind goes blank. *~ Steve Harrington x fem!Reader

Word count: 0.9k

When the head of the empty tequila bottle points at you, Steve chokes on his beer.

There you are – sitting on the carpet, skirt riding up a little high, hair a mess from dancing with your friends earlier, a glimmer in your eyes, looking like a late summers memory and the stupid reminder to never trust Robin again when she promises a party will be fun.

Who – at his age – even plays spin the bottle anymore?

You, apparently. You who walked into Family Video three weeks ago and haven’t left his mind since.

He knew you before, saw you around Hawkins, but you’re a year younger than him and have different friends. He knew you but he never noticed you. Not until the day, the door at the video store opened and that perfect ray of evening sunlight fell in, burning orange and gold, hitting you from behind, making you look downright ethereal.

And no, he had never used that word before but when he tried to describe you to Robin, stumbling over his sentences like an idiot, she did and he ran with it.

Now it’s not the evening sun that shines down on you but a shitty lamp in a dirty basement. Steve wonders how even this harsh light doesn’t take away from your beauty and simultaneously asks himself when exactly he’d fallen this hard for you without ever talking to you before. Unless that one time counts when he made a joke at Robins expense and you laughed.

Jesus, that laugh followed him into his dreams.

With a bit of luck, that laugh will follow him into this basement too because your eyes are fixated on him, patiently waiting for a reaction. Robin squeezes his shoulder as if she nudges him to wake up, while the other people in the circle begin to giggle at the awkward pause. Steve doesn’t care. All he cares about is the way the corners of your lips twitch.

“Scared, Harrington?”

It’s the first time he hears his name coming from your mouth, soft and teasing, and he takes another sip of the beer to swallow a goddamn huff. Next to him, Robin grins. She knows what’s up. He’s pretty sure that the only reason she begged for him to come tonight and join this game, is this.

“Should I be?” He finds his words again, somewhere in the back of his brain.

Your lips curl up into a full on smile, so full of innocence that the contrast to your following words draws scattered whistles from the people around you: “Why don’t I come over and you find out?”

Every bit of color fades from his face as you follow through on that question. Because you don’t simply get up and walk over to Steve – no, you come towards him on all fours, eyes locked and dark, looking like the main character in one of his fucking wet dreams. The whistles around you grow louder and dirtier and his brain short-circuits.

You stop right in front of him, mere inches away from his face, smelling like tequila and flowers Steve doesn’t bother to describe. After all, he has never been a poet. All he knows is that your scent alone will make him drunk if you come any closer.

“What now, Harrington?” you ask softly. “Will you kiss me now?”

Kiss you. You’re not the first girl he’d kiss, not by far, but for some reason his heart has never beat so fast before when another girl offered herself up to him.

“How drunk are you?” he wants to know, voice hoarse.

You chuckle and he shifts. Not because he’s uncomfortable but rather because all his blood is traveling to a certain region of his body.

“Such a gentleman,” you murmur. Eyes travel to his lips and his heart stutters. “Didn’t they call you King Steve in high school? Where’s that kingly behavior hiding? All I see is a scared boy holding on to his beer like-“

“Oh, shut it,” he whispers and then his hand is on the back of your neck and his lips are pressed against yours.

Fuck.

If he wants to describe the taste of you, he can’t. It’s simply sweet and heavenly and oh so much better than he expected it to be. A teeny tiny gasp leaves your throat at the sudden action but then you melt into the kiss, following the movement of his lips. When they open and his tongue pushes into your mouth, your legs almost give out.

Neither of you care for the howls around you, the disgusted yells to “get a room”. You’re too distracted by the way his hand tightens on your neck as if he restrains himself from pulling you closer.

He is. All he wants is to pull you on his lap, to rip that stupid dress off of you and make that gasp turn into a moan but it’s too public, too loud.

Someone – Robin? – kicks his leg and he breaks the kiss. Breathless, the two of you stare at each other. Your lips are swollen and red, his cheeks flushed, eyes wanting.

“Well, shit,” you say and swallow heavily. “So much better than in my dream last night.”

Steve almost passes out on the spot.

#steve harrington x reader #steve harrington x you #steve harrington fanfiction #steve harrington imagines #stranger things imagine #stranger things x you #stranger things x reader #stranger things steve harrington #stranger things fanfiction #steve harrington x y/n

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frillyfacefins · 8 months

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A constructive approach to building a solid Femslash Subculture in a new fandom, a thread (+ anecdotal “Case Study”)

(I posted this as a thread on twitter a week ago in response to some pretty old arguments getting thrown around again; the situation has cooled down now, but somebody asked me to put this thread on tumblr, and I thought it could help some people, so here we go.)

In 2013 I was in the Silmarillion fandom when the Hobbit movies brought in a giant influx of new fans.

I was not one of the people who had been into the Silmarillion for ages, I only just read the book too, and the fandom at the time was very much in flux.

Since Baldur’s Gate is in a similar situation - a very old fandom with a new influx of fans and new characters - I think it might be helpful for me to explain how we created a space for fanwriters and -artists to explore and celebrate femslash ships.

Here are my recommendations for femslash fans who want more f/f fanworks in the Baldur’s Gate 3 fandom, sectioned off in

“3 Warnings”

“3 Ways forward”

and a “””Case Study””” of what happened in the Silmarillion fandom.

Warning 1: Be aware that your fandom is a baby.

Nominally, the game has been out for less than a month. Most people who will write amazing fanfics for your favorite characters maybe don’t even have the game yet because they can’t afford it until the Christmas sales, or they just haven’t finished it yet (like me). Most people don’t want to write for a fandom until they have consumed all available canon. You don’t know how the fandom will look like yet, but you can start building a solid foundation to influence it.

Warning 2: Don’t alienate the Astarion-fans.

Astarion is fandom-bait. He is the exact kind of character people who ‘don’t get it’ have been fuming over for decades, and who people who ‘do get it’ get obsessed with. He is the exact formula that has been working since at least the 80s: A morally grey bad boy with slightly edgy good looks who is also - and this is THE key for this kind of fandom-bait - very vulnerable and can absolutely be made into a better person/ be healed by his love interest.

This is why most heroes in (especially older) romance novels work. This is why Lestat worked. This is why Kylo Ren worked.

The thing is - the people who go gaga over him now? A lot of them will grow bored at some point. Either they will leave the fandom, or they will become invested in other characters from this fandom.

So the worst thing you can do is make them feel like the femslash community is rude, confrontational, whiny. Sorry, but that is how fandom works.

Fanwriters write fanfics for 2 reasons: 1. They have fun while writing something specific. 2. They get great interactions because they write something specific. If they look at the f/f corner and see people constantly fighting or complaining, guess what? They won’t be as interested in writing about their favorite female characters. And especially in Baldur’s Gate 3, the female characters are not easy to love, but once you do, they have potential to make you into absolute stans. I disliked Lae’zel a lot during Act 1, but by now I honestly think she’s the absolutely cutest. And Shadowheart is definitely intriguing, but I want to know how her story ends before I get really invested in her. (And we don’t even have to talk about Karlach…)

Warning 3: Lurkers have no voice in fandom.

Sorry, but this is a fact. If you don’t write fanfic or draw fanart, you don’t get to complain about what other people draw/write about. We create fanworks because we are enjoying them, not because of some social obligation. We are giving you free labor, and if you keep complaining about the things we write because it’s not what you want to see, we will just be less likely to write the things you want to see. So if you don’t create your own fandom content, you can whine as much as you want, but you will just make those who actually do create look at your whole niche of fandom with way less interest than they might have had.

Now, what can you actually do to build the basis for a solid femslash subfandom?

Measure 1: For lurkers: Support those who create fanworks you like.

And I’m not saying financially. I’m coming from an old-school-fandom perspective here. You know what will absolutely make me want to write another fic for a pairing that maybe doesn’t have as much works about them as the big ships? Really, really nice people who either write detailed comments on my fics, or who engage with me on social media - like, actively comment on my post or even hop in my DMs and tell me how much they liked something I have written.

Complaining about people who don’t write your ships is the worst thing you can do. Celebrating people who do write your ships is the best thing you can do.

Measure 2: For most writers: Kind of logical, but - write.

Write long-fic, short-fic, flash-fic about your favorites. Plaster your social media profiles with it. Do monthly challenges, request your pairings in cross-fandom exchanges, write long rambly threads about how awesome they are. Right now, YOU get to potentially create the fanon. You get to sway people’s opinions of characters. And you get to actively build this community.

And please, try not to get discouraged if it’s hard at first. Like I said - this fandom is a tiny baby that only just started screaming its little red head off. New fans will come. And they will do the same as the person in the screenshot, and maybe if they actually look through the ‘other tag’ bar or by filtering for F/F, they will find your works and be super happy about it.

Measure 3: For fans who want to invest more time and effort: Organize cool stuff for your community.

Fests, exchanges, challenges, discord servers, tags on tumblr or mastodon - there are tons of things you can make happen that will inspire people to create. Make a femslash month with themed weeks and prompts every day, for example, both for fanfic, fanart, edits, fanvids, whatever kind of fan-work anybody wants to contribute. Or make a challenge with a list of prompts, or a generator, or anything else you personally are able to do. Invite people to participate. Make it easy. Make it fun and welcoming.

And now to my “”case study”” which is completely anecdotal but which definitely left an expression on me.

The situation: The winter of 2013/2014. The second Hobbit movie has come out, Elrond is hot, Galadriel is hot, Tauriel is polarizing, Legolas looks weird. A ton of new people come into the Tolkien fandom, and discover the Silmarillion.

The Silmarillion-fandom has to deal with a new influx of people like it never has since the LotR-films. These are new fans who are used to new fandoms, not the LJ-survivors who make up a lot of the fandom. The new fans glom onto the usual suspects - Maedhros/Fingon, especially. But with Galadriel and Tauriel being so prominent in the Hobbit movies, the few fans who were already trying to put some femslash flavor in this fandom suddenly get a trickle of new people. Not that many. But some.

And then somebody decides to try and build a little bed for that trickle. Tumblr-User Elleth (not sure if she’s still around) creates the (by now defunct) archive “Textual Ghosts” to register all 600 unnamed wife characters in Tolkien’s work. A labor of extreme love for a fandom, and a big stepping stone for a developing femslash-subfandom. Soon afterward, tumblr-user Elleth and I start the first Legendarium Ladies April Event (legendariumladiesapril.tumblr.com) which would - without my continued support because I’m a fickle bitch and I’m still sorry about that - continue until 2020 and fill the event archives on AO3 with 150 new fics - which doesn’t seem a lot, but it also leaves out a lot of fanfics, fanart, fanpoems, fanedits etc. that were only ever posted on tumblr.

Meanwhile, I - always a multi-shipper and not devoted only to femslash, but VERY devoted to kinky smut which is also not really such a big thing in the Silmarillion fandom at this time - open a kink meme for the fandom. It creates a few new smuttier fanworks, but it also creates a few handful of female-centric works when I make a mini-event for world women’s day.

I am sorry to say that I abandoned this one too after about a year or two, but the kink meme is still there. (It would take another 8 years for somebody to be like “Hey so maybe you have incapacitating adhd, would you like to try ritalin?”)

Anyway, in this way, that trickle did become a brook. The M/M and even M/F works still outnumbered the F/F ones by miles, but F/F fans (and fans of female-centric works) WERE fed. And maybe more importantly - we built a community of people interested in the stories of women who were treated extremely badly by their source material. We made friends, we wrote stories for one another, we had fun. And that’s how you make a community within a fandom - you find some way to make it FUN.

(If Elleth should read this, I’m sorry for being an absolute flake, you’re wonderful.)

Oh also this is when I realized I’m not straight. So there’s that, too.

So if really love a fandom and you want to have more femslash works in this fandom? Start working towards it. You don't have to do it alone, there are other people out there who want to help you. But you need to find each other.

And you REALLY need to encourage each other.

(And also, stop making people outside of the femslash space associate you with nothing but complaints. That's not going to bring anybody into the fold. Be inviting, welcoming, have fun, be a positive community people WANT to join.)

And just to make my own position a little clearer:

#femslash #wlw ships #f/f fanfic #fandom culture #fandom history #baldur‘s gate 3 #bg3 #text

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rhyselinn · 10 months

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In Defense of Toby Fox’s Halloween Hack

Twitter is all in a tizzy about the Halloween Hack as of late. The apparent reason for this is because the Halloween Hack uses a word commonly used as a homophobic slur, not taking into account that the hack was created in 2008 (when the internet was a different place) and that 2008 was 14+ years ago (and people are known to grow and change over this time). There appears to be some amount of discussion over whether Toby Fox should be “cancelled” for this.

I’ve seen a fair bit of banter from both sides on this, but what I haven’t seen people on the internet talk about is the CONTEXT of the game in which this word is used. And while I don’t spend a lot of time talking about HH due to Toby’s stated embarrassment when people draw attention to it, if the internet’s gonna go dig up old drama for some reason, then by golly, I’m going to go dig up my old love for this game.

So if you want to come take a wild ride through some internet history and literary analysis, then go buckle your seatbelt and click the Readmore.

(content warning: discussion of homophobic slurs)

A quick bit about me: I am an adult on the internet, and I fall into the original Halloween Hack (hereafter abbreviated as HH)’s target demographic: teenagers who existed on Starmen.net, an Earthbound fan website, in 2008. I am also a current admin for Starmen.net, which puts me in a good position to comment on the history and culture of the site as a whole, and how that ties into the reception of HH.

Starmen.net has a long and rich tradition of events called Funfests, in which the site staff run a combination art/writing/music/etc contest for the site members, usually coalescing around a theme such as “Earthbound”, or sometimes “Winter” or “Halloween”. These events offer prizes such as forum avatar/rank privileges, and historically they sometimes even offered physical prizes. The 2008 Halloween funfest had an entire website made for it, which you can view here. Toby Fox submitted HH to this 2008 Halloween Funfest under the internet handle Radiation.

This is the context of HH: a passion project made by a teenager for a fan website full of other teenagers/twenty-somethings. If you go to a high school science fair, you could rightfully lambast every project for being undeserving of a Nobel Prize, but that’s not why we host high school science fairs OR Starmen.net Funfests. These events are an opportunity for teens to show what they are capable of and receive commendation from both their peers and a panel of judges selected specifically for this age demographic and venue.

For perspective, here’s what one of the hosts of the 2008 Funfest had to say about HH:

“Radiation nearly outclassed himself with this effort of skill labour and love. What a lot of fun. Despite getting repeatedly killed in the sewers this was one thoroughly enjoyabe hack. I Think I’ll go and play it again!”

HH won an award in the 2008 funfest-- a #1 in the “Most Effort” category. For some perspective, few people on Starmen.net go to the lengths of creating an entire game for a Funfest (and HH has a playtime of roughly 5-6 hours!). Of those who do, most of the resulting games are consistent with the output you would expect from a teenage userbase, since it’s not fair to expect teenagers to produce professional-quality work. That said, I can say with confidence that HH is a standout in the areas of both effort and quality.

Another thing that needs to be said of HH is that it is not a standalone game made in today’s modern game engines-- it is a hack of a preexisting game. Earthbound's codebase is notoriously complicated, and a lot of the tools that modern Earthbound hackers use to make their jobs easier (eg Coilsnake, Ebmused) didn’t exist in 2008. Toby had to do a lot of manual coding grunt-work to make HH, up to and including manually typing hexadecimal values into his computer in order to compose Megalovania. (Source: Toby wrote a really in-depth post about the process he used to make HH way back when, which I’m referring to here, but it’s unfortunately been deleted since then.)

I can imagine a hypothetical objection at this point: “ok but high effort homophobia is still homophobia”. In this post, I am also going to argue that Toby’s usage of this word can be considered artistic merit when taken in context, but you’ll have to bear with me for a bit while I explain that context. I’ll also talk about some of the cool and neat things this game does along the way because I think they’re worth talking about.

HH is, at its core, a derivative fan work of the video game Earthbound. And while I love Earthbound deeply, I also recognize that it’s a cult classic that not everyone has played. So while I encourage people to play the game I love deeply, I’ll also sum up a few relevant plot beats here so folks can understand the source material HH draws from:

--Ness, a thirteen year-old boy, meets a creature named Buzz Buzz from ten years in the future who tells him that an alien named Giygas has destroyed the world (direct quote: “All is devastation”). As such, Ness and his friends must save the world.

--One of Ness’s friends is a shy boy named Jeff with a penchant for shooting bottle rockets at enemies

--Jeff’s dad is an odd character named Dr. Andonuts. Dr. Andonuts is a reclusive scientist who lives in a snowy region called Winters who sent his son off to boarding school at a very young age. Andonuts’s lab includes no other signs of life, certainly not any indications of a wife/Jeff’s mother. Andonuts ends his conversation with Jeff by saying “Let’s get together in another ten years or so.”

--Towards the end of the game, Dr. Andonuts uses a device he created called a Phase Distorter to send Ness and his friends to the venue for the final battle. This is very clearly telegraphed as a one-way trip, as the kids’ brains are described in text as needing to be transplanted into robots to get there, but the kids go along with it anyway because the world is at stake.

--The kids go on to fight the final boss in a spectacle that words can’t do justice to here. All I’ll say is that after a long-fought battle, in the grace of an unexplained Deus Ex Machina, the souls of the four kids are impossibly returned to their bodies so they can enjoy their happy ending.

These are all canonical events that happen in the base game of Earthbound. Earthbound’s sequel, Mother 3, was released in 2006, two years prior to HH, although the English fan translation wasn’t released until around the time of the 2008 funfest, interestingly enough. Mother 3 does develop Dr. Andonuts’s canonical character somewhat, but I won’t discuss it in further detail here other than to say it mostly re-emphasizes his odd, solitary nature and his overly cavalier attitude towards his science experiments.

It’s also worth noting that in an oddball game like Earthbound, there are a lot of weird and funny idiosyncrasies to theorize on. There are pencil-shaped statues that block your way, which need to be removed with a device called a “pencil eraser.” Ness and his friends fight robots, aliens, and Krakens, but they also fight handbag-wielding ladies and walking mushrooms. Dr. Andonuts’s character oddities, while strange, fit nicely into the evenly distributed mesh of oddities that comprise Earthbound’s world.

Derivative works, particularly fan works, exist in conversation with the source material. They answer questions posed by the source, interpolate details left out of the original, and otherwise build on the world of the original in a collaborative way. This conversation sometimes happens in a one-on-one manner, between fan and original creator, but it also happens in conjunction with the fan community as a whole. When a theory takes traction, it will begin to appear in more and more fan works, growing in popularity and notoriety until it is “accepted” as the most common interpretation of canon’s strange idiosyncrasies. Newer or more fringe theories are less likely to be taken as a “default” interpretation, but they are more likely to be taken as “fresh” or “interesting” until/unless they, too, begin to gain traction.

HH exists in a few conversations: one with the source material, one with the fan community of Starmen.net (and the broader Earthbound community as a whole, although there was much more overlap between the two back in 2008), and one with Starmen.net’s Funfest culture. In order for HH to be well received by the Funfest judges, it would need to be aware of the community sensibilities as well as push the boundaries of the fan conversation with Earthbound as a whole-- a careful balancing act of being both interesting but also recognizable.

So, the fundamental fan question that HH tries to answer is “why is Dr. Andonuts LIKE THAT?”

This is an absolutely fair question, and Toby was certainly not the first to ask it, although his answer in the form of HH is one of the most high profile now.

HH is set in the world of Earthbound a few months after the final boss fight in autumn, but one where Ness and his friends did not magically return after their one-way trip to the final boss. Word has it that Dr. Andonuts has turned evil and must be defeated. On its surface, this is standard fare for a throwaway plot for a Funfest submission, but the magic of HH is that it does not treat this premise as a throwaway plot. It sets out to earnestly discuss why this happened by delving into Andonuts’s psyche.

Coming back to the idea of derivative works existing in conversation with the source material and interpolating unexplained details: Earthbound does not explain why Dr. Andonuts lives in solitude, nor does it give any hint as to the identity of Jeff’s mother. It also gives no indication as to why Andonuts didn’t seem to have bonded well with his son other than the handwavey explanation that Andonuts is just “like that”. HH initially poses the question of “why did Andonuts turn evil”, but leaves the reader to puzzle that out while battling monsters in Earthbound’s RPG engine.

At first, Toby offers a partial explanation: in HH, Dr. Andonuts is portrayed as feeling immense guilt at having sent his son into what he perceived as a death trap. (quote from the game: “The world is dead, and I’ve become senile with guilt and rage.” He also says stuff like “what’s the point in living without them”.) As such, he turned evil and created zombies to storm the world of Winters, causing a surge in refugees and desperate survivors. This is why the main character was sent to kill him.

(image transcription: a picture of a menu with the text “What do you do!?” followed with a single option: “Kill him”)

But in order to see the depth of this explanation, the true answer to the question “why is Dr. Andonuts LIKE THIS”, the player must hit “B” to cancel out of a menu at the correct moment, something Earthbound players tend to learn by habit from closing the equipment menu so many times, but never used as a plot-relevant mechanic in the base game. HH takes this subconscious muscle memory and turns it into a mechanic gating off half the game if you don’t “spare” the enemy, a precursor to the “spare” mechanic that would debut seven years later in Undertale.

When the player does this, they enter Dr. Andonuts’s “Magicant,” a dream-construct representing his inner psyche, with his hopes and dreams and fears all laid bare. The main character is tasked with finding Dr. Andonuts’s lost Courage. In the base game, Ness enters his own Magicant, so this feels familiar to a veteran player, but it also gives Toby the chance to more closely examine Dr. Andonuts’s character than he otherwise might be able to do.

Over the course of the rest of the game in Dr. Andonuts’s Magicant, the player continues to control the main character, a bounty hunter named Varik, but the NPCs in the game often mistakenly treat Varik as Andonuts. The dialogue we see from these NPCs reflects memories from Andonuts’s own life. We see a lot more characters try to make connections with Dr. Andonuts (”hey don’t you want to play baseball instead of doing math?”), but these are apparently rebuffed througout Andonuts’s life. One NPC guarding the entrance to the path leading to this lost Courage advises “Be careful. Be yourself.” We see memories of Dr. Andonuts’s presumed wife/Jeff’s mom, who is an OC Toby created for this work to answer the questions posed by canon.

Varik is tasked with fighting three “demons” behind three doors, where each demon is said to be stronger than the next. Since this segment takes place inside Andonuts’s mind, these are unsubtly implied to be Andonuts’s inner demons. The second and third doors represent Andonuts’s relationship with his son and his guilt over getting people killed; the first door is relevant to this post, so I’ll talk about it in more detail.

Inside the first door, Varik sees Andonuts’s memories of something called “Remember Me,” who despite being faced in a battle, is friendly and affectionate and causes no damage apart from being “hard to think about.” This enemy has a stock overworld sprite of a male NPC from the base game.

(image transcript: a smiling purple sprite in an Earthbound-style battle. The text box says “The Remember Me? was a little hard to think about again”)

At the end of this map, we see a cutscene in which it’s implied that Dr. Andonuts felt disconnected from his wife, perceiving her as an incessant insect. She says things like “Lately, you’ve been acting kind of... disinterested in me. Is there something wrong with me?” She asks if Dr. Andonuts has been hiding something from her, which triggers the following battle:

(image description: an Earthbound-esque battle against three enemies, each a sprite depicting a closeup of a man’s muscular body: a bicep, a chest, and a swimsuit-clothed groin area)

All three of these enemies are named NO. The music that plays in the background is deliberately unsettling, and their battle moves consist mostly of “flexing in a masculine way”, “slapping their buddies in a masculine fashion”, and “being hard to think about again”. After three turns, these enemies deliver a series of un-dodgeable moves that kill the player before it’s possible to defeat them, ending the game. The only way to proceed in the game is to select the Flee option in the menu.

To summarize the themes being presented here, Dr. Andonuts is gay and repressed his homosexuality to try to preserve his relationship with his wife due to his lack of courage. From a game design and literary merit standpoint, this NO battle is actually a really poignant way of portraying Andonuts’s mindset and all of the fears that kept him in the closet, portraying men’s bodies as an enemy that he must fight, or in failing to do so, must run from. Remember that Earthbound takes place in 199X-- none of the 1990′s were known for being especially tolerant of gay men, nor was 2008 when Toby made this hack; 2008 was the same year that California passed a bill intended to ban gay marriage. In another since-deleted web page, Toby said that one of his motivations for creating HH was “the lack of non-stereotypical, major homosexual characters in media”. With that in mind, this is a surprisingly sensitive portrayal of the pains of repressing one’s sexuality, especially from a teenager.

Toby also portrays some complexity in Andonuts’s relationship with his son Jeff, making the case that Andonuts helped Jeff in his fight against Giygas as a way of living vicariously through him to feel like less of a monster. From this standpoint, it’s easy to see that Andonuts’s abrasive language might be a defense mechanism for his own self esteem issues, calling others monsters to deflect from the fact he sees HIMSELF as a monster.

(image transcription: a screenshot of the main character fighting Andonuts from the end of the game. The text in the textbox from Andonuts says “you idiots. look at your decaying, frostbitten bodies”)

(and just as a side note, I think the reminiscence of this dialogue to Flowey’s dialogue in Undertale is funny and interesting)

Dr. Andonuts says the following: "If I can't live with myself, why should anybody else? Ergo, nobody will live. Then, everybody will understand all the pain I went through. When everyone understands me... They'll cherish me so." This isn’t the expression of a healthy mind, but it is a portrayal of someone who’s experiencing some serious pain. I’d also argue that it’s a nuanced and sympathetic portrayal of a character who is clearly in a crisis.

Another Andonuts quote: “you’re going to kill me, because that’s what a hero does. he has to kill that monster, right? even in this form, i am shaking with fear. i don’t want to die. leave me alone”

The second-to-last fight in the game is against an enemy called Id. In Freudian psychology, the Id is the representation of one’s most base desires, in contrast to the Superego who restrains a person from operating on these desires. The game up until this point does a good job at portraying Dr. Andonuts’s Superego-centric repression strategies, so getting to see his underlying base desires directly is a novel development. The enemy Id consistently reiterates a desire to be left alone and for the main character to not kill it. At the end, it apologizes for not being much of a fight. Only then does Varik fight Dr. Andonuts proper, and without the Id, all that’s left is the Superego-fueled repression, labeled in-game as “hatred”.

Andonuts’s villain monologue starts as such: “I know what this feeling is. It’s hatred for the person who came so far just to destroy an old man. My mind is gone. All that is left is pure hatred.

YOU SEE THIS BURNING, BLOODY UNIVERSE. YOU SEE THIS ULTIMATE, UNLIMITED POWER? Varik. I HAVE FUCKING HAD IT WITH YOUR SHIT. you little fuckers are going to have your bodies ripped in half. i’ll shove your asses so far down your throats that when you crap, you’ll sing fucking beethoven.”

This monologue is the precursor to the infamous line:

(image transcript: a screenshot from the final battle, in which Andonuts says the words “tl;dr: eat shit, faggots”)

As established earlier, this is a line uttered by a gay character who is in a tremendous amount of pain, which would make it an act of slur reclamation. We could argue about whether Toby Fox is in a position to justify this usage, but I refuse to have that conversation because I don’t think real life queer people should have to out themselves in order to justify the art they make. Whether Toby Fox is actually queer or not is, I would argue, immaterial to the story he’s trying to tell here, which is nuanced in a way that a homophobe would be unlikely to write.

We can also have the conversation of whether this word choice is a good decision or not-- and there are, I would argue, a lot of parts of this game that a storyteller with more experience and maturity would have handled better. There are some parts that come across heavy-handed and needlessly edgy, and there are parts that could have been handled with more grace. We can discuss whether “bury our gays” stories were stale by 2008, or whether stories of queer pain had fallen out of vogue for stories of queer joy. But again, this is a work made by a 16-year old, and being needlessly critical of a fangame made by a teenager for a community of predominantly teenagers feels needlessly meanspirited. Just because the game has been unforeseeably thrust into the public light like this doesn’t mean we need to eviscerate it from a 2023 lens. It’s not fair to Toby Fox, neither the original 16-year old creator nor the adult celebrity today.

So I’m not going to do that. What I am going to say is that a queer reading of this work would indicate that this word usage may very well have been a decision made with artistic intent, and a death-of-the-author reading of this work might indicate that this word has artistic merit anyways. If a gay character sees gayness as bad and uses a slur associated with gayness to demean his opponent, that does fundamentally say something about this character, and in this case it reinforces the existing themes that Toby had put in place. I wouldn’t recommend people in 2023 take this approach in storytelling lightly, but I can see and appreciate the spirit in which the game and this word choice appear to have been made.

In the end, Varik does defeat Dr. Andonuts and kill him.

(image transcript: Varik standing above the machine containing Dr. Andonuts’s dead body, not depicted onscreen. The text box reads “You feel a little like this situation could have been avoided.”)

This is one of the last text boxes of the game, and I think it’s a good ending note for this work-- saying that queer lives do NOT need to go this way, that we do not need to bury our gays, that this genuine pain that Dr. Andonuts experienced is not an inevitability.

In conclusion, I do love Halloween Hack for what it is, imperfections and all. It was very clearly a labor of love made by a very earnest and well-meaning teen, and a lot of the things that would later go on to make Undertale so popular are present in their nascent forms here. HH has some genuinely interesting things to say about Earthbound, from both a plot and a character standpoint, and it’s clearly a good-faith attempt at grappling with queer and psychological subject matter. If people on the internet were to engage sincerely with it rather than judging it (and its creator) based on one out-of-context screenshot, I think they might find a diamond-in-the-rough that still manages to be an absolute gem of a fangame.

#earthbound #halloween hack #undertale #toby fox #tw slurs

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sometimes-love-is-enough · 1 year

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Let’s talk about 16th century Italian theatre.

No wait come back I promise this is actually related to Sanders Sides

So, last night I was talking with some friends about an AU I’m currently working on. I’ve been away from the Sanders Sides fandom for a good while now, but recently my hyperfixation reactivated and now my brain is so ready to write a ridiculously long longfic with a convoluted premise and horrifying implications. (I’m like 25k in. Having the time of my life. No doubt I’ll talk about it more later. This isn’t about that.)

Since I’m not the sort of person who usually writes AUs - I prefer to stick to canonverse, and canonverse-adjacent fics - I eventually brought up how worried I always am about characterization of the Sides in AUs. Because although I do adore an AU; I devour Love and Other Fairytales like candy and think about Lavender For Luck all the time and don’t even get me started on WIBAR, when it comes to my own writing, I secondguess myself a lot. I don’t like to stray too far from canon concepts and characterization. I get worried when I don’t draw enough connections to things that happen in the series, because it feels like a betrayal of the source material - if I change a character dynamic from how it’s usually portrayed, I spend entirely too long thinking about how to make it work.

And someone else said, well, I don’t usually worry about that sort of thing very much anymore.

And I said, why not?

And they said, well, I haven’t watched the actual show for ages. I mainly treat the Sides as stock characters for the stories I write, and my brain fucking exploded.

...Exploded in a good way. I have to stress this so, so hard. My personal opinions on writing characterization and AUs apply just to my writing. I judge my own work entirely too harshly and work too hard at Getting Characterization right, and that doesn’t apply to other people’s work or AUs at all, I enjoy them all without a problem. This meta isn’t about OOC being a bad thing, or AUs that are completely removed from their source material being a bad thing, because they aren’t, not at all, they’re a form of creative expression just like any fanwork. And if someone starts getting on your case about that sort of thing, just... just block them.

Anyway, where was I. Exploding brain? Ah yes.

So a few other people chimed into the conversation at this point, agreeing that in a lot of cases, the Sides for them were stock characters with fun names, established personalities and tropes to play around with, and part of the fun for them at this point came less from interaction with canon and more about interactions with friends and fellow writers. Which is very different to how I do things. I was fascinated, and my brain had one big delighted thought, oh shit! You’re treating the Sides like Commedia Dell’arte characters! I get it now!

(Disclaimer: I haven’t done drama or theatre for a good while now. If I make a factual mistake, either patiently bear with me or gently correct me.)

Commedia Dell’arte was a form of Italian improv theatre that was first popular in the 16-18th centuries through Europe, and didn’t have any proper established plots or scripts. The actors were almost never the same from performance to performacne, the comedy was over-the-top and often satirical and absurd in its physicality, it focused on plots about romance and jealousy and love. Emphasis on an ensemble cast. Very stylized, very distinctive. Here’s one beng performed in Venice, for the Vibes.

[image description: a photo shot of two masked people in period costume conversing on a small wooden stage, taken over the heads of a crowd in Venice.]

The key, the thing that ties all Commedia Dell’arte together? The stock characters. There’s a list of all of these character archetypes, all with specific names and associated masks assigned to them, and when you’re performing this sort of theatre, all the actors pick one of the archetypes and put on a mask and work out what the situation is, and bam, you’re on the stage and off to the races. You’ve got the servant of two masters, the stuttering statesmen, the Sad Clown (relatable), the utterly obsessed lovers who won’t stop making doe eyes at each other on stage from behind those masks of theirs.

Pretty freaky-looking masks, admittedly. Look at that nose on Naso Turco, the sly servant!

[image description: eight blue-and-black stylized Commedia Dell’arte masks, all labelled with their roles]

And the thing is, audiences would recognize these archetypes upon seeing them - it wasn’t so much about having characters that were perfectly ported from one story to another, like you might have in adaptations of fairy tales, it’s more about the archetypes. The personalities. Their status, and the way they interact with one another. Apparently all of the original cast of stock characters (you can find a list of them on Wikipedia, or maybe elsewhere) were "originally intended as a kind of characteristic representative of some particular Italian district or town." They’re representations of archetypes. You might even say that they’re conceptual representations.

Sound familiar? Yeah, it’s not hard to see where I’m going with this.

In Commedia, stock characters are almost never played by the same actors because the cast is always different, and might be an entirely different theatre troupe - so the way of recognizing certain archetypes is by their clothing style, or other symbolic context clues.

And that’s exactly how you recognize the Sides in fanworks when the AU is too far divorced from canon to understand them otherwise. If you’ve changed their ethnicity, or genderbent them, or given then a different species, you look for the context clues because at this point you’ve learned to read them like a language.

If it’s just fanart, or the names haven’t been brought up yet, how do you tell it’s Roman? Well, Roman’s costume is pretty distinctive, even when modified - and failing that, even if he’s just in jeans and a t-shirt, or even if he’s an indistinct jello-y blob floating in the distant reaches of space - he’s going to be the red blob. They’re color-coded for our convinience. Virgil’s stormclouds and spiders, Janus has his snakes and almost always has something going on with one side of his face.

Do you find this delightful? I hope you do. Because I do. I find it really, really delightful, and I’d never put conscious thought into this before last night. The Sides aren’t quite as flat and archetypal as the colorful cast of Commedia Dell’arte - they’re more fleshed out, for one thing, and even if writers don’t always pull on it, there’s canon backstory and plotlines to draw from. But they’re still archetypes, deliberately so in the context of canon. Someone in the server I was discussing this in summed it up really nicely - [..] we have Roman the artist, we have Janus for all the drama and deception, we have clever Logan to represent the science spirit. We have Patton for the morale lessons. We have Virgil for the memento mori style, and we have Remus for all the gore and dark comedic relief.

Which is such a great updating of all of the classic theatrical archetypes. Because (although Italian improv theatre is still performed! People still use these old roles and costumes, but it’s definitely more historical than modern) the idea of servants and masters and cunning peasants and all the complicated dynamics between these roles, well... it isn’t super relevant to modern storytelling. When Commedia Dell’arte is performed nowadays, it’s almost never hashtag-relatable in the way it used to be. You know what’s more relatable? Archetypes of the nerd who doesn’t acknowledge his emotions, the grumpy loner with a heart of gold, the theatre kid who won’t stop singing. You can take those and all of the rest and shove them into all manner of situations, and you can make some really cool stories out of that.

(National Theatre has a really nice video breaking down this theatre form a lot better than I can, with details I didn’t include here. Check it out here if you’re interested. It also includes details about the various archetypes’ physicalities and movements, which I think is kind of interesting, because in canon Sanders Sides the character’s physicalities are terrifyingly recognizable. That’s not really relevant to the idea of AU Improv Theatre, though, so I won’t poke any further at that thought. ANYWAY.)

I’ll level with you: some of the things people write in this fandom, I just don’t vibe with and I don’t get, and I’m okay with that. It’s the maxim of Mind Your Own Business, I just don’t interact and I keep on moving in my own lane. But, like... maybe I don’t need to get it. I’m pretty sure there were people in 1600s Europe who showed up to a Commedia Dell’arte performance and went ‘no, this one isn’t for me, did you see how they absolutely butchered the characterization of the Innamorati? Disgraceful’. But for many other people, maybe that particular performance just hit the spot, because they’d always wanted to see an interpretation just like that, that diverged from the norm just a little bit. And even if nobody in the audience at all liked it, maybe the performers were having enough of a blast that it more than made up for it.

And if not any of that - well, there’s always the next show!

[image description: four masked Commedia Dell’arte performers crowded around a prop cafe table, exclaiming dramatically over a menu that they’re all bent over.]

I don’t know if my brain will ever be chill enough to let me write something completely separated from canon. (Although... now that I’m typing that, I recognize that the chessboxing AU is not so much separated from canon as a tragic widower of a dinosaur-related apocalyptic divorce. Okay. Nevermind. Still, you probably get where I’m coming from.) And I’m probably not going to stop treating characterization like I’m going to be sentenced by a vicious panel of judges to a cruel and untimely death if I get the slightest bit of it wrong, but... I don’t know. The realization that it’s all comes back to this makes me happy, somehow. Just generally joyful about the state of the fandom, and the things that people create, and the community that’s been built up around it.

Commedia is all about exploring stuff in improv like love and romance and dynamics, and isn't that exactly what we're doing as writers? Throwing character archetypes together and making them kiss and talk to see what will happen? It's not really improv, but it's not like we have any stage to act on except the AO3 posting page.

We didn't set out to make the characters from a web series into stock archetypes that so many people pick up and play with to Work Out Our Issues With. (Writing is free therapy. We all knew that already.) That was definitely not the original intention of Sanders Sides - or any similar fandom, actually. (I know TSS isn’t the only one this happens in, not even close.)

But, hey, we're humans, and it always comes back to us wanting to play. And there's nothing new under the sun, not really. Of course given an infinite internet sandbox and a goofy web series about some guy’s identity crisis, we would accidentally reinvent the original Italian comedy theatre. That’s kind of brilliant.

You know what, I think 16th century Italians would enjoy Sanders Sides AUs a lot. I bet they’d make some pretty banger masks for the boys to wear.

God, I wish I had a time machine.

#sanders sides #sanders sides meta #min goes off the rails #(a tag that has not seen use for a while! i don't write much meta these days)#this may be deeply pretentious but also it hit me like a ton of bricks. i get it now. i get it

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prettyflyshyguy · 4 months

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Anyway here's wonderwall. I'm trying to start the new year off strong. Already feel sad its been a week and I've barely accomplished this. But that's the kind of negative talk that's so 2023. I'm throwing it in the bin. We focusing on personal achievements only.

I've been writing tonight! It's been fun! I'm still trying to get into the groove and struggling with the age old issue of whenever I hit a 'blank' I just stop working on the project, opting to wait for the stroke of inspiration to hit. This isn't helpful, and means I don't work through the issue. So 2023. Fuck that noise.

I'm still building my confidence back after having it a bit crushed last year, so no ETA on the final chapter of the main C Virus Fic, but you'll probably see some other mini projects pop up. Less stressful, helps me practice for the big stuff.

Anyway the song "Talking in your Sleep" has had me at gunpoint for 2 hours and I'm really happy with this interaction so here's a taster under the cut.

Chris and Leon attend a meeting with a Big Pharma client post-incident cleanup and they can't handle the heat of corporate talk.

Something had felt off about the job from the minute he set boots on the ground outside the factory. Chris had assured him that it’d be smooth, he’d done it a hundred times before, there shouldn’t be any issues. It was a C-Virus outbreak for sure, but not the normal kind. Valhanian was working on vaccines and preventative medication, blockers for the immune system that could quickly and effectively obliterate the virus or prevent it from even gaining a hold on the system. The most common form was the standard strains that had a very similar effect on humans as the T-Virus did, which they were lead to believe was the main focus of the factory - manufacturing and R&D for the ‘zombie’ strains.

What they found waiting for them was most certainly not the standard C-Virus infected humans.

Chris had brushed it off at the time, claiming that with how volatile the virus was, he wasn’t surprised that something had gone wrong and there were chrysalid variants in the facility.

Nothing’s without risk, something must have gone wrong, it’s not like we haven’t handled this sort of thing before.

Leon knew that there was no way in hell that a company with that much money in the game of vaccines would fuck around and find out - risking everything in the process. But it wasn’t worth arguing with Chris, he insisted that it wasn’t his job to worry about the science team’s side of things and that ‘Rebecca will figure it out.’

Chris was ever the optimist on his good days. Leon had seen too much to trust any corporation that invested in the field of medicine. You don’t get fission without fusion, and anyone who claimed that advancements in bio-organic warfare had no links to advancements in medicine, was a fool or a liar. Most likely both.

Of course something went wrong on the job, sure he’d had a little ‘mutation’ incident, but Rebecca’s drugs worked a treat, they just took a while to fully kick in.

“I don’t know what this is or what you’re trying to do, we don’t employ BOWs, whatever you’re trying to claim is unfounded.”

No no no you dumbass, don’t give it to them Chris!

“Mr. Redfield I’m just being thorough. You’re no stranger to the industry, and I’m sure you understand we are very conscious and concerned about protecting our trade secrets. Incidents like this are of a high concern to us as the entire reason we brought the BSAA in to assist us was to stop a B.O.W incident.”

Chris glanced briefly at the BSAA staff seated around him, and Leon. Fear and panic in his eyes, crying for help silently. He knew who was in the photograph and could only lie about it for so long before the game was given away.

Leon cleared his throat, drawing the attention of the sharks.

“Ms Harker I can assure you that Chris is just as shocked as you are, and that the BSAA operates at the highest level of-”

“Thank you for your assurance, Mr Kennedy, but I believe you are not a member of the BSAA is that correct?” her full attention snapped to Leon, her eyes looked predatory.

“Yes, I’m temporarily assigned to assist them in operations regarding the C-Virus as I have first hand experience with it that has proven invaluable in us combatting further outbreaks.”

“I don’t doubt that Mr. Kennedy. I’m aware of your reputation and high standing. Our country has a lot to thank you for.”

He shivered. There was no kindness in her tone.

“I just wish to express my concerns, as the security footage doesn’t lie.”

Leon digged his fingers into his thigh, scrunching the fabric of the chinos, his hands hidden under the table.

“Trust is critical to any operation as I’m sure everyone in this room is well aware. How can we trust the BSAA after seeing this? How can you trust yourselves?”

Chris began to speak, being swiftly interrupted by Harker’s shrill tone.

“Have you considered that there may be individuals laying dormantly infected, unbeknownst to the world?

Leon bit down on his tongue.

“Perhaps there’s an infected individual sitting in this room with us right now.”

The colour drained from Chris’s face.

“Perhaps it's someone not within the BSAA.”

Leon felt the eyes of every member of the meeting shift to look at him.

#c virus au #thank u resident evil for always being comforting to return to #mwah #its like putting on your old but still comfy jacket and feeling content

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tellthemeerkatsitsfine · 6 months

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Guess what I did last night, everyone? I performed stand-up in a club for the first time! I’d done five nights at pub open mics, which I can quickly summarize as:

- July 26: Go to a pub night with my brother, who’s been performing comedy for years. They have about eight scheduled comedians, plus a “lotto spot”, where literally anyone can put their name in a pitcher and they draw one out and that person can perform. The lotto is mostly used by comedians who aren’t on the bill, but turn up to watch, and throw their name in on the off chance that they’ll get stage time. It’s also sometimes used by new comedians who haven’t established themselves enough to get booked spots when they ask for them, but they can build up some cred by doing lotto spots. It is not generally used by random members of the audience, but it technically could be.

I wasn’t quite a completely random member of the audience. I’d been going to open mic comedy nights at a different pub, which ran every Thursday, for a few months. Just going to watch, but often enough so I had an idea of how they work and who performs at these things. And my brother’s been doing it for thirteen years, early in his career I used to go see him all the time. And I had written some stuff down, practiced saying it out loud a few times, thought maybe I’d try performing someday. But had no concrete plans to start at any specific time.

Then I went with my brother to a night at a different pub from the one where I normally went, he convinced me to put my name in the lotto, just to try, it probably won’t get picked. Obviously it did get picked. I think there were about ten names in that pitcher, I’m still not 100% convinced my name really did get picked, I think my brother might have told the comedians that this is his sister’s name, if they want to see his sister try comedy then just call that name out regardless of what paper is drawn. But I have no proof.

Anyway, I did it. I talked for about six minutes. I said the things I had written down and tried out in my bedroom. It was less terrifying than I’d expected. The crowd laughed quite a bit, but only because I’d said at the beginning that I have never done this before and didn’t expect my name to get picked so they were all being nice. But it was fun. It was a huge adrenaline rush. Afterward I got drunk with comedians.

- That was a Monday. Three days later, I go out to the regular pub open mic night that I’d been going to for ages on Thursdays. Turns out the guy who runs that night was at the other pub on Monday and saw me there. After the comedy show ends, he goes up to me at the bar and asks if I want to be on the bill in two weeks time. I say yes. Get very excited for my first time on an actual bill, not just going up with the lotto.

- August 10: I perform at the Thursday night. I’m incredibly nervous. I have spent two weeks refining my material, figuring I can do a better job if I actually properly write a set for a specific day, rather than just get up unexpectedly and say some stuff I’d only vaguely planned. It’s definitely better this way. It goes quite well.

- Some other day in late August: I go back to the Thursday comedy place just to watch. I put my name in the lotto, thinking there’s no way it’ll get called again, may as well just do that, but I’m just here to watch. My brother is hosting. He’s just had a breakup and is messing around with the crowd so much that it distracted me from doing any mental preparation. My name gets called from the lotto. I go up unexpectedly. I can’t remember most of what I was going to say. I panic and stutter a lot. It’s fucking horrible. I get off stage and want to hide under my bed forever. After, my brother tells me it wasn’t quite as bad as I thought. But still. Not great. I have just moved to the suburbs to housesit for a few months, making it hard to get downtown where the comedy venues are anyway, so I don’t go back for a while.

- Early October: I go back to the Thursday pub night, just to watch. It’s an exciting night and inspires me to try again. I go through the proper process this time, of going on their Facebook page to request a spot for the following Thursday. I get one.

- October 12: On this Thursday, I show up and try something slightly different. The previous nights, I had just told one story for six minutes. This time, I trim that story and add a separate bit at the beginning. I am, again, very nervous, with the fear that maybe I just happened to have only one funny story in me but can’t actually write good stuff generally so the other bit will fail.

It doesn’t. Both bits go great. This feels like my best one yet. I leave happy and excited and wanting to do it again. I go back on Facebook and request a spot at the other pub that runs on Monday nights for the next week. I get it.

I also email one a local comedy club. There are three comedy clubs in the city, and those are where the “proper comedy” happens. New and established comedians alike work out their material at pub nights like the Monday and Thursday ones, so that they can perform at clubs. At the club amateur nights, where no one gets paid but if you do enough of them then you’ll get noticed by the owners and maybe get to go on the pro nights, where people do get paid. Multiple people had told me I should sign up for a club amateur night, but I’d been too nervous until that point. Then, however, I send an email to the designated address requesting a spot in November (that’s how it works – you email the club on the fifteen of one month to see if they’ll give you a spot at any of the amateur Mondays the following month).

- October 23: I perform at the Monday night pub. Do the same two bits as before. They go okay. At this time I remember them, I’m not up there panicking and stuttering. They just don’t get as much from the crowd, and the more they go badly, the more I doubt myself and then don’t perform as well. Afterward, my brother tells me my stuff was good, and not to feel bad because the crowd didn’t laugh much at anyone who was on that night.

I am sufficiently demoralized to think maybe I won’t go back for a bit, at least not until December when I go back to living at my own place downtown and it’s easier to get to these places. However, this plan falls apart in November, when I receive an email telling me my request for a club spot has been granted, I can perform at the club’s amateur night on Monday, November 13. I am terrified.

- For about four days before the night of November 13, particularly all day at work on November 13: I am fucking terrified. Going to a club to perform material that didn’t go well last time.

- November 13: I arrive at the comedy club. See the sign that reminds me the audience has paid $10 to get in. None of the pub nights cost money for the audience. So this will be my first time performing to people who have paid money so if I’m terrible then I am personally wasting their money as well as their time. There is an actual stage (a very low one, but still). They turn out the lights and put a spotlight on the performer. They play entrance music and everything. It is much more intimidating than a pub night.

I’m on third. The host is a comedian I very much like, doing stuff that I think is funny, but the audience isn’t laughing. The first guy up is an established pro comedian whom I also like (and used to run a school wrestling team with him in 2015, actually, but that’s another story), he also doesn’t do great. I talk to my brother, who’s on later in the bill than I am. He warns me that this crowd seems quiet in general, so I shouldn’t feel bad if they don’t laugh much at me either, I should be mentally prepared for that. I pace around the back being very nervous.

- November 13: Guys it went so fucking well! I did my two bits, I remembered everything, I think I said it in all the right order and did it right. And it worked! They laughed! Afterward multiple came and told me I did well! I was not mentally prepared for how you can’t see the audience if you’re in a spotlight and they’re in the dark, that threw me off, also the light hurt my eyes a bit, but once I was used to it I realized that not seeing the audience is slightly easier. It was good! It was so good and I’m so happy.

I have to say thank you, again, to my Tumblr friends @my-excellent-bicycle, who listened to the stuff I'd recorded alone in bedroom early in the year and told me what was good in it, because the bit he said was good is what became the first bit I performed. The second bit I ran by @lastweeksshirttonight, who was also super kind and supportive and helpful with advice. And, you know, I never would have tried without having comedy Tumblr in general. I am still a bit high on the adrenaline of how exciting that was.

...I feel like I should clarify, again, that all I actually did was sign up for an amateur night and do six minutes. It was the bar area in the basement, not even the proper club room, which is upstairs. It was not particularly objectively impressive. But subjectively, I'm really fucking excited about it.

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