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betweengenesisfrogs · 8 months

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A HOMESTUCK MANIFESTO

I want to think about what comes next after Homestuck.

That’s a challenge to the world as much as a personal mission statement.

I want to see writers and artists and creators making the next Homestuck, taking its themes and binding them into new fabrics, giving life to new creatures even more beautiful and uncanny than the original species.

I hunger to see new forms of story and image evolving with Homestuck in their DNA.

This process is already underway. Homestuck is a massive boulder dropped into the waters of culture, and the full wake of its ripples is still to be felt. But let’s call attention to this process and ask: what would happen if we engaged in it more consciously? If we sifted through our feelings about Homestuck to create something new, deliberately, with great and wonderful purpose?

The tools we need are within our grasp. Homestuck presents itself as magic, but it’s a work constructed in time out of specific storytelling choices. So let’s understand those choices. Let’s understand how Homestuck did what it did, and use Homestuck’s tools to build art that grips the soul of future generations as strongly as Homestuck did ours.

What follows is not a traditional literary analysis. It does not cite its sources; it does not seek to give us a comprehensive understanding of Homestuck. If it does, it does so only to the extent it suits its larger purpose.

Our goal here, our quest, if you will, is not to understand the Homestuck that exists, but the Homestuck that comes next.

Let's begin.

0. THE WILD GARDEN

Let’s lay the absolute groundwork here.

Homestuck is constructed as a re-appropriation of itself. Or to put it another way, it’s a big improvisational move, a process of “yes and”-ing so hard it develops a sprawling continuity.

Tiny details are constantly re-contextualized to become part of something else. A joke might turn tragic. A silly aside might turn into something profound.

But it didn’t have to be that way.

It’s crucial to understand that what we experience as continuities were in fact choices made at specific times. Homestuck is a garden where seeds were scattered in every direction, grown en masse, then weeded down to create patterns and forms.

The shape of the garden is designed to conceal the gardener’s hand. But the gardener’s choices are there, every step of the way.

If we are to follow in its footsteps, what choices should we make?

Let’s talk about themes.

1. THE MEANING CRISIS

Nobody in Homestuck knows what they’re doing.

And neither do we.

All the old idols have broken down. The values we were taught in our childhood fail to measure up to the problems of the world we live in. We grasp after careers and lives we were told would make us happy and wonder why we’re left empty. The selves that we were told were us now fit us about as well as clothing we’ve outgrown. Crises loom, political, economic and environmental, and everywhere it feels like the people who are supposed to guide and lead us aren’t doing enough.

It's widening gyres and slouching beasts all the way from here to Bethlehem, is what I’m saying.

The reason people go absolutely insane for Homestuck is that it depicts this crisis of meaning. It shows the questions we might want to ask, and attempts to provide some kind of answer.

The protagonists of Homestuck struggle with what I’ve called “received narrative.” That is, they’ve inherited stories from their families, from the world, that they try to use to define their lives, and it doesn’t work. But these stories are so familiar that it’s hard to think outside them. They have to develop new stories by which to live. Sometimes they succeed, but other times they can’t escape the gravity of the ones they were given.

With me so far?

Great. Now understand that all this was improvised and discovered largely accidentally over the course of ten years.

Here’s a seed that became quite an impressive tree:

The streets are empty. Wind skims the voids keeping neighbors apart, as if grazing the hollow of a cut reed, or say, a plundered mailbox. A familiar note is produced. It's the one Desolation plays to keep its instrument in tune.

It’s a joke. But it was never just a joke. There’s an idea here of dissatisfaction with the stereotypical idea of American suburban life. Egbert here is looking for something more, dissatisfied for reasons they can’t fully articulate. This is typical fantasy protagonist stuff, but there’s something more here, too.

Eventually it’s redirected towards the idea that there really is an unseen riddler. But let’s put that aside for now.

This page, in its moment, says: your life is not the full picture. There’s something else out there, waiting, that’s going to change everything.

That's a potential set-up for a very powerful payoff. It gives us the sense that Egbert and all their friends are going to have to rethink what they know. That this suburban life is not going to be enough for them, that somehow or other they’re going to encounter something they aren’t prepared for, and they’ll have to find a new way of acting and being. That, try as they might to avoid it, they’re going to change over the course of this journey.

But to understand how they change, we need to talk about SBURB.

2. THE PORTAL FANTASY OF IT ALL

A lot of people like to joke that Homestuck is an isekai. I think it might clarify things to use the term portal fantasy instead.

Portal fantasy is simply the fantasy subgenre of characters, usually kids, going to a magical other world. Maybe they make friends, maybe they learn lessons and stuff. You know the drill. I don’t have to to tell you more because the story structure is already so familiar. That’s what gives it power.

Portal fantasy differs from the related Japanese genre of isekai in that isekai in its current form is much more heavily based on video games such as MMORPGs. In the most pervasive isekai narratives, protagonists are rewarded not so much for achieving personal growth as being able to exploit the game mechanics of a game-like system. That’s pretty different from your typical Narnia scenario.

The influence of portal fantasy is everywhere in Homestuck, especially in the beginning. We have nods to the fantasy films of the 1980s that gave us our contemporary idea of this story structure, such as The Neverending Story (itself, in its original book incarnation, a phenomenal commentary on the genre). Our protagonists are genre savvy; they recognize what’s happening here.

But it doesn’t fit quite right. The odd note is first sounded when Egbert asks Nanasprite if what they’re doing is going to save the world. They’re bit unsettled to learn the answer’s no, that something else is going on here. Next we have the fantasy worlds: the planetary lands each present a veneer of exciting adventure. But their inhabitants, the consorts, aren’t fully-realized people, they’re largely cute animals going through the motions, not really understanding the story they’re telling. The carapacians are a little better, but they’re still trapped in a fatalism that feels uncomfortable.

As things rev up in Act 4, we learn about doomed timelines from alt-timeline Dave and Rose, how your entire existence in this setting may be fodder for something other than you. When we learn the true purpose of SBURB and its froggy details in Act 5, we see that SBURB is more like a biological creature, mainly interested in its own reproductive desires. It was never really about the portal fantasy at all. The kids are just along for the ride.

So when we see that Rose wants to tear through SBURB, find out a way to escape fate, and snatch meaning from the jaws of futility, it makes sense. We’ve been given hints already that this is the conflict at hand: the characters vs the story that’s telling them.

(Note: it’s certainly possible to have a reading that SBURB is not evil so much as empty, that it reflects what you bring into it, that its will for you is your will for you. But that’s also a difficult thing, right? If you lack self-understanding, it’s a struggle to bring about your ideal reality.)

What we haven’t mentioned yet is that this is all mediated through the lens of video games. Which makes perfect sense. Because where do we seek meaning, especially as kids? In imaginary worlds that make more sense to us than real life, that give us achievements to take pride in and clear objectives to pursue.

SBURB evokes mechanics from games like Final Fantasy. We see its players complete objectives, cast magic spells, gain power-ups with colorful costume changes. But unlike the narratives implied by traditional video game progressions, leveling up doesn’t mean you grow as a person or process your trauma. Later, in Act 6, when we meet a player who has made his life about winning the game (Caliborn), it’s horrific to behold.

Homestuck is a portal fantasy, but it’s fundamentally a portal fantasy about games. It’s a portal fantasy that shows us how characters seek meaning in being the best at arbitrary game mechanics, but ultimately fail to find it.

So I guess…it actually is an isekai? Huh. Wild.

(But seriously, Homestuck is actually fairly prescient in predicting the ideas that come out of isekai and LitRPG. It’s engaging consciously and deconstructively with the weird ideas of self-fulfillment these genres are drowning in.)

So what might a Homestuckian work look like? It will almost certainly critique a false narrative we live by. It may comment on portal fantasy, or our personal satisfaction that comes as easily as playing a video game. But it doesn’t have to be limited to these things. It might talk about our popular TV shows and movies. It may take apart what’s flawed in Marvel, the latest triple-A game, or the modern dark fantasy novel.

Among its tools will be discomfort. Showing a disconnect early on between our character’s expectations and their happiness can serve as foundation to build on, so that when the flaws of the genre narrative are revealed, it feels like the truth. We may see characters who accept their narratives passively, or rebels like Rose Lalonde, who chose to rip everything apart in search of something better.

These are only some of the possibilities.

When I tell you the stories we live by mislead us, what is your relationship to that? If you were to tear these received narratives apart, what would you focus on, what would you try to say? The art that comes out of this question will be deeply personal to the soul who makes it.

But here’s another question:

Just who is giving us all these narratives, anyway?

3. THE PARENT FLIP

The world we live in was not made by us. It was shaped by forces that predate us, over which we have no control and are born into the grasp of without the knowledge of how to escape.

For instance, our parents.

The guardians who raise us provide our template for how to interpret life. We spend a large part of our lives immersed in the world they built, believing as they believe, living by the values that they instruct us in, so that we might carry their goals forward to the future.

This is an effort that is certain to fail.

Because the problems of today aren’t the problems of twenty or thirty years ago. At best, their messages can only to help in a limited way with the crises we go through as we live our lives. At worst, they actively hinder us from dealing with them productively.

If we are to escape the broken patterns of our world, then we need break out of the stories an earlier generation gave us.

How are parents discussed in Homestuck?

Initially? As jokes.

If we take our “future knowledge” goggles off for a moment, we can see that the early depictions of the kids’ parents are a goofy parody of standard parental tropes. Mom and Dad are nameless, faceless, exaggerated cartoon stereotypes, and conflict between them and their children is initially expressed through a silly video game fight.

There’s a seed of something real here, though. What we’re parodying is a familiar trope of tension between parents and children in kids’ fiction and YA fiction. But that trope exists for a reason. This conflict is rich with potential for any story about growing up. And Homestuck has smuggled the idea of it in as a silly RPG parody.

So we can extrapolate, for instance, that there’s tension between Egbert and their father in part because Egbert doesn’t know yet who they want to be, and that Rose and Mom’s relationship is awkward and contentious, with alcohol involved. We see that there’s something profoundly uncomfortable going on between Dave and his Bro, and Jade’s life in the shadow of a dead Grandpa suggests a psychology that’s not entirely a healthy one.

Understand that I’m not saying that all this was there from the start. Rather, a choice was made to develop these interesting possibilities out of the jokes, to tell a story about how parents that act like these ones might have affected their children.

A major turning point in this regard is when Egbert learns their father’s seeming clown obsession was the result of a failed attempt to connect with them. It’s quite silly, but it plays around with the idea of a gap in perception between parent and child. It’s also a sign the story’s starting to take more of an interest in character psychology, suggesting that what Egbert processes consciously is not the same as their deeper unconscious feelings. This in turn can become a setup for a portrait of Egbert as someone who represses things they don’t want to think about. From this moment, in the long term, comes June Egbert.

When the psychology machine revs up for all the characters in Act 4 and Act 5, it’s able to do so because this foundation was laid.

We also, as early as Act 3, get hints that the parents have intentions and personalities outside of how the kids perceive them. The original purpose is to hint at a larger conspiracy around SBURB, with Mom building a secret lab, Dad trying to investigate the mystery, and Grandpa jumping in and out of time. But what this suggests is that the psychology of the parents might at some point come into play.

But the most exciting development in the relationship between parents and children is Act 6.

The great role reversal. The parent and child flip.

How do you make your faceless parent figures into characters?

By making them kids.

We’re so used to this concept now t that it’s hard to remember how wild it is that Roxy is a teen version of a main character's mom. But the concept is genius. Meeting these characters on the same level forces our protagonists to understand them as people and reflect on their fallibility.

For us as readers, it adds detail and nuance to the cartoonish portraits we got in the beginning. Conversely, we also see what our protagonists might have been like as parents themselves—and turns it from a story of “parents just don’t understand” to a story of how people, despite their best intentions, can wound each other.

(The Homestuck Epilogues are a difficult text to evaluate, but one of the best things within them is Egbert’s arc in Candy, where we see how Egbert might have done as a parent, how their struggles with finding purpose in the world might lead them to embrace a narrative of parenthood yet struggle to have a good relationship their kid. It’s brilliant, and the culmination of everything we’ve talked about here.)

Thus the Homestuckian work of art will be concerned with themes of parents and children. It will play with the boundary between what children understand about their parents and what they don’t. It will show parents as people—fallible people, who make mistakes with severe costs, whose stories fail their children and themselves. It may build from a simple base of what children understand, or it may weave parent and child perspectives together. It may even show us how children fail when they become parents themselves. It will show us the cycles we are trapped in, how we wound and are wounded by our context.

And it will force us to look for a way out.

4. CLASSPECTS AS SIGNPOSTS

Hey. You want to know a secret?

Come closer, and I’ll whisper it to you.

Classpects aren’t actually all that complicated. Ultimately, they boil down to one thing:

Symbols we can use to construct a self.

If Homestuck is about a crisis of meaning, then classpects are part of its answer.

What do we do, when the world gives us no story we can live by?

We make one. We make one out of whatever symbols and messages we can find and put together from the stories we’ve read, from the people who teach and inspire us. Such collages are powerful things. They give us a way out of the dark, they give us a sense of something we are and can be, where there was nothing before.

They give us, in short, a personal mythology.

Classes and Aspects have often been read as codes to be unpacked and solved. It might be more productive to see them as creative tools, signposts designed not to narrow down meaning, but to allow us to explore it.

For instance, the portrayal of Light in Homestuck is unique. As a symbol, it combines notions of brightness, knowledge, future, luck, wealth, and narrative focus. These things aren’t inherently linked out in the world, but they are here, and that’s a choice, and an interesting one. It encourages us to imagine connections between these concepts, and to see if they have any relevance to ourselves. Identifying with the concept of Light, in other words choosing to value clarity, luck, and importance, might be a powerful tool for finding one’s way in the world.

Classes play with signposts at an even more basic level. Sure, we can talk about what a Knight does in the context of the story.

But a knight is already a powerful symbol. We bring so much cultural context to it. The word conjures up images and narratives of devotion, duty, violence, the slaying of dragons, armoring oneself against the world, and the rescuing of princesses. If we put that together with a concept like Time, we get a distinct character. If we put that together with our own experience of the world, we can create powerful concepts for who we want to be.

Interestingly, this complicates what we said about SBURB. As much as our protagonists struggle to find meaning within it, there’s still something there that they can latch onto. Classes, aspects, denizens, even consorts and lands—these things don’t have to be devoid of meaning. We can choose to affirm them; we can build something out of them, and say, yes, this is me, this is myself.

But it’s a double-edged sword.

We are responsible for the narratives we choose to live by. And we may find ourselves falling into a narrative that hinders us more than helps us, that creates a self-destructive self.

What does it mean to believe deeply that you are a thief, that taking from others to benefit yourself is the best way or comes to you the most naturally? What does it mean to tell yourself over and over that you’re a prince, with all the attendant baggage of power and grim responsibility that comes with that concept? Or, to follow the path further, what does it mean to tell yourself over and over that you are a destroyer or must be destroyed?

If we are to escape the story we’re trapped in, we must take care, lest we trap ourselves in a story of our own making.

Homestuck never quite resolves the ambiguity around these symbols of self, around whether SBURB hurts or helps, whether classpects are things you create or things that create you. But this ambiguity is a productive one. It gives us symbolic tools we can use in the creation of meaning, and it shows us the side of them that should make us wary.

The work that is to come after Homestuck will be about symbols. It may show us how we seek them in popular culture, or the people around us. It may use some of the clusters of meaning that that we see in Homestuck, but it will not be limited to them. It will write its own language of symbols, joining Light and Time to notions like Memory, Need, Rupture, and War, and be filled not just with knights and princes but brigadiers, lancers, healers, druids, taxidermists, sentries and waifs. It will build with tarot cards, enneagram types, and Babylonian gods. It will place all the signposts we’ve created in millennia of existence into new contexts and meanings.

By such means will it show us a way forward.

There’s one kind of symbol we haven’t talked about yet, however.

The kind that holds a mirror up to the world.

5. THE POWER OF ALTERNIA

There’s a reason dystopias have been so popular in young adult fiction. Sure, they’re cliché now, but they speak to something raw and visceral.

When you’re growing up into a world that doesn’t make sense, it’s natural to find refuge in emotional extremes. Stories of blood and violence, fates worse than death, and governments that demand horrific things of their citizens speak to the anxieties of the adolescent mind. They validate the feeling that something is wrong—that the world we’ve inherited is broken and unfair and has no place for us. And they’re right.

Alternia taps into these dystopian feelings perfectly. What makes it so fun is that it’s an inversion of a teenage fantasy. It’s a world where there are no parents, where kids can have access to power and violence, where you can sit around and play video games and design your own house. It almost feels like a response to the “parents don’t understand” themes of the early acts.

But the dystopia’s there, and it’s sneaky. A land of lost boys and girls isn’t actually all that great to live in. It’s lawless, survival of the fittest, with children killing each other left and right. And the future adult roles most of the troll kids aspire to are a glamorous veneer over competition for slots in a fascist military hierarchy. Which is to say nothing of the blood caste system as a way in which the kids are taught by their world to abuse and exploit each other. Crushes, personal slights, competition for status, group dynamics, attempts to define identity – all these familiar teenage dynamics play out on a backdrop of maiming and murder.

Which is perfect. Because when you’re young, all those social interactions genuinely do feel like life or death, and adulthood a regime of exploitation and horror bearing down on you. Alternia is a heightened, exaggerated version of reality. It expresses an emotional truth, not a literal one, validating our most intense feelings and giving us a road map to understanding them.

No wonder so many people wanted to skip to Act 5 and get to the trolls.

(See also Hiveswap Friendsim and Pesterquest, which explore these themes really really well.)

And Alternia, for a world where parents aren’t really a thing, tells us a surprising amount about the parental generation. In mid Act 5-2, Ancestors are added to Alternia’s wordbuilding, and we learn that as much as the trolls skipped having traditional parental figures, they were never devoid of role models. The deeds and exploits of notable figures throughout ancient Alternia gave them models to think about each other and themselves—even when those models were toxic ones. In a way, this isn’t so far from the human kids at all.

Furthermore, as time goes on, we acquire an origin for Alternia’s fascist worldview. Doc Scratch, manipulator of society, stands in for all those aspects of the world that work to create the false narratives we are born into, a true evil father figure – or uncle, if you prefer. And he's an extension of the ultimate evil father figure, Lord English, who controls not just Alternia but the timelines of the human children as well, whose belligerence and apathy give us aeons of toxic narratives and abuse. We see that story played out in Alternia in every interaction, in every moment, the beliefs its architects live by.

This is the power of dystopia—it can hold a broken mirror up to the world we live in.

Therefore the Homestuck that will come after Homestuck will worldbuild gardens of horror. It will not pull its punches but show us insidious societal systems and the effect they have on the people who live under them. It may depict fascism, authoritarianism, feudalistic tyranny, or all three. It will be unafraid to evoke blood and guts but use them to paint a picture of what we want, what we fear, and how we break under our false horizons.

As it depicts the path out, so, too, will it have its reverse side—it will show us all the hells and purgatories we’re trapped in.

6. SAILS TO THE WIND

Much has been written (including by this very author) about Homestuck’s metafictional aspects – the way it comes to foreground a more direct clash between character and narrative.

But the point I want to make here is that the metafictional angle wouldn’t work without these earlier choices. They allow the comic to talk about these concerns long before any notion of canon rears its head.

There are many ways of approaching these themes, and we don’t have to be limited to notions of Ultimate Selves and Beyond Canon to explore them. Such things are valuable, but they are only one retelling of the myth. If we are to make the next Homestuck, we must make our own.

I want to illustrate the space of possibility by offering some examples of works that explore similar themes. Note that I’m not saying these works were influenced by Homestuck in any way, but rather that they use some of the same tools to speak to the same questions, anxieties and concerns.

In trying to make what comes after Homestuck, we might consider:

Revolutionary Girl Utena, which foregrounds the archetype of the Prince as duelist, tyrant, and hero and dares its characters to break free from the false reality that shapes even these aspirations and dreams.

The Familiar by Mark Z. Danielewski, author of Houseof Leaves, whose core narrative concerns an twelve-year-old girl in thrall to an entity whose intentions are unclear but may be shaping the fabric of reality itself; which depicts the inner lives and uncertainties of her parents with just as much detail as they struggle, and sometimes fail, to make the right choices to help her; a story which, even in its incomplete form, explores a notion of a greater S.E.L.F that is not just you but also those who share something with you, where characters from other realities blur into transcendent archetypes in this one.

Digimon, perhaps the quintessential work of portal fantasy, not only Digimon Tamers, which steers the genre into a place of trauma, cosmic horror, and adults horrified by children saving the world, but also Digimon Adventure, which creates strong character arcs for eight very different children as they try to navigate a strange alien world, and shows us their struggle to reconcile with their parents as part of the process of understanding themselves.

The Neverending Story by Michael Ende,foundational text for Homestuck, which tells us not only about the rich possibilities inherent in reading oneself into fantasy worlds, but also the terrible potential for harm in making oneself an emperor over them.

Pale, by Wildbow, author of Worm, an urban fantasy story about three teenagers thrust into a world of magic and murder, a world where symbols literally create reality, where concepts like Carmine and Aurum have a powerful pull, where the Self is something that can be nourished or taken apart and put back together, a story where the parents are not just supporting cast but fully realized people forced to reckon with the ways in which they have deeply failed their children, and which contains perhaps the most thorough investigation of the question of “is it good for children to go on magical adventures?” ever committed to the page.

Heaven Will Be Mine, by Aevee Bee,in which the giant robots we pilot through space become the symbolic manifestation of our inner selves and our way of bringing about our ideal reality, and, relatedly, We Know the Devil, in which the repression of those selves causes them to burst out from us in terrifying and glorious new forms.

Crow Cillers, by Cate Wurtz, an often trauma-filled horror comic in which a group of kids and, eventually, adults, tries to fight back against an ever-present death cult that has its grips on every corner, all the while encountering Psyforms, beings made of pure mind, while characters from television and cartoons dance in the margins and all the while the line blurs between audience and art until it becomes difficult to tell who created who—a story that asks what it means to find meaning in stories when the corporate entities that own them are trying to devour us.

It's a tragically short list, I know. But perhaps it conveys some of the angles we might take.

We can also look at works that are known to have inspired by Homestuck. There aren’t many yet, but there are a few.

Undertale is famous for its Homestuck influences, with parallel timelines, an idea of agency that persists across them, and a contentious relationship between player and character, but for my part, I’m just as interested if not more so in Deltarune, which seems to be slowly building a grand thesis about portal fantasy, where the kids' adventures in the Dark Worlds seems to be offering them an escape and helping them become their best selves—but hints at a coming challenge to that simple worldview in the question of who’s really experiencing that escape.

The Locked Tomb, by Tamsin Muir – This is the big one, that really shows what building on Homestuckian themes can achieve. It turns out there really is an audience for weird aggro formalism in scifi publishing if you make it sufficiently gay. But smartly, like Homestuck, the Locked Tomb builds its weird mysteries gradually, adding on layer after layer on the solid foundation of characters we can follow and get invested in. There’s so much to notice – there’s the highly categorized teenagers involved in a murder feud, there’s the constant whiplash of humor and tragedy, there’s the endlessly open spaces in the story to interpret and project on to.

But to me, what stands out the most is the portrait of God and his court as every bit as emotionally chaotic as the sniping teenagers. You go to heaven, and God’s making out in the corner with his friend group, and you look for the adult in the room but the adults in the room don’t know what they’re doing and they never really did. It’s a portrait of the parents, it’s a portrait of the Ancestors, it’s a portrait of the gods of the new world, and it’s exquisite.

The Locked Tomb gives us a world at war with its own mythological narrative, rich with angst and irony. It’s a worthy successor to everything Homestuck was doing. It shows us how much these themes can say to us, and it gives us a hint at how powerful Homestuck's legacy might be.

7. THE APOTHEOSIS OF HOMESTUCK

There’s a lot of discussion about how to continue Homestuck. How to do it justice. What post-canon might look like, and what it might not. What fan comics, what fan fics, what semi-official works truly live up to the spirit of its characters and its multiverse.

To be clear, those discussions are awesome. I’m so glad those things exist, and it’s wonderful to see them unfolding.

But I don’t want the process to stop there. I'd be disappointed if it was only about adding to and re-articulating Homestuck itself.

I want this—

—This multifaceted, complicated, emotionally laden thing that is the experience of engaging with and creating with and interpreting Homestuck—

To go out into the world and to be infused into the world, to become waves spreading further and further. I want to experience the Homestuck artistic movement, the Homestuck school of thought. I want it to be an influence on the fiction of the coming generation of authors, and the next, and the next.

I want Homestuck to be one of those albums that's too obscure to be known by the general public, but everyone who listened to it went on to start an enormously successful band.

Homestuck can appear like a thing that was conjured out of the ether, but it isn’t. It’s a product of a particular time.

But that in itself is profound. When you create art, you reach back to all the things that have shaped you, and you listen to what the world around you needs, and you try to say what needs to be said. Which means you're a part of a history and culture that needs to say those things, which will be different from the things that needed to be told yesterday, and different from the stories that will be needed tomorrow.

There’s no otherworldliness to it, no platonic other reality. But for all I've talked about art being made of choices, there's still something transcendent here.

To make Homestuck—and to make art inspired by Homestuck—means being a node in a web formed of millions of people, where a light passes down the chain to you, and for the briefest of moments, you get to be filled with its presence, before it moves on to the next person in the chain.

That light isn't yours. Not really.

But at the same time, you do get to choose how that light manifests.

And to engage with that process consciously—to think deliberately about what we want to create—that gives us power and agency over that process, our sense of the world, and ourselves.

So let’s do this. Let’s make the thing that Homestuck is telling us can exist, the thing it’s paving the way for, the thing we know in our soul can come to be.

Let’s make the next Homestuck happen.

—Ari

POSTSCRIPT

“To put out a manifesto you must want: ABC

to fulminate against 1, 2, 3

to fly into a rage and sharpen your wings to conquer and disseminate little abcs and big abcs, to sign, shout, swear, to organize prose into a form of absolute and irrefutable evidence, to prove your non plus ultra and maintain that novelty resembles life… I write a manifesto and I want nothing, yet I say certain things, and in principle I am against manifestoes, as I am also against principles… I write this manifesto to show that people can perform contrary actions together while taking one fresh gulp of air…”

— Tristan Tzara, “Dada Manifesto 1918”

"The cyborg is resolutely committed to partiality, irony, intimacy, and perversity. It is oppositional, utopian, and completely without innocence....the cyborg would not recognize the Garden of Eden; it is not made of mud and cannot dream of re-turning to dust...This is a dream not of a common language, but of a powerful infidel heteroglossia. It means both building and destroying machines, identities, categories, relationships, space stories...I would rather be a cyborg than a goddess."

— Donna Haraway, "A Cyborg Manifesto"

“What we need is works that are strong straight precise and forever beyond understanding... let each man proclaim: there is a great negative work of destruction to be accomplished. We must sweep and clean…to divest one's church of every useless cumbersome accessory; to spit out disagreeable or amorous ideas like a luminous waterfall, or coddle them—with the extreme satisfaction that it doesn't matter in the least…freedom: Dada Dada Dada, a roaring of tense colors, and interlacing of opposites and of all contradictions, grotesques, inconsistencies: LIFE.”

— Tristan Tzara, “Dada Manifesto 1918”

“These are really the thoughts of all men in all ages and lands, they are not original with me,

If they are not yours as much as mine they are nothing, or next to nothing,

If they are not the riddle and the untying of the riddle they are nothing,

If they are not just as close as they are distant they are nothing.”

—Walt Whitman, Song of Myself

𖤓

#homestuck #homestuck analysis #what comes next after homestuck #the future of homestuck #homestuckian art #you are actually 100% sure walt whitman said that

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sykestarot · 7 months

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what's holding you back? how should you move forward?

1-2-3 (left to right)

I do not own any of these images

Hi guys I felt this was the message that needed be heard this week and some of it got very specific. Lmk what you think! Thanks for stopping by ily!!

Pile 1

“it consumes my mind, it consumes my soul, it wants my life, it wants complete control” (8 of cups (rx); 8 of wands (rx; The Emperor; The Hermit; king of wands; The Star) This pile might struggle with mental health issues, such as depression or anxiety. When channeling your energy pile one I had a heavy chest and a hard time breathing. You could be pushing yourself too hard and not taking a break. Or avoiding taking a break because then you’ll see how much pain you’re in. Either way I feel very heavy energies with you. I see you feel stagnant in your life, but this is because you refuse to make changes because you feel comfortable in the routine or cycle you’re in. I’m also seeing for some of you, that you went through something hard recently and you’re keeping yourself hidden due to fears of it happening again. This situation led you to forget how much power you hold and how truly beautiful you are. I think you might expect life to happen for you, even though you’re not really leaving your house. Sometimes we have to make things happen for ourselves, although I do understand not wanting to because of the fear of the unknown. The advice that the cards give you is to remember how you sparkle. I feel like your current energy is the song I channeled but the energy you need to embody is bejeweled by Taylor Swift lol. Two very different energies. Spirit is telling you to lean on them and let go of the past, because holding onto that is only going to make your journey to the top slower. I’m also not sure if this situation involved a betrayal but spirit is also letting you know that two people’s perspectives that may differ on the same situation can both be true at the same time. I also see in this advice that this is a journey you have to go on alone. I understand how daunting this may feel but I promise you have the strength and the resilience to get through this. I keep hearing “I wish you could see the way you shine”. Signs: August; the number 8; 8 mile; Eminem?; blue sapphire; stardust the movie; Aquarius; girl in red?; insomnia; overthinking; stripped socks; dark room lit up by tv; “remember who you are” - lion king

Pile 2

"Je te laisserai des mots" (2 of swords (rx); 3 of swords; The High Priestess; The Empress (rx); Justice (rx); 8 of wands (rx)) Hi Pile 2! I feel like for you guys you recently went through a breakup, possibly with your first love, or someone you thought was your forever. Maybe you guys were on and off for a while and you really believe this person will come back. I see that in terms of what’s holding you back is that you don’t believe that you can live without this person and that’s not true. I see that you would’ve given this person the world. I hear that quote where one person says “you were a wonderful experience” and then the other person says, “you, you were everything.” And I feel like you’re the one saying that the other person was everything. Perhaps you're an artist and this person was your muse and without them you feel like you can’t make your art anymore. I genuinely feel empty channeling your energy. I see that what’s holding you back is the idea that this person was the only reason you were successful, which couldn’t be further from the truth pile 2. You are worth so much more than what you create. I also feel that you only value yourself by how much you create or do and that you punish yourself for not meeting a certain quota. But because of the loss you’re going through right now you’re not meeting quotas because you’re hurt not because you are an unproductive being. If you leave this reading with one thing I hope that it is that you are worth so much more than just what you create. As far as advice goes for you I see that you need to place trust in the mysteries of life. Most times you don’t know what life has in store for you even if you think you do. Place trust in your heart and your gut feelings. Rest when you feel you need to and create when you feel the need to. I also see that your inner monologue could be hurting you, the pessimism in your mind could be keeping you in a cycle of self hatred and unproductivity and they're working hand in hand to keep you stagnant. Try to think more positively and be gentler with yourself and you’ll see progress almost immediately. I’m also seeing that when you step back and see the bigger picture you’ll find that everything happens for a reason, and almost every ending leads to a new beginning. I believe in you pile 2 you can do it!! Signs: 222’; piano; marble; fine arts; french?; museums; pine scent; guitar; the color blue; long distance; wishing on stars; turn back time; Romeo and Juliet; “it’s better to have loved and lost than to never have loved at all” ; paintings; indie

Pile 3

“keeping me from who I need to be, distracting me from what I need to do” Pile 3 I feel like for you what’s holding you back is your inability to admit that you are wrong about something. For you I see you continuing to try to do something that isn’t working and probably hasn’t worked for you either ever or for a long time. I see that for you your destiny holds much more than what you are doing. I see that you are going down a path that is filled with obstacles and you believe that it’s because it’ll give you a better success story when these obstacles are not even obstacles there more like road blocks. I see this pile is more of a career pile. I also feel like I can hear you while reading this immediately going, “pfft this isn’t for me”. If you thought this at all then this pile is exactly for you. I don’t know if someone told you that you wouldn’t make it in the line of work you’re in but I do see that you took that and made it the fire that lit you up. For most of you though this is a job that you can make it in but it won’t fulfill you in the way you think it will because at the end of the day I believe you don’t actually enjoy this job. SO if you feel like your life is stagnant or staying in the same place it’s because this career isn’t meant for you. I feel like you also know what career is meant for you and you’re being super stubborn. I also feel like when you talk to people you’re close to about your job issues they immediately bring up your other option of what you could be doing. Like if you’re a lawyer and it’s draining you and you tell your friend and they immediately go “oh what about the art you used to make you know you were great at that!” I also feel that this irritates you lol. I feel like you know and are aware of it at the very least. The universe has been sending you signs about this for what I believe could be years. But you do what you feel is right for you. As far as advice goes for you pile three I see it’s time to heal. Perhaps the reason you're staying in this job is because you feel the need to get recognition to stick it to the person who told you you couldn’t. That’s not necessarily the healthiest behavior for ourselves. I also see that you need to start thinking of laying something solid down for the rest of your life, so maybe this job is also not letting you provide for yourself or others and on top of all of that you don’t enjoy it? I think spirit wants you to think in long term goals and does this job or cycle let you pursue those? Spirit would also like you to know that you aren’t alone. I really heavily feel that given the opportunity your friends would love to support you in any endeavor and are probably rooting for you to leave this situation. So go ahead and reach out when you’re ready to leave!! Many people love you and only want the best for you, remember that. :) Signs: October 6th; October; June; pumpkins; hammers; carpentry; wood?; post malone; trinkets; working with hands; toxic positivity; hard helmets; hammers; beer; heinekens

#pick a card reading #reading tarot #tarot reading #spiritual #tarot #spotify #pick a card #pac #spirituality #channeling #pick an image #pap #channeled message #channeled song #divination #law of attraction #Spotify

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hybbart · 7 months

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Heya! I was wondering how medication and medical devices work in the ranchers au. Most devices need replacing quite often and after five years, many medications would be out of date and useless or even dangerous.

I definitely get if it's just a case of, they don't go off, since medicine is confusing but I was curious since it could lead to plot.

I should say that I specifically don't get into this stuff much just because I don't know much about it and I would rather keep things vague than accidentally impart incorrect information. As well as the fact that it is ultimately a biopunk setting with differences to our world. That said, have more rambles than I expected.

Right you are, there's in fact not a lot of medication left. People hoard anything they find but most is long expired. The hospital is lucky to have two doctors and Scar who know a bit more about medicine than the average person, but a lot of whats kept is just praying it still works.

Cleo thanks to being a gorgon is also in the drug development business, though she specialized in developing antivenom, but she not only knows but can help develop certain medicines. She and Scott have made quite a thing of their inn and I kinda wanna touch on it in the future.

Shubble, Katherine, Gem, Impulse, and Pearl know home remidies for a lot of things and have specifically been growing and creating them. These aren't going to replace complex modern drugs for specific conditions obviously, but they work and its easy to pass it around with the help of the radio station.

Overall, on bad days, Tango generally has to grin and bear it with homemade pain killers at most. It's rough and it contributed to the second wave of population decline after the first wave of zombie deaths. It's Scar's goal to specifically help survivors with this sort of thing, though.

As for medical equipment, it's a bit grim but since there's such a small population now and the hospitals were the first to go there was a lot of spare equipment from storage and patients left behind. In part because of Scar's own medical needs and in part for their desire to help others, Scar and Cub, and later Grian, collected what they could from abandoned hospitals and care homes.

It's obviously not going to cover everything, materials break down and as far as replacing them or things that need customization there isn't a factory just down the road that makes it all in house.

This is where I take the most artistic liberties, but Tango, with Doc and Zed, is the one to maintain Jimmy and Scar's equipment as well as his arm. Whether that's patching the existing, altering replacement, or crafting new parts. He knew a good bit from his job and hobbies but he's spent the past 5 years learning specifically how to diy for Jimmy and himself. It's not perfect but it's the best they have.

This is still a bit of a soft biopunk setting at the end of the day with mutliple species and genetic modification, I imagine it might be a little bit easier to get hold of certain things than it would be in real life. I also think they live in a very different economy, and its probably easier to find sturdier and custom made items due to the variety of their society making mass production more difficult. This leaves the problem of certain species not responding to certain medicines though and needing more specialized treatment.

The degredation of materials is something I do try to take into account, which is the reason gas power is nearly nonexistent, but it's hard to take everything into account and sometimes I would rather not, simply because it allows more stories to be told if something is available but difficult to get rather than impossible. I'm not great with drawing or knowing technology so it's easier to just say something is jerryrigged than it is to actively illustrate how they did it. If it seems it might be possible I allow it.

The important thing to me is to consider the types of people who would think about these things first and if anyone might be that person. You know, someone with asthma is going to think of medication and figure out how to get it, a truck driver might know where to go for storages of specific supplies instead of raiding malls, and a historical reenactor might think of how to get and create sustainable materials. Everyone leads a life that puts certain things at the forefront of their mind that other people probably wouldn't think of at all. Especially going from a modern specialist society collapsing into a society that requires generalized knowledge. And the saved knowledge of these things didn't turn to dust the second the apocalypse hit.

Life's not as rough as it might be in other apocalypse media, just because I guess I generally don't really care for the unrralistically cynical outlook a lot of american apocalypse stories are made in for drama's sake. This is a story about people caring about and helping one another, and developing a new life for themselves. If they don't have access to something, people work together to make due with what they have.

#raau ask #raau notes: technology #raau notes #raau notes: setting #raau notes: character #raau notes: ranchers #raau notes: art

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anistarrose · 2 years

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One thing I love about The Owl House, and I know I’m not alone in this, is how it depicts disability: Eda and Lilith’s chronic illness-coded curse, Luz’s neurodivergence, the many characters who can’t do magic the “normal” way, and the accommodations and adaptive equipment they receive, and so on and so forth. Disability and accommodations are huge themes in this show —

So, with that in mind, I think it would be great if we as a fandom could start writing more image descriptions, to make our posts about these characters as accessible as possible!

Image descriptions help blind or low-vision people who use screen readers, and ND people who have a hard time interpreting expressions or other aspects of an image, just to name a few. If you haven’t written image descriptions before, it might seem intimidating — but for the most part, there isn’t really an objectively right or wrong way to do it, and any image description is better than no image description, I promise. Here’s an example:

Image description: a screenshot from The Owl House Season 1, where Eda Clawthorne pats Luz Noceda on the head approvingly. Both of them are smiling, and Luz is slightly covered in Abomination goo. End description.

My (personal, and pretty loose) rule is that I start by specifying what type of image we’re dealing with — is it a canon screenshot? is it fanart? — and moving on to the main “topic” or “focus,” which in this case is Eda patting Luz on the head. Info about the expressions, tone, and any other major details is good to round it out.

I maybe could’ve gone without mentioning the Abomination goop — if I was making a post about Eda and Luz’s relationship, for example, and focusing only on the interaction between the two, I might’ve left that detail out for conciseness. Ultimately, it’s context-dependent, and completely subjective.

The most important thing is just representing the image accurately and accessibly, and of course, denoting where the description begins and ends. This is sometimes abbreviated “ID” and “end ID,” as you might've seen elsewhere.

Other quick recommendations: don’t overuse caps lock, especially for long strings of text (some screenreaders have problems with it); include image descriptions immediately after the image instead of further down in the post, and try not to put them under a read more. Basically, the intent here is to not just make posts accessible, but avoid breaking up the “flow” for anyone reliant on image descriptions.

You can start small! I started with just describing simple memes and the occasional screenshot, and worked my way up to describing fanart. That said, if you’re an artist, you are automatically going to be the best person at describing your own art — you know what details you want to receive focus, you know each character’s expression, and you know the precise intent behind the piece.

And, once again, any description is better than no description!

Finally, as a corollary, image descriptions on just some posts are also way, way better than image descriptions on no posts. Lots of us don’t know how to describe every image, or don’t always have the time, or the spoons, but I’ve always thought of it like: if everyone on the internet, or in a fandom, captioned a handful of posts when they felt like they were able to, that would still do wonders towards making the community more accessible.

Anyways, if you read this far, thanks a lot! This post came about because I’ve seen so much great discussion about disability in The Owl House lately, and trying to raise awareness of image descriptions felt like the right next step — both because accessibility is a good thing to aspire to in general, obviously, and because it feels especially important when we’re talking about disabled characters themselves 💜

#the owl house #toh #the owl house season 3 #toh season 3 #accessibility

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kaigarax · 8 days

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Fall

Portgas D. Ace x Reader

Quote: "Fall in love with someone you can share a secret with."

The gentle breeze of autumn has Portgas D. Ace reminiscing about the simpler moments of life. Like the laughter of his brothers or the frustration when he just can’t remember the exact answer to the riddle. Or the childish fear in his heart for his adoptive grandfather when he gets ready to train them for the marines.

Ace wonders if you had a simple life like him.

Leans forward towards you subconsciously as you look up at the sky, laying beside him on the cool grass.

Ace never much liked the feeling of laying on grass. The subtle movements of the grass in the wind constantly sent his nerves off. Sometimes he thought it might be a bug crawling into his hair; which was a horrible sensation when it really happened - he’d actually spent a week picking bugs out of his younger brother’s hair once. And then there was the smell of pollen and grass which had never been all too pleasant of a scent to Ace. Ten out of ten times he would have chosen the smell of the salty sea over that of the mundane grass and ordinary pollen that comes back every spring.

But, sitting beside you, he finds that he doesn’t mind the sensation all too much. Finds himself enjoying the warmth of the sun against his skin amidst the subtle chatter of animals in the subtleness of fall.

He finds himself noticing the little things like the old watercan left forgotten behind a tree and the overgrown weeds beside the stump of a tree filled with one too many bird holders. The mismatched rocks which had likely been gathered by children at one point in time piled up in both a creative and artistic way. Or, maybe it’s artistic? Ace doesn’t really know anything about art.

Perhaps you know?

Yeah.

Ace smiles.

He bets that you’re the kind of girl that knows about art and stuff. You must like it at least a little if that camera around your neck means anything.

Earlier he had asked you to take a picture and was all but refused which had put him in a bit of an annoyed mood that he tried real hard to push away. Of course he could never actually get mad at you (you were far too gentle for that) but you did seem to have a certain knack for pushing his buttons in every which way.

After a long while you did agree to take a photo of Ace but only in the moment when he least expected it.

Whatever that meant.

You’re so pretty. He thinks he’d rather stare at you then the sky which seems to have fully captured your attention. Honestly, Ace thinks he’s a little jealous of the sky if only for the reason that it has found a way to capture your attention. He wonders too if it has also captured your heart?

If someone else has already found a home in the place where Ace one day hopes to be.

Well…

It-

You turn to look at Ace and let out a little giggle when you notice that he’s been staring at you this entire time.

His cheeks flush red as he turns the other way.

You giggle in response.

It only serves to make his cheeks flush more.

You really are so pretty and in more than just your appearance. Ace has never particularly cared for romance. Never cared to think about girls the way that most boys his age do, preferring instead to look ahead and dream of a better world in front of him. Preferring to dream and charge forward rather than worry about the attention of a pretty face or soft and gentle voice.

And then there’s you.

Ace bets that you have a fondness for gentle men. Preferring someone sweet and chivalrous over a playful and flirtatious man. Ace has never really seen himself as either or and he doesn’t really care to fall into either category but… he does wonder which kind of person you might see him as and if he’s the kind of person that you might like.

He turns back to look at you to be greeted with a warm smile from you.

“What’re you thinking about?” Ace asks, hoping his voice comes out as smooth and calm.

You laugh playfully, “one thing or another, I suspect.”

Ace rolls his eyes but smiles fondly, “yeah? You actually have some thoughts in there, do you?”

“Hopefully~” You grin, nudging him gently.

Ace nods in agreement, nudging you back gently, “hopefully.”

You start to hum softly as you grab onto Ace’s hand, absentmindedly tracing the lines of his hand. Ace has never cared much to look at his hands. Never really traced over the lines of his hand or laboured over how soft or rough they might have felt. Sometimes he did think about how sore they could get after a hard day's work on the ship but other than that his thoughts about the ocean were rather limited. But right now he’s curious about what you seem to find so interesting about it.

Is there something special about his hands?

Do you like how they feel on their own?

He certainly likes the way his hands feel in yours.

“Have you ever wanted to die before?” You ask softly, looking up at Ace curiously.

Portgas D. Ace feels himself freeze in place, the calming atmosphere from the previous conversation earlier dying on the tip of his tongue.

You haven’t noticed Ace’s change in atmosphere or you’re simply choosing to ignore it as you continue to trace the lines embedded in his palm.

Ace clears his throat having only just recollected his composure, “what?”

Or maybe he didn’t gather it as much as he thought.

“Have you ever wanted to die before?” You repeat, your voice as calm and soft as ever.

“Have I ever wanted to die before?” Ace repeats. Has there ever been a moment when Ace thought it would be better to simply stop living than continue on? The answer immediately appears in his mind but he isn’t quite sure if this is something he wants to share with anyone else. It’s not something that he’s ever really thought to share with someone else and the people that had known aren’t the kind of people that he would ever outright go out and tell - rather, they’re the kind of people that managed to force it out of him. Sure, he’s rather thankful that they had managed to get the words out of him in the first place but overall he’s really just not sure. Finally Ace turns to look at you, his eyes steady and his gaze calm, “yes.”

You interlace your fingers with his, “you must’ve had a very sad childhood then.”

“There were both happy and upsetting moments.” Ace says, bringing your hand up to his face. He leans into your warmth and smiles, “but yes, it was during the hardest part of my life, when I felt that I was alone, that I wanted to die most. I didn’t think I was worthy of life simply because of who my parents were.”

“Sometimes having others is the only thing keeping us alive,” you look up to the sky, your eyes closed, as you inhale deeply, “I quite love this world. It’s a shame that this world will never love me in return.”

Huh.

Ace doesn’t think that he can relate. He personally has never cared much for this world. Not only did it curse him into the position of life that he’s in now but it’s never been very kind to him either.

No.

He much prefers the people.

Well, some people.

The gentle people that had been afforded to him. The ones that had cared enough to stick around with him. The ones that saw him for more than the circumstances of his birth. The ones that saw him. The ones that loved him and the ones he loved in return.

Did you love him?

Ace wonders but he doesn’t think he’ll ever ask you.

It’s not a question afforded to the likes of him.

Not a question he’ll ever have the gall to ask. To you or anyone else.

Your eyes soften and your smile is gentle as you turn back to look at him. There’s a fragility in the way you look at him. A look that Ace feels will shatter if he so much as moves another inch. That this moment will slip away from his fingers if he were to call out your name. So instead, he waits calmly and quietly for you to make the first move. One day he’ll look back to regret it but for now he simply enjoys your presence and hopes that the moment can last for as long as it can. For as long as it will.

“Who was it for you?” You ask.

“At first it was my mother,” Ace explains, “because I didn’t have anyone else. And then it was my brothers and now it’s my crew.”

You hum in acknowledgment.

“I actually never knew my mother. She died giving birth to me. I feel like she died because of me.”

Your eyes look at him with such pity and while Ace has never been one to care for pity he feels as if it’s different coming from you. It feels almost like he’s looking in a mirror. That you, better than anyone else, understand what he’s going through right now. He’s not really sure why but he knows that he does.

“You loved her, despite not ever knowing her?” You asked.

“I think I did. It felt more like I owed her something for giving birth to me. Because I took away years from her life.”

“And your father?”

Ace’s face darkens, “no.”

“So much more adamant and certain about your father.” You noted.

“He only ever caused trouble for me and my mom. Honestly, I don’t even know why he had children in the first place. It was as if he didn’t think about the consequences of what it would be if he had a child.”

“Oh?”

“Me being born was a crime in itself.”

“Being born isn’t a crime.”

Ace doesn’t seem to hear your words very well as he continues, “he forced that crime upon my mother. And he died even before I was born. Went off and got himself killed before he even knew me. Though, I guess that’s probably a blessing in disguise. It’s better that I didn’t know him, with how horrible of a person he was.”

“Ace.”

He pauses in his tracks.

The way you say his name is so different from how he’s heard you say it before. He feels as though it holds so much more weight than it had before. That it’s so much heavier. So much louder than before. He suddenly finds himself unable to speak in response, ready and alert to attention as he turns to look at you.

You brush his hair back out of his face gently, “living isn’t a crime. Children don’t inherit the crimes of their parents.” You flick his forehead, “and besides, it’s not as if you actually want to die anyways. You think it’s some burden that you have to take on but in your heart you’re too scared to die.”

Ace huffs, a pout on his lips, as he brings a hand up to cover the spot where you had flicked his forehead, “and how do you know that?”

“Because if you had wanted to die you wouldn’t be here now, would you?” You laugh as if Ace had just told a hilarious joke, “and besides, death is scary. It isn’t until we’ve accepted the lives that we’ve lived that we’re able to head into death with a smile. And even then, there are only a few who are able to die with a smile.”

“Do you think I will?”

“Who knows.”

His heart beats erratically as you pull away from him and turn your attention back to the bright blue sky.

“I don’t really know what I want out of life.” Ace admits.

“It’s okay,” you hum, “I don’t either.”

Fall in love with someone you can share a secret with.

#one piece #one piece x reader #portgas ace x reader #100 ways to fall in love

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gethoce · 2 months

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Hey uh, how does it feel to be that much of a great artist? Like, genuinely, you're so... Like, amazing what you do here, your art? Top Notch, the character designs are so unique, but they all feel like they have a soul, in the best way possible. All intrinsical shapes and sizes, motivations, color palletes, everything is so good. The writing? Stellar, basing your matters on actual folklore, history and mythology is genuinely so great. Your reinterpretations of Canon characters? Incredible, Metamorpho isn't really something I ship yet you somehow made me enjoy it when you draw it yourself, as well as things like Sir Arthur and Specially Morpho give me joy.

Your art is such an inspiration... You inspired me to make my own stuff! Even if I sometimes am jealous of it fjdjdj, like what you do is so good that it makes me a little bit angry, in the best way possible.

George coming in strong once again to boost my confidence. Your comments are very much appreciated and highly valued. Every artist longs for motivational boosts like this. I am flattered, to say the least and delighted to hear that I have inspired you!! eje6e5f2uf

That being said, how does it feel? I’m in constant fear of failure. I could probably easily list like 20 artists I wished I could be more like without even leaving Kirblr. If you ever wonder whether I too feel insecure about my art the answer is yes. I've been trying to find something to work on that the community enjoys in greater numbers for almost a year and failed time and time again. But we keep on going all the same :galathumb:

Anyway, on a brighter note, Metamorpho! Or how I like to call it Morphometa because the Metamorpho tag is terrible for finding art of them which might contribute to the low popularity of the ship. As a matter of fact, it is so unpopular there doesn't even appear to be a ship name to borrow from the Japanese fandom.

What is the appeal for me in this ship? They have chemistry for being warriors of similar moral standing but there gotta be more than that. In the case of my interpretation, spoiler alert, it's the depressed guy and reaper dynamic. One who views himself as a monster that wants to go out as a hero never to be seen as what he is and a one who on surface level is a being of life and light but has hidden flaws that haunt his mind every second of every day. One who sees the good in the other and wishes for him to see the bad in him as opposed to the one who just can't do either. There is a wish to be understood and over time they learn to be just that for each other.

Then Sir Arthur… a terrible person who is trying to become better without ever being held accountable for his action. Someone who thinks he has successfully left his past behind only for potential secrets to be exposed. A man who is willing to switch sides at any second if he sees no way towards redemption anymore. Never turn your back towards this man.

#gethoce #answered ask #i may have rambled a little too much #anyway back to work i go

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haystarlight · 2 years

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Hunter really liked working at the tattoo parlor. He got to meet interesting people, he got compliments on his talent and it paid really good. Most of his clients did make a point of letting him know he had a strange sense of fashion, but he always ignored them.

It was true, in a way. Most people expect a tattoo artist to be covered in black leather and piercings like some hot bad boy. Not a pair of crocs and a Hawaiian shirt in the middle of Connecticut autumn. Hunter was always quick to say, he liked wearing what was comfortable, not caring about style, letting his work speak for him.

He was getting ready for work when he heard the little bell, announcing his first costumer of the day.

"Welcome to The Owl House!" he said, smiling but not really looking at the client "what can I do for ya?"

"Oh, hi! I actually called ahead, I'm Willow Park," said the young woman, with a sweet cheerful voice that he did remember from the phone a few days ago.

The young lady was short but she looked at him with an air of determination that made him feel like she was not the type to get scared easy. And her smile was like sunshine, filling the room with warmth and light. The kind of person that made other people more confident by just being next to them.

Fuck, it was way too early for this shit.

"Oh, yeah! I remember, you had an appointment!!" he tried not to sound so loud "sit down, I still have to get my equipment ready."

Willow sat down and took off her jacket, which allowed him a better look at her. She was chubby, in a cute way. But her arms... fuck, they looked strong. Hunter briefly wondered if she'd be strong enough to carry him....

No! Nope! No! Professional!

"I'm Hunter Noceda, by the way,"

"Yeah, I know, you said your name when I made the appointment."

Fucking idiot.

"Y-yeah, you said you wanted a sunflower tattoo?" he tried to recall.

"Yup! Right here, on my left bicep!" she said, flexing to emphasize.

He was not going to survive this.

"Is this your first tattoo?"

"Yup!"

"Well then, I should warn you. The pain can be a little too much for first timers," he always tried to be gentle when he said this "if you feel like you can't handle it, just tell me and I'll stop. No judgement and I won't charge you if you don't let me finish it,"

"That's sweet of you, Hunter," she smiled kindly at him "but I think you'll find I have a higher tolerance for pain than expected."

She fucking winked at him. This had to be a fever dream. Did Luz spike his coffee with something that morning?

"Yeah, okay, let's get started then."

He started, fixating on his work. Concentrating as hard as he could on the drawing and not on the muscles he was lucky enough to have his hands on.

It wasn't like this was the first beautiful customer he'd ever had. Most of his clients were young and attractive; Hunter had suffered many bisexual freakouts, especially if a client wanted a tattoo in an unusual place. But something about this girl made her seem different from the others. Like, this was going to be more than just a fleeting crush.

"So, how long have you been working here?" she asked, breaking the silence.

It wasn't out of the ordinary for clients to start conversation when they got bored. Tattoos did take a long time to get done and sometimes talking was the only thing they had to pass the time.

And he might as well get to know her better.

"For, like, 2 years," he said "what about you? What's your job?"

"Oh, I work next door actually," she revealed "Willow's Wonderful Weeds, the new flower shop. We opened up pretty recently, it makes sense we haven't really been introduced."

Oh yeah, he knew that place. Of course he did notice when they opened a new shop next to his a few months back but he never paid close attention. He'd certainly pay more attention now, that was for sure.

"Yeah, I wouldn't forget about you, you seem like an unforgettable person," he instantly regretted saying that.

And then he saw her blush and stopped regretting it.

"Sooo, Willow's Wonderful Weeds, huh? That's a funny name."

She laughed. He made a mental note to make her laugh again.

"Yeah, my friend Gus came up with it. I thought it was stupid at first but it grew on me."

"It GREW on you?" he smirked at the accidental pun.

She groaned, but she didn't actually seem upset with him. He allowed himself a laugh.

"Oh, you're just as bad as him."

"You should introduce us, I think we'd get along," totally normal suggestion, not weird at all.

"Please no," she begged.

He laughed a little more before returning to work.

"So, flowers, huh? Is that why you're getting a sunflower tattoo?"

"Yeah, I've always loved plants," she said "ever since I was little, I felt connected with nature and I knew that's what I wanted to have on my skin to represent me. I wasn't sure what kind of flower I wanted at first since there are so many pretty ones, but I knew for sure I didn't want a rose, that one's been used to death."

"Oh yeah, totally," he nodded "take it from me, I see a million roses a day, it gets boring real quick. It's like, there are other flowers, people!"

"Exactly! Valentine's Day is coming later and I'm thinking about all of the roses I'm gonna have to grow, as if other flowers aren't romantic enough."

Hunter didn't think of telling her how the sunflower perfectly fit her, as she seemed to shine brighter than the sun. He was totally not thinking that, no.

"And you? You got any tattoos?"

"Yeah, I have one on my back of the starship from Cosmic Frontier, I don't know if you've read that."

"My friend Gus read it," she said "he keeps trying to get me to read it, but it doesn't seem like my thing. Maybe I will introduce you to him after all, give him someone to talk about it."

He now actually wanted to meet this Gus, he sounded like a cool guy. And the idea of spending more time with Willow wasn't bad either.

"I also have this one," he showed her his left arm for an instant before going back to work.

It was a big gray wolf, howling at a full moon, surrounded by bright stars.

"Wow, it's beautiful," she said, starstruck.

Totally not a big deal that she just said something about him was beautiful. Totally normal. Yes sir. Nothing weird at all.

"And this one," he showed his right wrist, where there was a picture of a little red cardinal bird.

"Aww, he's so tiny," she cooed.

"I actually did this one to myself, the other two are from some friends, fellow tattoo artists," he explained "can't exactly draw on my own back."

"Wow, that's actually pretty badass, I didn't know one could tattoo oneself."

"You can if you know what you're doing," he tried not to sound too braggy.

Willow took a deep breath, almost like she was hipping herself up to ask the next question.

"You don't have any tattoos that you share with your partner?" she asked, kind of quickly. As if she was scared.

"Uh, no. I don't. I don't have a partner."

Willow tried to hide her joy. "Oh, okay."

"Do you have one?" he asked, his fear even more evident.

"No, I'm single."

He quietly celebrated in his head.

"I don't really like matching tattoos anyway, you won't believe how many couples I've seen come in and get matching tattoos only to come back and remove them," he told her, quietly.

"Aw, that sucks so bad," she frowned.

"Yeah, it's not fun thinking something is gonna last forever only to realize it won't."

"Definitely not getting a matching tattoo with anyone now," she decided with finality.

"Yeah, I didn't even get one with my sister when she suggested it."

"Your sister wanted matching tattoos?"

"Yeah, she wanted ones that said 'La Banda de las Chicas Malas', which means 'The Bad Girl Coven' in Spanish," he recalled.

"That's so dumb, I'm glad you didn't go through with it," she laughed again.

"Yeah, she's like that," he rolled his eyes "she's annoying, but I do love her, don't get me wrong."

"Aaww," she sighed "I always wanted a sibling. I guess I have Gus, he's kinda like a brother, but that's not exactly the same."

"You're not missing much," he promised her "just constant invasions of your privacy and walking in on her and her girlfriend, neither of which is fun."

Willow laughed again. Hunter was suddenly reminded that, if Luz found out he now had a crush on the girl next door, who owned a flower shop, he would never hear the end of it. Her little fanfiction loving heart would explode with evil plans trying to get him and Willow together and it would be terrible for them both. Mostly for him.

He would try his best not to let her find out, although part of him knew he would simply be delaying the inevitable.

"So, tattoos... science fiction novels... what else are you into?"

You, he might've said if he was braver. Or crazier.

"Well, the tattoos started because I liked drawing and I also know how to sew," he regretted not wearing one of his shirts with patches, he would've wanted to show them. Oh well, next time.

"Ooooooohhh, a man who sews, that's nice," she said, her tone light and flirty.

Holy shit.

Well, two can play that game.

"How about you? You work out? Because your bicep game is ridiculous," he tried to sound cool.

He also tried to sound like he didn't get that phrase from Luz.

She blushed again! Fuck yeah!

"Yeah, I do a lot of heavy lifting when I'm working the plants but I also go to the gym pretty regularly and I like roller skating and jogging and soccer."

"It's called fútbol," he muttered under his breath.

Curse his wonderful, latino family.

"Yeah, that," she nodded "I also love photography. I have a camera that I carry around everywhere. It's super old but I love it, I love developing the pictures and seeing them come to life. I have sooooo many photo albums back home, it's crazy."

"I'd like to see them," he confessed.

"I'll show you some time," she promised.

Not too long after, the tattoo was finished.

"Okay, it's ready. Look at yourself in the mirror."

She did and she immediately squealed at the sight. She spun around, looking at herself from different angles, her smile kept getting bigger.

"I LOVE IT! THANK YOU!"

"It's nothing, I enjoyed doing it," he admitted.

He told her the price and she paid for it. He did still need the money, unfortunately.

"So, I'll see you around, right?" she asked, hopeful as she put her jacket back on.

"Yeah, if you ever need me, I'm right next door. You can just let yourself in here or you can call me, you have my number."

"Yeah, I do have your number," she said, as if she had forgotten "so I guess I'll call you soon, then."

"For another tattoo?"

"No," she smiled, as she opened the door to leave "for a date."

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sanchoi21 · 6 months

Text

Sweet Delusions

Toji Fushiguro x Reader

Warning: Delusions, sadness, lonely, mentions of self harm, mentally broke (just like me), Toji being the comfort character, fluff. Art not mine, credit goes to the artist. Song recommendation while reading this: One of your girls.

You walk your tired way towards home. College life was indeed tiring with a new test coming up each semester. Snakes for friends and there was no one who would listen to you. Parents busy with work and there are some things which you just can't share with family, this is a place where you need friends but all you saw were snakes in human skin. The animal in itself is good but humans aren't.

Being alone was something you had gotten used to since a very young age, so it wasn't difficult roaming all by yourself across the town at dawn or night. Infact you preferred being alone than being in company of hyenas. Your mental support or comfort character was Toji. You liked him very much. Though he was fictional your love for him was unwavering. He was the only character with whom you could relate on spiritual level. Toji was an introvert, someone who was always looked down upon but still managed to prove others wrong, a loyal man, a caring father and a hottie, all these characters were what easily caught your heart. Though he couldn't come to you in this real world which has nothing but pain, you still were happy to have him. As you always felt connected to him. Anywhere you went, anything that you saw, a smallest gust of wind, a simplest treat that you ate in break time, and just like that everything reminded you of him.

It didn't matter if he wasn't real, all that mattered was that he never left your side when you were in difficulties. He would always encourage you to fight your problems head on y setting his example. Others might think that you are slowly going insane but infact he was the only one who keep your sanity intact. There were times where you wanted to harm yourself but that voice in your head which you thought was of Toji, again stopped you for the nth time that day, you didn't know that he was slowly but surely teaching you self love.

You wondered if he was real, if he was with you by your side, would things have been different?? Would he have comforted you by hugging you tight when you had a tough day, so tightly that he was scared that if he didn't you would shatter to a million pieces?? Would every meal with him be more enjoyable if he was right beside you, instead of you imagining he was?? There were nights when you dreamt of him, and the following day would most definitely be a wonderful one. You sometimes wondered was that his way of apologising for not being by your side today too??

You just wished him to be real or to find someone who might be similar to him. Who knows if that person will be the one who can make you forget Toji, so that he is just a pleasant memory in your head, or will you still continue to miss and yearn for him till the day you go to grave?? Or maybe wish that you both were in the same dimensions in next life, who knows??? Or his thoughts might just haunt you forever, because that's just the kind of man he is....

Guys, I might just be too much into him, who knows??

#toji fushiguro x reader #toji x y/n #toji x reader #jjk fushiguro #delusions #toji fushiguro #jjk

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mariewriting · 2 years

Note

Hello! I saw that your requests are open, might i ask for yandere naib and eli (with the detective outfits) with a reader whos a jewel theif and always got out of their grasp even slightly teasing or flirting with them?

GN reader

Notes; I used the same picture of Seer that I used in my previous post. I hope you don't mind! I couldn't find any pictures of him that aren't fanart (I don't like to use fanart without crediting the artist)

Warnings;Isolation, theft, threat.

Yandere! Naib and Yandere! Eli x reader

Naib and Eli have been working on the same case for weeks, only so far, they have not found any proof of who is guilty.

There has been a series of thefts in the last two weeks. This week a museum had three pieces of jewelry stolen. And nobody knew who it could be, when they tried to look at the cameras in the place, they just weren't working. Naib noticed that the guy who planned the robbery knew what he was doing. And he did it very well.

Eli was hard at work on the case. Not giving up, Naib could not say that he was not desperate. Because he had no progress on the case. The subject left no trace in the museum or where he left. He could tell he was about to give up on the case. But something told him to continue, and having said and done so, he didn't drop the case.

Naib and Eli were in the office discussing who it could be, even though they were not sure. When a beloved person arrived, (Name) The person who was always around, sometimes stopping to chat with Eli or, perhaps Naib. (Name) has a habit of flirting a lot with them, and they deduce that it is his way of expressing himself.

"Working on the same case?~"

(Name) groaned, in a tone of disappointment.

"Unfortunately yes" Eli said in a low, almost inaudible voice.

"How annoying! The thief is really giving trouble!'' (Name) spoke, in a childish tone. Wanting to hide his laughter.

"Look, not everything is the way we want it to be. It's not like I want to stand still on this one." Naib said, staring at you.

Naib and Eli cannot lie that you are not a beautiful person with a charisma. And Naib sometimes feels that his feeling is wrong. But you just ignore it. And Eli, well, he has already accepted his feelings. But he can't lie that he doesn't feel very strange sometimes.

Nsib feels very strongly that he must protect you. He just doesn't know from what. Eli feels this too, only he is less rude about it.

But one day Naib and Eli went to a place that had been robbed. They found a camera, broken but working. They felt victorious. "Finally the case would go forward!" Eli thinks.

They took the memory card from the camera and put it into another camera. Saving the photos and videos on the other camera.

The only thing Naib and Eli could see was you stealing jewelry from a jewelry store. Naib felt very ashamed of his actions. And Eli was very disappointed. Wondering why you were doing this.

The only thing Eli and Naib wanted to see is you behind bars.

And in a desperate attempt by Eli, he threatened you. Saying, if you didn't stay with them. You would go to prison. And you, you would give yourself up to them. Very afraid of being arrested

However. Eli and Naib are more worried about you than anything you have done. They are very suffocating. Imprisoning you in rooms for days just so that you will give them affection. The only thing you want right now is to be far away from them. Maybe being locked up would be the best option? That's the one question that doesn't leave your mind.

They really love you very much, and you love them too, don't you?

#identity v x reader #writing #identity v #yandere identity v #identity v naib #identity v eli clark #idv eli #idv naib #yandere

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veinsandknuckles · 2 years

Text

You’ll just have to learn the hard way, pt 4

Brad Bakshi/f!Reader, “friends” to enemies with benefits. part 1, part 2, part 3, part 5 PG-13 (for now) TW: sexism. From a distance, Brad seems like a perfectly nice (and distractingly handsome) man. When you start working at Mythic Quest, he catches you looking on your very first day and happily lets you misunderstand him; by the time you realise what he’s really like, you find yourself already entangled.“Friends” to enemies-with-benefits, conflicted feelings, hate fucking with a slow build and all that good stuff.

----------- Chance didn’t throw the two of you together much the next couple of days, at least not in any context where you got the opportunity to speak in private and Brad did not seek you out. You were determined not to make the next move as a matter of principle and besides, the thrill of uncertainty and anticipating was enough to keep you walking on air. Brad shot you a meaningful look across the room every so often and once a wink and a smile that both made you blush all over and wonder why the entire office wasn’t instantly scandalised.

While you might not seek him out, you did linger in the break room sometimes when you knew he was around, just in case. You slowed your steps when you saw him in the hallways so he had time to say something if he wanted to, or turn and walk with you if the mood should strike him.

And when the door to his office was left open and you heard his voice, you listened.

You knew better than to eavesdrop, at least when discovery was almost certain. This time something caught you though and you stayed without even making a decision.

A blonde woman was standing by his desk. You couldn’t see her face from this angle but she looked and sounded tense, as if it took everything she had not to... yell at him? Cry?

“I’m just... I’m really not comfortable with this, mr. Bakshi.”

“Yeah, so you’ve said.” Brad, on the other hand, sounded just as comfortable as ever. A little bored, a little impatient, but her emotion seemed to affect him in no other way. “And I wouldn’t dream of forcing you to do anything you’re not comfortable with. We have a bunch of talented artists here. If you don’t want to draw this, I can find someone else.”

“She’s my character.”

“Is she? You just told me you came up with this design while you were on the clock.” He spoke slowly, as if to a child. “And anything you create at work is our intellectual property. I mean, that’s what we pay you for.”

It was a wonder that the woman held it together so well. “I know that.” You could practically hear her teeth grinding together from here and your own stomach grew hot and heavy in sympathy.

“It’s in your contract,” Brad said in the same infuriatingly helpful tone. You shifted your stance so you could see him clearly through the blinds and yes, he was leaning back in his chair, arms behind his head, pleased as punch.

The woman took a deep breath. “I understand my contract. It’s just that I was encouraged to... I didn’t just invent this design, I was given the opportunity to come up with an entire character. May I speak freely?”

Brad shrugged. “Please.”

“Mythic quest already has plenty of fan service. People have responded really positively to this character specifically because she’s not wearing bikini armour and getting rescued every few seconds. It’s 2020.”

“And you don’t believe in a woman’s right to wear whatever she wants?”

Was he baiting her into an argument? Or did he just want to remind her of how powerless she was? This situation was completely different, but he watched her with the same amused curiosity he usually turned on you.

It didn’t matter if either of them caught you listening, you had to see how this played out.

“She’s not a real person, she’s a character and the perpetuation of-”

Brad waved her off. “Whatever, I don’t care. Either you draw what I asked you to or someone else will, your choice.”

“Fine. But I won’t be the only person who finds this incredibly tasteless.”

He raised his eyebrows. “Yeah. That’s the point. We get the twitter feminists angry, they get the incel nerds angry, the controversy goes viral. Everybody wins.” And then his eyes met yours. Brad didn’t show any surprise, neither his tone or expression changed in the slightest. For all you could tell, he might have seen you standing there right from the start. Still looking at you but speaking to his employee, he continued, “well, I win, anyway. You do get how this works, right?”

“Yes,” she said, “I get it. You’ll still have to find someone else for this because I won’t do it.”

“Yeah!” Brad punched the air with mock encouragement. “You show ‘em. Stick it to the man.”

The woman turned to leave and you moved out of her way without taking your eyes off of Brad’s calm, gorgeous face.

You’d heard enough and he knew you’d heard enough. From his expression now when he looked back at you, you suspected he might even have raised his voice slightly to make sure you heard him. You didn’t bother to mask your confusion and disgust... and he smiled. The same sunny, friendly, open smile as always, the smile you’d chased every time you talked to him.

You’d shown Brad you wanted him, you’d shown him you were desperate, you’d probably even shown him how much he intimidated you, even if you hadn’t meant to. Now you were lost, you felt sick and he took it all in, smiling as brilliantly as ever. He didn’t even have the decency to twist his expression into something menacing, as if this was the big reveal. There wasn’t anything to reveal because he’d never really tried to hide anything. Poppy and the rest had been right about him and you’d refused to see it.

You couldn’t afford to quit. You wouldn’t be able to avoid him. It felt like minutes had gone by but in reality it was probably no more than a few seconds. When he curled a finger to beckon you into the room, your strongest wish was to turn and run, but it was probably better to get this over with quickly.

“You shouldn’t eavesdrop, you know,” he said when you entered by way of hello.

“You shouldn’t leave your door open if you don’t want people to hear you,” you replied and shut it behind you.

“Eh”, he shrugged. “So, what brings you to my office this time?”

The reminder of your last encounter in this room made you grow hot all over; with anger, embarrassment and more conflicting feelings and you didn’t care to wonder which was stronger. “I wasn’t coming to see you, I was just walking by.”

Brad seemed to be about to say something else in the same teasing, playful tone as usual, so you cut him off.

“The woman you were talking to, she looked like she was about to cry.” You drew a breath to steady yourself. “I didn’t realise you were such a piece of shit.”

That seemed to stun him. Not with discomfort, but genuine surprise.

“You didn’t?” His pretty, pretty eyes searched yours for confirmation. There was a long pause while he processed this. “I thought that was like... part of the tour for new employees. Here’s the fire escape, the back of this fridge freezes over, Brad’s a piece of shit.”

An uncomfortable look must have flashed across your face because he asked the question you desperately hoped he wouldn’t. “Are you sure no one warned you? Because frankly, I find it insulting that I still have to have this conversation with people.”

You glowered. You didn’t bother to try to lie, it clearly wouldn’t work anyway.

Brad laughed. “Oh, so they did warn you, you just didn’t want to believe them.”

That, too, you refused to deny. And it all seemed to be so thoroughly entertaining to him, there was no point trying to argue with him or make him feel ashamed.

“And here I was thinking you were trying just trying to get on my good side, but no...” he shook his head, genuinely amazed. “I guess you really meant it. Weird.”

“Well, you’re an attractive man. At least on the outside.”

“Yeah,” he grinned. “That’s all it takes, huh?”

There were all sorts of things you wanted to tell him but what was the use? He didn’t seem to take anything the right way. In fact, it sounded like he’d assumed you hated him from the start and either pursued him despite yourself or to... what? Sleep your way to the top?

And he’d liked it. You couldn’t think of an insult strong enough that he couldn’t somehow twist into a compliment.

“I admit I fooled myself.” That was all you could say. “I really fooled myself, and I shouldn’t have, but now I know better. Just... stay away from me.”

Brad spread out his hands in a gesture of innocence. “I mean, let’s not kid ourselves here. You practically begged me.”

The rage you felt almost threatened to make you incoherent and you refused to yell at him. Instead you growled in pure frustration and... God, the way his eyes lit up.

If he’d seemed eager for you before, it was nothing compared to this. Brad leaned a little closer without seeming to be aware of it. You could have sworn his breath came faster and now you couldn’t deny it either - anger was only a part of why you felt so hot and so weak.

You wanted to jump across his desk, pin him down and force him to yield. You couldn’t decide if you wanted to spread out your hands to pin and touch and grope him or bunch them into fists and wipe that smile off of his face once and for all. You could bite him or kiss him, just as long as it would shut him up.

You wanted to humiliate him just as he’d humiliated you but if he had any shame, you clearly wouldn’t know where to find it. And realising that you would never win no matter what you did just made you even more angry.

God, he made you feel sick. He really did, your confusing reaction definitely did and you were grateful for it. Without another word, you turned and left, determined to avoid him from now on at all costs. Whatever he brought out in you, you didn’t like it, you didn’t want to examine it and he wasn’t worth the effort. All you could do was to kick yourself for not listening to the warnings and try to forget about this whole mess as quickly as possible.

#brad bakshi #brad bakshi imagine #brad bakshi x reader #mythic quest #Mythic Quest: Raven's Banquet #mythic quest fanfic #my fics

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