do you think roy always knew he was into men or was he repressed until he realized he was into jamie?

oh anon. i started to answer this, then got inspired and started writing a fic in answer to it instead, then the fic turned into a bigger fic that's going to take me months to finish so i think it's best if i just answer the question. 😅

so thanks for asking, anon, i DO have some thoughts!!!! they are scattered and messy but i'll give it a go.

i don't know that roy has always known he's into men, but i think he's known quite a while. maybe not when he was younger - he might have known in the back of his mind that he liked boys, but he knew he wasn't gay because he definitely liked women, so that's that, no need to think about it past that, it's squared away. even if intellectually he knew about the existence of bisexual people growing up, he wouldn't have considered it an option for himself (and to be honest, i don't think it's a given that he did know it was really a thing. it was the 90s. bisexuality wasn't widely talked about. if you liked men, you were gay, and roy wasn't gay).

roy was born in 1982; he was in the academy and going through puberty and trying to figure out who he was in the 90s. things were not great for us in the 80s and 90s. i'm 8 years younger than roy kent would be, and the way i learned about the existence of gay people was aids and the rhetoric surrounding aids. and that was formative for me; it provided the only frame of reference i had as a kid of what gay people were. that was how i internalized that my queerness—the queerness i couldn't even articulate or understand—made me sick, dangerous, unclean. obviously that's not a universal experience, but it's also not a particularly uncommon one for our generation, and it takes a shit ton of work to unlearn. it would have been worse at roy's age, and i can see it being something that would shape his perception of what it means to be a queer man.

listening to roy talk about himself is fucking devastating and so telling. "sometimes i get concerned that i've been infecting you with the worst parts of me," he tells phoebe. infecting is a pretty loaded word, and it speaks to the deeply rooted shame that roy carries at the very core of his identity. we see over and over throughout the show that there's something about roy that he seems to truly believe is...rotten, repulsive. unlovable, maybe. a lot of people read roy as completely lacking self-awareness, and i get where that comes from, but i don't really read him that way. i think roy's sometimes plagued with self-awareness when he doesn't want to look, and he loathes the things he sees. he knows how he is. he knows the parts he hates about himself. and i think his queerness plays right into that.

ted lasso is, among other things, a show about masculinity, and roy's character arc throughout the show is, among other things, an arc about masculinity, so i think it only makes sense that his sexuality is tied up in that. because in his world, what could be more fundamental to your masculinity than heterosexuality? there's a shit ton of homophobia in football, and it certainly wouldn't have been any better during roy's formative years.

there's a lot you could say about La Locker Room Aux Folles and roy kent's sexuality, and i won't because this is already stupid long, but seriously, have you watched 3x09 while considering that the episode is about roy's repression as much as it is colin's? that it might be colin's coming out episode, but it's roy that functions as the episode's protagonist? that the message colin understands at the end when george hearn croons "i am what i am" is one roy can't let himself embrace by the end of the episode, not even by the end of the season ("i'm still...me"/"wait, did you want to be someone else?"/"yeah. someone better")? that colin may have escaped la cage by the end of the episode but roy's still in there?

the last thing that roy kent wants is to be what he is, and that kind of fundamental, foundational shame reads as very queer to me, feels very queer to me.

so, anyway, i do headcanon that roy sleeps with guys sometimes, at least by the time he gets to chelsea. i don't think it's particularly frequent and i don't think it's particularly healthy and i don't think he lets himself develop anything like a genuine connection, but i think it's what he's allowed himself. i think that's basically where he starts the show, occasionally sleeping with men, refusing to acknowledge it says anything about him. (i could also see him not having fucked a guy, although i like that less. regardless, i do think he recognizes he's attracted to men, even if he doesn't necessarily accept it.)

i definitely think that, when they finally get together, jamie would be his first boyfriend.

anyway, dear anon, you didn't ask for a 1000-word response to your 20-word question, but thank you for coming to my ridiculously rambling and likely incoherent TED talk about roy kent's internalized homophobia 😂

ngl as much as i used to say i really like fucked up ideas and stories i haven't really been in the mood to read or write any. i've kinda been straying away from that stuff now actually. i kinda just want good old basic fluff and angst but with some story to it. i just want a good drama. sure, it can have a dark backstory element or two but only to like...an extent. like, idk, an anime plot or whatever

8, 11 for Fragile Things, and 20!

hello yes!!! thank you!!

Which of your own projects have shaped your writing the most? in what way?

Ooooh okay this is an interesting question!! Hm... I suppose The Ruins of Memory is what kind of made me aware of the fact that I love writing about big deep themes but with elaborate metaphors and I'm a little obsessed with stories that have super elaborate deeper meanings. Fuck me up with that good good symbolism. If that makes sense. Idk if this makes any sense but who knows!

I don't think I'm answering this that well, I'm just super into stories with tons of symbolism and The Ruins of Memory is what started that trend I think.

Give three songs or images that fit [WIP].

OOOH okay!!! I'm gonna do songs, because I don't think I have the energy to do image IDs rn.

I do have a Fragile Things playlist (well, more of just a playlist for Ink and Arthur in general), but here's a selection of my favorite songs from it that I think really capture these two's vibes, as well as some Choice Lyrics from each of them:

Ghost Stories - The Narcissist Cookbook

🎵 And that's where you come in You came along, you taught me that people cannot be explained That we are all ghost stories at the end of the day And maybe we should just aim to stay that way 🎵

What If I Forget Your Face - Kimiko Glenn (from the Centaurworld soundtrack)

(yes this song is what inspired the title)

🎵 One careful step at a time For you and I Are fragile things 🎵

Toxic Thoughts - Faith Marie

🎵 Evaluating the damage, no, I just don't understand it Conflicted by the very air I breathe A love with hatred laced between 🎵

Genuinely the line "a love with hatred laced between" is my favorite summary of Noah and Arthur </3

Where do you begin a WIP? ex: a mood, a scene, a certain character dynamic, etc. does this differ per project?

This really differs from project to project, but most of the time my WIPs start with a Vibe that I chase and microwave in my head until it turns into something. Either that, or I start with a single character and ask myself, "What is the point of this character? What are they doing? What's around them?" I'm not fully sure how to explain it, so I'll just list some WIPs and what they started with.

Bleeding Over Eden - the concept of a character who already had their big supernatural adventure and now must deal with the aftermath

For We Are Both Fragile Things - literally just started with a desire to outline exactly what happened between Ink and Arthur, and then it expanded

The Ruins of Memory - the vague vibe of a world healing from its past

CUDAAS - literally just a desire to have my own angel and demon OCs

A Modern Ghost Story - literally it all started with me making my OC Juno (which started b/c of a poorly-executed creepypasta that had a good concept)

God Died With Wooden Bones - the vaguest possible vibe of memory and trauma, and the idea of finding a long-dead god in the forest

going to disneyland with your kids and you get seated next to green lantern on splash mountain but you have a secret identity and he doesn’t so you just kind of have to pretend you don’t know each other

My favorite ship dynamic? People who constantly make fun of each other but will rip out the throat of anyone else who says something even remotely mean about the other

me: 😐

me when sokka and zuko are next to each other: 😮🤯🤩🫶🌈✨️

Nona the ninth is like,

Imagine you are a girl, and you woke up sixth months ago and thats your earliest memory. You dont know who you are. Your name was chosen for you seemingly at random, because nobody else knows who you are either. All you know about yourself is this: you cannot let anyone see you injured, or they will kill you. You are inhabiting a body that the others recognize, but you dont. You are probably one of two people, but nobody knows which one. You dont know these people. You dont know yourself. And deep down maybe you know you're not either one of them.

You are happy anyway.

You live with three people, who love you and who you love back fiercely. One of them is inhabiting a body that doesnt belong to her. She understands you, but she also doesnt. The other two are sharing a body, so intertwined that you can never be sure which one is standing right in front of you, unless you study them closely and know them well enough to guess. They understand you, but they also dont. They expect you to be one of two people, but you arent and you dont know why. You dont know who (what) you are.

You are happy anyway.

The world is crumbling around you. Your life is on a time limit and your soul is trying to claw its way out of your (her) body. The people you love are in danger but you dont know why or how to stop it. You are in danger, and the people you love know how to save you. You dont belong in this body, everyone knows that now. You are too big, too much, and the rest of your essence is trying to claw its way into your mind, becoming whole again, but you cant let it. You cant let it because if you are whole then you will be different, you wont be Nona anymore and you will not be that girl who loves and who is loved. But there is no choice, you must go back or risk killing yourself and the girl whose body you inhabit. You may remember your time as Nona, or you may not, but either way you will never be the same again. You might not be loved anymore. You might not love.

But you are happy anyway.

Because at least you know this. You cannot take loved away.

when boromir died for merry and pippin and then pippin saves faramir's life. when pippin says i offer you my service in payment for this debt. when he offers it to denethor but really it's to gondor and to boromir and to the man that denethor once was. when boromir saving pippin's life directly means that pippin saves faramir's life and literally...to boromir, that would've been enough, to have his brother live. for gondor that is enough, to have their captain returned to them.

my secret confession is i think a lot of current art in comics is pretty but sometimes way too glossy and lifeless... it kinda feels like a sticker sheet where they just swap out generic stock poses that they have on hand for that character rather than the art being reflective of the actual story and moment the character is currently in

So what's wrong with Clara, then? There's nothing wrong with her. Why haven't you made her immortal? Well, look how you turned out.

I really did go through a phase where I thought I had to curate everything to fit a certain image aesthetic vibe etc……. Whenever I’d like something outside of the scope I set for myself I’d be confused because how does that fit into my lore?? But like it just does. My vibe is that I like what I like. My aesthetic is that I’m a girl who’s ever growing ever evolving ever changing. Not everything has to be cohesive or to make sense I really don’t understand why this is a big deal in my brain

I think the thing that, like, has me fully frothing at the mouth about the way the last of us transformed bill's story is how it flipped on its head what bill does in the narrative. in the game (at least in my interpretation), he is the epitome of the living vs. surviving dichotomy, an example on how you can do everything you can to survive as long as you can and be absofuckinglutely miserable and alone if you continue to shove down parts of yourself and keep everyone at arm's length. he's what joel could become if he's not careful.

and in the show, he's the opposite - he's the example of how you can change your ways in the worst circumstances, how letting someone in is actually the most powerful thing you can do, how surviving isn't enough, isn't worthwhile, if you don't have love, if you don't have something to live for. and where in the game he was a portent of joel's future if he continued down the path he was on, in the show he's a contrast of what joel already is. joel, who couldn't tell tess he loved her, joel who can be detached enough to dispose of the corpse of a child, joel who doesn't allow himself to mourn the death of his friends for more than a few seconds. bill of the game was that way, except he still helped joel and ellie out. joel of the tv show is where bill was, but he still gives ellie his jacket when its cold, his food when she's hungry.

and in doing all of that, and with knowing what's coming, the last of us has said "love will save you. it doesn't matter if its romantic love or familial love, no matter the people involved, love is the most natural thing we do, and if you try to push it away, it will be that that kills you."

i lovvve obito as an evil mysterious manipulator behind the scenes. its so fun. i also think its so interesting to compare his version of madara w the real one bc i think they are quite different? obito-madara isnt the same as real madara ... he seems more malicious .. i think and more mean-spirited. adsdsfdgs. like he's super enjoying to manipulate and like meddle with everyone's business and watch ppl die and go crazy (thinking abt the danzo vs. sasuke fight here for example. he finds it quite satisfying to watch sasuke go crazy and not just obliterate danzo. but also abandon his own principles by stabbing his own teammate). this isnt rlly madara-behavior i think, madara's more focussed on his own power and ego and i think wouldnt concern himself as much w meddling in other ppl's business or getting them to become just like himself. UNLESS we are talking abt obito himself but madara also needs help from him. so there is an agency here that he has with him whereas obito ... it seems as if he's just fucking with ppl for funzies oftentimes. he also CLOWNS the shit out of deidara as well as kakashi's team when he keeps them from getting to sasuke & itachi and plays up his tobi shtick. like ... i think obito rlly likes playing marionette with ppl and his god complex has more of an >:) i am taking over the world cuz i can and its fun vibe and he poses like this when he talks abt realizing his plan:

sfsfsgdgs. like madara wouldnt gesture like this. madara, the real one. is kind of more subtle i think. less hehehe i am stronger and more DECEITFUL than everyone else, he isnt really deceitful at all, he's more stoic and his flavor of arrogance seems more INTENSE in some ways but less outright malicious. if that makes sense. LOL

I will forever love seeing Luffy and Nami holding Zoro's swords. He's so protective of those three but it's not even because he fears something might happen to them, but because he's scared something might happen to the crew and himself if he doesn't have them with him. They're like extra limbs. The ones he uses to fight and protect and breathe. He feels uneasy whenever his swords aren't around him, and that is just a fact. You can't deny that he feels comfort in having them by his side at all times, knowing that he'll be able to protect the crew from any dangers. They're tied to his heart and soul in a way that if he loses sight of them he might actually lose himself too. So he does not enjoy seeing his swords in somebody else's hands. They can disappear, he will find them. They can run away, he will follow. They can break, he trusts them not to but if they do, he will keep going carrying their bond with him still. But he doesn't like seeing them in somebody else's hands because those are his swords. His limbs. His heart. His soul. It's just not right. It never feels right. But.

But.

But sometimes Luffy acts like he knows what he's doing and actually asks for permission instead of just taking what he wants. As if crossing Zoro's boundaries would be unforgivable, when he knows Zoro would give him anything he wanted to take from him. But he asks. He asks, with a careful, polite, deep voice Zoro isn't used to hearing. But it always ends with the softest of smiles and the petition reaches a place inside of Zoro's heart that he just knows has also touched his swords. So he lets him, because how could he not, and he runs his fingers through all of them. Amazed. Astonished. Respectfully talking to them as if they could hear him. And they can. Zoro knows they hear and feel and love and crave and long for his captain's touch. He knows, because he does too. Because who wouldn't? Luffy holds them in a way he never holds anything else- Carefully. Like they aren't his. Like befriending somebody he fears might reject him. Like taking hold of Zoro's heart and holding him so gently in case he might break him. He worships them as if he weren't the god in this relationship. He looks handsome, too. Not pretty. Not cute. Handsome. Mature. His hat covers his adventurous gaze but leaves his mischievous grin for the whole world to see. And yet, the swordsman trusts him enough. Without any look or any word. He knows Luffy's face by heart, he realizes, now that he can picture his eyes quite too perfectly under his hat. His skin glistens under the sun and his tender fingers hold the sword with so much clumsiness it looks dumb. He doesn't know how to hold them, yet they don't want to move away from him. It's clumsy but it takes over them. Maybe it's his haki. Maybe it's the effect the future king of the pirates has. Zoro thinks it's just him. Luffy. And his heart stops the second Luffy smiles, as if he had just heard the sword respond to him. He wants to kiss him. Bite him. Let him bite back and draw blood and eat him. Let him hold him the way he holds the swords but tighter. Closer. Maybe he's in love. Zoro. With Luffy. It's not a maybe. Who is he trying to trick? He knows he is in love. With the way he smiles and the way he holds and the way he wants but respects and loves. It's funny like that, the fact that Luffy keeps being so careful when Zoro would let him tear his heart apart and eat it if he so desired. It's funny that the swords love him with such gentleness when they often demand power. Perhaps kindness is the most powerful weapon of all or, at least, Luffy's most powerful skill. Zoro hates it when somebody else holds them because they don't own them. They don't own him. He doesn't even own his swords, anyway. Nobody can. They're his the same way he's theirs, just with a bit more dominance and respect. But Luffy isn't owning them. He's praying to them. Talking to them. Befriending them. Loving them. And they would bow to him if he so desired. Zoro knows they would, as fierce as they are and violent as they seem and as sharp as they cut. They'd bow to him because Zoro would too. The uneasiness does not exist when Luffy is the one to hold them because, if Zoro had to give out his soul for somebody to take care of, that would be Luffy. And if he has to be unprotected. Naked. Bare in front of a thousand soldiers. He will if it's Luffy the one fighting instead.

Sometimes Nami wants to hold them just to feel what it's like to be in Zoro's shoes. It's a stupid reason. He refuses to let her do it as an instinctive reaction at first. She doesn't seem as interested in following the protocol as Luffy is, but she knows where to stop and she knows what to say to get on Zoro's nerves, anyway. She's equally as fierce. Equally as sharp. He won't let her hold any cursed sword, but it's not like she wants to. She's smarter than that. Careful and respectful but not that interested in the swords and what they mean, more in how they feel. Zoro gets it. Kind of. Somehow. She says something about always letting them eat her precious tangerines, so he should humor her by letting her hold Wado at least. She isn't pushing him. He knows she wouldn't. She's just teasing because she knows. She always knows. She knows he will say yes. Because he always does what she says, although he keeps demanding a bit of respect to not be treated like a dog. But Nami never forces him to do anything. He could refuse. She would give up at some point. But there's just something about her- Stubbornness. Strength. Love. So much love and care and worry and anger. And Zoro likes her. She's selfish, too, like a pirate should be. Stronger than Zoro in the ways that matter. Smarter, too, even if he wouldn't admit it out loud. But she leads the way and he follows, not because that's a dog's job, but because he wants to. He trusts her. Something he never thought he would. But he does. She's smart. She leads the way. She knows where they're going. They somehow are the same and totally different at the same time. Zoro grounds Luffy when he gets lost. Nami leads them both so they won't. So there's something about her curiosity that makes him soften. He never knows exactly why he does what she says. Why he indulges her like that. But it's satisfying, for some reason he refuses to read within himself, the satisfactory and pleased grin on her face when he hands her Wado. She's careful with her. Awful at holding her. Bad posture. Great smile. Horrible movements. Beautiful eyes. It's okay, though, he thinks. Wado likes her because Zoro likes her. Nami loses interest within a minute, complaining about the weight and the sudden realization of "you always have this thing in your mouth" which makes her want to give her back. But she stares at her for a whole minute. It isn't her thing, but her eyes spark when the sword is returned to Zoro. Trust. A smile. Thankfulness. Her bangs are getting a bit longer and one strand of hair gets in the middle of her teasing smirk. She says she prefers her clima-tact, but swords are fine, "I guess". "She's pretty" she says. Zoro thinks she is pretty. Nami. In a way he can't quite describe because he has never really been good at that. But she is. Like a blade. Sharp. But in the right hands this time for her not to cut the ones she loves anymore. She hands him a tangerine next, every time he lets her hold his sword. An exchange. "I give you something that matters. You give me something that matters". Zoro wants to say it's not the same, but the tangerine is sweet. Juicy. His fingers then smell strongly of citrus. Almost as similar as steel. If he can feel Nami's heartbeat in every bite, he wonders if she has been able to hear his in the hilt of his sword. Calm. Peaceful. Safe.

Zoro doesn't like seeing his swords in somebody else's hands because those are his swords. His limbs. His heart. His soul. It's just not right. It never feels right. But.

But sometimes it does.

thinking about how the desperate attempt to cling to her childhood with speak now elicited mixed responses (scott telling her she couldn’t have a fairytale-inspired title like enchanted, romantic relationships with older men who took advantage of her inexperience vs the need to be america’s sweetheart), which led to a pivot to try to slowly grow up (hence a noticeable aesthetic change, more mature themes and sounds in her music, etc), only for that to be confronted with even more criticism (sit-downs over leaving the cursive fonts of her early albums behind, constraints to her sonic experimentation, scott generally doubling down on his control of her music because, in her own words, her success in pop with IKYWT/WANEGBT made him see her as a woman which felt threatening, a global slut-shaming campaign, the paula of it all). no wonder it led to the feeling that she had to double down on her maturation arc with 1989 to truly feel in control for the first time, which, in turn, tainted her memory of her previous two albums because they both felt constraining and slightly embarrassing compared to her newfound sense of liberation.

I think something cool about modern fnaf is that- unlike other indie horrors (Bendy, Poppy Playtime, Indigo Park, etc etc)- the big corporation behind everything isn't. Personal? If that makes sense?

All of the listed games have faces to their companies, people who give speeches and are like the face of the company beside the mascot- they make the experience kind of. Personal. Hearing the dreams and wishes of the person behind the evil and explaining why they do what they do (or at least what they want you to think the motives are)

Modern Fnaf doesn't really have that- William and Henry are dead and we don't know who the new CEO of Faz Ent is. It's cold and corporate behind the colorful mascots. We know nothing about the goals of the owner/CEO, who they are, why they inherited/got ownership the company- we just know the colorful faces hiding whatever they're doing behind closed doors.