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forcebewitht · 3 years

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Force's Disney Geek Master Theory: Why Twisted Wonderland Is Called Twisted Wonderland

We have all grown to know and love various Disney characters over the years, correct? Yet, I believe a lot of us can argue that not many characters have the same effect on us even as adults today as the Villains do within their respective movies. In the game Disney: Twisted Wonderland as we all know and love, the select boys to Overblot are supposed to have the "souls" of their Villain counterparts, right? But...why is it called "Twisted" Wonderland, then? The truth may lie within something that has been right in front of us all along, my friends: the meaning of a mirror. Ready to buckle in for this one? If so, then here we go!

We have seen all of these guys share character traits, looks, etc with their Disney counterparts, correct? Well, what if I were to tell you that things in terms of the "main" guys that we are supposed to pay attention to aren't exactly what they seem? This could be analyzed in a few different ways, honestly, yet the most prominent way is this: the differences in their personalities- they are reversed. Let us take this bit by bit, shall we?

Ah, yes. The Queen Of Hearts. The ranting, raging, bundle of red, black, and gold we all know and love. (or else heads would roll, I'm sure) One of the things that everybody knows about her is that she's extremely hellbent on the crazy rules that she makes up and is prone to anger honestly very easily. Yeah, you can connect that to Riddle- but think about it for a second. While that rage and the rule thing is still there, it isn't as prominent with him as it was with her, is it? With the Queen of Hearts, her whole "issue" was that she wished to make everybody listen to her and follow her every command- but Riddle was essentially always following the rules of another- not his own. This seemed to make Riddle a little more calm most of the time in terms of how he handled and oversaw things. It wasn't until he actually Overblotted that the "listen to me and only me" thing came out- buuuuuuttttttt I'll get to that part in a bit.

Next: Leona and Scar. While we honestly didn't get to see a lot of what went on behind the scenes in the Outlands in terms of how Scar even met the hyenas to begin with at all, one thing can honestly be said- Scar worked very hard to get where he was. I mean, it's not like you can get an entire pack of rabid, hungry hyenas onto your side in the course of a single day, or maybe even a week (especially as a lion, no less). No, something to that extreme takes careful planning, wording, and stringing along to ensure that nothing goes wrong along the way. The way Scar spoke to Shenzi, Banzai, and Ed made it seem as though he had known them for a looooonngggg time before this- that's where that behind the scenes planning comes in. And then...you have Leona. Leona, from what we can tell in Chapter 2, planned the idea for the "endgame" alright- but he didn't actually act upon any of the plan for himself. Ruggie did. Even in the Lion King, we see that Scar had no problems whatsoever getting his paws dirty a little within his own scheme to take his "rightful place" at the head of Pride Rock- but Leona quite honestly did not a thing once Ruggie was in motion. See where this is starting to head?

Azul and Ursula. Ursula, the Disney baddie queen of my heart Ursula, the Sea Witch. She was known all around the ocean floor for helping out poor little merfolk in secret, wasn't she? Yet, nobody ever really seemed to catch wind of the whole "her turning those who didn't quite fit the bill into polyps" thing, did they? That was one of the things that made her such a honest threat to Ariel herself- because Ursula was cunning. She did things behind the scenes, and sure- we could catch onto it out in the audience (annnddd maybe Sebastian and Flounder as well), but nobody else really seemed to, right? Azul is the complete opposite in this standpoint. He instills direct fear into his "workers" and those even beyond and within his dorm. Like- basically most knew that this dude was bad news to begin with. Azul, mostly, seemed to hide his cunning facade behind a fake yet still seemingly "soft and genuine" smile and act. But all in all, he didn't really attempt to "hide" anything- hell, he even proclaimed his entire plan of what everyone with those things on their heads were gonna do for him in the open! At least when Ursula sang as Vanessa, she was in an almost perfectly enclosed room with nobody else around.

Jamil and Jafar. This comparison here, given what occurs in the movie Aladdin, is honestly one of the biggest possible indicators of this reoccuring theme I shall clarify in a bit. Jafar, while being sneaky, was known for being a more "out there" Disney Villain in terms of his personality alongside that of his partner Iago in the film. He would smile in a sinister way, he would crack jokes out in the open, and let us not forget his crazed yet oddly interesting laughter. Jamil? He's the exact opposite. Given his past and what he has had to dealt with growing up with Kalim, he is much more reserved and barely releases a chuckle or cracks a smile at all. His personality is a lot more repressed than that of Jafar himself throughout the film. Jamil has been so used to having to hold himself back thanks to his parents in favor of Kalim's family, he doesn't seem to know how to "let go" whatsoever. Yet Jafar, while still maintaining that sneaky side of him as well, has no problems whatsoever letting a little hang loose whenever he so chooses to.

Vil and the Evil Queen. This one honestly may be a bit more self explanatory than the others- but the difference between these two is their expressions of themselves. The Evil Queen was the very first animated counted Disney Villain within Disney's history- yet, she barely had any lines throughout the film at all. Her ranges of expression were almost little to none thanks to the era in which the movie was released in- but she always looked like she was pissed, huh? Vil is the exact opposite of her in this sense. He is able to fully express himself through his various facial expressions, theatrical abilities, musical experiences, fashion style, and even how he behaves. Vil is able to do so much more than the Evil Queen did or could do within that time period, that it's almost a little staggering if you fully picture it.

Idia and Hades. Now, now. We haven't honestly seen too much of the flaming blue boy yet in TWST, but one thing is apparent here right off the bat- in terms of his personality? He is the exact opposite of Hades. Idia is much like Jamil but to a more "geek" degree- he's extremely introverted, shy, a bit snippy, yet mainly keeps to himself and his gaming tech. Hades is most often renowned as the Disney Villain with the most personality- and the best humor. Hades has no problem whatsoever being "out there" with his crazy puns, sassy remarks, anger, and even mocking behavior. I mean, please, guys- I haven't been this choked up since I got a hunk of moussaka caught in my throat!

Finally, Malleus and Maleficent. Ooooohoooooooo boy. We have to count out the live action movie Maleficent for this one (sorry horned queen fans). One thing that basically everybody even with their toe in the water in that of Disney movies kind of knows this fact- Maleficent is c r u el. She's got a bizarre set of dark powers and an even blacker heart than that. Hell, we basically had to "soften her up" a little bit in Maleficent thanks to just how seemingly irredeemable her character is in that of Sleeping Beauty. I mean, c'mon now- cursing an infant? And we get no explanation for that in the original? C'mon, now. Anyways, Malleus? As we all can tell by now, this dude is the compleeettteeeeeee opposite. Sure, he has those repressed bits here and there too, but it is evident that this dude has a heart crying out for the MC and it is big, bold, and golden to the core once you look past how he looks. He sent the MC a card for winter break, for crying out loud. Yeah, let me know the next time you see Maleficent do that smh.

Now, I have avoided using a certain word up until this point to see if anybody could catch on to what exactly is happening here. Did you figure it out? Reverse. The boys that either have Overblotted already or intend to Overblot soon stop holding out on us, Chapter 6 have had the exact opposite personalities compared to that of their Villain counterpart- until one prime point in their "character arcs". Their Overblot.

Riddle wished to have all bow before him and obey his rules.

Leona led his entire dorm into ruin and nearly sanded away the entire school in the process.

Azul let himself finally free of his personal shackles entirely and "took what was his".

Jamil finally let himself go and opened up more in his personality, almost seeming to be driven insane in the process.

Vil wanted to become the most beautiful one of all and would kill anyone within the way of that goal without any hesitation whatsoever.

The moment that the boys' Overblotted, that was the exact moment when the "soul" of their Disney Villain counterpart took control. Keeping that idea in mind, that should mean that this will happen in the upcoming chapters and their Overblots:

Idia will show off all of the personality, powers, and intelligence that he has been keeping down within this introverted self of his.

Malleus will become so broken by being left out and alone in the cold for the final time that he will turn into a completely cruel Fae and possibly nearly kill either the MC or the representation of Prince Philip within that Chapter in the process.

(Hello, my dear Readers! Guess who is trying to get back into her bigger pieces of writing? This gal right here~ feel free to drop a comment and tell me what you think of this theory- I'd love to hear your thoughts! 💕)

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candychronicles · 3 years

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bodyguard // s. todoroki

A/N: my take on the rockstar/band/performer au for bnharem! i’m not a big fan of au’s normally but this one was a lot of fun to write! todoroki is definitely ooc in this one but i took a lot of liberties with his character in order to better fit the au storyline.

CHARACTER PAIRING: Todoroki Shouto x F!Reader

WORD COUNT: 5,091

WARNINGS: mentions of blood, gore, fighting, death, oral sex (f!receiving)

SYNOPSIS: you were in it for the money, he was an unhinged popstar. how could you two ever possibly get along?

want to read more rocking stories? click HERE !

the days at work were tiring, the nights even longer, but the pay was good and it was always satisfying to make a grown man cry as you knocked him to his knees and manhandled him away from your client.

Todoroki Shouto, one of the elite, the famed, the rich, and absolutely fucking annoying. sure, he was hot (anyone with an eye could see that) but he was just like everyone else in his industry: a cocky bastard. you didn’t mind his lifestyle too much except when it interfered with his job, like having to pry off whiny people who clung to him like their life depended on it, and for some, it probably did.

his biggest claim to fame was being in a now wildly famous band, namely the main singer. he was charming with a sultry voice and a personality that oozed confidence but he wasn’t always that way. in fact, he was originally a shy, anxiety ridden teen when he first joined, not sure how to use his voice or deal with people coming up to him in the streets. the life he lived was sheltered before that, training under his dad to take over the family business, but when sweet, innocent Todoroki confessed that he much rather be artsy and sing at the age of sixteen, things quickly changed for him. his father, Todoroki Enji, tried to convince him otherwise, told him that he didn’t know how the real world worked and that he would never be successful, but Shouto wouldn’t budge and eventually Enji caved in, or so it seemed.

Enji immediately enrolled Shouto in lessons, instructing him to shape up or ship out. if he couldn’t become successful in the industry, he would take over his father’s business instead, but that didn’t happen. Shouto excelled in lessons, blowing his instructors away with his timbre and control. he was a natural, and frankly, good enough to be a star. they weren’t so concerned with his stoic yet endearing personality. they had broken enough pop stars, molded them to be perfect model citizens, so what was one more?

the plan backfired immensely. as Shouto’s talent grew, Enji seeked out the biggest in the game, convincing them to give his son a chance at stardom. while reluctant, the board agreed, not wanting to piss off one of the most powerful men in Japan but were thoroughly surprised at the fact that his kid didn’t suck at all. in fact, he was actually good, really, really good.

they signed him immediately, whisking him away into the life of fame and fortune at the young age of seventeen. his range, the slight rasp to his tone and the ability to reach into somebody's soul and pluck the very feelings they try to hide so deeply from it’s depths pushed him towards the life of a rockstar. the freedom he had never been able to experience living at home pushed him over the edge and spiraled him out of control.

Todoroki drank, smoked, and fucked his way through cities big and small, getting himself into a lot of trouble along the way. the behavior went on for years, only getting worse as time went on. nobody seemed to be able to get control over the boy with the pretty hair and wild scar. after almost killing several women and one of his bandmates in a drunk driving accident, his team, label, and most importantly his father had enough.

the conversation between the two did not go well. Shouto was now an adult, legally free and clear from his father’s power. he had his own money, enough to live comfortably for awhile, even if he dropped the band, and all of the repressed rage, longing and anger that was pent up from his childhood. he was not stopping his lifestyle for anyone. that was, until you came along.

you were always a scrapper, getting yourself in trouble more times than you could count. it was just in your nature to defend those who couldn’t defend themselves and you spent many days on the playground beating up the bullies who picked on the sweet girl braiding flowers into her hair, or the boy who liked to play with baby dolls instead of trucks.

as you got older, your fights got fewer and farther in between, at least when it came to the public.

when you turned sixteen and kicked some kid who was trying to look up your skirt so hard in the chin that he saw stars, you were approached by a few men who slid you a card and told you if you wanted to make money fighting, come meet them.

you were a dumb kid and instead of running in the opposite direction and telling the police, you showed up at the seemingly dingy door behind the alley of a fairly run down ramen restaurant. knocking on the door and rocking back on your heels, you waited to see what would happen. it took a few seconds before a panel slid open, allowing you to see nothing but someone’s eyes peering at you in the mid-afternoon sun. hesitantly, you raised the business card in your hand, showing it to the person and jumping in surprise as the panel slammed shut and the door creaked open, inviting you in.

you nodded your head politely at who you realized was a rather bulky, burly man, before a woman dressed in a silky black dress plucked the card delicately from your hand and led you through the hallway. when she opened the door, you were taken aback by the scene.

people of all shapes and sizes stood cheering as two rather muscular men fought in an arena across the room. spit and blood flew across the floor as the two pummeled each other over and over again before one tapped out, the other man raising his fist in the air in victory. you stood, gaze fixed on the scene in front of you, blood racing at the thought of you being in the ring.

“addicting, isn’t it?” the woman whispered in your ear, a knowing smile on her face before she gently took you by the sleeve and guided you away from the screams and shouts into a private room that was much quieter.

you sat down in front of a man who was rather tall and thin, graying hair across his head and a clean shaven face.

“so, i heard you’re a good fighter. how good do you think you are?”

“uh-” you stuttered, not sure how to respond, “i think i can kick someone’s ass if i have a reason to.”

“is money a good enough reason for you?”

“money is a nice reward, yeah, yeah it is,” you confirmed, not pondering the question over for a second.

“good, you start on Saturday. come in comfy clothes that you won’t mind getting sweaty and dirty in. you’re my new ace, a secret weapon. give it six months time and you’ll be defeating guys like that out there in seconds.”

and defeat you did. over and over again, men, women, anyone who thought they were better than you were defeated by your own fists. you worked hard and then some, through literal sweat, blood and tears, to reach the status of champion of the underworld by the age of eighteen.

you were a wild card, unpredictable in your stature. you didn’t have hulking muscles and a sturdy frame, but what you did have was speed, the element of surprise, and the ability to calculate in a split second, all of which allowed you to defeat your enemies time and time again. this relative victory didn’t come without your share of sacrifices: hiding the bruises, blackened eyes and bloody lips from your family as you trained relentlessly, having to figure out a way to manage the steady flow of income that started coming your way as you fought in your first official matches, defeat after defeat as you trained, chipping a tooth and having it promptly filled in like nothing happened, having to learn how to disarm and fire a gun, work with knives and most importantly, losing a bit of your empathy along the way.

it came as no surprise when people who were much more powerful and much, much richer started taking an interest in you, placing large bets upon your head at some of the higher staked matches, a feat you worked your way up to after many years. you never failed to disappoint, knowing that these fights were the ones that mattered the most, the ones that brought you, and your boss, the biggest pools of money.

it was at one of these fights on a dreary, rainy night that you met Todoroki Enji, a hulking man that failed to intimidate you. you were used to people his size and bigger thinking he could take advantage of someone like you and it only made you chuckle thinking of how easy it would be to have him on his knees in seconds.

“i’ve made a proposal to your boss that he couldn’t refuse. he said he couldn’t and wouldn’t force you to do anything, but since you’re quite motivated by money, i think you’ll be intrigued by my offer,” he started, sitting down next to you in one of the VIP booths, sliding his business card on the table with a sly smile.

you were interested and entertained him, listening to him ramble about his shitty kid and his bad behavior. amused, you sipped on your drink as you absorbed his rants and whines about the negative reputation his kid was creating for himself, how he abused his freedom and power to the fullest extent and how his life was spiraling out of control.

“what does this have to do with me, exactly?” you finally questioned, setting your drink down and turning to face him, eyes met squarely with his own.

“i’d like to hire you to be his personal bodyguard.”

“sounds like he needs a babysitter, not a bodyguard,” you retorted, getting ready to stand up and move away from this blathering idiot.

when he spit out a number so outrageous, however, you sat back down, now thoroughly intrigued by the situation at hand. satisfied that he had your full attention, he went into details, laying down a fairly thin stack of papers in front of you as you listened to every detail.

“so let me get this straight. i’m to be his personal bodyguard, keep his shitty behavior a little more under control, whip him up into shape sort of situation. that’s it? and i’ll get paid that much for being a glorified babysitter?”

“you will have to protect him, of course. there are some crazy fans out there that climb windows, seduce themselves into his bed, stalk him, chase him down, but i don’t think it’s anything that, with your expertise, you can’t handle.”

you continued to ponder the situation before gesturing him to continue with his story. he rambled for another moment or two before picking up the papers and going over them with you: standard non-disclosure agreements, a detailed list of your job description and a contract agreement that he was subleasing you through your boss.

after a few minutes of reading the contracts over and discussing them with your boss, you agreed to the scenario, locking yourself into what would be a rather entertaining six months.

the first time you met Todoroki, he instantly tried to hit on you, but when his hand lowered down to grab your ass, you had him on his knees with his left hand behind his back before he could even blink. after that encounter, your conversations were curt. he knew what you were here for and he wasn’t about to let you get his way.

what he wasn’t expecting was for you to be so relaxed about the whole situation. he still drank, still partied, fucked almost whatever girl or guy he wanted, but anytime things got too out of hand, you stepped in, firm but gentle, guiding the crying groupies out of his bedroom after their time was over, driving him every time he got too drunk, cutting him off from any supplies when he was getting out of hand and most importantly, keeping him safe during his travels.

he never realized how much danger he was always in until you mitigated the problems with ease. he just assumed that being assaulted on the daily was something that came with being in the public until you broke some robbers finger when they tried to swipe the wallet out of his own back pocket. after that, he almost clung to you like a koala on a tree anytime he was out in public. you provided stability in a time where he was drowning in his own worries.

that didn’t mean he was ever nice to you though. in reality, he was actually sometimes meaner to you, the simple fact that some girl could be stronger than him set him off, always feeling on edge around you. you weren’t necessarily quiet, offering up any and all small bits and pieces about yourself that he ever wanted to know, but he never really knew you: not your last name, where you were from, if you had any siblings, parents, where you went to school, what your job was, who you were on the inside. it bugged him like crazy to know what your favorite color was and that you liked cheese on your ramen but not anything important, anything he wanted to know.

you liked to keep it that way, however, and would stay as friendly yet aloof as possible. this was a job to you, a job that would set you up easy for awhile and gave you a break from fighting for the most part. you wouldn’t admit to yourself that you liked the man more than you would’ve expected. you felt the way he clung to you as fans swarmed him, the way he always looked to you in reassurance as you walked the streets at night, hearing his sobs in the shower, sobs that were so broken and confused. it showed to you a side of him that was vulnerable, that showed emotion.

he broke down towards the end of your stay, realizing a little too late how much easier it was for you to do your job when he was cooperative and nice. in fact, he began to be more open about enjoying your company and spending time with you. it made it harder for you to continue with your job knowing you were falling for the pretty rich boy, for the man you were hired to protect, for the man who looked at you like you could do no wrong but vehemently would deny it. you began enjoying the little moments with him, the stolen glances, the laughing. you didn’t know what changed in him but you were glad he was someone you could get along with. underneath that crazy exterior, he was just a guy who wanted a friend.

your six months came up relatively quickly. it sucked that your cushy job living in five star hotels, eating decadent meals and working out in state of the art facilities would be over soon but you felt yourself getting lazy, weak and losing your rather sharp edge. it was time to get back into the grind and despite your heart panging at the fact that you would leave the pretty boy with the angry and sad heart behind, you were ready to go.

your last night of work consisted of the final show in Tokyo. tens of thousands of guests were set to attend what would be the bands biggest concert ever. you were calm, cool and collected as always, but the singer, not so much.

he spent the day pacing back and forth, warming up his vocals, hydrating himself, stretching and generally doing his best to calm his nerves.

in a rare act of affection, you reached out to grab your hand with his own, looking him dead in the eye and telling him that this night would be one he would remember forever; and you were right, just not for the way either of you thought.

the show went amazing, the crowd loud and receptive, the choreography flawless, the singing perfect. Todoroki ran off stage with the biggest smile he had ever seen and in his own rare display of affection, twirled you around with ease, adrenaline still pumping through his system.

you congratulated him on the great show and waited patiently for him to remove all the makeup and his costume. he emerged a little while later, hair flat against his head, wet from the shower, sweatpants and an inconspicuous gray hoodie donning his body. you bid a pleasant farewell to his bandmates before escorting him back to the car. he had requested that you drive him back to the hotel and spend one final night in the comfortable hotel beds before you headed back to your hometown.

when you arrived, however, things felt quiet, a little too quiet, and the hair stood up on the back of your neck.

“Shouto, you need to get into the driver’s seat right now, turn on the car and lock it. do not let me in until i tell you to. do not get out of the car, okay?”

he began to question you but before he had a chance to argue, you were pushing him out of the way as a knife sliced towards him, figures cloaked in black emerging from the shadows.

one, two, three, four.

you counted out the four assailants as you shoved Shouto against the car, prompting him to unlock and scramble in through the back seat. only when you heard the click of the lock did you breathe a sigh of relief and begin your attack.

the first man with the knife was tall and lanky, using his height to his advantage, trying to overwhelm you, but with a quick kick to the back of his kneecaps, he went tumbling onto his knees. now shorter than you, you were able to control him by grabbing onto the top of his head and slamming it into the ground, effectively knocking him out.

one, two, three.

the next man thought his muscles would save the day, but his size lacked any true speed, and you were able to land fingers to his eyes, a punch square to his nose. a quick chokehold and he was knocked out against the concrete as well.

one, two.

they both came at once, knives flailing in the air as they sliced your way. one managed to gouge out a chunk of flesh in your arm but you paid no mind, too focused on the task at hand as you grabbed the knife with your hand and used the other arm to knock into their elbow, making them loosen their grip enough to let go of the blade that you then embedded into their shoulder. the other assailant took your distraction to swing the knife your way and as you were trying to dodge the serrated edge, used their other fist to swing up into your chin. you felt your teeth chatter against each other, blood mixing with saliva as you bit your tongue. spitting, you slammed your hand down against their wrist, grabbing the knife with your hand and yanking, not caring that it sliced into your palm as you flipped the weapon around to shove it into their abdomen.

with both men distracted, you slammed your fist against the car door, telling Shouto to quickly unlock it so you could get in. when you heard the telltale click, you instantly dove into the backseat, yelling at him to lock it and drive as fast as he could back to the hotel. he did as he was told with an eerie calmness to him, backing out and around the attackers that were attempting to survey the damage that had been dealt to them.

once you had made the relatively quick trip back to the hotel, you hurriedly jumped out of the car, telling Shouto to carry his own bags so you could be on alert if anything were to happen, scanning each and every corner for a possible other attack. thankfully, everything was safe as you made your way into his hotel room.

you dropped him off quietly, not even attempting to walk into his room, but only fifteen minutes had passed before he was knocking on your door, a first aid kit he had gotten from the front desk securely tucked under his arm.

you let him in without a word, locking the door behind you and turning to face him. before you had a chance to ask what he was doing there, he had dragged you into your rather grandiose bathroom, sitting you on the steps leading up to the jacuzzi tub and pulling out the contents of the kit onto the floor.

he began by assessing the damage to your wounds, cleaning and disinfecting them before wrapping both your hand and arm rather efficiently.

“i had to wrap a lot of my own wounds as well as my siblings. dear old dad let the temper get the best of him sometimes and it wasn’t always so pretty,” he explained, teeth clenching together in an attempt to remain calm.

“thanks for this. i’m sure they’ll heal just fine,” you replied, not wanting to put him in a situation where he had to talk about his troubling past.

“you could’ve died protecting me today, you know?”

“that’s my job Todoroki. i was hired to protect you, i protected you, and i’m fine, thank you very much. this is not my first fight and it definitely won’t be my last.”

he sighed, rubbing his temples as he sat down on the marble floor in front of you, holding your wounded hand in his own, tracing the fabric that surrounded your palm.

“i recognized one of the cars in the parking lot. it was a company car, one of my dad’s cars to be precise. i know they can seem relatively inconspicuous but i memorized every car my dad ever had, big or small. it was definitely his car.”

you mulled over his words for a moment before sighing yourself, slumping against the stairs as your head rested against the rim of the tub.

“your dad sent those men, huh? that’s why you were so eerily calm driving away. you knew you weren’t really in any danger, that those men were secretly there to kill me,” you finally concluded, anger boiling deep within the pit of your stomach.

“yeah, i think they were. i don’t think dad is too fond of the fact that you and i got close. i-i like you a lot more than i let on, i’ve told him so. i thought that would make him happy, knowing i have someone in my life that i could rely on and trust, but he didn’t like the fact that he couldn’t control you after these six months were up, think he wanted to teach me a lesson.”

“wouldn’t be the first time i’ve had a hit out on my head. this one, however, is probably going to be a lot tricker to deal with.”

Shouto sunk deeper into himself, body shaking with rage as he saw the fight flash in his head over and over again.

“i’m going to protect you. if you want to, that is. i’ll sign you on as my own bodyguard, however much money you want. i’ll be by your side always, make sure that nobody tries to kill you, tries to hurt you like that again.”

“i can fend for myself Todoroki.”

“it’s Shouto. and why won’t you let anyone else take care of you? listen, i know i’ve been kind of an ass but i thought we were at least friends, and yet i know nothing about you. i know your favorite color, your favorite animal, that you like sunsets and the rain and snuggling under comfy sheets at the end of the day, that your eyes sparkle when you get a chance to fight but secretly crave peace and comfort, but i don’t know who you are. your name, your story, why you’re really here.”

you heaved as you sat back up, staring him straight in the eye to find no malice, no anger, only confusion, empathy and maybe even a bit of longing. so you told him, you told him everything: who you were, what you were, where you grew up, about your childhood dog and all the scraps you had as a kid, how two strange men in suits approached you and groomed you to fight at the age of sixteen, how it was the only thing you knew how to do, the only thing you were good at, how you scared yourself sometimes because you enjoyed the pain that came with the fights. he sat there watching, eyes wide and unblinking as he absorbed every word you said, every bit of pain and anxiety, of longing for someone to love and understand you, of not having to fight all the time, of wanting to be vulnerable for once.

“let me take care of you,” he declared, standing up and outstretching his hand towards you, helping you up from the cool tile, hand coming to rest behind your head once you had steadied yourself.

he leaned forward, unsure and hesitant, before placing his lips against your own, soft and gentle, tasting of mint chapstick and coffee. you were unsure of yourself, awkward, full of aches and pains, wanting so badly to let go but never wanting to get hurt.

“it’s okay, you’re safe with me. let me take care of you, please.”

that was all it took for you to open up, looping your arms around his neck as he led you back to the bedroom, careful to not run you into anything. your knees hit the back of the bed and you reflexively tensed up, like a deer in headlights.

he shushed you, rubbing his hands up and down your arms, heeding the bandage and wound underneath. you laid back after that, body attempting to relax as his hands ran themselves soothingly over your body, across your breasts, the flesh of your stomach, your thighs, the corded muscles in your calves, slipping your shoes off, your socks, kissing every inch of your body along the way, making sure you were comfortable. you shimmied out of your pants, your tight shirt, bra, underwear, finally bare for him to see, scars, bruises, all the imperfections of your life.

“so, so beautiful,” he murmured, taking his time to kiss every single blemish and scar that you had, wanting you to feel his dedication.

after what felt like hours of soft kisses, his thumb came to rest on your clit, rubbing in quick and precise circles, fingers gently parting your folds to press into your body, back arching at the feeling of him already.

“it’s all about you tonight, okay? just relax, let me show you how much i appreciate you.”

and appreciate you he did. he dropped to his knees, nose nuzzling into your pubic bone as he kitten licked your clit once, twice, three times, testing your reaction. you whined and squirmed at the feeling, already overwhelmed by his fingers lazily dragging in and out of you. you wanted, needed more, but Todoroki wouldn’t hear any of that. you deserved to be treated right, treated gently tonight, to allow your worries to melt away, if only for a few moments.

his fingers began picking up pace, pistoning in and out of you, his fingers curling in all the right spots, fists clenched into the downy comforter as you attempted to ground yourself from the overwhelming situation. his tongue worked against your clit, changing speed and pressure, trying to find what was the right combination to set you off, watching your every move intently as you squirmed around on the bed. before he even got a chance to get into a routine, you were already cumming over his fingers, creamy liquid coating the digits.

he hummed in contentment, pulling his fingers out to lick up the syrup, you watching with your pupils blown wide.

you went to sit up, body aching from the adrenaline of the fight, but he pushed you back down into the plush bed, tutting as he settled his head against your thigh, kissing, sucking and biting along the plump flesh, leaving little marks only he would know about.

his tongue began lapping at your clit again, this time harsher, more in tune with what your body wanted. you clenched your legs around his head, fisting his hair with your good hand as you tried to ground yourself yet again to reality. his velvety tongue felt like heaven against your body, coaxing moans and sighs out of your mouth. you felt your second orgasm hit you like a freight truck, tingles running up your spine. you tried to push his head away but he only held your body down, a frighteningly feral look on his face as he continued to lap against your clit, unrelenting in his pursuit to pull orgasm after orgasm from you.

after, two, three, four more highs, you couldn’t tell where one began and one ended, he was finally satisfied, pulling his face away, chin glistening in the dim light. your eyes were teary and red, overwhelmed by everything he had put you through. you had never been more satisfied in your life, and by the look on Shouto’s face, he knew it too.

your eyelids began to droop and your body relaxed into the mattress as you came back down into reality. Shouto shuffled around the room before settling you into your bed, tucking the sheets around your body and propping your head against your pillow.

he was enamored by your, by your story, how you opened up so willingly to him after tonight. nothing would get in between you two now. he was just starting to truly know you, know the real you, and nothing was going to stop him from wooing you until you were his, not even his father., and if her life was ever threatened again by him, well, Shouto would just have to kill Todoroki Enji.

#todoroki x reader #shoto todoroki #shouto todoroki #bnha x reader #mha x reader #boku no hero academia #my hero academia #mha #bnha #bnharem collab

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the-desolated-quill · 3 years

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WandaVision: ‘Subverting’ Good Television - Quill’s Scribbles

(Spoilers for the first five episodes)

Hey everyone! Well... it’s been a while, hasn’t it? The last time I wrote a proper review or Scribble, people still thought the COVID crisis would be over within a month. The poor saps. But I thought that as a special way to mark this year’s Valentines Day, we could take a closer look at the Marvel Cinematic Universe’s shittiest power couple in their new Disney+ show WandaVision.

The first of many MCU spin-off shows that nobody asked for, broadcast exclusively on Disney’s totally unnecessary streaming platform, WandaVision is about everybody’s favourite whitewashed Nazi experiment and her red sexbot boyfriend as they try to fit into a suburban sitcom neighbourhood without arousing suspicion.

Yes, you read that correctly. The MCU has a sitcom now. My life is now complete.

Sarcasm aside, I was legitimately curious about WandaVision because of its unusual setting. And considering one of my most common criticisms of the MCU is its total lack of creativity, anything that’s even a little bit subversive is bound to attract my attention. Of course ‘subversive’ doesn’t necessarily mean ‘good.’ I could hand you a canvas smeared with my own shit and call it subversive. That doesn’t necessarily make it good art. And that’s exactly what WandaVision is. A canvas smeared with shit.

So lets split this critical analysis/review/angry bitter rant into two distinct chapters. The first focusing on the plot and setting, and the second focusing on the characters. Okay? Okay.

Chapter 1: Bewitched

Critics seem to be utterly enamoured with the whole sitcom gimmick, and it is a gimmick. As far as I can tell from the episodes I’ve seen, the sitcom setting serves no real purpose whatsoever other than to make the show ‘quirky.’ Which I wouldn’t mind, believe it or not, if the show was actually funny. There’s just one problem. It’s not.

Now in some ways describing why a sitcom doesn’t work is often futile because comedy is largely subjective. What I find funny, you won’t necessarily find funny and vice versa. With WandaVision, however, I won’t have that problem. I can demonstrate to you precisely why WandaVision, objectively, isn’t funny. And it all comes down to one simple thing. The stakes. Or rather the complete and total absence of stakes.

The show makes it very clear from the beginning that none of what we’re seeing is real. The cheesy theme song, the era appropriate special effects (mostly. It’s actually very inconsistent), the joke commercials, and, in the case of the first two episodes, which are in black and white, the appearance of red lights and objects in Scarlet Witch’s general vicinity. (Gee, what a mystery this is).

Basically Wanda has brought Vision back from the dead and created this sitcom world for them to inhabit. I’ll explain the stupidity of this in Chapter 2. The point is none of this is real, and that has a negative effect on the comedy because the very nature of comedy is suffering. Take the plot of the first episode. Wanda and Vision have to prepare a dinner to impress Vision’s boss. If they fail, Vision could lose his job and the couple could be exposed as superheroes. If this were a normal sitcom, it would work. The stakes are clear and it would be satisfying to see the two struggle and overcome the odds. But here, we know it’s not real. If it’s not real, it means there’s no stakes. If there’s no stakes, it means there’s no suffering. If there’s no suffering, there’s no comedy.

It would be one thing if the unfunny sitcom stuff lasted for like the first ten minutes or so before making way for the actual plot, but it doesn’t. Oh no. It doesn’t even last for the first episode. Out of the five episodes I’ve watched, four of them are almost entirely about these unfunny, objectively flawed sitcom homages, each set in a different time period. The fifties, the sixties, and so on. And what’s worse is that nothing that happens in them is plot-relevant. That gets relegated to the last five minutes of an episode. So you’re forced to sit through twenty five minutes of boring slapstick and puns in order to catch even a whiff of actual story. Which begs the question... who is this for exactly? It can’t be entertaining to Marvel fans, who have to slog through all this pointless shit so they can figure out what the fuck is going on. Comedy fans may get a kick out of the sitcom pastiche at first, but after four episodes, surely the joke would wear thin. So why is it in here? Clearly someone in the writer’s room absolutely fell in love with the idea of doing a Marvel sitcom, but nobody put in any time or effort to figure out how it would work in context.

I cannot stress enough how bad the plotting of this series is. As I said, the vast majority of a thirty minute episode is about shitty sitcom plots that aren’t funny and don’t have any impact on the story, only to then tease you with a crumb of actual plot in order to keep you coming back for the next instalment. Admittedly it’s an effective strategy. I was more than ready to quit after Episode 2 until that beekeeper showed up out of the sewer (don’t ask. It’s not important). WandaVision essentially follows the Steven Moffat school of bad writing. String your audience along with the promise that things might get more interesting later on and that all the bullshit that came before will retroactively make sense by the end. Except, as demonstrated with BBC’s Sherlock, that doesn’t work. And even if it did, it wouldn’t justify wasting the audience’s fucking time. And that’s what the majority of WandaVision is. A waste of time.

The only episode that doesn’t follow the sitcom format is the fourth episode. Instead it basically exists to explain all the shit that happened before. The shit that the audience, frankly, are smart enough to figure out for themselves. Wanda created the sitcom world as a way of coping with the loss of Vision, blah, blah, blah. Yeah, we got it. Thanks. It doesn’t advance the plot or anything. It’s just a massive info-dump. But by far the lowest point was when Darcy (by far the most annoying character in the first Thor film and is just as obnoxious here) was sat in front of the TV, watching the sitcom and asking the same questions we were. Not even attempting to look for answers. Just reiterating what the audience is thinking. Like this is an episode of fucking Gogglebox.

In the end it becomes apparent why the series is structured the way that it is. It’s to hoodwink people into subscribing to Disney’s stupid streaming service. If you think about it, there was no reason for WandaVision to be a TV series other than to lure gullible fans in with a piece-meal story buried in a mountain of crap. This isn’t a TV show. It’s what is cynically known in the world of big business executives as ‘content.’ They’re not interested in entertaining the audience. Instead they crave ‘engagement’, which isn’t the same thing. Watching WandaVision is like staring into the void, waiting for something to happen, while Disney charge you for the privilege.

Chapter 2: I Love Lucy

So the plot sucks balls. What about the characters? Surely if Wanda and Vision are likeable at least, it’ll give us something to cling onto.

Well as I was watching the first episode, it suddenly hit me that I couldn’t remember anything that happened to them in previous films. I knew Vision died, but other than that, I couldn’t tell you significant plot details or their personalities or anything. Not a great start.

See, up until now, Vision and Scarlet Witch have been little more than background characters. So already there’s an uphill struggle to get us invested in their relationship, especially considering we haven’t actually seen that relationship develop. In Avengers: Age Of Ultron, Scarlet Witch is killing people because she’s pissed off about Tony Stark killing people (you work that one out) until all of a sudden she stops and joins the good guys because the script said so. Vision meanwhile is introduced as a convenient deus ex machina to beat Ultron and gets no real personality other than he’s a robot. Captain America: Civil War comes the closest to giving Wanda a story and personality of her own as it’s her actions that cause the Sokovia Accords to come into effect, but she never gets any real growth or payoff as the film is heavily focused on Cap and Iron Man’s penis measuring contest. And as for Vision, all he does in the film is accidentally cripple War Machine. No real character or arc there as such. And then we have Avengers: Infinity War, where Wanda and Vision are now sporadically in love and on the run until that pesky Josh Brolin, looking like a CGI cross between Joss Whedon and a grumpy grape, comes along and rips out Vision’s Infinity Stone to power up his golden glove of doom, and the film treats this like a tragic moment, except... it isn’t. Because we haven’t really had the time to properly get to know these characters and see their romance blossom. So instead it just comes off as hollow and forced.

WandaVision has the exact same problem. Apparently Wanda was so distraught about Vision’s death that she broke into a SWORD base, stole his corpse, brought it back from the dead... somehow, and then enslaved an entire town of people to create an idyllic lifestyle for her and her hubby while broadcasting it as a sitcom to the outside world... for some reason. Putting aside the dubious morality of it all, it’s impossible to really sympathise with Wanda or her supposed grief because we’ve barely spent any time with her. Had the Marvel movies taken the time to properly explore the characters and show us their relationship grow and develop, this might have had more emotional resonance. But no, it just happens. In one film they barely speak to each other and in the next they’re a couple. No effort to explore how they feel about each other or any of the problems that may arise trying to date a robot. It just happens and we’re just supposed to care. Well I’m sorry, but I don’t care. You’re going to have to try a little bit harder than that I’m afraid. What’s worse is that, thanks to the whole fake sitcom thing, it’s impossible to really become invested in Wanda and her plight because the show has to constantly keep us at arms length at all times in order to keep up the pretence that this bullshit is somehow mysterious.

Looking through the WandaVision tag, it amuses me how many people say that she’s acting out of character. And yeah, her actions are a bit of a head scratcher. Why would an Eastern European’s ideal life be an American sitcom? Why a sitcom? Why kidnap an entire town? Why keep changing the decade? None of it makes sense, but you’re wrong for thinking that Wanda is behaving out of character for the simple reason that Wanda has never actually had a character. In fact, ironically, Wanda mind controlling an entire town and forcing them to do her bidding is probably the one consistent thing about her as she did this in Age Of Ultron. In interviews, Elizabeth Olsen and Paul Bettany described how they used actors like Elizabeth Montgomery and Dick Van Dyke as influences, which is really funny because they’re straight up admitting they don’t have characters and even now they’re still not playing the characters, instead emulating the work of far better actors.

As I was watching the show, it became abundantly clear that not only do Marvel not have the faintest idea what they wanted to do with these characters, but they also straight up don’t give a shit about these characters. Wanda in particular has had a rough time under the tyrannical regime of the House of Mouse. First they cast Elizabeth Olsen, a white woman, to play a Romani character, then systematically erasing her Jewish roots, even going so far as to put a cross in her bedroom in Civil War, and now the character is being butchered even more by forcing her into an American sitcom housewife role that she apparently willingly chose for herself, which is laughable. I mean say what you like about Magneto in the X-Men films, at least they actually depicted his Jewish culture. At least they recognised his Jewish background was important (though not important enough to cast a Jewish actor apparently). Wanda’s steady cultural erasure over the years is incredibly insidious and judging by Olsen’s comments in interviews, where she called Wanda’s comic book outfit a quote ‘gypsy thing’ unquote, it seems nobody has an ounce of fucking respect for the character or the culture she’s supposed to be representing. (and to all those kissing her arse saying it was a slip of the tongue, she has been repeatedly called out for using the slur in the past, so at this point I’d describe her behaviour as wilful ignorance)

If you want further proof of how much Marvel doesn’t seem to care about Wanda, look no further than her brother Pietro, aka Quicksilver. At the end of Episode 5, Wanda brings Pietro back from the dead, except it’s not Pietro. It’s Peter Maximoff, the Quicksilver from the X-Men films played by Peter Evans, who coincidentally is not Jewish or Romani either. So Quicksilver has the dubious honour of not only being whitewashed three times, but also twice within the same franchise. But should we really be surprised at this point? It’s Marvel after all. The same company that whitewashed the Ancient One in Doctor Yellowface and claimed it wasn’t racist because Tilda Swinton is ‘Celtic’. But now I’m going off topic. My point is that this isn’t a simple case of recasting an actor like Mark Ruffalo replacing Edward Norton as the Hulk. WandaVision actually acknowledges the recast in-universe, which makes no sense. Why would Wanda bring back her brother, only to make him look like a different person? We the audience may be familiar with this version of Quicksilver, but she isn’t. That would be like me bringing my Grandad back to life and making him look like Ian McKellen. He’d be perfectly charming, I’m sure, but he wouldn’t be my Grandad.

If Marvel really cared about the characters or narrative consistency, they would have brought Aaron Taylor Johnson back. Instead, now they have absorbed 20th Century Fox into the hellish Disney abyss, they use X-Men’s Quicksilver as a means to keep viewers from switching off and so that people will write stupid articles and think pieces about whether the rest of the X-Men will show up in the MCU. It’s like dangling your keys in front of a toddler’s face to distract them from the rotting corpse of a raccoon lying face down in the corner of the room.

And it’s here where I decided to stop watching the show because fuck Disney.

Epilogue: One Foot In The Grave

You know, I am sick and tired of the so called ‘professional’ critics bending over backwards to praise these god awful films and shows when it’s so clear to anyone with a functioning brain cell how bad they truly are. WandaVision is without a doubt one of the most cynically produced and poorly structured TV shows I’ve ever seen. Its riffs on classic sitcoms are pointless and self-indulgent, the writing is terrible, the characters are unlikable and unsympathetic, and it’s entirely emblematic of what the entire MCU has become of late. And it’s only going to get worse as Disney drowns us with more ‘content’ to keep the plebs ‘engaged’. In short; pathetic.

#anti wandavision #anti marvel #anti mcu #anti disney #quill's scribbles

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violetwolfraven · 3 years

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Willie Headcanons

So I actually came up with this like a month ago and forgot to post it. Anyway enjoy my headcanons about our favorite sk8er boi. Be ready for feels.

Tw: death, car accident mention, emotional manipulation.

...

In my mind, Willie had a good relationship with his parents. They were supportive and everything. They both loved Willie very much.

And Willie has youngest child energy so I’m saying he has a sister who’s 2 years older and a brother who’s 5 years older. Their names are Delilah and Austin.

AND ALL THREE OF THEM ARE ADRENALINE JUNKIES.

Seriously imagine the worst possible combination of head empty only skateboarding and you’ve got Willie, Delilah, and Austin.

Austin started skating when he was 7 and got Delilah hooked on it a year later.

Their parents kinda didn’t like the idea of it but those two had already started teaching Willie basic stuff by the time he was 3.

But... the other two had other interests. Delilah was into art (painting) and Austin played piano (like, really well).

For Willie, skateboarding was his thing. And it always was.

He had fun with it when his big brother would put his hands on his and teach him to play a bit, or his sister would give him some paint and a spare canvas and they’d doodle together, but it wasn’t like skating.

As far as I’ve seen (which admittedly isn’t that far) it’s widely accepted that Willie has ADHD so I’m leaning into that here.

And Willie inherited his brain from his dad, who had a bad experience with meds and so wouldn’t let any of his kids go through it.

So Willie grew up unmedicated but probably better off for the time period. His dad taught him coping mechanisms. Him and Austin. Delilah didn’t inherit it but she was taught to empathize with her brothers and recognize when they needed her help with something.

She’s a badass who can and does beat up anybody who’s mean to her brothers for missing social cues.

But anyway while Austin had piano (and skating as a side thing) Willie got even more hooked on skateboarding than either of his siblings because his brain latched onto it from a young age and couldn’t let go.

We all have our outlets. The chaos in our brains has to go somewhere. For Willie it goes into skating.

When he’s young he and his siblings will skateboard to school and then after school they’ll skate all around Hollywood for hours.

They do their homework in random McDonalds and Denny’s and tbh become local cryptid customers. Like they’re just these 3 super friendly skater siblings who tip really well and visit every fast food place within a 20 mile radius of their house with varying frequency.

They also find e v e r y skatepark, empty pool, and vacant lot in that 20 mile radius that they can possibly find.

Their parents have to bail them out of jail for trespassing and the occasional vandalism every so often.

Sometimes one of them has stuff to do and it’s just two of them out skating but if two of them are busy the other one never goes out alone cause it’s dangerous. We’ll get back to that later.

So anyway when they’re 17, 14, and 12, Delilah comes out as a lesbian.

And the family is supportive of course because they’re a good family.

But her coming out gets Willie thinking. About how some of his friends have crushes on girls but he just... doesn’t see the appeal.

Like he has a couple friends who are girls and they’re great and he likes hanging out with them at recess but he doesn’t get the hype. They’re just more friends. So he doesn’t really see what his big sister is so interested in either.

In my mind Willie actually is from around the same time as the boys (dying in like 1999) so one day while nobody else in their house is home he and Delilah are watching Star Wars: Return of the Jedi and Willie’s again wondering why people think Leia is so hot cause she’s cool and all but Luke is right there and he looks really good and—

Willie: I think I might be gay.

Delilah: Yeah I know.

They talk about it and Willie does decide to tell the rest of the family but he’s a bit wary about anyone else because he saw how some of Delilah’s friends turned on her after she came out. He doesn’t want that to happen to him.

He does end up telling a few of his friends but he doesn’t quite not care what people think of him the way his big sister does.

Austin is the only straight one and he’s like. So awkward about it but in a sweet way.

Austin: So, Britney Spears is hot, right?

Delilah: Stop.

And

Austin: So I saw you hanging around Chris the other day are you two..?

Willie: ...no...???

Austin: Cool, yeah I didn’t think so. Just had to make sure. Not that I’m doubting your ability to get boys but I’d have to shovel talk him if you were.

Willie: If I ever do get a boyfriend, please don’t.

He tries. He’s a himbo if that wasn’t clear. Where did you think Willie learned it?

So anyway fast forward a couple years and they’re 22, 19, and 17. Austin and Delilah are both in college and Willie’s the last one left at home and things between their parents start getting... tense.

Like they don’t fight exactly but they’ve fallen out of love and things are awkward.

Even Austin and Delilah can tell and they’re only home on breaks and some weekends but for Willie it’s right there and he’s watching it happen. He has no option but to see.

They used to have a rule that they don’t go skating alone because it’s dangerous but Willie just can’t make himself stay home so he goes out skateboarding.

At first it’s never too far from home or anywhere where there’s too much traffic but as things get increasingly awkward at home he goes out farther and farther, chasing the adrenaline high he used to get from going anywhere and everywhere every day after school with his siblings.

Then his parents officially tell him they’re getting divorced and

And it’s not like he couldn’t see it coming, but... it still hurts.

And neither of his siblings are coming home any time soon so

So he goes out skating on his own, way too far from home. He keeps going until he doesn’t even know where he is anymore.

He isn’t really paying attention the way he should but that’s not why he runs into trouble.

The driver of that red pickup is drunk and he rounds the corner out of nowhere.

If Delilah or Austin had been there they could have yelled for Willie to jump out of the way, or maybe up on the hood so the impact wouldn’t be as bad, but he’s alone.

So he gets hit, and the car was going fast enough that he’s dead before he even hits the pavement.

After that there’s a lot of confusion but once Willie figures out he’s a ghost... it’s too painful to think about going home, so he just... doesn’t.

He doesn’t want to see his family mourning him, so he just distracts himself, skating everywhere he couldn’t before without getting busted.

Plus some old routes where he used to go with Delilah and Austin, just for something that’s familiar but not too familiar.

He’s on one of those more familiar routes a few weeks after his death when he’s skating down Sunset Boulevard one night, singing along to Toxic by Britney Spears blasting from a nearby club and a man dressed in a purple suit comments on how he’s got a good voice.

Honestly Willie is just so relieved to have someone to talk to that he forgets about stranger danger completely.

Plus he recognizes an Elder Gay in Caleb and assumes he can trust him because the Elder Gays he met at pride that one time he went with Delilah were so nice and understanding of how reassuring it was to see queer people of older generations who got a happy ending.

Caleb barely even has to try. He just lets this 17-year-old obviously-queer ghost rant at him for a few minutes, asks a few questions and finds out that he also can play piano, and convinces him to come to the Hollywood Ghost Club the next night.

From there it’s not like Willie has anyone to save him so of course he has to join the club.

At first he’s completely alone because the other performers scare him almost as much as Caleb does.

Then slowly, he sees how they give him space because they know he’s scared of them. How they turn a blind eye when he leaves the club without permission. How they don’t critique his mistakes with the same sarcasm they show each other.

Willie starts to realize that the other performers are doing their best to look out for him, and he starts being less afraid.

They’re all too concerned with their own survival to really protect him but if they draw some attention to themselves occasionally so Caleb doesn’t notice Willie being slow to pick up some tricky choreography, that’s not too risky.

The others are all like 21 at the youngest and they really don’t appreciate Caleb tricking a literal child into working for him no matter how talented said child is. (Cause Willie is good at singing and piano. It’s just not his passion.)

The twins are 22 but they died in 1925 and before that they were performing to support a younger brother who they never got to say goodbye to so maybe they see Willie as a kind of second chance.

Lyssa (what I decided to name drummer woman because I don’t know her real name if she has one) is 25 and she died in 1984. She had a daughter who’d be about Willie’s age now and... who knows? Maybe they were friends.

Fuego is 24 and from 1951 and he had a childhood best friend who enlisted and died in WWII that he thought he might get to see when he died but that boy moved on and so... well, Willie’s just a little younger than his friend was the last time he saw him.

In short Willie becomes everyone’s baby brother and they do what they can to look out for him even if they’re just as scared of Caleb as he is.

And the better adjusted Willie gets to (after)life at the HGC and the better they get to know him, the guiltier the others start to feel about him being stuck there.

Eventually a combination of guilt and worked-up courage leads Fuego tells him about the whole unfinished business thing, in hopes maybe he can figure his out and get away from Caleb.

It doesn’t take Willie long to think of his family, how hopeless he felt about the divorce, how worried he was it would change everything and then how scared he was to see his family in pain because of his death.

He realizes his unfinished business is probably seeing them. Letting himself say goodbye.

He almost gets away with it.

Caleb catches up and stops him in the driveway of his house and poofs them back to the HGC.

He convinces (gaslights) Willie into believing that saying goodbye was never his unfinished business and even if it was it’s not like it would matter because Caleb wouldn’t let him do it.

The next morning he ships the HGC out to Tokyo. They stay on the move for a long time and when they are in town, Willie is basically locked in his room.

The next time he’s allowed out in Hollywood, his parents don’t live in their old house anymore and he has no way to find them.

As a coping mechanism, he just starts making the best of a bad situation. Becoming better friends with the other ghosts. Helping soften the blow whenever someone new comes along.

None of that means he stops checking the faces of passing skaters or keeping eyes on restaurants his folks used to like, but it does mean he more or less gives up hope.

That’s what he’s doing when he bumps into Alex.

Look, Willie loves his friends at the HGC. He really does. But there’s a big difference between 17 and 20-something. Like the others will drink alcohol some nights and technically Willie was born over 21 years ago but he still feels weird enough about it that he doesn’t drink.

He hasn’t talked to anyone his age in a long time so Alex is a breath of fresh air.

Also he’s like. Really cute. And sweet. And funny. And shit, Willie’s fallen for him before he even has time to think about it.

He keeps thinking about how Alex doesn’t seem like he’d be physically capable of hurting someone on purpose so Austin would approve and every once in a while there’s that sarcasm that pops out which means he’d get along great with Delilah.

In general Alex is the kind of guy he would’ve loved to take home to meet the family. Them not included, he’s kind of... everything Willie’s missed about Hollywood in the form of one person.

Then they hang out more and Alex is still everything he’s missed but he’s also so much more than that and...

It almost feels like a part of Alex is still alive. And for the first time in years, a part of Willie feels alive, too.

They’ve known each other for like a week tops and Willie is already in love.

Not that he’s admitting that to anyone, because he’s learned the hard way that anyone you care about can be used against you.

Still... when Alex asks for help getting revenge on Bobby, he can’t bring himself to say no because he needs to keep Alex in his (after)life and the only way he knows how to do that (or to make people be nice to him in general) is to be as useful as possible.

That turns out to be a big mistake, because Caleb sees right through him in an instant, targets Alex to confirm it, then immediately starts the process to trick the boys into committing to eternity at the HGC.

Willie feels like an idiot for thinking he could actually get away with it. Doing something good for someone he cares about.

He hadn’t thought Caleb would be interested in them because he’d never actually heard them play. The assumption was that he’d make them do some small favor and then let them talk to their bandmate for 5 minutes. A clean deal where they never have to commit to anything. Willie forgot to take magic into account.

He almost manages to convince himself it was all a bad dream, but when he seeks out Alex and his friends to check on them, he can almost feel the jolts himself, and seeing Alexthem in pain feels terrible.

Willie knows that theoretically they could figure out their unfinished business and cross over, but that all depends on finding it and doing it fast enough and if they failed...

People you care about can be used against you. And Willie does not want to be used against Alex again. He doesn’t want to see Alex used against him.

So he keeps his distance, in hopes Caleb will think he lost interest. He’s pretty sure once the boys find out about the stamp they’ll hate him, anyway.

And plus, as he’s been taught by his friends at the HGC, you have to look out for yourself because no one else will do it for you. Maybe you hurt somebody by not standing up for them, but you can apologize later and hope they forgive you. You can’t apologize if you’re gone, and it’s not like it would make a difference anyway because Caleb is too powerful for anyone to beat.

The thought of how spending eternity with Alex might not be so bad even if it has to be at the HGC does come up, but ironically that’s what makes Willie decide to screw his courage to the sticking point and tell them.

Because he has seen what decades at the club has done to his friends.

They’re all great performers, and they perform happiness well even to each other, but Willie knows them enough to know how tired they all are. How they have been doing the same thing over and over again for decades and they are sick of it.

They’re young, talented tragedies lost to drug overdoses, or AIDS, or accidents, or suicide, and they should’ve gotten to rest after everything they went through in their lives. Instead, they got a curse disguised as a blessing. They got to stay on a stage, got to keep performing and soaking up applause, never got to stop.

Willie has been there a shorter time than most of them and he feels it. The exhaustion, because ghosts are supposed to haunt for a few years then figure out their unfinished business and move on. They’re not meant to be trapped for decades, used as party tricks.

A part of Alex still feels alive and being trapped in the Hollywood Ghost Club for years on end would kill that part of him.

Willie can’t let that happen, so as hard as it is...

He tells the boys what’s wrong with them. And by that hurt, betrayed look in Alex’s eyes, he’s honestly expecting him to never forgive him.

But then Alex does. And that almost hurts worse because whether he figures out his unfinished business or not, Willie doubts he’s ever going to see him again.

He honest to God almost cries when Alex hugs him because... shit, he hasn’t gotten a hug since he was breathing.

He goes back to the HGC and tries to go about his day, and keeps replaying how good it felt to have Alex’s arms around him, hoping that memory will get him through the next few decades on his own.

The ghosts at the club do actually gossip a fair amount and by this point all of them know about the 3 dead members of Sunset Curve.

So when Willie admits to Helen (what I’m calling one of the twins) that Alex hugging him was the first time he’d gotten a hug since he died, she hugs him tight for a good 20 seconds, telling him she’s sorry he has to lose him, and if Willie closes his eyes he can almost pretend it’s Delilah.

The next thing he knows, he’s locked in a closet.

Caleb comes to talk to (intimidate) him a few hours later, saying he knows what Willie did.

He’s magically locked in his room alone for a couple weeks after that and it’s essentially psychological torture.

Helen, Anna (what I decided to call the other twin), Dante, Fuego, Lyssa, and everyone else tell him not to test Caleb for the next couple years, but Willie has a heart full of love and a head full of fuck it, so he doesn’t listen.

He gives it exactly one day of being/acting scared and obedient, then goes out without permission again, fully intending to scream in a museum alone to let out all his feelings.

Remember: Willie didn’t see the Orpheum performance. He doesn’t know the boys didn’t cross over but by Caleb’s mood he has a feeling the outcome of that scenario was not in the magician’s favor.

He gets there and it’s literally this comic by the very talented @williessweatycherrysocks

He can’t stay long but he and Alex scream in each other’s faces, talk a bit, maybe sing a duet.

After that, they sneak to see each other when they can but don’t get to see much of each other for months.

It’s hard on both of them but they don’t give up on their relationship.

Through long and complicated events which I will outline later, Willie eventually gets free of the HGC, hugs his friends goodbye already making plans to take down Caleb for good to free them, too, and promptly declines an offer to stay in the Molinas’ garage.

As much as he wants to be close to Alex he’s done being confined to one place.

He still comes and visits like every day tho.

He knows a lot more about ghosting than the other boys do so he and Carlos get along amazingly like:

Carlos: So do you know who Jack the Ripper was?

Willie: No? How old do you think I am?

Carlos: I dunno but I thought it might be Caleb cause that would explain how he never got caught.

Willie, taking notes in his Things To Potentially Use To Take Caleb Down notebook: You’re a tiny genius.

No one was expecting it but everyone is in awe of how well he and Carrie get along. Between the two of them they know so much celebrity gossip. (and it’s definitely a good thing he’s on good terms with her cause she and Alex are close)

On the angsty side, Willie also bonds with Nick over how they both know how it feels to be manipulated and used by Caleb.

Also it takes a long time before he’s able to trust him, but he does get adopted into the Molina clan by Ray.

Ray reminds him a lot of his own dad, once Willie’s able to see that he’s nothing like Caleb.

Ray’s honestly just 100% happy to Dad™️ anyone who needs a dad so it works out great once Julie and the boys figure out how to make Willie visible.

But anyway back to important stuff.

Now that they don’t have to hide for any reason, Willie and Alex can both breathe a little easier. Or... they both feel better. Ghosts don’t really breathe.

Willie can finally let himself get used to feeling alive again.

The whole ghost gang goes (invisibly) to the Los Feliz Homecoming dance and maybe it should make him feel a little on-edge with the kind of club-like environment but...

He’s got Alex there, and they’re dancing to some corny pop love song from the 90s that Flynn probably put on because she knew the ghost boys would be there so how could he feel anything but safe?

For a minute it almost feels like actually being alive and there’s yellow and pink and blue lights coming from everywhere reflecting in Alex’s eyes and Willie is suddenly very aware of the fact that though they’ve been together for a long time now, they haven’t had their first kiss.

Then the Cha Cha Slide starts up and the atmosphere switches and Willie totally forgets about the whole romantic tension thing because it’s the Cha Cha Slide everybody has to dance along.

Dirty Candi performs towards the end of the night and the ghost boys cheer the loudest despite how Julie’s laughing at them. They don’t care that Carrie can’t even hear them, they’re being supportive!!!

Everybody screams even louder when Flynn runs up on stage and kisses Carrie and Willie feels a big burst of affection at how Alex shouts ABOUT TIME!

Then he gives Willie a quick hug and leaves cause he and the rest of Julie and the Phantoms have to go get set up for their performance.

Since Alex was able to flip Carrie’s hair in All Eyes on Me I’m saying that ghosts can touch lifers if they focus and believe it will happen hard enough, so the ghost gang has developed a system for alerting their non-Julie lifer friends to their presence.

So while they’re waiting in the crowd Willie taps Carrie on the shoulder like: • - - one short tap, two long taps, a Morse code ‘W’ and Carrie lets Flynn know that he’s there.

(Nick can see him too but Nick’s off somewhere with his date {one of his lacrosse teammates you know the one})

Anyway so Julie goes out and starts up the song and then the rest of the band poofs in but

Something’s unusual.

Cause it’s not Luke on the lower main vocals.

It’s

Alex

Singing while he plays the drums and fucking killing it.

Willie totally bluescreens for a second but then when he actually focuses on the lyrics...

It’s a new song about beating the odds and being with the person you love in spite of the challenges that come with them.

And yeah there are Julie elements in there, (and she’s definitely making heart eyes at Luke even as he sticks to backup vocals) because of course there are since she has to start the song up, but

But Willie might not have any formal music training, but he was at the HGC long enough to know his stuff about music and recognize different artists’ styles.

And there’s a time signature switch on the bridge that’s a little off from how Luke would write it. There’s a swing to the melody that’s a bit more ‘pop’ than the band’s usual songs. Julie’s harmony doesn’t go as high as it normally would, as if whoever wrote the song didn’t have as high of an upper range to work with as she does.

The song is so unmistakably Alex that no one else could have written it.

Flynn and Carrie are quietly making smug comments on what they bet his face looks like right now but Willie’s not listening to them.

On the last chorus, Alex fucking winks at him right before poofing out.

Willie has whiplash like how did they go from him having to psych Alex up to break into a museum even when there’s zero chance of getting caught to Alex openly flirting with him from the stage?

He poofs backstage right as the boys get back from dropping their instruments back in the Molinas’ garage and he honestly doesn’t know what he even wants to say to convey how amazing that performance was.

Then Alex just smiles at him.

Alex: So I take it you liked the song?

Willie: Can I kiss you right now?

They both kinda freeze after he blurts that out and Reggie goes wow really quietly before he and Luke poof out to give them some privacy and whoops now they’re both flustered but

Alex: Wow, didn’t expect that. That’s... um, wow. But yeah.

They kiss and it’s a total romcom moment.

And the story’s far from over, but to Willie this definitely feels like happily ever after.

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bellasauruss · 3 years

Text

excuse me for a moment, I'm about to go ballistic

Yes hello, me, me here, Bella, hi

I wanna rant about creating things with my characters

Not just like, the Wings of Fire ones, those are cool too but they've never felt like my own simply because they're FAN characters, I don't know how to explain that, I can imagine them but not like I can the people I've made in my head

I don't know how many of you guys have tried it before, tried the thing I do almost everyday, but just lying down and getting lost in someone else's story that only you know the beginning and end to, that's what making a story is like, and it's such an awesome feeling if you get to ignore all the other things in your own life. And not someone else's story as in not your own, that's fun to do as well, I do it with Wings of Fire all the time, but I mean someone else that YOU'VE made, their story, their mind

Everybody does this: lying down and listening to a certain song and either imagining yourself, a character, your character even? Perhaps? It's just great. I think that's part of the experience of MUSIC and then, of course, imagination and creativity in itself, that's just how it works, all the colors and how they go with the music. It's one of my favorite things to do and it's what made me learn how to animate because I realize I can physically create the wild scenes I see in my head and actually let someone else get to look at it. It's euphoric

There are these characters in my head that I know more than anybody, their tendencies and the way they sound, their favorite things and their darkest fears, and it's terrifying in a way to think that there's people who feel so real like that yet I'm the only one who's met them- met as in, made them, they're there in my brain, brain children (wait no that sounds gross)

I know the THEM that's all, there's all these little scenes that I use songs to help develop, develop the story and the emotions and what drives their motives just as much as my own. I want other people to know them as well

And it's horribly embarrassing in this weird way when I try to share that, or my story, or explain it to other people, because for some reason I can't bring myself to do it. It's surprisingly hard to briefly summarize a few months worth of things I relive over and over so I can just learn how to write it out on paper- and simply because of the sheer volume of it all. I'm already trying to proof read over this and I sound like I'm trying to be pretentous and I'm kinda going eeeee! You sound nuts!

That's the part that gets embarrassing about it, because I lay it out like it's an awesome story and such (MIGHT BE, key word, I don't know) you get all the crazy emotions waaa!!! look!! People FEELING!!

But because of how much there is I can't even begin to tell people about it. The reason I wanna tell people about them is because I want other people to get to feel the feelings I get to feel, again, all those scenes: the banter between fictional friends that makes me laugh in a way I wouldn't ever at anybody else's characters, the stark tension in a room between brothers who used to love each other, all the raw emotions that everyone has felt themselves, but sound dramatized when you try to talk about them- all things that finally after a while of pondering I realized

Nobody is ever gonna get to feel it the way I do unless I write it out, that's why I create art

Emotions are a major drive behind art and stuff and I think once people finally get that click about what that really means do they really understand their own passions. You can repeat that over and over and say it's about the feelings but it won't ever really finalize until YOU understand it. It- the phrase, and art- means something different for everyone. Everybody's got different motives but I think at the end of the day we just want people to understand what we're thinking about, just basic understanding, 'cause honestly, if I could I'd totally sit down in a room and explain the ENTIRE lore to my characters just so whoever is in there with me could- GET IT.

That's what a book is, and that's why I'm trying to write

cheers lmao

#rambling #writing #vent #happy vent

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bigskydreaming · 3 years

Text

Fandom Stuff To-Do List (basically just stuff I want to get to this week in any order, now that I have Completion Capabilities. Not meant to be a promise of any specific things on this for sure getting done, just these are stuff on my mind to get around to when I have the chance)

- Finish meta post about the wings fic AU and how peoples’ wings are affected by massive physical or emotional trauma that changes them as a person (aka do Babs’ wings change when she becomes Oracle). Which will of course segue into a mini-rant about how our culture tends to view trauma and the acquisition of physical disabilities as something there’s no coming back from, like there’s a ceiling on how good a person’s life can ever be after certain things happen to them.

And that’s why so much of our media content is geared towards treating disabled people and survivors almost more as resources to ensure ‘the same kind of thing’ doesn’t happen to people it hasn’t happened to yet and thus ‘can still be saved/protected.’ Rather than people just fucking acknowledging that trauma is just destructive change that’s impact is relative to how many resources a person has to cope or deal with that change and incorporate it into their life. And that people don’t need to be protected from trauma or accidents as much as is hyped because its literally impossible to ever prevent anything bad from happening ever, so rather than hyping the illusion that ‘this sort of thing could never happen to you as long as you do xyz and don’t do abc’ more attention and focus should be shifted to acknowledging that its still gonna happen sometimes no matter what people do to prevent it or keep safe from it. Because these sorts of trauma ARE EXTERNALLY ORIGINATING and thus there’s literally only ever so much people can do that’s originating within the self to control/protect from being affected in certain ways by stuff originating from outside the self, aka inherently OUT of our control.

And thus IMO we’d all be better served as a society by paying less lip service to the idea that people can be guaranteed safety or protection from various things and instead have more of that focus and attention shifted over towards the acquisition and building and distributing of more resources to help people in the EVENT of certain things happening to them anyway. Which in turn helps spread the narrative that you know what, even if these things happen, even if you are disabled, even if you are traumatized, that’s not the end of the road, that’s not a dealbreaker, that’s just a CHANGE that we as a society are here to help you through. It just means that your life is different now, that you may be different now, but different doesn’t have to be bad, it doesn’t have to come with a ceiling or limitations, it just means a change in perspective.

Bad things will still happen, just like bad things still happened before your Big Change, and its important to remember not to glamorize or romanticize the Before time because that tends to gloss over the fact that nobody’s life was ever perfect before big change or trauma hit anyway. So why on earth should it be a surprise (or any different from anyone else’s life) that life isn’t perfect after big change or trauma? That doesn’t mean it can’t still be GOOD. That you won’t still have good days, good surprises, happiness, friends, joy, laughter, that maybe it takes more resources or just DIFFERENT resources to get there than it did before.....but everyone’s life is different and everyone requires different resources to achieve various desired results or experiences in the first place, so its not the end of the world to have to switch your focus and look in different places for different resources now.

There needs to be less focus on what HAPPENED to people and more focus on what EFFECT it had on them, specifically. On how it changed them and what those changes mean they require now in order to live their life fully and happily, that just might be different from what they needed before. There needs to be a shift in focus from just the trauma or accident or THING that happened that changed the course or direction of a person’s life as like....the definitive point their life changed, because that THING that happened was still just a THING. It came from the outside. It was external. It literally WASN’T ABOUT THEM, and thus focusing on IT can only ever reveal so much about the PERSON it happened to.

No, the point of focus for a person’s life changing in the wake of massive trauma or an accident isn’t WHEN that happened, its when in the aftermath of that, however long it took, when that person, that survivor, finally got up one morning and realized they had a new normal. That they weren’t the person they were before, but they aren’t aimlessly lost in a single long-lasting trauma response searching fruitlessly for personal landmarks to reorient themselves when those landmarks simply don’t exist anymore, because they don’t HAVE to find or lean on those old familiar landmarks anymore. Because they’ve found new ones, found their footing in a new landscape, a new approach to living and perceiving the world around them and how it impacts and intersects with them.

Gimme a change in focus to how recovery isn’t a thing you can ever FIND, that you can ever ACQUIRE by searching for it...and so its less vital that we hold up the idea of it as some kind of semi-mythical Holy Grail its okay to send knights eternally questing for on just the possibility of its existence because hey at least its something to shoot for, when not so deep down a lot of people shelling out advice for recovery that isn’t rooted in their own experiences or utilization of the same advice they’re selling but rather is born of ‘eh, you want something I can’t give or help with and that’s making me uncomfortable so lemme point you in a direction just vague or far away enough that I don’t have to worry about seeing you and your aura of Making Me Uncomfortable around for awhile’....

.....nah, instead how about looking to how resources might be better utilized just....supporting people until they can reach that point of recovery in their own time and their own ways. Because by its very nature, you can spend years working on recovering, on finding a new normal, a new sense of stability in your life, but you’re only ever going to ‘find it’ the day you realize that you’ve ALREADY found it. That you don’t have to go searching for it anymore because its already there, you settled and replanted yourself without even realizing it. Recovery in the wake of trauma is about searching for a way to feel better, to heal, to move past something, and the answer to that need is a feeling of no longer needing to search or find that ephemeral something, because you’re content, you’re okay with who and what you are now. And you don’t need to look anymore for something you wake up and realize you’ve already found somewhere along the way.

Being disabled, being traumatized, being hurt, being CHANGED by some kind of big ass fucking Meteor Of Suck smacking into the planet that is your life and wiping out the fucking dinosaurs of this weirdo metaphor, like....yes, it leaves a mark, makes an impact, oftentimes a BIG one. But like, without the meteor that ended the dinosaur age or whatever, none of us would even be here because the point is just life goes on, and there’s no predicting what it will look like tomorrow, so yeah it could be worse and maybe it’ll never be like it was before, but there’s absolutely zero proof it couldn’t maybe be BETTER, even if it doesn’t ever look the way it was before.

Change is just change. Its not the enemy, its just the point of life. Like we’re born and then things change every single day of our life however long it is and then we die. Birth and death are the bookends, and constant change is every single page of the book in between that. Change isn’t the villain of our story, change IS our story.

And its OUR story, so it never gets to be defined by what someone else does to us in the story, because the hero’s journey isn’t about what MADE the hero set out on their quest, its about their QUEST itself, its about their TRIUMPH, its not about what happened its about what THEY decided to do NEXT because of it. Its not about the catalysts for our changes, its about what we decided to DO, who we decided to BECOME, once those catalysts hit the page and necessitated further change.

Your trauma, your change, none of those are YOU, because YOU are the person you see when you look in the mirror and take all of that in, view it as part of you, your story, something that left a mark just like every single experience of your life has left SOME kind of impact no matter how small, and who you changed into, decided to become, how you incorporated all those marks and changes and experiences....THAT is you. The ENTIRETY of that map, not the single markers along the way, no matter how loud or dramatic or attention-grabbing they try to be.

You are the map of your experiences and you only look to a map, a map only matters to you when its about leading or finding the way to where YOU want to go, with intent. No road map gets to take the wheel of the car just because you aren’t going in the direction it said you were supposed to go originally. If you get lost, you get lost. If you end up somewhere you didn’t expect, you end up somewhere you didn’t expect. If you realize you no longer want or need to go where you were setting out to originally, if you change your mind or decide another destination is better suited to you, you get to look to your map and draw a new route accordingly, because its YOURS, it only exists because of you, not you because of it.

Your trauma or whatever else is fucking up your life may be big fucking pieces of the mosaic you are when you see yourself in the mirror metaphorically speaking cuz I want this analogy to be inclusive for blind people too and I just realized I need to spend more time thinking up alternative ways to express that sentiment that don’t rely on a singular axis of experience to convey it, because that’s kinda the point in and of itself:

We’re all born with toolboxes that give us a variety of tools to approach life with, to build things out of, to build OUR life out of. The aim of civilization, of society, of being a species that only made it this far by being communal and building things together, pooling our tools to build things none of us were equipped to build with just what we already had...is that ideally, the toolbox we’re born with gets added to by others around us. Our parents or guardians or teachers, our friends and loved ones, the random person at the store who saw someone was a dollar short at the grocery store register and offered one of their own or the way we can add to someone else’s toolbox by simply asking if they’re alright when we can see they’re not and then just like that they have the added resource of the knowledge that someone cares enough about them to want to know what’s wrong.

And none of our toolboxes are identical. None make it all the way to our deathbed with us while containing the exact same tools we started with, some are missing, some are added. Some we didn’t even realize we had. Some we never even used. Some we used the hell out of and are worn to pieces and some are shiny and new because we wore out the older version of them and needed a replacement. And sometimes big fucking meteors of suck smack into our lives right when we’re just minding our own business and enjoying our own jurassic age and everything changes forever, but millions of years later we might still be around and now we just look like chickens and alligators and sharks and all the other creatures that are basically just dinosaur descendants in a different form because we’re hardy as fuck and damn I really need to get over this metaphor it is not the analogy I’m looking for but oh well.

Point is, sometimes Change happens and the tools we’re used to leaning on when building our better, ideal lives and optimal experiences, like....maybe they just don’t work for us anymore. Maybe we can’t grip the old familiar ones the way we used to, maybe our eyes have gone to shit and we can’t wield the more precise instruments with the precision we’re used to, maybe the nails we were using to build stairs in our dream house are fucking useless cuz they’re not the right size when building the wheelchair ramp our new dream house needs instead.......and so fucking what? What does any of that actually say about US, about who we ARE, about what our life could be or how good it could get?

Absolutely nothing. Because the toolboxes we were born with were still only ever just tools. What we ARE is what we make with them, what we build out of ourselves, what we choose with intent to become. So what if our old tools aren’t up to the task of actualizing our new dreams? That’s what we need other people for. That’s what society SHOULD be for. That’s when what we need is not to be FIXED, not to be restocked with what we had originally but is now no longer of use to us or what we need or maybe even not what we want.....no, all we need is....new tools. New resources. New kinds of help.

And again, that’s what society is SUPPOSED to be for. To help us define ourselves not by the problems we face but our solutions to overcoming them. To help give each other new tools and teach each other how to use them when change necessitates hunting around for something that’s easier to grip now. And if we all come into the world starting out with different tools than everyone else anyway.....what does it MATTER if somewhere along the way we have to swap out the old familiar ones we started with and look for new ones we didn’t need originally?

A cane is just a cane to help someone walk because for whatever reasons, their legs or spine need that tool to help get them where they want to go. A cane is not proof that it will never take them to a destination where they’re every fucking bit as happy as people who made it to the same place without the use of one. A cane is not THEM. Its just a fucking cane. Same thing with glasses, with wheelchairs, with prosthetic limbs, with hearing aids. Same thing with support groups, with therapists, with trauma centers.

Like do people ever think about how fucking AMAZING it is that we have prosthetics at all? That somewhere along the line, people saw a problem, saw a need, that was not ‘oh this person (or maybe even ‘they themselves’ because let’s not go the saviorism route and forget that disabled people have had plenty the fuck to do with designing or dreaming up or building the tools disabled people use to navigate life while working with a different set of physiological tools than most people are equipped with. Like this isn’t a ‘oh look how good other people are to people in need’ point but more just a ‘people-as-in-society-overall-which-includes-both-able-bodied-and-disabled’ point).

Like the point is the response to seeing that was not just ‘oh so and so or maybe even me is damaged beyond repair,’ no instead it was just ‘this person’s legs aren’t currently equpped to do what this person needs or wants them to do.’ And people said okay the solution, the answer, the RESPONSE to seeing that problem or need was not to sit back and think about how much it sucks that this person can’t walk on their own and how limited or ‘lesser’ their life will be than other peoples’ because of that, no they said instead, hey, what if we just BUILT THEM DIFFERENT LEGS. Like, just THINK about that. We, as a people, communally, as in more than one, pooled resources to BUILD PEOPLE NEW FUCKING LEGS.

And all it ultimately took, the catalyst for THAT, for changing the lives of people who use prosthetics as tools in their day to day lives....the catalyst for that CHANGE was NOT in fact....whatever happened to make various people need prosthetics in the first place. No, the catalyst, the change that got us to the point of people having the OPTION of prosthetics at all, was the point in time where people saw a need, and came up with the solution of prosthetics to address that need. When they said not oh that’s a problem or oh sorry you have that need, but oh I have an idea, or oh here’s what we can do about that. The defining element wasn’t that something needed building. The defining element was WHAT PEOPLE CHOSE TO BUILD BECAUSE OF THAT.

Just like severe trauma is a catalyst for change in a person’s life, a meteor that no one saw coming and can dramatically reshape the landscape of their life, wipe out familiar comforts and landmarks they use to orient themselves.....but at the end of the day, that person is not the meteor itself. We don’t call them whatever we call that meteor, we call them by their fucking name because they’re still the same fucking person, just in a different place now, with different needs, with different dreams or wants or goals. Who they are isn’t how rough they have it while they’re going through the most....because how much a trauma shakes up a person’s life is directly relative to how equipped they are already to deal with that particular trauma or change.

So by its very nature the ‘worst’ or most changing traumas are the ones that we’re personally LEAST equipped to deal with at that particular time on our own, and how fucking stupid is it to try and draw conclusions about a person based just on how they react in the immediate aftermath of an event whose defining element is that it was a destructive change that was uniquely impactful because it hit them where they were least equipped to deal with it?

Like, NOBODY is equipped to handle well, like, an event that relative to THEM SPECIFICALLY, like....is something they’re not equipped to handle. LOL. Like, that’s so fucking dumb, but that’s who we ALL are when in the midst of massive trauma responses - just people hunting desperately for new normals, new landmarks, new awareness with which to recenter ourselves, reorient ourselves, redefine who and what we are in relation to our lives and society and our loved ones in the wake of a massive change that shook things up and required repositioning ourselves because the spot we used to be positioned on no longer exists.

And what the fuck can you learn, can you actually KNOW about a person based solely on the fact that ‘oh this person is having a hard time dealing with something that there’s literally NO good way to deal with?’

People talk a lot about how revealing trauma or tragedy is, that you can learn a lot by seeing how someone handles a huge trauma or tragedy being thrown at them, even in fiction. But y’know what? There’s a ceiling on how much that alone can ever reveal, especially if the lens of time through which you examine that person or character is limited just to the aftermath of the trauma, the thing that HAPPENED to them. Rather than focused on the beginning of their new journeys, once they’ve reoriented themselves, acquired new tools, picked new destinations or goals for their lives and set out to now make THOSE a reality....just like people before or without massive trauma or tragedy are similarly not defined by the LACK of what didn’t happen to them, but simply by......what destinations or goals they pick for their lives and their journeys to get there and what they do and what choices they make along the way.

Nah, if you ask me, a person’s truest essence isn’t revealed by what they do with whatever limited tools or resources they have when struggling with a massive trauma or tragedy that’s only massive specifically BECAUSE it hit them in a way or place they were ill-equipped or unprepared to deal with. Because the essence of that person, the truth revealed by examining that struggle, the answer in focus when looking through just that finite lens....can be boiled down to the exact same thing, no matter WHO you put in that place.

What they do in the wake of a massive trauma is simply ‘as much as they’re capable of given their limited resources or capabilities at THAT SPECIFIC POINT IN TIME.’ Which is inherently....not a lot. Completely subjective and relative to every individual, given the different traumas, resources and needs or injuries relative to every individual while they’re going through their fucking worst....but that’s still the point.

A person struggling with things beyond their capability to handle well at that given moment given their current state or resources.....is ultimately never going to appear as anything other than.....a person struggling with things beyond their capability to handle well at that given moment given their current state or resources. Wow. Really pegged that person huh. Got them all summed up, totally differentiated from every other person to ever go through shit, just by seeing them.....not handle it great when by its very nature of fucking course they’re not going to handle a trauma they’re not prepared for with any degree of ‘great.’

Like, is it any wonder our society has this built in presumption that experiencing certain traumas or tragedies just fucking CONDEMNS that person to from then on live a life that will never actually measure up to being as optimal as it maybe could have been if that hadn’t happened? What other conclusion are you gonna draw, about how good or not a person’s life is in the wake of massive destructive change....if you’re only ever focusing on or looking at how they react at the specific point where they’re LEAST equipped to deal with that trauma or tragedy well?

Because thing is....that’s not a person. That’s a snapshot of a person. Try and define me or sum me up by looking at a fucking Polaroid of me when I was ten or whatever. Go on. See how revealing that is. Tell me what that says about me.

People can’t be defined by negative space. By what they’re NOT. By all the ways in which they can’t be what they MIGHT have been had something happened different, or all the things they COULD be if they were born into different circumstances. You do that, you’re not describing a person, you’re describing hypotheticals that you can apply as desired to ANY person, with just a few tweaks here and there, and thus always find a way to picture them as you want to for your own personal purposes, agenda or comfort, rather than gaining any insight whatsoever about who they are as defined by the space that they DO fill up, with intent, by their choices.

We don’t look to the early history of our species and talk about all the people who DIDN’T discover fire, maybe even just because they were born in a fucking wet climate or whatever where it was inherently more difficult to happen across the realization that striking sticks or stones in certain ways can make a very useful and helpful flame. With the point being that even if we DID talk about those early humans as much as we did the ones who got actual bonfires going, the fact that they simply ‘weren’t the ones to discover fire’ actually would reveal shit about them in and of itself, because who’s to say that the reason, the ‘culprit’ for that was that they were simply too dumb or whatever to figure that out instead of just being they lived in a climate that made that discovery particularly difficult or less likely to happen by chance? Y’know?

But no, anyway, we talk about the ones who DID discover fire, because the turning point for our species which that was, like, we don’t look at it and define it by the lack of it happening sooner, at the problem that not having fire was for the people who came before that discovery. It was the triumph that mattered, it was the choices made in the wake of that discovery, it was how people put that new tool to work and not oh how revealing it is about the rest of early humanity that they didn’t put that tool to work in similar ways because it simply wasn’t even a possibility for them when it was simply a resource they didn’t have.

Nah, IMO a person’s truest essence is revealed not by their problems or their lacks, not by the hypothetical maybe me they could have been if they went through life without anything bad ever happening to them and thus who they’ll never actually be now. Its not revealed by taking a snapshot of them in the moments or days or even weeks following a trauma or tragedy that struck with an accompanying seismic shake-up of all their existing stability and support systems that ultimately limited how much or many of the resources they’d previously acquired or built could even be of use to them in dealing with things now. You don’t learn anything substantial by putting people in a room with only two exits and one of them locked and then act like its an insightful revelation that they ultimately make their way out by means of the finite options available to them when their options have been actively limited by forces outside them and their control, even if that wasn’t the ‘optimal’ answer to that predicament and you wanted them to make other more ideal choices without acknowledging they literally were limited to the most basic of fucking choices available. No, IMO the actual revelations about people come in their declaration of a new want or wish or ask or goal AFTER they’ve found their footing and are ready to live again rather than just cope.

Why define ourselves by our needs when we’re most ourselves when dreaming of our wants?

You don’t gain the most insight by watching someone flail about when they’re at their lowest and just floundering. You want insight, you look to see what tools they use to pull themselves upright, what resources they ask for or seek out in order to build something new that they can place upon their new shaken-up-and-reformed foundations and from there find some stability with which to pull themselves FORWARD. Instead of just clinging to the shattered remnants of whatever their source of stability was previously but is no longer useful for that purpose, maybe not even because they WANT to cling to just that or are afraid or unwilling to move forward, but because they simply can’t reach any fucking resources with which to do anything BUT just cling to what little they could grab, and what they actually need is just someone to offer them said resources instead of just acting like they really did something by looking at a person lacking in resources and then judging or defining them simply by all the things they AREN’T doing to better themselves or their lives, WHEN THAT’S ONLY BECAUSE THEY’RE LACKING THE FUCKING RESOURCES TO DO ANY OF THAT.

You see who a person is not by comparing them to who they MIGHT have been before, because who can say with any certainty what person they might have been the day after that massive trauma or tragedy, had said trauma or tragedy never actually occurred? Who can guarantee that person, that hypothetical maybe-me is ACTUALLY better than who they are or can become now?

Nope. You wanna know who that person is? That’s who they declare themselves to be the second they stop trying to define themselves by who they WERE and thus who they’re not anymore....but rather by who they are NOW, and who they want to be from here on out. You don’t look at the person who’s been pushed to the ground and say oh that’s that person, that’s who that person is. No, all that tells you is that person was pushed to the ground by an asshole, and surprise surprise, they fell because that’s what fucking happens when someone pushes you to the ground, lolol. That’s not the nature of a person, that’s the nature of physics. Wow. Person A is affected by gravity and the forceful aggression of assholes in their vicinity. The uncanny insight of it all.

You wanna see that person, you look at who they are AFTER they’ve pulled themselves back up. You see what they do THEN. Once they’re back in control of themselves, their life, in the driver’s seat.

You can’t define people by the lack of something. A lack of control, a lack of choice, a lack of resources. Because we are our choices, we are the journeys we take, we are what happens on the next page of our story because the next page of our story only EVER happens because each and every page we decided to MAKE something happen next.

And we can only MAKE those choices, versus have them made for us and which thus says more about the person who forced those choices on us than it does us for simply being unable to stop that, we can only TAKE those journeys, versus being forced into certain directions and paths and down certain roads by limited options that say more about how little a person can do with only finite options available to them rather than say anything substantial about what directions a person might go in if they had actual options and choices available to them beyond just being presented with two routes that both equally suck, we can only do anything substantial with any of that, anything that says anything about US rather than just descriptive of our circumstances....

We can only do anything with all of that AFTER we’ve gained or taken back or regained control over our lives. AFTER we’ve found our footing. AFTER we’ve said well guess what, this happened then, but guess what else happened today? I got out of bed and said okay so we’re just not gonna worry about that because its over and done and it doesn’t get to be the only thing that matters about us. So instead, how about what matters right now is whatever the fuck I choose to do today, because THAT is up to me, THAT says something about me, THAT is not just some random rock crashing into me from outer fucking space and saying knock knock, fuck you. THAT is ME, saying with intent, THIS is who I am now and THIS is what I’m going to do today, and THAT’S an actual story about me and my choices and my PERSONHOOD. Versus just a summation of how shitty I looked while being smacked in the face by a mountain of bullshit and me without so much as an umbrella.

THAT’S a story about a person. That other thing, that fixation on the rock that crashed into them without warning? Its ultimately never going to be anything other than the story of how a person got hit by a fucking rock.

All of which is to say, so yeah, in that wing fic AU, Babs’ wings do change after what happens with the Joker, even though her wings had already settled.

BUT, the key thing about that is....the point of CHANGE for her wings was NOT when the Joker shot her. Its not when her life, when SHE changed, ‘because of that.’ Because maybe her wings didn’t work the same way anymore after that happened, because they represented who she was before that. And before that she was and thought of herself as someone who could grapple between buildings, flip kick into bad guys, do cartwheels across rooftops, and she can’t do those things anymore so maybe her wings don’t work for her in the way they used to because they were ‘designed’ for someone who lived life in a way she was no longer capable of.

But her wings didn’t just change then and there, they still remained the same as always even if they weren’t as useful because maybe she could still fly perhaps, but not land in the ways her wings were designed to do that, due to the changed capabilities of her legs and spine which were meant to work in concert with her wings.

See, because the point is.....if the wings are the ultimate expression of the self, even acknowledging that she was in fundamental ways CHANGED at that point (not lessened, but changed, made different, needing different things and having different wants).....the point is, at just that specific time, in the immediate aftermath of that trauma, what would her wings have changed into? What would they LOOK like, simply because say, two days ago, the Joker shot her and now she’s paralyzed? If she’s no longer the old her, how could the new her POSSIBLY be defined by that little data, that little definition, that small an image or encapsulation of everything she still MIGHT yet be or become once she’s out of bed, out of tears, out of grief for the goals that are no longer viable and now ready to say okay, now let me decide what DOES come next for me now.

So yes, Babs’ wings do change after the Joker shoots her, but they remain as they were for awhile. Just not as useful to her now that her toolbox of physical capabilities was less equipped to accommodate her newly changed needs and approaches to life.

When they change, its because she’s already become Oracle. That’s who she is now, Batgirl is a part of that but more about who she was. It’s part of the foundation she built her new self atop, its never going to not be a part of her, never going to leave, it still matters....but it is not the building itself anymore, it is the bedrock that made it through the seismic upheaval of her life and thus was sturdy enough she felt safe building something new on it, something that could ride out further earthquakes thanks to having it to ground her. But as integral as it is to what she built in the wake of her big quake....it is not the house she houses her self-image in. That’s Oracle’s domain now.

And so when her wings do change, it happens overnight, while she’s asleep. Dreaming of everything she wants now, everything she wants to become. They change not in a ‘this is happening’ sense, much like we’re never fully aware of how far into our recovery process we are.....instead, they change in a ‘huh, so this happened’ sense. Just like we only realize how much we’ve recovered, how much we no longer need to define ourselves by a quest to be better, happier, more alright...once we’ve already found that happiness or contentment and realized the reason there’s no longer the same drive to pursue some abstract image of recovery is simply because we no longer need to go anywhere to get that, we’re already there and this is what that looks like.

And so when one day Babs wakes up feeling different and looks in the mirror to see her wings no longer look like they used to but rather seem much more suited to the woman she is now, the woman she envisioned in her mind as a new goal or destination of self-determination, that she chose to become with intent, that she worked to become so she could be defined by something other than what some asshole did to her, so that she could be the sum of her deeds rather than the snapshot of her tragedy.....its a sign of change. Of her change, and proof that her life is not now what it once was, and never will be again.....but its not some big momentous reveal, more just an exhale of affirmation for something she’s already known for awhile and just now has the distance and perspective to see actual proof of.

Its the marker of the fact that actually she’s okay with it, she’s okay with herself, her new self, because she doesn’t need to be who she might have been without that trauma, she doesn’t need to be a maybe when who she is? Has no more of a built in limit or ceiling or cap on happiness and success than the woman she was before her trauma had. She doesn’t love what happened to her, but its just something that happened to her. Its not who she is, THIS is who she is, this is THAT, and this she’s more than okay with, she’s proud of, she’s like damn I look good. Life threw a punch at her and she got into a wheelchair and rolled with it, and if you’re busy looking at the bruise from that punch because you’re so focused on the fact that it happened, you’re missing the real story.

And that’s the way she pulled herself out of bed every morning for a year and into her wheelchair to train with escrima sticks in whole new ways of fighting so the next time the Joker tried knocking on her door, he wouldn’t get to pull the same shit twice. Because she’s not the same woman she was then and anyone focusing on THAT instead of watching out for all the ways she can still kick ass, some old, some new, some that she invented herself because necessity is the mother of invention and Babs has always been driven to be the top of her class for reasons that have everything to do with just HER and absolutely nothing at all with what happened to put her in a class where fighting from a wheelchair was a tool she felt she needed -

Well maybe they need to get clocked across the head with a stick to drive home that they’ve missed the entire point, that if you’re there looking to see a tragedy you’ve got the wrong fucking address cuz she’s doing just fine.

And so she wakes up one day and looks in her mirror and sees her wings have changed overnight and they look nothing like she remembers but tbh, she likes these a lot better, likes the way they feel, the shape of them, they just FIT....and then she just nods her head decisively, quietly pleased but in no rush to make any big announcement, because for her, this changes nothing. Its just a sign that change has already happened.

And its like....duh, she already knew that, and she’s more than okay with it, so semantics can wait for another time. She’s Barbara Gordon, the Oracle of Gotham, and she’s got shit to do.

And okay, so clearly, I ended up just writing that post instead of writing the rest of that to-do list, so I’m gonna now go make another post with the ACTUAL to-do list, and like, yay, I can cross this off I guess? My process is so mysterious, oh unknowable ways.

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rexok · 3 years

Text

Subway Station

TW: alcohol, slight angst, worrying about the future

Being at this party was a mistake. It was too loud, too obnoxious, and her head was pounding from the alcohol and music that blared on the speakers.

It’s already been many years since she fought off the overblots and graduated from the school that she considered her home. While Crowley was useless at times, she considered him as an almost healthy adult figure in her life compared to others before him.

Everyone else in the Ramshackle dorm seemed to be doing just fine. They either pursued partners and have a happy life with them or they got a well known career that gave them enough to live a life of wealth.

Hibiki didn’t have anything like that. She was holding onto the past and couldn’t let go of it. Graduating was a dream for everyone, but a nightmare for her.

She looked down at the red cup of alcohol that she held with shaking hands.

Despite the situations, Ace and Deuce allowed her to be a roommate at their apartment while she was pursuing a career that stressed her to the ends of time. Even they got to live out their lives as Deuce got a girlfriend and Ace achieved a good scholarship.

She was still the underdog no matter the circumstances.

Now here she is, at a reunion party with a number of people she knew before. Some different, some stayed almost the same.

Petra and Ace were the ones with the bright idea of bringing alcohol to the party, much to the dismay to Riddle. This led to a majority of people getting drunk while others watched the chaos go down from the sidelines with friends.

Hibiki was glad that she had a high tolerance of alcohol, otherwise she would not forgive herself for the stupid shit she would be doing.

With a less then relaxed sigh, she downed the alcohol and threw the cup into the garbage can next to her.

“Didn’t expect to see you here.”

She knew that voice. She knows it far too well, it’s a voice that she both dreads yet loves to hear.

“Good to see you made it to the party Jamil” Hibiki exclaimed with false enthusiasm as she waved her hand “How have things been holding up for you? Got a girlfriend? A boyfriend? Or maybe an incredibly good scholarship like the rest of the people here”

Jamil did not flinch at the sarcastic tone of her voice, as it is something that he is plenty familiar with.

“To answer your questions, I did not achieve any of that”

Despite his countless efforts to achieve a scholarship of sorts, his status still held him back from escape

“But what has gotten you so upset now?”

His question made her rub the temples of her forehead in aggravation. She did not want to talk about her feelings, not when she is feeling this close to passing out from the countless thoughts that swam in her head previously.

“Now? You say that like I have had these types of fits before” She retorted.

He was able to think of a retort just as quick as she was to speak it.

“Because you have. Mainly in your first year of school”

Always has to be the smart ass between them. While Hibiki had her moments of competing with Jamil, he always held the upper hand and was the most intelligent. She was only the chaos bringer and nothing more.

“You try getting transported to a land of who-knows-what” Her comment made him laugh slightly before he quickly silenced himself.

“I would rather not have that happen to me” Jamil said with a frown “But, will you just tell me what has gotten you so worked up? Avoiding the reason I came to talk to you is ridiculous”

Hibiki paused at the last of his words and looked at him with a suspicious glare.

“…Are you Jamil?”

The question caused a irritated glare from the other, but he kept silent as the girl laughed slightly and explained what caused her irritation.

“I am upset at myself” She states “I am disappointed that I haven’t been able to achieve anything after leaving Night Raven. Everyone was so happy about leaving, but I viewed that place as my home and leaving was the last thing that I had planned for.”

“Crowley was irresponsible, but he was one of the only adults in my life that didn’t view me as a burden to him. Now, I can’t even hold contact with him because of how busy he is with running the school.” The words kept tumbling out of her mouth and felt herself getting teary-eyed from the alcohol investing her brain and talking about her feelings in general “Ramshackle either has girlfriends or boyfriends or partners or are achieving a perfect job with countless of friends, so they have no time to contact me.”

“Everything sucked with overblots and shit, but at least I had a family. One who cares about me at least…”

She let out a shaky breath after the long rant and started wiping away the tears that fell down her cheeks. It was exhausting talking about feelings, but Jamil did take in a majority of what she talked about at least.

“You say that like you don’t have people who care about you now”

“Huh?”

“Just because they are achieving their own lives does not mean that they don’t care about you any less. They are only trying to sort themselves out like you are” Jamil explains with a blunt tone “Everyone in your year just graduated and they need time, you can still attempt to contact them instead of waiting for them to contact you.”

Before Hibiki could retort at his remarks, he continued speaking without looking at the other girl.

“And nobody is asking you to achieve something great or outstanding, you will still be the same old Hibiki that everyone cares about” Jamil says.

“And if they aren’t willing to stay around, then that’s their loss.”

Jamil finally turned towards the dirty blonde girl to see her mouth agape and eyes widened in surprise.

Only then, when she noticed Jamil staring at her did she snap out of her surprised daze.

“Wow!! You really are going soft Jamil!!” Hibiki snickered “Did those years away from Night Raven change you that much?”

“I take back what I said before”

Despite his tone, his mouth formed a small smile at the teasing from the girl. This is the Hibiki he was more used too.

They chatted for the whole party up until everyone was feeling drowsy and started to head home with their significant others or friend groups. Hibiki was planning on going with Ace and Deuce, but the two of them went to go hang out together instead leaving her and Jamil.

Surprisingly, Kalim wasn’t with Jamil to attend the party due to having to handle family matters at his homeland and Kalim giving permission for Jamil to go alone much to Jamil’s dismay as he was never the fondest of parties.

“Damn…” Hibiki winced sympathetically before shrugging her shoulders “He didn’t miss much of that party in all honesty, the food was pretty good at least”

“It wasn’t the best, but I will agree with it being average for a party” Jamil agreed with a slight nod.

The two of them continued chatting as they headed to the subway. Jamil agreed with dropping off Hibiki at her apartment due to it being closest and her showing slight signs of exhaustion.

In the middle of conversation, Jamil was ranting about his experiences with his sister due to the topic of siblings being bought up briefly and slightly tensed when he felt something lean on his shoulder.

He stopped midway in his conversation to look over at Hibiki, who was completely passed out with a snore coming from her every minute.

In any other circumstance or year, he would’ve shoved her off his shoulder and tell her to not use him as her personal pillow. This time, he felt more at ease with it and sighed in faux annoyance.

Maybe this party wasn’t a total mistake after all

#twisted wonderland #oc x canon #jamil viper #twst jamil #twst #twst oc #hibiki hayashi #twisted wonderland oc #oneshot #twst oneshot #twst x oc #twisted wonderland oneshot

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himbeaux-on-ice · 3 years

Text

Can I just say that Habs “fans” who act like Carey Price’s contract is somehow patient zero of all this team’s problems drive me absolutely fucking insane? Seriously. Buckle up. This is about to be a rant.

Now. First things first. Is it ideal that the $10 million goalie is currently uh, not doing very good? Fucking NO! I am disappointed as shit with that and I don’t like seeing him struggle. I know he can be better. He has to be better. Obviously.

However. That being said.

Do I think it’s an incredibly stupid look to spend several tweets complaining about all the issues Habs defence have been having, and then also griping that they haven’t started Jake Allen enough for how he’s performing, only to then for some inexplicable reason state that the FIRST THING, the first thing that needs to be dealt with after the new coaching staff have had ONE GAME (and zero practices) to work on things, is somehow “well, the ten million dollar man in net is weighing them down, that contract has gotta go!”?

Yes! That’s stupid!!

I think that’s a very ice cold small-brain take, and not just because Price is my favourite of favourites for as long as I’ve been a hockey fan! I have reasons, dammit!! I put THOUGHT into this!!

Here, dear ppl of Habs twitter who will never read this, are some reasons why this narrative you’re concocting is dumb, and why management/coaching are unlikely to think of trying to ditch Price mid-season to fix the current problems:

1: Time. It has been one (1) game under Ducharme. He has been able to run zero (0) full practices on off days with the team. We just changed up a major piece on the Habs chess board — why don’t you give it a minute to see what fresh eyes and minds can do with this roster before you decide we are fucked? This season is fast-moving, sure, but there is time for us to ride out some little bumps here and still make a playoff spot in this Canadian division. Have patience. Do you remember what patience is? Dom is a new head coach, not a wish-granting fairy godmother. Chill. Do you remember chill?

(rest of this under a cut because I actually LIKE Habs Tumblr, and I want to be nice to you all by not making you scroll past all of it if you don’t want to)

2: Jake Allen exists. There are a couple of things I like for what this means for the Habs. Firstly, for basically the first time in his NHL career, we are not in a situation where if Carey Price is in a slump, we have to go “Ah, shit, so now our options are let his stats tank while he tries to get the groove back in net, OR throw whoever the poor backup is out there to get murdered while we plummet through the standings.... 😬” We don’t have that problem right now, because the backup is... actually good? Oh my god, the backup is actually good! Thank fuck! We’re not doomed. If I’m Ducharme, I put Allen in net for a few consecutive starts to put a solid backstop behind all my fun experiments I’m probably planning with the skating roster (to catch their slip-ups, while also giving Carey lots of time and rest with which to work hard on sorting out whatever his issue is along with the goalie coaches).

2b: Jake Allen exists and is competition. Hell, if I’m Ducharme, maybe I even play a little hardball and say “Look, Carey, I don’t want you to be an expensive benchwarmer, but if things don’t pick up soon I am going to start whoever is doing best and you will have to compete for that net.” Related to my last point, when was the last time Carey Price had to push himself to compete for net time against anything other than his own injuries, and wasn’t simply always the default starter? Has that EVER been a thing? Honestly as much as I love the idea of him being The Goalie for the Habs, I also kinda like this idea a lot because I think it could really push him to a higher standard of performance. Maybe that kind of high-pressure situation (given how much he thrives in the pressure-cooker of the playoffs) could be what he NEEDS in order to Be Carey Price again. Worst comes to worst, he doesn’t respond to that challenge, and I am very sad but the Habs have a good goalie in net anyway, because Hallelujah, Jake Allen exists! God, isn’t it nice to have Jake Allen? Bless him.

3: Money. Guys, this league is so broke right now. Seriously. Seriously. Nobody has any fucking money. The Habs probably have more money than most teams, and that does not help when it comes to offloading large contracts. Trades are a NIGHTMARE both because of the flat cap but also because travel is complicated (especially cross-border) but also nobody wants to trade within their division if possible because all your games are against them. Who in the name of fuck do you think is jumping at the idea of taking the $10 million per through 20-lots-and-lots-of-years-from-now contract of a goalie who is currently struggling, impressive past record aside? What kind of astral plane of fantasy hockey are you on to think there’s a trade out there for that within this season. Shut up. And no, don’t bring up the expansion draft, this post is a rebuttal SPECIFICALLY to the people who think that Price and his contract are the biggest problem that needs to be dealt with RIGHT NOW and first on the list of ways to immediately remedy the team’s struggles.

4: Spite. Specifically to piss you off, bud. You personally.

5: Knowing how to troubleshoot properly. Fellas, if my computer is running slowly and freezing up a lot, do I immediately decide the first step to fixing it is to crack open the chassis, remove the hard drive, and try to sell that hard drive to someone to see if I can enough money back to somehow get a better hard drive for less? No, dipshit. That’s not how troubleshooting a complex system works works. It’s the same with hockey teams. Ah, my star goalie is not performing great. This situation is deeply less than ideal. If you’re actually good at troubleshooting, the first thing you do is not “WELL. I GUESS WE’LL HAVE TO THROW THE WHOLE GOALIE OUT. HE’S TOAST.” The first thing you do, if you’re a smart coach, is you say “Okay, what are my defence doing in front of him? What are they doing to reduce the amount and quality of our opponents’ scoring chances? Oh. Oh, they’re taking a lot of penalties, and... oh, uh, some of this is very not great. Yikes.” And then you start your work by trying to make the defence actually work instead of running the same Pairs That Everyone Is Very Much Over And Tired Of, because your goalie is actually supposed to be your Last Line of Defence. And maybe during that time you give more starts to Goalie Who Is Absolutely Slaying It, so that when you start trying new D-pairs and they inevitably have some mistakes, it doesn’t immediately turn into an Oh God Holy Fuck moment every time, because that last line of defence backstopping them is solid. The reason you need to deal with defense first is because a) You know you have a reliable goalie (Allen) in your pocket right now if you need him. What you don’t have is a whole-ass proven and tested and practiced Backup D-Core you can swap into the roster in front of your goalies to make their lives easier. Fix your defense and it WILL improve your goalies, even marginally. Defrag the hard drive before you ask why it’s not working. and b) If you need to go looking for any new D-men to solve the issues, those are WAY easier and cheaper to find than top-tier goalies, and you always want to start any troubleshooting process with trying the simplest solutions first to hopefully save time and money. The better that D-core is, the less it fucks your team over if the goalie isn’t feeling themselves, because the D is going to stop more of those pucks before they ever even become the goalie’s problem. FIX. DEFENCE. FIRST. Then try to train your goalie back into top form. THEN explore your other options.

6: The vicious cycle. Guys. We literally do this once every year or second year. EVERY time Carey Price has a slump, this fanbase gets into a tizzy like the Bell Centre is burning down and he was the one with the matches. And what ALWAYS happens literally within the year, every single time? He gets his mojo back like he did last summer in the bubble and goes on a heater and everybody goes “JESUS PRICE!!!! 🙌” and is ready to name their firstborn kid after him. Until eventually that performance becomes unsustainable, and he becomes mortal again, and suddenly he’s The Real Problem With This Franchise once again. I know he’s the guy they chose to build the team around instead of a superstar forward, but oh my god folks. You’d think he was the only player on the team. Guys, I feel like fucking Sisyphus pushing a blue blanc et rouge boulder up Mont Royal once a year with this shit. This man’s entire career has been a constant seesaw narrative between “Carey Price is our saviour!” and “Carey Price should be exiled to Nome!!!!” from parts of this fanbase, I swear. Look, slumps suck, but for once we are actually lucky enough to be in a position where this team, for the first time in YEARS, does not solelylive or die by the inscrutable magical cycles of Carey Price’s goalie powers — because when he has to step back and work to get back into his groove, there is FINALLY a SECOND GUY who is GREAT. Honestly, given that the state of this team for so long has been “they will go as far as Carey Price can take them” and he has put in a pretty fucking decent job of it despite all of the team’s other struggles, I feel like it is owed it to the guy to be like “Okay, well, we have somebody else solid to fill the net right now, and a chance to really figure out our defence and special teams with this new coach. Why don’t you take a step back and work your ass off at trying to get back into the form I know you can still perform at, and we’ll go from there?”

Anyway. Some parts of this fanbase have been waiting for a fresh excuse to claim Price is overrated, washed-up, and to blame for all of this team’s flaws and ills ever since he signed that contract, if not since the start of his NHL career. Just unreal how nasty some of this fanbase is willing to be about a player who is ON. YOUR. TEAM.

Am I saying he is beyond critique of his play and can do no wrong and his contract is perfect? No! I want this team to have the best goaltending it can get, and I want them to kick ass and take names. The difference is, I still believe Carey Price is a part of that winning formula, and I also think Twitter is overflowing with idiots who just repeat what everybody else says. He’s still a better goalie than your ass would be if I stuck you out there to stop shots from Mark Schieffle, for crap’s sake.

“The first thing that has to go is Carey Price’s contract 🤪”. Shut the fuck up. You are actively making other people stupider by talking. Go eat sand. Good day.

#It’s Time For My Opinion #I put so much time into this I hope it’s coherent lol #habs #Carey price #montreal canadiens #long post

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my-whumpy-little-heart · 4 years

Note

Tied to a table troupe rating/rant GO I am enabling you

Nemi how dare you expose me like this you’re fantastic. Sorry this took so long.

Listen, if there’s any trope that I love just as much or maybe even more than permanent marks it’s being restrained against a table. Wanna know why?

1) They’re! So! Fucking! Vulnerable!!!!!!

Being tied down to a table leaves a whumpee so open and vulnerable. There’s no way to curl up or make themselves smaller or protect any part of their body that isn’t being pressed against the table. You can restrain them with hands by their side or pulled up above their head, or limbs stretched far apart or

They don’t have a full range of vision either. Depending on how well you restrain your whumpee’s head, they’ve got a maximum of full side to side vision and possibly some brief looks above their head if they can handle the vertigo inducing feeling of tipping your head back nearly upside down to get some extra perspective. but with enough restraint, you can take that away from them, and even their side view if you’re adamant about it.

Just force the whumpee to stare upward, only seeing the whumper when they’re close enough, and not having a clear idea of what’s gonna happen to them. They’re so open and vulnerable to whatever is going on, and not knowing what to expect makes them even more so!

And of course, if you gag or muzzle them that adds a whole other level. They can’t even have a conversation where the whumper is condescending and vague about their questions of what the hell is going on, and just have to watch in wordless silence (or muffled shouting, whichever suits your fancy) as the whumper mills around before finally standing to face them, taking action on whatever their plans are.

There’s a lot more to go on from here, but I’m putting a cut because this got a little long! Head below for more excited table content.

2) Hi Hello Yes That’s Absolutely Terrifying In My Personal Opinion

Listen I think I just need an entire section to talk about this sensation. Being tied to a table is an inherently inferior position to someone else, because everyone around you can loom over, look down on you, and no matter how much they get down on your level you still feel lower than them. You have absolutely zero control over what they do and that in and of itself is so scary!

Even being tied to the table with nobody around is bad. There’s really no easy hope of escape from that, assuming it’s done well so there’s no wiggling out from under the bonds, and the whumpee is just left to. sit there. and imagine what in the world they’re tied down like this for. because tied down completely flat is such a unique, particular situation. And it’s not easy to convince yourself that someone would choose that exact position without a specific plan in mind.

So much room for terror to brew, the cold of the table to seep into their bones, and the nature of the position they’re stuck in to really sink in.

3) Med!whump (content warning that this section will be all about medical based whump, and fixating on ‘lab rat’ type whumpees! skip to number four if that’s something you’re not comfortable with!)

Ohohohoo yes, medical whump has a special place in my heart, and the trope of being restrained against a table has a lot to do with that!

Day after day, a whumpee is taken out of their cell and used for experimental purposes. There are different places they’re taken within the lab, but all the worst things happen on the table.

One of my favorite parts is the compliance, or lack thereof. Someone new to the facility seeing that table for the first time, being coaxed up on it through their fear by threats of the awful things they’ve already been through. Trembling against it at having to hold still, even as they’re tied down so tightly that it’s uncomfortable. And then watching the whumper in their element, preparing different implements that they can’t quite catch a glimpse of until they set a folding table with everything readied right near the whumpee’s head.

What’s on there? What ideas does it give the whumpee? How long are they left to lay there, stewing in their fear before anything even happens to them?

But let’s also imagine every time after that. The first experience on the table was so horrific that the next time they’re brought there, even if they’ve learned to be obedient, they panic. They fight every step of the way, throwing themself back against the whumper’s hold. And they were probably prepared for the whumpee’s resistance, whether that was by restraining them further, bringing an assistant to help them, sedating them partially beforehand, etc. And so they wrestle the whumpee up on there, forcing them down, maybe having to bash their head against the table so they go limp for a second...

Oh, and either way please don’t forget the blinding light directly overhead that makes it painful to keep their eyes open, but shutting them hardly does anything to block it out. It’s disorienting and will probably give them a headache, but it’s all worth it so the whumper can properly see what they’re doing (and also be silhouetted by the light so the whumpee can’t see their face as well to read them)

4) Seriously, They Can’t Fucking Move

That’s it. That’s the entire point. Whumpees throwing their entire weight against the straps and not being able to go anywhere. Not being able to adjust and shift their weight, forced to lay the exact same way against the table for hours on end, probably getting uncomfortable with the pressure and hard surface. Good stuff!

5) Some tropes go best in pairs!

Take a knife (or your bare hand if you’re looking to freak them out and not immediately hurt!) and trace it across the whumpee’s exposed body, not even cutting at first. running it across planes of skin they can’t see, leaving prickling shivers in its wake while they wait tensely for the pain. The whumper telling them to just relax, tensing up is gonna just hurt them more, but they can’t relax when the knife moves so unexpectedly, running over wherever it pleases.

Choke a whumpee against the table! They’re being so good and holding so still that it’s nearly irresistible to just wrap hands just above the strap or collar holding them down to the table and tighten, cutting their breath off completely while they have no power to stop you. They pull against the restraints as hard as they can but they won’t be able to claw at the hands keeping the breath from their lungs.

Oh, and instead of pressing them into the table, you could always push them off it too! I’m talking twist a hand in the whumpee’s hair and pull their head forward against the neck restraint until they’re choking on whatever breaths they draw and then slam their head back down against the table.

Electrocute the whumpee on a table. Kneel above them and beat the whumpee on a table. Interrogate the whumpee on a table. Brand the whumpee on a table. Cane the whumpee on a table. Waterboard the whumpee on a table. jUST TIE YOUR WHUMPEE TO THE TABLE AND GET WHUMPING ALREADY IS THIS TOO MUCH TO ASK-

#whump #boa speaks #ask game #yeah okay i talked a little bit huh #tied to a table #whumpees!! on!! tables!!!!!#lab whump #med whump #only briefly! but just in case!

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arsonistslut · 3 years

Text

Chapter 9: Reminders of Tragedy

"Hey, Jane!"

"Hey, Ingrid! How is my favorite person in the world?"

Jane's girlfriend of a good 9 years now happily walked over and kissed her on the cheek, beaming as she always seemed to do whenever she looked at her lover.

"Amazing now that you're here. Hey, you wanna go to that party Randy's having at his house tomorrow?"

"He's having a party? I didn't figure him the partying type."

"Despite the whole business parents thing, he is a real party animal. Hey, you know what's weird about the party?"

"What is?"

"He invited that Jeff guy there..y'know, that creep with the Conduct Disorder?"

She gestured to the tall, dark clothed young adult that sat alone at a lunch table nearby, playing with a switchblade.

"Hey, I remember him being pretty nice.."

"Remember him? You two date at some point?"

"We did, actually, wayyyy back."

Jane smirked when she saw the look of surprise and pride on Ingrid's face when she realized she guessed right.

"What was he like?"

"He was a sweetheart. Cheesy, but a sweetheart. Hell, even cheesier than me."

"Jane, you've carved our names into multiple trees. There's no out-cheesing that."

"Oh, you wouldn't believe how we met, either. My dad was out mowing the lawn, and he accidentally ran over a rock and it hit Jeff in the head."

"Oof, that sounds bad.."

"I visited him in the hospital with my parents one time, and I will never forget what he said to me as a pick-up line."

"What did he say?"

Jane cleared her throat, before trying her darndest to do an impression of a young Jeff.

"Did you come from heaven? Because you look like an angel!"

Ingrid couldn't help but let out a giggle as she quickly pulled Jane into her arms.

"Aww, that sounds so cute!"

"It was!"

Jeff himself was hearing this conversation from afar, the little tricks he played with his knife not an adequate distraction from the constant reminder of what could've been.

"I don't think he handled our breakup too well..nobody really wanted to treat him as anything other than a freak after his diagnosis went public. One time, I heard him ranting to his brother about how it was hypocritical of the school to do a health topic on depression when they wouldn't stop judging him for his CD."

"Sheesh, it sounds like he's been through a lot..poor kid could use a friend."

"It doesn't really look like he wants any. Liu isn't sitting with him..that's weird, Liu always sits with him."

"Prolly had an argument or something, you know siblings."

"Yeah.."

The day continued without incident, Jeffrey getting home at the same time as usual..yet his mind was not thinking about the party, or school, he was thinking about Jane and Ingrid. Why was Jane so special that she had everything she wanted in life and not him? What crime did he commit that landed him with absent parents, demonization from his peers, and a fucking smile cut into his face? That love, that relationship they had..Jeff came to the conclusion that it was something to be destroyed.

Liu, meanwhile, was..struggling with something. Something he never expected would be a problem in his life. Lately, he began having these thoughts..these violent, awful, intrusive thoughts, thoughts that seemed to be begging to be spoken aloud, the actions they describe seeming to grow more and more appealing as time passed.

Kill Randy.

Maim Keith.

Skin Troy like the cattle he is.

Maybe if he gave the thoughts an identity, they'd be easier to handle, he thought as he thought of a name for these urges..one stood out from the others. Not at all goofy, but not as laughably edgy as the other options.

Chapter 10: Enter Sully

Liu ended up speaking to Sully for the entire night..and even into the morning. When Jeff woke up the next morning, he could already hear Liu downstairs talking with..someone.

"It's sad, really..so concerned about themselves..no time spared for you."

"I-I guess..but they've got more important things to worry about.."

"Child, they do not have a thought in them about you. They're all self centered egomaniacs that would rather get pushed around by a genetic failure of a human rather than do anything about their situation!"

"That's not true, Sully! You're lying!"

A horrible growl soon came from the room.

"We are friends, child! Friends do not lie to each other, do they?"

"I..I guess not..goodbye for now, Sully."

"Where are you going?"

"I..I need some time to think."

Liu got back up, jumping from fear when he saw his brother staring at him.

"Holy shit, Jeff! You scared me!"

"I bet."

Awkward silence soon filled the dining room where they stood.

"Hey, Jeff...?"

"What?"

"I'm..sorry about punching you, and saying all that shit about you. I shouldn't have done that."

"No shit, Sherlock."

The elder brother turned around and began walking back up to his room, but not before his brother called out to him.

"Hey..is there any way I could make things up between us?"

"You could make things up by not betraying my trust again. You're all I've got, Liu..don't pull a Jane and fuck it up for me."

Liu always did question that grudge Jeff held for his ex, after all, he chatted with her in the past, and it always seemed like she genuinely enjoyed what her and Jeff had, and she always felt bad for leaving him like that. Hell, it sounded like it was as painful for her to leave him as it was for him to find out that his girlfriend left him. He was tempted to point that out, but he feared ruining things with his brother again.

"Alright.."

Chapter 11: A Hell of A Party

When Jane and Ingrid rounded the corner home, they found..a disturbing sight. A dead raccoon laying in the middle of the street, it's guts ripped out of it's body and thrown aside, Jeff gleefully pawing through the freshly murdered animal, childishly gawking and giggling over the corpse.

"Hey, Jeffrey! What happened here, what the fuck did you do?!"

Ingrid cried out to the blood-soaked kid, who looked up at her, confusion riddling his bloodied face.

"I killed a raccoon. It's not like anyone's gonna miss it."

"Why, you little-"

Ingrid slapped Jeffrey right across the face, knocking him to the ground as Jane held her girlfriend back and tried to keep the situation from escalating any further.

"What the hell was that for?!"

"You killed a helpless animal, you freak!!"

"I oughta kill you next, you piece of-"

Woods choked on his own spittle as he made his threat, never having been particularly..elegant with his words.

"Oh, really?! I'll kick your teeth down your fucking throat!"

"I swear to God, I'll strangle you with your own fucking intestines!!"

When Jeff reached for his switchblade, Jane panicked and grabbed her lover's hand, running off with her as Woods continued to scream at them.

"Your last words better be some Mark Twain shit, because it's going on your tombstone!! You hear me?!"

That experience was all on Jane's mind as she watched Jeff steadily get more and more wasted by the bonfire outside as time went on, at least, what glimpses she could catch of him when she wasn't busy dancing with the other students. Randy was also outside, reluctantly playing Truth Or Dare with the others as well as his increasingly hot and bothered enemy.

"Ok, Jeff!"

"Whaddup, baby?~"

"Truth or dare?"

"Dare, hit me with the worst ya got!"

"Slow dance with Randy."

"What the-no! I'm straight as a arrow, dude!"

"So is spaghetti until it gets wet~"

"Jeff, never say that again."

"C'mooooon, do the dare, ya pussy~ I don't bite!~"

Woods took his time getting up, but still had enough cognitive function to put on Grover Washington Jr's "Just The Two Of Us", to try and improve the mood, but Randy still wasn't having any of it. In a last ditch effort to try and seduce Randy, Jeffrey just..up and took his shirt off. That'll get things going, right? No, it didn't. Despite some swooning from some of his classmates, Randy himself didn't want any part of this. He was a few drinks deep as well, so in a drunken haze, he grabbed one of the bottles of booze they had, took a running start, and smashed it right over Jeff's head. The problem with that is that they were only a couple feet away from a bonfire, so when Jeff stumbled backward, he fell right into it, the alcohol on his exposed flesh quickly igniting. He quickly burst into flames, screaming and running off as the fire quickly seared his body, every remaining nerve ending he had that wasn't burnt away shocking his body with waves of pain. He could feel his scalp burning up once his hair was scorched away, finally finding solace in a nearby puddle that put out the flames. Jeff could see his life flashing before his eyes..his family, his brother..that was all he could see. As Randy and the other students' screams of horror faded away, Woods silently cursed himself for not doing anything more with his life..a single bloody tear rolled down his face as he shut his eyes for what he believed would be the last time.

Chapter 12: The End Of The Beginning

Suddenly..he was in some sort of void. The ground beneath him was black as pitch, and footsteps began to grow ever closer to him. When Jeff looked to see who was approaching, he found no earthly being waiting for his attention. When he laid his eyes on whatever approached, the previously totally dark void began to turn a sickly red. What stood before him was a monster unlike any other, an otherwordly monster many believed to be a mere tall tale.

HE COMES.

#creepypasta #jeffery woods #liu woods #sully #zalgo #tw violence #tw animal moidah #tw jeff fucking burns

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boleynhowards · 4 years

Text

i hate to make this, but: a call out post.

TW: toxic behaviour, mentions of sexual harassment, brief mention of suicide/depression, manipulation, anxiety/panic attack and bdsm choking.

Please keep in mind while reading this, we have minors who are under 15 that have asked to remain anonymous. They will be referred to as the minors when delved into each person's stories and their usernames have been blurred in relevant screenshots.

As well as this, so the screenshots don’t get confused, our names:

Amy - @boleynhowards (me) / i.cequeen on Instagram.

Maddy - @thenameisnoone / the_names_no_one on Instagram.

Jo - @thatbolxyngirl / historyeet on Instagram

The subject of this post is Tumblr user kakesparrlyn, or kraftingcereal on Instagram. I want to say that Kake has blocked me and @thatbolxyngirl ngirl on Tumblr, so they won’t see this unless they unblock me. This post is not to hurt anyone, but rather to warn others after our group went through an uncomfortable experience with this person.

My friends and I are not the type of people to make these posts, it hurts the majority of us to even think of doing such a thing, but we felt it was necessary for others to know. So this is posted here today as a caveat for anyone interested in this new group.

We are the old roleplay group that user kakesparrlyn (Kake) used to be in, and, to summarise, it turned wrong very quickly.

Kake proved to be a very problematic person to all of us by displaying lots of toxic behaviours. This included guilt tripping us, harassing the minors in our group, trying to roleplay NSFW with the minors, being easily offended when things didn’t go her way, acting biased towards personal opinions, and what is most appalling, sending sexual comments to the minors.

Whilst we would usually like to avoid conflict, we think it’s necessary to post this account of our stories. We wish for no one to fall to the mind and emotional manipulation and discomfort we have been through.

Starting off with one of our minors, Kake, who is an adult, has tried to roleplay smut with them. She requested if it was okay to roleplay a poly relationship for a ship she liked. With Kake not only being an adult, but also the admin of the group and play “adopting” said minor, the minor felt uncomfortable and pressured when needed to answer. She then requested a personal smut roleplay of her choice to another person to see if she, personally, liked a certain kink, choking, in front of the same minor.

The second of the minors was another one that she play “adopted.” Kake proceeded to pressure this minor into choosing a favourite friend, a week after meeting this minor. She was very adamant on getting this minor to choose her as her closest friend and didn't give up, even when the minor wanted her to stop, continuously insisting that she was the minor’s favorite.

As well as this, Kake gushed about her crushes on several others in the group to the same minor, including myself. In all, Kake made this minor severely uncomfortable, putting the minor in the middle of several conflicts, including calling the girls she had crushes on, choosing her favourite ‘mum’ friend and claiming she was the two crushes’ 'girlfriend.' On top of this, this minor played Catherine of Aragon in the roleplay and Kake forced them into roleplaying Aralyn, specifically an Aralyn that could have progressed into NSFW very quickly if the minor didn't shut it down.

The final minor, who also had a four year age gap with Kake, was guilt tripped and constantly felt forced to compliment her. They would feel panicked whenever Kake would send certain cryptic messages such as sharing private messages between herself and I which pulled the minor into the drama where they didn’t need to be. She would also occasionally say creepy things to the minor, calling them “hot” and then laughing about how creepy she sounded. Unfortunately there are no screenshots of this as it happened over a voice call.

This is only what happened to the minors under 15 who have asked to be unnamed to protect their safety. However, these atrocious acts do not end with them as they still continue with the slightly older minors, including myself, who have all agreed to be named.

The first person who has agreed to be named is @thenameisnoone. She was constantly guilt tripped and pressured to the point that she would have anxiety whenever texting Kake. When going through a tough time in real life and wanting to take a break from the roleplay, Kake begged them to stay and continued to message things such as “you are the only one who cares for me”. This added even more pressure onto her during such a hard time, and when she came back Kake ranted about how nobody loved her to them.

She also constantly needed to be in control of all group activities. A second group chat was made in which we played Minecraft and other games in. Kake was originally added to it, but left because she didn’t enjoy it. When @thenameisnoone mentioned how they were gaming instead of roleplaying, Kake would get extremely upset and say that nobody cared for her in the chat and constantly message @thenameisnoone about this.

Even with the explanation that she left the group and could rejoin if she wanted to, Kake continued to guilt trip @thenameisnoone and say she wanted to leave because ”nobody loved her, only them.” At the same time, she was texting others in the group chat an identical message.

More on her controlling side, she excluded some of the group members’ interests in roleplay whilst they obliged to hers by putting her own personal biases into the roleplay without consideration of others. This included instances where she would force an awkward age gap between Katherine Howard and Anna of Cleves in the roleplay because she didn’t ship Katanna.

As well as this, whenever trying to roleplay, Kake would force other characters into certain positions, otherwise her own character had a tantrum and forced the plot to revolve around said character. It made everyone uncomfortable and distant themselves from her and the actual purpose of the group (roleplaying). This made her continue to cling to @thenameisnoone. The final straw for them was when Kake openly dramatised her emotions by emphasizing her anger multiple times in the main group chat, nonstop, for @thenameisnoone jokingly becoming my fake wife.

Not only did this offend them because Kake was being hypocritical, but, unlike Kake, @thenameisnoone actually asked for the joke relationship and respected my feelings. The constant statement about Kake’s refusal to talk to them in front of everyone, and continuous repeated messages of how they are mad and hurt by this act of “betrayal” and refusal to move on for over a long period of time bothered them so much that they finally cracked and confessed what manipulation she has been put through by Kake to me. @thenameisnoone has now been dealing with emotional trauma from past experiences that Kake has reminded them of and could not focus on any schoolwork today until after an hour of me comforting them over the confrontation.

The second person involved who has given permission to be named, @thatbolxyngirl, wrote the next part herself which I will copy and paste into the post. (Hence the change of perspective.)

“It’s a shame that I actually have to write something like this and, to be honest, I didn’t even plan to ever write something like this. I’m just doing this because I don’t want this happening to other people besides me and the rest who sadly had to go through all of this. The situation could have been worse, but still, it’s been a really bad time for some of us. I’m kinda glad to say that she just ignored me, after she had a crush on me that is. I’m 17, so it’s not illegal, but very uncomfortable nonetheless for me. She still tried flirting with me after I said that I was not interested in her, or a relationship in general, at the time. She just continued to flirt with me and made her crush really obvious, and everytime I ignored it, she’d just write something like ‘No one will ever love me’ or ‘they are really oblivious’ and expected us all to, I don’t know, maybe pity her or something like that.

The worst of it was how Kake went into other chats to talk about me with the others in the group, asking them to hype her up in front of me, one of the people she asked being a minor. This repulsed me in an inexcusable way, to ignore my dismissal of a relationship with her and claim to the others I disliked her after she became romantically interested in another member of our group (@boleynhowards). It was an uncomfortable period for me, one I hope none of the people reading this have to go through.”

That’s what @thatbolxyngirl had to say on the matter, written from her perspective.

Finally, I’ll tell my own story. After waking up to find that I had been called Kake’s “girlfriend” during the night while I was asleep, I assumed she was joking around and went along with it for a bit. However, when she didn’t drop the joke after a long time, I sent a message to remind her that, at the time, I had a girlfriend and I was also 15, an illegal minor for her to date. I made sure to make it obvious to her that I was uninterested. Her mood immediately shifted to depressed and she began to post borderline suicidal things. When I saw these posts, I dmed her and tried to comfort her. After a bit of conversation, I confronted her about how it seemed that since I told her I was uninterested she was upset. She then told me that I got the wrong idea; that she didn’t like me, but she liked @thatbolxyngirl. I was relieved after this because she stopped flirting with me and dropped the pet names. This empty period was only short though as it was quick for her to begin to flirt with me once again, only this time worse. She began to pressure me into video calling her and in these calls she would make explicit sexual comments going from how I’m going to “fall in love” with her and also asking me three times to strip on camera for her. Like above, unfortunately there are no screenshots of this as it happened on a video call. When I rejected these requests, she was very begrudging about it as if trying to guilt me for my decision. By the end of her second wave of advances, she confessed her crush on me. I rejected her again, reminding her another time that I was 15 and had a girlfriend. She said she understood this and wouldn’t act on her crush, but later I found that was an empty promise as she continued to flirt with me. This got to the point where I began to distance myself from her as much as possible, which led to her trying to guilt me into doing things because she “loves me so much” as well as painting me as a villain to other members of the group by calling me cold and distant.

Not only did her behaviours make me severely uncomfortable and anxious around her, but they also made me doubt my own feelings, wondering if I was in the wrong for what happened to me.

That concludes what we would like to raise awareness about. Once again, we are not trying to spread hate. We were shocked when we saw Kake’s post about making a new roleplay group only minutes after she left our own. We feared of others going through the same experiences as us, so if you are interested in the new roleplay chat be warned. This could very well happen to you.

Whilst this has been hard and taken hours for us to write, we would like to remind you to please not show any hate to Kake; this is simply a post to protect others. Kake has been through some of her own issues that could have been reasons for her behaviour, but nobody is obliged, especially without a proper explanation for why, to go through this.

Thank you for reading this far, and we hope you can understand our need to post this.

Signed,

@boleynhowards, @thenameisnoone, @thatbolxyngirl and the unnamed minors of our group.

#six the musical #catherine of aragon #anne boleyn #jane seymour #anna of cleves #katherine howard #catherine parr #roleplay

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scenariosonscenarios · 4 years

Text

Dealer (1)

Genre: smut, drugs (dealing not using), stripper, slight angst.

Sumarry: you were just a stripper trying to get by in college while he was a dealer and rapper. confused about what he wanted from you

A/N: I got this idea while listening to loopy’s song “dealer” 😗 especially when owen said “baby won’t you strip for me. This a dealer symphony” LIKE YESSS

You looked at yourself in the mirror as the music from upstairs played throughout the club, the girls downstairs in the changing room talking and getting themselves dressed for their shift.

Your outfit was a rainbow fishnet bodysuit over a matching bra and panties, your ridiculously high stripper heels also going with your choice of clothing. You weren’t in the mood to be there tonight at all but there you were getting ready to dance for horny men that could only eye fuck you.

You were an exchange student at your college. You saw the “study abroad in Korea” sign one day and thought “why not?”. You wanted to travel and experience new things anyway.

But if you knew it would’ve brought you to making money like this you probably would have stayed home. Unfortunately you were under a contract and couldn’t just leave because you couldn’t handle it though, so you had to stay for the next year.

“Don’t just sit in here trying to avoid working, get up there!” You heard your boss yell as he barged in. You sighed but got up along with your other coworkers that were trying to avoid dancing, throwing on a face mask that matched with your outfit. It was your signature thing as a stripper and added to your charm, although for you it was just to hide your identity. You started heading up stairs feeling yourself getting even more moody, thinking about how much sleep you were missing out on and how much you just wanted to be home.

“Please give me a shot” you said to the bartender, the girl looking at you sympathetically before pouring you a shot of patron.

“Girl, all these shots you take every night is going to eat up your check” she said to you sliding the drink closer to your reach

“Luckily my ass makes up for it” you told her before lifting your mask up briefly to down the shot, a slight cough coming from you afterwards. You honestly weren’t a big fan of alcohol but you would get yourself tipsy or drunk to get through the night often times.

Now that you had an extra push from the alcoholic drink you felt a little better, walking around the club and looking at the men who were sitting and enjoying the view of women gyrating themselves in front of them. You did your usual, gave customers lap dances while they talked to you about shit you didn’t care a bout and got your money. Your attention was on the middle aged man you were moving your body lewdly for until the music playing faded out, your body stopping as you, along with other people looked at the dj.

“Alright alright sorry to cut the music off but I just wanted to announce that very special guests have made their way into the club, we got mkit rain in the building” they said. Everyone showed excitement while you muttered “if they aren’t paying my bills what the fuck do I have to care about them for” before looking away.

You danced for a few more men before going in the back to take a small break and make sure you still looked good.

“Hey [—-]” one of the girls called out to you while rubbing her ankle. You looked and widened your eyes when you saw the injured body part, a wince coming from you.

“How the hell did that happen?” You asked

“Some douche by the bar bumped into me and made me twist my ankle. I really need someone to cover my solo for me” she said looking at you with pleading eyes. One thing you avoided were solo dances on the stage and the only reason you did them was because you had to.

“Jesus Christ, why me?” You asked

“Please? You’ll get a lot of money” she said to you

You twirled a piece of your curly hair that was up in a high ponytail as you thought about it. Although you were introverted and hated the stage, you needed the money.

“Fine, I’ll go to our boss and tell him. You go home and rest” you said to her before walking out. She was a sweet girl and you decided to be nice tonight so she got lucky. You walked to your boss’s office and knocked on the door, coming in when he gave the okay,

“Hazel sprang her ankle pretty bad so she can’t do her solo and asked me to fill in her spot”

“Shit it’s always something. Go ahead and do it I think you’d be perfect for it. Your dance starts in 10 minutes so get ready”

“Thanks boss” you said before walking back out. You went back to the bartender, the girl saying “I already know what you’re here for” before pouring you another drink.

“Thank you so much” you said quickly gulping it down. You felt your nerves about to get bad but the brown liquid you just drunk saved you and you felt good again.

“Alright let’s get this shit over with” you said before walking backstage, the dj announcing you were coming up.

“This next dancer has the body of a Barbie doll and a mysterious charm about her nobody can resist, please give it up for [stripper name]” he said

Everyone cheered for you as you walked onto stage, all eyes on you. One trick a girl told you is that when you feel nervous don’t look directly at the faces of everyone, look at things such as their shirt, watch, or hair. They’ll still think you’re giving them attention although your not.

You heard Likybo Kraazy playing from the speakers and hummed in approval, thanking god a song you knew was chosen. Your body moved naturally to the beat as you grabbed onto the pole, getting ready to lift yourself onto it.

Your mind wasn’t all the way there so you honestly didn’t remember what the hell you did on stage but the men were cheering and giving hella tips so it didn’t matter. As you picked up up your tips your eyes met with one of the members of mkit rain who sat in the vip section. Another stripper was trying to keep his attention while he stared at you but he didn’t respond. You quickly picked everything up as you felt awkward, going backstage quickly.

“You did so well!” Some of the girls congratulated as you went into the locker room once again

“Thanks but I was honestly too drunk to even pay attention to what I was doing you said putting the combination to your locker in. You smiled as you looked at the money, satisfaction jumping inside you when you saw it wasn’t just 1’s”. You quickly stuffed it in your bag and closed your locker back before going back upstairs.

Your mood was good as hell now and you were ready to shake your ass for people as if your life depended on it.

“Hey, you were requested in the vip section” you heard before you could even get out of the doorway good enough.

“Okay” you said continuing your walk. You made your way to the vip area, the guy from earlier looking at you while you made your way to him. You had to admit he was fine as fuck but you never focused on the men who came in. You were there to do your job and go home.

“I was requested?” You asked double checking to make sure you weren’t hearing things and they actually wanted you in their section.

“You heard right. Come give my friend a dance it’s been a long day” one of them said looking you up and down before pointing to the one that had been eyeing you all night

“No problem” you said before looking at him and making your way onto his lap. Your ass was pressed against his hips as you grinded against him to the much slower song that was playing, your eyes closing as you took in his scent that was slightly reeling you in.

“So, why do you wear a mask” he asked while grabbing your hips as you danced against him, your back against his chest.

“You shouldn’t be so nosy” you said to him avoiding the question

“My bad, I guess I’ll just shut up” he said with a chuckle. You did a smile under your mask as you thought about how cute he was to you.

“Sorry if I came off rude it’s just that I usually avoid conversation” you said

“Maybe the men in here just talk about things you aren’t interested in” he said. You turned towards him and straddled his hips, dancing against him comfortably as the two of you talked.

“Maybe. You’d get tired of men talking sexually or ranting to you all night too if you did this kind of job” you said to him

“I’m an entertainer, you don’t think I deal with that? Groupies trying to fuck all the time and people ranting to you comes with the territory” he said.

For some strange reason you felt yourself getting turned on while talking to him and you had no clue why. You just hoped you didn’t get too wet and he felt it.

“Sounds annoying but some men wish they could enjoy what you have. You must get a lot of attention

“It’s always the same cycle with people and eventually I get tired of it. It gets really boring” he said to you as his hands gripped your ass.

“You can say that again” you said relating to his words.

“You just kind of want variety or someone to appreciate you for you, not because of your title. I’m sure you get tired of the same type of dudes coming to you every night” he said

You never felt yourself actually get attracted to a customer but you wanted him to bend you over and fuck you against the table in front of you so badly. You never even felt this way about guys outside of the club.

You looked at the alcohol swimming in your system as the culprit because there was no reason this man should’ve had this effect on you. You gave him a few more dances and conversation before you got up and left. It was almost your time to clock out and go home.

You were exhausted and horny from dancing on the man and you desperately needed to go home and take care of your problem. You changed into regular clothes and grabbed your things leaving through the back door. You never parked in the front because you didn’t want creeps following you home.

You were stopped in your tracks though when you saw mkit rain also in the back, standing around their cars as they conversed before leaving. They all went quiet for a moment before resuming their conversation and you hurriedly made your way to your car.

“Ay” you heard from behind you. It was the guy from earlier you were dancing with.

“You should take this with you” he said handing you a piece of paper. You took it and looked down at it, his number written on it.

“By the way, you look really good without that mask” he said before walking away

You smiled slightly at the compliment before getting in your car and starting it, driving back to your place. It was 3am and your bed was the only thing you wanted.

Or so you thought.

You tossed and turned in the bed as you thought about the man at the club. Your gut was tingling as you thought about whether to text him or not and eventually you gave in and sent him a quick “hey. It’s me from the club”

After 5 minutes you got a text back from him and saw a simple “wassup” across your screen.

“You busy? I was wondering if maybe you wanted to come over”

“Send your addy” he texted back. You sent him your address and felt your stomach churn as you started thinking of possible scenarios. He could of been a murderer or something or a kidnapper.

“Be there in 20” he texted. You sighed in relief at the fact that you had time to prepare for him coming and with that you tidied up a bit and made sure your home wasn’t messy or anything. You also took extra measurements to make sure you looked good too, your onesie that you wore hugging your your curves.

You sat on your couch and watched Cartoon Network to calm yourself down as you waited for him. You were so scared but so excited as you anticipated what was gonna happen. You hadn’t had any in god knows how long and considering how frustrated and stressed you were, you could use it.

When the doorbell ringed you almost jumped out of your skin. Your hands fluffing out your hair and pulling down the shorts to your pajamas before you went to go open it. There he stood with his hands in his pockets as you stood in your doorway briefly before moving to the side and saying “come in”

He looked around your apartment and did a small grin as he looked at your decorations, the cute 90’s and early 2000’s theme catching his eye.

“I like the decorations you have” he said to you, the colors of neon words that lit up the room casting a dim glow over you two

“Oh thank you...you can take a seat on the couch and make yourself comfortable” you said to him. And he he did just that, sitting on the couch and looking at the tv with a smirk

“Gumball?”

You did a small laugh in embarrassment, fiddling with a piece of your hair

“Cartoon shows are better than regular shows sometimes” you said taking a seat on the other side of the couch. Loopy eyed you up and down, noticing how nervous you were and sighed.

“You can relax, I don’t bite” he said

“I’m just gonna be honest with you, I’ve never really brought a guy to my apartment like this” you admitted to him

“It’s understandable. I can tell you’re really shy and innocent in a way but I don’t mind” he said

“Really? Most people see strippers and think we have sex with anything that breathes” you said

“Most people judge others from the surface and make assumptions based off of the way they look or their profession. I’m not like that, I like to see people for who they are despite the image they have” he said. You felt yourself getting turned on by him again and realized maybe it wasn’t the alcohol that had you wanting him so badly.

“I’m glad you’re not judgmental like others. I view people the same as you do to a big degree. I want to know that person for them” you said

“So when you see me do you see me as a rapper or something else?” He asked

“I see you as a person I’m attracted to. Someone I can vibe with” you said to him. He actually was a deep thinker and didn’t think like everyone else and that alone was something he reeled you in with. Not to mention he was fine as hell.

“Show me how much you vibe with me” he said to you

You looked at him for a moment before rising up from your seat, motioning for him to follow you to your room. There was no light except for the blueish tint outside that let you know the sun was about to rise.

His hands moved to your hips and gently laid you down onto the bed, his eyes looking at your body before leaning down and leaving kisses on your collarbone, his fingers unbuttoning your romper like pajamas. He kissed every bit of skin that was exposed to him, his lips stopping once your onesie was undone. It was a brief pause before he started pulling it off of you and you looked at him shyly as you sat there in only your bra and panties.

His eyes scanned every curve of your body before spreading your legs, looking at the wet spot that showed through the lace. His member twitches impatiently as he whispered “fuck” under his breath at how wet you were. With a swiftness he removed the cloth that was covering your most private area, your legs closing as you saw him look at it.

“There’s nothing to be nervous about. Everything about you is gorgeous” he said to you. You relaxed at his words and hesitantly spreaded your legs back apart, your hands unhooking your bra and watching as your breasts were freed from their confines.

“Good girl” he said to you with lustful eyes. You watched as he removed his shirt, nervousness spreading through your body as his pants followed. You could tell by looking at his print he was big before he even removed his briefs and when he did, you felt like you couldn’t wait one second to have him inside of you.

You watched as he crawled above you, your legs naturally spreading for him. His hands grabbed your thighs and pushed them up to your chest as he placed his tip at your entrance, guiding it into you gently. A whimper left your lips as you finally felt him slipping into you, the fit a bit big but not nothing you couldn’t handle.

“You feel so good baby girl” he said before sliding all the way in, a moan coming from you. He was reaching so deeply into you already and you couldn’t help but move your hips trying to get him to fuck you.

He must have got the message because he started moving in and out of you at a hard, steady pace. His eyes closed at the pleasure he felt while in you, harsh breaths and curses leaving his lips as he buried himself into you roughly. Your moans started getting more and more high pitched as he started slamming into you with no remorse, his pace fast and hard as he hit your spot dead on.

“Yes right there!” You yelled out as you felt yourself about to cum. It was stopped when he pulled out though, a look of disappointment on your face

“You want more?” He asked while stroking his cock. You nodded eagerly and rubbed your clit slowly as you watched him, wanting him back inside of you badly.

“Come ride me then” he said. You got up with no complaints as he laid back on to the bed, your legs straddling his hips as you positioned yourself above him. You held his hard on with one of your hands and guided it into you, moaning in relief once he was filling you up again.

Your hips started moving against him slowly, loving the way his hard member felt sliding in and out of you. His hand eventually came down on your ass spanking it, making you cry out from the stinging pain

“Come on baby girl I know you can do better than that” he said

You nodded your head and planted your feet on the bed before leaning back, started to slam your hips up and down against his quickly. His hands grabbed your hips as he thrusted back up into you, your spot getting hit once again. The sound of skin clapping and your moans mixed with his filled the room as you both moved against each other, your legs trembling as you felt yourself nearing

“Ioopy I’m about to cum” you moaned out as your movements on him started to turn sloppier.

“I am too” he said as his hips started fucking harder into you. It only took a few more thrusts before you were pushed to the edge, your pussy tightening around him as you threw your head back, cumming all over his cock. He felt your pussy clench around him and couldn’t hold back anymore as he fucking you, pulling out and cumming on you and his stomach as he pumped his member quickly.

Once the two of you settled down from your high you collapsed on side of him, your eyes fluttering as you tried to catch your breath. You watched as he got up and went into your bathroom, coming out with a towel and wiping his cum off of you and himself.

“Thank you” you said shyly, watching as he started getting himself dressed again. You felt a little hurt that he was leaving you and looked away, bringing your covers over your body. You had no clue why you thought he was gonna stay in the first place. You were clearly his little booty call to enjoy for the night.

“I’ll text you tomorrow” he said to you once he was fully dressed

“Yeah sure” you said quietly. After that you heard him walk out, the sound of the door opening and closing following after that.

“I feel so cheap” you thought to yourself before getting up. You didn’t even bother going back to sleep and just showered, got dressed and went on campus. How could you sleep after stooping so low so easily?

“What are you doing here so early? Your classes don’t start until 10:00” your friend said. It was just hitting 7am and here you were on campus after not sleeping the entire night, looking like a complete mess.

“Just needed to clear my mind” you said

“You look rough today. Something happened at work?” She asked.

“I guess you can say that. Anyway just forget about it, let’s go to the cafe and chill” you said

That’s what you were gonna do, just forget about it. Forget about him.

#mkit rain #mkit rain scenarios #mkitrain #khiphop scenarios #mkit rain smut #loopy #thisloop #loofla #khh scenarios #kkh smut #khip hop smut #nafla #bloo #youngwest #owen ovadoz #mkitrain scenarios #mkit rain loopy #mkitrain smut

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painandpleasure86 · 3 years

Text

Pull yourself together

A/N: Hi people! I was missing to post a fic here. It was based in an own experience about my own capability to write fics.

You can also find this fic in AO3, here.

Summary: John don't feel capable to write songs. Freddie tries to encourage him to continue writing.

Pairing: this is a Gen fic! No pairing.

Warning: Angst, some swearing.

Word count: 1359

Permanent taglist: @warriorteam1924 @toomuchlove-willkillyou @deakysgurl (if you want to be in the taglist, just tell me in the comments or send me an ask :3)

He did not feel he was capable enough. But, on the outside, he was determined, unwavering, impenetrable. Many times he wanted to start writing, because he was mentalized and determined, but nothing came to his mind. He felt the demand that he not only had to write something, but also something that could be adjusted to the standards of the band. He saw Brian and Freddie writing without any problems, and he was facing a blank sheet of paper, with nothing "good" in mind. Or maybe he thought it wasn't a good thing, because, thanks to the demands, he set the bar too high and was too self-critical, too hard on himself.

At that time they were preparing News of the World.

While in the recording studio, the conversation came out.

-Hey John, we're waiting for your contribution for the album. How are you doing? - Brian asks -I'm on it, Bri, you know how I am with that, he -laughs falsely.

-If you need help, tell us- adds Freddie.

-I can handle it myself, don't worry. Thanks for offering, though, guys.

Neither Freddie nor Roger were too convinced.

-Hey, and nobody asks me? -says Roger to ease the tension he felt in his friend.

-Because you told us you had Sheer Heart Attack- said Brian.

-I have one more surprise- he pointed out, winking

-Are you going to make a song about your cat, Roger? -asks Freddie, playing along.

-The cat lover is another one -answers Roger, pointing to Freddie.

-Ah, you got me, darling, I don't know how you guessed it! -adds Freddie.

John smiles. Goal accomplished for Freddie and Roger.

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

That night, when he was able to be alone in his room, he began to cry and to rant aloud

-Why the fuck don't things work out for me? I don't really know why I try to write songs, if they're not even that good... While Brian and Freddie's songs are singles, two of the three I've written are a fiasco. I'm not good at writing, it's really better that they don't have "my contribution". Oh Brian, saying it so lightly... HA! If you spend all your fucking time reading literature and things come to mind. It's a joke that someone with more capabilities has songs next to my shitty stuff. I'm sick of all these requirements. I'm tired of the responsibility. I hate myself for agreeing to start writing songs in the first place... ha, things come naturally to Freddie. I just barely have three songs, why can't we fucking accept that I'm not good at songwriting? I don't have the lyrical skills. I can write music, but lyrics? Ah no, that has to be left to the other two. At least I'm not the only one who "contributes just a little", but I don't have to feel comfortable or proud of that either... I'm fed up with this - he shouted, throwing away things that were within his reach and throwing himself into his bed to continue crying for a few moments.

Minutes later, he wipes away his tears and grabs a pencil and paper that were on his bedside table. He has something to write on.

Pull yourself together, because you know you should do better.

What he wrote was more of a self-message than anything else. That phrase came into his head and he had to turn it over so he wouldn't forget. "Maybe I'll think of something related to that later". When he put the notebook back in its place, he heard a knock on the door. It was Freddie.

-Now can I come in, John?

-Yes, I'll let you in. John opens the door to his room and lets the singer in. Then they both sit at the foot of the bed, side by side.

-I heard everything, honey.

-Ah? -asked John, pretending not to notice.

-All you said.

-I'm sorry, I...

-Don't apologize, honey. These things happen. I understand your frustration.

-Ah Fred, don't pretend to understand me.

-Hey, I'm not always inspired.

-Following that criteria, i'll never be inspired.

-Don't say such a stupid thing, John- said Freddie.

- You've already proved that you can write great hits.

-Only one of my songs came out as a single, I don't know what you're talking about Freddie. It's easy to talk when you write Bohemian Rhapsody. My songs are shit besides to that song.

-John, how many times have we talked about it? You're just slower, but that doesn't mean you're bad.

-What if I am?

-You really aren't. I see great potential. You just have to stop comparing yourself to me and Brian.

-It's impossible to tell the truth... you two write masterpieces... All people love your songs.

-People love You're my best friend...

-Yes, because it's the only good thing I've written so far.

-You are good John, I don't know how to tell you anymore.

-Stop saying it then and assume that you were wrong about me.

-Okay, I think you're still hysterical. I'll leave you to rest.

Freddie leaves and John remains pensive. More phrases have come to his mind, he writes them down.

You said me six and you passed past seven. I believed you, bent on my knees for you. Oh, I trusted you, but you let me down.

"They don't make sense, but well... inspo it's inspo" he thought.

After a much-needed bath to relax body and mind, he went to bed.

-Perhaps Freddie is right. What if I'm writing the band's next hit? Now, more calmly, he was convincing himself of Freddie's words. A part of his mind didn't like this at all and wanted to boycott him with pessimistic thoughts.

-Ah... enough! No. I'm not going to let you pass. Get the fuck out. Let me sleep in peace. -he said aloud with his eyes closed.

To sleep in peace, he took a deep breath and imagined himself far from his hotel room, being anywhere, but happy and free. When he least expected it, he fell asleep.

The next day he woke up much more relaxed. Getting dressed, thinking about the dream he had, a few phrases came to his mind

He spends his evenings alone in his hotel room, wishing he was miles and miles away...

Read the note book and see that Freddie was right. He smiled.

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

Back in the studio for another day of recording, John enters with his notebook and pencil.

-Looks like someone came ready to write today- Brian said, smiling.

John approaches his colleagues and shows them his notebook from afar.

-I've been ready since last night- he walks up to Freddie and hugs him.

-With you, always- Freddie said in his ear, tapping him on the shoulder.

Freddie left the embrace, but Roger takes advantage and hug John.

-I knew Freddie would help you- he said in John's ear.

-W-what?

-You're our brother Deaky, how could we not know?

Brian kept looking at the scene trying to understand what was happening, until he finally got it. "Now I understand everything".

Roger and John left the embrace, because John wanted to say something to Brian.

-I think I have not one contribution, but two- John said.

-But that's great-answered Brian, patting him on the shoulder-. This is the first time you've brought two songs!

-We have to celebrate- says Roger, winking an eye.

-It's 10 am, wait a little for the alcohol- says Freddie.

-But look who's talking, Mr. Champagne

-Without any shame, darling.

John and Brian laughed at the scene.

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

Months later, one of those songs would be a single for which they would record a video clip. Preparing for this, John started to think "Freddie was right, I have the capacity and my songs matter too... Look if they matter that one will have a video clip... Although, I don't know if the chosen set was the best choice. It was winter and they were outside, his hands were beginning to feel it; but he was happy that they were recording the video clip. Also because, from that day on, they were representing themselves. They had spread their wings and flown away from John Reid.

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Thanks for reading this. If you enjoyed it, please reblog this. It counts A LOT!!!

Cheers, Lily

#painandpleasure86 writes #painandpleasure86 fics #queen fic #john deacon #freddie mercury #roger taylor #roger meddows taylor #brian may #70s deaky #deaky #deacy #spread your wings #who needs you #news of the world #angst with a happy ending #queen angst #angst #friendship

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pokemonswshbutionlyplayedsword · 4 years

Note

I'm going through a rough patch right now and kinda need this so... How would the gym leaders and co. act if they found out from a friend of a challenger that they were in an abusive household? Like their family went with then on the journey and just kept verbally berating them when they loss and hit them when they'd stand up for themselves.

There’s a tw for abuse on this post. Heads up.

Hey, I hope your situation gets better. Don’t forget to reach out if you’re in trouble. It may not seem like it, but you’re surrounded by people who can help you.

Families going with their child on a gym challenge is not uncommon, but a lot of people have noticed this challenger shaking and being on the verge of tears at a loss.

Milo notices that this challenger failed his gym challenge and one of his gym trainers reports that the kid is being pretty much torn apart by their family, verbally. Maybe even a few smacks. So when the try again, they get past the challenge and manage to beat Milo. He pulls them away for a private chat for a bit. He talks to the challenger about what their family is doing, and while there’s not much he can really do, he can try to get them to back off a little. It probably would do more harm than good, though, so he tries to alert the rest of the league to please do something if they can.

Nessa knows because of Milo’s alert. She makes up some excuse about “the family distracting the challenger while they battle” so they don’t feel as stressed, hopefully. Nessa also has a quick, private chat. She offers to send a gym trainer, or even go herself with them to Motostoke, where they can hide in the Budew Inn. The family can’t join them in the hotel room, she lets them know, so it’s a safe place to avoid them. Nessa has always been the kind of person to stand up for herself, though, and since that seems to cause more problems for the poor kid, she kind of refrains from giving them more advice.

Kabu, unlike Milo and Nessa, has no problem letting the family know that what they’re doing is wrong. After the battle, whether the challenger wins or loses, Kabu goes into a rant about how the challenger and their family should be proud of them. He tries not to make it sound directed at the challenger’s family. He talks about how impressed he is and how, win or lose, there should be nothing but joy and praise after a well fought battle. He also gives them a private chat. He gives them the Budew Inn advice again, but he also adds that camping in the Wild Area to train is a good break. In the Wild Area, large camps can attract strong pokemon and cause a lot of trouble. Most people know not to do that, so the challenger should be safe. He also gives them his number so if they’re in a pinch, they can call him for help.

Bea stands up to the family for him. Once she knows, she kicks them out of the gym. After that, she meets with the challenger and their family. She talks about how it’s really obvious that they’re being horrible to the challenger. They’re a disgrace. She talks to them about how the ought to knock off this behavior, because one day this kid will be strong enough to put them all in the dirt, and that if they continue to act like this, later in the league, they’re going to be met with a lot of trouble. All the while, shielding the kid from them. She personally walks the challenger to the next town and explains the situation to Opal. All the while, she gives the family death glares to get them to not try any shit.

Allister doesn’t get much a chance to help. He really can’t do anything, but after the battle, he comforts the challenger as best he can. He also tells Bea, who does her thing to help them. Their actions lessen the abuse a little. Either they learned slightly or they’re trying to make up public appearances. Whatever suits your fancy. Also, Allister gives them his phone number and frequently checks up on them through text to make sure they’re doing alright throughout the rest of their challenge.

Opal is not afraid to confront them either, but she’s pretty sure Bea scared them straight. She’s got eyes on them the second they walk into Ballonlea. They very obviously get that feeling that they’re being watched, so they behave themselves. The challenger is feeling a little bolder because of what Bea and Kabu said about how great of a trainer they are and how the parents should be ashamed. Opal is super sweet and some of the questions on the quiz involved making the challenger feel better about themselves. Opal knows that they need help to boost their damaged self esteemed, and she’s determined to help even a little. She sends two of her gym challengers with her to Circhester. Opal sends another alert ahead, updating the rest of the league on how the poor kid is doing.

Gordie is waiting for Opal’s gym leaders to deliver the challenger to him. He takes them wherever they want to go until they go to the gym. He lets them take their time around, not getting impatient. He uses himself to shield the kid from their family entirely. They don’t even get a chance to get close. They haven’t been given a chance since Bea got involved. They’re probably really impatient to start up their shit. After their battle, he pulls the family away from the kid and says something like “look, everyone knows how shitty you are by now. There’s no point in continuing to do it. You’re losing grip of your child and there’s nothing you can do about it. You’d better knock it off, because we’ve all been pretty nice to you about this. Once you get to the next gym, you’re either loving and supportive, or Piers is going to literally kick your asses.” Then Gordie walks the challenger to Spikemuth, because Melony asks him to.

Melony knows Gordie is out there to fetch the challenger. She knows the family has been schooled plenty already. This doesn’t stop her from raging about how poorly they must be treating this child. She’s the kind of mom who would not and could not ever hit her children. She’s disgusted by the actions of this family, who has definitely been exposed everywhere by now. Their reputation is so ruined. So after the battle, she comforts the challenger and walks him to the end of Circhester, where Gordie will come and walk the challenger to the next gym. She screams, flat out screams at the parents for the scum they’re being. The gym leaders have to stand up for the challenger since they can’t stand up for themselves. She promises them that they will never get the chance to hurt that child again. She also warns them about Piers.

Piers has been preparing for their arrival since he got the text from Milo. He grew up with abusive parents as well who also shamed him for losing during his own gym challenge. He’s not going to let anyone else go through that. He knows they’re coming, and he hopes for their sake that they know what’s waiting for them in the darkness of Spikemuth. He sent Team Yell to collect the challenger from Gordie at the opening of Spikemuth, and to keep the family out. “For their sake,” he reminds them to say. He battles the kid just fine. Then he takes them by the shoulder and tells them that he’s going to walk him out of Spikemuth, and he wants the challenger to point out their family to him. The challenger, who knows vaguely what’s about to happen, does this, and Piers marches over, splitting the crowd to look them in the eye. The family is so fed up and angry that they start yelling at Piers to let them see their child. Piers is a rockstar, and has a loud voice. He yells louder than all of them combined. He says that they’d better go back to whatever hole they crawled out of and leave that challenger alone. Their journey ends here in Spikemuth, Piers promises it. The child will go to Hammerlocke alone. Nobody thought a gym leader could tell a family to leave their child alone, so it didn’t happen earlier, but Piers doesn’t care about whether or not he has the legal authority. It’s definitely a threat, but they’re known throughout the region as villains, so they can’t do anything about it.

The challenger makes it to Hammerlocke, where Raihan is waiting for them. He looks around and asks about the family and escorts he was expecting. The challenger is a bit stunned and tells him what happened at Spikemuth. Raihan laughs and just goes “yeah, that’s Piers.” He reassures the challenger, the battle goes great, and then he comforts him a little. He promises to talk to Leon about getting them some sort of living situation away from that family. He knows very well that if he has to go back to that place after this, they’re doomed. He says he’ll get something figured out. The challenger cried a little and thanks him. Getting away from their family is a dream come true.

Leon has pretty much watched everything with this challenger. He also knows about Raihan’s promise. Whether or not they make it to the battle with Leon, he comes out to see the kid anyway. He follows up on Raihan’s promise, and they get the kid to live with some friends or something that’s much better than going home to an abusive house. Leon also reassures them and comforts them as much as he humanly can. He also gives the challenger his phone number, so that if their plan falls through, they can call him and he can help them sort things out.

That challenger is still in good contact with every gym leader, even after their gym challenge. They’re away from the abuse and they couldn’t be happier. The league also pitched in to pay for some therapy for them, so they’re recovering from years of damage. It’s not a linear recover, they never are, but there’s progress. The trainer knows there’s progress, and things are looking up. Life is good.

I hope this helps. I don’t have a lot of experience with this kind of thing, so I tried to keep it vague. This applies to everyone, if you’re in a bad situation, there is help close by. It may not seem like it, but there are people who want to help you. People who want to see you do well. Help is out there. Help is always available.

And I hope your situation gets better soon.

#pokemon swsh #pokemon milo #pokemon nessa #pokemon kabu #pokemon gordie #pokemon melony #pokemon opal #pokemon bea #pokemon allister #pokemon piers #pokemon raihan #pokemon leon #ask #spooksahoyboye #tw abuse

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simonalkenmayeris-still-dead · 3 years

Text

That Post (2/???)

Just between you and me and everyone reading this post, I would not have started with “how this began”. I’d have got straight to the point. Nobody really wants to read the backstory, they want to know the terrible things I’ve done and the horrible consequences that are going to come of my actions.

Simon says he asked me why I used his name in my url. That’s not true. He asked whether I was afraid of trademark infringement, and only just fell short of an explicit threat to take me to court.

In the time between me starting to write this and his followers spamming my blog, he’s written another post alleging that I had some sort of contact with him prior. That’s also untrue. He might be mistaking me for another tumblr user with a similar name, but I did clarify that I was not that person.

I expect Simon’s writer was assuming I would be so intimidated that I would back off. They definitely didn’t expect to be speaking to someone who’d already considered that they might be threatened with legal action and had checked to make sure that what they were doing was perfectly legal.

I voluntarily told him why the blog is called Simon Alkenmayer is dead, because it seemed to be making him upset. You can see the entire exchange here.

When Simon says he “asked” me to stop using his name, he means he asked me to stop, after he tried to threaten legal action.

Simon then lists a bunch of reasons he told me for needing to change the blog name. And this is true, but none of them are particularly realistic.

To put this in perspective, I need to emphasise that Simon is not a real person. He is a character someone made up and is roleplaying as.

But sure, I’m using his intellectual property. I was not at the time using his intellectual property, aside from referencing his name on my blog, which is to be expected, considering I was using my blog to record his responses to me.

Even if we agree that I might end up in the public eye, and I might make missteps, which he seems to take for granted (flattering), there’s no reason to believe we would be confused. For one thing, he is a fictional character whereas I am a real person. For another, nobody is getting Michael B Jordan, actor, mixed up with Michael Jordan, basketballer, and they only have one letter difference in their names.

And the dangerous, angry people who target Simon are part of his plotline. If they exist, it’s as weirdos trying to prove he’s not real, and have no reason to target me, since I also don’t believe he’s real.

Then, instead of calling me The Fool, or even just Fool, as it says on my blog and which would actually be kinda funny, he lets everyone know he’s going to refer to me as “isdead”. This person thinks they’re a trans ally but they can’t even figure out how to use the correct name? Obviously, he’s trying to copy the fact that I’ve said I’ll refer to his writer as Si, which I only did because I need a way to distinguish between the character and the writer, and I really want to give Kristina the benefit of the doubt here.

But mainly, I want to point out that the sentence where he does this begins with the word heretofore. Simon’s writer probably thought it was a suitably old sounding word, and it really is. Unfortunately, it means “up until now” not “from now on”. He really should have used henceforth.

It’s excessively picky, and I’m only mentioning it because Simon lived during the time when these words would have been used. And later on in this rant, he complains that one of the reasons people hate him is because he never breaks character. Except that he breaks character all the time.

I’d like to be clear that I’ve never said that I used Simon’s name in homage. I’ve said it was a reference. If I have used the word homage, I would have been referring to a homage to Rozencrantz and Guildenstern are Dead, not a homage to Simon.

But I don’t think I’ve ever used that word, it implies a level of interest in Simon that I’ve never had. I think he’s used it here because he likes to say and imply I run this blog as an attempt to lash out after he didn’t pay me attention I thought I deserved.

Simon then tries to accuse me of not caring about his feelings. Which is true. Simon is a fictional character and I do not care about his feelings because like the character, they don’t exist.

His writer is certainly very angry about me using Simon’s name, but they’ve made a choice. They have decided that it’s more important to them to remain anonymous than it is to stop me using the name.

When I’ve said that I have a right to use Simon’s name, it’s merely in the way anyone can use any name. Simon’s name is not trademarked and you can’t copyright a name.

He’s then gone on to try to explain the original conversation, which I’ve already explained above, so I’m not going to cover it again.

I don’t see why Simon is trying to stain my character by saying I called him a liar, since he admits he did say the wrong thing. I think it’s pretty reasonable to assume someone is lying if they threaten you with legal action that they can’t go through with.

Simon then tries to assert that the pen name is actually protected anyway, which is simply untrue. I’m not attempting to profit off this blog, and libel does not cover products, or fictional characters.

It’s also worth noting that libel must be untrue, which I don’t think anything on my blog is, or I wouldn’t be writing it.

Simon goes on to say that he blocked me because I was lashing out in a negative way, but I was just refuting what he was saying. I know I’m not the only person who he’s blocked because Simon didn’t want his followers to see any inconvenient truths.

I wasn’t actually openly hostile to Simon for a long time, although I doubt he sees it that way. I used to go to his blog and ask anonymous questions, and then reblog the screenshots to my own blog to point out the inconsistencies in his characterisation or the conflict in what he said, and what my research had produced.

When I first created this blog, I wasn’t at all interested in proving anything about Simon, I was interested in the experiment, and how well Simon’s writer had researched the character. That’s one of the reasons I quickly lost interest in him, because it seems they don’t even do a cursory wikipedia search on most things.

I haven’t sent an ask to Simon since September of this year.

Simon also references his IP tracker as though it lets him know when I’m sending him asks. Either he’s bluffing, or he doesn’t have one. If Simon had my IP address, he would know that the three other people he’s referenced in this rant aren’t me.

It’s convenient for Simon to say that I think he’s a villain because he didn’t want me to use his name. What could be more petty? In actual fact, I think he’s probably well meaning and more dangerous because of it.

He then goes on to list a number of things I’ve allegedly done, that prove my blog is a hate blog – is this the thing I’m being called out for?

It seems to me that the thing Simon dislikes about my blog, aside from the name, is that I don’t run it the way he wants.

He himself says, in his FAQ, that to interact with the experiment, you don’t have to consume anything that isn’t free. So it’s interesting that he’s suddenly accusing me of not reading enough of his book.

Simon thinks that his blog isn’t literature, his followers seem to think it’s not literature, but it is still an interactive storytelling medium. That’s what he’s using it for. Simon’s opinion doesn’t change that the blog is part of his canon.

For someone whose writing is fairly average, Simon is very good at using emotive language when he wants something. His blog is a community, the rest of the internet is a cesspool. One that I’ve been rooting around in, apparently.

What actually happened is that I was sent an anonymous tip off which I then investigated. And I didn’t “accuse” Kristina Meister of anything other than being the person behind Simon.

And I’m not sure you can call it fielding mean spirited asks when those asks are about Simon. What the person writing Simon, and what many of his followers seem not to understand, is that I’m critiquing a fictional character. There’s no reason for me to tell people not to send asks pointing out Simon’s flaws, because Simon is part of the fiction. He’s part of the critique.

And if the person writing Simon doesn’t understand that distinction, they probably need to take a bit of a break.

The reason I’ve not brought forth a single argument that gives Simon pause, is because nobody can. Regardless of what they say or even what they think about themselves, I don’t think the person who writes Simon is open to persuasion. I’m not writing this blog for Simon’s benefit, I never have been.

You can see it in his attempts to paraphrase me. I don’t think Simon’s antisemitic for referencing the lizard people conspiracy, I think he’s antisemitic because in reaction to the observation about antisemitic tropes in his work, he doubled down and referenced the lizard people conspiracy in an attempt to lure me into sending him angry asks.

Which I didn’t do, but other people did, and he thinks those people are me. Thus, why I say he probably doesn’t have an IP tracker.

The reason I don’t engage with Simon using logic is because there is no point, and even if there were, I don’t think he would understand. I have studied logic, and his writer doesn’t even bother to google historical periods he allegedly lived through. Why would I waste my time with that?

I don’t hate Simon, I just don’t think he’s a real person, and I treat him as accordingly. That’s allegedly what is experiment is investigating, but he interprets it as hate.

#hashtag called out #simon alkenmayer #the post that never ends

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