We know tokoyami loves perching on top of things so here’s a silly one shot
Tokoyami has a “bad habit” of climbing on top of furniture he’s not supposed to
There are normal thing like sitting on top of a railing, his desk, or the back of the couch…but climbing the fridge and trying to wedge himself on the top shelf of cabinet is a bit much
So there came to point of enough people being jump scared by a perched tokoyami sitting in the dark that they decided enough was enough and put a large book shelf in the common room.
They stuffed enough black pillows and fluffy blankets on top to attract even the most picky of avians and waited
(The rest of the shelf spaces were filled with books and board games so it wouldn’t seem suspicious, in fact everyone seemed to enjoy adding their additional stuff to the shelves to show off and grab quickly)
The trap was a simple one and tokoyami fell right into it, it only took 3 days before he asked why there were blankets up there when no one could reach them
they answered it was storage, he knew they were lying
Instead of hovering at the edge of the room broodingly now he will walk straight over to the book shelf and perch on top of it
He can look surprisingly cool and edgy from up there (he can make anything look cool and edgy tbh)
One time kamanari tried to go up there because it makes sense if it’s the common room then anyone should be able to go up right?
Well tokoyami walked in to see kaminari in his nest Fortress of Darkness and immediately turned around and walked back out
He wouldn’t climb back up for nearly a month until finally they coxed him into it
All he kept saying was that the space had been “spoiled” or “wrought with corruption” or they had “defiled his inner sanctum”
They had to take everything down, wash it, and move the shelf before letting tokoyami set it back up how he liked
They knew better than to touch his stuff again after that
their dynamic in the show had so much potential. their friendship could’ve been so good. the great things they could’ve done as the king and queen of gotham. more thoughts in tags :)
i also think the fact that i had such a stunted and isolated upbringing and now that im an adult all my friends are on atypical life paths (and honestly even my friends as a kid were like this too) means i find things that are usually very common life stages really interesting. like knowing someone who has a house and a wife and 2 kids (with that wife) and a job with a salary feels like meeting fucking paul bunyun to me. or hearing the kids i work with talk about graduating high school and going to college and being on a real path with that stuff is neat? or even sometimes knowing cis/het people who are like going thru that coming of age stuff that i never really experienced the way you see it in the movies bc of transness/queerness/neurodivergence. its like woah they said the name of the thing in the thing. do u know what i mean???
i know a lot of trans women talk about mourning not growing up a girl and i always thought i didnt experience any equivalent to that (probably for many reasons) but the last couple weeks i realised i think i do and its specifically about not growing up a gay man.
been trying to figure out just how i am going to explain how wildly my brain has been altered since the last time i saw my therapist && it make me realize all of this has happened in 1 month,,,,,,,,,,, it feels like . eons. eternity . in the best way possible
kind of obsessed w the way goro got served with a "you don't actually hate akira do you, i saw you smile when you realised he was alive" by the catsona of hope and just had a mental breakdown about it
Idc anymore i think i'm a good enough writer that i can say that when i noticed the pattern in what exactly makes a book "good" on booktok (and, bc of that, what makes it popular and top bestseller lists), it feels almost demeaning and denigrating to the entire craft. Idk if i should blame the way tiktok-esque social media has utterly rotted everyone's ability to concentrate and read more than three sentences, but literally none of those books are objectively good.
(Yes, yes, art is subjective. HOWEVER. Art is subjective when you look at style, at themes, at motifs, at plots and characters. Art is still a craft, it still requires skill. I've seen beyond the tiktok quotes of these books. Not even their editors are good given the amount of typos/spelling mistakes. That is not something that you should find in a traditionally published book.)
You look at these books, and you know the only reason for their existence is to make money. I cannot and will not accept that as art.
(I'm on Tumblr, of course I have to explain every point. Artists who make money off their art =/= people who only create art meant to be profitable. There is a difference between an artist who hopes to monetise doing what they love, who creates what they wish to see more of and who happens to then create something that other people wish to see more of, and a person who looks at what's trending and decides that making an unholy frankenstein's monster of a book that mashes all those trending tropes and motifs together would get them rich quick. The fact that a lot of these booktok books become popular because of nepotism is just the cherry on top. It's soulless.)
And to finally say what I wanted to say, it's because none of these books have any deeper message or even artistic value to them. You will find a few out of context quotes or paragraphs, ones written specifically so they'd look deep and beautiful when taken out of context, so that people would post them, so that people would buy the books. Entire books written just so those few lines could become viral and make cash. It cannot even be compared to a hook line writers would post to get people interested in their works, because in booktok's case, those are the only lines of quality and in the context itself, they are often out of place and forced.
I just hate booktok, i hate what modern social media has done to art. It's all created to be quickly consumed, for the few ☆aesthetic☆ glances, and then discarded. Just to make more money for those who are already nepo babies. As if artists needed more obstacles to jump over.