#i still have no idea how i'm going to get all these details with my markers lol
Note
how much of Stormpaw’s demon are Maple’s curse vs just things that happen (cause in canon it’s really vague about whether Maple causes all those tragedies or has the ability to see his future for some reason)
EVERYTHING that happens in Stormpaw's Demon involves her. It's not being so dramatically renamed for nothing, she's a major driver and cause of the plot! Crookedstar's young name is in the title; but really, his demon is driving the misfortune.
That said... It's been a while and I'm heavily considering retooling the narrative.
Since I last REALLY worked on it, BB has changed in the sense that I'm a lot more willing to alter canon than I used to be. While my driving mindset used to be "telling a better version of the original story," and that IS a value I still hold... I've lost patience with the misogyny within the original work.
I've spoken at length about the way Crookedstar's Promise grinds my gears (PLEASE follow this link for a full breakdown of why), but in summary; it desperately tries to keep every male character likeable when they shouldn't be, saying nothing about the fact they are complicit in or even enabling abuse, while giving Crookedstar TWO flatly evil maternal figures. Even Brambleberry, who's heavily praised for being "like a mom instead," has a weird moment where she starts giving Crookedjaw the cold shoulder because she finds out he's chatting with a demon.
So like... I'm not sure if I want to make the "better version" of that story. That was the one that I already had, which had Mapleshade be acting entirely out of just the malice of wanting to hurt a child, while Hailstar and Shellheart are the excellent people canon wanted to see them as.
(not that it's even a BAD super edition, it's actually a really good one, but if it's my kitchen that's not what we cook here. Man I really do always massively overhaul my favorite SEs LMAO)
I think, specifically, I want to make Mapleshade slightly more morally gray and Hailstar more of an enabler. Shellheart is getting significantly retooled to make him more of the heartwarming parental figure I think he should be; someone loving to help balance out a very heavy rework.
And of course Brambleberry, I'm going to tweak her some. Try to make her flaws more consistent, get rid of that odd cold shoulder moment.
Old regulars will remember an old AU which is also still a massive favorite of mine; it was called Better Call Mapleshade, and it was kind of a commentary on how an environment can shape a person. Mapleshade, as a demon in heaven, was essentially their best prosecutor and defense attorney.
You can actually see how a lot of ideas from that AU ended up in Better Bones with the expanded trial system! I'm thinking of taking another page out of it, by making Mapleshade more aware of "the game" of Clan culture's structural unfairness, while also using it like a weapon against people she wants to hurt. A powerful demon of revenge.
Under the cut, what won't be changing, the way it was, and Draft 2 of Stormpaw's Demon.
(MASSIVE CONTENT WARNING FOR MENTAL AND PHYSICAL CHILD ABUSE including ableism. BB!Rainflower is WORSE than canon.)
WHAT WON'T BE CHANGING;
These are major details of Stormpaw's Demon that are different from canon. I'm working with these as givens and won't be changing between drafts.
Mapleshade does have a bone to pick with Appledusk's lineage specifically.
One option might make her more discerning when it comes to her targets, but no matter what, she is going to have her eyes on this bloodline. She Haunts Applekin.
Rainflower is Hailstar's deputy.
And I will make her downfall spectacular. If you were worried I was going to make her more sympathetic then you have no idea who I am LMAO
Shellheart is not Crookedstar's biofather
While I want Hailstar to maybe be worse; I do want to fix Shellheart by making him a good parent. I've decided a good way to do this is to make it that Shellheart adopts Storm AFTER he's been abused by Rainflower. He didn't have authority over him before then. In general, I do want him to have a bigger positive role in this narrative.
DEPENDING ON WHICH VERSION: Oakheart might also not be his bio-brother.
Crookedjaw is not a cruel name; it's an Honor Title.
I've ALWAYS been frustrated by how canon treats scars and injuries as bad things. It's a BATTLE culture. Surviving brushes with death is their WHOLE THING. There is no "crookedkit" or "crookedpaw," he was Stormpaw until he earned his warrior name, with "Crookedjaw" commending the massive lengths he's gone to in order to survive, adapt, and honor StarClan.
Mentor change: Goodbye Cedarpelt, hello Magpiesky!
I decided to repurpose one of the Barn Cats! Magpie from the books is a daughter of Perchshine-- the cat who killed Mapleshade. She joined RiverClan long ago. She's actually the one who points him in the way of the barn, and has to train him "as a punishment for teaching him disobedience" when he comes back. I actually have a couple of minor reasons for making this change but I'll spare them for now.
He might start with Cedarpelt, but then run to the barn when Cedarpelt is basically refusing to train him properly.
Some family tree shuffles
I need to update this tree to show Crookedstar's new situation with Shellheart (and also reflect some other changes I made like confirming Hallowflight fully being Lizardtail's honor title and Robinpaw being the apprentice who gets eaten by Ripwater), BUT, overall this tree is solid.
The ableism Storm faces is going to have a different flavor
I have built BB in a way where him surviving his injury would be very respected, but he'd get badly coddled and pushed into early retirement. Him running to the barn is because he suspects he wouldn't have gotten training otherwise.
He kills a fox there
because it's Cool. I might give him the tail to wear as a trophy of the kill because that's also Cool. The fox was very old and feeble at that point, which was why it was attacking chickens, but shhh
The Way It Was (Very Evil Mapleshade)
Darkstar's Commandment creating the Queen's Rights, that no queen would ever have to reveal the other parent of their kittens, wasn't enough to appease Mapleshade.
Nor was the damning of everyone that Mapleshade killed. In a fit of irrational fury at all the death, StarClan sent all her victims into the Dark Forest.
But she can't chase them. In the Dark Forest, you don't see someone unless you WANT to see them, not unless you're hanging out in a "land mar" (a sort of personal hell that all demons get).
on the off-chance she does see them, Frecklewish usually rips her to shreds...
Which is the next problem.
You can't DIE in the Dark Forest if you're a demon. You poof back into existence the next day, no injuries, no scars, nothing.
she's bored.
And vengeful. In spite of the wrong being righted, she still thinks she deserves MORE revenge, because what she wanted was really Appledusk.
She finds it unfair that HER legacy is snuffed out, that it's Darkstar's Commandment and not hers, that her babies were destined for greatness and by extension SHE should have been great.
So she takes up a hobby in tormenting Appledusk's descendants. She wants to eradicate them completely, but is spiteful enough that she'll just settle with hurting them.
The first one she managed to kill was Applefrost, Reedshine's son. Just by accident. She didn't know she had such power over the mortal plane.
After that, she managed to drown Duskwater. The daughter.
But she couldn't wipe out HER daughter in that storm... and she brought two more Applekin children into the world.
Stormkit and Oakkit.
So, naturally, Mapleshade turned her sight on the little fuzzball.
He would be an easy kill, in theory. She smashed Stormkit's jaw on the rock, but Oakkit pulled him out.
From there, it's similar to canon for a bit. His recovery is long and painful.
Rainflower is disgusted, and wants absolutely no part of helping him through this process.
That wasn't an injury gained in battle-- it's because he's careless and didn't listen to her. He's going through all this suffering, and for what?
To never become a warrior?
She's cruel to him, begins to neglect and distance herself from him. Discourages him from suckling.
Mapleshade LOVES this. It's worse than she could have imagined. Rainflower is horrible.
Gleefully, she realizes that Stormkit dying now is what Rainflower wants.
So, she kills two other kits in the nursery.
Fallowtail's only survivor is Willowkit, so she has plenty of milk. She starts suckling Stormkit.
(Graypool is now an older sibling! She's actually an apprentice at this time! Later, she encourages Willowkit to visit their father, who decides to just kidnap them completely)
Eventually, being the deputy, Rainflower had some kind of conversation with Hailstar.
During that conversation, she asked him to do something very cruel to Crookedkit.
And Hailstar LOST IT
He's the successor of Volestar, who was appointed by Darkstar herself to uphold the Queen's Rights and protect children.
How DARE you try to turn RiverClan into a place of disrespect?? To use my power this way?!
So, her power was stripped, and Oakkit and Stormkit were taken from her.
From there, Storm eventually goes to the barn as discussed, and Mapleshade continues to do things to hurt him.
This was my first draft, and now having thought about it a lot, I feel like it's not super cohesive. A demonic Mapleshade who's entirely malicious is neat, but I feel like this makes her flat. Shellheart's not tied in super well either, and Hailstar's stand feels kind of hollow because Rainflower hasn't actually used or leveraged the new authority I've given her.
But most egregiously? Rainflower's abuse being so close to canon tastes kind of bland. I feel like I can make it sooo much more intense, complicated, and painful.
Draft 2 of Stormpaw's Demon (Demon of Revenge Update)
Essentially an outline for the first few chapters establishing Mapleshade by dealing with Rainflower and then fragments for the rest.
Mapleshade's still malicious, but this time, there's more to it.
Darkstar's Commandment, and the damning of her victims, DID appease this Mapleshade.
But is she satisfied? No.
She doesn't feel like she was wrong at all, actually. Without her killing those three in revenge for her kittens, StarClan's anger probably would have subsided.
She can't hunt her victims down again though, because, they don't want to see her. She fights Frecklewish every now and then but what's the point?
She WON already. She already GOT the euphoria of dragging them all down with her.
Punishing everyone who had ever wronged her was the highlight of her existence... but now it's done.
She's in Hell and she's bored. Her punishment is never seeing her kits again, but more importantly, her punishment is eternal shuffling through the leaf litter when she's SO GOOD at getting revenge.
Problem with revenge is, when you get it, it's gone.
She probably messed with Duskwater and Applefrost a bit, but if she killed one of them, it was accidental. It made her realize that revenge without a motive is just boring.
The prologue would probably open up with establishing her as a character. Who she is, what she wants.
Because the first chapter would dive RIGHT IN to Stormkit. The only child of Rainflower, the deputy.
Right along with Stormkit, you only learn in hindsight that he was born in a storm that killed his grandmother. It's clear that Rainflower reminds him of this often.
And that she's nasty to him. Giving him unclear instruction and finding things to critique, telling him to jump and then barking at him that he didn't ask how high.
She has great expectations for him, and reminds him of their family lineage often. Of who killed his great-grandfather, of what a fantastic pair of warriors Applefrost and Duskwater were
"I lost everything the night you were born. You'd better be able to make up for it."
Unfortunately, Stormkit is not the sort of child who's good at listening to those sorts of orders. He's stubborn and defiant; angry and oppositional.
When he doesn't understand why you do something, he doesn't want to do it
He "embarrasses" her a lot, and gets hurt for it.
In public, these are swats and whacks. The things you're "allowed" to do to discipline your child. In private these are a lot more severe.
So when Stormkit is given an order or a command, he obeys completely out of fear rather than respect. And sometimes he forgets his fear.
The other cats in RiverClan? Well... Stormkit is a problem child, and Rainflower is a fantastic, organized, respected deputy.
Hailstar especially, unfortunately. He feels bad... for Rainflower.
"It must be so hard for her to have such a little brat as a son. He never seems to learn his lesson. When will he stop wandering off? What's wrong with him? He certainly didn't get that from her."
His best friend, Oakkit, gets in the SAME trouble he does.
He's mischievous, fearless, and outgoing, and... never gets punished for it.
There's times where Oakkit does something and Stormkit physically recoils, just imagining what Rainflower would do if HE did something like that. Especially in how Oakkit talks to his dad, Shellheart.
For example, Shellheart will come to get his son for suckling time and Oakkit will tell him to his face things like, "I don't want to! I'm HAVING FUN!"
and shellheart doesn't flip out. He just. explains why it's important to eat on time.
"I know. But Fallowtail wants to go have fun too! She's waiting for you to come and suckle so she can go play."
"Well why can't she just play now and I suckle later?"
"When a suckler is full of milk, it makes their belly very itchy. She's uncomfortable when you don't come and eat on time."
"nnnh"
"Tough sell? How about I sweeten the pile with a badger ride back?"
"Hm. You drive a hard bargain, Mr. Dad."
Stormkit doesn't know why he hates it. He's all angry inside when he sees them acting friendly. He's polite because Oakkit's his best friend and Mr. Shellheart is really nice, but he just...
He's too young at the time to know he's envious. He wants what Oakkit has so badly it hurts.
Sometime after an exchange like that, Stormkit is visited by Mapleshade for the first time.
And they talk about Stormkit's anger and resentment. Stormkit lets it slip that he HATES his Mi.
Waits for Mapleshade to stop him and tell him, like everyone else does, that "she's still your mother."
...but she doesn't.
Besides Oakkit and Shellheart, she's the first person who doesn't tell him that.
She just lets him talk. Lets him go on. Starts making nasty jabs, which make him laugh.
"She says she lost everything the day I was born!!"
"What?! That's crazy! She got you that day!"
"Right?! It's like she's saying I'm nothing! Maybe she SHOULD lose everything, then she'd know what she's got!"
And then she asks, "Do you want her to die?"
Suddenly, there's a chill in the air. He's really shocked by the suggestion of that. He didn't... he didn't mean it to go THAT far. That's not what he meant... is it?
But she's fading back into the shadows, just her eyes visible in the dark. Tells him that she can see he's unsure. That's ok.
Holds up a budding sprig of sycamore, the maple she's named for. Its buds grow in a "deer hoof," with one large bud in the middle and two "toes" sprouting on its sides.
Teaches him that if he needs someone in his corner, all he has to do is call.
(to summon her, a bud is plucked off the sprig and thrown in the river.)
He wakes up with the sprig in his paw, panics, and shoves it under the nest he shares with his mother.
The experience shakes him. He probably ran to Brambleberry for the first time, who explains very seriously that he was contacted by a demon.
From the description... Mapleshade. The cat who killed his great-grandfather.
He BEGS her not to tell Rainflower. PLEADS with her. He can barely hear her already saying yes under the throbbing sound of his heart in his ears.
When he calms down, he hears her saying yes. On the condition she will need to smoke the nursery with sage and cedar, and that he will be needing a bath as well.
When he's still concerned that Rainflower will question him, she makes a plan to distract her for a day, long enough for him to do his cleanse and the smell to fade.
And, of course, that he will not follow any instructions that Mapleshade left him. He agrees. But does not tell Brambleberry about the sprig.
For a while he's very "well behaved." But it's not about him, never has been.
It really doesn't take long at all for Rainflower to get worse. Kids who are defiant like that are usually exercising a defense mechanism-- if they're not aggressive about their boundaries, their limits are pushed to a breaking point.
And after a big blowout like this, which was probably a public spectacle, Stormkit runs back to his nest and digs out the sprig, runs to the river, and throws a bud in the river.
Having calmed down from his shuddering fury, the dread begins to set in as a dead-smelling wind ruffles his fur. He can't help but feel like he just did something very stupid out of anger.
Looking at his reflection, he sees no cuts or swelling. The blows weren't "bad enough." He doesn't have the kind of injuries that anyone would do anything about. Equal parts guilt and frustration swell in him like a tide at full moon. How could he be sitting here wishing she hurt him worse?
So he tries to soften it, "I don't want her to die, I just, I... I just want her to lose everything like she says. Please..."
The wind whispers in his ear, "it will get worse before it gets better."
"I can handle that," he sobs, "I can do anything. Please. Make it stop."
After that, Oakkit probably runs to come find him. Stormkit doesn't want to be found. He makes up a childish plan, on the spot, to run away and join ThunderClan.
Oak says that's mousebrained, but Storm has DEVOTED himself to this plan he made just now.
And is crossing the stones.
Oak sighs, but if Storm's going to ThunderClan, he should really go with him because then they could totally fight off a small fox (Childish hubris)
Unfortunately, Rainflower found them. asks Exactly What He's Doing.
The kids freeze. Stormkit in particular has that horrible, twisting anxiety that you get when you hear The Tone that means you're in for an absolute wallop when you get home.
He's about to start running, but then the voice tickles his ear-fur again. Mapleshade tells him to go back. It'll be ok. She's on his side. She'll make her pay.
Oakkit is still frozen in place when, as if possessed, Storm's body stiffly returns to his mother.
There's a silence. The river trickling through the stepping stones. Storm looking with fear and anger up at her.
She's waiting for an apology, groveling. He doesn't give her one.
So she raises her paw and gives him an awful, hard blow.
His little body twists, flung off balance, trying to correct himself, and he can swear he felt paws pushing him a second time, whipping him downwards.
The feeling of falling fills his stomach, the water sloshes into his ears before there's a ring of a sound like CLUNK-CRUNCH, and then the river floods his nose and mouth.
It all goes dark.
When he wakes up, it's with a throbbing pain in the side of his jaw so intense that he can feel it all the way down in the tip of his tail. He learns from Brambleberry that Oakkit rescued him-- jumped right into the water to pull him out. And then Rainflower pulled him out. That was when Shellheart came and found them.
There's a LOT of arguing outside, but Storm can't ask what it is because it hurts to move his mouth at all. Brambleberry hushes and soothes him, telling him it's nothing he needs to know about.
(MEDICAL INFODUMPING: i do actually have a medical reason I want his injury to come from someone hitting him which causes him to fall. The injury he'd get in canon would actually be a really simple and common split in the front of the mandible, which wouldn't cause his mouth to have a dramatic twist and would heal very easily. He needs to come down on the rock at an angle to shatter the joint like that.)
From here, the tune about Stormkit starts to change.
Oakkit was distraught when they got back, telling everyone that Rainflower smashed him against a rock.
Rainflower's story is that he was running, and she chased after him. EVERYONE knows that he has a habit of doing this.
Then HE slipped and fell and hit his face on the rocks. His fault.
Oakkit was running away with him, he's lying.
Shellheart is FEROCIOUSLY taking the side of his son, furious that she would imply he raised a liar.
Hailstar is taking the side of Rainflower. It's two troublemaking kits against his deputy.
Yes, Rainflower's disciplined him before, but that's no indication she'd do something like this on purpose.
Brambleberry weighs in that the injury that Stormkit has isn't the sort of injury a kitten gets from hitting his jaw. The bone is shattered.
probably does some kind of visual to go along with it, using a stick and a stone
"The bones of a kitten are like the young shoots of a tree. When they fracture," she takes a young twig and snaps it in her paws. The fibers in the center are bent but unbroken, with the bark splintered around them, "they flay but don't snap."
She places the stick on the ground, "So for the injury that Stormkit has," and violently smashes the rock down onto it. It's shattered and pulped, the fibers flattened, "there would need to be a great force."
Shellheart hisses, saying that THIS is the evidence. Oakkit's story is consistent but Rainflower HAS to have lied.
Several cats are now on his side.
...But more are on Rainflower's.
"She's his mother. She loves him. Oakkit has to be mistaken."
"Why would she chase down her own son just to smash his face on a stone?"
"She wouldn't pull them out of the river if she really wanted to hurt him!"
Hailstar prompts if there's ANYTHING else that could explain this?
It comes up that Brambleberry cleansed the dens the other day.
She says that it's possible there is a demon's influence at work. She can't know for sure which one it is-- but it may have a grudge against Rainflower.
She allows them to reach the conclusion that it's probably Mapleshade on their own. She will be talking to Crookedkit when he's able, but she's not about to tell anyone about his dream yet.
She doesn't want him to have the extra scrutiny when he needs to rest and heal, but if she'd shared that an unnamed cat had a demonic dream, it would set off panic as cats accused each other of dark magic.
Rainflower manages to escape consequences by pointing out that it was likely Mapleshade that injured her son.
Oakkit is still trying to tell everyone SHE did it, he SAW it, Stormkit walked back and she hit him and smashed his jaw on the rock
But he's hushed. It's decided there's not enough evidence. And not enough reason to doubt the noble deputy.
She's never done something like this before, after all. It's more likely it was an accident.
There is a group of cats that are dissatisfied about this, though, and it only grows when Brambleberry explains that Stormkit's prognosis is not good.
There is a very high chance he will die. Even adult warriors can wither slowly from this sort of injury.
Recovery will be slow and it will be painful.
...but after that incident? Rainflower gets bolder. She got away with it in public. She got a taste of the leverage she has, how much they trust her.
Stormkit spends a lot of time floating in between his dreams and his living-world pain. There's at least one interaction where he speaks to Mapleshade, screaming at her that he TRUSTED her, he KNOWS she's the one who hurt him! How could she?!
She can't say much, kept at bay by a hazy smokescreen of sage. "You must live! You must survive!"
Her old words echo in his head; It Will Get Worse Before It Gets Better.
Throughout the recovery, Rainflower grows more cruel and more distant.
In public she likes to talk about how difficult this is for her, but he's strong, he will survive.
In private, she'll do things that hurt him, like repositioning his head in a way that "his jaw will heal better in." When he cries, she's unsympathetic.
"You brought this on yourself. This is for your own good."
Her definition of "private" is also changing. She's getting more comfortable with snapping at him in front of limited groups of people.
Since she's deputy, the other two parents in the nursery, Shellheart and Fallowtail, do their best to care for Stormkit while she's away. He's pulled away from them when she gets back, any ideas or suggestions they have vetoed.
When they try to go to Brambleberry about this, she shakes her head with frustration and tries to make them understand she knows... and she's just as unhappy with it as they are.
She tells them she keeps going to Hailstar, but he's still hesitant. Even though she's trying to tell him that Stormkit's recovery is being undermined.
"Rainflower's son has always needed tough love. She's his Mi and knows him best... she's still taking care of him. Give her a warning before suggesting anything drastic."
In the other draft, I had Mapleshade kill two of Fallowtail's kits to free up milk for Stormkit. I'm not sure I need that anymore honestly, plus, this rework's heavy enough! She can just have Willowkit without any deaths, while Graypaw remains an older sibling.
When Brambleberry informs Rainflower and Stormkit that the jaw isn't healing straight and it will probably be at an angle forever, Rainflower reacts with disdain.
"His first scar and it's nothing he earned?!"
She's reminded he might not even survive. He's lost weight. He's eating less. Stormkit curls up quietly. He hates how they talk about him like he can't hear them.
"Surviving is the bare minimum," she scoffs reflexively. There's a silence so thick you can cut it with a claw. After an uncomfortable heartbeat, she continues, "What kind of a life will he live if he-"
"a life," Brambleberry cuts in, "he'd live a life. And it can be a good one"
Rainflower growls, spitting that the twisted jaw is a disfigurement. He'll never be able to open his mouth all the way. He can't chew and he can't suckle forever. Stormkit will never become a warrior if he can't even dispatch a fish with a killing bite.
"Scars are the sign that StarClan has mended our bodies after fighting a good fight, making any Clanborn cat worthy of being an elder" Brambleberry preaches, "Names are what mark us, calling upon our ancestors to look down at us and witness our actions, Rainflower. Don't say anything you wouldn't want them to see."
Rainflower flicks her ear, seething, a rumble in her throat, "was that some kind of threat? As if I've said something wrong?"
"If you feel threatened, look within."
Stormkit resents all of this talk. He can feel his mother tensing up next to him, hears the low rumble progressing into a growl. When adults play stupid games with his mom, he's always the one who ends up dealing it. Why don't they get that?
It's only Shellheart who seems to have it click, "Hey, this is the nursery. Can you take it outside, please?"
As Brambleberry and Rainflower leave, Stormkit lays curled up in his nest, cold and alone. Oakkit leaves Shellheart's paws to curl up around his best friend.
Shellheart stares at them, shifting, but ultimately stays where he is.
There's a lot of words I could write there, between Storm and Oak. Ones where Storm speaks about how he just wants the pain to be done with. Others where Oak comforts him, tells him how much he means to him. More where they end up running into the wall that they're just two little kids and they've both learned the truth that they have no control over what happens when Rainflower comes back into that den.
But I think it would be good to end there, at the lowest point. Because it gets better.
Pissed off by being gently confronted, after her warning from Brambleberry, this is the moment where Rainflower goes too far.
Hailstar is gradually losing his patience. Every time this issue comes up, he's making some kind of new excuse for her.
She's still a competent deputy who holds the Clan together, but this has taken a toll on her reputation.
Her biggest mistake was becoming more open with her abuse after being emboldened. And I think Hailstar is beginning to feel like he's got "egg on his face."
After standing up for Rainflower several times, getting heat from Brambleberry, and now the Clan also starting to murmur...
It's getting very difficult to justify why he's sticking his neck out.
and maybe, part of him is starting to feel a little self-conscious about the way that his deputy is acting about her injured child.
When she comes storming up on this fateful day, interrupting whatever he was doing to make a proposition, it's the breaking point.
Her suggestion: "I've realized that there's only one way to ensure my son survives his injury. He's being haunted by our demon, which only started threatening him when he disobeyed me for the last time. WE need to teach him a lesson, and make sure StarClan gazes down upon him to acknowledge his mistakes."
"...how do you intend to do that?"
"Stormkit must be given a Dishonor Title."
A Dishonor Title, one of the greatest shames that a leader can put onto one of their warriors. A punishment that ranks just below exile in terms of severity.
"you want to put a dishonor title... on your child? one with a life-threatening injury?"
"One that acknowledges his carelessness. To protect him from the demon."
Protect him from the demon. "I see now what must be done."
Previously, I'd thought of Hailstar as someone who would be loud and merciless when he does this. Now I'm thinking it was something he put a lot of thought into. He stands up, brushes past her, and goes to talk to some of his most trusted cats. Brambleberry, his mate Echomist, an experienced warrior such as Piketooth or Ottersplash, and lastly, Shellheart.
So it's not a surprise to anyone but Rainflower herself. He doesn't want this to be dramatic. He doesn't want it to be another big scene. Stormkit has gone through enough.
When he eventually has this Clan meeting, he calls it quietly. In his address to the gathered cats, a crowd that Shellheart and his family are missing from at his request, he says that his greatest regret is that he didn't do this sooner. He even doubts that Mapleshade is haunting her at all-- now having seen her behavior, he says it's more likely that Rainflower bashed her own child against a rock and simply lied.
First, he announces that Stormkit will be removed from her care. He will no longer be of the Applekin bloodline.
She is banned from the nursery at the request of Fallowtail, and will only see Stormkit when supervised by his new Mi, Shellheart.
Brambleberry has already agreed to this necessity, and is performing a ritual so that StarClan may approve of this choice.
He also strips her of her deputyship, and appoints Ottersplash instead. (I might change this to a different deputy eventually)
Not everyone agrees with Hailstar. There's an uproar from Rainflower's supporters.
She was a VERY popular deputy.
More that are just uneasy, feeling that this was a BRUTAL punishment that she didn't deserve.
Lots are happy and optimistic, though. But the mixed reception is exactly why Hailstar asked Shellheart not to be here.
This isn't something Stormkit has to deal with right now.
When Darkstar herself, who created the Queen's Rights, was on her last life, she appointed Volestar to uphold the law as her legacy knowing that Oakstar might try to break it again.
Volestar appointed Hailstar, in the hopes that he would uphold her legacy in turn, to protect kittens and those who can't protect themselves.
He was late, and can only hope he was not too late. He hopes that Volestar can forgive him for that.
Meanwhile in the nursery, Shellheart, Oakkit, and Stormkit are alone, far in the back, where the padded moss keeps out arguing voices.
Oakkit, bless his little heart, is babbling with excitement because his best friend is his BROTHER now. And it's gonna be THE BEST.
He's talking about how it's fine he can't chew because now they can have soup, and they're going to make the nest bigger, and they can stay up later because they can whisper quieter if they're this close together
But Storm doesn't really hear him. His head's swimming, thinking about the dull ache in his jaw, how MAD his mom's going to be because he can't imagine her not finding a way to hurt him, how this is all his fault because he called Mapleshade.
He can't stop it anymore and starts sniffling, which turns into weeping. Still, he's TRYING not to bawl, knowing, knowing he looks stupid when he does that
Shellheart just pulls him in close, so he can bury his face in his fluffy chest. Tells him it's going to be ok. He's safe now. No one can hurt him there.
Not on his watch.
Unfortunately, it's not the last he sees of Mapleshade. After this...
Mapleshade shows him everything she did for him. Yes, she did smash his jaw-- but it was to get him away from his mother.
And she planted an idea here and there, just little whispers into Rainflower's ear. Nothing she wouldn't do all on her own.
And now... Mapleshade believes she's earned some respect.
Stormkit can't disagree... she did exactly what she told him she'd do.
And now that he's not Applekin anymore, they can be Real Friends. They could even strike up a partnership, of sorts. After all, what did StarClan do to help him?
It wasn't StarClan that answered his prayers.
I'm still figuring out what, exactly, she's going to want from him. I have a scintilla that she wants to give him a life, maybe as some kind of bridge to StarClan to see her kits?
Some strange "attempt" at redemption, perhaps? Which she ultimately doesn't get.
Not that she didn't enjoy doing all that for love of the game, mind you. She's very good at getting revenge and it's fun and exciting to pull it off.
But hey, if you're good at something, never do it for free.
What causes Mapleshade to ultimately turn, and begin haunting the bloodline again + Oakheart, is Crookedstar rejecting her in some way.
She comes to collect on her end of the bargain and he refuses, breaking their partnership. He chooses StarClan.
And then from there, it's ON again. Now she has another EXCUSE to do what she wanted to do, and take out her boredom and malice on his family.
This time, it includes Oakheart as well-- because he was Crookedstar's brother.
It was also her curse that harmed Willowbreeze and eventually Silverstream. She's on the warpath.
Maybe she actually helped make him leader on purpose. Like he explicitly asked so she helped him by making the squirrel omen, instead of just doing it for him unprompted. Still figuring it out.
Shortly after the scene where Stormkit cries, he needs to have a confrontation with Brambleberry about Mapleshade I think. She needs to explain why Dark Forest demons are seen as bad.
She's biased, of course, but it's not like she's TOTALLY wrong either. Cats like Mapleshade ARE vengeful, in ways many other spirits are not.
If you're curious, Crookedstar's dishonor title from Rainflower would have been something comparing him to a parasite and referencing his ""accident"" like Fleaskip or Midgefall.
The point she's trying to make with the Dishonor Title is that her son is an annoying bug who didn't listen, as well as subtly erase she fact she knocked him off that rock.
She wanted his name to say "everything that happened was my fault and my mom did nothing wrong"
Not that Hailstar got as far as even asking lmao
#better bones au#Stormpaw's Demon#BB!Crookedstar#BB!Shellheart#BB!Oakheart#BB!Mapleshade#BB!Rainflower#Cw child abuse#tw child abuse#cw physical abuse#tw physical abuse#cw emotional abuse#tw emotional abuse#Stormpaw's Demon Draft 2
154 notes
·
View notes
Note
So this isnt a pride req but you still don't have to answer!! But how do you draw so quickly?? I swear you draw like 2-4 times a day? I wanna get on a really good schedule about that so I can keep up with a art blog but idk how to draw fast! How'd you do it?
I hope it helps If I go over my entire process here because I've been wanting to showcase my process for awhile anyways :}
Haha! Yeah, i usually try and draw ~4 things min a day. Now, let me clarify, to run an art blog you don't have to draw fast! I do try and take breaks if I need them!!! But a lot of my speed has to do with the fact I've just been in a very art-inclined mood as of late :} It's a lot easier to draw if you WANT to draw! and knowing people like my stuff is a huge motivator.
Long post below where I explain my process and some of the shortcuts I take!! :]
For more skill-based tips though, my method definitely helps. Drawing lineless and paying attention to my stabilizer helps a lot. I'm definitely not a perfectionist when it comes to my art and I do tend to reuse poses I KNOW im comfortable with if I'm not in the mood to go all out.
I sketch freely with loose stabilizer using a pencil-like pen that allows me to get a good idea of the details I want down... Ex:
I have a very good grasp on the way i draw slugcats and how their bodies are shaped! Depending on the characters you're drawing, you should try drawing them a TON to get to a point where you can sketch them without even looking at a ref of any kind. My designs tend to stay consistent as I have a solid idea of each slugcat in my mind! It helps me pace myself as I generally don't need refs! :}
Next, I blot out my main body shape. I then, using a clip layer, add in lines and line in limbs! Generally I do this all in the same colour, get the main shapes down before you add detail and all that...
I blot out different regions of my character in different colours and section off areas to ensure I can later select these and go over them! Doing lineless helps me a ton as I don't use a lot of layers! it's just the style im more used to :}
Lastly, I add in my colours and adjust places where I can adding in all markings and details and recolouring where I need to! I use the selection wand to help me and I also use clip layers.
The details are relatively easy for me, most of the time its just getting to doodle whatever I want to make the colour combo look the best I can!!! :} The final result of this one will be posted on its own, but I just use CSP tools to add an outline-- I'm not sure if you use Clip Studio Paint, but if you do, you can use the effect feature!
Its just a little thing I add to make my drawing pop against the background!!!! :D
Anddd thats how I pump out art at an inhuman rate! Drawing is one of the few things I can do without my chronic pain kicking my ass so a lot of my day is spent at my computer cozy n' arting!
Drawing for too long does cause fatigue in anyone though! I reccomend listening to something engaging in the background (if your attention can take it) and taking regular breaks every ~15-30 minutes.
This piece took me 30 minutes?? maybe a little more!
I hope this gave you what you were lookin for :D!!!!! I wish u well in ur art blog n' make sure not to stress urself!!!!!
#moons - talks#long post#art guide#art tips#art advice#I hope this is actually helpful lolll ive been wanting to talk about this for a stupidly long time
30 notes
·
View notes
Text
Too little too late (no minors)
Alastor x F!reader x semi Lucifer
Chapter 2
~This hole you put me in, Wasn't' deep enough
And I'm climbing out right now, You're running out of places to hide from me.~
*******************************************
"That bitch doesn't know everything I've done for her. Who does she think she is, doesn't she know all I have sacrificed for her?” The small contents that had been resting on the dashboard in his radio tower now fell onto the floor with a loud crash. He grabbed at his hair, grunting between gritted teeth.
“How fucking dare she?? And with all people him? That pretentious little shit excuse for a king?”. He slid to the floor, claws digging into his hair, trickles of blood trailing down along the sides of his face. What was he going to do? He can't kill the king of hell.. as much as he would love to. He would enjoy tearing the pathetic smile from his lips, ripping his chest open, deflating the smug hot air that puffed from his chest.
Did he know you the way he did? Did he know the way you loved tea with more milk than sugar? The way you hated the hot summer days but loved the warm summer nights. Did he know you've already read every book in the library 10 times and still had something new to say about them? Did he know how you loved your neck licked? Especially the small part close to your collarbone. Oh, the idea of his slimy snake tongue worming its way along your perfectly soft skin, ripping those sweet small gasps from your throat…. Those sounds were for him and him alone. How dare you how FUCKING dare you. That idea alone turned his blood cold, his horns protruding from his head, his eyes transforming into details.
He tried to steady his breathing, and collect his thoughts..his eyes darted back and forth scanning the room..he was lost in his sadness and pure unfiltered rage. Wait.. you never said you didn't love him anymore, you said you can't! Why can't you?? Were you in some sort of deal?? With Lucifer??? Oh Lucifer didn't know who he was up against, no if he assumed he would go quietly he was more stupid than he looked.
The mindset he was in at the moment, he barely cares how this situation would affect his standing with Charlie, I'll rip her fucking throat out too if she gets in my way..y/n belongs to me we promised each other. Maybe she's forgotten that maybe I have to remind her of her promise.
His eyes snapped up his hands, finally leaving his sore and abused scalp. "Yes, yes that's it, she just needs a reminder, it's ok my darling it's ok I'll forgive you, we can fix this". He stood, laughter ripping from his throat, gritty and deranged. "Yes, I'm coming, I'm coming it's time you were reminded, reminded where you belong. Whatever this situation is, I can remove you from it. I can fix it". His large smile returned, not meeting his crazed eyes. Grabbing his microphone, his shadow appeared at his side displaying the same maddened smile, mirroring his masters as they both melted into the shadows.
“Darling, is something wrong with the food?” “hm?” “I asked if something was wrong with the food. You've hardly taken a bite! I can order something else” You weren't sure how long you had been pushing your pasta around with your fork in the dim restaurant Lucifer had taken you to this evening. You also weren't sure how long he had been talking, ranting about Charlie and ducks and overlords.
Your mind was still focused on the conversation with Alastor earlier, the look in his eyes when you had left. You could have sworn you heard a sniffle behind you as you turned and left the room leaving him alone. “No! No, everything is fine!” You lifted your head off the hand you had resting on the table. Moving your fork once again you forced yourself to take a bite, pushing past your nauseousness that had settled in your stomach.
Lucifer eyed you suspiciously, pushing away his place he reached over the table clasping your free hand on his. He ran a thumb over the back of your hand sighing. “Sweetheart please, I can tell something is on your mind, why won't you just tell me? Let me help you lighten your load?”. You looked up at him, his sweet fanged smile, his rosy cheeks and soft kind eyes underneath light purple eyelids. He was truly handsome, the most handsome in hell some would say.
You felt the hot sharp pain of guilt creeping into your stomach, it felt like you had swallowed sandpaper, causing it to suck all the moisture from your throat. Why did you feel this way? You haven't cheated on him, you haven't done anything! You told Alastor it was over between you both, so why did you feel so guilty?.
“I'm ok Luci, truly I think I'm just tired, it was a long day at the hotel that's all! I'm fine”. you squeezed his hand back reassuringly offering him a small smile that didn't meet your eyes. You're lying he thought but he wouldn't push it, not now not here. “You know I am too! What do you say we get the check and head home?”. He looked over to the waiter waving them down. You nodded, not answering him, returning to your thoughts. You had to let Alastor go, it was the right thing to do, you could be happy with Luci, he was an amazing man and he's always treated you with respect, he was kind, funny and handsome anyone would be lucky to be with him.
You didn't speak as you stood watching him pay the check. You slipped on your thin cardigan, pulling it around you almost protectively. “Ready to go hon?” His hands wrapped around your waist pulling you into a side hug, as the bright portal to your shared home opened before you. Walking through you tossed your purse on the floor next to the bed before beginning to undress, you could hear Lucifer faintly in the distance putting the leftovers in the fridge.
This night had exhausted you, you couldn't help but wonder what Alastor was currently up to. Was he angry? Taking it out on some poor innocent sinner somewhere in the streets of the pride ring? Was he sad, was he.. with someone else.. in an attempt to forget your body; lying above another? That thought.. the picture of him touching, feeling, kissing another. Oh it hurt and it hurt bad, but you knew you had no right to be hurt. You had told what you told him earlier and the cards lay where they may.
“Feeling any better?” Their hands in his white jacket pocket, large hats already discarded Lucifer signed standing in the doorway observing your body language. “Did everything go ok at the hotel today? Did something happen?"Crossing the room over, he wrapped his arms around your waist nuzzling into your shoulder. You set your hands on his looking back at him. “No, I promise I'm ok just a long day, thank you for dinner”. You pressed a small kiss to his nose, pulling out of his grasp to finish undressing.
He retreated to a chair next to him, and beginning to remove his shoes he looked up at you, watching you remove your layers slowly. You eyed him in the mirror behind you. “What?” You lightly chuckled meeting his eyes. He shrugged “Just admiring my beautiful fiance is all” his eyes lowered, his forked snake tongue protruding to moisten his lips. You were so beautiful and sexy..neither of you had taken the plunge and fully made love yet, opting to take things slow, but Lucifer was growling impatient. His need to discover how delicious your nectar would truly be was starting to drive him mad. And watching you now undressing before him was torture, the elegant curve of your back, the sway of your hips.. the curls in your hair rippling down your back as you removed your hairpins.
You felt shy under his gaze, exposed and vulnerable. You very childishly felt guilty again. Your thoughts floated to Alastor, you had promised him no man would ever see this way but him. “Say it” his words were staggered, broken as he pumped into you “Say it. “I'm yours Alastor” Eyes rolled back fists clenching his scared tan skin “It's all for you I promise only for you” “Yes” his head scanned your face, clawed hands holding your cheeks so softly so tender “Only for me”.
Holding back the tears that had started to form in the corner of your eyes you pushed that memory away, You discreetly whipped your eyes hoping Lucifer wouldn't notice, you fake smiled back at him over your shoulder “You're so sweet, my king”. You crossed over to the drawer pulled out a nightgown and continued your undressing, you were used to his eyes now always watching and lingering over your body. He raised from his seat behind to undress and change himself.
You took the opportunity to retreat to the bathroom, you splashed some cold water on your face taking in deep breaths. You had to hold it together; this was your life now. Heading back towards the bedroom you hoped that Lucifer would be preoccupied with whatever new project he was currently interested in so you could get some sleep without any further explanation.
To your luck, though he was waiting on the bed for you arms outstretched, “Come here my dear cuddle with me” You crawled in next to him letting him engulf you in his embrace. “I know I sound like a broken record” his thumb lightly rubbing on your arm “but please talk to me when something is bothering you, let me try and help share your load”. You looked up at him and signed “I know and thank you I promise I'm ok for now, maybe a little stressed with all the projects going on at the hotel”. “Has Alastor been giving you trouble?”
The mention of his name was a sharp poker through your heart, you gripped your bottom lip between your teeth shaking your head side to side “Na uh”. Closing your eyes you attempted to drift off to sleep when you felt Lucifer move next to you, soon he was moving down the bed and you felt your nightgown slowly lifting, your eyes shot open “Luci? What are you doing?” He was adjusting himself by your thighs running a hand softly over them. “I know we agreed to take things slow but I wanted to try and make you feel better if you don't mind” his sly smile reaching his half-lidded eyes.
You didn't want him to eat you out, but you also knew if he was to be your husband you would have to get used to his touch. Lucifer wasn't a bad man, a cruel man or anything of the sort, he was on all counts a great man and a great choice of husband. Your body thought your body knew what and who you wanted, but once again you pushed that feeling down. “oh ah sure” you answered in a shaky voice holding your hands in a clasp by your torso. “Thank you” he chuckled “No need to thank me, love, I should be thankful for you allowing me to partake in such an enjoyable activity” he winked at you before spreading your legs slowly. He started to kiss up your leg slowly humming contently.
Despite your best efforts your mind began to wander to past experiences. “Such smooth soft skin my darling” Alastor was kissing and lightly sucking slowly pressing his nose into your leg as he crept up your leg. You squirmed happily, his touch was electrical, lighting up every part of you. His large clawed hands slowly pulled your legs apart, pressing his face into your womanhood and inhaling your sweet scent, “hmmm delicious”
You felt him hook a claw into the band of your panties pulling them down and off your legs, he hooked your legs over his shoulder, claws digging into your thighs, he smiled at you a smile like he had seen the most delectable dessert in his life. He licked a long deep stripe against your lower region causing you to gasp and grip the sheets. “Oh fuck, I love you” You felt him chuckle against your skin “I love you too my firefly” before diving back into your sweet juices.
“Wait! Wait wait I'm sorry” Your whole body seized in response to Lucifer’s hands slowing opening your lap, he froze and looked up with apologetic eyes, he sat back on his heels, “Oh Gods I'm so sorry, this was probably too soon I don't mean to rush you I'm ok waiting!” He pulled back your nightgown over your legs and crawled back to lay next to you, “Please forgive me we agreed to take things slow I just wanted to help make you feel better”. You ran your hands down your face, you felt guilty he shouldn't be apologizing to you, here he was trying to give you pleasure while you think of another man. “No don't be sorry I just I am really tired I'm not feeling up to it right now” You turned over and patted his arm “But thank you for wanting to truly Luci I think I just want to get some sleep”. He hooked his arm around you nesting into the pillows comfortably. “Ok my love, yeah it's time for bed for me too”. You both snuggled into the comfortable blankets and leaned on his chest, hearing the soft pitter patter of his heart and slow breath. Soon he passed out lightly snoring and content.
You however could not sleep. Peeling his arm off you, you slinked out of bed grabbed your robe and headed outside to the gardens. Sitting on a chair in the warm night air, you let the tears fall. “Oh Alastor”, you whispered to yourself “Oh how I miss you”. You held your face in your hands trying to muffle the sounds of your cries. You were so distracted you didn't notice the dark shadow appearing behind you and the tentacles slowly encasing your body"Hello my firefly".
Hope you all enjoyed reading! Please feel free to re-blog but not without credit ❤️
#alastor hazbin hotel#alastor x reader#hazbin alastor#lucifer hazbin hotel#hazbin hotel lucifer#hazbin hotel#alastor fanfiction
25 notes
·
View notes
Text
Recap Simon Cowell's new interview about 1D.
Hi everyone so I decided to do a combination of recap/transcription of what Simon said about One Direction on The Diary Of A CEO with Steven Bartlett.
TLDR: His only regret was to not own the name of One Direction to make things like animations or make them tour without all the members, according to him there hasn't been a great group after 1D. He advice to the 1D boys was to be themselves, to be involved in their music, to not get a stylist, to not dance etc. He said that in his new show the group that is form will not get a record deal they have to be good enough to get one after the show and part of the new deal will be that he owns the name.
If you want to see the videos are in this post. Below I have the recap for anyone who wants a more detail info of what he said without the need to watch Simon's face, I still link the videos for each part.
So the poodcast is 2hrs and 14 min long. They basically talk about Simon and how he got were he was, his family, son etc. The last 30 min aprox is what I would expand more, whoever I want to point out two aspects that stand out for me in the history of him:
He doesn't know the process to make a record, he never goes to a studio and see the process, doesn,'t know what is first etc. He says he doesn't want to and he doesn't want to pretend to know anything, he just wants to listen to the album after and form an opinion.
He wanted a producer Peter Waterman to make a record for his artist ( Sinitta who previously Simon have a hit with her the first time) this producer got very famous and have a lot of work so he didn't accept to work with Simon. So Simon went to the studio every day and make tea and sit in the studio, after a year and a half Pete ask him why is he always there and Simon said he was trying to learn how he does it, how he works (to me sounded kind of stalker vibes) and said that he wants that one day he writes Sinitta next record. A few months later the producer at the end call him with a record for his artist and was Toy Boy and he knew it would be a hit internationally, it hit no. 4 in the UK and was famous in Europe.
1D creation, paparazzi & privacy.
For Simon it was quite obvious once the boys were form they were gonna be really successful with the right records, for him they were the perfect group.
I: "I think the most successful artist you've ever develop? S: "Gosh ah, I actually I don't know the answer to that".
I: Really?
S: No, I mean I know they were really successful they sold a lot of records...[whispers] and they made a lot of money.
He adviced them to not complain about paparazzis: "Don't ever complaint about paparazzi because they are gonna take your pictures, don't complaint about invasion of privacy because people were always want to a picture taken with you. Don't complain about the long hours because they're going to be long hours, so none of this if any of this is a problem just do something else". That is what it comes with the territory and it's worth it.
Not a good group after 1D & his show.
For Simon being in a band is more fun that being a solo artist and it's a brilliant way to get notice like they've all become, being in a band was the catalyst for that.
He is making a new show because right now for him" I don't think a band who has been as good as One Direction since One Direction in my opinion'. Now they are more solo artist than bands in the pop music and the only way he knows to put a band together is with auditions. For his show they are gonna document the whole process since the beginning of the idea, the selection the contestants etc. "There is not safety blanket on this in terms of I haven't gone to a record label and go and said right I'm doing this would it you guarantee a record deal, l got to hope the band are good enough to get a record deal."
Secret sauce of 1D, problem of making bands and his "advice" to 1D
The interview ask him what is the secret souce for boybands. Simon says people, personality, that is the one thing about 1D they all have great personalities and they were interesting people. The first time he saw them again after the band was form was in Spain and they were walking at the beach and everyone were looking at them as they were already stars even if nobody knew them, there was this glow about them.
He had hits with bands and missing with bands he was 1% off or 80% off. He just gotta hope he gets lucky and find the right people.
He is selling an act to somebody he is not, the fans are going to be primarly teenegers, he have to guess what the audience is going to like. Recently when he sees bands for for the minute they are on stage he knows is wrong, someone told him what to wear, they are rehearsed, nothing is spontaneous "and I'm thinking what is that person whoever is behind the scenes, why can't let them just be themselves?"🙄.
He said to the 1D boys: "Do whay you like and that was sort of it, I just said look when you got a problem you come to me. Is really down to you to make this work. You gotta love the records you make, you gotta influence the records you make, you can't dance so don't try and dance, don't ever hire a stylist because you already have great taste, and just be yourselves and really really have fun."
Harry's success & famous UK artists.
Would he predicted his success? He never guess he was going to be one of the biggest stars in the world, no one would have thought that. He thought Harry was charismatic, fun and the audience like him. The boys use that vehicle of 1D to go where they wanted to go, he doesn't know if Harry will be Harry without 1D no one could tell that, but being in a band help him.
This make him thought that "the amount of UK artists that broken globally in the last say 7 years has fallen off a cliff, literally if you think about how many global artist British had broken globally in the last 7 years is possible 3? Which is crazy.
I: I can' think of 3. S: [says with his lips "nor can I] [Both laugh].
Only regret, tour & new deal with new group
"Again when I was talking to One Direction I remember saying to them our goal is for to you to have enough hits that if you ever reform that you could do stadiums tours. That means you gotta have 10 hit singles because that's what people wanna hear, they want to hear the hits, and you know if they ever did reform that's exactly what would happened".
He doubts that the 1D boys will get back together.
The interviewer mentions that Spice Girls got together many years later, then Simon talks about his only regret , without anyone asking him about this by the way [For a fragment of the next part I will use the color purple for Simon dialogue and color green for the interviewer dialogue]:
S: "The one thing I regret is I should have keep the name" I: "Oh you should have owned the name?"S: I should have owned the name. I: You didn't own the name? S: No. I: Who owns the name? S: They do. I: Oh okay. S: That's the problem I could have made an animation or whatever, but when you give an artist the name it's not yours and that's my ONLY regret, so if your listening [looks at the camera] I will buy it back from you. We'll do it as a partnership [points to interviewer with both hands]
-S: "But that is the ONLY thing I do regret because if one of the band members for whatever reason said they don't want do tour it can stop the others touring so if it was me who own the name it wouldn't be a problem."
-I: You can do a tour with 3 of them. As so that's was stopping a tour, because they what..did they own 25%, 20%?
-S: "I believe so, yes, I mean I can be very naive at times and that was me being very very naive, so next time that will be part of the deal, I have to own the name, they can still make most of the money but I need to own the name."
Thanks to @wendersfive to help me figure it out what Simon mumble.
Before ending this just wanted to share that besides the many times Simon has try to make groups in his shows, he already made this idea of a show dedicated to create a band. Is not something new.
The transcription I did it with only what I heard and seeing the subtitles on youtube so sorry for anything I could miss or a gramatical mistake.
#simon cowell#one direction#harry styles#louis tomlinson#niall horan#zayn malik#liam payne#the diary of a ceo with steven bartlett#the x factor#music industry#the boys theserves so much better#the man is delusional taking credit for things the band fight for they have to fight for being songwriters
33 notes
·
View notes
Photo
This one definitely gave me the most headache to draw, Lord white is besides the ones that work the most they have a great proximity to the power that alagadda has, I like to think that their faith would resemble that of Wicca.
I imagine his domain being the quietest and with the most fauna there, although white people spend more time studying than actually enjoying it.
#scp#scp fandom#scp alagadda#white lord#albeto#scp 2264#sorry for the delay I'm still studying and I end up getting overwhelmed having to scan the drawings#i'm still going to do their anatomies#albeto is by far the one that I didn't know how to put all my ideas about them on paper but the less detailed the closer I got to them
90 notes
·
View notes
Text
Poll adventure (paventure? lol) Day 3: read the small story tidbit below the poll for more details, OR just vote based on initial impression
(✦ see past poll results + further information HERE (link) ✦)
The winning option of yesterday's poll was that the adventurer should throw a coin into the mysterious well ….
"After nearly ten minutes rummaging through the disorganization at the bottom of his backpack, he finally approaches the well once again, meager coin pouch in hand. He meticulously balances a little golden coin on the tip of his thumb, positioning it just so for an elegant coin flip… With a flick of his hand, the coin wobbles off, anticlimactically dropping into the darkness.. He pouts, leaning in to listen for a plonk as the coin hits the water but… nothing…. silence..
A few minutes pass and he shrugs, moving to pick up his bag and just continue his journey elsewhere, when suddenly a faint noise echoes from the well.. an almost cartoonish plopping sound, like wet feet slapping against stone..? The pitter patter grows closer and closer…then stops abruptly. The adventurer cautiously slinks over to the well, only to find.. a creature of some sort, clinging to the walls, staring up at him blankly. - What should he do next?"
#paventure posting#polls#choose your own adventure#(I saw a few people tag these as that and I guess it makes sense. hmm)#DAY 3!!! vote to choose this little man's fate#Sad that people did not want to go into the well.. :( Maybe we can still go in depending on how things go with#The Creachure. I mean I know I could just make whatever happen anyway since I'm the one doing it but. It has to feel natural lol#it would be obviously just me doing what I want if I was like 'oh uh we went to throw the coin in the well but he tripped and#fell and then somehow didnt die and whoops he's in the well anyway!!'' lol#I care more about things being realistic and natural than following whatever ideas seem interesting. If it was voted for him to explode#into a million pieces sadly I would simply have to explode him. audience says#let me know if the formatting of this is weird?? also? I wasn't sure where to put the slightly longer bit of text#so I kept it under a reas more just to the post looks neater. I thought it'd seem weird with a bunch of text blocks sandwiching the poll#and too much going on. But I also feel like it's organizationally weird if all the details are at the end? eh..#bt then at least it's optional. not everyone will want to read more. And it's not like.. amazing text lol#I'm slapping them out off of the top of my head with minimal editing because I have to get it done and I know if I make it too complicated#or become concerned with like things being Perfectly Revised then I will absolutely not be able to do it once a day#Same with the obvious sketchy ms paint art lol. But so like. I dont feel as bad about kind of having the text be options#*optional since it's not like 'omg this is so good u have to read this' it's like.. eh.. passable amount of detail ghbj#ANYWAY. and 'paventure' (poll + adventure) is just temporary so I have a way to tag this on the blog/keep up with the posts#in a organized way. I think 'padventure' is more obvious but that's already the name of other things and I didnt want the tags to be#confusing or like.. post in some random tag that people already use for something else#but the only thing I found when googling 'paventure' is like. .some venture capital business from PA. and who cares about that lol#explanation probably not needed but I think it sounds a bit silly so I'm justifying myself to myself lol#ANYWAY. lov his silly hat. I want to draw him more. I want to name him. I COULD DO A POLL TO CHOOSE A NAME#but that wouldn't fit in with any of the days lol. maybe if I make it a week actually doing it or something at the end of the week#I could do a bonus poll or something. ??? idk.. ANYWAY.. new day!
64 notes
·
View notes
Text
Worst Guy Ever - Also, Unfortunately, Very Homosexual Convo. (subtextually)
#Evidence of Tom being a bad boyfriend is also in a file labeled 'Tom wants to fuck Steth so bad'#but seriously I wanted to deck him in this convo v_v FORTUNATELY it is bearable bc I think that's the point - like the narrative is#showing that Tom is 'ruining what he's worked for' by being a dick to B'Elanna so I'm not like meta-mad about it (like OTHER Tom/B'Elanna#moments) <- Ex: Tom saying 'I have a beautiful girlfriend' instead of something like#'someone I care about/a girl I love' but that's a like...tv writing thing. I don't like it but I know it's a tv writing thing#Woman as like a status symbol instead of a person you care about#I never care about Tom's inner conflict in Tom episodes (with the exception of the one where he gets thrown in solitary - him going full#rogue was fun) bc his inner conflict is always the most boomer bullshit#Literally he's just having a midlife crisis in this one.#BUT...GUYS....IMPORTANT NEWS...BULLDOG'S IN THIS ONE??#BULLDOG ?? My enemy BULLDOG BRISCOE from Frasier??? Good to see you man! This makes sense.#Steth....WHY would you choose to turn into a guy with a detailed and established web of interconnected relationships on a ship with a#complex hierarchy? Steth really thought he'd be able to play it cool on VOYAGER...the USS codependent...nu uh#they sniff you out and maul you like gophers on that baby#EHHEHEEH the Emh is funny as hell...'WOW...I had no idea me being so perfect at everything was making you feel bad! It all makes sense to#me now...' / Steth(as Tom):....Yeah v_v#SNRKEHEHEHEHEHEH GUYS..I'm taking a mental health day so I can reflect on myself and how even though I'll never be as good as the Doctor#I'm probably still worth SOMETHING#Steth(as Tom): Hey now B'Elanna...let's not go around blaming Steth for things. He's a pretty cool guy actually.#Okay yes confirmed! The above convo is also to show that Steth is 'being better' than Tom by telling B'Elanna what she wants to hear#unfortunately this does not make me like Tom more#SHE WANTS SO LITTLE. SHE ASKS FOR SO LITTLE.#BC Tom DOES say that B'Elanna is 'overreacting' and basically calls her crazy even when it's not for a later moral lesson and#this isn't framed as bad by the narrative. If your girl's always mad at you then your relationship ISN'T good.#There's literally NO resolution once again to their relationship issues. Tom shows her his garage program and when B'Elanna says she feels#she doesn't value her he says 'Yeah I do.' episode ends.#T/B scenes are literally [conflict arises then they argue or kiss] <- it is never...RESOLVED...#Me @ The Writers: (B'Elanna voice) Is this your idea of an adult conversation?#OH. Gay subtext: I hate spending time with my girl I want to hang out and live the bachelor life with my cool guy friend.#Tom's grease monkey program might as well be a subscription to playgirl magazine sit DOWN dude
10 notes
·
View notes
Text
father grimaldi: forgive me, lord, for i have sinned.
constantine: — understatement of the bloody century, that is.
father grimaldi: the chapel is closed to the public! who are you? how did you get in here . . .?
constantine: did you know vatican city has the highest per-capita crime rate of any nation state in the world? i'd have thought a touch of breaking and entering's pretty much par for the course around here.
so #1, an undeniable slay.
#2, how long do we think he was sitting in the confessional booth waiting for the guy to wake up from ellie's fake vision quest. like an hour? checking his light, practicing his Big Reveal Pose TM? he probably brought a book with him and just shoved it underneath the seat cushion when it was time to show off.
#3, knowing how intensely he studied & continues to study in order to teach himself magic at such an absurdly advanced level without any teachers to formally guide him? and how that level of dedication would absolutely carry over into researching a mark / making sure he had every corner of a confidence scheme nailed down pat? i like to imagine that the day before this meeting was spent with his severely under-caffeinated ass parked at a public library computer, squinting at articles for 'most important things to know about vatican city before you travel' or 'top 10 little-known facts about vatican city' and using the back of his boarding pass to take notes on what would be the best throwaway line to blow off all the usual questions with.
also, he probably woke up still in his travel clothes less than two hours before this scene and had to hustle to get suited up in time for his Dramatic Apparition. the demon blood was boiling so bad in that chapel that it was giving him a killer migraine. he didn't get breakfast so his stomach was growling the ENTIRE time. but all that meant was he had plenty of room to eat UP the runway and that's EXACTLY what the fuck he did.i'm
#( ooc. ) OUT OF CIGS.#always torn in half between 'john is a freaky little weirdo who just Knows Things and Picks Up Vibes and it usually works for him'#and 'john is the most Normal Dude in the whole london occult scene he just works w/ magic like a grad student prepping for finals week'#and you know what? the answer is always 'Both. Both is good.'#also on the one hand i'm truly obsessed with the idea of john just?? Always having a bunch of weird trivia available w/ his eidetic memory#like he read about the apostolic palace once in a book when he was with the peace convoy and his brain latched onto it forever#and it just Happens to become convenient later on and this happens VERY often and no one ever really knows how he does it#but there is a real real charm in considering that he's still Just A Guy beneath all the layers of false confidence and mysticism#still someone who had to work to get to where he is now and who will always have to work to Maintain as well#i like the mental image of him pacing around his temporary digs with index cards and drilling all the necessary details for the scam#or him and ellie getting blasted the night before and dramatically playing out their Big Final Confrontation to iron out all the beats#you just Know they were laughing til they cried workshopping shit like 'MY OLD ADVERSARY! WE MEET AGAIN!' and 'DO YOUR WORST HELLSPAWN!'#still trying to keep straight faces the day of the fake fight while drastically improvising to try and throw each other off their game#idk!!! i always enjoy the Strange and Off-Putting things about him but all of the Really Really Human stuff is also just. so so precious#we always get to see The Myth The Legend as shaped by the errors of The Man. but especially in later years actually SEEING The Man gets rar#all this to say that for every perfectly executed and properly horrifying loom out of the shadows with a glimmer of his freaky glowing eyes#there is always at LEAST half an hour or more practicing angles + expressions + mood lighting in the mirror going on behind the scenes#and that is very very special to me!!!!#( headcanons. ) I'M JUST LIKE THE BASTARDS I'VE HATED ALL ME LIFE.#( visage. ) AND I'M A BASTARD.#sched.
5 notes
·
View notes
Note
I need more dad Sukuna and mom reader fics / headcsnons, I love the way you wrote for them!!
hey anon thank you! i'm thinking about making this a series, if you guys have any ideas/requests/prompts lmk <3
PICKING UP BABY FROM SCHOOL oops, toddlers can't ride motorcyles! (dad!sukuna x mom!reader)
sukuna rolled up about twenty minutes before his daughter's school got out, deploying the kickstand of his pitch black motorcycle against the rainbow colored fencing. he pulled off his helmet, sighing deeply when he met fresh air again.
his phone buzzed against his thigh. he pulled it out of his tight cargo pocket, answering immediately when he saw your caller ID. "hey, doll."
"you got there okay?" you asked.
"mhm."
"and you're on the right side of the building? that's where her class comes out."
"mhm."
"great." you exhaled. "m'sorry i couldn't make it this time—"
"stop." he says gruffly, his phone between his shoulder and ear as he pulls off his gloves. "what are you sorry for, silly girl? you're sick and should rest."
he doesn't mind anything when it comes to his two girls, not the fifteen minute commute to her school or the half hour of waiting just to get a parking spot nice and close to the doors.
your laugh was warbled over the phone. "at least the car is air conditioned. it's been getting warmer lately."
"..." he looked down at his bike.
"ryo, baby?" you hummed.
"hm?"
"you did take the car, right?"
"..."
his silence was all you needed to hear. he tuned out your worried rambling about how the hell is your daughter going to get home on that thing in order to process. toddlers don't usually use motorcycles as a mode of transportation... and he should've thought of this before!
"it'd be fine if i had an extra seat." he mused, debating on how he could manage this situation without having to call you to get them.
"an extra seat?! not even an extra helmet?" you shrieked. "baby, i swear, if you're actually thinking about driving with my baby girl on that thing—"
"relax, doll," he grumbled, pushing down the traces of embarrassment burning at his ears. "the brat will be fine, s'just a couple blocks away. she can handle the wind."
"..."
the bell rang and the doors swung open, children pouring out of the hallway and buzzing around in search of their parents.
"she's out, we'll see you soon." he was about to hang up when he heard,
"i'm literally about to come get you, do NOT go anywhere."
he frowns, his eyes scouring the crowd of midgets for his kid. he didn't mean to make you so upset and worried. he just... overlooked important details sometimes. not his fault, he's trying his best :(
"y/n, you will sit your ass down in bed. when i come home, you better be laying down exactly how i left you." he warned. he heard your breath hitch. "you trust me, don't you, baby?"
"yes... unfortunately."
he nodded. "we'll be home soon."
"in one piece?"
he rolled his eyes, grumbling. "yes, woman."
"hm." you huffed and hung up.
he strolled into the compound. as soon as he saw those pretty eyes that creased happily when they landed on him, he smiled and crouched down.
she ran over to him, her backpack jostling behind her. she held up a painting she made. "daddy, look!"
"i see." he pulled her closer, holding the backpack off her back and letting her walk off it. he slung the bedazzled bratz backpack over his shoulder, lifting her up in his arms. "what is it?"
"for mama."
"oh. all your crafts seem to be for mama. still nothing for me." he complained with a drawn out sigh.
she rolled her eyes, and he swore he was looking at you for a second.
"don't roll your eyes at me, brat." he scoffed. "who the hell even taught you that?" he muttered under his breath.
sukuna finally stopped in front of his bike. her eyes lit up as her legs started to kick in excitement. she's only ever seen daddy ride off on this thing, now she gets to ride with him?
he swung his leg over the bike, ignoring the mix of distasteful and flirtatious looks thrown at him. "okay, kid." he exhaled, shrugging off his jacket and holding it up to her. "gotta put this on."
she turned up her nose. "stinky."
his jaw dropped open. "i showered before i came to wait half an hour for you, chubby brat. the hell do you think you're talking to?"
she looked at him as if it were obvious.
"you'll put this on now. give me mama's painting, i'll put it in your bag." he said gruffly yet gently slid the painting into her backpack with the utmost care.
the jacket drowned her, the sleeves near triple the length of her arms. sukuna zipped her up and put the helmet on her head.
she started to whine. "stinky." she wailed.
"hush." he hissed, slapping some shades on and holding her towards her chest firmly. with her protected as best as he could with what he had, and with the jeweled backpack strapped to his back, he began to roll out into the road.
that drive home was the longest thirty minutes of his life. he had never drove so slow before.
you were waiting by the front door, running down to meet them as your husband pulled into the driveway.
"oh my god oh my god," you ripped your baby from his arms, tossing the helmet off her head. "are you okay, baby?" you smoothed away the sweaty hair from her face, your lips pursing when you hear her sniffles.
"my poor baby. daddy's never gonna pick you up again, don't you worry." you peppered her face with kisses.
sukuna caught the helmet before it crashed to the ground, walking behind you with his hands in his pockets. he kissed your temple as he leaned over your shoulder to peer down at his daughter. "daddy didn't do so bad."
you glare at him, cradling your daughter's head against your chest. you whirl away and storm into the house.
he sighed.
after many apologetic kisses and a good amount of groveling, you let him do pick-ups and drop-offs again. though you made sure to watch him get into the car before he drove off.
© miniimight ! thanks for reading <3
#sukuna ryomen x reader#sukuna x reader#sukuna fluff#jjk sukuna#jjk fluff#jjk x reader#jujutsu kaisen#ryomen sukuna x reader#jjk comfort#dad sukuna#sukuna#jujutsu sukuna#sukuna ryomen#jjk x you#ryomen x reader#ryoumen sukuna
5K notes
·
View notes
Note
hi, i ireally love your work and i don't know if you've answered this before but, what kinds of studies do you do or how did you learn color theory? i wanna get better at rendering and anatomy but im having trouble TT TT
Hi! Long answer alert. Once a chatterbox, always a chatterbox.
When I started actively learning how to draw about 10 1/2 years ago, I exclusively did graphite studies in sketchbooks. Here's a few examples—I mostly stuck to doing line drawings to drill basic shapes/contours and proportions into my brain. The more rendered sketches helped me practice edge control & basic values, and they were REALLY good for learning the actual 3D structure behind what I was drawing.
I'd use reference images that I grabbed from fitness forums, Instagram, Tumblr, Pinterest, and some NSFW places, but you could find adequate ref material from figure drawing sites like Line of Action. LoA has refs for people (you can filter by clothed/unclothed, age, & gender), animals, expressions, hands/feet, and a few other useful things as well. Love them.
Learning how to render digitally was a similar story; it helped a lot that I had a pretty strong foundation for value/anatomy going in. I basically didn't touch color at all for ~2 years (except for a few attempts at bad digital or acrylic paint studies), which may not have been the best idea. I learned color from a lot of trial and error, honestly, and I'm pretty sure this process involved a lot of imitation—there were a number of digital/traditional painters whose styles I really wanted to emulate (notably their edge control, color choices, value distributions, and shape design), so I kiiind of did a mixture of that + my own experimentation.
For example, I really found Benjamin Björklund's style appealing, especially his softened/lost edges & vibrant pops of saturated color, so here's a study I did from some photograph that I'm *pretty* sure was painted with him in mind.
Learning how to detail was definitely a slow process, and like all the aforementioned things (anatomy/color/edge control/values/etc.) I'm still figuring it out. Focusing on edge control first (that is, deciding on where to place hard/soft edges for emphasizing/de-emphasizing certain areas of the image) is super useful, because you can honestly fool a viewer into thinking there's more detail in a piece than there actually is if you're very economical about where you place your hard edges.
The most important part, to me, is probably just doing this stuff over and over again. You're likely not going to see improvement in a few weeks or even a few months, so don't fret about not getting the exact results you want and just keep studying + making art. I like to think about learning art as a process where you *need* to fail and make crappy art/studies—there's literally no way around it—so you might as well fail right now. See, by making bad art you're actually moving forward—isn't that a fun prospect!!
It's useful to have a folder with art you admire, especially if you can dissect the pieces and understand why you like them so much. You can study those aspects (like, you can redraw or repaint that person's work) and break down whether this is art that you just like to look at, or if it's the kind of art that you want to *make.* There's a LOT of art out there that I love looking at, probably tens of thousands of styles/mediums, but there's a very narrow range that I want to make myself.
I've mentioned it in some ask reply in the past, but I really do think looking at other artist's work is such a cheat code for improving your own skills—the other artist does the work to filter reality/ideas for you, and this sort of allows you to contact the subject matter more directly. I can think of so many examples where an artist I admired exaggerated, like, the way sunlight rested on a face and created that orange fringe around its edge, or the greys/dull blues in a wheat field, or the bright indigo in a cast shadow, or the red along the outside of a person's eye, and it just clicked for me that this was a very available & observable aspect of reality, which had up until that point gone completely unnoticed! If you're really perceptive about the art you look at, it's shocking how much it can teach you about how to see the world (in this particular case I mean this literally, in that the art I looked at fully changed the way I visually processed the world, but of course it has had a strong effect on my worldviews/relationships/beliefs).
Thanks so much for sending in a question (& for reading, if you got this far)! I read every single ask I receive, including the kind words & compliments, which I genuinely always appreciate. Best of luck with learning, my friend :)
3K notes
·
View notes
Text
Here are some of process snapshots of this piece of Astarion in Baldur's Gate.
I am a messy painter and I often adjust and change the designs as I paint. (Mostly because I don't have the patience to do proper line art haha)
I start out with a rough sketch, I usually sketch ideas out on my ipad and move to my cintiq to work with colors.
Next I block in rough color thumbnail. I keep this part messy as I just want to figure out the value structure and the overall mood.
At this point, I have collected a myriad of screenshots and reference images from the game, pinterest, and also from artists work that inspires me.
With the references on one screen, I start to paint the details, I work from foreground to midground to background. (Sometimes I'll bounce between the depth when I get bored from painting one thing for too long)
Sometimes after I block in the colors I'll make adjustments. I didn't like how warped the perspective was getting on the building on the screen right side, so I adjusted the vanishing point and added more tiers to the design. I went back into the game and looked at more how the stairs were designed and figured it out more thoroughly with a sketch on on top.
I think sitting down and doing the details is the most time consuming part. I still want the focus to be on the character despite all the detail going on the background. At this point I'm toggling on black & white filters constantly to check the value, grouping everything in the background together, making sure the lighting frames the subject in focus. At this point I realized, I forgot to paint Astarion's hair LOL, and that the bg was getting a bit too detailed, so I used a more textured brush and painted away some of the edge details of bg buildings.
Last, I make final adjustments, and I make a overall lighting/fx adjustment folder. Adding in some noise, adjusting the contrast, color balance, and lighting over all and call it done!
Link to Print shop!
#astarion#astarionfanart#bg3#baldurs gate astarion#baldur's gate 3#artprocesses#art tutorial#astarionpainting#bg3art#bg3fanart#art process#artists on tumblr
8K notes
·
View notes
Text
“Why’s she so rude?” (She’s Not)- Stereotypes, pt2
So I'm sure that you all thought I was going to give a blow-by-blow list of "visual stereotypes to avoid". I'm going to be honest here, I thought about it, and figured it would be redundant. My page already includes sensitivity on depicting Black people. So instead, I'm going to focus on stereotypical "character" concepts, so that you can 1) not write it in your stories and/or 2) recognize it in media (fiction and reality!) and in life!
Two major resources: the Jim Crow Museum website is an EXCELLENT resource to understand the imagery of antiblack racism in U.S. history and society. The other, White Tears, Brown Scars by Ruby Hamad. The book focuses on the many racist stereotypes projected onto women of color and how that purposeful, systemic negative perception of us bleeds into every aspect of our lives- specifically by white women/white feminists who believe that they are not contributing to said oppression.
I'll start with Black women, just because I’m passionate about it (obviously) and there are so many things I wish I had and hadn’t seen growing up. We deserve better by the year of our lord 2024.
TRIGGER WARNINGS: mention of sexual assault, assault
Misogynoir
What I want everyone to understand, before I get into this, is the concept of intersectionality, and more specifically, misogynoir. Misogynoir is the specific type of contempt and prejudice that Black women face at the intersection of race and gender. I say this because you might read these things and go “oh, as a woman, I experience these things!” I get it, but I want you to PAUSE, and remember, that right now, we are talking about Black women’s experiences. And those will often be different, due to that intersection of identities. And that understanding will have an effect on how you understand (and thus, write) those experiences.
The Jezebel
The link goes into much deeper detail, but the Jezebel is the idea that a Black woman or girl who is sexual is somehow “fast”, “salacious”, “a hoe”, “driven by desire/doesn’t understand purity”, and at its worst, unable to be r*ped/a victim because she is less valuable yet somehow inherently seductive to men.
This gets thrown around CONSTANTLY in media and life for Black women (my first experience of treated like I was ‘fast’ was when I was like… twelve?) One major, visible example is Megan Thee Stallion. Meg has a college degree, she likes anime, she’s a brilliant rapper, and has an entire personality and struggles she’s shared… But she also likes to dress scantily clad and have sex. By doing those things, she ‘lessened in value’. And because of this, when she was shot at and assaulted, even Black people questioned her character, rather than understanding that she could have been anyone, and she still wouldn’t have deserved to be assaulted. She's not allowed to be multi-faceted; she "brought it on herself".
Black girls and women who happen to take charge of their own sexuality, to the discomfort of society, are treated as Jezebels- as whores. Think about it- if one of Taylor Swift's recent boyfriends shot at her, would the media question her value or her word? Question her equivalently high ‘body count’?
Question how you write your Black woman- she can enjoy sex! She can be sexy! We love to see it! But if you're punishing her specifically, or judging her within the narrative, versus your other characters who are allowed to safely explore and act upon their sexuality… Check your judgment! Why do you feel the way you do about this character? Why do you think that your Black character is the one that should be judged for her actions. Would you feel this way if it were a nonblack character?
The Sapphire/Angry Black Woman
Ohohoho, I have infinite amounts of feelings about this one.
This is the "sassy Black friend", the "aggressive Black boss", “step on me angry mommy”, the one who does the z formation and makes everyone "uncomfortable". She’s not allowed to be confident, assertive, or self-assured- she’s arrogant, rude, and aggressive.
I discussed it in part one, but I'll reemphasize it: your Black woman doesn't have to be an ‘Angry Black Woman’ in order to be angry! Just like any other human being on the planet, we are allowed to be mad. (In my honest opinion, we have a lot to be mad about, but I digress 😅)
If the only character that ever gets angry is your Black character, I want you to consider why. What is she angry at? Was this something you wanted the reader to understand or empathize with? Are we supposed to disagree? How does everyone around her treat her anger? Is her anger righteous? Is she always shut down or dismissed for it? Is it only meant to defend her friends, but never herself? Does the narrative suggest that it’s only good in use of others and not herself? Would this be the same reaction if one of the nonblack characters was angry? Is this something you did on purpose?
Very often, we're called 'angry Black women/girls' to invalidate our emotions. My therapist once said anger is a protective emotion. We might be hurt, overstimulated, sad, depressed, frightened, anxious… But we are often not allowed the grace of others digging deeper to see that. Even if the other characters do not understand her anger, even if her motives are not meant to be understood at the moment… you as the writer should be aware. But if every time it’s time to show anger or upset, it’s your Black character… consider why this is the one you thought would best convey that message, and how your Black readers might feel seeing that this character (who may not even be the ‘bad guy’) is the one that is ‘only’ angry. No other development, no other emotions, just… there to be mad.
I take this one to heart, as someone who feels very passionately about things… this is one of those things where I wish, in life and in media, people would have more grace for Black women. We're human, too. We have feelings, too.
The Mammy
This one isn’t as visually blatant anymore in media as it was in the past (like every Mammy doesnt look like Aunt Jemima), but you may have seen this one as "the mommy figure". The "lesbian that parents the silly gay boys". The one that’s always encouraging the ship of the white boys, but never the one allowed to be in the ship (especially when her ship is canon!)
A good example of this was how people expected Jessica Drew from ATSV to be "more loving" to Gwen, rather than the mentor and boss she was (plus, as a Black woman with a Black mother… trust and believe, she was quite direct and gentle). And in comparison to her counterpart, white man Peter B. Parker, was decried far worse for similar detrimental actions.
The Mammy often serves in opposition to the Jezebel and Sapphire/Angry Black Woman. What makes the Mammy particularly annoying is that it implies that the only good Black woman character is a ‘nice’, demure, unthreatening, homely, motherly figure whose job it is to make sure to center the (usually) white ones. The Mammy is expected to coddle everyone, to her own detriment. She's a ‘good Black’ because she causes no issue, raises no fuss, never shows a negative feeling, knows that she has to ‘be strong’ but to always defer because the white characters know best. She’s ‘not a threat’, and that’s why she’s ‘allowed’ to be around. We shouldn’t have to be those things in order for our stories to be heard and understood, in order to be empathized with or treated like someone of value.
The Strong Black Woman
If I never hear this phrase again in my life, if we eradicate it from future generations for Black girls and women, I'll cry of joy lmao. I hate it, and it's not for the reasons most nonblack people would expect. Lord, this one. Anyway. The ‘strong Black woman’ is meant to protect everyone, no help needed! Whenever something is wrong and we all need a pickup, here she comes to ‘let me do it’ and everything is going to be okay! She did all the necessary suffering so that your characters don't have to! She can sweep in and save the day!
Now here's the dissonance kicks in. This one on its surface probably sounds like a good thing. She's a hero! She’s resilient! She's great! Who wouldn't want to be superwoman? Who wouldn't want to reject being a love interest, all women are always love interests! Let us be the badass that kicks ass and shows the men what for! Who wouldn’t want that, 24/7?!
The answer: US. 👍🏾🤣
This is a long, separate conversation on its own, but we have to understand that Black women (women of color, really) and White women do not always share the same end goals and understanding of "strong woman character" or even feminism. We certainly aren't always the love interest. Very usually not, in fact. We are always pushed to the side. We are already the hero in our lives, we're already the "strong woman".
Not everyone yearns to be the Singular Hero who will Fix It All as many of us are already expected to do. It's exhausting having to swallow your own needs for everyone else all the time, especially when it's suggested that you have no value otherwise if you don't. Heroism is Exhausting, and it's something worth looking into when you’re characterizing your Black girls and women. I’m not saying that we can’t be strong! We are, and it’s impressive! But I also want us to add some nuance to that strength, the way we would for any other character. What it means to have community, rather than to do it all alone. How even if she wants to be the hero (and that’s okay! That’s fine!) how it would still wear on her. Surrounding your Black girl character with unconditional support, to have a lover that actually wants to pull some weight- that's something many of us actually would like to see, because we're usually shafted to the side as 'someone who can do it all herself' (in order to hide that no one thinks we need or are deserving of the help).
It's okay to let your Black woman and girls show weakness, to rest, to be taken care of! It's not "less feminist" to accept that we're humans that need help and can't carry it all, too. That it’s okay to want to feel valued and protected. Because god knows, I wish I didn’t grow up strong and resilient, I wish I grew up knowing that the world cared that I was safe.
Standards of Beauty
These standards are not the same! I've mentioned it before in my lesson on skin tones, but very often when we think of "beauty", it’s easy to fall into the idea of whiteness. Pale skin, thin hair textures, etc. If those are our existing standards of beauty, then it doesn’t matter what any of us look like- we’re ugly! When I was in high school, I remember a classmate saying that Swedish people were the most beautiful people because of "white hair and pale skin". Without even meaning to, that guy basically said everyone darker than a stack of loose leaf printer paper was ugly by proxy of not being Nordic White (no matter how pretty they actually might be!!) 🤣
It’s also of note that whiteness/paleness tends to be connected with innocence and cleanliness in western culture, while blackness/darkness tends to be considered dirty, sinful, fearful. Now, while the origin of this idea may not be racist itself, when you spend hundreds of years implying that Blackness is bad- to the point that, in the U.S. they came up with an entire slur one step past “negro” (meaning ‘Black’) to deem you less than- it’s hard to say that the societal connotation didn’t apply.
Now we've already discussed working on describing our Black characters better! I continually remind you all that you should be describing them as wonderfully made as you do your white characters. Keep in mind that we live in a world where from day one when we enter the world, Blackness and Black features are not seen as beautiful nor emphasized. Whiteness is the standard of beauty that we, for a long time and still, are expected to adhere to. If you'd like to do better by your characters, remember that you don't have to give them "white features" or use "white" as an adjective to do that!
Black Women as Women
“There was literally nothing, not a thing, that a white woman could ever have that was worth more than her sexual virtue, and this obligated mandatory chasteness and sexual vulnerability… If the most important thing a woman has is virtue, and only white women can have virtue, then by definition, only white women can be women.” Ruby Hamad, ‘Only White Women Can Be Damsels’, White Tears, Brown Scars
Often, Black women by definition are not included under the societal banner of “women”, from our features, to our personalities, to our 'role' in life. "True Womanhood" is denied us, cis and trans, because of our Blackness. The things that make women ‘women’, we are not included under, because systemically, the only ‘women’ that were meant to mean anything were white.
I bring up Megan Thee Stallion again. Meg is probably one of the most beautiful, feminine women I've ever seen in my life. Men still call her a man, due to her height, due to her confidence, and due to their insecurities. Same with Serena Williams; Serena is damn near built like a god in my eyes. She was told she was manly from the beginning of her career, no matter how beyond skilled she was in women's tennis. Even when she damn near died giving birth- the most basic of 'tasks' women are seen as having in this society, it didn't matter. Black women are 'less womanly', 'less valuable', 'less in need' of that protection and identity that society swears Women™ need (and not in the honest way that we do need protection).
Consider that you're making sure that your Black women have the options of range of gender expression and emotions (and if they aren't allowed to, is that on purpose). If you're only ever creating us and we're in service of some dainty white woman and never the other way around... consider how that may reflect what you think our role is in your story, and in your mind.
Adultification
“Awkward moment when Rue is some black girl and not the innocent blond girl you imagine.” twitter: sw4q
It has been shown that Black girls the same age as their white girl counterparts are deemed older and less in need of protection, and supposed to 'be more mature'. Imagine that. Deemed inherently less innocent, due to your skin color. Having to parent our siblings, get jobs to contribute, do all the cleaning, and more. Yet, when we act with the maturity that we've been forced to grow into, we're "fast". A little 12-year-old girl, now to society, the Jezebel. All because she wanted to try pink lip gloss or wear a skirt; things that little tween girls might try to understand the big world around them and push boundaries. Now she's a woman, now she can never be a victim. Now she can be beat on and hurt and it's her fault.
I explain this for two reasons: One, for you to think about how your write your Black girls, and Two, for you to hold more grace for Black girls- real and fake. Do you hold her to a higher standard than your white characters of similar age? Does she inherently seem less innocent to you for reasons outside the plot? Is she as human to you as your other characters? Is she allowed to be a child? To act like one? To make mistakes? Are you as empathetic or understanding about that childishness as you are towards nonblack characters? Do you make these decisions on purpose?
It's not like Black girls can never be YA protags or anything- ofc we can. But keep in mind that she's not somehow automatically "stronger" by proxy of her Blackness, that she'd "be tougher". She's a kid. Let her be one.
Conclusion
There’s a LOT you have to consider when writing Black girls and women. I’m not going to sit here and say it’s easy, because being Black, and being a Black woman, is not easy. If you’re stressed reading it, imagine being stressed living it lmao. It’s a constant chain of quick-time events every day of your life to prevent nonblack nuclear meltdown in response to your every single action. I’m not going to apologize for it, either.
That being said, I don’t expect you to understand everything, especially not all at once. I just want you all to keep these things in mind, to question yourself when you’re writing your character- are you treating her differently on purpose? Or are you treating her differently because of a bias you might not even notice you have? It might help to go back, to read how you treat all of your characters. Or, if you’ve never written before, to maybe outline the traits of your characters and figure out where things balance out. As always, all you can do is practice at it. Because it's the thought that counts, but the action that delivers.
Whew, I'm actually emotionally strained after this one. My chest is beating fast. Let me go get some groceries now.
#creatingblackcharacters#character design#black characters#black character design#writing#creative writing#stereotypes#antiblackness#racism
1K notes
·
View notes
Text
a wedding in june
cult leader!joel miller x virgin fem!reader
[18+] | wc: ~3.2k
summary: You run from Joel on your wedding day.
masterlist | AO3
warnings: HBO Joel, TLOU AU, dubious consent (i'm so serious don't read if it makes you uncomfortable), some proofreading, post-outbreak, commune/cult vibes, arranged marriage, mentions of infected/gore/violence, no use of y/n or too many details on reader's appearance, some face slapping, loss of virginity (and some pain associated to that but only a few sentences), outdoors sex, oral (f! receiving), squirting, unprotected sex, creampie
a/n: i promise i have other ideas rattling in my brain besides dubious consent 😭 i have a whole wip chart with tons of ideas that i hope i can write
You run faster at the sound of shouts behind you. Sweat drips down your temples and fear makes your heart beat erratically, but you don’t dare stop.
The outer gates are only a few more hundred feet away. All you need to do is get past the trees and you’ll be able to escape. You don’t have time to think about how this will be your first time venturing outside of the commune.
Everything you were taught about the outside, about the orphaned souls and monsters that lurk, none of that matters. Not when you’re more terrified at what your future will bring.
Joel Miller. The man who in just a few months, cleared away the hundreds of infected in the nearby valley. Joel, who in the commune’s monthly hunting trips, manages to find everything from venison to medication.
The times you’ve been close enough to Joel, to feel the heat emanating off his body, you can almost taste the violence that simmers beneath his skin. Instead of it scaring you, like it would any sane person, it excites you.
The longing in his gaze whenever he looks at you makes you dizzy. There’s a pulse of heat between your thighs each and every time, one that will only go away after you ride your pillow until exhaustion. Whenever you face him again, after you’ve dreamed of him taking you, you wonder if he knows what you do in the privacy of your room.
There’s no denying that he’s saved this commune from the brink of starvation. Of course everyone, including you, is grateful for the kindness of a stranger. But in the months he’s been here, their gratitude has turned into pure devotion.
Your parents practically pushed you into his arms the moment Joel asked about you. Normally quite level headed, your parents have begun to treat Joel like a God. You thought Joel would find their insistence of marriage off putting, that he would be an honorable man and let you choose your own path in this place.
You were wrong.
Your parents saw it as an honor that out of all the women in the commune, Joel chose you. The books and pretty dresses he finds on his trips are only a sign of how devoted a husband he will be, at least that’s what your mother tried to tell you.
And the times you tried to speak to Joel and get him to rethink this marriage? Don’t worry about it, pretty girl, was all he would say before he’d send you off.
You can imagine him in your bed and fantasize about him in your dreams, but to be his wife? Especially now that he’s been chosen to lead the commune—you want nothing to do with that.
A denser path to your right has you changing directions, wishing to throw them off your trail. You can still make it if you run through here.
Except it’s too late. Strong arms grab and push you into the lush grass.
“No,” you scream, “let me go!”
“What’s wrong with you,” Joel snaps, “don’t you know what’s out there?”
“I don’t care,” you scream out childishly, “I’d rather be out there than be with you!”
He climbs on top of you, grabbing your wrists in one hand and pressing them above your head into the grass. He leans on your thighs to keep you still and grabs your chin with the other hand.
“Listen to me,” he insists, “you don’t know what you’re sayin’. You know nothin’ of what life is like outside these walls.”
He digs his fingers into your cheeks and shakes your head slightly since you refuse to look at him.
“Joel, did you find her?” your father calls out from a distance.
“Yeah, I got ‘er.”
“Great, let’s go back and finish the celebration–”
“No,” Joel calls out.
“Joel–”
“Leave,” Joel interrupts.
He continues sitting on you, putting most of his weight on your trembling body. The white dress you're wearing, a satin piece that he found on their last hunting trip into the town, rides up dangerously close to your panties.
“I need to teach you a lesson in respect, wife,” Joel growls.
He stands and just when you think you can escape again, he yanks you up with him. Joel holds your arm tight with one hand while taking off his belt with the other. He spins you around and brings your wrists behind your back, using the belt to bind them together.
“You wanna see what’s out there? Since you think you’re so tough?” Joel asks, not waiting for an answer and instead dragging you to the gate. “I do everything to make this place safe for you, darlin’. But this is how you repay me? Runnin’ off at the first chance you get?”
You’re surprised at his words and the sincerity of his voice. He sounds almost… sad.
“Practically beggin’ to be out there with those fuckers instead of me?” he continues, “The only man who can truly protect you?”
You reach the gate and your heartbeat picks up again. You’ve never been out this far. In fact, you’re acres away from the actual commune. While the gates are secure and regularly enforced, you can’t help but feel truly terrified that something will grab you just outside these barriers.
“I’m sorry, Joel–”
He stops, spinning you around and landing a hard slap, slap, slap on your ass.
“You address me as sir.”
“I’m sorry, sir,” you cry out, “I learned my lesson. Let’s–let’s go back.”
Joel ignores you, choosing instead to march you right to the gate. He keeps one hand on your arm and uses the other to maneuver the many locks and wires on the barrier door until it finally opens.
“No, please! I said I was sorry! I wasn’t thinking!”
He drags you out and for the first time in your life, you’ve left the commune. Despite only a metal gate separating both sides, this area seems devoid of life.
He walks and walks until you wonder if you’ll pass out from the panic. You fall to your knees and Joel crouches right in front of you.
“Your daddy ever tell you about the infected?” Joel whispers, tilting your chin up with his index finger. “How they’ll bite and rip into any part of your flesh.”
“No, please,” you whimper.
He drags a finger down your neck and over your exposed collarbones, leaving goosebumps in his wake. Your nipples tighten as he glides his finger over one breast and then the other.
“Once they’re done with you, if there’s anything left, then you become just as mindless and violent as them. Forever lost–”
“Sir–”
His hand tightens around your neck, cutting off your words.
“It’s not just one, babydoll. They like to travel in hordes. Makes it easier to find their victims.”
Your air supply thins and blood rushes to your ears. You squeeze your thighs unconsciously as the pulsing between them only grows. Joel ghosts his lips over yours and your eyes flutter closed without thinking.
“But it’s not just them,” he whispers over your lips, “there’s non-infected out there. People who won’t think twice about hurtin’ a pretty girl like you. Killin’ ya’ just for fun.”
You’re not sure who kisses who first. It’s not the chaste kiss the two of you shared at the altar. It’s rough and has you pressing your body close to his so you can take every swipe of his tongue or bite from his teeth. He continues holding your neck, lightly squeezing so you have no other choice than to gasp for air.
You fall back at the push of his hand on your chest. He flips you on your side to untie his belt from your wrists. You attack the moment your hands are free, sliding your hands through his salt and pepper hair and tugging him down.
Joel hisses but returns each of your kisses and bites with his own. You hear the squawk of a crow from above and you're immediately reminded of where you are.
“Wait, sir,” you gasp, “not here. Take me back to your–our house–”
He drags his teeth down your neck, rubbing his beard into your soft skin and biting down.
“Thought you’d rather be out here than with me?” he says, repeating your words from earlier.
“No,” you whimper, trying to push him off, “not here. I–”
He reaches your chest and sucks your nipple into his mouth right over your dress. Your words are cut off and you're arching your back, trying to push more into his mouth.
Joel makes room between your thighs and grinds down as you twist his wavy strands of hair between your fingers. His hard bulge rubs over your pussy and your whimper at the roughness.
He pinches your other nipple between two fingers then leans back to tug down the straps of your dress. Warm, summer wind glides over your now naked breasts and you shiver.
“Look at these pretty tits,” he groans, “all mine.”
Joel yanks the skirt of the dress over your tummy and runs a finger up and down your panty-covered pussy. You shamelessly grind down on his hand and cry out the moment he lands a harsh slap.
“Please,” you beg with what's left of your sanity, “take me home.”
With the same technique as before, Joel holds both wrists in one hand and uses the other to rip your panties off. You try to close your thighs from the sting of the elastic, but he’s quick to stop you.
“Christ,” he whispers, “now ain’t that a beauty.”
With two fingers, Joel swipes through your slick folds and brings them up to his mouth.
“Mmm, sweet girl. Needa taste of this pussy.”
“What do you mean—“
You try to remind Joel of just where the two of you are, but he fits his broad shoulders between your thighs and fuses his mouth to your pussy.
You’re surprised, stunned silent by the heat of his mouth on your most intimate parts. You’re by no means ignorant of what a husband does to his wife—you’ve read enough of the romance books your mother keeps hidden in her bedside table and heard enough stories from your friends to have an idea of what happens on a wedding night.
But never did you imagine it would feel like this. His beard and mustache only heighten the sensitivity between your thighs. The setting sun and the dense forest that surrounds the two of you should add to your terror, but Joel manages to put your attention elsewhere.
His tongue lashes repeatedly over your clit and down to tease your entrance. You throw your head back onto the grass and stare through blurred vision at the purple sky, uncaring of where you are and of what creeps in the dark.
He’s greedy, eating away at you like you're the last meal he’ll ever have. You’re slick and sticky, painting his face with your juices, making it easy for him to push a thick finger into your entrance.
The stretch burns, but he calms you with a swipe of his tongue on your clit and the vibrations of his moans on your skin.
“Your parents were right, you are a virgin,” he groans, pushing on the little piece of thin flesh that separates the rest of you. “Gonna be a tight fit, baby.”
You have no time to think about when your parents had that conversation with him. Instead, you're dumbfounded at the size of his fingers. You whine, unsure of what exactly you're asking, but nonetheless chanting more, more, more into the air.
Joel manages to slide a second finger, curving them and pressing on something bumpy that makes you twitch and see black dots in your vision.
He stretches and scissors his fingers in your tightness, opening you up more and sucking your swollen button between his lips. Just when the heat is about to consume every inch of your body, he stops.
“No,” you whine, trying to yank his head back to your thighs.
Joel dodges your hands and laughs at the desperation written all over your face. He leans down, pressing his wet face to yours in a sloppy kiss, forcing you to suck on his tongue. Riding your pillow doesn’t compare to this.
Just as before, Joel rips away and catches your wrist right when you reach for him.
“If you woulda been a good girl, I woulda eaten this virgin pussy till mornin’,” he says while unbuttoning his jeans. “Made you ride my face and cum as many times as you wanted.”
You barely understand how someone could ride a face, and yet you clench and gush around nothing, wanting his mouth or fingers back. You see the dark, curly hair at his base before he pulls out his length.
“But for bein’ a brat, I’m gonna make you come on my cock instead.”
The tip is swollen and leaking a white-ish liquid that makes your mouth water at the sight. He lets go of your wrist and gently slaps your face.
“Are you listenin’ to me, girl? I won’t fuck you if you ain’t payin’ attention.”
“Y-yes, sir. I’m listening.”
Joel laughs once again, noticing the dazed look in your eyes.
“Don’t worry, baby. I’ll make it fit.”
There’s a craving inside of you, one that has you suddenly feeling so empty, that if he doesn’t fill you with his cock you think you’ll die. You repeat the word over and over in your head.
You’ve read it more than enough times and heard it through hushed giggles from your friends, yet the way Joel says the word, the way he squeezes and twists his hand over his cock, you finally understand what the word truly means.
Your fingers and the handle of your hairbrush were never able to give you what you so desperately seeked. You always stopped before you went in too deep, never able to take that final push inside.
He spreads open your thighs and you lean up on your elbows to try to catch a glance at what he’s doing. You see your sticky fluids stuck on your inner thighs and over the tip of his cock. He pushes in just an inch, and you gasp at the thickness.
“Fuck, tight little thing,” Joel moans. “Need you to beg f’me, baby.”
“Please, please, sir,” you answer quickly, “please, I–I want it!”
He sinks in another inch, his face pinching in barely controlled restraint.
“Say–fuck, say ‘I need your cock, sir’.”
The words are caught in your throat as you try to adjust to his size. Joel doesn’t like that you take too long to answer and slaps your cheek.
“Answer me.”
“I need your–your cock, sir,” you whine.
“Again, fu–again,” he demands.
You try your best to repeat his words, except he’s too far gone now. There’s a pinch, a rip of thin flesh and suddenly he’s sliding all the way in. You claw at his arms and at the grass to get away but he’s gripping your thighs, pressing deeper and whispering take it, pretty girl and you ain’t getting away from me.
You feel full, so incredibly full. You’re split open, ripped apart just for him.
“I know, baby. I know,” Joel coos, “it’ll hurt only for a minute.”
His thumb rubs tiny circles on your clit and he leans over to press kisses on your eyelids and cheeks, licking away the tears that fall.
The stretch burns, but his groans of pleasure and his gentle kisses have a warm glow spreading through your body. Joel notices the change in you and glances down to watch your hips move in small circles.
“There we go, baby,” he moans, “knew you’d like it.”
He pulls out slowly, keeping eye contact with you and watching each pinch of your brow and flutter of your eyelids.
“Saved this pretty cunt just f’me, yeah?”
“Yes, sir,” you whisper, pushing away the sweaty curls from Joel’s forehead.
He picks up the pace, curling his hand behind your knee and pushing it into your chest, arranging you like a doll. The pain now completely gone, you lay there, running hands over his arms and watching the sweat drip down his temples.
Every slide of his cock kisses the very end of you. Your hips move and twist on their own accord and you have no choice but to cry out into the night sky.
“Takin’ this–this big cock like a good girl, yeah?” Joel groans, watching his cock plunge in and out of your little hole. “Need you–fuck, need you to say you’re mine, baby.”
“I–I’m yours, sir,” you whine, feeling a twinge in your core, “yours, yours, yours.”
You dig your fingers in his neck and drag him down for a kiss. He grunts as you bite deep enough to draw blood.
The thoughts from earlier, about running away from him, leave your mind. Even if it hurts a little, even if you aren’t prepared to be a wife, this is exactly what you need. And you won’t let anyone else have him.
“You gonna cum, girl? Gonna cum on your husband’s big cock?”
This time he doesn’t stop you. His hand squeezes your neck and he traps you into the ground, pistoning his hips into your slick cunt. Your oxygen lessens and your cumming, numbness and white heat spreading throughout your body.
“Just like that, baby,” Joel growls, “soak my cock.”
You're gushing on him, painting the hair at his base with sticky juices. You tremble in his arms and claw at the hand that squeezes your neck. Joel doesn’t let up, fucking into your limp body, loving the way you mewl underneath him.
He moves in short thrusts, stiffening and letting out an animalistic grunt into the night sky. He presses his head into your neck, sucking and biting into your soft skin while he spills his seed inside of you.
"Take my cum, baby. Take it, take it," Joel moans.
You clench around him, massage his cock with your inner muscles. Every drop of his cum belongs deep inside of you.
With the little strength left in your body, you run your fingers through his hair. Joel's hands move to grip your thighs and he grinds down, spilling the last of his cum into your cunt.
"You belong to me," Joel whispers. "Don’t ever run again."
You lay there in the grass, breasts bare and pussy full of your husband's cock.
"I won’t," you promise.
Joel leans back and slowly slips out. There’s a twinge of red mixed with his cum that he wipes up with your ripped panties. He lays down next to you and brings you in close so that your head is placed on his chest. You listen to his heartbeat and the sounds of crickets around you.
You think about the long way back to Joel's–well now your house too–and then you remember exactly where the two of you are.
"Sir, we're outside of the gates what if something or someone comes–we don't have any weapons–"
“There’s another gate a few miles out," he interrupts, "I installed it for extra protection around this place.”
You drop your head on his chest from relief and exhaustion. Joel rubs a hand down your back and squeezes your arm.
“I’d never put you in harm's way, pretty girl.”
-
general taglist: iloved1lfs0
ps: i know that there has been other cult leader!joel fics but in no way shape or form have i copied those works for this. if there is something major in my work that sounds similar to someone else's, it's purely by coincidence. i respect each person who takes time out of their day to write FREE content and the last thing i'd do is steal their storylines 🤍🤍🤍
#joel miller x you#joel miller x female reader#joel miller smut#joel miller tlou#joel miller x reader#hbo joel miller x reader#dark joel miller#dark fic
902 notes
·
View notes
Text
you're grabbing lunch with a nice man and he gives you that strange grimace-smile that's popular right now; an almost sardonic "twist" of his mouth while he looks literally down on you. it looks like he practiced the move as he leans back, arms folded. he just finished reciting the details of NFTs to you and explaining Oppenheimer even though he only watched a youtube about it and hasn't actually seen it. you are at the bottom of your wine glass.
you ask the man across from you if he has siblings, desperately looking for a topic. literally anything else.
he says i don't like small talk. and then he smiles again, watching you.
a few years ago, you probably would have said you're above celebrity gossip, but honestly, you've been kind of enjoying the dumb shit of it these days. with the rest of the earth burning, there's something familiar and banal about dragging ariana grande through the mud. you think about jeanette mccurdy, who has often times gently warned the world she's not as nice as she appears. you liked i'm glad my mom died but it made you cry a lot.
he doesn't like small talk, figure out something to say.
you want to talk about responsibility, and how ariana grande is only like 6 days older than you are - which means she just turned 30 and still dresses and acts like a 13 year old, but like sexy. there's something in there about the whole thing - about insecurity, and never growing up, and being sexualized from a young age.
people have been saying that gay people are groomers. like, that's something that's come back into the public. you have even said yourself that it's just ... easier to date men sometimes. you would identify as whatever the opposite of "heteroflexible" is, but here you are again, across from a man. you like every woman, and 3 people on tv. and not this guy. but you're trying. your mother is worried about you. she thinks it's not okay you're single. and honestly this guy was better before you met, back when you were just texting.
wait, shit. are you doing the same thing as ariana grande? are you looking for male validation in order to appease some internalized promise of heteronormativity? do you conform to the idea that your happiness must result in heterosexuality? do you believe that you can resolve your internal loneliness by being accepted into the patriarchy? is there a reason dating men is easier? why are you so scared of fucking it up with women? why don't you reach out to more of them? you have a good sense of humor and a big ol' brain, you could have done a better job at online dating.
also. jesus christ. why can't you just get a drink with somebody without your internal feminism meter pinging. although - in your favor (and judgement aside) in the case of your ariana grande deposition: you have been in enough therapy you probably wouldn't date anyone who had just broken up with their wife of many years (and who has a young child). you'd be like - maybe take some personal time before you begin this journey. like, grande has been on broadway, you'd think she would have heard of the plot of hamlet.
he leans forward and taps two fingers to the table. "i'm not, like an andrew tate guy," he's saying, "but i do think partnership is about two people knowing their place. i like order."
you knew it was going to be hard. being non-straight in any particular way is like, always hard. these days you kind of like answering the question what's your sexuality? with a shrug and a smile - it's fine - is your most common response. like they asked you how your life is going and not to reveal your identity. you like not being straight. you like kissing girls. some days you know you're into men, and sometimes you're sitting across from a man, and you're thinking about the power of compulsory heterosexuality. are you into men, or are you just into the safety that comes from being seen with them? after all, everyone knows you're failing in life unless you have a husband. it almost feels like a gradebook - people see "straight married" as being "all A's", and anything else even vaguely noncompliant as being ... like you dropped out of the school system. you cannot just ignore years of that kind of conditioning, of course you like attention from men.
"so let's talk boundaries." he orders more wine for you, gesturing with one hand like he's rousing an orchestra. sir, this is a fucking chain restaurant. "I am not gonna date someone who still has male friends. also, i don't care about your little friends, i care about me. whatever stupid girls night things - those are lower priority. if i want you there, you're there."
he wasn't like this over text, right? you wouldn't have been even in the building if he was like this. you squint at him. in another version of yourself, you'd be running. you'd just get up and go. that's what happens on the internet - people get annoyed, and they just leave. you are locked in place, almost frozen. you need to go to the bathroom and text someone to call you so you have an excuse, like it's rude to just-leave. like he already kind of owns you. rudeness implies a power paradigm, though. see, even your social anxiety allows the patriarchy to get to you.
you take a sip of the new glass of wine. maybe this will be a funny story. maybe you can write about it on your blog. maybe you can meet ariana grande and ask her if she just maybe needs to take some time to sit and think about her happiness and how she measures her own success.
is this settling down? is this all that's left in your dating pool? just accepting that someone will eventually love you, and you have to stop being picky about who "makes" you a wife?
you look down to your hand, clutching the knife.
#writeblr#this is a mashup of like 3 dates i accidentally went on lol#by that i mean that i was out with a woman on a date in 2 of these situations#and a man just. joined us. and we were too awkward to say anything while he tried to ''date'' me#& one was a longterm friend that i was like. you what????#like he's nice he's a doctor and my mom was SO happy she was like raquel think about it#''it's a perfect love story you grew up together and reconnected as adults and like the same things and he's friends with ur brother#and his sister is one of ur close friends!!!''#yes but alas. he is a boy . she only likes girls. can i make it any more obvious#anyway im tryna write about like the force of male attention being actually incredibly ingrained to women like we are SUPPOSED to like it#it's seen as the only important thing#even if ur gay#and it's a nuanced thing idk#and while rn i i.d. as lesbian#like .... it wouldn't be UNTRUE to say i am probably like ''cusp bisexual'' bc i CAN experience attraction to men bc like .#sexuality is fluid...#don't tell straight ppl tho bc they do not understand the concept that ppl don't necessarily need a solid everlasting label#they're like GET in the BOX#if ur gay & in boston i'm 30 and pretty please come kiss me.#(i usually only date older ppl sorry in advance tho)
3K notes
·
View notes
Text
You're a Liar
𝕊𝕦𝕞𝕞𝕒𝕣𝕪: ɪɴ ᴡʜɪᴄʜ ʏᴏᴜ ᴅɪꜱᴄᴏᴠᴇʀ ᴛʜᴇ ꜱᴋᴇʟᴇᴛᴏɴꜱ ɪɴ ᴄᴏʀɪᴏʟᴀɴᴜꜱ' ᴄʟᴏꜱᴇᴛ.
ᴘᴀʀᴛ ᴏɴᴇ / ᴘᴀʀᴛ ᴛᴡᴏ / ᴍʏ ᴍᴀꜱᴛᴇʀʟɪꜱᴛ
𝕎𝕒𝕣𝕟𝕚𝕟𝕘𝕤: ᴄᴏʀɪᴏʟᴀɴᴜꜱ ꜱɴᴏᴡ (ʜᴇ ɪꜱ ʙᴀᴅ ᴇɴᴏᴜɢʜ ᴛᴏ ʙᴇ ᴀ ᴡᴀʀɴɪɴɢ)
ꜱᴏʀʀʏ ᴛʜɪꜱ ᴛᴏᴏᴋ ꜱᴏ ʟᴏɴɢ. ɪ ʜᴀᴅ ᴛᴏ ᴛᴀᴋᴇ ᴍʏ ᴄᴏʟʟᴇɢᴇ ꜰɪɴᴀʟꜱ ᴀɴᴅ ᴛʜᴇɴ ɪ ᴅᴇᴄɪᴅᴇᴅ ᴛᴏ ʀᴇᴡᴀᴛᴄʜ ᴀʟʟ ᴏꜰ ɢᴏᴛ ᴀɴᴅ ʜᴏᴛᴅ ꜱᴏ ɪ'ᴠᴇ ʙᴇᴇɴ ʜᴀᴠɪɴɢ ᴅᴀᴇᴍᴏɴ/ᴀᴇᴍᴏɴᴅ ᴛᴀʀɢᴀʀʏᴇɴ ʙʀᴀɪɴ ʀᴏᴛ.
Mornings might just be your favorite time of day. The way the sun just barely peaked through the curtains and shimmered its way across the bedspread made your shared room with Coriolanus look simply divine.
Mornings might just be your favorite time of day. The delicious scent of bacon and freshly cooked pancakes wafted through the mansion and under your closed door. The promise of fresh orange juice and perfectly hot coffee was enough to rouse anyone from their slumber.
Mornings might just be your favorite time of day. Coriolanus is still asleep beside you. Curly hair is splayed on the pillow, free from whatever styling gel he put in it. His face is relaxed and peaceful as you run your fingertips across his forehead and down the bridge of his nose. The stress of being president is gone from his face when he sleeps and that's how you know, mornings are your favorite time of day.
"I can feel you staring at me."
His voice was still muddled with sleep, deep and scratchy as he batted at your hands trying to keep them off his gorgeous face.
"I'm appreciating the art in front of me," You smile as he finally opens his eyes.
"Your hands on my face are making my nose itch." He says grabbing your right hand and gently squeezing it as he sits up beside you.
You hum a tune of acknowledgment and take in his appearance. Coriolanus' pale skin was a wonderful sight to behold as the blanket slipped and fell into his lap.
"You're staring again." He says playing with your fingers
"An incredibly attractive man seems to be missing his shirt, can you blame me for staring?" You state a playful smile pulling on your lips.
Coriolanus lets out a snort and gets out of bed with a grunt. Long red scratches adorn his back as you watch your fiancee walk across the room towards the bathroom, ready to scrub last night's activities off himself.
Yes, mornings were your favorite time of day. You had warm sunshine, delicious food, and Coriolanus by your side.
But, most of all, mornings were your favorite because you weren't alone.
Coriolanus never truly wanted to leave the bedroom he shared with you. Even now as you groaned and begged him to just lounge around the mansion with you, he wished he could go back to when he felt your soft fingertips brushing the bridge of his nose. He had woken up beside you, cleaned himself, and eaten a wonderful breakfast, now the next step was simple. The next step was attending to his duties as the President of Panem and leaving you to your day in the south wing of the mansion. Despite the tempting idea of staying with you, he knew you'd be eagerly awaiting him, tonight at the dinner table, ready to listen about his day. It was the perfect daily routine and Coriolanus never wanted it to change.
He could feel the press of your lips on his lingering hours later as the newest Head Gamemaker listed detailed plans for the games that were two months away. Dr. Gaul's death had been a blow to the way the Hunger Games functioned as a whole. Now, Coriolanus wasn't sure if the new man chosen for the job was truly the correct choice, he didn't have any of the ruthlessness Gaul had. Sure, he could've stepped in but how would he run the country and dream up deadly traps and mutts for tributes. Sure, he probably could've but that meant so many hours of overtime and leaving you to sleep alone in those overly soft sheets you had hand-picked for your shared bed. This new game maker would just have to do, he didn't want to imagine your sad little face if he didn't sit down for dinner with you each night.
The hours after Coriolanus left you at the breakfast table were terribly boring. There wasn't anything for you to do anymore.Sure, you could've gone shopping or gone to a local park but you hated doing all those things alone. Coriolanus had convinced you that running your Father's weapons company would be overwhelming for you and managed it in your name. As far as you knew it was doing well and was providing many jobs for people in the districts. Everything else in the mansion was tended to by an army of maids and butlers, who were ready at the snap of a finger. So, here you sat in your sunroom that Coriolanus had built as a special place just for you.
You had taken up painting nearly a year ago but your long days of solitude had caused you to quickly run out of inspiration. Now, the paints and easel sat, awaiting your touch but your creativity was gone. You missed Coriolanus and he wouldn't return for another hour. Surely dinner was nearly ready and you wished you were sitting with him, listening to whatever he had spent his day doing. Perhaps you should start a new book before he returns. That'd give you something to tell him about when he did come back.
Maybe the extensive in-home library here would have a book about a lonely woman, wishing for her lover. Maybe there'd be a book all about her and how she spent her days without him and how to pass the time. Maybe, there'd be a book all about her mornings with him and how she never wished for them to come to an end.
It was during these long days that you felt like the loneliest woman in all of Panem. Moments like this made it feel like you were a delicate china doll, only removed from her case to be admired for a few spare moments before being placed back on her shelf.
Two Years Later
Watching. It was something you had gotten good at over the past few months, especially since Coriolanus stopped allowing you to leave the grounds of the mansion. You watched as the boy you grew up with and danced at countless galas faded from view. You tried to welcome the man who sat across from you eating his dinner but it was had more and more difficult as the weeks bled into months and months turned to years. Coriolanus even seldom kissed you now. It hurt even though you knew it was for your own safety. He had admitted it one night in the darkness of your room as he lay beside you. Poison had created sensitive sores in his mouth. You wished he'd stop using it, surely there had to be other ways to do away with enemies.
You felt as though you were withering away, your days were so tedious and you often found yourself eagerly waiting at the dinner table for Coriolanus. Your long days were spent in isolation and you rarely spoke to the staff of the mansion. That didn't stop you from racing to the dining room when the sounds of Coriolanus' return sounded through the halls. Some days it felt like you were a child waiting to tell their parent about their day.
Tonight, it was like your words were falling on deaf ears as Coriolanus was paging through a book while nibbling at the food that had been placed in front of the two of you. Your engagement ring was a dazzling silver as you played with your fingers, wishing he'd look up from whatever knowledge that book might've held.
"Coryo..." You began
"Yes?"
His tone wasn't what you had hoped for. He was annoyed that you were interrupting whatever was on the page in front of him so you didn't elaborate on what you had wanted to say.
Watching. It was something you had gotten good at since there wasn't anything else for you to do.
It was raining the day you found them. You had spent most of the day lounging around and working with the wedding planner Coriolanus had hired so you wouldn't have to do all of the work yourself.
It was nestled in an old shoe box, covered in dust, perfectly hidden behind Coriolanus' clothes on his side of the closet. At first, you had thought it might have been more of Sejanus' things that Coriolanus never gave back to Strabo. Instead what you were met with was worse than a dead boy's things. There, wrapped up in a silky orange scarf sat a single golden earring and an envelope. You swore you could smell lingering perfume on the scarf as you opened the envelope.
It felt like your hands were burning when you finally looked at them. Surely they weren't real. Right?
Two pictures sat in your hands. One of Lucy Gray Baird on some unknown stage, a black guitar in hand. Her pretty dark curls were pulled back and behind her a small group of blurry faces were muddled together, unrecognizable due to the poor lighting. You felt a lump of anxiety and anger swell in your throat when you moved on to the next picture. It was taken as if the subjects of the photo had no knowledge of the camera. Lucy Gray sits on a dilapidated-looking couch with your Coriolanus beside her. Her face was partially obscured as she pressed her lips to his cheek and Coriolanus was smiling, his one arm wrapped securely around her waist.
How long had it been since he smiled like that at you? Perhaps it was even before the reaping that had brought her to the Capitol. When was the last time you saw a truly genuine smile from the boy you grew up with? You wondered how you had missed the way his boyish smiles had transformed into those cruel smirks he donned when things went his way.
Jealousy and sadness burned in your stomach as your mind raced. How long had it been since these photos were taken? It had been nearly 7 years since her games. Coriolanus' head was clearly buzzed in the photo with Lucy which meant it was after he was forced by Highbottom to leave the Capitol. How many times after his return to you had he assured you that nothing had happened between them? How many times had you believed him and his sweet words and actions? How many times had he lied and betrayed you all for another girl who mysteriously disappeared?
Betrayal is what you felt as you pocketed the pictures and slid the box back into its spot behind his fancy coats. Tears were pricking at your eyes as you dressed for dinner, Coriolanus would be back soon and you would confront him about the pictures once he was seated across from you at that dinner table you had sat at hundreds of times.
Dinner is silent as you pick at the cut of steak that was placed on your plate. Coriolanus is talking about how he's on the hunt for another head game maker and how annoying it is but you just can't help but not care. The table that separates you from him makes it feel like a huge ravine has grown between the two of you as you tune him out.
15 years is how long you've known Coriolanus Snow. In those 15 years, you had never dreamed of doing what you were about to do as you removed the pictures from where they sat hidden under your pretty skirt, a floral pattern Coriolanus had picked for your 27th birthday a few months ago. Your heart ached as you slid them across the table to him.
"I found these today. In our closet. Wrapped in your mother's scarf with a gold earring."
You finally have all of Coriolanus' attention as he swallows his food and stops his complaining.
"I thought you said it wasn't romantic. You promised me it wasn't."
Coriolanus glances down at the pictures and reaches out to brush his finger across the one with him and Lucy Gray on that couch.
"You promised, Coryo."
Your voice was breaking. Damn it, don't cry!
"I know I did."
He finally speaks. You wondered what was going through that ridiculously complex mind as he fumbled for his words.
"Then why did you lie? I would've listened if you had just told the truth to begin with." You honestly say.
It's true, you would've heard him out. Maybe you wouldn't have taken him back but you would have at least listened.
"I wasn't thinking straight, okay," He says " I should've told you. I should've gotten rid of that stuff years ago. I don't know why I didn't."
"Yes, you do." You sigh "You love her Coryo. Even now, you're looking for Lucy Gray. That's why you keep me here, you're scared I'll run off like her."
"No, no that's not it. I just...want you to myself." He reasoned
"If that were true you'd let me leave."
"Why do you need to? Everything anyone could ever wish for is right here in this home." He points out, you don't miss the way his fist is clenching, his nails digging into his skin.
"I haven't left the mansion in two years!" You cry, blinking back tears "I feel like some prize you've won and caged up! You don't even let me attend galas anymore."
"You hated those galas. All the nosey reporters and their questions were something you hated. Do you want me to apologize for doing you a favor? I won't. I've done nothing but make your life easier." Coriolanus says
"Yes, you have made my life easier, you've eliminated all challenges I might come across by keeping me here, like a doll." You agree, tone dripping with sarcasm
"Look, if you want you can go to the next gala with me. It's in a week I'll get a designer here tomorrow morning to make you a nice dress." Coriolanus sighed, clearly tired "I don't want to argue with you about petty things"
"Good, then we can argue about these photos." You say, ready to finally hear what he had to say.
"I don't love her. Maybe I did at some point but none of that matters now, I came back to you didn't I?"
Maybe I did at some point.
Hot tears fell from your eyes as you looked down at your feet. How could you be so stupid? Why didn't you see it sooner?
The sound of Coriolanus getting up and walking towards you had you wiping at your face and unattractively sniffing as you tried to fix your runny nose. You didn't want him taking your tears as a sign of weakness. He couched down beside you and pulled your chair out so you were facing him.
"Stop crying." He commands placing his hands on your thighs.
Another fresh set of tears falls from your eyes and Coriolanus brushes them away.
"You're a liar." You say, your voice barely a whisper
"I'm not...I want to be here, with you. I'll let you go back out on your little shopping trips and attend galas, shitty reporters and all."
It's tempting, to agree and let everything perfectly mend itself. But as you glance at the pictures that fell off the table and Lucy Gray's face stares back at you, you feel your heart sink to your feet again.
"You're a liar." You say, this time your voice comes out strong as you push his warm hands from your face
Coriolanus gives you a hard stare but lets you pull away from him.
"You can't even apologize for seeing her." You point out
Coriolanus looks guilty as he disgests your words.
"What happened between the two of you?" You asked
"She ran off, I think. I also had some personal issues after Sejanus was killed. She offered for me to go with her, I almost did." He says
You let out a soft hum of acknowledgment as Coriolanus remains in front of you, on his knees, fiddling with the end of your skirt.
"I don't think I ever really loved her. I think it might've just been the idea of possessing her that I liked." He admits, eyes on the floor
"And how is that different than us now?" You ask
Coriolanus' eyes snap up to yours when the question leaves your lips.
"It's different because...we're us...We grew up together, darling. You ate Tigris' cabbage soup and gave me lunch when I didn't have money for my own."
You swallow the lump in your throat and stand up. Coriolanus immediately rises, not interested in being so much shorter than you. You know what has to come next but you're not sure if you're strong enough to do it. Your actions will close the chapter of a book 15 years in the making.
"Coryo...I think I want to go home." You say looking up at him, fresh tears pool in your eyes.
"You are home. You're with me." He says reaching out and taking your hand in his
"No, I mean...to my family's home. I want my mom, I miss her." You admit, pulling your hand out of his.
Coriolanus' face is confused as you look down at the gorgeous ring he gave you at his proposal. It looked so perfect on your hand when you woke up just this morning but now it felt like a death sentence as you sighed.
"I think you should have this back too..." You say as you slip it off and hold it out to him, "I'm sorry about things ending like this, but if you can't even apologize, I don't think I can stay."
Coriolanus' confusion quickly morphs into anger as he looks at the ring in your hand.
"Put it back on. I'm not letting you walk away." He says, upset
"Coryo, don't make this difficult." You say taking the ring and placing it into the pocket that sits just above his heart in his button-up shirt.
You begin to walk towards the looming archway that marks the entrance to the dining room but you're blocked by an angry Coriolanus Snow, tears in his eyes, fists clenched, and his mouth set in a cold line.
"You're not leaving. I won't let you."
Part Four
Series Masterlist
Taglist:
@10ava01
@i-dont-know-make-it-cool @bxtchopolis @anneliese500 @kitscutie @kiselasmetana @wpdarlingpan @miglielia @anneliese500
@taylorsmakingfuckingmacandcheese
@ajs-222
@ayyyeeeeidk
@noisymoisu @clintsupremacy @impeterporker @bl0ndelilac @threeinchminimum @starjane312 @ladyslytherin7 @inmyownlittlechair @eclipixels
@ffioncandy @marihoneywk @earth-to-lottie @julesandro @arzua10 @wotcherpeak
@imaybewrongbutidoubtit @luxebeautystyle @v1ennie @shev3nom @poemfreak306 @slyhersophia @xreaderbooksreads @popcornpoppin @peach97 @louweasleymalfoy @lizziebitch33
@hjgdhghoe @death934 @whore-for-pennywise @poppyflower-22 @callsignwidow @hey101010 @winuvs @iliveonteaandbooks
@powernutterbar @supersmexyandhot @dahlias-and-marigolds @literatureluster @spidermoony @lorarri @dilucpegg3r @forevermoremagcon @sarahskywalker-amidala @ms-longbeach@fictionalwhore123 @snowsgames
#the hunger games#fanfic#coriolanus snow smut#young coriolanus snow#coriolanus x reader#coriolanus snow#coriolanus snow x reader#katniss everdeen#mockingjay#the ballad of songbirds and snakes#lucy gray baird#tom blyth#rachel zegler#coriolanus snow fluff#sejanus plinth#thg#tbosas#coriolanus snow x fem!reader
2K notes
·
View notes
Text
Why Do People Like Yanderes?
Hi everyone, my name is Diya, and this was going to be a YT video-essay-type-thing but I'm too poor to afford a mic and too busy with college to learn how to edit videos, so here's my vague exploration of the psychology behind why people like yanderes so much through the lens of my favourite Visual Novels.
TW for uh. yandere content. Mentions of sex, gore, and non-con, particularly in the last topic. This is more like the first draft of an academic paper so while it's not explicit, I do go into some detail.
Introduction
If you’re a fan of anime or visual novels, then you’re probably already aware of what a yandere is, or at the very least you’ve seen that one picture of Yuno Gasai. Still, for the sake of thoroughness, let’s take it from the tippy top. The term ‘yandere’ is a Japanese portmanteau of ‘yanderu’ – the progressive form of ‘yami’ – meaning ‘sick’, and ‘deredere’ which roughly translates to ‘loving’. Together, the word refers to someone who is – in short – extremely lovesick. Obsessive to the extreme, and with little morality to spare, the standard yandere is characterized by a dangerous fixation on a chosen target, often appearing shy and caring at first only to flip the script and become violently aggressive towards perceived threats (Kroon, 2010).
It should be noted that yanderes are not a strictly romantic or sexual trope. The Ancient Greeks classified at least six forms of love, from familial (storge) to guests (xenia). Modern psychologists may distinguish love as either Companionate or Passionate (Kim & Hatfield, 2004) or consisting of three dimensions of Intimacy, Passion, and Commitment (Sternberg & Sternberg, 2018). Realistically, possessiveness shows up in a variety of relationships. However, people are generally primed to view certain dynamics as inherently amorous. Societal norms tend to encourage the idea that romantic bonds ought to rank above all others, and therefore if Person A is bizarrely fixated on Person B, then clearly there must be an element of sexual interest involved regardless of the actual relationship between the individuals in question.
Regardless, yanderes remain quite popular in fiction. Many dismiss it as a fetish, which it can be, but that isn’t the case for everyone. While there is nothing wrong with indulging in kinky fiction, not all of us get horny at the thought of being chained up in someone’s basement, no matter how hot our captor may be. So why is it so pervasive? Why is this trope so appealing that most writers cannot help but include at least a single line of dialogue implying that – if circumstances had been ever so slightly different – my wholesome shoujo romcom might have turned into a psychological horror?
Hybristophilia
‘Hybristophilia’, also known as Bonnie and Clyde Syndrome after the titular criminal couple, is a word is derived from the Greek word ‘hybridzein’ meaning ‘to commit an outrage against someone’ and ‘philo’ which means ‘a strong preference for’. Sexologist John Money reportedly defined it as a paraphilia in which an individual is sexually aroused by a partner who has a predatory history of hurting other people (Money, 1986, as cited in Matuszak, 2017). In his book, Serial Killer Groupies, true crime and crime fiction author RJ Parker distinguished two forms of hybristophilia: passive and aggressive. The former is when an individual contacts a criminal with the intention of striking up a relationship with them, allowing themselves to be seduced and manipulated but having no interest in committing a crime themselves. The latter are far more dangerous, as the individual not only derives sexual pleasure from their partner’s atrocities but are active participants in carrying out or covering up the crime. To quote Griffiths (2013, as cited in Pettigrew, 2019):
“[They] help out their lovers with their criminal agenda by luring victims, hiding bodies, covering crimes, or even committing crimes. They are attracted to their lovers because of their violent actions and want to receive love yet are unable to understand that their lovers are psychopaths who are manipulating them.”
In some ways, hybristophilia is the nearest thing we have to a realistic understanding of why people love yanderes. I mean, much of the fantasy surrounding such characters and their media tend to be filled with posts begging to be spat on or calling the rightfully terrified main character ungrateful for being a teeny bit upset about finding surveillance cameras in their ceiling. However, enjoying fictitious immoral activity does not predict real perpetration, so what does? There exists little consensus amongst psychologists as to what sparks this particular predilection, and that was strange to me. You would think there would be more studies into this topic, in spite of or perhaps because of its controversial nature. Heck, that one dude wouldn’t shut up about white women’s obsession with Bundy and Dahmer, and I assumed he had gotten that information from somewhere, but it turns out that was just him using modifiers to justify sexism.
However, I believe that we can hedge a few guesses, and over the course of my research, I’ve organized the main rationalizations under four umbrellas which I will explore through the lens of my favourite yandere-themed Visual Novels. Please keep in mind that most of these games are rated as mature due to sexual scenes and/or gore. Additionally, in the spirit of transparency, this ramble will be focused exclusively on male or masculine yanderes. So, without further ado:
Call Me Bob the Builder Because I Can Fix Them
If you’re familiar with DC Comic’s Batman, or just happen to have attended any costume event held over the span of the last 20+ years, you may be familiar with the character of Dr. Harleen Quinzel, better known as Harley Quinn. Initially created as the Joker’s one-off sidekick in Batman The Animated Series, she was so well-received by audiences that she became a recurring character in the cartoon and was eventually given a proper origin story in the form of a one-shot titled Mad Love.
Harley’s origin story has seen some alterations over the past decades, but the core aspects remain largely untouched. In the beginning, Harleen Quinzel was a promising young woman who wanted was a degree from the university’s prestigious psychology department, which she gained through…less than scrupulous means.
(Listen, I’m not sure if the authors were leaning on the Dumb Blonde stereotype, or if they simply thought that casting her as a genuinely bad student would make her later actions more believable. Either way, the idea of Harley as someone with a legitimate PhD came later)
After landing an internship at Arkham Asylum – a half-hospital and half-prison straight out of the 1870s that might as well be built out of one-ply tissue-paper soaked with gasoline and left next to a crate of fireworks – Harleen set her sights on the then incarcerated Joker. At the start, her fixation on the criminal wasn’t remotely sympathetic. She didn’t want to help him, she wanted to use him. Harleen Quinzel wanted piggyback off his infamy and write a tell-all tale detailing what sort of messed up childhood resulted in Gotham’s Clown Prince of Crime. Yet the more she interacted with him, the more the Joker took advantage of her empathy. By the end of their sessions, Harley no longer saw him as a violent serial killer with a clown schtick, but as a “lost, injured child looking to make the world laugh at his antics.”
But Diya, you may be asking, what does this have to do with the video? The Joker never loved Harley, and it could even be argued – as Shehadeh did in a 2017 essay – that her obsession with the pasty-faced clown is more akin to Histrionic Personality Disorder. While that may be the case, I believe that Harley’s story provides one of the reasons yanderes are so popular: their backstory.
Whether they were abandoned by their family, bullied by their peers, experimented on by evil scientists, starved on the streets, died under mysterious circumstances and then trapped in a haunted VCR tape for decades, or are simply so impossibly inhuman that they frankly do not understand why it isn’t socially acceptable to imprison their crush in a pocket dimension made of meat and non-Euclidean geometry, yanderes often have fairly sympathetic or at least understandable explanations for why they are Like That. Your mileage may vary significantly depending on how much you sympathize with these motives, but the point is that yanderes always make sense to some degree. Their morality and priorities may be twisted or even completely incomprehensible, but the audience almost always knows the reason, and that can be comforting. In the real world, other people aren’t always straightforward, and we never really know what they’re thinking, but narrative coherence demands a semblance of internal consistency lest the audience end up frustrated and confused. So yanderes are not only easy to sympathize with, but also fairly predictable. In-universe they may be unhinged freaks with a blood fetish, but to you watching from behind the safety of the screen they’re just acting out the script written for them based on a prototype. And if you understand the why behind their loose gears, then you might just be able to put them back together again.
The concept of rescue romances or “I Can Fix Them” has been around in our stories for thousands of years. The Epic of Gilgamesh detailed how Shamhat essentially ‘civilized’ wild man Enkidu through ritual lovemaking, and a concerning number of religions push the idea that women are dutybound to save men from the follies of sin. Yet men are not exempt either, with one notable example being the German fairytale, King Thrushbeard. Call it what you will regardless: Knights in Shining Armour, the Florence Nightingale Effect, or a plain old case of Because You Were Nice to Me, studies have shown that human beings generally like helping [DA2] others, even when the reason doesn’t necessarily stem from pure altruism. I will delve deeper into this later, but care and compassion are deeply ingrained in human nature, and arising from those roots is the appeal of this mentality: You can save them. You can change them. You can make them better. You are special, and the way you treat this person carries a weight that has not and will never be matched by anyone else for the rest of their mortal or immortal existence.
The illusion is a delicious one, especially if the person you’ve helped turns out to be a billionaire CEO with cash to burn, a super powerful ghost king willing to raze continents to dust for you, a demon having fun on a Friday night, or just your average hot creep with a knife. Moreover, different people have different ideas of what ‘fixing’ even means. Maybe you want to single-handedly rehabilitate your yandere into a functional member of society. Maybe you’re cool with the incessant stalking but would like them to stop slaughtering your friends, family, and local service workers. Maybe you want to make them much, much worse.
Not only do yanderes provide immediate proof that your actions have a tangible impact on the lives of others, but the fantasy also includes the desire of being seen as special. Of being admired and adored by someone whose life you inexplicably made better by virtue of simply being yourself, or an idealized version of yourself. In this fictional world, in this imaginary setting, the person you are is so uniquely, impossibly irreplaceable to someone. And if that’s the case then they can’t risk losing you, can they?
The Allure of Obsession, or ‘Til Death Do Us Part (Literally)
It shouldn’t be necessary, but here is my obligatory disclaimer anyway. Ahem: obsession is not a good thing in real life. Fixating on another human to the detriment of your own wellbeing and that of those around you is dangerous, as is encouraging someone else to obsess over you. You might think you are being worshiped, but real life is not a visual novel. The outside world doesn’t come with an age rating, the author’s guiding pen, and a convenient fade to credits sequence once you’ve reached an ending. The consequences will still be there in the morning, so don’t do it. Just don’t.
PSA out of the way, it’s natural to want to be wanted. Maslow’s Hierarchy places it just above physical safety, but I’d argue that it could easily be compared to baser drives. According to many psychological and anthropological studies, much of humanity’s continued survival and environmental dominance is largely attributed to our ability to form groups, cooperate with one another, and maintain complex interpersonal networks. Social support, intimacy, and a sense of belonging are linked to emotional and physical benefits, such as more optimistic health perceptions, higher subjective well-being, increased creativity and innovation, and greater self-efficacy (DeWall & Bushman, 2011; Harandi et al., 2017; Wang & Sha, 2018). Therefore, it’s perfectly understandable that rejection of any sort would be construed as a threat.
But if someone is obsessed with you, then you have no reason to worry about that, right? No more nights spent agonizing over how they feel about you, asking yourself whether your last text made you sound too desperate, or if you’re boring them because you spent the past hour info-dumping about Stardew Valley farm layouts. With a yandere, there will never be any doubt that they care about you. Sure, they might go about it in weird, manipulative, and insidious ways that violate your physical and mental autonomy, but you can’t deny their loyalty. They do love you in their own bizarre way. You are the sun around which they orbit. When you’re in the room, no one else exists. Every single messy flaw is just another bullet point on the mile-long list of why they adore you.
In essence, yanderes are not only attentive, but their love can be virtually unconditional. A yandere might know everything about you, and still revere you. It’s unhealthy as hell and you might genuinely question their taste, but it can be tempting to pretend that all of you, right down to the ugliest parts of yourself – the traits and choices that you would never share with another living soul even at gunpoint – are worthy of understanding, if not open praise and affection.
Attractiveness, or Okay but Have You Considered That They’re Hot Though?
.
.
.
I mean what am I supposed to say here? They’re hot, what do you want from me?
No, but in all seriousness, fictional media paints an idealized version of the world, and most yanderes are hot because they have the freedom of existing purely behind that screen; artfully arranged and edited to forever appear compelling to anyone who happens to enjoy their particular style. And there are a lot of styles to choose from. Whether you want them pretty faced and disarmingly cute, or scarred up and big enough to pin you like a butterfly, yanderes come in a wide variety of shapes and sizes that are meant to pique your interest and draw you in like a naïve little fish being lured towards the mouth of an angler fish, unwilling to believe that anything bad might happen to us when the bait is this pretty.
This is often referred to as the Halo Effect, a form of cognitive bias referring to the tendency for people to assume that a single obvious positive trait must be associated with other positive traits. The go-to characteristic is typically physical attractiveness, but a nice voice, good humour, and cooking skills are also factors which serve to influence our perceptions.
So, conventional physical attractiveness is one thing, but that’s only skin deep. What about beyond that? After all, the yandere still has to talk to you before they enact their master plan of tying you up in their basement until Stockholm Syndrome kicks in.
When I showed my friend a picture of John Doe from the game John Doe, she told me that he looked like a creepy slob, and she’s far from the only person who’s ever thought so. Look at them. I feel like if I tried to comb that hair it would simply eat me, and some of the CGs really put the scopophobia in Scopophobia Studios. I love Doe, but he is not hot, and he doesn’t behave in a normally appealing way either. If the player chooses not to take a bath, Doe will immediately comment that you “smell good” before following you home, breaking into your house, and leaving a bloody organ on the floor for the player to trip over. Many yanderes can at least fake a veneer of normalcy, but from the get-go Doe doesn’t even bother to pretend he’s anything less than an otherworldly creature stuffed into a vaguely person-shaped meatsuit. In an effort to find out why so many people had latched on to Doe – including me – I shopped around social media and YouTube for answers, and what I found was a widely unanimous sentiment.
While some were drawn to his fun design and goofy personality, most simply thought that he wasn’t inherently malevolent, just very confused. In addition to being a supernatural being with a completely alien axis of morality, Doe’s meta-awareness and unbridled attempts at winning the player’s affection lends him quite a bit of support from the audience, especially if you yourself also happen to struggle with social cues and relate to his pure earnestness. In Ending 7 of the extended version, the player character has the option to tell Doe – who has altered himself to pass as more ‘normal’ – that they prefer who he truly is, at which point he grows visibly flustered and sports an adorable pair of literal heart-shaped pupils.
Whether they’re charismatic, seductive, cute, sweet, funny, nurturing, or generous, the best yanderes have engaging personalities. Even while they’re committing truly heinous crimes against God, man, and your guts, you still kinda want to hang out with them, and you want them to acknowledge you as being just as interesting. And this is all fine in fiction because you’re the one in charge, and if you ever get bored or uncomfortable or busy with something else, then you can simply close the tab or window with zero consequences, which brings us to the final and most important reason.
Power Dynamics and Consent in Fantasy (I Couldn’t Think of a Joke Here Guys, This Is Kinda Serious)
Once again, I feel that I must preface this section just for the sake of my own peace of mind: sexual coercion and assault are vile and disgusting crimes that should never be emulated or tolerated in the real world. We are speaking purely of fictional media, specifically adult-oriented media in this case, so please be mindful.
In 2009, Bivoni and Critelli conducted a study on 355 undergraduate women with the goal of assessing the reasons behind fantasies of non-consent. At the time, there were two leading explanations of this phenomenon. One stated that women with high libidos but repressed views of sex used these imaginary scenarios to alleviate the guilt they had grown to associate with sex. Because the simulation was a purely mental exercise and they themselves were cast as helpless victims in the scenario, they were able to remain blameless while still finding sexual gratification. The second stated that these fantasies were an expression of liberation by women who were adventurous and comfortable enough with their own sexuality to engage with taboo ideas that they weren’t at all interested in performing in real life. Which do you think was more common?
.
.
.
If you guessed the second option, you’d be right. The study found that of the 220 women who had experienced such fantasies, 45% found theirs erotic, 46% were mixed, and only 9% reported pure aversion. One justification for this outcome relies on psycho-biological theories, for example masochistic preferences or the unintended activation of the sympathetic nervous system and subsequent mis-attribution of arousal. Other reasons have to do with higher order thinking and are tied to the power dynamics within such fantasies. On the surface is the appeal of being so desirable to someone that they simply cannot control themselves, but then there is a deeper impulse, which the researchers referred to as Adversary Transformation. To quote the article: “[fantasies] involve a struggle between an assailant and a potential victim in which it is relevant to consider who is the winner and who is the loser. At one level, it is a struggle over sex, but the woman's non-consent may be feigned or token. At another level, the woman may be seeking a victory that is not about whether sex occurs, but about what happens emotionally between the protagonists.”
Basically, the imaginary perpetrator may have ‘won’, but the self-character need not have ‘lost’.
Media provides an extra layer to the illusion, one that you as the viewer have absolute control over. If you are choosing to engage with a piece of media that explicitly labels itself as including R18+ yandere content, then you clearly have some expectations, and that background awareness goes a long way in reducing long-term discomfort and allowing audiences to make informed decisions. If you don’t like the plot, you can simply turn it off it with the click of a button, and when the screen goes dark it’s not like the yandere is going to punish you for saying no. Strade isn’t going to break into your house with a drill, there are no homicidal clown ghosts hiding in your TV, and no suspicious pink-haired hackers watching your webcam. They aren’t real, and the consequences aren’t real either. You have all the power here.
Conclusion
In summary, Yanderes are appealing for a variety of reasons. Whether you want to save them, think they’re attractive, wish to indulge in a dream of being utterly coveted, or simply enjoy a bit of spice in your me-time, it’s obvious why the trope has persisted for so long and will likely continue to do so. If you enjoy yanderes but are worried that having a taste for the less wholesome side of things might imply something about who you are as a person, don’t be. The notion that fantasies and media preferences directly reflect subconscious desires is not only painfully out of date debunked nonsense but also indicative of restrictive ideologies wherein bad thoughts = sin. This isn’t 1984. You haven’t committed a thought-crime by having a weird kink. You aren't going to superhell for fantasizing. The human mind is hardly ever so mathematically rational, and the point of fiction is to allow us to safely engage with and explore various ideas, provided the everyone involved is mentally, chronologically, and emotionally mature enough to do so.
Thank you all for listening to me. If you learned something or were just a little bit entertained. If you're curious about knowing more, I've listed my sources below
REFERENCES
Bivona, J. M., & Critelli, J. W. (2009). The Nature of Women’s Rape Fantasies: An analysis of prevalence, frequency, and contents. Journal of Sex Research, 46(1), 33–45. https://doi.org/10.1080/00224490802624406
Critelli, J. W., & Bivona, J. M. (2008). Women’s Erotic Rape Fantasies: An Evaluation of Theory and research. Journal of Sex Research, 45(1), 57–70. https://doi.org/10.1080/00224490701808191
DeWall, C. N., & Bushman, B. J. (2011). Social acceptance and rejection. Current Directions in Psychological Science, 20(4), 256–260. https://doi.org/10.1177/0963721411417545
Flynn, F. J., Reagans, R., Amanatullah, E. T., & Ames, D. R. (2006). Helping one’s way to the top: Self-monitors achieve status by helping others and knowing who helps whom. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 91(6), 1123–1137. https://doi.org/10.1037/0022-3514.91.6.1123
Harandi, T. F., Taghinasab, M. M., & Nayeri, T. D. (2017). The correlation of social support with mental health: A meta-analysis. Electronic Physician, 9(9), 5212–5222. https://doi.org/10.19082/5212
Hazen, H. (1983). Endless rapture: rape, romance, and the female imagination. https://openlibrary.org/books/OL3161300M/Endless_rapture
Kroon, R. W. (2010). A/V A to z: An Encyclopedic Dictionary of Media, Entertainment and Other Audiovisual Terms. McFarland.
Matuszak, M. (2017). Hybristophilia White Paper. https://static1.squarespace.com/static/55dfd21ee4b0718764fb34cc/t/5cb7cabee5e5f00ab13be58b/1555548863275/Hybristophilia+White+Paper.pdf
Oarga, C., Stavrova, O., & Fetchenhauer, D. (2015). When and why is helping others good for well-being? The role of belief in reciprocity and conformity to society’s expectations. European Journal of Social Psychology, 45(2), 242–254. https://doi.org/10.1002/ejsp.2092
Parker, R. (2014). Serial killer groupies. RJ PARKER PUBLISHING, INC.
Wang, T., & Sha, H. (2018). The influence of social rejection on cognitive control. Psychology, 09(7), 1707–1719. https://doi.org/10.4236/psych.2018.97101
#reference list is completed!#yandere#sunny day jack#my dear hatchet man#mdhm#stnaf#ddlc#john doe#boyfriend to death#tpof#degrees of lewdity#your boyfriend#14dwy#br<3ken colors#camp willowpeak#br0ken colors#obey me#binary star hero#favor vn
2K notes
·
View notes
Last Seen Blogs
ask-the-2012-onceler
You Need a Thneed!
iheartkopi
yna
tittytimeblog
Titty Time
ask-the-2012-onceler
You Need a Thneed!