#no one i actually know follows me here which is extremely intentional and on purpose so i can post shit like this | Explore Tumblr Posts and Blogs

sanspuppet · 4 months

Text

GENRE: fluff, smut w a lot of romance (?)

PAIRING: Heesung x afab! reader

W/T: university au, lil bit of jealousy, unprotected sex, biting, swearing, pet name (princess)

A/O: i know that Hee doesn’t have much to do with my blog but this is the ff i wrote for my bestie and i’m just gonna post it so yeah, remember that i’m a multi-stan so i write for many other groups apart from ateez

enjoy <3

———

"come on! it'll be fun!" Jeongin tries to encourage you, his hands begging at your pissed expression because of his hundredth attempt to invite you at his party.

"i don't want to! i don't know anyone of your friends" you reply back with a sharp tone, it’s almost a week that he keeps asking you to come, and he can’t comprehend that you have no intention to go.

"Oh yeah! there's one: Heesung! that guy from class 3B" he winks at you with a smirk already trailing on his face.

"Another reason not to go there!" you quiver, body stiffening the same second he pronounces his name. Actually, if there’s Lee Heesung too, you could think about it a couple times and accept. Through all, he’s the finest man at your university, no doubts he’s your secret crush, well not that secret because it seems that Jeongin has already found out.

"But it's a good opportunity to talk to him!" his voice booms inside the classroom, all of your classmates turn back to look at you, your professor violently slams his palm on the desk: "You two! Better keep those mouths closed during my classes!" you hush a quick "excuse us" before turning back to focus on algebra.

Hours later, when the last school bell rang, you leave the university, arm crossed while walking down the street, with Heesung's smile pictured in your mind and dangerously lost in yourself while fantasizing about him. The stoplight turns red, which unfortunately you don’t pay attention to, you’re about to cross the road when someone thoughtfully grabs your waist, fingertips gripping at your skin, trying to stop you. Your heart flutters intensely, goosebumps on your body as you hear a familiar voice beginning: "you should pay more attention while walking" oh no, you perfectly recognize that voice, sweet but at the same time extremely attractive, you can’t help but turning your face to look at him, panic already flowing into your body. "U-uhm... sorry" Heesung smiles for a millisecond before turning back to his serious expression: "you don't have to be sorry, just wanted to warn you darling" maybe how he called you is the reason why you keep stuttering and trembling like a shy kiddo: "Y-yeah..." you suddenly grimace, confused: "w-why are you here?" you question. "Oh, you didn't notice? i live near your house" you mouth a small "o" before you could even realize what he actually said: "Wait- what?!" he blinks twice, his hands involuntarily still gripping at your waist, a strange feeling intensifying inside the core of your stomach. “i. live. near. you.” he repeats, marking every word, not in a arrogant way, but in a beamy one. When he realizes that you aren’t going to say anything, he approaches you with an another argument: “Well, wanna walk together? I.N. told me that you’ll come at his party” you wide your eyes, following him hesitantly as he crosses the road. “What? No! Nono i don’t like that kind of party” He raises an eyebrow:

“…what kind of party do you like then? like a… uhm” he bemuses, you shake your hands, trying to clarify: “No! I mean… I’m the only girl in the group and i’m quite worried about it” when he turns his head to face you, you can’t believe he purposely holds your hand. “I understand, don’t worry! You know i wouldn’t let anything happen to you, right? Such a good girl, you don’t deserve to get into that kind of shit” you can hear your heartbeat booming inside your head, mind blank as you keep repeating his last sentence to yourself, barely capable to think at any reply. “Please, i want to know you better! Come with me, and you’ll be sure no one will make fun of you, or touch you in any way” he insists, tightening the grip on your hand.

okey, are you dreaming? are you in a coma, after a car invested you? What the hell is happening? All of your day dreams about him seem becoming reality as he’s begging you to accompany him. You’re not conscious of your blushing state in this moment, smiling pathetically, lost in yourself as you’re trying to realize your current situation. And you finally cooe: “Well, if you say so… i’ll be more than glad to come!”

Heesung raises a fist happily: “That’s my girl! i mean… happy to see you again y/n” he stops in front of a small, cute little house. He sighs, taking a heavy breath before continuing: “i live here… alone, so if you need something, you can find me here.” you bow slightly, smiling uncontrollably. “Got it! See you at the party, then.” He keeps staring at you without leaving: “What? So i’m not gonna pick you up?”

“Oh… uhm, yes! yes, sure. Sorry” you beam back.

“Okey, shall we share our phone numbers?” he asks, taking his phone in his hands, ready to take notes. When you’re both sure that the other has the contact saved, Hee shakes his hand and heads towards the door of his home.

The evening of the same day, you can’t help but keep fantasizing about how would it be to spend hours with Heesung at your side. Having him that close to you, would probably drive your mind nuts, but what if he was talking seriously hours before? He seriously wants to get to know you better? Well, if so, you’d surely go to that party. Knowing that it’s quite easy to convince you in anything when it comes to Heesung, you already start choosing what to wear at the party of the next day.

“Mmm” you scratch your chin, looking at your dresses hanging inside your wardrobe. “What should i-“ the loud sound of your ringtone makes you suddenly hop. You check the name written on the screen, snorting when you see the name of your best friend.

“What do you want?” you tilt your head to squeeze your phone between your ear and shoulder, picking your favorite dresses and throwing them on your bed.

“You’re coming?!! God, you fucking drool for Heesung, don’t you???” you hear Jeongin beaming through the speaker.

“Me? No, no absolutely.” you find yourself staring intensely at one dress in particular: the fabric of a soft white, its skirt’s quite short and has elegant lace sleeves. You choose that one, while keep listening to Jeongin freak out from happiness.

“Well, whatever. You’re gonna come too!!!” he starts to giggle joyfully.

“Yeah, now please calm down. Also, i have to go now, bye!” you end the call without even waiting for him to say anything else. The only thing you want right now is staring at the selfie of Heesung that he has set as his profile picture. So you did, laying on your bed, after putting carefully in place your dresses again.

“Ooh… he’s such so handsome and cute”

You whimper seeing the notification of someone texting you appearing from above the phone screen. A pang hits your heart when you realize it’s Heesung.

< Hey, tomorrow the party begins at 6 p.m. Imma pick you up by 5.45, is that okay? >

You smile like an idiot while texting back: < Perfect! >

That night you fall asleep, lost again in the thought of his cherishing smile and how simply gorgeous he always is.

And as soon as you do, as soon you wake up, squeezing your eyes from the warm light of the sunrise. You suddenly grip at your hair, your heartbeat starts accelerating as you process: “The party is today!”

Now that you have realized it, you can’t stop waiting impatiently for afternoon to come. You force yourself to distract your mind, doing chores and your homework, listening to music and practicing the dance steps you learned at your last dance lesson. Doing that you don’t even feel the hours that have passed, making you bounce slightly on the spot as you read what time it is.

“God i have to get ready!” you jolt while running towards your bathroom, starting to do your makeup. You keep checking the time on your wristwatch, and once you have your look done and prepared all the stuff you’d need, you leave the house and chuckle shyly as you see Heesung standing in front of his car a few meters apart from you.

“Hi y/n! How are you?” He approaches you, giving you his hand to help you get inside of his car.

“Pretty fine” you affirm after he joined you inside it.

The short journey was something you could define totally embarrassing, you were frustrated because you couldn’t do anything but stare outside the window and tap nervously your fingertips on the handle. He was the one that after some minutes that seemed eternal hours find the courage to speak:

“Uhm… that dress is so beautiful, matches your vibes a lot” he turns his head to take a quick look of you before his gaze could go back at the road. “Thank you, Heesung” you smile genuinely. He giggles back: “Oh please, just call me Hee. We’re friends after all, right?” what your previous smile seemed full of happiness, it quickly turned into a wounded one. “Yeah… friends”

———

Once you enter the apartment, you didn’t expect it to be so well organized: cute colorful balloons fill the living room, yummy snacks all over the table followed by soda and other drinks, background music to keep the welcoming atmosphere. When you step out the entrance you immediately see Jeongin’s friends casually chatting on the small couch.

“Naur way look who’s here!” Jake exclaims as he notices your figure standing in front of them. You chuckle at his funny Aussie accent.

“Yeah personally i know you couldn’t wait anymore to see me” Heesung smirks, heading towards Jeongin who’s trying to inflate other balloons. “Hyung i think these are enough, yeah?” he whispers at him, noticing his red, overworked cheeks.

Jake turns his head to look at Hee, grimacing: “What? No i meant y/n! Didn’t expect you to come” He approaches you, with the intention of hugging you friendly. After he pulls away, the other boys stand up to do the exact same. You thank Jay, Chan and Beomgyu as they compliment your curated look.

You spent a couple hours on watching a comedy show and laughing together. Your body stiffened any time you felt Heesung’s hand resting (apparently) innocently on your knee, when you saw him facing you while giggling as he enjoyed the film, it seriously looked like you were a couple, and you weren’t the only one who noticed that:

Chan’s gaze suddenly went to your knee, as he saw Heesung rubbing his hand on your skin.

“Are you hiding us something, guys? Seems like you’re very comfortable together.”

Chan’s your ex, so you could tell that his voice had some point of annoyance when he spoke.

“Yeah! I was about to say the same thing” Beomgyu smirks, moving his eyes on you and the fine guy who’s sitting next to you.

“Oh, it does? Sorry if i might stole her from you” Heesung appeals with his cocky smile.

“It’s not up to you, Hee” Chan replies, a slight look of arrogance on his face surprises you. “Right, y/n?”

“Uhm… well…” you struggle to find any appropriate answer, but nothing comes to your mind. Jeongin fortunately saves you from that embarrassing situation:

“Let’s play a game!” He stands up, turning off the tv. Jay and Jake that were still focusing on the program, whined at him.

“Fine” Heesung stands up, searching for your hand and heading towards Jeongin. A smirk pops into the childish friend’s face, he crosses his arm looking intensely at the both of you through his hooded eyes.

“Y/n, truth or dare?”

The moment after the other guys heard that iconic question, every one was sitting on the rug in a circle, waiting for their turn as they joined the game. It was quite fun, most of the dares were hilarious that got you almost rolling on the floor from laughter, but once it got repetitive and your friend seemed bored, Jeongin once again proposed you:

“Y/n, truth or dare?” this time his gaze is mysterious enough for you to suspect he planned something.

“Uhm… dare?” you murmur, not sure if you chose the right answer to keep your dignity.

“I see” Jeonging looks straight at Heesung on your left, before moving his gaze on you again. “Kiss Heesung”

Loud “Uuuh” fill the atmosphere as the guys find finally a captivating idea, everyone but Bangchan, who seems about to kill Jeonging with his stare and choke Heesung before he could touch you.

Panic starts to rush inside your veins as you turn your head and see Heesung smirking, you can feel the eyes of all the others stuck on your lips, waiting impatiently for you to make a move, but nothing, you couldn’t even elaborate any conscious movement. You’re like a greek statue, immobilized, your eyes focusing on nothing but Hee’s lips, your hand standing steady on the ingenious intent of wrapping it around his waist. Heesung chuckles: “y/n? are you’k?” he snaps his fingers in front of your face. “Fine, I’ll do it myself.”

What it took least than two seconds, felt an entire minute for you.

You feel Heesung carding his fingers through your hair, before falling on the nape of your neck to pull you closer to his face, the tip of your noses rubbing against each other as he’s moving his lips closer and closer to yours. It felt warm, and soft, something you never experienced in that way, you could immediately tell that you would be addicted to his lips, if only he could be yours.

Heesung pulls away, exhaling a soft laugh as he holds your hand. “You good?” he asks, you nod: “Yeah. Yeah i’m good” you murmur, smiling a little before turning your head to face the others. Beomgyu, Jake, Jay an Jeongin are hyping the both of you, on the other side you can notice Chan squeezing his fists as he keeps staring at you. “What’s wrong with him?” you question yourself.

Jeongin giggles at you and Heesung: “I meant a peck on the cheek but well, this proves that you like each other! Thank me later guys” he stands up, taking the bowl of chips and starts to chew a few.

“W-wait- What?” your mouth hangs open, while Hee is simply smiling at you.

The rest of the party went great, you had funny conversations and ate tasty food.

Later, you head towards the exit, where you left your jacket and phone, you barely even check your new notifications, that you feel a hand resting on your shoulder, you expect it to be Heesung and uncontrollably smile, but once you turn your head to see his face, you find yourself a few inches away from Chan. He’s moving closer to your lips to steal a kiss from you. You pull him away, smacking your palm against his face.

“What the hell are you doing? Huh?” you screech.

“Come on, don’t act like you don’t want it, we were so perfect as a couple, you look better with me than Heesung” He gets closer to you slowly once again, but you’re too concerned to move. You jolt as you see someone pulling Chan away from you by grabbing his shoulder.

“What’s going on here?” Heesung looks at you before moving his annoyed gaze to Chan. “Why would you care?” he replies, with his arms crossed.

“Because she just rejected you a few seconds ago, don’t you get that she doesn’t like you anymore?” you can’t articulate anything before he wraps his arm around your waist and yell at the others in the living room.

“Guys, it was fun but now i have to take y/n home, see you on Monday” Heesung takes your jackets and leaves the house with you squeezed in his arm.

Not long after he stops in front of his house, you’re still confused from why he reacted like that before, you don’t realize that it isn’t actually your house. Heesung gets out of the car. “Come with me” he called you, heading towards the door.

Once you’re both inside, he turns to look at you, taking your hands in his. “You’re not interested in Chan anymore, right?” you nod: “Yeah, i’m not.” he lets out a relieved sigh. “Good, because i like you” you start to mumble incomprehensible words. “U-uhm…” Heesung notices that your cheeks are turning into a blushing state, making him chuckle. “You don’t need to say anything, just kiss me already, okey?” he slowly approaches you, getting closer enough for you to feel his warm, deep breaths against you nose, his hands are trailing soft lines on your back, sending you shivers down your spine. You automatically raise on your tiptoes, holding yourself onto his shoulder. You start to leave small pecks on his hot lips, struggling to stop because of the warm feeling of his body. Hee chuckles between every kiss: “i see, you love me, don’t you?” you giggle against the crook of his neck: “Yeah, so much.”

“May i take care of you? Show you how much do i love you, too?” he leans over you neck to inhale your sweet scent. “Mark you as mine, so you won’t get bothered by other guys?” you take a few seconds to realize what he actually meant with those words. “Uhm… i don’t know…” He caresses your cheek, attaching his lips on yours another time. “Don’t worry, it won’t hurt. Please, let’s be each other’s first” You chuckle: “I can’t believe you’re still a virgin” he wides his eyes, smiling: “Why?? I had only a girlfriend when i was 14, you’re the one i fell for, after a long time.” you bite your lower lip, looking down to avoid eye contact. “It’s just that… i’m worried i won’t be good enough” he wraps his arms around your waist, pulling you closer to him as he walks backwards, heading towards what you figure to be his bedroom. “You’ll be perfect as always, my little princess” you can’t help but blush at that new petname, that stole another smile from you. A few seconds later he’s opening the door with you still holding at his waist. He sits on the edge of the mattress, looking up at you with doe eyes. You suddenly get shy as you realize that you started unconsciously to strip, hiking up slowly your dress as you expose your bare legs and stomach to him, the man that you craved for three years. He holds himself on his wrists, watching carefully every detail of your body, already struggling to contain any reaction from his body. “Oh god, you’re so beautiful” he murmurs, biting his cheeks to avoid any flustering sound. You jump onto his lap with your legs wrapped around his waist, Hee starts to kiss you deeply as you busy yourself by unbuttoning his shirt. Your tongue dives into his mouth, while trailing your hands all over his naked chest. You push him, getting him completely layed on his bed. You’re still asking yourself where did you find enough confidence to do all of this, when you bite on his neck, smirking against his red skin. “Untie it, Hee” as soon as he hears you, you feel your bra falling off of your body, hearing it thrown on the floor. Heesung grabs your waist, forcing you to switch your positions. You see his unmistakable smirk glued onto your face, but it doesn’t take long before he moves it down your breast. “Are you sure you’re ready, princess?” he asks you, caressing your waist side. “i trust you” “Glad you do, baby” he stands up, untying his belt before unzipping his jeans. Not long after he throws them on the floor, then focuses again on nothing else but you. Hee leans over you, making his way down your body with small kisses, once he reaches your lower abdomen, he slowly drags you panties down your legs. “So pretty, tell me…” he stops by biting slightly on your hips. “Want me to wear a condom? I’m clean, just to let you know.” you shake your head. “I’m too, and on a birth control” Heesung nods, positioning himself between your wided legs. “Got you” you breathe heavily, when you watch him dragging down his boxers, inhaling the air deeply to force yourself to slow down your heartbeat. You squeeze your eyes when you get to see his cock standing between your wet core. It’s just about a few seconds that you finally feel him burying himself inside you. He lets out a sweet groan, holding his breath when you involuntarily squeeze around him. “Fuck, didn’t expect it to be this good” he slowly pulls out, trying to feel every sensation. “Do you like it?” He watches your aroused face. “Yeah, please, go on” You watch him smirking through your eyelashes. “Didn’t hear you, may you repeat darling?” you sigh, smiling. “Huh, please i want you”

Heesung holds onto your knees, making sure you stay spread for him, while he slides into you another time, then out, repeating the same movements as he speeds the pace. You try to stay still, gripping harshly at the sheets beneath you, your eyes roll back as you feel him touching your sweet spot with every thrust.

“Fuck- just like that, please” you mewl, letting out whimpers when the pleasure builds tension inside your lower stomach.

He moans back once. “Never thought you could make such sweet noises.” he smiles, eyes shut as he feels himself getting closer to his climax. Surely the way you keep clenching around his length doesn’t help him to last longer, and surely the fact that his tip’s kissing your g-spot continuously from minutes is getting you to the edge very quickly. You let out a broken, high pitched moans when you feel pure arousal hitting your body, making you arch your back from pleasure. “Fuck- faster, now!” he does immediately as you say, slamming his pelvis against your thighs gap as fast as he can, the sound of your skin slapping against each other’s booms inside the room, followed by nasty, squelching sounds at every pump. Heesung leans over you to help himself thrusting into you better. “So close~ cum for me princess” Your breathe loudly, as soon as you cream around him you feel hot ropes of his cum shooting inside you. His thrusts become sloppy when he slows down, pulling out after a few more pumps.

“You’re so beautiful right now, all fucked out because of me, i think i like you better like this.” he leans over to steal another deep kiss, his hands reaching instinctively your bare breast. “You did so good for me, you need a treat babe” you smile the best you can, still trying to get down your high. “Like…?” Heesung leaves a small peck on your right cheek. “What about a warm bath? I said i’m gonna take good care of you.” he cards his fingers through your hair, caressing your forehead.

“Will you let me do it forever?”

273 notes · View notes

frownyalfred · 7 months

Note

Apologies for the extremely long ask.

Omegaverse as a concept is so complicated and interesting as to me as a trans person.

On the one hand, the writer in me is intrigued by the world building implications and the opportunity to explore gender roles/dynamics. The concept of having a secondary dynamic alongside your actual gender is also fascinating to me and it's something I typically would have expected to be in something like sci-fi before I actually got into fanfiction.

I especially love deep diving into pack dynamics. Admittedly, that's where most of my interest and attention is focused on when reading and writing Omegaverse. I just find the concept so fascinating and any opportunity to write characters with heightened instincts, alien or otherwise, is just so much fun.

But on the other hand, I'm also very aware of how Omegaverse came about because some Supernatural fans wanted to play around with the idea of pack roles/relationships based on a messy study of wolf hierarchies. I'm also aware that intentional or not, a lot of early Omegaverse fics and tropes leaned really heavy into more homophobic and transphobic stereotypes, especially between M/M pairings.

I do feel like this has changed a bit over the years, though. From what I recall, a lot of early Omegaverse fics just really over relied on the stereotypical "which guy is really the girl?" trope that you saw a lot in the early to mid 2000s when discussions of queer (but mostly gay) relationships were brought up. I feel like the discussion has become a lot more nuanced since then and I know there are other trans fic writers like me who enjoy writing Omegaverse simply because it provides an opportunity to explore concepts of gender, sexuality and identity in a relatively fun way.

Not all Omegaverse fics/tropes are created equal, though. And every trans person has a different reaction/feeling towards this AU. I definitely feel like the odd one out, though, sometimes since I mostly come to Omegaverse for pack dynamics, less so for the smut (although I have written some in the past for fun or for friends). But I also believe there's validity in writing smut just for the purpose of enjoying smut.

Overall, I think this AU has a lot of potential, but I also see why it could make people very comfortable. I do wanna say that your fics haven't made uncomfortable and I do enjoy your takes on this trope. And I especially appreciate your willingness to listen to other trans people and their thoughts on Omegaverse. It goes a long way.

Side tangent: I will always be amused by how this whole trope came about btw, but also because the original author of that study followed it up by saying his first paper was absolute bullshit actually and shouldn't be viewed as a factual study of wolf pack hierarchy. Man messed up his original study, but he's a dedicated scientist and I love him for debunking his own work. But also the fact that he had an unintended impact on fandom is such fucking gold to me. I love this man so much.

Thank you for putting my thoughts to words, anon! There's definitely a long history there, and I agree with you that the genre itself has changed a lot in recent years, I think for the better.

I don't begrudge anyone for not liking or wanting to read a/b/o fics at all. I think it's intriguing but has the potential to be deeply uncomfortable or even like you said, transphobic for some people. I try to tag everything very well here that mentions it, etc.

I think what I like most about recent changes is that the genre has shifted to be less about "how can we get these two characters to breed?" and more to discussing pack dynamics, the implications of designations and gender roles, and building interesting biological rules and intricacies in an author-unique universe.

#asks #anon #thank you for sharing anon!#a/b/o mention #a/b/o tw #myfic #theresurrectionist #a sky of honey

30 notes · View notes

pkmnprofloblolly · 1 year

Text

ooc post- i wanted to compile the areas where my own personal pokemon lore contradicts with that of the canon of the games!

(also, im a little paranoid of this coming off as vagueing anybody in the inbox whose sent in asks about these topics- please dont take it that way if you have sent in something like that! the whole point of this blog is to provide interesting explanations for odd pokemon stuff, and all of the following is certainly odd pokemon stuff warranting explanation. these topics are just things i can't reconcile with my own version of the canon, or i think are more interesting when changed.)

so the majority of stuff i post here is additive to the canon. extra supplemental stuff that can slot into what we know about pokemon from the games, is the intention. i try to take almost everything the pokedex says at face value, save for perhaps some exaggeration on the numbers (mostly temperatures..). buuuuut for the sake of my own fun and cohesiveness of my own little version of canon, i've changed a few things.

upon reflection like...almost all of this has to do with the breeding system, lmao. so in the game, every single pokemon that's able to breed does so by laying eggs. they all have large eggs that hatch into large offspring, implying few offspring are produced with relatively high investment (k-selection).

i think this really flattens the interesting ways that organisms reproduce. there's a lot of bizarre, neat ways that things make more of themselves and making every single pokemon capable of reproduction have the same reproductive strategy is just boring!! so im throwing it out the window goobyebye

and then there's egg groups. the fact that entirely different species can breed with one another (not counting pokemon like tauros/miltank illumise/volbeat and so on where the males and females of presumably the same species are counted as different pokemon due to extreme dimorphism), with the female passing down the species.

i tried for a while to make a way this works that's interesting to me, but couldn't really land on anything. i'm sure there are folks out there who could create an interesting and cohesive spec-bio world where organisms use a reproduction system like this, but i'm not that person. so, for my purposes here, pokemon can only reproduce with members of their own species. (except for ditto. ditto's weird, and in a fun way. i'm still trying to come up with a reason for ditto's Whole Thing. but i want to keep ditto's whole thing intact, and removing the idea of egg groups makes it even weirder and unique among other pokemon. i'll figure some reason for why it can do that.)

also worth noting here are non-living pokemon. object pokemon, ghost pokemon that are canonically spirits, those sorts. these pokemon can often breed. yamask, for example- my personal favorite ghost pokemon- as a kind anon pointed out, is canonically the risen spirit of humans from hundreds of years prior...but it can also breed and produces eggs. in my eyes, only one of these things can be true, and i prefer to keep the ghosty stuff, because i find it much more fun. so, in my own little pokemon world, ghost pokemon like yamask, drifloon, or sinistea which are said to be actual spirits don't reproduce like normal creatures, and are instead created directly from Ghostses

lastly are Bullshit Gender Ratios. pretty much just pokemon that are entirely male or entirely female without an interesting reason. i absolutely hate the trend of any vaguely "feminine" looking pokemon being an all-female species. tsareena, tinkaton, jynx, lilligant, so on. there are some interesting ways animals can be all-female, mainly via the process of parthenogenesis, when a creature produces offspring without fertilization. this is most famous in vertebrates like the new mexico whip-tail lizard, an all-female species in real life. but it seems almost always when there's an all-female pokemon species..it's literally just because it looks girly, or less often all-male species looking manly (ie the hitmons and sawk+throh). and that ticks me off SO much, i don't like it one bit, so most single-gender species (not counting things with diverging evos like mothim [which is notably based directly on real bagworms, it's really neat] or salazzle) i'm treating as if they had normal gender ratios.

(sidenote, and something i'll probably make an in-character post on at some point- mandibuzz was an inadvertent prediction of this, which i find pretty fun.. mandibuzz is an all-female vulture pokemon, and only last year it was discovered that california condors are apparently capable of parthenogenesis. nice call, gamefreak.)

additionally, all-male species just straight up do not exist in nature. like, i don't want to entirely strike them from my canon, i'm sure i can figure out something .. but idk, stuff like braviary which is just a normal-ass bird, i see no interesting reason or explanation for it to be all-male.

anyways, yeah, i think that should be everything. thx for reading and sorry to anybody who wanted a fun explanation about the topics here, i wasn't able to come up with one 😔

#ooc #pkmn

50 notes · View notes

alphashley14 · 1 year

Text

One of Us

A Scooby Doo: Mystery Incorporated/Mystery Skulls Crossover

Chapter 17

Get in the Car

“Oh!” Ricky exclaimed, hardly able to suppress his surprise. “Your daughter? She uh…” Ricky looked down at the thing in the hole and tried to patch up his reaction. What’s the polite thing to say here?! “-She looks just like you.”

That is not the polite thing to say here, you idiot!

But Mystery just laughed as he gently re-buried the head. “Don’t fret, I can see why one may be confused. Shiomori wasn’t my child in the sense that most people would think. But I took another living thing, created her of my blood, and raised her as my own. What is a daughter if not that?” He explained, patting the soil firm again.

“Sorry for not being all whimsical and shit, but I’m going to need a better explanation than that,” Ricky said.

Again, Mystery laughed that fox-like laugh of his. “I should think so! Where to begin? Shiomori wasn’t a particular kind of Yokai per say. She was actually the product of an experiment of mine. I was trying to create an extremely dangerous yokai (at least to humans) called a Jubokko. But instead the result resembled a hodge-podge between a Jubokko, a Furutsubaki no rei, and a Kiyo. And I know you don’t know what those are so long story short, Jubokko and Furutsubaki are tree yokai and a Kiyo is the female equivalent of an Oni, which is a creature akin to goblins in western lore. Following along?”

“Not about the yokai stuff.”

“I can refer you to texts later. That information isn’t entirely important. Anyway - skipping to the end, Shiomori and I parted ways when I joined Mushi, and there was a lack of communication that led to… a lot of anger. I imagine Shio believed I had forsaken her. I ran from her for years, until she caught up with us. I tried to appease her, to stop the fight. But Vivi didn’t know about Shiomori, and she was attacking us. So she killed her.”

“That’s awful,” Ricky said, at a loss. “I’m sorry.”

“It does make me extremely sad, but I am not and cannot be angry with Vivi over it,” Mystery said, ears drooped. “She gave Shiomori the chance to live and leave, but she just kept coming. Vivi was protecting me and the fight came to be through my own doing. Really, the fault is all mine. So why should I forsake one daughter for the death of another?”

“You consider Vivi your daughter?”

“By all intents and purposes, they are my friends. But I can’t help but consider all of the Mystery Skulls, Vivi especially, to be my children in a way. I watch over them, protect them, had a hand in raising them, and their futures are ever on my mind.”

“So… if Shiomori is dead, then what’s with all…?” Ricky gestured to the planted tree and all of the adornments around it. “Is this her grave?”

“Not exactly. Death is not always as final to a Yokai as one may think,” Mystery replied. “Shiomori has easily regenerated from losing limbs, being cut in half, and even being beheaded. Vivi knocked out Shiomori’s weak point - her heart. But it wasn’t destroyed. So after the fact, we found where it landed and put it back inside her body. The energy’s weak, but it’s still there. She didn’t regenerate immediately, but she could still come back. I don’t believe she’s entirely gone. Rather, she’s in a sort of hibernation. The issue is that it could be decades before she’s strong enough to wake up again. So all of this is the least I can do to make up for what I did to her. I can’t change the past, but I can make better choices going forward. So until she wakes up, it’s my duty as her creator to keep her safe and to speed the process of her healing and awakening along as much as I can.”

Ricky made a face, and what he said next sort of just slipped out. “With what? Miracle-Gro?” WHY DID YOU SAY THAT?

But, completely serious, Mystery replied, “And my blood, yes.”

Ricky blinked at him. “Oh. Of course. I should have known.”

And again, Mystery just laughed.

They departed from the conservatory side by side - Mystery wanted to tell the whole story to everyone so he didn’t need to repeat himself. They found the others back in the lounge, where Vivi had made everyone tea and Scooby was finishing off a tray of rice crackers.

How that dog was fitting any more food into his body after that huge dinner was beyond Ricky. But then again, he’d read somewhere once that dogs didn’t have that part of their brains that told them when they were full, so maybe Scooby just ate whatever food he came across no matter how much he’d eaten. Then again, Ricky reeeally wasn’t one to judge in his position given that just the sight of the food was making his (or rather Shaggy’s) mouth water. Maybe he was missing that part of his brain too.

No but seriously, the kid had to have some kind of condition.

“Hey guys,” Vivi said, bringing the group’s attention to their arrival.

“So… everything good?” Fred asked.

Ricky looked over at Mystery, and they spared each other a smile. “Yeah, we’re good,” Ricky said.

“Where is Lewis? Has he already departed?” Mystery asked.

“Yeah, he said goodbye. You just missed him actually,” Daphne said.

“Hold on. I’m missing something. Where did Lewis go?” Ricky asked.

༻˚⁺･⚉｡○✼༓☾⦾♫෴♡💛♡෴♫⦾☽༓✼○｡⚉･⁺˚༺

As much as Lewis had been able to calm down over the course of the past few hours, his anxiety was flaring with a vengeance and he could feel his energy destabilizing once again as he drove the Mystery Skulls van through the backroads, bound for Destroido.

Had you asked Lewis when he was alive whether or not ghosts drove cars to get places, he would have laughed and said no. They have like, magical powers. Why would they drive? Now that he was a ghost however… long-distance teleportation takes a lot out of a ghoul, okay?!

But such thoughts weren’t exactly on his mind at the moment. Rather, he couldn’t stop thinking about what might be waiting for him at his destination.

Arthur got caught.

They hurt him.

What if Ricky and Shaggy lied?

Mind you, it wasn’t that Lewis doubted Arthur’s abilities nor that he mistrusted Ricky or Shaggy. It was just that Artie was so… So…

Selfless.

Small.

Fragile.

Strong.

Important.

Sweet.

Smart.

Loyal.

Caring.

Thoughtful.

Cute.

Lewis’ flames flickered at that last thought and he quickly shoved it out of his mind. Arthur? Cute? I mean sure his eyebrows are shaped like hearts and that front and center patch of brown hair sticks up like the antennae of a doodlebug. Okay, so Arthur was pretty cute. But not like that kind of cute.

… Right?

Lewis turned on the radio to reorient his thoughts, and the CD that he’d put in earlier today picked up where it left off.

“Baby youuu got me wrong… Let me siiing you my songs… Let me shooow you where I been… Let me teeeell you everything! Let me take you with meee~! Mmm-mmmh! Let me take you with me~! Let me take you with meeee~! I’ll take you some place far. If you get in the car… (Right now.)”

Fuck, it would be nice to be able to just toss Arthur in the car and go. But he couldn’t exactly do that. And what Lewis wanted right now didn’t matter anyway.

“Ooh, -Drivin’ down the highway with my baby! Ooh, windows down, music up, it makes me crazy! Ooh, driving faster than we ever been before! Has it. Ever felt this good? Ooh, driving down the highway with my baby! Ooh, windows down, music up, it makes me crazy! Ooh, driving faster than we ever been before! Has it. Ever felt this good?”

Whatever was waiting for him ahead, Lewis was going to be whatever Arthur damn well needed him to be. Whether that be a sword, a shield, an ally, a spy, or a friend.

“Baby, you got me so misunderstood. We're driving down the highway like I told you we would, Taking you places that I can't explain my actions, If you think I don't know, I gave you no satisfaction. I keep tellin' you-”

-And not just because Arthur was his best friend. Or because they’d known each other for as long as they could remember. Or because Arthur was there for Vivi and the Peppers when Lewis couldn’t be.

“Ooh, -Drivin’ down the highway with my baby! Ooh, windows down, music up, it makes me crazy! Ooh, driving faster than we ever been before. Has it. Ever felt this good?”

No. This was more than favors between friends. This was repentance.

“Ooh, -Drivin’ down the highway with my baby! Ooh, windows down, music up, it makes me crazy! Ooh, driving faster than we ever been before! Has it. Ever felt this good?"

Saving his life is the least you can do, you piece of shit. Because after he looked after your girlfriend and your family while dealing with losing a limb and going days without sleeping looking for you, what did you do?

You tried to kill him.

And you almost succeeded.

An image flashed through Lewis’ mind, of the shock and horror that had been in Arthur’s eyes the moment his best friend dropped him to what would have been his death.

Lewis shook that image away. Lewis may have been a ghost, but for three years he had been haunted by the what-ifs of what could have followed that moment.

He never wanted to see that look on Arthur’s face again.

Lewis would not let that happen.

“Baby youuu got me wrong. Let me siiing you my songs. Let me shooow you where I been. Let me teeell you everything!”

Lewis’ thoughts wandered to Mystery, and the story he was telling back home by now. God, he just hoped that conversation went well.

“Let me take you with meee! Mmm-mmmh! Let me take you with meeeee~! Let me take you with meeeeee-e~! I'll take you some place far. If you get in the car-”

Lewis turned the radio off.

Before long, the trees along the road turned black and decayed as the van entered Destroido’s polluted grounds. Lewis drove off-road and parked the car in the poisoned forest, parking as far away from the facility as possible while staying reasonably close. He used a bit of magic to cover the vehicle with mutated or decaying shrubbery and placed a glamour over it to make it unnoticeable, then drifted in the form of a pink mist through the anomalous forest until he reached the same hilltop he and the others had stood and argued upon only hours before.

Destroido Corp. was a truly dismal, ghastly place. Mystery didn’t like it, that was for certain. Being a Mori, every moment he spent in these woods rubbed his fur the wrong way. And using any of his related powers here felt like chugging battery acid with how polluted and mutated everything was. Though Lewis knew he hadn’t said anything about it because he didn’t want Ricky to feel bad.

It was hard to connect the Ricky Lewis had met today to the Mr. E who had put ruin such as this out into the world. Not that Lewis should really be surprised. He knew Ricky had done a lot of things he regretted. But he was trying to do better. So maybe after Arthur took everything back and they didn’t have a curse, a crazy parrot, or an evil eldritch deity to deal with, Ricky could do something about… this.

But, that would be Ricky’s choice to make and his mess to deal with. For now, Lewis’ place was at his friend’s side.

Come to think of it… Lewis didn’t know what adult-Ricky looked like. He’d seen pictures of the original Mystery Inc. as kids, he knew Ricky wore a striped shirt and a purple jacket with a red ‘E’ seal on it, and somebody had mentioned that Ricky had long hair. So he had that to go on.

Let’s see. If I was Arthur pretending to be Mr. E… where would I be?

༻˚⁺･⚉｡○✼༓☾⦾♫෴♡💛♡෴♫⦾☽༓✼○｡⚉･⁺˚༺

“That’s right! Arthur wanted to talk to Lewis!” A whole new stab of guilt hit Ricky at the mention of Arthur. Ghosts, ice magic, and yokai had kept his mind so occupied that the guy living his Hell who was in the process of saving his life had somehow managed to evade his thoughts. “So that’s what Arthur meant by that,” Ricky said, pushing through. “But he couldn’t tell us at the time because- ahhh, I see. Wow. It’s going to be really easy for Lewis to get into Destroido. I most certainly never thought to ghost-proof the place. Nor would I know how. And I doubt Professor Pericles would either. So, Vivi? Any idea what Arthur may need him for?”

“Well obviously, Lewis is a lot more powerful and more intelligent than the Dead Beats - no offense, guys.”

The dozen or so Dead Beats who were hanging out around the room made noises and gestures of mock-indignation, pretending to be offended. Except for one, who stuck his tongue out and nodded in agreement. But his buddy next to him smacked him upside the head and he quickly joined in with the others’ protest. Ricky snorted.

“There are any number of reasons Arthur may need Lewis for something,” Vivi said thoughtfully. “It probably has something to do with his escape plan, but I can’t be sure. If there’s anything Arthur needs done that would take a bit more finesse than the Dead Beats’ capabilities, then he’d need Lewis. Whatever it is, Lew will tell us when he gets back or in the morning, depending on whether or not we’re asleep when he returns. I mean it is past eleven.”

“I just hope he’s okay,” Ricky sighed.

“Hey, don’t worry,” Vivi said with a forced smile. “Arthur’s a really capable guy. If he says he can do it, then he can do it!”

“But?”

“But what?”

“That did not sound very firm, Vivi. So where’s the but?”

Vivi sighed. “Arthur… makes bad choices when it comes to his own health and safety. He is really capable but… his self-preservation isn’t exactly great and he cares about other people too much more than his own life. I believe in him. Really, I do.” Then she cringed. “Buuuuut this is the guy who once speedballed two Red Bulls and his pain meds and then didn’t sleep for five days so-”

“Heeey! I believe I owed you guys one more story!” Mystery quickly and loudly butted in before Vivi could completely dash everyone’s faith in Arthur.

But Ricky didn’t let him. “Wait no- no. I’m sorry. He did WHAT?”

“What the hell was he thinking?!” Velma cried.

“Let’s just say he makes poor life choices and leave it at that,” Vivi said, realizing her slip-up.

But then something possessed Mystery to make it worse. “Vivi, he saw cracks in reality on the third day. We found him in the attic trying to speak to his past lives. I’d say ‘poor life choices’ is an understatement.”

“Oh my God I’m gonna die…” Ricky uttered with sheer horror.

༻˚⁺･⚉｡○✼༓☾⦾♫෴♡💛♡෴♫⦾☽༓✼○｡⚉･⁺˚༺

I’m going to kill him…

Deep within the labyrinth that was Destroido, Judy was silently seething. She snatched up another piece of equipment and furiously went about the process of taking it apart and putting it back together again. Checking their trapping gear was a regular activity she shared with Brad. A peaceful, habitual chore that they could do together, perfectly in sync.

Usually.

“Judy! You used the wrong screws in the Spangleheimmer 3,000! Do you have any idea how disastrously this could have made a trap fail?”

“At least I didn’t forget to check the tension on the iron cables, Brad!”

“I already apologized for that, Judy.” Brad snapped. “Or is there still wine in your ears keeping you from hearing me!”

“Enough, you dummkopf!” Professor Pericles snapped, fluttering between them.

“You sure are one to talk, Professor Pericles. That little button of yours was supposed to solve our Ricky problem once and for all!” Judy sneered.

“Und it has,” Professor Pericles insisted. “No matter how defiant he pretends to be, at the end of the day he is powerless.”

“Is he?” Brad and Judy both asked at once.

“Last I saw him, he didn’t exactly seem powerless, as you said he’d be!” Judy grumbled.

“If I wasn’t so angry, I’d be impressed,” Brad said. “I didn’t even know Ricky had that in him, much less in his position.”

Neither did I, Pericles realized with a jolt of anger - he really didn’t like not knowing things.

“Makes me wonder what else Ricky might ‘have in him’” Judy mused. “I guess it’s true what they say, Brad: You can only push someone so far.”

I pushed my sweet Ricky too far, an old voice whimpered annoyingly and pathetically in the back of his mind.

No, No. Professor Pericles had worked too long and too hard to allow such weakness to stand in his way! Ricky was simply… scraping out his last traces of defiance. He was broken. BROKEN. And with Cassidy dead and the kinder firmly against him, outside these walls he had nothing. What choice did he have but to stay with Pericles, where he belonged, and to do as he was told?

“For now,” the Parrot said, “We shall give Ricky the space he so desires. But we are at too important a stage of my genius plan to allow such insubordination to thwart a single step. Perhaps I have allowed Ricky too long a length of chain. He will need to be controlled much more closely.”

“What do you have in mind?” Judy asked gleefully.

“Let us just say that by the end of it, Ricky shall regret ever showing such disdain for my generosity,” Professor Pericles sneered. “When I am done with him he shall-”

But Professor Pericles stopped short.

Because that’s when the cold pierced through his feathers like a thousand needles. Involuntarily, his feathers puffed up in an attempt to conserve heat and his breath- what?

Professor Pericles exhaled experimentally and felt a different sort of shiver run through him as a puff of visible, condensed air left his beak.

Brad and Judy were shivering too, looking around in confusion and fear. Each of them wordlessly grabbed a weapon and stood, back to back, the hairs on the backs of their necks raised. With a few beats of his wings, Pericles flew up to land on Judy’s shoulder.

Something in the air had changed. As if someone was here- something- What was that? In a reflection, Brad could have sworn he’d seen a face glaring at him. But it darted out of sight. Was it a hallucination? Or something more?

That’s when whatever it had been dissipated, the tension in the air disappearing and the cold fleeing the room just as quickly as it had come.

What the fuck?

Was zum Teufel?

Maybe Ricky… needed to go on the backburner for now.

༻˚⁺･⚉｡○✼༓☾⦾♫෴♡💛♡෴♫⦾☽༓✼○｡⚉･⁺˚༺

“Jeepers… that’s awful, Mystery.” Daphne said once Mystery was done telling the kids about Shiomori.

“You killed her, Vivi?” Velma said, looking at Vivi in a new light.

“Three years ago was… a big night. For all of us.” Vivi said, putting the tea set back on the tray. Daphne got up to help her with it.

“Oh,” Ricky said, the timing dawning on him. “So… it happened around the same time Arthur lost his arm. And Lewis…” Ricky trailed off as Vivi wordlessly took the last couple of cups from Daphne and skedaddled out of the room.

“Please tell me I didn’t say something wrong,” Ricky groaned.

“You didn’t,” Mystery sighed from where he was lying in front of the fireplace. “Three years ago is a difficult time for any of us to talk about. And we struggle with what we can and can’t tell you without giving away more than we should for Arthur’s sake.”

“Like we get that though,” Shaggy said. “It was like, major for him. I wouldn’t want other people sharing stuff like that about me either.”

“Seriously. Don’t push yourselves to tell us any more than you’re comfortable with at a time. We may not know what happened three years ago, but I think we know enough that it’s even worse than what we’ve been through,” Fred said.

“I’m going to pretend I didn’t hear that,” Mystery said, slightly raising his teeth in anger. But this time no one flinched, because it was on their behalf. “Trauma is trauma and it isn’t a game of top trumps to see who’s ‘had it worse’. How it happened does not change the fact that everyone here has known pain. In one way or another, we have been lied to, used, and our worlds have fallen apart - permanently in some cases.”

There was a pregnant silence as his words sank in.

Fred remembered all too well the nagging anxiety that had stabbed at him when he’d pieced together his Mayor-Dad’s lies, and what he’d done to the Original Mystery Inc… then the agony that had pierced him when he’d learned who his real parents were. Then how close he’d come to losing Daphne forever… Perhaps it was the fresh wound from his father’s betrayal that made him almost numb to it when his “real blood” chose the treasure over him.

Daphne remembered all too well the way her heart had crumbled when Fred broke off their engagement and left Crystal Cove. The words “Mystery Incorporated is dead” rang through her ears for days afterward, and she cried so much that she nearly ran out of tears to shed. And of course her parents had been little help. In fact Daddy had seen fit to rub it in that he’d never approved of Fred. Then Baylor Hotner had- … Daphne knew he was an idiot. A monster and a criminal. But Daphne really had liked him. And that he’d just been using her from the start… hurt.

Shaggy remembered all too well what it felt like to be ripped away from Scooby and the others. Time and time again forces outside his control seemed to try and take his dog away from him. Velma. The robot dog and Jason’s Mom. Supervillians, and then his own parents- …Military School had been… rough. Separated from the gang and from Crystal Cove. Scoob sent away to live on some farm. And knowing that his own parents, who were supposed to love him more than anything, had sent him away in an attempt to “fix him” had made it all the worse.

Scooby remembered all too well what it had felt like to lose Shaggy and the others over and over again. Being locked away like some animal in the Animal Asylum. Being sent away to some farm while the others were falling apart and Pericles was alive and could hurt them without Scooby there to look after his kids! Then Nova- Scooby had gotten the gang back… He didn’t know if he was ever going to get Nova back.

Velma remembered all too well how crushed she’d been when the gang blamed her for the breakup. A tumultuous game of tug-of-war had gone through her head for months afterward. Should I have told them about Angel sooner? Was it my fault? Why didn’t I fight harder? Why was it so easy for them to turn their backs on me? What else could I have said? When Crybaby Clown showed up, forming an alliance with Mr. E and Marcie had served as a welcome distraction. Marcie… telling her she had to leave the gang had been the hardest thing Velma had ever had to do. She felt this… ache in her chest that she’d never felt before and she was still figuring it out. As for Mr. E: of course Velma now knew why, but he had purposefully kept them at a distance back then. No matter how much Velma tried to make it clear that she and Marcie were his teammates, not his employees, he continuously treated them like the latter. And you know what? She didn’t ‘know’ Mr. E very long (at least in person), but she’d been disappointed by the ‘real thing’ in comparison to the Mr. E who had sent her friends clues and playfully teased them over the phone. Since Mr. E- Ricky had apologized and Velma now knew about the eldritch god that had been playing with his head and parts of what he’d been going through at the time, she felt… a sense of closure in understanding why he’d acted that way. But that didn’t erase the sting she’d felt at the time.

Ricky remembered-

Without saying a word, five heads slowly turned to him at once. And by the way he trembled, clutching the edge of the couch with white knuckles, staring ahead with eyes that were seeing horrors both long-past and not-so-long-past… they all knew at once what he remembered all too well.

Velma tentatively placed a hand on his shoulder, and flinched when he jumped. But the haze of momentary panic cleared when he looked at her, and she gave him a comforting squeeze. Ricky gulped, taking a deep breath, and appreciatively placed his hand over hers with a smile.

Next to Velma, Scooby laid his head on Shaggy’s lap and the boy started stroking his dog’s head. On the other couch, Daphne scooted closer to Fred to lean on him, and he for once got the hint to wrap his arm around her and pull her closer.

“Fortunately for us, humans are extremely social creatures,” Mystery said, repeating his earlier words. “And unfortunately for our enemies, nothing has the power to bring people together like shared pain. To think that pain makes you stronger… humans really are incredible,” Mystery said reverently, but then his brows furrowed and his ears drooped. “I only wish that I had realized that sooner.”

“What do you mean?” Velma asked.

“You were right to distrust a nogistune,” Mystery said with shame. “Up until now, you have gotten to know only one side of me. Others are… darker. But they are a mere shadow in comparison to the monster I once was.”

“Until you met Mushi,” said Fred.

Mystery nodded. “Let me tell you everything - lay my sins bare. So that when I tell you that I am being honest and my intentions are sincere, you will believe it. I only ask… that you judge me for how I have grown, and who I am now. Not for who I was.”

The six mystery solvers looked at each other, then with a nod they all agreed.

And the kitsune began his tale.

Aaand that's a wrap on chapter 17! The people have spoken overwhelmingly in favor of Lewvithur, and tbh I can't exactly blame you. They're so cuuute. This chapter is, to me, kinda underwhelming. But it reeeally nicely sets up chapter 18. I sort of think of it as the prelude leading into chapter 18. Which ya'all are gonna love, btw. Still, I liked writing it. And I did have some fun. I was intending for this chapter to be at least mostly light-hearted (hence all the jokes), and I couldn't resist the opportunity to make a reference to my favorite Mystery Skulls fancomic, "Mother-like friends." IDK what about that comic makes me laugh so hard, but apparently it's my exact breed of humor. Shout-out to its creator, huppupbup. And thanks to the talented voice actors who gave it a voice. I also liked checking in on Pericles, Brad, and Judy. Like, let's not forget that they exist. And cracks are beginning to form. Also Lewis giving them a lil scare was so satisfying to write. Eat it, birdbrains. 😈 I really don't know where that mountain of angst came from at the very end of this chapter, but I'm happy to have it. With how much Ricky and Mystery Skulls angst is in this fic, I think it's important that I not forget or skim over the fact that the gang has been through some shit, too. The wait for chapter 18 shouldn't be very long. It's like, totally done (and it is a doozy!) I just need to make a couple of edits. Though I might make ya'all wait just to give me some time to work on chapter 19, which I haven't even started. I hope you all enjoyed this chapter, and I can't wait to share the next one with you!

Chapters 1-16 of One of Us are presently posted on Archive of Our Own.

Chapter 17 should be posted on Ao3 within the next 24 hours.

22 notes · View notes

girl4music · 9 months

Text

You know, morally grey characterisation in visual media like TV/movies or graphic/comic novels is actually very difficult to do because if it’s a beloved protagonist character that either is already or is becoming morally grey, the last thing you want to do is write them in such a way that de-humanizes or alienates them from the audience. That is to say, you don’t want to have the audience say “I don’t like them anymore” because they don’t like what’s going on with them. You want to avoid this reaction at all costs because then that beloved character’s reputation is tarnished to the point where people lose interest in watching and engaging with them on the screen/page. And the thing about this reaction is it’s entirely subjective. Very rarely will you have a majority of the audience or fans react the same way towards the morally grey character unless it’s extremely purposeful to. Unless the intention by the creator/writer is to make the audience feel this way about them. Unless the point is to tarnish the character’s reputation. But for the most part, the reaction to morally grey character representation and development on-screen/page very much depends on your subjective take away of them. Your understanding of who you think that character is.

I can give you a personal experience example of what I mean by this here on Tumblr. One of my mutual followers and frequent responders on my Tumblr blog is @confusedguytoo. A lot of my blog posts are about the character Willow Rosenberg from ‘Buffy the Vampire Slayer’ and her character arc throughout the entirety of the show but especially in Season 6 where her actions and choices become so blatantly ambiguous morally that it’s hard to accept what the writers are doing with her and her arc in this season. We completely disagree on how we both think and feel about the character and her actions and choices this season and so we often clash in our responses to each other on it. Always in a very civil and respectful way, but nevertheless, we absolutely cannot reconcile our differences of opinion on this subject - this character. Now I genuinely enjoy our debates and our banter because I’m just the type of person that loves that kind of thing for my own self-learning purposes. But I always find it surprising nonetheless how they view this character’s seasonal arc compared to how I do. It’s clearly a very subjective experience, and that’s so great to me because it just shows how significant ‘BTVS’ really is if there’s endless different views, perspectives, interpretations and beliefs on everything that happens in it. On everyone in it. And I always find that this happens more so with characters that toe the line between good/right and evil/wrong than it does a static or only one-or-the-other character. Not sure I’ve explained that in such a way that will make sense to people but I’ve tried my best.

But basically, my point is, that morally grey characterisation is the most compelling to watch and engage with because it’s the most difficult to create/write/produce in visual media. Especially when it’s good-to-evil primarily. Like Willow. When it’s corruption and manipulation and abuse that a character is showcasing, it’s a very difficult thing to have a beloved protagonist represent that on-screen and for us to see that in them and still love watching them. For me, seeing all of that in Willow makes me riveted/glued to the screen. For @confusedguytoo, it’s something they want to avoid seeing entirely.

And I don’t know - I just find it fascinating how differently we watch and engage in Willow Rosenberg and I hope our deep discussions on her never end.

It all just goes to show me that characterization that already is or is becoming morally grey is crucial to represent in visual media art/entertainment because there can be endless take aways from that very thing. Which means a more diverse and expanded audience. It’s just something to think about for all you visual media creators out there. I know it’s difficult but it is something you definitely want to endeavour to do because, so long as you do it right, the pay off is high because you give us a character that goes from this:

to this:

#buffy the vampire slayer #willow rosenberg #alyson hannigan #morally grey #characterization #representation #development #confusedguytoo #visual media #creation

10 notes · View notes

bb-editing · 1 year

Text

ROXANA (Chapter 32)

“Miss Roxana, you’ve received an invitation from Madame Maria.”

I frowned. It was inevitable, but still… it made me unhappy. After all, I’d already dealt with my fair share of annoyances today.

This morning, Jeremy had approached me to confess about his meeting with Maria. In trying to escape the conversation, he’d accidentally told her about Cassis. God, Jeremy can be so stupid sometimes. I suppose that’s how he let slip to Sylvia about Cassis’ death in the novel.

Jeremy continued to complain about Cassis and Maria. I knew he was jealous of Cassis because of how much time I spent with him, but I also knew how much Maria pissed him off, too.

Usually, Maria isn’t this persistent about following up on her offers, so she must really be interested in Cassis. Which means… It would be best not to bring him to the tea party.

* * *

Maria’s tea party was held in a glass greenhouse in the centre of the mansion. Unlike the typical Agriche greenhouses that keep poisonous plants, this one was built solely for lounging and conversation.

Of course, members of the Agriche family are extremely independent, so this greenhouse is rarely used for gatherings. Instead, the only time the family got together was for our evaluation ‘dinners’, held once a month… But even that only consisted of Father and a select three children.

For that reason, Maria was special because she was the only person who actually tried to bring the family together.

“Welcome, Xana.”

Sunlight flitted gently through the vaulted glass ceiling. Maria smiled as she got out of her seat to greet me.

“I guess I’m the last one,” I replied coolly. “Thank you for the invitation.”

I took the only empty seat left- which was annoyingly next to Maria’s- and greeted my mother, Sierra, who was seated to my right.

“Xana…” My mother looked surprised to see me. I suppose she thought I would decline the invitation as per usual.

That was another difference between us- she was never courageous enough to refuse Maria’s invitations, no matter how casual the offer. Truly, she was a weak-hearted woman.

Perhaps she was afraid of being killed by Maria, just as Maria’s son, Dion, killed Asil.

“Xana, I didn’t know you were coming. You didn’t say anything in advance.” Her face had darkened, and I was starting to feel like I was unwelcome.

“I kept it secret on purpose, Sierra.” Maria chimed in. “That’s what makes this a surprise party.” She emphasized ‘surprise’ with a flourish of her hands. My mother just kept getting paler and paler, and I wondered if she would still be conscious by the time cake was served.

Sigh. I guess nothing’s changed.

“It’s nice to have you at a tea party again, Xana. It’s been too long!”

“I’ve just been busy these days,” I replied, raising my teacup to acknowledge her. The tea tasted deep and flavourful, but it wasn’t to my liking.

“Hmm. But these parties are getting too predictable. Don’t you think the atmosphere would be livelier if Cana brought her new toy along?”

Everyone murmured in agreement.

“Right?! I was really surprised when I heard about her receiving her first ever toy!” Maria clapped her hands together in earnest, looking around at all the attendees.

Everyone turned to look at me curiously, awaiting my response.

“I’m really disappointed. We even prepared a special cage for it today.” She gestured to the large cage inside the greenhouse, lined with colourful drapes- it was a degrading enclosure not even fit for a party animal, much less a human.

If I’d brought Cassis here… God.

“My toy is very shy,” I said, setting my cup down. “He’s a little antagonistic towards people who aren’t me.”

At my words, the attendees of the party began staring at me more intently.

16 notes · View notes

gimblestank-the-goblin · 2 years

Text

Hot Take, but the focus on manga being the more “authentic” version of the story is... well its not wrong but its an extremely simplified view and doesn’t really reflect how much of anime and manga are made.

So, this is much less of a thing now with seasonal anime, but it wasn't that long ago that anime and manga would be made concurrently with each other and with the assumption that the manga would quickly outpace the manga leading to original content in some way shape or form. Furthermore, much of these manga would be created for the *purpose* of launching an anime, the two properties meant to prop each other up and boost the sales of both. And this leads to a bit of a grey area as to what is the "real" or "original" work. Which... It's a super hot take so let me give you some background first. In 1991 Naoko started writing a manga called Sailor Venus. That same year (very early on into it's life) Toei approached Nakayoshi Editorial Group (the publisher of Sailor Venus) hoping to find a new anime to fill a soon to be empty time slot. Most of Nakayoshi's pitches were rejected, but Toei showed interest in Sailor Venus, so Nakayoshi out together a pitch which they hoped would satisfy Toei. The only problem was, as part of this pitch they promised a bunch of stuff that Naoko didn't have planned, primarily stuff centering around expanding the lore and cast of the series. Now, things get a little murky here but here is what we know: 1. Sailor Venus was meant to be a one shot, but got expanded considerably past that. 2. Naoko's editor* kept pushing for Naoko to expand the lore and take on bigger stories in order to match the pitch that was made. 3. Part of the deal with Toei was that Sailor Venus would be an ongoing monthly comic which would run concurrent with the anime. 4. Sailor Venus was eventually replaced by Sailor Moon, a retooled version of the same basic concept designed to work better as an ongoing anime/manga. From what I can gather from various accounts, Nakayoshi basically lied their asses off and told Toei that Sailor Venus was always meant to be a long running monthly manga (or that it could be retooled to be one). To keep this fiction going they extended Sailor V's run and had Naoko keep writing more and more stories in it (with a larger focus on world building and ongoing plots) while Naoko and her editor worked to create a new series from scratch. A series very much inspired by Sailor Venus (because they didn't want to lose the pitch) but one which was designed from the ground up as an ongoing series which would work as both an anime and a manga. SM's manga debuted Dec 28 1991, and its anime debuted 3 months later on March 7th, 1992. Naoko then went on to write her manga concurrently with the anime, but the two quickly diverged as the anime caught up to the manga and chose to use the manga's original stories more as inspiration than as actual plots. And this was all pretty common for anime adaptions back in the day, and it points to something that I think is really important when looking at what the "real" or "authentic" version of a story is. Namely, that there was never an "authentic" version of Sailor Moon. And listen, I love Naoko and I don't want to downplay her achievements. Getting a manga published is hard work. You have to write dozens and hundreds of different one-shots to pitch to the publishers in the hopes that one will get picked up and expanded into a larger story. And then once you do that you have to write the thing. And that original idea will always be yours. If you asked me who invented Dragon Ball or FMA or Sailor Moon then I am going to point to their authors because those are the people who came up with and pitched the original idea. But Sailor Moon, the property? That was always a collaborative effort. The idea, and writing of the manga was a collaborative effort between her and her editor and the IP was always created with the intent of producing a manga which followed its own version of the story. And that intent is important. Because its not just some soulless corporation buying an existing IP so they can slap a familiar brand on a story they have lying around. Naoko invented Sailor Moon with the intent of the Anime telling its own version of the story, and that makes the anime just as "authentic" as the original work. And this has been kind of rambley but to summarize: 1. Naoko makes the Sailor Moon IP with the intent of expanding it into both an anime and a manga. From its conception it is designed to produce two distinct works. 2. One of these works, the Manga, is written by Naoko with the aid of her editor. 3. The other, the Anime, is created by a team of Creatives all of whom are talented at their jobs. 4. Both these works are based on the same initial idea, and produced at the same time. And a lot of this is going to change between various adaptions (FMA had a few chapters out when Arakawa decided to have an anime made for instance) but prior to seasonal anime, this was the norm. Sometimes (like with Sailor Moon) the Creator had less of a hand in the original idea, sometimes they had more. But the point is that which work is more "original" or "authentic" is a muddy issue, and saying that something like FMA (2003) is "just an original story with a familiar title slapped on" is... well it just feels very unfair to the people who worked so hard to create it. These were good writers, who were hired to make an anime based on a pitch that Studio Bones received. Yes, the person who wrote that original pitch didn't write the show, but that doesn't mean its not an authentic work. It just means that we had two teams making two stories, both based off of the same property. And yeah, if I had to pick which one was the "real" story I would pick the manga, but that feels very unfair and considerably two cut and dry. The Manga is more true to the original Creator's vision, but FMA hasn't had only one Creator since it started being published and gotten an editor. Its a collaborative project just like all writing, and that means that FMA (2003) can be just as valid as the manga. * Note, editor's have a lot more control over how a story goes than how people think. It's worth looking at some stories from the industry so you can see how an editor is basically a manga co-creator.

#Anime #sailor moon #Anime Original #DiC Dub #History #Manga

6 notes · View notes

chaoticskyy · 3 months

Note

The one you mentioned in the notes of your fic? I guess that's about you? Im kinda interested in the other one now too

OH! Okie yeah your right it's about me.

SO. You're gonna need some context about who I am, where I come from, and what that means.

I'm an afro-indigenous person from Guatemala dad's side is the mixed black side, and mom's side is the primarily indigenous side. The region we're from is best described as Texas but worse. I carry a machete in my truck just in case, and every male elder I know wears a cowboy hat.

The mestizaje of the region is pretty through, most people are mixed indigenous with white, and of course, it's Guatemala. Half of us are "wholly" indigenous. I stick out like a sore thumb, not because I'm dark skinned. Black Guatemalans exist but mainly farther north, in Izabal and port regions. I'm fairly light skinned, but I have really curly hair, I'm tall for the region and not to being vain, but I'm really pretty.

Once I hit puberty, I haven't really been allowed to wander around on my own for safety reasons. You see, we live in a region where the organized crime that reigns isn't gangs, it's narcotics trafficking cartels. They usually leave you alone, unless you approach them for whatever reason. Like you want money and are willing to launder for them and things like that.

Narcos have this nasty habit of picking out women they deem attractive and sponsoring them, essentially being their sugar daddies but like Worse. Usually, the sugar baby can get put of the relationship scot-free, but in this case, women are known to be killed.

The fear has always been I catch the eye of one of them, and I have to flee the country for a long while. Or until they relocate. It's a fairly warranted fear, I've been approached by Narcos for dances, drinks, etc. I have been followed even while I've been in a large family group by these men who all clearly have pistols and bodyguards and are driving bulletproof SUVs. I've been saved every time by my family stepping in before I knew something was wrong.

Now that you know all of this info, let's get to the night I nearly got kidnapped! To be extremely clear, I have no idea what their specific intentions were other than that they wanted to take us away from the place we were at.

My mom's Gabapentin prescription had run out during our last trip to Guatemala, so my mom, my aunt, and I decided to head into town from my grandma's village to buy the medicine. My sister and younger cousin begged us to go, but I put my foot down and told them to fuck off because every time they left the house they made us spend more money than planned and the medication was going to be expensive.

Gotta say thank God I was an asshole to them that day.

My mom has some serious brain fog when we got to the 24HR pharmacy, she had tried to hold out and suck up the pain but I backfired on her and she wasn't able to hold out as long as she wanted which meant it was 9pm by the time we had headed into town. So she shoves the money into my hands and tell us to go get it.

We walk up to the pharmacy and wait in line outside. The pharmacy itself had been closed leaving only a tiny window for money and drugs to be exchanged. There's only two people in front of us, and then two men get behind us.

Blue shirt has a pistol on each side and a wicked looking knife on his right. Yellow shirt keeps looking me up and down. He only had one pistol.

It's no biggie. My own mom has a revolver in the car herself. Guns are the norm around here. If you don't have one, you at least have a machete. I hadn't noticed then, but they had purposely placed their truck at an angle, preventing anyone from passing the tiny road.

Then they start talking. Mind you, there are no alarm bells in my mind right now. I'm actually incapable of feeling anxiety while on my medication, not to mention my risk assessment skills are lacking due to the Autism. Yellow shirt does most of the talking, trying to sus out who we are and what we're doing. I don't realize things are wrong until my aunt is shaking with the wallet in her hands when I hand her the money to pay.

To me, the entire conversation was reading unwanted male attention, but still being like the sort of pushy politeness common in Latin cultures. This plus the fact that men especially get whatever they want can make even everyday interactions feel like microaggressions.

They get closer, and I corner myself, hoping that if we look ugly enough, they'll leave us alone. My aunt is panicking and trying to throw them off our scent, and then Yellow locks onto me and says "Your not from around here.". A fact in his eyes. He's wrong, but not entirely, I'm not from town, and I don't live in Guatemala anymore.

I'm just interesting looking to most people.

My aunt interjects, because I'm kinda a bitch to men and at the time I wasn't aware but she was worried I'd get us shot or worse.

This is kinda when I start to realize something is Wrong. My mind starts racing and now I'm fully prepared to piss or shit myself to avoid being raped.

Then my mom comes in and saved the day.

Bless her.

She's this stout pretty looking woman, she's got this habit of being confrontational and kinda a bitch. She managed to save my grandma from getting murdered once, and the woman can take one look at you tell you how much you weigh and give you an estimate of how long it would take her to cut you up butcher style. It's her favorite party trick, and is honestly unnerving. She also has very low self esteem, and when her disabilities flare up even more so. Which makes her swooping in and saving us all the more impressive.

My mom maneuvers the car to get closer and asks us what's taking us so long. Just as it was time for our turn, I go into autopilot and start talking to a pharmacist I can't see. The lucky bastard is hidden behind a bullet proof wall. Just out luck, he has to search for an alternative medication.

Mother is trying to distract them, and figure put what's going to get them to stop bothering us. Blue shirt points out that the car she's driving, a Mercedes-Benz SUV is not a common site. European engines around here are not common, and a car is life and freedom. He starts asking about the car and who my mom is, and who we are. How much she'd sell the car for.

My aunt had purposely been avoiding sharing any identifiers, including my last name. While it does have sway, it's often not enough, and it can backfire since people believe my father's family has lots of money and is a proud bunch.

My mother, on the other hand, introduced herself with her household name. This made Yellow shirt pause, and Blue to stop leering at me. After some needling on both ends of the conversation, it turned out that Yellow shirt and I are distantly related.

This finally allowed me to slip past Blue shirt and into the car.

When we got to my grandma's, started properly freaking out. Turns out my mom was fully ready to give them the car in exchange for our lives.

My aunts husband was fully freaked out because apparently those men are like known criminals. Like deep into being Narcos lakeckeys. They aren't Narcos themselves, but they like orbit the same spaces. According to him.

Also NOTE DO NOT LET THIS DISCOURAGE YOU FROM TRAVELLING IN GAUTEMALA!

I DO NOT GO TO TOURIST ATTRACTIONS OFTEN, I EXIST IN PRIMAILY RURAL RESIDENTIAL AREAS OF A NON TOURIST DEPARTMENT. THE BIGGEST WORRY FOR TOURIST IN TOURIST AREAS ARE PICK POCKETS AND FOOD POSIONING!

BE SAFE!

#the floof speaks #ask and you shall receive

1 note · View note

jupitermelichios · 3 years

Text

So I’ve been playing a lot of skyrim lately, because it’s video game comfort food, and I decided it was time for my Redguard Dovahkiin to settle down. (Actually I specifically just wanted to be able to adopt some of the random orphans you meet because I felt guilty about them, but you need to be married before you can do that so that there’s someone at home to take care of the kids while you’re off galivanting).

So I travelled around a bit, chatting up likely looking npcs until I found one I both liked and didn’t feel guilty about marrying (I feel bad if I marry one of the warrior adventurer types, making them be a stay at home mum) and settled on an obnoxiously cheerful argonian called Shavee because her life was frankly shit, and I thought she’d probably be good with kids.

So off I go to Riften to the Temple of Mara to arrange the wedding. I book it in for the next day, realise I didn’t bring anything nice to wear, and spend the night before the wedding robbing every house in the city in the search for something to wear. Eventually decide everyone in Riften has terrible fashion sense and break down everything I stole into raw materials and use them to craft myself an outfit and some jewellery that i’m pretty happy with. I even carefully pick out my fanciest looking sword to wear.

(don’t know why I bothered, frankly, shavee turned up wearing a shirt covered in suspicious stains and weilding a pickaxe, it’s like she doesn’t even care about this marriage)

(also for comedy purposes, bear in mind I play with survival mods that mean my character needs to eat and sleep to live, and I literally spent the entire ingame night on this and forgot to eat and drink anything either and then just downed four bowls of wolf stew right before entering the temple so I didn’t starve during the ceremony. also I discovered during the wedding that I am dying of rockjoint, which I contracted from sleeping in a pile of hay on the floor of a skeever infested cave, so even being six foot tall and jacked can’t make up for the fact that I am exhausted, running a fever, and probably covered in wolf which I spilled because my joints are slowly atrophying, and even the fanciest clothes in the world aren’t going to cover that up)

so I enter the temple, and my finance is there, and Lydia my housecarl, and some random NPCs the game thinks are my friends because I did fetch quests for them

One of the random NPCs is Lisbet. Atfter I did her fetch quest, I then did another quest in which I discovered Lisbet is secretly a cannibal and part of a demonic cult that worships the daedric prince of decay by kidnapping priests, sacrificing them, and then eating their corpses. Raw. I think the raw meat is the sticking point for me here honestly.

I ultimately decided not to sacrifice the random priest to a daedric prince in exchange for one magic ring and all the raw human I could eat, because frankly, that doesn’t sound like much of a deal to me. I was expecting there to be some kind of dialogue choice where I could nope out at the last minute, but it turns out there isn’t one, so after they drugged the priest and tied him to the altar, I just got out my sword and started swinging.

I killed most of the cult (including the town butcher, because I had brought meat from him before and was extremely pissed off that he might have been secretly feeding me humans) but a couple of them got away, which I figured was fine because they weren’t trying to kill me.

Except it turns out, if any of them escape, then every time you see them in the future there’s a random chance that they’ll fly into a violent rage and try and murder you.

Lisbet is at my wedding. Lisbet decides that clearly me marrying this random argonian woman with two lines of dialogue is the happiest day of my life, and she cannot allow me that happiness, when I’ve taken so much from her.

So she tries to kill me. Only she can’t, because I’m stuck in a pre-rendered wedding animation, and also she’s sitting next to Lydia, my faithful retainer and owner of a really big axe.

It also turns out that Lisbet is essential, meaning she can be knocked unconcious but not actually killed because she’s needed for some quest or other. And the minute she wakes up from unconciousness, she tries to kill me again, so Lydia knocks her unconcious again, and I’m stuck, I can’t move, because I’m supposed to be in the wedding animation.

Except Shavee has, not unreasonably, see all this and decided that she doesn’t like me enough to risk getting murdered, and has done a runner, leaving me at the altar, but more importantly, leaving me trapped in a broken pre-rendered animation, so all I can do is stand there at the altar, staring at the space where my fiance was supposed to be, listening to the sounds of Lydia trying and failing to beat a cannibal to death behind me.

Okay, I think, clearly this wedding isn’t going to happen, I’m going to go for the registry office option and complete the wedding using the dev commands. I do this. The priest gives me a wedding ring, and I can finally move again. I chase after Shavee, who has an impressive turn of speed on her, and eventually catch up right by the city gates. I try to talk to her.

Apparently using the console has completed the wedding for me, but not for her, because she still only has the same 2 lines of dialogue she usually has.

Clearly this is working, I can’t leave my kids with someone who can only say 2 things and doesn’t even know she’s their mum, that’s irresponsible.

I try loading from inside the temple. I get the same problem.

Eventually I figure out that I need to use the dev controls to disable Lisbet’s entire existence in the universe.

Shavee and me get married. As the priest reads the vows, I stare at Shavee and wonder why she couldn’t even be bothered to put on a clean shirt. I wonder what kind of mother she’ll be.

Once the ceremony is over, and I’m happily married to the dirty green lizard of my dreams, and we’ve agreed that until I can make her recognise my extremely nice modded house exists I will share her single bed in the unheated flophouse in Windhelm she calls home, I re-enable Lisbet, because I’m worried I’ll forget if I leave it too long.

Fun fact about skyrim, it loads in quite a lot of npcs and objects by dropping them from the sky. I have no idea why this is the case, but it’s objectively the funniest way to load in objects.

I re-enable Lisbet. She falls from the sky, clips through the roof of the temple, and lands in the pew beside Lydia, stands up, draws a knife, and is immedately beaten unconcious.

I no longer care, because Shavee now has all the exciting new spouse-only romantic dialogue options like “Could you cook something for me” and “have you made any money lately”, and I know she’ll be a great mother.

I limp to the door of the temple, while around me the guests not involved in the Lydia-Lisbet murder cycle scream and duck for cover.

I open the door to the temple, immediately collapse and ragdoll down the steps, which is how I discover I am dying of rockjoint.

I limp to the orphanage down the street, adopt two kids, and then finally remember that I’m carrying garlic bread, which as we all know, cures all known illnesses.

When I emerge back into the street, full of the joys of motherhood and garlic bread, I find the town in disaray. Lydia is chasing Lisbet through the streets with an axe and a dragon is circling overhead, burning npcs to death. People are running for shelter, screaming, while the guards try to take down an entire dragon using only the worst bows and arrows in the game.

I decide that as a parent, I have to think of my own safety first and leave them to it.

I head out of the city, intent on returning home and figuring out why Shavee refuses to move in with me. A man hanging around the stables challenges me to a boxing match. For want of anything better to do, I agree.

Halfway through the fight he dodges at the wrong moment and I punch one of his horses in the head.

Two guards attack me while I desperately try to surrender. My kids will miss me, but I’m prepared to go to jail for my horse crimes, I’m an honest citizen. Also my horse crimes seem somewhat less important than the dragon.

The guards refuse to accept my surrender. I am stabbed to death. As I collapse in front of the indifferent horse, Lisbet exits the city, followed by Lydia. The last thing I see before I die is Lydia swinging her axe at Lisbet’s face.

#skyrim #spoilers #technically #although this game is a decade old and we all own at least two versions of it at this point #so i'm not sure it counts #long post

16K notes · View notes

comradekatara · 2 years

Note

what classes would the ATLA characters make/play as in DnD and who would be the DM?

here's an old post by chell about this and also i asked @kickaboutheart and they said the following:

sokka would be DM and take it extremely seriously, aang and katara would undermine him at every turn, then suki would take over and be amazing at it even though she doesn’t really give a shit. idk the archetypes all that well but im tempted to assign them all unexpected characters so they all have to learn and grow

personally, i've never played dnd (everything i know about it is from that one episode of community) and looking up the character types gave me a headache but i do agree 100% with both of them that sokka would be the DM. although tbh i don't really see any of them being the kind of nerds who are super into dnd, so they'd probably be roped into it by an outside party. that said...

sokka would take his role extremely seriously, not because he's particularly invested in the game itself, but because he can't help but be a micromanaging control freak in everything he does. whenever the others mess up the game by not taking it seriously enough and undermining his intentions, he's all like now we're never gonna get an A in dnd!!!! something that is both normal to want and possible to achieve,

if azula was playing with them, she would definitely be trying to figure out to how to "win," making the game considerably less fun for everyone else because she is constantly trying to destroy them (her definition of winning). everyone's really mad at whoever invited her to play with them, but no one will actually fess up to having invited her.

it's super obvious that katara's character is just a mary sue self-insert with no flaws who always does the coolest, best thing in any situation. also, she is always trying to convince her party that they need to overthrow the government (she asked sokka if the government in this fantasy land was corrupt and sokka made the mistake of being like "well this is an uninspired fantasy setting so it's likely a monarchy, right?" even though he should have predicted what she would do with that information). everyone's like "that's not the point of this game" and katara's like "well maybe it SHOULD be. ever think of that!!!!! huh!!!!!"

suki does not take this game seriously at all, which, depending on who you ask, is either the exact right or the exact wrong way to play it. she is committing to the bit that her character is a big buff man who just happened to be born yesterday and doesn't know what anything is, and every turn she's just like "i roll to find out who the blurry guy in the water is" and then she rolls and sokka has to be like "that's you. you're staring at your own reflection from the surface of the lake" and then suki rolls again to see if this concept of self-awareness will register. it doesn't. and every time she does this bit (which is every single turn she has) it gets less and less funny but he doesn't stop doing it

aang's bit is that he's a shapeshifter who can transform into any animal but he's really bad at doing it on purpose and doesn't know how to change back into a human, so every turn he tries to communicate by doing different ridiculous animal noises. it is quite amusing. to everyone but sokka, that is

toph's playing as an omnipotent immortal being who knows literally everything and all he wants is to take a nap but he has insomnia and people keep disturbing him so his one real motivation is to get everyone to leave him alone so he can go back to trying to fall asleep. she thought this character would just be a funny joke at first but it ends up being the most compelling character in the whole game and she ends up getting really into it. sokka is so grateful for her

zuko's character is also painfully obvious as a self-insert mary sue but it's almost so sad that no one wants to make fun of him for it. his character is this aloof hot girl rogue who plays by her own rules and is so mysterious, like a sexy impenetrable fortress. she has no attachments except for her trusted animal sidekick that she rides around on, and she's only in it for herself/for the money. basically, zuko just wants to be june...? [iroh voice] hmmmm......

mai's mad that zuko's playing as what is clearly just a hotter version of her. what is he trying to say??? meanwhile, her character, who is named sokka, is actually based entirely off of mai's assessment of katara, and all her choices are informed by what she thinks katara would actually do in that situation, which (according to mai), most of the time, is cry or yell or storm off angrily. mai does this specifically because she finds katara's awesome adventurous rebel character so flawless and boring and self-righteous that she cannot help but troll her, but she is also trolling sokka too, because she's a multitasker like that.

since mai is trolling one pair of siblings, ty lee takes it upon herself to troll the other. her character has just enough of a mix of traits from both zuko and azula that they don't know what to make of this character but they know that this character sucks!!!!! although they do both enjoy ty lee's affect when playing this character, which is just a spot-on impression of mai's deadpan cadence.

teo is probably the guy who roped aang into playing who then roped all of his friends into playing, and he's the only one who actually plays dnd on a consistent basis (or at all, for that matter) so he's the only one whose character and choices are actually thoughtful and well-made. while he appreciated sokka's effort as dm considering that he literally learned the rules like a day before playing, and he thought that toph's sleepy god character was actually very charming, he's glad he has other friends he can play dnd with, because this particular group..........well. they're fucking terrible at it.

#anadventurerisfail #asks #the gaang and #teo #i guess?#i hope this even remotely resembles dnd gameplay im not a nerd so i dont know that !!!!!!!!!!!!#personally i think suki aang and toph have the correct approach #also i want to make one thing clear #zuko does not like june (because shes mean to him) but subconsciously he does rly wish he was more like her #whereas mai & toph consciously wish they were more like her #etc etc

71 notes · View notes

blindbeta · 3 years

Text

Trope Discussion: The Blind Prophet / Blind Seer

This covers blind seers, prophets, clairvoyant characters, etc. Anyone who can see or predict the future, usually through seeing visions. This trope is extremely common. It also has roots in classical mythologies, religion, and literature. It is not necessarily bad on its own, but the way it is used in fiction and it’s popularity with non-blind writers makes it an uncomfortable trope for me much of the time.

I understand that not everyone will agree with me, but I think some of my suggestions can be helpful because this post offers potential ways to make this trope better for those who wish to use it.

I neglected to include it in my post about Things I Want to See More Of / Less Of in Blind Characters, but it is still something I want to discuss. I thought it warranted its own post. To get an idea of my thoughts on this trope, I don’t think it is so much harmful on its own, such as the cure trope, but rather I feel it is over-used and used in ways that contribute to ideas I find harmful. In the case of this trope, the ideas I find harmful refers mainly to the idea that blind characters need something extra or special that is designed to make up for their blindness.

The blind prophet or blind seer is something people seem to assign to their blind characters because it feels right. I would like writers to consider why this is, ways to avoid problems associated with it, and ways to be more intentional with how they design blind characters in the future. To clarify, I’m not saying you should never write a blind character who can see or predict the future. I’m not even saying this is best left up to blind writers. I’m saying I want writers to be aware and have more intent when they use this trope. Hopefully this post can help people do that.

I often receive asks or messages about blind characters who can see the future. A few common characteristics include:

1. this blind prophet is the only blind character

2. this blind character is the only person in the story who can see the future

3. this blind prophet is always totally blind - I have only received one message in which the blind prophet in question had some vision in one eye

4. seeing the future is portrayed as making up for or otherwise replacing the character’s lack of vision (again, the trope is almost always about a totally blind character)

So, in other words, this trope can be used for writers to make up for blindness, whether that means actually giving the character sight through their visions or making up for it emotionally. For example: “This character is blind, which is sad, but that’s okay because they can see even more than we can! They’re special!”

Let’s break it down.

Discussion: 1. this blind prophet is the only blind character

Why is this a problem? First, I think we are well beyond having only one blind character in our stories. Sometimes having one blind character feels as if the writer believes having more than one would be unrealistic. Sometimes it also feels frustrating to explain over and over that affirming stereotypes can often be avoided by simply having several blind characters. Unfortunately it often feels like a struggle to get writers to consider it. This means the only example of a blind person in the story is one who can see the future, which means they affirm this trope or stereotype for the casual reader.

Second, having the prophet be the only blind character tells readers that blind characters cannot exist without something to make up for their blindness. They can’t even exist in a story without this.

Discussion: 2. this blind character is the only person in the story who can see the future

Why is this a problem? This one is similar to the first one. We have the token blind character who is the only one who needs sensory based powers. Because, remember, the blind character needs to make up for something, apparently.

Why does the blind person always have to be the prophet? Why can’t they be the strong one or the one with teleportation? Why can’t they be, I don’t know, the person with power of attraction or display proficiency with a weapon?

Why do they always have sense based powers? Why not another power? At least a character like Toph is a powerful bender. She can do plenty of things aside from see, plus her adaptation was derived from everyday use of a power she already had rather than a power she was given for the purpose of seeing.

It gets a little disappointing when a blind person’s power is just the ability to — I guess — see? More on that in section 4.

Discussion: 3. this blind prophet is always totally blind - I have only received 2 story ideas in which the blind prophet in question had some vision

Why is this a problem? I’ll try to explain this part as best I can.

There is nothing wrong with having a totally blind character. That is not what I’m getting at here. My issue resides in the idea of seeing the future making up for blindness, and this means, the character usually needs to be totally blind.

I think this is a manifestation of the myth that all or most blind people have no vision at all. This is not true. In fact, the majority of us have some remaining vision. I asked my totally blind friend who said she had only met one other person who was like her.

I think this is also a manifestation of the idea that blindness needs to be made up for. With a special sight power and not with something like flight or technology-based powers. Writers who are consciously or unconsciously accepting this idea need to have a totally blind character. Because if the character has some remaining sight, what needs to be made up for?

Discussion: 4. seeing the future is portrayed as making up for or otherwise replacing the character’s lack of vision (again, the trope is almost always about a totally blind character)

Why is this a problem? I want to stress that these are two separate things. Both problems, but different ones that have roots in ableism.

When I say ‘making up for’, I refer to a blind character being given visions to make up for their lack of actual vision. As I mentioned before, this character, almost always totally blind, needs something to make up for blindness in the narrative. These visions can be brief ideas of the future or actual flashes of light or color. Either way, this character is being given a special kind of “sight” which makes up for their blindness. This can be a way for a sighted audience to feel better, or for the writer to feel as if they have made up for the character’s blindness. This is mostly emotional or mental. The character doesn’t need to actually see anything in order to fulfill this part of the trope.

The second part is about how sometimes the blind prophet can literally replace their blindness with their future visions. For example, they don’t need a cane while using stairs because they can predict when each step is. Or they might not be able to see people’s faces in visions. This erases their blindness. And in this case, why write a blind character at all?

On that note, discussion 3 also comes into play. If you want your character to be totally blind while failing to write them as totally blind, you shouldn’t be writing a totally blind character. In this instance, you probably shouldn’t be writing any blind characters, period, but I do think you would be better off writing a character with some vision instead.

Additionally, back in discussion 2, I said this: [quote] “It gets a little disappointing when a blind person’s power is just the ability to — I guess — see? More on that in section 4.” [End quote]. I wanted to add that having powers that just make up for a lack of sight is boring. I’m bored by it. Does it mean it can never be made interesting? Of course it can be interesting. However, that would require more work than some writers are putting in when this trope is used.

How to Avoid Some Problems

Problem 1: this blind prophet is the only blind character

To avoid: add more blind characters, specifically ones who cannot predict the future.

I generally advise adding at least 1 extra blind character, but for big tropes like this my happy area is 2 to 3 extra. You should have at least 2 to 3 blind characters in total to avoid both tokenism and this problem specifically. This means, if you have 1 blind character who can see the future, you should have at least 2 who cannot. This is the minimum.

The point is to expose readers to characters who do not follow the tropes they are probably used to and may even think are representative of blind people in general.

Problem 2: this blind character is the only person in the story who can see the future

To avoid: Set out to have characters who can see the future and who are specifically not blind. Also, have characters who are blind who cannot see the future.

I think, if you want a bunch of prophets in your story, this is a good way to go. You could also simply not have any blind prophets, but it depends on the story you are telling and if you have a bunch of prophet characters, you might wish to include a blind character among them.

For an ask relevant to this point, go here.

Problem 3: this blind prophet is always totally blind - I have only received 2 story ideas in which the blind prophet in question had some vision

To avoid: Create characters who are prophets with residual sight.

This problem is very much connected to problem 4, but I wanted to mention it just in case. It is not as much of an issue on it’s own.

Problem 4: seeing the future is portrayed as making up for or otherwise replacing the character’s lack of vision (again, the trope is almost always about a totally blind character)

To avoid: Don’t erase the character’s blindness with visions. Don’t give them visions as a way of making up for not being able to see at all / well. Don’t connect their powers to their blindness. The idea of [quote] “My character can’t see so what if they could - gasp - see in an extra special way” [end quote] is not that creative. Also see problem 3.

Additional thoughts:

Consider giving blind characters powers that don’t involve sight, at least not in such a direct way. Whether you have a blind prophet character or not. Perhaps another alternative could be giving them several powers.

I would like blind characters to have more unique powers, because I see this trope often. It would be fun to see something different or for this trope to be subverted somehow.

Again, I want more awareness and more intent from writers. Not necessarily complete avoidance of this trope. Would I like to come across it less? Yes. But there is still hope for it.

I hope this helps.

-BlindBeta

I also offer sensitivity readings. See my pinned post for more information.

Edit: @stealthetrees Yes I think it would still apply. Think of this type of character as also being totally blind.

#blind prophet trope #trope discussion #blind #blind seer #writing blind characters #blind characters

413 notes · View notes

anashins · 3 years

Text

If You're Willing to Kiss || Taeyong

“If you’re willing to kiss, then let’s show him what he’s missing out on.”

During a stupid round of spin the bottle, your crush kisses someone else, but you make sure that he'll regret it very soon.

_____

“Kiss, kiss, kiss, kiss, kiss, kiss!” the people in the circle chanted and clapped their hands simultaneously to the rhythm of their voices.

You watched in rigidity as your female best friend and your crush Jaehyun were about to kiss each other.

Reluctantly, they crawled to the middle of the circle as the chants only increased in their volume the closer they approached the spot until they were awkwardly sitting in front of each other, almost not daring to look into the opposite’s eyes, their cheeks visibly flushed.

At the same time, your heart broke into a thousand pieces.

You hadn’t signed up voluntarily to play this stupid game of spin the bottle as you sure had better things to do on a friday night, like reading or sleeping.

But you couldn’t have said no when Jaehyun had tagged you along to this party as all your friends were coming as well.

At first, you had been excited about it, because wherever Jaehyun went, you would willingly join him as you always wanted to spend as much time with your crush as possible.

After years of having hidden your feelings, tonight you had gathered enough courage to finally make a move.

But now he was about to kiss your best friend, and you felt utterly devastated as you watched how they slowly pressed their lips onto each other.

The people before had only shared light pecks without even touching one another at other parts, but Jaehyun and your best friend did not only kiss longer than required, they also started to put their hands on each other’s bodies, not minding the cheering crowd at all as though they had drifted off to their own world.

You felt sick in your stomach, murmured something along the lines of a hurried apology and excused yourself to the bathroom.

Splashing water into your face, you looked into the mirror while your fingers gripped so tightly onto the sink that your knuckles turned white in the process.

No wonder, you had always felt like that your best friend was a hundred times more beautiful and intelligent than you. Every guy wanted to go out with her, then why not Jaehyun as well?

You had seen the way they turned shy, the way they flushed at each other, and then the way they shared a chaste, yet deep first kiss with 20 other people as witnesses. You may be in love, but you weren’t naive.

If one kiss could change everything, then this had been the kiss.

The kiss he had been supposed to share with you. The kiss you had wanted to save up until it was now too late.

And before the first tears started running, you wanted to go home. Nobody would care anyway.

“Y/n, are you in there?” you suddenly heard from the other side of the closed bathroom door.

It was Taeyong, Jaehyun’s close friend, and the only one who knew about your secret crush.

“Yes, I’ll come out soon, no worries!”

You had forgotten that he was also here, but he hadn’t participated in this round of spin the bottle anyway.

Taeyong only knew about your crush because you had once poured out your heart to him when you were drunk, and until this day, you regretted it deeply as he never failed to miss a chance to tease you about this.

But always, he had kept his lips sealed in front of Jaehyun, and for this, you were grateful.

So of course he would now be the only one knowing about your true feelings after having witnessed your best friend and crush kissing each other.

Yet, you tried not to let any of your true emotions slip as you opened the door and faced him with the brightest fake smile you could pull off.

“Sorry, I just wasn’t feeling well. I think I’m going home.”

“Uh-huu…”

Taeyong inspected you from head to toe, and then decided that he wasn’t satisfied with this answer.

“You sure about this or are you just affected by the clownery Jaehyun has just pulled off?”

It had been a given that you couldn’t lie to him about this topic. Somehow, he must have gotten wind of what had happened. Perhaps, he had also purposely followed you to the bathroom.

You were just asking yourself why.

“Look, Taeyong, I don’t want to talk about it, okay?”

“Lately,” he started, “he has been talking about her a lot.”

You hesitated and gulped. “About… my best friend…?”

Silently, he nodded, confirming your fears and making your stomach churn. It hurt you more than anything ever before, and you were rendered motionless.

“I want to go home,” you then said in the same robotic manner.

At home, you could pour all your feelings out and finally started crying instead of staying at this place where you had to watch them getting closer and your best friend taking the place at your crush’s side that was supposed to be yours.

“Either that or you could stay,” Taeyong suggested.

You frowned. “Why would I want to stay?”

“Jaehyun is an extremely jealous person. If he sees you with someone else, he might regret it and realize that it’s you that he wants.”

“That’s stupid,” you judged and crossed your arms.

“How long have we been knowing each other, y/n?” Taeyong asked. “Long enough for me to know that if you don’t do something now, you will whine about it for ten years, and - no offence - I don’t have the time and patience to hear about your unrequited love for much longer. Either you do something now or you let go of him.”

“It’s already too late,” you commented dryly and wanted to pass by him, but he grabbed you by your arm, making you stop.

“Are these the words of a young woman who had fought her way through the crowd to the first row to see her favorite band up close, elbowing people to the left and right? They’re not! They’re also not the words of someone who had threatened an online seller with an imaginary consumer advice centre when they didn’t want to return her money! And you want to let him go just like that? If there was anything you have taught me, y/n, then it’s the fact that it’s never too late.”

Turning keen-eared, you asked, “So what do you suggest?”

Shortly after, you found yourself being part of the spin the bottle circle again.

Of course your eyes hadn’t missed out on the longing gazes Jaehyun and your best friend were throwing at each other while more and more people gathered in the middle of the circle to amuse the crowd with their kisses.

You were angry on the inside, but also full of nervousness as the bottle spun again and Taeyong jumped up, paused, and then reached out his hand to make it stop at the right time.

And the bottleneck was pointing directly at you. You inhaled deeply.

“Hey Taeyong, you wanna kiss her so badly or what?” someone shouted.

Another one added with a laughter, “He’s finally shooting his shot.”

“Shut up, the bottle is pointing at her, so that’s the rules.”

No one complained though as he crawled to the middle and you did the same. It was as though the crowd, your fellow students, actually had been wanting to see you two kiss for a long time, and you wondered whether you were right with your suggestion and why they would think that way.

Taeyong… he had always been there by Jaehyun’s side. He was Jaehyun’s friend, not yours.

Even though he always helped you with homework when you forgot yours. Even though he always handed you water at parties to keep you sobered. Even though he always gave you a ride when you missed the bus. Even though he always made you laugh when you were sad about Jaehyun again.

Even though, in a situation like this, he wanted to help you again.

There were many things Lee Taeyong did for you, yet you had never considered him your friend.

You wondered whether he felt the same way when he leaned in to you.

“If you’re willing to kiss, then let's show him what he’s missing out on,” he whispered only for you to hear. “If you’re willing to kiss, then close your eyes.”

But before you did as you had been told, you threw a last gaze at Jaehyun who looked at you with a mouth slightly agape.

Surprised that it might work, you grinned inwardly as Taeyong’s lips brushed over yours.

It had been so long that you last kissed someone, but from the first moment on, he proved to you that he was indeed a very good kisser.

Taeyong’s lips moved with yours in a very chaste way that had even something romantic to it, and it surprised you, to say the least. It was not even the manner in which Taeyong kissed you that gave you this feeling, but the way he made you feel, the emotion he delivered.

So comfortable, so warm, and raw, and you wondered whether this had been his intention all along or whether this was the usual manner in which he kissed.

So you didn’t wonder when you suddenly noticed him leaning in to you and bending your body to the point of you having to wrap your arms around his neck to look for support so as to not fall backwards, yet you didn’t stop.

Before, you had agreed on fake kissing passionately to rub it under Jaehyun’s nose, but truth to be told, the line between faking and reality slowly started to blur as you genuinely began to enjoy kissing Taeyong.

With his hands now holding onto either side of your waist, he parted your lips to deepen the kiss, and you gladly let him do so.

Even when he started using his tongue, you didn’t make him stop like he had asked you to before in case it would get too much, but you didn’t want him to just yet and pulled him even closer.

You only stopped in the moment Jaehyun interfered with an, “Enough now, it’s only a game!”

But when you pulled away and looked into Taeyong’s sparkling eyes that radiated so much fondness, you wondered how you could have missed the affection he had been holding towards you all this time.

You didn’t care much about Jaehyun’s opinion anymore. Or who he was kissing.

Because if one kiss could change everything, then this had been the kiss for you.

#taeyong #lee taeyong #taeyong imagines #taeyong scenarios #taeyong fluff #taeyong x you #taeyong x reader #nct imagines #nct scenarios #nct fluff #nct x you #nct x reader #kpop scenarios #kpop imagines #kpop x you #my writing #imagine #ah it's soft hours again

436 notes · View notes

caelestis-composition · 3 years

Note

killshot anon! YEAH i totally agree w/ your view on kaeya. it's so weird to me that people will blame him for his role in a situation he was forced into as a child through no choice of his own. that itself had to be traumatic, not to mention everything that happened later. i hate when people say he's untrustworthy - like yeah, he's lied, so has everyone? it's clear he does it mostly to protect himself. not to mention that (& sadism) can be symptoms of trauma. kaeya deserves nothing but happiness

take a seat folks it’s time for a “brynn should’ve been an english major” lesson! today we’re gonna learn some literary theory; specifically, we’re gonna apply psychoanalytical trauma theory to kaeya’s backstory and current character. killshot anon i bet you never thought this would result in a whole ass essay.

disclaimer one! you are allowed to dislike kaeya! i am not saying you need to like him or his character, you’re entitled to your opinion and i’m not here to change your mind.

disclaimer two! i am in no way an expert and this is all for fun! this is just my silly little analysis of one of my favorite characters as someone who’s studied literary theory and rhetoric and can also apply personal experience. seriously analysis is like a hobby to me and this is just an excuse for me to ramble about kaeya.

disclaimer three! this contains lots of spoilers! basically for everything we know in-game, general knowledge as well as stuff from his voicelines and character story. don’t read this if you don’t want spoilers.

since this is going to be filled with spoilers and is about to get really long, everything will be under a cut. for those who wanna read my dumb super informal essay: enjoy!

final note: yeah this is over 2000 words long can you tell i like analysis

⭒

let’s start by getting a quick rundown of trauma theory out of the way. to begin, what is “trauma?” in this case, trauma is going to refer to an experience that greatly affects and changes one’s life; attitudes, memories, behaviors, mental state, etc. while not all changes may be bad, per se, the overall effect of trauma is generally a negative one, which is why it’s so significant. literary trauma theory, then, explores these changes and the impact of trauma in literature. it analyzes the psychological and social effects of trauma, explaining what those effects are and why they happen. in the context of a specific character, trauma theory breaks down said character’s behaviors, feelings, and general mentality in relation to their past experiences; trauma theory hopes to explain to others the reasons for why a character may act or feel the way they do, all based upon the character’s experiences, particularly traumatic ones. our character today is the lovely kaeya alberich, with the “literature” being genshin impact. i’ll be referencing kaeya’s wiki page to ensure i get all details correct for his character story and voicelines.

it would be good to review kaeya’s backstory before delving into the actual analysis. though we don’t know much about his life before living in mondstadt, we’re told he was sent as an agent of khaenri’ah. and by “sent,” i mean his biological father abandoned him in a completely unfamiliar land to serve khaenri’ah’s interests and fullfil his mission—what this entirely entails hasn’t been revealed. mondstadt, however, welcomed kaeya “with open arms when they found him.” crepus ragnvindr took him in as his adopted son, with diluc as his adopted brother. kaeya and diluc were “almost like twins,” so close they “[knew] each other’s thoughts and intentions without a word.” he’d began a new life in mondstadt, one surrounded by friends and family that loved him; one that was completely shattered by crepus’s death. kaeya arrived at the scene of the disaster, and was led to believe diluc was the one who killed their father to “set his father free” from the effects of his delusion. there’d always been one big question in kaeya’s life: if it came down to it, who would he support? the nation that abandoned him, but he still felt loyal to, or the nation and family that took him in and really loved him? overrun with guilt, kaeya confessed his purpose to diluc, sparking a fight between the two brothers. in this fight, kaeya receives his cryo vision. though both brothers stepped away alive, they’ve never been able to make peace with one another. now, kaeya is the eccentric and charming cavalry captain of the knights of favonius; a man who gets his way by using any means necessary, regardless of whether or not it seems right.

kaeya’s not evil; he’s morally ambiguous, and that stems from what appears to be a general distrust of others. his life is one shrouded in secrecy. from the moment he stepped foot into mondstadt, he was surrounded by secrets. even now, he doesn’t talk about a lot of things, namely his past, vision, and feelings. though he’s always willing to get information out of others, kaeya never reveals anything about himself. he repeatedly tells the player they can confide in him, but whenever you try and pry into his life, he deflects your questions with some sort of witty comment or flirty remark. anything he does reveal is vague, or spoken in some sort of “code.” for example, his “interesting things” voiceline. he tells us about the owl of dragonspine, how it “seems to look right through you, while letting go of none of its own secrets,” and then tacks on a “quite fascinating, don’t you think?” it seems like an awfully accurate parallel to himself; kaeya does all he can to get information from others, but never gives anything about himself. now, this whole thing—his relationship with diluc falling apart and his need for secrecy—could have probably been avoided if he had just come clean about his mission years ago. so why didn’t he? to start, kaeya was a literal child. not only are children unable to properly tell the difference between right and wrong, but they’ll also typically follow their parents’ orders blindly. kaeya had just been abandoned, and he wouldn’t want to risk being cast out by mondstadt as well if he came clean right away. you see, there’s this thing about trauma, something that trauma theory states. traumatized people feel a sort of shame or guilt regarding their traumatic experience; they’ll keep quiet because they don’t want to cause problems or bother others with their issues. of course kaeya wouldn’t tell the truth about his past, he doesn’t want to destroy the genuinely loving relationships he’d built in mondstadt. his fight with diluc only proves what he was afraid of: if he’s honest, he’ll be abandoned again. and if kaeya’s used to all the lies, why should he bother changing?

another thing, if he’s not going to tell the truth, then why would he have initially gone along with his father’s plans? again, he was a child. he really had no choice, and was forced into a very wrong and cruel situation. there’s a good explanation for this, too, which is also stated in trauma theory; traumatized people will still do their best to please their abusers. especially if said abuser is a parent, that will drive traumatized people to work even harder to please them. although his father hurt him by ruthlessly abandoning him, kaeya still sought to make him and his homeland proud. he was willing to be used as a tool for their gain; that is, until he found people who actually cared about him. he was an impressionable child, of course he’s going to obey orders. but as he gets older, he feels torn. does he serve those who abandoned him, or those that took him in? his father—and arguably, khaenri’ah as a whole—hurt him, sure, but he still feels some loyalty and connection to his former home. instead of revealing anything, he lets the situation play out. that way, he can’t be blamed when things fall apart.

the thing about claiming he’s untrustworthy is that hardly anyone in-game believes that. he’s adored by the older folks in mondstadt, and foes and allies alike find him easy to talk to. despite seeming lazy and uninterested in work, kaeya takes his job very seriously. in fact, his story states that crepus’s death was the “first and only time kaeya failed in his duty.” the “only time” is especially important, because it signifies kaeya still fulfills his duties successfully. he’s had a total of one slip-up, and hasn’t failed since. no, kaeya is not untrustworthy. rather, kaeya finds everyone else untrustworthy. it’s not unlikely that this is a direct consequence of being abandoned as a child. although it’s been established that kaeya and diluc were very close as children, when crepus dies, kaeya assumes diluc is the one that killed him. in order to jump to such an extreme conclusion against someone he was so close to, there had to be some underlying sense of distrust. furthermore, kaeya expresses feeling as though he doesn’t belong anywhere. he was abandoned by khaenri’ah, and then worried he wouldn’t be accepted by mondstadt. he is, but there’s still that worry. if you place him in your teapot as a companion, he tells you that your home feels like someplace he belongs, following it up with a “heh, who’d have thought…” kaeya still feels as though he doesn’t belong in mondstadt; despite the fact that he’s a high-ranking knight of favonius and rather popular, he still feels like an outsider. he doesn’t trust that anyone actually wants him around, and he finds joy in testing peoples’ trustworthiness. it’s noted in his story and through his voicelines that the beloved cavalry captain has a rather sadistic nature. he likes putting people into difficult situations, to see what decisions they will make. he does this to both opponents and allies, testing to see who’s going to back out and who’ll keep fighting; in the sake of allies, who can he trust? or who will turn tail and abandon their teammates at the slightest hint of danger? i mentioned it previously, but kaeya doesn’t care what measures he has to take so long as his job gets done and he gets the answers he wants. it’s a sort of self-preserving mindset, putting himself above the safety of others. kaeya’s trying to protect himself, which makes sense with all he’s been through. he doesn’t want to be hurt, and instead finds pleasure in threatening harm upon others. it’s twisted, sure, but it’s because he can only trust himself in a world that he believes is out to get him. he’s got as many enemies—if not more—as he does allies; of course kaeya focuses on protecting himself first, whether physically or through keeping his secrets, well, secret.

his most obvious traumatic effect is definitely his alcoholism. but he uses it as a distraction, not just to wallow in self-pity. this is seen again in his story, particularly in story 3. it’s found that when his favorite drink, death after noon, is out of season, mondstadt’s crime rate is decreased drastically. at face value, this just means kaeya spends more time working when death after noon is low in supply. but kaeya doesn’t skip work to go to taverns; it’s already been established he takes his job very seriously, so this means he actually patrols and tracks down threats while off work when he can’t indulge in his favorite alcoholic drink. he doesn’t get drunk simply because he’s depressed. if he did, there wouldn’t be a drop in incidents when death after noon is out of season. no, kaeya uses both the alcohol and fighting to distract himself. after all, it’s a little hard to think about feeling sad when you’re either drunk out of your mind or fighting for your life.

despite being so secretive, kaeya gives us glimpses of his true emotions from time to time. as previously mentioned, his flirty attitude is nothing more than a mask to hide how he really feels; and kaeya is terribly, terribly lonely. that may be why he seems so extroverted. constantly being around people should, logically, drive away that feeling, but it doesn’t work like that. when he talks with the player, he frequently expresses disappointment when you have to leave. each time, though, he dampens the weight of his words with playful or flirty language. he’s lonely, but doesn’t want you to know that, like he’s afraid of asking you to stay. he takes the seriousness of his feelings, and basically bends it into some sort of lighthearted joke. kaeya hides his true feelings—negative feelings, to be exact—so that he doesn’t bother anyone. which is, again, something that happens with traumatized people. he displays that hesitance to reveal his true feelings, because there’s a shame or guilt that comes with his past. he doesn’t want to bother others or hold them back, so he puts on a smile and amps up the charisma. one other very important thing—but very small detail—i would like to note is his feelings toward family. his fell apart not even once, but twice, and kaeya still holds familial relationships in high regard. we know he doesn’t exactly care how he goes about getting his work done. he doesn’t pay attention to what’s “right” or “wrong,” so long as he gets what he needs. but one of his informants, vile, notes that the cavalry captain has one exception: he won’t work with those who threaten others’ families. in fact, kaeya claims those who do should be hunted down and destroyed. even though his own families have caused him so much pain—and he ended up estranged from both—he still understands the importance of having people who love you in your life. because he didn’t get that.

kaeya’s not evil. ultimately, as a knight of favonius, his goal is to protect others, because no one was there to protect him. and because no one was there to protect him, because he’s been hurt time and time again by people who were supposed to love him, kaeya has taken to protecting himself. he hides any and all negative feelings with a charismatic, friendly façade, because he thinks it’ll drive away his persistent loneliness. any “bad” actions of his were hardly his fault; he was forced into a life of secrecy and lies, and then abandoned by the first people who truly loved him. kaeya’s a multi-faceted, tragic character, one that toes the line between good and evil, and that’s what makes him so interesting.

#brynn yells #brynn answers #killshot anon #brynn's writing #genshin #genshin impact #kaeya #kaeya alberich #genshin kaeya

226 notes · View notes

whythinktoomuch · 3 years

Text

attempt #37

This was the 52nd formula that Lena had come up with, the 45th solution that she had to wait several hours to synthesize, but only the 37th time she was injecting her shoulder with the resulting concoction.

It was bright green this time, which only made it seem all the more promising.

There’s a rush and some mild nausea that Lena had come to expect with the experiments, but everything else felt the same. For now. Setting the syringe aside, Lena called out, “Hope, think of a number between one and a million.”

Then, for the 37th time, Lena tried. She cleared her own mind, practiced the meditative mantras, stared intently into Eve’s eyes, bright blue yet blank with Hope’s quiet disinterest, and... nothing. Not a single digit came to mind.

No matter how hard Lena tried, the only thoughts in her head were her own.

With an exasperated sigh, Lena rolled her sleeve back down and directed Hope to log their latest attempt as yet another failure before storming off to start her day.

Lena emerged from the laboratory with wrinkled clothes and dark circles sunken around her eyes, which was probably why the first thing she heard as she stepped out of the elevator was her personal assistant’s hushed commentary of, Oh sweet Jesus, she looks tired.

“Oh, I’m well aware, Hector,” Lena said, lofty and without much malice. “Nothing a little coffee can’t fix though.”

Hector stared at her blankly. “I’m sorry, Miss Luthor?”

“Never mind,” Lena said, rolling her eyes. She took the outstretched coffee in question as she walked by the assistant’s desk. “Just hold all my calls until the afternoon, please.”

This time, when Hector grumbled under his breath about wow, she must be grumpy too, Lena ignored it. There were better things for the CEO to tackle, after all; as for example, some fitful sleep on her couch, perhaps?

Hours later, Lena was relatively well-rested, so she pored over her notes again, trying to pinpoint the exact variable she must have overlooked in her carelessness. Because by all accounts, the formula should have worked—Lena had been certain of it. But then again, she’d admittedly thought that of almost every attempt thus far.

When Hector walked into her office at some point in the late afternoon with a handful of contracts to be signed, Lena felt no closer to the solution and a slight headache coming on.

“Is there anything else I can help you with?”

“Another coffee would be great,” Lena said, as she sifted through the documents.

“Oh my God, if she takes in any more caffeine, her heart’s going to literally explode...” Hector muttered to himself. “Well, maybe she won’t notice if I get her decaf instead...?”

Lena dropped the papers onto her desk with a scoff. “You know I can hear you, right?”

Hector appeared startled, which seemed rather appropriate until he slowly said, “So... was that a yes on the espresso?”

“What?”

Hector maintained his slow cadence, carefully enunciating every syllable as if he were repeating himself, “Did you want to stick with your usual order... or maybe go with an espresso... because it’s a little stronger?”

But in a normal cadence, also in Hector’s voice and somehow clear as a bell in Lena’s head came, “If this woman doesn’t get another nap in pronto, she is going to drop dead, and everyone’s going to think I poisoned her coffee, because she’s always in—”

Absolutely stunned, Lena continued to stare up at Hector in silence, eyes narrowing as the assistant’s slightly panicked voice droned on and on in her head. Until a louder remark broke through the reverie.

“Whoa, did she just fall asleep with her eyes open?”

Lena blinked quite obviously, and her mild shock was accompanied with a loud and clear, yet unspoken Oh, thank God! from Hector.

But the Hector standing before her hadn’t moved his lips once, only watching the bewilderment play out on Lena’s face with some polite concern.

“The usual’s fine,” Lena interjected before her assistant could press again. “Or the espresso, or whatever. I don’t care, as long as it’s still hot and caffeinated.”

“You got it,” Hector said.

“Definitely getting her decaf,” Hector thought as he turned to leave, but Lena hardly minded. She was too busy restructuring the rest of her day around this most exciting realization.

After some quick bit of arithmetic in her head, Lena set a timer on her watch for five hours, which was presumably the amount of time it would take for her body to break down the serum and render it useless. Then she logged on to her private interface and happily directed Hope to re-record attempt #37 as a success.

The ability to read minds was, quite simply, quite the advantage.

Though it wasn’t so much “mind-reading,” as mind-receiving. The serum seemed to have granted Lena access to the loud and active thought processes of everyone around her—their inner monologue, if you will, everything put into words but left unsaid.

Lena had been hoping for more, to be able to break into other people’s minds so as to hack secrets, determine why supposed close friends would ever betray her, and the like. Maybe that would come with time and practice.

But as it turned out, there was rather plenty to be gleaned from the forefront of someone’s mind, as people often thought about the things they weren’t supposed to say before choosing more palatable means of expression. Which made the rest of Lena’s workday somewhat informative, if not a little fun.

For one thing, Lena found out that a lot more of her employees enjoyed working for her than she had thought. All of them respected her, several feared her, and quite a fair few entertained invasive thoughts about her décolletage before swiftly directing their attention elsewhere.

She also found out there was one board member in particular who liked to fudge the numbers during meetings, and that his face took on a very unappealing shade of off-white when Lena could inexplicably confront him with the actual results of his findings.

But most importantly of all, what Lena found out was that... she actually enjoyed this heretofore inaccessible sense of control this ability afforded her. She had taken on the experiments for a very specific purpose, but now, it was difficult to even imagine going back to how things were, even after the fact.

Lena walked into the DEO, and for the first time, the outpouring of distrust attached to the Luthor name was all but imagined. The disparaging thoughts followed her, even as the people who had them smiled or averted their eyes as she passed.

Nothing she wasn’t used to though.

Alex’s voice slid into Lena’s head in a whisper—... the hell?—one whole minute before she actually greeted her, “Lena, hey... Well, can’t say that I was expecting you.”

“Yes, that’s what it sounds like,” Lena mused, and Alex gave her a slight frown.

“So, did you need something?”

“Where’s Kara? I want to talk to her.”

Alex’s carefully composed face betrayed no emotion, but her thoughts sighed heavily, “Of course...” before ebbing away into something entirely indistinct and indecipherable.

Lena blinked. She hadn’t encountered anyone whose thoughts weren’t immediately accessible to her before. But here Alex was, giving directions to Kara’s current whereabouts, all the while muttering some underlying commentary in tones so hushed that Lena couldn’t quite make out any of it.

“... Is there something on my face?” Alex swiped her sleeve across her forehead. “What are you looking at?”

“What? No, nothing,” Lena said brusquely. “Thank you for telling me where Kara is. Bye.” She turned on her heel, headed for the hallway that would eventually lead to the training room.

“Well, that was weird...” Alex’s voice drifted after her, a literal afterthought. “But I mean, I guess she has a nice ass, so—”

Lena shot a dirty look over her shoulder, but Alex was already back on her computer, mind rattling off coordinates and running through tactical drills like a well-oiled machine.

Kara was wearing short shorts and a sports bra, panting, and absolutely drenched in sweat when Lena stepped foot into the training room. She looked over at Lena, her skin glistening against the dimmed green of the kryptonite-lined walls, and smiled wide.

“Oh, hey! What are you doing here?” Kara asked, giving the punching bag one last jab before tugging her gloves off. "Did something happen or...? I mean, not that I’m not happy to see you, of course.” She flashed Lena another bright grin before pressing a towel to her face and neck and chest.

It was enough to stop Lena in her tracks, and almost enough to put a damper on her plans. Almost.

“I need to talk to you,” Lena said evenly, eyes glued firmly to Kara’s forehead.

“Yeah, sure! Jeez... I’d give you a hug, but I’m like sweating in places I didn’t even know existed. Alex says that this is the only way to learn proper form and all, but wow. I can’t believe there are humans who actually do this for fun—”

“Kara,” Lena cut in, lips pursing in exasperation. “I’m serious. We need to talk right now.”

Kara blinked, then slowly nodded. “Okay, yeah, let’s talk... You wanna sit down?”

“I prefer to be standing.”

“Okay.” Kara remained standing as well, towel now crumpled in her hands. “So, what’s going on?”

Lena took a deep breath, quickly running through the meditative techniques meant to keep her mind clear and open, then asked, “Why did it take you so long to tell me that you’re Supergirl?”

Kara’s shoulders slumped. “Lena, I...”

“No, why did it take three years? Why didn’t you trust me?” Lena continued, her pace steady and firm just like she had practiced. “I trusted you. I trusted you with every part of me, which is extremely difficult for me to do, and you just... didn’t care, I guess.”

“Of course, I care. Lena... I never meant to hurt you,” Kara said insistently. Her voice was loud, emphatic, and at the moment, the only thing Lena could hear.

“Don’t!” Lena snapped when Kara started to approach her. “Don’t come any closer. And stop talking! Just listen.”

Kara exhaled sharply through her nose and raised her hands in tentative surrender in absolute, utter silence. Lena even paused for a beat or two, just to see if any of Kara’s thoughts would breach the surface, but none did.

“Why couldn’t you just trust me, Kara?” Lena asked, and regrettably her voice trembled on the last syllable. “Why did I have to hear it from Lex?”

Kara’s eyes widened. “Lex? Lex told you before I did?”

“Shut up. Do not talk,” Lena hissed out, waiting for Kara to snap her jaw shut before continuing with a bitter laugh, “Do you, do you even trust me now...?” Kara stared, gaze hardening. “And how do you expect me to trust anything you have to say for yourself now?”

Lena’s questions—all of the above and beyond—were met with silence, strained only by the sound of Kara’s heavy breath and Lena’s own thoughts.

Scoffing, Lena threw up her hands. “Do you even care that you hurt me?”

“... Can I talk now?” Kara demanded, seething like she had any right to it. But when Lena shook her head furiously, she held her tongue and apparently everything else as well, because Lena couldn’t hear a single damn thing.

When the alarm on her watch went off, Lena left, slamming the door on her way out. She contacted Hope through their private channel and had her re-log attempt #37 as just another failure.

Back to the fucking drawing board.

(next part here)

#who's ready for attempt 38 n' 39?#and did i honestly start another ficlet series when i already have so many ongoing?#WACK!#also wtf; why is this 2k words...?#my words.

644 notes · View notes

therealvinelle · 3 years

Note

How do you believe Carlisle feels about Esme? How would their break up go? Would he ever cheat on her? I mean like emotionally?

He loves her.

I don’t doubt that his feelings for Esme are genuine, that he respects and cherishes her and wishes to spend his life with her. Esme, too, worships the man.

My complete lack of faith in this ship comes from the fact that they’re together for the wrong reasons and not compatible.

The Bad Beginning

Carlisle had spent centuries searching for likeminded, he never did. In the end he succumbs and starts creating his own, first Edward and then Esme, and to his joy they both agree to do the diet.

Esme’s transformation was entirely an impulse on his end. He saw this delightful, vivacious young woman he’d known ten years ago lie broken and dying in the morgue, a Jane Doe declared dead, she was all too easy to steal. She was too far gone for him to have time to think it over, and so he went «alright let’s do this. I imagine it seemed rather like God had sent her to that morgue specifically. We learn from Midnight Sun that romance wasn’t on his mind at all (even if it was, that wouldn’t make their marriage more functional) and he expected nothing of her. He bit her because he didn’t want Esme Platt to die.

Esme, of course, wakes up into this new life under surreal, heavenly circumstances. Her child is still dead - but here is the mythic, pedestaled Dr. Cullen, now her savior and more wonderful than ever. To back myself up with the books:

Esme had already been in love with Carlisle—much to his shock—but not through any mystical, magical means. She’d met Carlisle as a girl and, drawn to his gentleness, wit, and otherworldly beauty, formed an attachment that had haunted her for the rest of her human years. Life had not been kind to Esme, and so it was not surprising that this golden memory of a good man had never been supplanted in her heart. After the burning torment of transformation, when she’d awakened to the face of her long-cherished dream, her affections were entirely his. (Midnight Sun, chapter Bloodtype)

Carlisle, on his end, hadn’t had the idea at all until Edward said “Dude, she’s into you, go for it.”

I’d been on hand to caution Carlisle about her unforeseen reaction. He’d expected that she would be shocked by her transformation, traumatized by the pain, horrified by what she’d become, much as I had been. He’d expected to have to explain and apologize, to soothe and to atone. He knew there was a good chance that she would have preferred death, that she would despise him for the choice made without her knowledge or consent. So the fact that she had been immediately prepared to join this life—not really the life, but to join him—was not something he was ready for.

He’d never seen himself as a possible object of romantic love before that moment. It seemed contrary to what he was—a vampire, a monster. The knowledge I gave him changed the way he looked at Esme, the way he looked at himself.

More than that, it was very a powerful thing, choosing to save someone. It was not a decision any sane individual made lightly. (sic)

I’m not entirely void of authorial intent - I get that this was supposed to be romcom where the cute nerdy guy has no idea the girl is interested.

But, what I see is that after centuries of being alone, never finding anybody who shared his values, Carlisle finally has these two people who share his ideals, the only two in the world. He’s had countless friends, but it never worked out because of that damn diet. But, now he has these two people, and one of them is a beautiful, kind, wonderful woman who’s in love with him.

I imagine falling for Esme was easy. It was just so perfect, simply by being Carlisle Cullen he could make her happier than any other man, and given their shared diet, he wanted her by his side always, just as he did Edward. And this was it for him, really, to Carlisle Cullen Esme might as well be the only woman in the world because she’s the only one who'll share his lifestyle. He also felt responsible for her.

I don’t at all doubt their sincerity or affection for one another.

However, they did not fall for each other for each other’s sakes. Esme fell for the ideal since childhood, and Carlisle fell because she was perfect. Stick them in an AU and it won’t happen.

The Slippery Slope

Where they run into trouble is firstly that Esme doesn’t share these ideals, nor value human life for its own sake. Now, I’m not asking her to be a saint - but over the course of these books we had some lapses that I find pretty damning.

She wanted Edward back in Forks, when this would almost certainly mean the death of Bella Swan, simply because to Esme having Edward nearby > a person’s life. This wasn’t the case for Carlisle, he made it extremely clear he wanted Edward to leave.

During the “Kill Bella?” vote, she was in favor of whatever meant Edward would stay.

Carlisle, having failed to get anywhere with talking sense into Edward, sends him home to his mother for an intervention. What happens next is that Esme gives Edward her blessing to eat the delicious girl if he wants to. Now, we can’t know specifically the talk Carlisle and Esme had before this, but I can’t imagine it was this. Also, damn, what a miscommunication.

Esme simply doesn’t have a problem with the deaths of individual humans, and she will put her loved ones above all other things, even if it’s a minor inconvenience. Keeping Bella alive only becomes her priority after Edward makes it clear he wants this.

Now, Carlisle’s standards have been worn down over the centuries, he just wants his family to try not to eat people on purpose, that’s how low the bar is. Tragically for his marriage, Esme is stumbling over said bar.

The further trouble they run into is that I don’t think they’re very compatible people.

Esme means well, but she’s peculiar, to put it extremely nicely. Her ambition in life is to LARP the human life, right down to being a master chef of something her species can’t eat, which could be sweet if she did other things. She doesn’t, the closest she gets is designing homes for her family. There’s being single-minded, and then there’s Esme, who appears to have honed herself into someone who exists only to be the housewife.

This leads to bizarre behavior - for instance in Midnight Sun when Edward has realized he’s in love, he sits around laughing to himself like a lunatic while playing the piano. Something happens with Rosalie, who runs out of the house in humiliation. Esme, responding to all this, gives her infamous “the best and brightest of us all” pep talk.

It’s just such a weird scene, even accounting for the inhumanity of Twilight vampires this is weird.

Mostly, thought, it is Esme’s interests and desires in life that I find so at odds with Carlisle’s. She wants to be an improved human, living the shinier, better, life without actually embracing the inhumanity of vampirism, while Carlisle is doing the human thing because he wants to be a doctor and save lives. Before that, he was travelling the world, living with normal vampires, using his eternity to study and pursue meaning in life. Now, they end up in the same place, with similar goals - wanting to blend in with humans - but the motivation is the polar opposite.

Which in turn means that as the world turns and their lives inevitably change, the way they live will have to change. This will spell trouble.

There’s also me having a strong suspicion these two don’t have much of a physical relationship, if any. Meyer specifically referred to their relationship as spiritual, and that fits the vibe we get from them in the books. Quite notably, Rosalie and Emmett were impossible to be around when they were newlyweds, while Carlisle and Esme weren’t a problem at all.

Not to mention what Esme longed for all those years was very much an ideal of a man, which to me doesn’t immediately point to a very physical attraction.

The Penultimate Peril

Would he cheat on her, you ask. Answer is yes, they’re both cheating emotionally with Edward. No.

He’s with her because he wants to be, and feels responsible for her. More, developing the kinds of feelings necessary for an emotional affair isn’t really on the table for him, since everyone else in the world is either a. one of his kids or the Denali, b. an unrepentant man-eating demon. So, unless Tanya’s feeling frisky, Carlisle doesn’t have anybody to cheat with.

(I’m here defining an emotional affair, which as I understand it is a bit hard to define, as a romantic, but non-physical entanglement. The cheating party has to know their partner wouldn’t be cool with it for it to count in my eyes.)

As for physically cheating on her, nope. God no, not ever. Unless something really convoluted like the plot of Blue Moon unfolded, but that’s really more a case of Esme pimping out her husband to her daughter-in-law, so everyone’s to blame here.

The end

I think the breakup can happen in any number of ways, but I think either way it will be sudden.

These two aren’t going to go “you know, I think we’ve grown apart” because Esme would never acknowledge that nevermind walk up to Carlisle and say it, and if Carlisle realized things aren’t working he’d still want to stick it out for her sake.

I think it’ll be sudden, it’ll happen as the immovable object that is them is hit by an unstoppable force. One will go someplace the other can’t follow. Maybe when the Cullen coven splits down the middle, and they’re on each their own side of the chasm, or maybe some other cause entirely.

It’ll devastate them both, but given the people these two are, I think it’s inevitable.

#carlisle cullen #esme cullen #carlisle/esme #twilight #twilight meta #twilight renaissance #hope you all think the header theme was as funny as i did #a series of unfortunate events aka-#Anonymous #ask

285 notes · View notes