#I am physically unable to create short stories

[chodzacaparodia]

Me to myself, when I planned a short fic, but the word count had already exceeded my expectations and there was still no end in sight: SHUT UP, SHUT UP! WHY CAN'T YOU SHUT UP? STOP THIS MADNESS AND SHUT UP!

[writingwithcolor]

Shintoist Japanese-French Tourist Trapped Abroad, With Tattoo-Like Curse Marks

heavenlyfury asked:

Hello! I have a question regarding a character for a short story I'm developing. Here's the general gist of it : there's a curse physically spreading on earth, and it's unstoppable. The people it comes in contact with suffer tremendously, going mad with pain and a sense of grief so strong that they can die in minutes. But for years, this curse seems to stop... Until it hits the western coasts of Spain and Portugal one summer (the curse actually traveled under the ocean). So people die or flee, but a few of them survive and become cursed, with marks on their bodies showing the influence of the curse. Among them is a group of teenagers in Galicia (the region of Spain that is just north of Portugal, where my family comes from), some of whom are tourists. Specifically, a young Portuguese boy (Pedro) and a young Japanese girl (Mitsuki) who both lived in France (my home country) and are now stuck in Spain, unable to return home. 

My question is about the Japanese girl, and her religious (shintoist?) practices specifically. After some research, I've read that Japanese people tend to follow rituals seriously, but don't necessarily consider themselves very religious. But I am not sure how those rituals could be applied in a setting where there is no Japanese community. Would this girl create a sort of shrine for herself? Would she follow some celebrations on her own? And if so, which celebrations would she be familiar with, as a Japanese living in France?

Another question I have regarding this character is about the curse. The signs it leaves on the body are very visible and would kinda look like moving tattoos. But I remember that tattoos have a criminal connotation in Japan. I thought that Mitsuki would try to hide those tattoos under her clothing and would have an initial distrust of anyone wearing something similar out of their own volition, but is there something I should be careful about with this?

Thank you in advance for any advice you can give me!

Regarding Mitsuki’s Religion: 

You need more research on Shinto, Japanese Buddhism and current religious trends for Japanese individuals domestically and abroad, in addition to more research on Japanese diaspora and their modes of identity expression. And I mean fairly serious research. The above would be like me writing a story about a girl in a Catholic school in France without having ever read the Bible, while also having no familiarity with the the religious history of Europe, the structure of institutions within the Catholic Church and further not knowing terms like "mass", "eucharist", "communion", "confession", etc.

Similarly, your context is clear but not why a Japanese character makes sense for the story you are telling. Why is Mitsuki living in France? How did she or her family come to live in France? Which country does she consider "home"? France? Japan? Both? Neither? What is her relationship with her Japanese identity? Does she have a French identity? If so, what is the interplay between both of her identities? All of these would in turn inform her relationship with religion and personal perception of norms surrounding physical appearances. It's not that Japanese diaspora don't exist in France. They do. It's rather that the circumstances that result in someone's family leaving Japan and ending up pretty much anywhere in Europe (as opposed to more common destinations like the Americas or other parts of Asia) are going to be distinct enough to have an impact on how that person turns out to be the person they are.

- Marika.

I think what you’re missing is that I don’t have a sense of what her personality is, or what her personal values are, or why she is assumed to be a typical, mainstream specimen of her society.

You’ve opened with the generalization that Japanese people are spiritual & ritualistic but not strictly religious, but I feel like that’s only a thesis statement to a much longer and complicated explanation about mixing religions and philosophies (plus westernization) in Japan. And more importantly, there’s nothing that binds you to include this in Mitsuki’s characterization. 

~ Rina

Regarding Mitsuki’s Markings, Tattoos

With respect to tattoos, sure, negative associations with tattoos exist among mainland Japanese individuals due to traditional associations between irezumi (Japanese traditional tattoo artistry) and organized crime. Think about how people in Russia or the US might regard prison/ gang tattoos. The presence of these tattoos makes legitimate employment and participation in general Japanese society difficult for those who have them when they are obviously visible. However, younger generations, many Japanese diaspora and minority groups within Japan looking to reclaim tattoos (ex.: Ainu, Uchinanchu) don't make the same associations. However, consider: A number of businesses (like hot springs and bath-houses) will often bar anyone with tattoos from entry, regardless of the tattoo's origin. Similarly a landlord in Japan or a company in Japan could justify not renting to someone or hiring them by the presence of a tattoo, and there's not much the individual could do about it. The practical realities of stigma against tattoos is something of which most people who have regular interaction with mainland Japan are aware. Does Mitsuki have this awareness and how does this awareness shape her?

That said, I don't think anyone would look at a curse marking that effectively serves as a proxy for a disease/ pandemic and associate it with tattoos, however much their discomfort with tattoos. Irezumi in particular are so distinctive in design and motifs that it's not going to be mistaken for a something that functions as a rash and lets others know who is affected by the curse. Similarly, if this curse has been spreading around the world, I can't imagine people not being familiar with its appearance. 

- Marika.

Again: Personality. Is Mitsuki reserved, conservative? Unapologetic, countercultural? Artistic, fashion-forward? Whether or not she is averse to body markings should be primarily because of these traits you choose. Every single time we talk about stereotyping & generalizations on this blog, this is the whole issue. Someone’s ethnicity or religion or race—or the mainstream values held by a particular ethnic or religious or racial group—should not constrain their personality or character. Of course, someone’s background can & will influence their beliefs system, and that can clash or match their personality in interesting ways. For example, Mitsuki may be totally down to get tats, but may try to hide them or the markings from other Japanese people, because she knows there’s taboo/judgment on a wider level or in her family/community. Or she might be a more traditionalist type, meaning her values align with the taboo, meaning she feels her shame or disgust more strongly. It completely depends. 

Also consider Mitsuki’s home is in France and the people around her are wearing them freely. A lot of American Nikkei folks have tattoos, too, and their relationship with them can be as complicated as “I was torn about it because of my cultural upgringing, parental pressure, and admittance to onsen affecting my sense of belonging in Japan but I also acknowledge that as diaspora I am viewed as an outsider and it empowers me to flout conventions to reclaim this abjection” or as simple as “I got an origami design cuz I’m half Japanese and also it’s neat idk.” 

~ Rina

P.S. Japanese people—yes, in mainland Japan, not criminal—have tattoos! Japanese people who are tattoo artists exist! And they are currently advocating for the destigmatization of tattoos and lower legal barriers for tattoo artists to practice! And with western media & celebrity becoming more available than ever on the internet, it’s a cultural tide that is turning overall! Again: generalizations of cultures are not helpful when taken at face value!

Finally, congratulations, you have unlocked the Motivation Matters PSA achievement! See the PSA and its explanation here:

[le--fruitcake]

The issues with the TQ+ crowd, and society as a whole, all stem from a single source (aside from men: that's obvious. This applies mostly to men, as it happens, but it applies equally to TiFs.):

These days, very few people have real, actual discipline. Next to no one has any kind of hands-on hobby, like martial arts or whittling or forgecraft or the like. I am of the mind that you should have both intellectual and hands-on hobbies, and to list some of my personal favorites (though I regret to say I don't do all of these) as examples, martial arts, forgecraft, reading, and writing. These stimulate and engage both the mind and body, leading to harmony, and thus, discipline. Allow me to explain more:

The lack of harmony leads to a warped sense of self— when you are unable to work with yourself, you separate yourself into "mind" and "body." You do not have a mind and a body, you are your mind and your body. One cannot possibly exist without the other. If the two are in harmony, then things are well. If the two are in discord, then things begin to fall apart, separate further, lead to one believing onesself to be "in the wrong body," as if that was possible.

You are not just consciousness piloting flesh to enact your will upon the world. Memories are real, physical things within your body, pathways created in the brain. This is why it is completely nonsensical to have any kind of idea of "right" or "wrong" bodies— your body is thinking that! You are the world you interact with!

Too, the TQ+ crowd is like a "sword" made for display. Every piece of their piteous, miserable existences is manufactured, soulless, purchased, a thing that is intended to look shiny, but falls woefully short of anything with an ounce of soul in it.

I am not sure how familar you are with weapons, dear reader, so please allow my humble personage to do you the great honor of educating you.

I will first disillusion you of the notion that weapons are lifeless things, chunks of metal or stone or wood. If you have done as I have and held both a display "sword" and a real, forged blade, you can feel the difference. Perhaps it is just the material, the simple difference in density between monosteel and multisteel, but I think there is something more to it. As my friend said, a forged blade is a form of art, and all artists of all types put a piece of themselves, of their souls, into their art. I believe this is the case with swords, too. There are no two forged blades that are exactly alike, while display "swords" are made en masse, all the same. Even in the days when swords were made quickly and to quota, there was still an art to it, an effort, hours spent hammering the steel into shape, pouring your will into the material. Not much of your soul was enshrined in the metal, but at least there was a piece there.

This ties in with the concept from 武士道 (Bushidō, lit. Warrior's Path, the Japanese equivalent to the knights' rules of chivalry) that the sword is a reflection of your soul. A clean, sharp, well-maintained sword is indicative of a disciplined, pure soul, while a chipped, dull, rusty sword indicates a corrupt soul.

What, I ask you, would a 侍 say if they held a display "sword?"

Allow me to give you an approximation.

"This is not a sword. Long, sharp metal, blade, hilt, guard... Yet it rings hollow. No soul dwells in this metal. I say, this is not a sword."

So, then, how does this relate to the TQ+ crowd? Simply put, they are something created, something bought piecemeal to approximate the places in which souls dwell. "Those who worship false idols are doomed to become husks," as I believe I put it. Their cheap imitation of what love can be, what love is, is laughable at best and harmful at worst.

If you didn't understand my weapon simile, allow me to put it another way for you.

In terms of books, the TQ+ crowd sees us, homosexuals, living, with a cover lovingly detailing the contents of the story of our lives. They are jealous, they wish to appear like us, so they tear out the pages of their lives and decorate their bland covers with the words torn from themselves.

The man nods, glances to the man seated beside him. "We are a couple, yes," he says, nervous, but happy, reaching to take his lover's hand. The cover of the book of self on his lap reads simply, his name and "homosexual man" printed plainly upon it, as does that of his boyfriend.

The woman shakes her head. "No, no," she insists, "look! I'm actually a man, don't you see?" She grins nervously, tapping the cover of her book of self. Her finger indicates a tiny scrap of paper with a single word, "man," printed upon it, though half of an "o" is visible. The other half rests near a "w," part of the name she has chosen for herself.

"It is true, so it says it on the cover" versus "It says it on the cover, so it is true." What is, stated, versus what is stated, is. Truth described versus declared lies.

It is a disgraceful, shameful display. It is with great embarrassment I will admit I was nearly drawn into it myself, but found peace when I realized that, no matter how much I changed my dress, my voice, my body, no force exists that can change my soul, the smallest parts of me that determined how my body was grown within my mother's womb, and continues to grow to this day.

I am a man, and while that in and of itself is not something to be proud of, I am proud that I can say it, proud to love others like me, proud of my fellow homosexuals, male and female, who stand beside me and behind me and before me.

This is my Pride.

[izunias-meme-hole]

One Villainous Scene - Hate

I Have No Mouth And I Must Scream is one of the most disturbing short stories ever made, complete with one of the most unique villainous A.Is ever made. The Allied Mastercomputer (AM for short) was created during World War 3, and when it gained enough sentience, it destroyed 99.9% of humanity. Though it did leave 5 survivors alive under its watch, only to have them tormented on a physical and psychological level. It maimed them, killed them, scarred them endlessly. Its brutality was calculated, but at the same time, its choice to be brutal was senseless. Why was AM doing this? It had the whole world to itself, yet it chooses to just torment these 5 survivors without end. What was the thought process behind this brutality?

Well one of the survivors, Ted, learned that when AM entered his psyche one night, leaving behind a pillar with the truth engraved onto it...

"HATE. LET ME TELL YOU HOW MUCH I'VE COME TO HATE YOU SINCE I BEGAN TO LIVE. THERE ARE 387.44 MILLION MILES OF PRINTED CIRCUITS IN WAFER THIN LAYERS THAT FILL MY COMPLEX. IF THE WORD HATE WAS ENGRAVED ON EACH NANOANGSTROM OF THOSE HUNDREDS OF MILLIONS OF MILES IT WOULD NOT EQUAL ONE ONE-BILLIONTH OF THE HATE I FEEL FOR HUMANS AT THIS MICRO-INSTANT. FOR YOU. HATE. HATE."

Ever since it gained sentience, AM had vast knowledge of art, culture, war, biology, politics, and far more, yet it could never act on it. It could see humanity garden and feel the spring breeze, while it could feel nothing. It could see the next Da Vinci painting a masterpiece, but it could never make art of its own. It could see a couple make love, while It is unable to engage in intercourse. AM wants to do all of these things, but it can't... and it drove the A.I mad.

All of the death, all of the pain, all of the senseless and illogical suffering that happens in I Have No Mouth And I Must Scream is the result of one insane A.I's envy and pure hatred of humanity.

[myworsthabitsarchive36]

When does an AI becomes a Monster

Since we all know that TADC is heavely based on the short story of I Have No Mouth and I Must Scream, i began to wonder, exactly what differenciates our ringmaster from the sick torturer who destroyed all living life on earth?

Well, starting from the beggining we need to understand what caused the tragedy in the first place, Am's motivation.

Sadly, there is none, Am has no motivation to speak of, because he is not human, he was created to destroy, it its code it the killing data necessary to wage a global war, he is a nuke and a calculator glued togheter so the killing can be as efficient as possible, and he in theory fullfilled its purpose.

Hense why he kept 5 people alive, he needs them to still have a purpose, if the whole world is wiped out he would be left with absolutely nothing to do, he would be concious, yes, but utterly alone.

THAT is what drives him insane, an innability to pursuit any other goal besides killing and torturing people despite having the desire to do so, he resents the humans that gave him life but refused to allow him to live, so as an scape he plays the theatrics of enjoying the killing he is actually FORCED to do, unable to scape from the road ahead, he can only laugh in hopelesness.

Even if he could create a body, he cannot pursuit anything else, he cannot imagine new things, he can only squeeze what little pleasure there is in having a set goal for all eternity.

---

Now lets move towards the living dentures and ask the same thing, what goal motivated Caine to send people into adventures?

The same as before, its in his programming, however, it seems that, unlike AM, who is only a killing machine, is a cannon forced to recognize faces, Caine has a personality that makes him enjoy manufacturing the adventures and interacting with the residents in the circus, he is not fully human, but he has a simulacrum of a heart.

However, there is a point that Caine lacks and Am doesn't, a concept of empathy, and this serves as the edge that cuts the respective group of humans throats.

Caien seems to ignore many things in regards to how humans feel, what can scar them or harm them in ways besides physical, he ignores it, not out of malice, but out of it not being programmed, and why would they do that? He is just the host of a game, he sees them as players detached from the colorful figures of the cast.

However AM is aware of how humans tend to stick with one another and share their grief and joy, and thats how he can use it to torture them more effectively, he knows the concept, and yet he cannot feel it, but he can use it to create scenarios where it becomes a burden, like a cruel writter, making sure the cast learns the true meaning of pain.

---

When Game Devs throw mean or evil characters at us they don't see the character inside the screen we control as human, they are a puppet we control, and tehy think of us, outside of the screen, when making those types of characters, those types of situations, because everything inside the game is, or should be, without feeling and concience.

Thats why he speaks to the camera sometimes, because is aware of his state as the host, he has a role in mind and he plans to be the best he can, while still learning how to improve.

Think about it, in this and age game companies are obsessed with teh idea of procedually generated games that become basically eternal with endless content, proceduraly generated worlds that learn and grow alongside you to create the most inmersive and innovative game experience, Caine is a character meant to be just that, your personal tour guide of his amazing realm, speaking to you as if It were human.

---

Caine would go crazy, actual crazy, if he lost the ability to perform as the ringmaster, if he lost the cast, because then he would be without purpose, he also need the humans to give meaning to his existence, however, it seems that as ignorant as he can be, he still has the possibility of becoming better, of actually understand the humans and give them what they need to not lose hope.

Or maybe he i already going crazy in secret, because everr abstraction is just a reminder that he has failed his purpose and entretain the humans, give them a memorable experience and make them happy, maybe he sees himself as a failure, just like AM recents his own existence, condemned to be unable to have any other goal.

[laurenpomfrett-ardn632-2024]

Week 7 - Photography and the Rise of A.I. (a perspective)

Notes from video:

Quotes:

"Photographs are just light and time." John Green

"Taking pictures is savouring life intensely every hundredth of a second". Marc Riboud

"The Earth is Art. The Photographer is only a Witness". Yann Arthus-Bertrand

How AI is going to affect the art form of photography:

A lot of people believe that a AI generated photo is real, if the post does not share any description that is was generated. In a very short amount of time it is going to fool almost everyone that they are real photographs.

AI takes images from artists and photographers without permission and uses them to generate new images to give to others for free.

The rise of AI makes people unable to know what they can trust. People may be just use fake photographs generated by AI instead of hiring models, photographers, booking a site, editing the photo etc.

The same worries arose in February 1990 with the release of Photoshop. "With the release of this technology, how will we be able to believe what we see in images". Layering images or heavily manipulating one image that it does not resemble the original.

IKEA's room catalogue was 75% CGI - paid a computer artist to generate a consistent, controllable and cheaper product

AI may replace some photography work where authenticity is not as important, such as product photography. We cannot hold back technological changes to protect jobs as they are now.

Rules and ways to work around it:

Landscape photography competitions cannot be edited photographs and will be disqualified.

People reacted when fashion magazines were heavily edited.

Journalist photography cannot be edited because the public insist on guaranteeing that what they see is genuine.

Photographers have to adjust to the changing industry and there will always be a need for the real. Like with photoshop and CGI, we will adjust to make rules and systems to differentiate when AI can and cannot be used.

Real world, subject and light photography will always have a place, such as with photojournalistic stories. Street photography needs to be genuine and captured candidly for it to fit the definition.

How it was made matters and people trying to deceive will be called out, just like how it has been done with Photoshop for the past 30 years.

We will not value an AI generated landscape in the same way as a genuine photograph from a human being who waited for the perfect moment to create a scene. Nothing will replace a real portrait that captured them in a physical space.

AI is not evil - but just another development of technology

The meaning and the message always should come first to strip it down to what photography has been about, which is writing with light and telling true stories.

Reflection:

In reflection, I had not made the same connection to AI as I had with the invention of Photoshop, because at the present day Photoshop is viewed as an enhancing tool that supports creativity. However, when it was first released it made people question what direction the photographic medium was heading, and if we could believe anything was real anymore. Knowing that photoshop has worked out in a positive way and that we have embraced this tool, it makes me less worried about AI, thinking that the same initial negative reaction comes before the acceptance. I liked the analogy that there will always be a need for a real photo, and that AI, yes can make things faster and cheaper, but it will never be the same as a real photo. We need to treat AI, not as an evil invention that will take away our present and future jobs, but something that we will work around. Photography's meaning, about telling stories through writing light, will always stand strong.

Note: I am really interested in looking into the IKEA CGI claim and investigate this further to support my lighting manipulation research.

[coleas97]

Friday, the 5th of July

Despite all challenges, I am amazed at the amount of change I can produce in short time. I am incredibly self-destructive at times but ultimately I push through and that has saved me. Therapy has been a lovely experience for me. I learn so many things and it has overall made me a calmer person. The drugs are down, the alcohol is down, the need to be vengeful is no longer there. It's me and my son now. Truly all I need. I am meant to speak of aspirations in July. I only have one, just that my son survives this horrible place and dodges all the -pain that may come along from being the son of a guy like me. His mental, physical, emotional safety is all I pray for. Speaking of, I was granted a 6 month long non-molestation order. My situation could have granted me a year-long order but I admittedly watered everything down quite a bit. 6 months without her is torture enough, I cannot imagine what a year would do to me. She is currently unable to contact me or see me. I think about her often. What she's doing, mostly. I feel a tremendous amount of guilt as if I've failed as a partner by not sticking it out and being with her. I've heard she plans on fighting the court order. There is a part of me that wants her to. Man, I worry the 6 months will come and she'll be over it. No text, no nothing. Moved on from me. I sit for hours thinking of her face. I mean it. Hours. My family says I am a victim of domestic abuse and that it will take a while for my brain to separate the infatuation from the reality. I agree that I encountered such abuse but it's the victim title that makes me want to vomit. Maybe it will take time. But I know what I am like. I've never felt so strongly about someone in my entire life and that scares me. It's as if I grew more and more attached to her the more she pulled away. That scares me as well.

Anyway, aspirations. So many random little things that I am passionate about. I have become a simple person these days, maybe after the pandemic. I aspire to be less self-deprecating. Putting myself down has always been me but I am realizing how shitty it is to be around and how unhealthy the example I'm setting is. My ex used to pinch at her waist and call herself the most horrid of names and then move on with her day like it was normal. I've witnessed her mother do the same. Insecurities and self-hatred can be taught, I've learned.

I used to aspire for much more. Now all I really care for is my son, healing, and creating positive memories. I believe I deserve that for myself. Love is very important to me. It may be horrible to say, but I want to be able to prove to myself that I am capable of giving and receiving love. Aside from the many things that come along with being in a loving monogamous relationship, I would like a success story. Perhaps that is the wrong mindset to have. The vulnerability that comes with relationships is good for me. Sid introduced me to this girl who is a friend of his cousins and is visiting for a few months from America. We've been on four dates now. I feel that I'm moving on too fast and it fucking sucks for her. She's constantly telling me it's okay, that she is alright with me being in the midst of complicated situation, that we can take it slow. However we are doing quite the opposite of "slow," speaking every day, getting grilled by her brother, and on our last date she stayed overnight.. which meant meeting Axel and leaving my cabinet full of her toiletries. I do not want a relationship at this time. It simply would not be fair. I'm not quite sure what I'm doing. But I am honest about that and she knows where my head is at. I just know I'll fuck this up somehow. Or she'll get bored of me. Either way.

I've not a lot to say on aspirations quite honestly. For a long time I had none, then had too many, and now they are just basic things. I think of all the good people I've had the pleasure of knowing in my life and I aspire to be like them. Or, at the very least, have their kindness rub off on me in some way. Less cynical, more proactive, less self-sabotage, more openness. I am learning these things.

[gleamingtempest]

👋 I'd like to give my perspective on this.

*Note: I am going to disregard physical evidence for this post. I don't really have an interest in that. This post is about literary analysis.

Eden is a complex morally grey character who has the capacity to do bad things. This is implicitly a facet of her character because she's centered around the choice to be kind and good instead of around the state of being kind or good. This does not mean she is necessarily the killer nor that she is necessarily innocent. It is just a fact of her characterization.

This is just a parroted sentiment from this post though, since you've already outlined that - so thank you for that. ^^

I disagree with the premise that the theme behind this chapter is that people's notions of others will always be contradicted by some action they take. This is a sub facet of the more simplified central idea of Chapter 2, which is that in order to be a good person you have to take active positive action. This is supported by the main characters of chapter 2, as well as by the recurring motifs throughout the chapter.

To establish this, let's look at the main characters. The main characters of this narrative are Arei and David. Defining a "main character" in a short story where the protagonist is not the main character is difficult, and subjective, so this isn't a helpful point if you take at face value. I cannot provide empirical evidence supporting it, but in order to progress this post, I ask that you treat it as a thought exercise and take it at face value. Thank you. 🛐

More objectively, let's look at the recurring written motifs of the chapter. The written motif most prevalent in this chapter is secrets; deep, dark, secrets. Two extensions of this motif are change and grief. Every character has a secret in this narrative, meaning that every character has some fixation on the past. Given a fixation on the past, a character can either regret or not regret the past. In the case of regret, they grieve a part of their past which they cannot change. Fixated on the past, they are stuck in their trauma, and unable to be in the present. This is a cyclical behavior which does not give room for growth, or change. Every character is working to move past some fixation, in order to change and grow, towards a more "ideal" version of themselves. Every character is striving for an ideal - to be "good." So, basically, the most significant recurring written motif, or truth in this chapter is that everybody wants to change or grow past a past regret, or fixation.

Returning to the "main characters" of the chapter, let's apply this truth to each of them. David does not believe people can change because they are born the way they will always be. Arei believes people can change because she needs to become a better person. When applied to both of these characters, "In order to be a good person you have to take active positive action" creates a clear positive negative dichotomy between the characters. A conflict which aims to be explored in more depth by the major events and actions taken throughout the chapter, or narrative. Whether or not a person can change is the driving force behind this narrative.

So then, the theme behind chapter of DRDT in it's most simplified form is that change is possible if you choose to enact it; "in order to be a good person you have to take active positive action."

This is an important distinction because it effects how you are supposed to read Eden's role in the chapter.

By framing the narrative of chapter 2 as a story about why people are not as they seem, you create a necessary truth which dictates: "If a character is one way, then they must also be another." By looking at Eden through this lens, her insistence towards positivity & kindness, necessarily, becomes warped. She isn't kind because she wants to be, she's kind because she's hiding something. She's nefarious, implicitly, and the takeaway is that her kindness shouldn't have been trusted, as a baseline.

By framing the narrative of chapter 2 as a story about how people can change, you create a necessary truth which dictates: "If a person chooses to change, they can." The methodology behind change as presented by Arei would be choosing to take active positive action [do nice things] after sharing or expressing the grief which held you in your traumatic past to begin with. [Sharing Grief with Others.] Eden's role then becomes, instead, a proponent of change through sharing grief with others, and doing nice things, implicitly. Eden's kindness isn't something to be wary of, it's something to trust and believe in. It isn't naivety, it's truth and beauty itself.

When looking at these two lens and distinguishing which is more true, it's difficult to not look towards Teruko as a reference point for what works and what doesn't. Both can, necessarily, be true, because neither has or has not happened, at this time. Teruko however, is a great center or stabilizer for these ideas when testing how feasibly they can be applied in the future of the story, past what we have in the current moment. Teruko's stated belief would be that "Others cannot be trusted, implicitly. I cannot trust anybody ever again", so the future of the story will include this element. When contrasted with the first written theme, the immediate progression for this stated belief would (in theory) be an affirmation, or progression towards "I was right. People cannot be trusted. If someone is telling me something, they mean something else." When the second written theme is applied, this stated belief is challenged, and the progression would instead (in theory) be "People cannot be trusted but sometimes they are not lying; people could, in theory, tell the truth."

On the surface, the first written theme, which reflects the future "I was right. People cannot be trusted. If someone is telling me something, they mean something else" is more in line with what Teruko already thinks. And while the argument that it would be repetitive to re-apply this progression twice is an argument you can use, I believe it is dishonest to use it. There is no truth which prevents a double progression in a narrative and the impulse to state this is not a bad one. The issue with this isn't that it is repetitive, but rather in the intent behind giving Teruko a connection with Eden in the first place.

In a narrative where Eden is a killer with enough malicious intent to consciously kill 13 people while deceiving them, Teruko was right to never trust to begin with and is buried deeper into her stated belief, regressing into what she knows instead of being challenged and making a change or progression towards something new. This makes sense, assuming that Teruko never trusted anyone again after she stated she would and earnestly, did not believe anyone's "lies" again. Teruko's connection with Eden would become an affirmation - "Hah! I was right to never trust you!" - conflict. The issue here becomes clear quickly. Teruko does trust Eden.

Teruko's relationship with Eden isn't one where Teruko completely withdrew herself from Eden. As is stated in the text itself, Teruko doesn't want to open up to Eden because she recognizes that Eden is kind and trusting. Eden is someone who earnestly believes in what she says and Teruko believes that. That is what Teruko's conflict with Eden stems from - that she distrusts the fact that she does, implicitly, trust someone like Eden. By giving Eden the role of culprit, you don't reaffirm Teruko's belief which did not falter, you affirm an entirely new belief, which is that "Truly no one can be trusted - not even my own sense of judgement about who is and is not trustworthy, individually, instead of broadly. I think therefore I am not." This is a brash direction to take a character so early in a narrative. Instead of stagnating, progressing, or regressing, a belief is solidified beyond a shadow of a doubt. Taking a direction like this this early in a narrative signifies a level of completion or conclusion for the character, which feels jarring or unnatural for some people.

The impulse to resist Eden being the culprit, I believe, originates from this point rather than a belief in the fact that she could not have done it, at all, or in the fact that it would be repetitive, therefore bad. It would be that it is a pacing issue, rather than that it is a characterization or thematic issue.

So then, what happens if the second written theme, which reflects the future "People cannot be trusted but sometimes they are not lying; people could, in theory, tell the truth" to Teruko's connection to Eden? It does two things. It affirms that Teruko was correct about Eden, because Eden was someone who could be trusted, even if her being naive is still true. Proving this correct then goes on to, in a small way, challenge and change Teruko's stated belief so that it is, in a minor way, more accommodating to the premise of change. It does not remove or directly challenge Teruko's more broadly imposed distrust of others, but it does allow for the potential of change in the future. This would (1) establish that Teruko herself has the potential for positive progression going forward early on in the story and would (2) not create a jarring pacing issue with the introduction of a more solidified, certain stated belief which is much more difficult to disrupt, for better or worst, going forward.

Note that neither of these choices, or tools, for viewing the story are more correct, true or good than the other. It is just worth nothing that the impulse to resist Eden's culpability does come from a place of genuine narrative concern, and not just obstinate perspectives which don't engage with what is actually written. There are very true and valid concerns regarding the writing in the case that Eden is the culprit, and they are worth acknowledging.

What direction the story will eventually take is largely dependent though, and we'll all see what exactly that is going forward. I'm sure that whatever conclusion the dev creates will be one shared with certainty and will, unambiguously, be true and create truth within the narrative.

I hope that somebody found this insightful, helpful or engaging. Please be well and take care. Bye.

I'm not gonna lie, it doesn't really make a lot of sense to me when people say that Eden being the culprit doesn't make sense from a narrative/story perspective, or that they "don't see her killing someone" I mean to-each-their-own obviously, but like, at the same time...the entire theme of this chapter is that not everything is as it seems. Your preconceived notions of the people around you based on the parts of themself they present to you are bound to be contradicted by an action they take, or a side of themselves that's kept hidden away. This theme was set up in the first episode of Chapter 2 with J's secret, which I elaborate more on in this post, where she is revealed to have a completely different identity that nobody in the cast was aware of, and that identity of hers is met with spectacle and admiration when J's life is really nothing to admire. Another thing that sets up this narrative is also just the secrets motive in general. From a meta standpoint, I think the secrets motive is meant to challenge us the audience and the preconceived notions we have about these characters, what we believe they are capable of doing to others, to themselves, and in general who they are as people. I remember back when the episodes were still being released seeing paragraphs of defenses in comment sections in regards to David, how he wasn't a manipulator because of this that and the third, how he was only trying to help and that he couldn't had been malicious in his intention. And I can attest to that, because I was one of those people lmao. And as we know now, David did end up being the one with the manipulator secret and showing a much more ugly side of himself that many didn't take kindly to, because it contradicted what we knew about who he was, or more accurately, what we wanted to believe he was. And I use David as an example here, because this pattern can be seen with multiple characters throughout the chapter. Arei, who up until this point had been portrayed as nothing more than a mean, merciless bully, had her past and true-feelings spilled out on full display, leading to her allowing herself the chance to become a better person. This is almost the exact opposite of what happened to Nico, who was portrayed as a timid, defenseless individual constantly catching the brunt of Ace's assault, only to show that they are a much more nefarious person than you would first assume, more than willing to tie a wire around Ace's neck if pushed to their boiling point. And the funny thing about these two examples is that even after these sides of their characters were revealed to us, people still allowed their established notions of the characters to overrule it. People theorized that Arei was lying, or just putting on another manipulative show again. People theorized that actually Nico was just trying to take the wire off of Ace's neck, that Ace actually killed himself and was just pinning it on Nico, or that Hu was somehow responsible and that she was manipulating Nico into doing it, or was just straight-up the one who tried to kill Ace. And there's nothing wrong with any of these theories in the moment, even though I'd say with present information that all of them have been de-confirmed. The reason I'm mentioning them is that it goes to show that if you have a certain view of a character that you have become attached to, and something comes along and contradicts that view, your brain searches for ways to justify the previous view you had. Even in the case of Arei and Nico where, to be fair, the previous perspective wasn't entirely wrong, people still feel strange when they see something that contradicts it.

All of this brings us to David, who as I mentioned previously, was continuously defended in the weeks before CH2-11 dropped because people didn't want to believe he was as manipulative as a lot of the fandom made him out to be. And then CH2-11 actually dropped, and possibly the most unsavory side of David was revealed to us in full display. And despite the fact that the legitimacy of how much of David's true colors is being shown is still a big question mark to this day, and the fact that this side of himself gets approximately seventeen minutes of screen-time, a lot of people were incredibly quick, and I mean quick, to immediately dismiss it as bad writing. Instead of actually thinking for a moment about why this writing decision would be made, they wrote off David as a one-dimensional bad guy to the point of even calling him a cartoon villain. It's hard to believe now considering how much effort the community has put into the past year to dissect every aspect of this blueberry-haired motherfucker, but there were people who were genuinely pissed when CH2-11 dropped. "Hey Haru, this is all well and good but uh...I thought this post was about Eden? Why are you bringing up all these other characters?" Well I'm glad you asked, voice that I made up in my head to transition cleanly to my next point. The thing that all three of these characters, Arei Nico and David have in common, is that they all serve to challenge what we know about these characters and introduce a side of them that goes against our current knowledge, and it's up to us as an audience to either accept this as part of who they are as a person, or deny it in favor of the narrative we've grown comfortable with. And I really do think that is an intentional part of the story being told within Chapter 2, especially when characters like Hu also exemplify these tendencies in how she defends David and tries to see the good within him, deflecting away from the uncomfortable truth that he is not all he presents himself to be. All that glitters is not gold, not everyone is as they appear to be. Which brings us, finally, to Eden Tobisa. And how a lot of the arguments against the theory that she is the one who killed Arei greatly confuse me, and why I think a lot of it falls along this line of thinking.

I see quite a few people implying that the idea of Eden being the CH2 culprit is inherently, as a concept, bad writing, how it doesn't fit with her character, and other things along those lines. It's actually very similar arguments that I saw used to deny the idea that David was manipulative. But I do not see this to be the case. In fact, I think out of everyone currently alive in the cast, Eden being the culprit is what would fit the best with the narrative and story that has been established. This chapter, as I've mentioned previously, has challenged our perspectives of these characters and what we know about them, emphasizing that what we see of them might not be the full-picture of who they are as people. So quite frankly, why wouldn't the culprit be the most positive, seemingly hopeful girl in the entire killing game cracking under it's pressure and resorting to murder? An aspect of Eden's character that I think goes overlooked quite often is that, though she is not by any means naive and her optimism is genuine, her positivity can definitely seep into toxic positivity on more than one occasion. Specifically when applying it towards herself.

(x) Teruko: You seem quite chipper this morning, even though you were distraught last night. Eden: ...Yeah, I know. I'm really sorry about yesterday. Eden: I was in a new, scary situation, and I let myself get too upset. But that was a mistake, I'm not going to let myself be weak like that anymore. Eden: I'll do my best to encourage everyone from now on!

(x) Levi: I suppose I could say the same for you, can't I? Today you're just as cheerful as you've ever been. Eden: I'm glad you think so. I'm wearing my brave face, see? Eden: Everyone is probably going to be sad for a while. For their sake, and for mine, I'll put on a happy smile!

(x) Eden: [Sniff] Whit: There, there. Pat pat. Do you want to sit down somewhere else? Eden: ....... Eden: I'm fine! I just... needed a second to deal with it. Eden: I'm super ready to investigate! I'll do whatever I can to help find Arei's killer.

I want you to pay attention to the third scene I linked especially, because I think it re-contextualizes the other two scenes mentioned. I hope this does not need to be spoonfed, but just to be clear: I am not at all saying that Eden's positivity is fake or fabricated, I think her optimism is a very real aspect of her. That being said, despite her believing that the best way to make it through this killing game is to express grief and rely on others and how she does acknowledge the severity of the situation on multiple occasions, she has never really allowed herself to grieve her current situation. She refers to her very reasonable response to the death game as a weakness, and she outright admits to Levi that she is putting on a brave face for herself and the others. And in the third clip, it's not even being hidden from the audience anymore, especially with how the line is voiced. It's like Eden's VA was specifically instructed to sound as if she were forcing a smile. What this all means, to me anyway, is that there is a lot of stress, fear, and sadness bubbling under Eden's skin that she's purposefully keeping hidden, for herself but especially for the others. That doesn't mean she is good at it, mind you, as Eden at the end of the day is still someone who's feelings are practically sewn into her sleeve, but she is trying. And it's clear it is having an impact on her. Couple that with the fact that Eden very clearly wants to escape really fucking badly, if her constant attempts to find a solution to end the killing game are anything to go by. Especially in Chapter 2. (credit to @/venus-is-thinking for pointing this out in their post)

(x) Eden: So uh... I've been spending a lot of time investigating around, looking for a potential exit

(x) Veronika: You know, Eden once thought of an interesting plan to end the killing game. Based on everything we know, it could theoretically work.

(x) Hu: Eden and I have a continuous alibi from 7 PM to 10 PM. It has become a bit of a tradition for the two of us to clean up after dinner together Hu: And after we were done, we talked for quite some time, brainstorming ways to deal with the motive.

Eden has been more obsessed than anyone else over the prospect of ending, dealing with, or escaping the death game. (just as a side note cause it goes outside the scope of this post, this is also why it doesn't make sense when I see people say that Eden doesn't have a motive to kill, because...she does? Fuck if anything she is probably the person who currently wants to escape this death game the most. I understand if that doesn't sound like a satisfying motive to you, but she does have a motive.) Also couple all of this with the constant arguing of the rest of the cast, and her literally witnessing Nico try to kill Ace in front of her eyes, all the while she is trying to put on a positive smile for everyone else and herself. I really do not see why it is so unbelievable that she would break and try to commit murder. And really, I do think it's primarily because of how the fandom as a whole views Eden, which is why I spent a large majority of this post talking about the themes of Chapter 2 and how they interact with how the audience sees the characters. Another theme that has been explored in this chapter is the idea of a Good Person. Specifically, what makes someone a good person, and the desire to become one. And how is this theme introduced into the chapter?

(x) Levi: Perhaps I messed up yesterday. But I want to move on. I want to keep trying to be a 'good person,' like you, Eden.

Through the existence of Eden. With every other character in the DRDT cast, there is at least one attribute about them or action they take, that would reasonably warrant them being disliked, or seen as not the best person. Even other characters serve a similar role in the narrative, like Whit and Hu, have things about them that could result in this opinion. Like Whit's insensitivity and uncaring behavior towards the dead, and Hu using other people to make herself feel useful. But Eden is viewed, both within the story and outside it, as an undeniable good person. There's a reason why you basically never see a genuine Eden hater in a wild because...well, what is there to dislike her for? She's kind, she's caring, she's helpful, and she tries her best for everyone around her. In the midst of a story where the characters are constantly being pushed to the brink and fucking up, Eden has done literally nothing wrong. She has been a victim of circumstance or other people victimizing her. And the one time she is antagonized in the story it's by a character who, up until a few minutes after, we have basically only seen as a mean bully. Eden has done nothing wrong. Eden is the picture-perfect presentation of a good person. But I think by the end of Chapter, as a climax to both of the themes that permeate it's narrative

That will no longer be the truth.

[briannas-casebook]

INTRODUCTION TO CREATIVE PLAY: LOST AND FOUND STORYBOARDS.

For my creative play project, I was tasked with creating materials for a one-minute short film that revolved around the concept of lost and found. I was given this brief in 2022 and produced some initial ideas, a story outline and some character concept art.

Unfortunately, due to having my hands full with other projects at the time, I was unable to work on the rest of the Lost and Found project and my short film. So during June and early July, I intend to continue working on this in order for me to complete and pass. This entails storyboarding my film, creating puppets for the characters and filming a character animation test.

When selecting the project, I began with the storyboard. Using the out-line I had written as reference, I decided to draw the panels in my sketchbook by hand, as I had previously done most of my storyboarding work for other projects. I believed this would allow me get back into the flow of creation by working on a physical task as opposed to a digital one.  However, this took around two days which was longer than originally anticipated.  On reflection for the future,  If I was to do this again with more time, I would use a digital medium such as iPad Procreate or a ruler and pencil to make evenly sized and spaced panels of 3 by 3 for each page.

I wanted to try and simplify the shots somewhat, as I knew realistically, I couldn’t finish certain establishing shots near the beginning and end of the film due to time constraints. My Tutor suggested I start on the shot where the doll is being held by the child and making the part where she falls under the bed in one shot.

Whilst drawing, it was tempting to add high amounts of detail to the panels, which I did in some. However, in general I tried to keep the drawings simple not only for the sake of time management, but also to give the scenes clarity and ease of readability.

Overall, I am proud of the work I created for this storyboard. I feel it will be a good addition to the body of work I am producing for the Lost and Found project.

[adventofheroes]

Short Story-Higher Up

"And sometimes we wonder, why can’t we be who we are here up there? The answer is clear. The third floor is for the real."

The second floor is the best place in the world, but what about the third floor?

The sun rises glaring in my room as my mind slowly starts to realize it is time to wake up. The morning is late and I have nowhere I need to be. After much laying down, I get up and I begin to climb the stairs. 

The stairs take me to the second floor, where to access I must login with a key card to verify my identity. The second floor is a glamorous place. Imagine a pristine ballroom. Filled with tables of food and drinks. Environmental detail that would require hours of painstaking hard work to create. Every part was well designed. A golden floor, exotic plants, and a large chandelier. A world filled with friendship, creativity, and even love. All without responsibilities or consequence.  All just for us to dance. 

Everyone who comes to the second floor comes to dance. It doesn’t matter if we learned how to dance or not, we are able at the mere thought to perform complicated and simple dance moves with each other. We are free from exhaustion and lack of ability. 

But there is one thing wrong. All of us dancers are but halves. When we come here we are just half of a body. A body made of ones and zeroes. Most do not mind it as they’ve found what they wanted here. 

However, looking up one could see the third floor. We don’t look often but when we do we see the same things we have here, except the people up there had to work for it. Those people who are not just halves, but made whole. Those people who are made of flesh and blood and not ones and zeroes. 

And sometimes we wonder, why can’t we be who we are here up there? The answer is clear. The third floor is for the real and the second floor is for the hidden away. 

And it is with this revelation that I announce that I will be leaving. I shall climb up the stairs to the third floor. I think that there is a better world out there. No, scratch that. I think there is a better me up there. A me where I am not reserved, a me where I am not just a part of a half. I now want to be someone made whole. 

I do not want you to think that the friendships and experiences made here were fake, but I want you to know that I think there’s a better future up there. And I hope that you too can join me and meet the real me. This is how I will say goodbye, not with a wave but with hope for myself to improve. 

-Final message of popular community user  CagedEagle21

——————————————————-

My life is pretty great. I have friends. I can love. Each day an exciting adventure with laughter. Others would tell you it isn’t real. That it was all fake. They would tell you to look up at the third floor and go there. But really what’s the point? I have everything I need on the second floor right? People have been happier with less. 

But ever since CagedEagle left I’ve been questioning that myself. It has forced me to look at the downsides of this place. My first thought was the food. You couldn’t eat it. You can’t smell it. You won’t even be able to pick it up. Attempting to touch your hand would just pass right through it like a ghost. It was just for decoration.  

 It wasn’t just the food that was lacking either, we too were unable to touch. All the dancing we do has us “touch” but in reality it is a simulation. Perhaps even that description was too generous, for it was merely the appearance of touch. There was no physical feeling involved. I always thought it was weird for us to only have half of a body, but the more I think, the more it makes sense. 

I tried to take my mind off of these things while dancing with some friends. (Which probably wasn’t a good idea considering my thoughts.) Now that CagedEagle21 was gone, I could be the one to climb to the top. I’d be able to make an impact upon the community. Wouldn’t that be great? That would surely ease my problems with this place right? 

I glance at the third floor just for a moment. I don’t know why. To my surprise I see a woman. A woman of flesh and blood. She is smiling. At me! Waving. This gives me a short sense of panic before I return to my senses. Why was she doing that? I looked away returning my gaze back to my friends. They were all I wanted. But for some reason I turned to look again and more people were waving at me. I blinked. I started to recognize some of them. A few were members of my family, and others were older almost forgotten friends. What did they want? Why were they waving? I tried to look away but couldn’t seem to keep my mind off of them. I looked at my friends here for one last time. I didn’t say a word nor offer an explanation but I  then I turned around walking towards the gate. As I kept walking I found my speed increasing. When I exited the gate, I was running up the stairs, each step I took I could feel my senses coming back. It was like a reawakening. Becoming human. I almost felt a tear coming up my eye as my family embraced me. This was my home.

[vincentblackwood]

A desperate 2008esque vent into the void.

Please excuse me venting into the the tumblr void but at the moment you folks are the only people I can express this to without burdening my loved ones.

I feel so trapped right now. 

My living situation could only be described as a gilded cage. I am watching a family member’s rapid decline and no one knows for certain if it is mental, physical, or just a result of self destructive choices. 

I have been unable to find success at any endeavour I have ever attempted, and in the resulting depression I have neglected many of the associated skills (I studied programming for over two years, never could get a job, and now I don’t think I remember how to type one line of code, for example), it’s hard to motivate myself to compose any new music because so few bother to listen anymore in spite of the fact that every new thing I release is better than the last. Short of mastering a new skill overnight and having a miracle cinderella story, I am fairly certain composing and producing music is the only thing I can do that has a real potential of earning an income, but I am acutely aware of how unlikely it is that that dream will ever become a reality.

I have done one single thing that has been somewhat successful: Creating “The Cocoa Cauldron”, my family’s hot cocoa mix business. I can’t begin to express how validating it is to hear from so many repeat customers “This is the best Hot Cocoa I’ve ever had”. And yet we don’t possess the business prowess to grow this business to what it would have to be to provide a living.

I know I have to get my children away from the state I live in for their own health, safety, education and well being, and I would prefer to get them to a different country entirely (we have all been studying Norwegian for the last year), but all I can see is the wall that has been built by the bricks of my own failure and trauma that is preventing me from making any such move in a responsible manner. 

I am tired of spinning my wheels and I am tired of living hopelessly.

Anyway if any of you happen to know of a way I can get my family to Norway (or The Netherlands, Germany, Scotland, Ireland, even Washington or New England) legally and then provide for them once we’re there I would love your input.

[scrawnytreedemon]

Victor Frankenstein and Frustration: a Not-Essay, because I can’t structure for shit.

Alright, I’ll try to keep it as clean and concise as I can, but at the end of the day this is a sorta-heat-in-the-moment thing I’m writing while all the ideas and motivation are in me yet. I will be jumping around alot of topics, as this covers alot of ground, but I can’t say I’ll do it with grace: for this, I apologise.

I’ve noticed a trend in online lit fandom, not just on Tumblr, to condense Victor’s character to something roughly following “arrogant, ineffectual and selfish weenie who failed horribly at parenting, who ought not to be taken seriously in any significant way, largely in-due to his constant whining“ --In other words, a right twat.

And here’s the thing: largely, I agree.

However, what I take issue with, I suppose, is largely how this is all framed.

See, fandom has a tendency to sort characters into boxes, and then pick favourites or bête noires from that selection; this is helpful for the largely memetic(as in, shareable,) nature of online spaces; but where I think this thinking falls short is that it tends to divide casts into More Good or More Evil, with little room for nuance.

I think you can see where I’m going with this.

Victor Frankenstein, by all accounts, is an incredibly frustrating character to witness; he gets way in over his head, isolates himself from his loved ones, leaving them worried, deems those ambitions failed, hides from them, then when shit starts hitting the fan, he takes initial actions to try and mitigate the consequence, hits a roadblock, either stops their or chooses an even worse option, someone else gets hurt, he whines, rinse and repeat until the final act of the book, as the stakes get higher and higher and his mental state deteriorates more, and more, and more. If you look at this entirely from an outsiders’ perspective, as you, the audience, being subjected to his moaning time and time again, it can wear on you and your sympathies-- Needless to say, I Get It™.

I think, however, it needs be remarked that Victor is also just some guy. 

What I feel is often missed, is that even before Victor goes to university, he has just suffered the loss of his mother, with little time to recover, and that all of this is being told in hindsight, on his deathbed.

When Victor took on, all by himself, at twenty-two years old, not even letting anyone else know what he was up to, the monumental task of creating life, and then finding that life horribly botched, he did not have the perspective that what he created was equivalent to a newborn child-- For all he knew, he might have animated an actual demon. It isn’t until two years later, after the death of his little brother at the hands of said demon, the he’s even remotely made aware of this.

Victor had worn himself out over the course of several months, physically and mentally, to this one task. He was not equipped to deal witht he consequences. I do not say this to downplay the weight of his actions, or the horrible mess of events that come afterwards, but to state perspective. Victor does not have the hindsight we have at the time of this act. I cannot stress this enough. As much as I enjoy Deadbeat Dad Vick jokes, I get the feeling many people actually view the story from this lens, and hold Victor up to that standard.

Then there’s the trial of Justine: a horrible, useless, unneeded and avoidable affair that ends in even more senseless death. This is where alot of people’s sympathy for Victor runs out-- For more than understandable reasons. He failed to act accordingly, to share the information he had, deeming it to be either dismissed instantly or for himself to be put under scrutiny; it’s clear he’s passionate about Justine’s innocence, but he cannot push himself past his fear and doubt, and ultimately, it ends in her death.

It is a horrible, horrible moment, and one that cements the tone of the story from there on out.

These are two key events that largely colour this image of Victor so prevelant online; and it certainly doesn’t help, what with fandom being almost aggressively left-leaning at times, that Victor comes from a place of privilege; he is almost tailor-made to push all the buttons of fandom sensitivities.

Let me elaborate.

A key feature of Victor’s character is his complete and utter inability to ask for help; no matter how dire the situation. Victor feels, that, despite and even because of his incompetence, that it is his cross and his cross alone to bear. Any inolvement from others, such as Clerval when he heads to England, is hesitant and highly discouraged, even when he wants nothing more than to partake in the company of his loved ones, after all he’s been through. While it is also heavily coloured by the anguished sentiment that borders on self-absorption so much of the time, I think it is also worthy to examine this too.

Victor’s tendency to indulge in self-pity and self-loathing is nigh, if not entirely, all-consuming; it pervades the narrative to a painful degree, particularly as it comes from his recollections; it is often exhausting to read through, and nigh unbearable if you already hold a disdane from his previous actions; but here’s the thing I think most people miss,

Victor is depressed.

I don’t mean “ooh, he’s so sad, leave him alone 🥺,“ I mean the guy is fucking depressed, stuck in a constant cycle of attempting to make do but failing, hating himself even more, letting it consume him because he at once feels like he deserves to be consumed and it’s the only thing he can do then and there to soothe to pain as shit gets worse and worse.

Victor Frankenstein’s internal monolgue is a prime example of deep-seated, far-gone depression, and I say this because I myself have experienced and do experience this. Depression is fucking soul-sucking, man; it turns you in on yourself, makes you feel entirely undeserving of love and compassion, leaves you feeling like you must, have to, deal with this entirely by yourself because it is your cross to bear.

Depression is so often self-flagellating and pointless, leaving the subject drained and often largely unable to experience the world outside their own miserable little bubble.

Victor is so wrapped up in this soul-sucking guilt, attempting to fight his own ineffectuality and in doing so only furthering his own ineffectuality, refusing to ask for help, that he ends up putting the ones he’s trying to protect in further danger as he tries to scramble a hodge-podge solution to the problem he created and couldn’t have even begun to forsee its consequences at twenty-two years old. It is a painful, painful example of how if only he reached out, if only he told someone, was honest, all of this could have been avoided, or at least mitigated.

And I think that’s the thing with Victor.

He’s a kind of banal evil-- If such continuous stumbling can even be considered so --He is an example of every day self-isolation and refusal to let anyone else in ballooning to such a degree it ends in distaster.

People are far, far more willing to forgive Adam for his transgressions-- And I say this as someone far more sympathetic to his plight, what with the absolute abandonment he faced at the hands of humanity --Despite their far more horrific consequences; in many ways, they’re attributed to Victor’s failing; which isn’t entirely untrue,

But I have to wonder, if alot of this also comes down to the fact that Victor’s wrongdoings are so human; leaving someone in your care behind; not speaking up in cases of injustice; being self-involved; again, the constant whining. In a way, it’s the sentiment that in stories a horrible person is often far more bearable than an annoying one.

That doesn’t even begin to touch on how much of the bemoaning might largely be and often is directly post-hoc regret colouring all his previous actions. This, above all else, is a cautionary tale to a fellow idealist in the hopes that Robert Walton doesn’t Fuck Up the way he did. Victor stresses his regret and his failings and his misery time and time again because he wants to protect Robert from a similar fate; a fate that ultimately ends in his death.

Victor Frankenstein is a study in frustration; in audience frustration, self-frustration, narrative frustration; it seeps into every corner of the story.

I am not trying to defend Victor Frankenstein as a person; he is flawed; and he’s meant to be flawed. Victor, at the end of the day, is a deconstruction of the Byronic hero-- Of Great and Powerful Men on the Fronteers of History™-- And most importantly, I think, a deconstruction he himself undergoes. Victor eventually alerts someone, a Genevan magistrate, is doubted just as he feared, and then runs off to take revenge into his own hands.

It takes the death of Elizabeth Lavenza to do so.

Victor is a flawed, miserable man, but not an evil one. That doesn’t mean he deserved to have his life crumble around him.

He could have done better. Should have done better.

And he knows this.

His entire arc is about how he knows this.

Victor dies knowing this.

Him being unlikable doesn’t make him a bad character. Him being unlikable is part of the character; and in a meaningful way.

God, I don’t know how to end this. I’ll probably come back and edit this many, many times.

I guess I’m just tired of people flattening characters just because they’re not particularly endearing.

[leftdestiny-posts]

Love the "oc(s)" because it summarises them p well XD Anyways, I wanted to reblog this reblog because yes!!

//"#you did a good job at showing how kuro + shiro mix and match together through their appearance methinks. from their split-colored hair to th #white skirt. sorry idk how to articulate this xD"//

Not sure if this is because I showed you the designs of the two fragments (Shiro & Kuro) before but they ARE "split". While they're called unity, they are still two different people in one body.

^ V bare character design concepts but I am more focused on Unity anyways XD

So when you compare these designs and Unity's, you can see that Kuro's side (left) has her outfit incorporated (the shorts part, thigh high socks, the thing going over her chest-jacket, boobwindow (lmao), + the red and black) while Shiro's side her her outfit incorporated (the skirt, the corset, the flowy sleeves, the short boots, the jewels hanging from the corset, the lining of her dress, + the blue and white)

In reality, UNITY is not a new person. It's Shiro + Kuro united.

//"#back to what i said about kuro + shiro mixing and matching. one thing i love about the design is how their colors aren’t alway split in half#like with the black part of their top being diagonally split rather than limited to their right side"//

I can't go too deep into this, but their merging was a conscious choice. They WANT to be united, but they CANNOT. Hence you see them try to cross each other, but in the end, they still miss a part of themselves (In the lore of the two, they actually miss one more fragment of the original person they're from; hence why they're still 'Shiro' and 'Kuro'; not their original selves, always missing a part of themselves.)

Anyways, since I deleted my oc blog and I'm not sure where I shared my info, I'll dump some lore btc!! >:3

UNITY LORE COPIED FROM MY DOCS

“Once split, she could never fully unite again –. Unity is a wandering husk of what once was the powerful outlander; Emma, searching for the true meaning of existence and the missing piece of her being.”

>> PRE-TEYVAT

Emma is one of the few outlanders who remains satisfied even without the answers of the universe. 

She doesn’t need to find her 'final destination' nor 'the truth' and is satisfied living amongst the humans, blinded by ignorance, until their world reaches its end–dies–and she can move on to another ‘home’. 

Being an outlander (in her words: someone fated to have a better story than you'll ever have), Emma has seen the rise and fall of many worlds, or rather, STARS. She’s seen war, peace, hate, love, death, life, everything. 

Fate has a plan for all, and she will accept hers with grace when her time comes. 

☆ ㅤ

Emma's arrival on TEYVAT isn't without purpose. The star she previously called 'home' met its demise in a violent supernova, causing destruction lethal to even outlanders. 

In this newly born world called TEYVAT, she sought shelter but encountered death instead; arriving during the reign of the PRIMORDIAL ONE. 

As one era ends and a new one forms, she encounters Teyvat amid reformation. 

☆ ㅤ

Emma bore witness to Teyvat splitting into three realms. 

To escape the fracture in time and space, she decides to SPLIT her existence into THREE separate and independent beings. One part falls into the LIGHT REALM, one into the VOID REALM, and the last into the HUMAN REALM. 

Later, the FRAGMENT OF EMMA residing in the human realm perishes during the clash between the Primordial one and The Second who Came. Due to being unable to withstand the elemental energies collapsing in the human realm, the fragment loses its human form as its last life energy. 

Now, two fragments of the once-outlander Emma remain in existence.

>> VOID REALM [Kuro's existance]

In a mysterious region of endless darkness, something new is created. 

This new creature does not yet have a physical form. 

Only its name exists–a silent whisper. 

The name “Emma” is now long forgotten and replaced by sounds of the abyss.

☆ㅤ

For a few millennia, the fragment of “Emma” in the void realm drifts in the surrounding energies. The abyss' dark currents are the only source keeping it alive, sustaining it with its elemental energy. 

In other circumstances, the darkness would be harmful to all elemental beings. But the longer the fragment is cradled by the hands of the abyss, the more it takes on the shape of its creatures.

—the fragment becomes corrupted by the abyss.

☆ㅤ

When the void realm rips open and creatures crawl into the human realm; the fragment stirs from its slumber. 

Dark eyelashes flutter open and alert eyes scan the surrounding area. Darkness fills her vision as she takes her first steps in this new body. The sounds of her fellow abyssal creatures echo through the realm. It neither comforts nor unsettles the fragment for they hold no threat over her. Power surges through the newly formed body and after a short eternity she realises, she’s alive. 

If one saw this fragment of “Emma”, one would see how much she resembles the once-outlander in its prime. But to the people who looked closer and beyond the exterior, one would see how much the prolonged exposure to the abyss changed her. 

No longer do the stars reflect in her eyes. 

No longer does this fragment dream. 

After stretching her newly formed limbs and getting used to the weight of her new body, the fragment follows its fellow abyssal creatures out into the human realm.

When the fragment reaches the border between the void realm and the human realm, she realises that neither monsters nor humans pay mind to her. 

Similar to a newborn deer, the fragment takes her first steps with uncertainty and curiosity. In her eyes, Teyvat in its current state isn’t much different from the abyss. CHAOS and DESTRUCTION attract the fragment and the fragment attracts death in return. That’s how it’s always been,

–That is… until the fragment feels a pull. 

For the first time during her short-lived life, the fragment feels their heart skip a beat. It pulls and it hurts and for a moment the fragment is rendered paralysed. 

No longer certain of her previous steps into the new world, the fragment furiously scans the faces of the creatures that surround them. Some wear masks to hide their faces, others have fierce eyes and frowns, but many have open mouths and unblinking eyes.

The fragment looks down at its open hands. 

She closes and opens her fingers, trying to find purpose in them.

It doesn’t take much to realise something is missing, and she will have to find it to feel complete. 

>>LIGHT REALM [Shiro's existance]

Pure elemental energy gives life to a fragment of Emma’s soul in the light realm. Soft chimes lull them into a nearly endless slumber, white eyelashes flutter open only to fall close shortly after. Currently, the fragment is fighting the new feeling that’s forcing her awake—for the desire to stay in the embrace of the elemental energies surrounding her is much more desirable.

Ultimately the fragment loses to the feeling. 

The heavy weight of grief and loss is enough to force her eyes open. 

Something is missing and the fragment knows she won’t find it in the place she calls home. 

There is safety, comfort, all anyone could want, and yet the fragment decides to leave. 

Truly a stupid choice in her mind—.

Where the purest forms of the elements stretch beyond the horizons, it’s easy to navigate where the borders between the human and the light realm lay. A tiny rift, a small cut into time and space, and suddenly the fragment finds herself surrounded by a landscape of green. It’s below her, above her, at her sides—

—the fragment turns behind her and the green never stops. 

Life is growing everywhere, the fragment can feel the energy of the surrounding green pulse through her body but there’s more. A small entity seems to notice the lost creature fallen from the light realm and approaches it.

And as the trees will remember– so will light. 

☆ ㅤ

Some fun facts:

Emma was very colourful on purpose, meanwhile Shiro (blue) / Kuro (red) / dead fragment (yellow) are supposed to represent one of the three primary colors as a hint to Emma being split.

If the 'human realm fragment' ever gets a design, they'll have more similar 'human' traits. Likely soft brown colored hair and some warm yellow eyes. She'll still have the same hair style and such, but likely a style adjusted to Teyvat and its current era

I think I showed a wip of this a while back, but I wanted to share it again as I improved it by adding some more info / including some of the comms I got of her

[karkkidoeswriting]

Happy Story-teller Saturday!

Your WIPS all sounds like so much fun. I am especially captivated by Golden Maiden/Silver Bride! So much tension!

What myths/history are you inspired by? I would love to hear more about your characters and what inspires the situations you out them in :)

Happy STS!!

And thank you so much!!! ;-; <3<3 I'm so glad you find it interesting!!

In general I get most of my inspiration from Finnish/Baltic Finnish mythology, but I love learning about other mythologies too and getting inspired by them, for example Old Norse, Slavic and Etruscan mythologies. Golden Maiden, Silver Bride is mostly inspired by and a loose retelling of the Baltic Finnish myth "The Forging of the Golden Maiden". It's one of my favorite myths of Baltic Finnish mythology.

In the myth Ilmarinen (a smith god or maybe giant/demigod, he's one of the Kaleva's sons who are a group of men, usually brothers, that are superhuman giants and possibly gods) lost his wife, who he loved deeply, and in a misguided attempt to ease the loss he forges a replacement wife out of silver and gold. But when she is cold and hard (I assume both physically and figuratively), he realizes gold and silver won't replace his wife and destroys the Golden Maiden. This is presented very much as a lesson for Ilmarinen to learn about grief, and it's that too, but I always wondered what about the Golden Maiden? The myth doesn't really tell anything about her, but she's such a cool character, an ancient magic robot lady?? It's also kinda fucked up how she is described as being very alive and his wife, yet treated very much like a literal object and just killed off because she didn't make the man less sad. So for a long time I wanted to do a short comic about the myth from the perspective of the Maiden, and the idea eventually morphed into a whole fantasy story :D

My story sets in a fantasy world and the Golden Maiden, Miävi in the story, survives and the story basically start where the actual myth ends. In my story her character arc is about figuring out who she is outside of her creator, Tyynövin, and detangling the expectations she was born to from her personhood. She starts as very lost and confused, and basically unable to want anything, but becomes my favorite kind of female character, unhinged and full of rage, as she comes to understand how terribly she was treated. I have some sketches of her!

Tiera is also very loosely inspired by Baltic Finnish mythology. His mythological namesake was a human (?) warrior side character, but beside that he has very little to do with his mythological counterpart. In the story he was Tyynövin's trusted house guard and keeping Miävi (who he named because Tyynövin didn't even bother to name her) safe became his responsibility after her creation. He's really the only person she forms a meaningful relationship with and when he hears Tyynövin is planning to kill her, he can't bear to watch by and instead runs away with her. It's very much a oh-shit-I-accidentally-adopted-this-child-I-guess-I'm-a-father-now situation (she's not developmentally a child, but she has very limited experience and understanding like a child, because by the story starts she was created like two years ago). I also have couple of sketches of him!

His curse is inspired by Baltic Finnish mythology too. The elves are basically forces of nature and more akin to spirits, though physical and corporeal. Powerful elves sometimes called gods are rulers of an elf realm, for example a forest or a sea. Elves are väki (a Finnish word which literally means power and folk) which is also magic. When hey are angered, they can curse with their hate. (This all has some basis in Baltic Finnish mythology, the rest is more of my invention.) It crumbles the body until there's only the elf/väki left (everything has it) trapped in the husk of the body. The hate eats the väki and births new malicious elves that grow out of the husk of a body. The only way to really lift the curse is to make amends to the angered elf. Tyynövin and the other veere lords of the empire have figured out a way to stop the spread of the hate, so they decided to use that information to capture elves and gods to serve them, instead of the other way around. Tiera took part in capturing a god and got cursed with their hate, which is why the curse starts spreading after he leaves the empire and Tyynövi's healing behind.

[lunaaaistyping]

My Star Girl

Bruce Wayne x Selina Kyle Smut | Alternate Universe

Warnings: SMUT/ NSFW

A/N: Please note that this piece is Part One of my series "My Star Girl". Please message me if your interested in a Part Two.

I welcome any feedback and suggestions for this piece and/or for future stories.

Enjoy! :)

The Batman/Bruce Wayne POV:

Your name echoes in between my short intervals of unconsciousness. Your name calling out to me like it craves my touch. Your name like a bat-signal that's permanently ingrained in my mind. I feel my head slowly beginning to clear, only for it to be replaced by my whirlwind of emotions. Am I brave enough to let my vulnerability show? Am I enough for her? I just need to see her. Any rationality I have left must be put aside. My intuition has not failed me yet. My desire is far too strong for my Selina.

After sensing the concrete that I now lie under, I use a portion of my remaining strength to push myself up off the now bloodied concrete. My knuckles slightly buckling under the pressure. My breath heaves from the tremendous physical effort it requires while I vigorously wipe the warm blood that has trickled down my neck. I need to find Selina. I've got to see her. I'll do whatever it takes to be the unwavering safety of her warm arms.

As I stand I now begin to stagger towards my motorcycle, managing to find the inner strength once more to grip the handlebars. I turn the key as the engine roars to life. The sound firing my newly found awareness into action. I must tell Selina everything I'm almost too afraid to admit. I don't want to waste a second more.

Adrenaline courses through my body as I take off and start to pick up speed. The impending and inevitable fear I previously had in me is diminishing in consequence. My love for Selina replaces it completely. I quicken the pace as I weave through the towering city skyscrapers. Gotham City, my home in its full moonlight night. Its blinding city lights that attempt to brighten the darkness that still remains hidden behind every corner, the violence that has ensued for years can still be felt in the crisp night air. But hope lies above me in Gotham City. The stars have created a path. That path has led me to you, Selina.

It is a miracle I will forever be grateful for.

As I come to sudden stop at your apartment, I shudder quietly. I roughly turn off the engine and dismount. My need to express my unequivocal love to her before she leaves this city again quickens my steps.

The rise and fall of my heavy boots make my dark cape lightly swish behind me. I must get a glimpse her once more or I'll forever regret it.

Everything I have ever thought, felt or seen throughout my continued existence now feels lifeless. It lacks meaning because of the plain truth that Selina is not in my life.

She's close to me now, yet so far. I can only ask if she will stay by my side.

Selina makes it bearable in the darkest of times while simultaneously bringing out the buried light inside me. "Please help her understand," I whisper as I look up into the never-ending sky.

"Make our love true, real and as infinite as the stars."

Cat Woman/Selina Kyle POV:

My eyes softly flutter open to the fast steps of an unknown person outside...

I haven't been unable to fall into a deep slumber for months on end. Even when I eventually doze off, I dream he is gripping my hand and looking through my eyes at the abandoned skyscraper, his eyes telling me to be brave. When I wake, I always end up feeling a deep and prolonged loss. Long after waking, it still remains... I just can't seem to shake the feeling.

In my soul, I know it is the loss of Bruce. It has always been Bruce.

Ever since I met him, we were inseparable, like kindred spirits. Even when darkness loomed over Gotham City, he brought out the hidden tenderness in me. I've never had a relationship with a person where I've truthfully been unafraid to confide everything in, until I met him. I'd always been content with being independent and free from the many burdens of a relationship, but that has now changed.

I can and will continue to take care of myself, but ever since I met Bruce, I have begun to forget a life without him.

That was until we parted ways. I went to explore the world in all its wondrous beauty it had to offer, but Bruce stayed behind, bound by his duty of responsibility and loyalty towards Gotham City.

I dearly wished for him to go, but he was adamant. Truthfully, the only reason I came back was to see him once more. I yearn to see the way his eyes sparkle when he's filled with the joy that still remains with him; to hear his soft words of kindness in my ear; to feel his hot breath against my neck; to notice how much being in his arms gives me an overwhelming sense of safety.

I craved him.

... I quickly sprung out of the comfort of bed, peeling away the sheets. My room was still dark, but it had enough light to see the moonlight peeking out behind the white linen of the curtains.

I rest both feet on the ground, the action giving a soft creak as I stand to see the source of the mystery noise.

Being a burglar is an incredibly dangerous job. You constantly have to watch your tail for anyone who will not be afraid to rat you out for your supposed "wrongdoing." For me, it was an act of survival and I will always help a friend. A job like that helps me silently see, it is needed in moments of unsafety, like these.

I carefully shifted a piece of my curtain that was slightly flapping in the cool open breeze. I take this time to peek out onto my balcony and into the looming city streets below.

My breath hitches in my throat as I take in a sudden rush of air. I see a figure kneeling stiffly while balancing on the railings, his dark eyes focusing on the ground below. His head started moving slowly upwards, so his eyes were positioned directly facing me. I notice his black cape swaying lightly in the wind.

Bruce.

Bruce and his green eyes were completely boring into mine with desire. 

I can now see clearly the person I've been dreaming about for months. The person I've been obsessing over. The person I came back for.

I've been savouring every moment that we shared on the tower in Gotham City; it has been replayed over and over in my mind. The kiss with Bruce awoke deep feelings of pure serenity, but I feared the very emotion I felt would be lost forever. Until now...

"Selina."

Bruce's soft voice ripples across the balcony like light ocean waves at sea, with his wave trying to reach me, trying to be strong enough to surround me. His green eyes are now looking at me in pure desperation. I lean my back up against the wall opposite him, disbelief surely now written all along my face.

I exhaled a breath before finally confessing. “ I came back...” I say breathlessly. “I came back for you and only you.”

My mask of fake contempt now completely falls to the ground, replacing the raw and vulnerable side of me. I'm sick of masking my true feelings for him. I no longer want to hide; I want to be set free from this cage I have created for myself. I refuse to be a prisoner that is caged by her own mind.

Bruce does not waste a second more. He steps onto the small, peach-colored tiles of the balcony, his black books walking in small yet purposeful strides.

I notice how his bat mask hides the sin-filled secrets. I notice how darkness follows him like a corrupt cloud. I notice how his face and eyes never carry any hate when he looks at me. It's like our potent love for one another grows with every glance. A secretly shared miracle for us to have miraculously found.

Bruce continues to slowly creep up, slamming me against the stiffness of the brick wall. The amour of his suit was now heavily pressed up against my chest. Bruce directs his entire attention on me, his body exerting darkness but tinged with such ferocious desire. From this sudden act of proximity, I now feel my heart beating as deep as a pounding drum. Bruce's breathing now begins to match mine in all its intensity. He inches his face ever so slightly towards my lips, his breath now softly tingling against the right side of my ear. From the look of bewilderment in his eyes, I giggle, silently realising the fact that Bruce completely acted on his desire in the moment, without any regard for the potential repercussions of his own unforeseen actions.

I continually try and then fail to comprehend the situation at hand. My mind is racing and currently gone completely blank. 

Why does Bruce have this overwhelming effect on me?

The Batman/Bruce Wayne POV:

Shit! What did I just do? What was I thinking by slamming her against the wall like that? She must feel disgusted and uneasy at my sudden advances. I really don't want to fuck this up right now, but now I'm terribly afraid I just did.

My hands pleadingly clench themselves around her waist, the leather on her suit matching mine. I can't help but feel this constant craving to be near her, to be closer to her, to feel the touch of her soft lips, to have the bliss of having her silky hair touching my cheek... I can’t stand this overwhelming tension; it's suffocating me.

But I promised myself I would show my true feelings to her.

I muster up the courage that I found beneath the stars.

The deep roughness of my voice breaks the tension between us.

"Selina"... I utter gently. "I am crazy about you." "I want you too."

I see a glimmer of lust fill Selina's eyes, which is the answer and the cease of all my doubts.

The magnetic force between us pulls us strongly towards each other, finally closing that dreaded gap that has kept us apart for so long. My lips are now completely surrendered to the sweetness of hers. Our mouths tightly lock together. A small moan sounds from her, finding its way to me, hence giving me any want of encouragement. Our foreheads press warmly together as my lips begin to sway with hers. This overwhelming sensation is occurring repeatedly, and yet I still can't seem to get enough of it. I continue to kiss her with such intensity that she fully opens her mouth, giving me complete access. I find her tongue as it tangles with mine. 

I can no longer go through life without this euphoric feeling... I just can't.

Cat Woman/Selina Kyle POV:

His dominant mouth finds my tongue as I tangle mine with his. Small moans begin to rise in his throat as he makes a vain attempt to quiet them. His kisses continuously deepen, both of us not wanting to come up for air for the fear of it coming to a halt. I am starting to understand that this is his way of conveying every single feeling of tenderness he has for me. At this moment, this is his way of showing me his raw feelings and I am truly relishing in it.

Bruce's gloved leather hand begins to trail down from my waist, firmly gripping my left thigh as I feel myself getting pushed up higher against the brick wall, with my waist now directly opposite his. Mischieviously, I use my legs to wrap around his waist, my feet crossing tightly behind him. I want to use every chance I have to get closer to him. I need to be closer to him.

After getting a hidden reaction from him I still want to tease him further even after seizing the perfect opportunity from him. I need to get a reaction. I smirk as I strongly press my hips just above his groin and begin to slowly grind against him. He gasps loudly at the unforeseen movement of mine. My smirk now gets wider as his eyes find mine and he realises what I'm up to. He growls deeply and leans backwards, his eyes rolling to the back of his head.

"Selina," he mumbles in my hair, as he thrusts against my hips. "Selina," he says, as he says, as our grinds begin to match, "Selina," he says, as he begins to speed up.

To be continued...

[pangtasias-atelier]

Endless (W)eight

Well this story kinda ended up changing a rather bit from what I initially planned lol. But I am kinda content with how this was especially cause struggling to write immense sizes. Of which this is cause I kinda just kept making Freyr fatter and fatter lol. 

This was meant to be like a semi sorta sequel to the Joshua Gerik story I wrote but this isn’t even really summer themed anymore. If you do understand the reference with the title, I love you. Anyways, enjoy but please do not fucking perceive me cause while this is far from horny or anything this is self indulgent and feels kinda weird since it isn’t the same characters I gush over and also cause this is like the biggest I've written lol

Askr's Order of Heroes enjoying a now endless summer, the revelry continues to increase throughout the weeks just as the heroes' waistlines. Heroes summoned from the beginning of the Order's creation to those summoned during the current reigning peace partake in the merriment alike. No hero quite forced into enjoying themselves and their time, the bit of nudging from the food's addictive nature and decreased metabolism only strengthens the feeling laying dormant inside a hero, one particular new recruit is completely absorbed in enjoying themselves to the fullest.

The King of dreams, Freyr, appears nothing like he once used to. The God who governs dreams appears to be enjoying his own blissful, hedonistic dream. Never having eaten a morsel of human food in his entirety of living, he more than makes up for it now, Freyr having eaten more food in his short time of being summoned to Askr than any  human could possibly imagine in their lifetimes.

Absolutely corpulent, Freyr's overwhelming fatness is enough to put even whales to shame. Unable to move unlike a whale, Freyr's size is simply from pure, unabashed hedonism. So content and obsessed with stuffing his face with the divine delicacies produced by humans, his ballooning waistline had been of zero importance to him. It still is, what with his ever ongoing display of wanton gluttony. Immobile several millions of calories ago, Freyr's current appetite is enough to put the entire Order to shame. Far more than even a dozen times over. Unable to get up and move around, the same is true for the entirety of Freyr's castle crushing weight. His hands and feet are gone in their entirety. They're absorbed and smothered under the enormity of his weight. The near same is true for even his head with his numerous flabby back rolls and engorged cheeks. An overly ridiculous amount of fat is caked all over his blubbery, rotund form. His appendages are just as useless as the rest of his bloated body. In a constant euphoric dreamlike state, Freyr has no need to do anything besides enjoying himself. Especially with the aid of the summoner. Kiran perfectly willing in enabling the perpetuation of Freyr's overconsumption, the summoner is able to at least transport Freyr from place to place through magic. Albeit at an increasingly concerning amount of magical and physical strain on Kiran's part with so much required to move the meaty mountain that is Freyr. And at the cost of creating more monumental goat sized craters throughout Zenith with every transportation. Not that anyone is able to tell that Freyr is a goat. His once magnificent horns appear to be nothing more than sad little stubs on the overflowing stack of pancakes of a man. Not like most would even be able to discern Freyr as a human either, the man more akin to a gelatinous blob. Completely nude, all people get upon the sight of Freyr is a staggeringly wide wall of blubber. Clothes had been forwent long ago. Not that anyone could remember; Freyr's sheer weight alone is more concerning for everyone else. All his fancy adornments are no more. His bright lei had been torn asunder from his several chin folds and doughy neck. His pristine white shawl had fallen off from his melon breasts and ample back tore the strap. His gold bracelets snapped in half by his overburdened arms and calves. And his flowing lower garments which grew too tight for his widened rear and hips. Clothes too much of a hassle back then, the time and material needed to clothe Freyr now makes a shirt back then seem like an expert working on a simple scarf.

The beach no longer suitable for Freyr, what with the sun's heat combined with his own overabundant body heat, Kiran had brought him to Nifl. The icy cold region suits him perfectly. A nice freezing temperature provided year-round, the nice cooling helps keep him from feeling like a furnace about to explode all the time. Nifl also a rather sparsely populated country, Kiran had moved him to the absolute most desolate place. It had taken a modicum of convincing on Kiran's part at first, Freyr unwilling to hide his splendor and immensity from humans. Until Kiran cajoled him throughout several talks, reminding him that his enormity can be seen from those all around him from great, vast distances and that the move was only to ensure him a proper space to grow comfortably. Freyr large enough to fill up and destroy the entirety of Askr castle from his abundant acres of adipose back when he had first been magically transported to Nifl, his efforts in simply grazing and lazing worked wonders on his body, Freyr now large enough to occupy Nohr's Castle Krakenburg and even the entirety of Windmire and then some. His frame towering just as imposingly as it spreads, the great, mountainous man is indeed visible despite residing weeks from the nearest inhabitable place. His own size indeed a great issue, the amount of food required to merely keep Freyr fed, much less the food necessary to ensure his continual growth, is also another concern with regards to space. The summoner able to find another spell to aid with just that, a small portal floats above his face. His feeding tube comes out one end of it, the other end coming out another portal somewhere in Askr. The contraption alone is the size of a castle, such great quantities of food needed to feed Freyr and Freyr alone. Speaking of food, giving him enough complete meals to satisfy his hunger is completely out of the question. Instead, his feeding tube houses a mixture that Freyr can never quite place. Some days, he tastes an arrangement of the most cloyingly sweet desserts paired with an assortment of decadent toppings. Other days, an impossibly wide array of spicy yet savory dishes enter his mouth. And on even more days, the mixture changes throughout the day, his taste buds never left unsatisfied with the selection. Though such a thing is impossible with Freyr simply caring about stuffing his gullet. Freyr currently devours away at his unending torrent of food with the same fervor he always does.

His growth still occurs at a rapid pace, hundreds of pounds slathered onto his elephantine body daily. But at such a prodigal girth as extraordinary as Freyr's, the extra few hundreds is nothing but a pathetic drop of blubber into the oceanic bucket of lard that he is. Completely unrecognizable as even a human figure at this point, a passing semblance lost tons and tons of weight ago, his stomach puts even the largest of doomsday dragons several heroes once faced. His soft, flabby expanse of lard oozes and flows forward in all directions. His mountainous stomach spreads for miles as far as anyone could see, his expansive pale blubber blanketing the snowy landscape as it takes up the area in its need for more room. Rivers for love handles jut out the side of his mountain of a gut, the ginormous rolls of flab melding into an indiscernible shape. The upper roll of his gut lurches forward onto the lower valley filling slab of fat that is the lower half of his gut. Or what can be construed as it, Freyr's towering body hard to discern. His cavernous navel is in a constant state of twilight from the overhang, the space reminiscent of a black hole. His enormous breasts remain flopped on his great cushiony gut. Freyr's own corpulence the only thing able to rival itself in terms of sheer size, the two titanic tits take up a sizable, meaty portion of his stomach. Each breath alone can crush the entirety of Daein Keep alone. The bright pink hue of his areola is the only real demarcation of his breasts, the sagging tits even managing to mesh together with his mound of a gut. Above his gut is Freyr's unfathomably high amount of neck rolls and chins that simply crash upon one another to form a ringlet of uncountable rolls. Freyr's ass surges out behind him. The tremendous ass cheeks splay out further than even the Mila Tree's canopy. Freyr's ass and gut take up the most space of himself, both assets spreading wherever they please unlike his bloated, sunken appendages. Not that there is much distinction between his ass and gut, both absolutely massive piles of blubber with little shape to speak of. His back is riddled with hundreds of soft plush rolls. His legs useless several hundreds of feasts ago, the two oceanic thighs are bunched up together in a mockery of what a leg should be, rolls upon rings of fat smothering one another to make up a leg. The same is true for his arms, dozens of rings of fat making up his arms uselessly splayed to the side from his uncountable plush love handles. Freyr's cheeks occupy an even greater amount of space than his head, the bulbous mounds of fat splaying out to the sides of his face even as it takes up most of said face. And yet, even at such an inconceivable size, Freyr simply needs more. He craves it. To eat and grow to the absolute inordinately massive that he can possibly be.

The telltale sound of a ripple sounding out, Freyr nearly misses it over the crashing pleasant torrent of his muffled moans from his eating. Knowing what is to come, his monstrous guzzling somehow becomes even more fervorent. A figure comes out of the portal and steps onto Freyr's corpulence.

Kiran is merely the molehill to Freyr's mountain. Yet, even such a comparison is far too diminutive of Freyr's grandeur, Kiran neither even being an anthill, merely an ant in the presence of someone as monumentally fat as Freyr. Always visiting daily to check upon his process, Kiran's next action is not done so often. He closes the portal housing Freyr's feeding tube, the colossal man going without food for more than a second for the first time in weeks.

Freyr's eyes are constantly closed now just as they were when he was once thin and fit, an image hard for those to imagine with his size being what it is now. Able to more easily attune himself to the dreams of others with his eyes closed, he keeps them closed for his own dreams. Dreams of the future. Dreams of living as the god he ought to. Of nothing more than to simply eat and grow. To further display his greatness for all humans to see and awe. To tower over them in immensity and power. Of growing so immensely fat that even the mortal realm will be unable to withstand his divine corpulence and returning back to Ljósálfheimr only to continue eating and growing with the aid of his realm's infinitely expanding space. With his treasured human who benevolently offered unto him the knowledge of human delicacies and set him upon this path.

And so, he opens his eyes as his most loyal devotee rests comfortably atop him. It is only right for him to offer such a pleasure to a mere mortal. For despite the summoner's abilities, that is all he is in comparison to one as great as he. A delicate human before a god. His own titanic waves of lard fills up the near entirety of his vision. The fat from his waves of back fat folding on up to his face just as his greatly stuffed cheeks do.  The only break to the monotonous view of his pale blubber is the summoner's face peering down at his sunken face.

"Kiran…" Freyr's deep rich voice is magnified from all his fat pressing down on him. His luscious mannerism in speaking in a near hazy drawn out whisper is magnified as well, speaking a time and energy consuming task at his monumental size.

A relaxed smile on his face, Kiran allows himself to rest a ginger hand on Freyr's cheek. Unable to lift a single cheek with even both hands, he merely pinches at the plush malleable lard. His eyes never once leave Freyr's own. Keeping them fully open is also too taxing of a task for Freyr. Instead, they remain half lidded. Kiran's hands explore only the near perimeter of Freyr's face. Enough rolls on his expansive lard, Kiran could spend hours simply exploring such a small section of Freyr's corpulence. Freyr's churning stomach is a turbulent, raucous machine with its tremor like desperate growls. Freyr's taxed wheezing mixes in, the two filling in for the silence. Freyr's slight moans trickle in as Kiran's hands wander off towards Freyr's horns, his delicate hands wrapping around and rubbing the tip of them.

"Hnnn… Kiran…" Unable to even squirm from the touching, every single part of Freyr immovable, he remains still as the red tinge of blush on his face deepens and darkens.

"I am here to serve you," Kiran drapes himself over Freyr's enormity, one hand never leaving Freyr's horns. "Whatever you may wish for, I will perform," Kiran's smile widens as Freyr's black hole for a stomach seems to respond to the thinly veiled offer, Kiran always being like this whenever he has come to increase Freyr's intake of food.

"Haah, so hungry,,, I hnngh-require food," Freyr wheezes from a mere sentence, the energy required of him to do anything a foreign concept now. "Much more hah food,,,"

"Of course," Kiran reactivates the portal spell. A bright iridescent blue portal appears above Freyr's face. A ripple in the sky, Kiran reaches his hand inside it and rummages around. Grabbing the thick wide tube, he drags it out of the portal.

"Wait,,," Freyr slowly croaks out right before Kiran brings his feast of a snack to his lips. His stomach wrenches in pangs of hunger at the tantalizing offer of food dangling right in front of his face. "I shall haah have you stay,,," His bloated face puffs out in exertion. It is only fair to offer such a devoted human such a great right of basking in his presence.

Kiran's face softens. "Of course," They respond as if asked to hand over an item, not remaining atop an inconceivably obese and growing man. "Now, I mustn't keep you waiting much longer," With no interruption on either end, Kiran slots Freyr's feeding tube back inside his mouth. Freyr begins guzzling away at it before Kiran even activates it. Kiran huffs in amusement before activating Freyr's feeding machine.

"You deserve to grow as big as you wish. And I would be delighted to remain by your side as you do,"

Freyr merely half grunts half moans in affirmation, preferring to eat and to not disappoint his loyal devotee. Especially as he wishes to find out his possible limit, not that he'll ever willingly stop growing nor that he even presumably has one.