#I had to go through a very rigorous testing process to get to this point | Explore Tumblr Posts and Blogs

lossie92 · 2 years

Note

"if you think you will get many kudos and comments on a fic, usually the exact opposite will happen" > these do be the facts. Could I request for 17 and 18 of the asks?

Yeah, they are. Very unfortunate facts too imo 😩

And yes, ofc you can!

17. Talk to me about the minutiae of your current WIP. Tell me about the lore, the history, the detail, the things that won’t make it in the text.

Oh boy. That's a tough one. For one, I have so many WIPs, which makes the choice difficult, but also I like to keep a sense of suspense in my stories, which means I don't exactly want to go into detail about a fic before it's fully posted. Don't want to ruin the surprise for y'all.

Because of that I will have to pass on sharing those juicy details about a current WIP. What I can do instead is talk about one of my posted fics and the universe it is set in with mentions of what you may expect from the sequels.

That fic would be Lemon Meringue Pie in the Smitten verse.

When I was initially writing down ideas for that fic, it was just supposed to me a morning after the wedding night story with some spice, but then it grew on me.

I started really thinking about Tobirama's thought process, the reasons behind his reactions, his childhood, the way he grew up, his relationship with his own sexuality and gender, and what I ended up with was this story of self-discovery and newfound joy.

Tobirama in that fic goes on one hell of a journey. He is initially confused about his reactions and feelings, because he was never allowed to think outside of the bounds of his conservative upbringing. In a way, this gradual unveiling of truths about himself and the world around him mirrors my own journey, which makes it somewhat personal.

I liked writing this ace spec Tobirama who is suddenly liberated - a Tobirama who is finally free from the rigorous rules and from the limitations of the Senju clan. And it was nice to write him happy too. His relationship with Madara in this AU is very soft and sweet, and playful. It is not without its issues, as the ending of the fic showed, because they both still have to do a lot of learning and what they do know about each other is just the beginning, but there is this sense of joy in the opportunity to find out more about someone you can see yourself caring about that I liked exploring.

In the sequel to this fic, Our Summer Butterflies, I'm planning to explore more of Tobirama's journey of self-discovery. In Lemon Meringue Pie he only just found out that what he is feeling is natural and perfectly alright, and it will take time before he can fully accept it.

Also, Tobirama in this AU is gender fluid and that will also come into play at some point.

Another important aspect is the matter of Tobirama's trust. He had definitely learnt the hard way that he cannot trust just anyone (Butsuma taught him many lessons and all of them were painful) and he needs to find out for himself that he can trust Madara. Although he is willing to do it in some aspects already, he isn't ready to dive all in. I can tell you right now that Tobirama will be putting Madara through some tests to see if Madara is really trustworthy.

I'm hoping to start posting Our Summer Butterflies in late Autumn, so stay tuned, I guess? 😅

18. Choose a passage from your writing. Tell me about the backstory of this moment. How you came up with it, how it changed from start to end. Spicy addition: Questioner provides the passage.

I cheated a little and @wisiaden picked the passage for me, cause I swear I instantly forgot every scene I wrote the moment I read this question 🤦

Either way, this is a passage from Looking for Home aka my first published mdtb fic 😅

“When you married Anija... Um, that’s not it, not really. Sorry, I just... Um, when... Well, the anniversary. Your wedding anniversary. The first one. How did it...?” He breathed harshly through the nose, irritated at his inability to voice the question properly. “What I want to know is... Well, could you maybe, um, explain how does one celebrate such an occasion?”

If Mito was surprised, she didn’t show it. Her expression was calm and thoughtful instead, full of kindness.

“It is different for everyone, I think. There is no proper way to celebrate it that has been agreed upon if that’s what you mean.” She smiled at him and squeezed his arm once again, the gesture strangely reassuring. “It is kind of customary to spend time together if possible and some couples exchange gifts. But I know people who do neither. Treat it more or less like just another day, you know? It all really depends on you and how your relationship works.”

Tobirama mulled it over for a moment before responding. “So it doesn’t have to mean anything?”

“No.”

“What if it does... but only to one person?”

“Hmm, an fair point,” Mito said. “But I think only one person can celebrate too.”

“Wouldn’t that be strange?”

“Why?”

“Because it’s...” He bit his lip, a maelstrom of thoughts in his mind as he tried to put his meaning into words. “Marriage is supposed to be about partnership, right? Wouldn’t it be, well, counterproductive to do things like this alone?”

When I was planning this fic, I initially didn’t have a specific idea for a scene with Mito. I did know I wanted to involve her somehow in the story, because I like the idea of her being a sisterly figure for Tobirama, but the inspiration to write this scene didn’t strike until pretty late in the process.

What I ended up writing in the end is Mito and Tobirama discussing, in a way, what it means to be in a good relationship. Tobirama at this point in the story is lost and confused. He doesn’t yet understand why he is drawn to Madara or what his feelings for his husband are and he has no prior relationship experience to fall back on. Despite being so intelligent, he is struggling with this problem and it’s immensely frustrating for him.

Mito is able to see it, of course. She also suspects the reason why Tobirama is so lost, but she is intent on letting Tobirama figure things out for himself.

And he does, doesn’t he?

Even though Mito tells him it’s alright to spend the anniversary however he wants and to celebrate it in his own way, Tobirama is able to realise and admit outloud that it is not something he wants.

He has the right idea of it too.

Marriage is a partnership. You’re not meant to do things alone.

He also for the first time voices a fear he doesn’t yet fully acknowledge when he asks Mito what if something like an anniversary is only important to one person.

In this moment he is really saying to her is “what if I love Madara, but he doesn’t love me back?” and Mito rushes to reassure him that his feelings are valid regardless of whether they are returned or not.

Overall, I like to think that this is a pretty simple scene that foreshadows and reveals a lot of things about mdtb’s relationship in this fic. It was pretty interesting to write it too, from what I remember.

Weird Questions for Writers

#mdtb #madatobi #madara #tobirama #lossie writes #jfc this got so long #idk how

6 notes · View notes

forbiddensoul562 · 3 years

Text

Contagion

I could have sworn I’d published this, but I found it in my draft folder this morning... So... I apologize that it hasn’t gone through a rigorous editing process, but I hope you enjoy anyway!

Two years ago I sat on a train in Taiwan, headed from Taipei to a small, remote place called (I think) Wufeng. As I sat there, I thought about a post-apocalyptic zombie Meronia fic I’d read somewhere on here. It was very good, but I had no luck tracking it down again, and I thought that was a damn shame.

So, I pulled out my notebook and wrote a test first chapter of my own version during the whole two hour train ride.

It’s not much, and might not have much substance to it. But I’d love to get anyone’s thoughts on it’s start.

Working Title: Contagion

The moment they appeared their existence made national news… The world screeched to a halt, all attention on these things. Humans… turned diseased, feral, or perhaps something else entirely. No one knew for sure where they came from. It was as though one moment the world continued spinning like normal, and in the next… these things began flooding the streets. The initial confusion of news analysts and reporters slowly began to turn to fear. It took only an hour before the first bite was reported... The victim turned, becoming one of the diseased.

That was the moment public fear began to turn to panic, catching like wildfire.

As Near watched, from secluded inside his high tower, he was acutely aware that he was witnessing the turning point of human history.

By the second hour after the first report had hit the news, Near had decided that what he was witnessing was potentially the unravelling of human society. He was a detective… trained to solve the world’s mysteries. But this… There was no training for this, and even if he wanted to act, the pandemic was spreading far too fast.

By hour three Near found himself trying to name these things based on their condition – should he refer to them as the Sick, infected initially by some kind of widespread contagion? The news began to report them as simply ‘undead,’ and while Near understood that such a title effectively, and most simply communicated to the general populace what these things were doing, based on common knowledge from mass media, Near could only roll his eyes at how unoriginal and unfitting the term appeared to be.

At the tenth hour, local news agencies began going off the air as it was too dangerous to stay and try to report. It made sense, they had themselves and their own families to think about. It was in that moment that fear suddenly began to take the place of Near’s previously more pragmatic thoughts. A new, chilling terror of encroaching total isolation the outside world seeped into his bones.

It was then that he decided it best to make the one call of utmost importance in the dying world, before cell towers began to completely fall off the grid.

Rester handed Near the phone and the detective listened to the ringing tone as he pressed it to his ear, an unspoken panic brewing in his center and he couldn’t decide if it was premised in his worry for lines of communication, or something much more morbid. ‘Pick up,’ He mentally pleaded, desperately. ‘Come on, answer your phone…’ Of all the times to be ignored…

But then, as if by command, finally the other end of the phone ceased the repetitive tone, replaced instead with a simple, abrupt, “What?”

“Mello.” A heavy breath was released that Near hadn’t realized he was holding, momentary relief taking its place. “You’ve seen the news?”

[More beneath a ‘keep reading’, just in case Tumblr isn’t showing it...]

There was a brief pause from the other end, and Near felt his heartrate quicken in response. Time was just too precious for delays of any kind. Every second that crucial information wasn’t being conveyed was another second that Near felt his panic increase, worried that the call might drop and he might never get to say what he needed to.

“It’s starting to be chaos here, too.” Mello’s tone was somber, quieter as though speaking any louder would make the events all the more real.

“I see.” Near reached for a strand of hair, though the repetitive twirling sensation was proving to do little to calm his nerves, as it once had. This was just becoming too big of a catastrophe for his simple rituals to pacify his worry. “The world is ending, Mello.”

“Strangely dramatic of you.” The older successor muttered, but was quick to add, “You think I don’t know that?” There was an irritated edge to his tone, yet still Near couldn’t help cracking a small smile at Mello’s underhanded, and perhaps unconscious, implication that they both truly were not above dramatics. Though, perhaps he was reading too far into it, searching for a sliver of normality in a world that was quickly falling crumbling.

“No, of course you would already be aware.” After all, Mello was much more heavily involved in the world, or at least connected to it on a far more personal level than Near was. “No doubt the grid will be going down at some point. Maybe in a few minutes, maybe in a few hours, or days… So to that effect I wanted to contact you first over anyone else.” Near’s motions in his hair stopped, the white strand unravelling around his index finger. His vision and even his attention to the rest of the room seemed to blur as he focused entirely upon his connection to the only other person of importance Near had, in a world that was falling apart. “If things continue as they are, to the best of my ability I plan on attempting to create a safe zone within my tower. Right now it has the resources to survive here for at least a year, but I aim to build on those.”

When Mello said nothing in response, Near continued, rambling still, but this time more to the point, “What is happening right now is far greater than you or I, Mello, and on our own I do not think we will make it long. You lack the resources and I lack the physicality. But together, we-”

“Near, don’t, I’m not-”

“Mello, please.” He could hear the pleading in his words, “Just listen to me a moment.”

This time, the blonde remained quiet on the other end.

“If you can make it from your present location in California to here in New York… I would greatly benefit from whatever you have to offer to survival efforts. Neither of us will make it if we’re split up. This is not like anything else we have ever dealt with, and because of that I don’t think it makes sense to hold onto lingering animosity. Think of your survival.”

Near shook his head. Logic wouldn’t work with Mello… So he added quieter, “I need your help, Mello.”

There was a long silence between them, then, the words and residual antipathy culminating between them into that one moment of silence which seemed to hold all the necessary potential to be both of their ruin, not to mention all the others Near had every intention of trying to help. Everything hinged on this single moment… of being able to put aside disputes, and endless history for a greater good. It had never worked before. Yet this time, Near held his breath.

Finally, “I’ll do what I can.” The words were vague, but of course both successors understood the weight and challenge associated with attempting to travel from one side of the country to the direct opposite in the current collapsing state of things. But if Mello was as willing and able as his words alluded to, then Near was willing to hold his breath a little while longer.

Near nodded, “I look forward to your arrival, then.”

The detective was ready to end the call while he had Mello’s agreement and thus his own sense of hope, but of course Mello broke in before he could, “Yeah, you say that, but you’re not the one having to go out and deal with this shit. It’s a risk, Near. At this rate, who knows what the country will do in response...”

Near could read between the lines: Mello thought he might not make it.

But Near had to stay positive, even if he was feigning it for both of them, now. The thought of being alone to go going through what was shaping up to be the apocalypse was troublesome at best, and truly terrifying at worst. “Getting into and climbing the ranks of the Mafia was a risk, too.”

There was a short, curt chuckle from the other end of the line. “Yeah, well… we’ll see. I’ll try.” The younger successor didn’t like the tone latent in his voice. He didn’t like hearing Mello be anything other than his loud, over-the-top self that exuded confidence. But then, nothing was good about this situation or provided any reason for the blonde to hold onto his normal demeanor… Still, it was jarring and was almost worse than seeing the reports on the news.

But Near forced himself to nod, “Right, I’ll see you soon, then.”

Yet another pause on the other end, followed by a simple, “Yeah.”

In that moment Near found himself reluctant to cut their connection. There were so many things he wanted to say to the blonde successor… just in case this was their last time ever speaking. Years of harbored words flooded his mouth like bile, yet burning his throat with the knowledge that no matter how much he wanted to let it all spill out, Mello wouldn’t stand such talk. Not now. Maybe not ever. Though, perhaps it was better this way. He didn’t want to say anything that might prove a distraction to Mello’s journey across the country to get to him.

So he instead swallowed it all back down, promising himself that he would make time to pour out all of these words to Mello when the older successor made it to him.

He could only bring himself to whisper, “Good luck. Be safe. Please.” It was the closest thing to a prayer Near thought he could ever formulate.

“You too, Near.” Mello said much quieter. “Don’t... let anything happen before I can make it there, alright?”

“I won’t.” He shook his head. “I’ll be here waiting.” With that, he pulled the phone away and hung up.

#fsfics #Death Note #Meronia #MelloxNear #MelloNear

24 notes · View notes

derinthescarletpescatarian · 3 years

Text

Pro-variation vs. pro-selection culture

Evolution requires three things: some form of information that’s inheritable, some way to create variation from that information, and some way to select what information will be passed on to future generations. In biological evolution, of, course, we all know what these three things are: genes (information) can mutate (variation) -- well, it’s more complicated than just mutation, but this isn’t a biology lesson -- and those that are worse at surviving and reproducing themselves are of course naturally weeded out through cause and effect (selection). But other things -- art, culture, language, science, technology -- evolve as well, and they all need the same three things.

When it comes to variation and selection in things like culture and politics, there’s a sliding scale of which one people think is most important -- whether they’re more pro-variation, or pro-selection.

People on the pro-variation end of the spectrum tend to view diversity as a positive thing and selection as something that will take care of itself, or even something to be actively suspicious of because of its tendency to cause harm -- a rainbow queer community, an education system available to people of all cultures and economic backgrounds, country borders that are as open as practical, and embracing a diverse array of art make a community stronger, and things like gatekeeping, means testing and heirarchies on ‘what counts as art’ should be abandoned unless there’s a really good reason for the selective process to exist, in which case it’s grudgingly tolerated. To pro-variation people, exclusion and oppression within a community are threatening. Pro-variation people recognise that yes, you’re going to get some freeloading drains on resources and obvious money laundering schemes masquerading as terrible art and a few people pretending to be gay for a few years to look more interesting to their straight friends, and this is largely a non-issue, a perfectly acceptable price to pay for a diverse and fair world.

People on the pro-selection end of the scale tend to view selection as the main means of advancing or healing a society, and see diversity as something that will take care of itself and as something to be deeply suspicious of. Gatekeeping, unequal opportunities and financial heirarchies are needed to sort the what from the chaff and make sure everyone does their best (”capitalism breeds innovation”); initiatives to redress inequality and give minorities or poor people an ‘unfair’ advantage or make it easier for outsiders to enter the country should be abandoned unless there’s a really good reason for their existence, as they’re dragging down the ‘deserving’ and polluting the culture. To pro-selection people, contamination or invasion from outsiders is threatening. Pro-selection people recognise that yes, you’re going to lose some talented geniuses in sweatshops and stop some deserving people from achieving success and bully some LGBT people out of the community to face abuse and oppression alone, but this is largely a non-issue, a perfectly acceptable price to pay for an advanced and fair world.

“Oh, Derin, you’re just talking about left-wing vs. right-wing philosophies.” Sort of, but not really. It fits the stereotypes and common arguments to a T, but one can’t assume that all righties are pro-selection or all lefties are pro-variation. I have met pro-variation righties, although I’m not really sure how. And there are leftie TERFs out there, despite TERFism being an undeniably pro-selection philosophy. I find determining where people sit on the variation-to-selection scale to be a lot more useful for communication than left-to-right.

I say this because often I’ll see pro-selection and pro-variation people talking to each other, and notice that they’re having fundamentally different conversations. For example, let’s look at the issue of meritocracy. Most modern people would say that meritocracy is a good thing, but ’meritocracy’ means a fundamentally different thing to pro-selectionists than pro-variationists.

A pro-selectionist, when conceiving of meritocracy, tends to think in terms of, well, selection; devising a system where the strongest (those that excel in whatever the thinker thinks is important; innovation or determination or whatever) rise to the top and gain special privileges and power over others, that they can use to determine the rules and make life better for themselves and their children, elevating society as a side effect. To the pro-variationist, this is absolutely not a meritocracy. “You’ve built a system whereby those who don’t start out with more, those who are born poor or disabled or underprivileged in some way, have to work way harder and be lucky in order to get anywhere than those born lucky. People don’t get ahead on merit in this system because the playing field becomes drastically uneven after a couple of generations. This is not a meritocracy.”

A pro-variationist, on the other hand, would concentrate on making sure that everyone has a fair chance at exercising their skills and getting ahead. They’d focus on making sure that people had the space and security to exercise their skills and that, when it came to supporting the society to make that happen, those with more contributed more. To a pro-selectionist, this is absurd. “So those who have pulled ahead and succeeded are being penalised by having to give more? That’s the opposite of a meritocracy! That’s a system designed to drag the best down!”

I find this framework useful in explaining a lot of weird political quirks of certain subcultures. TERFs and tradwives, for example, are theoretically political opposites, but in practice their logic sounds almost identical to outsiders, sounding rather a lot like standard right-wing talking points and Fascism Lite. This is because they’re all using pro-selection arguments. To a pro-selectionist, the arguments of these groups look very different -- “we’re saying that X kind of people are good/virtuous/victims, and Y kind of people are bad/oppressors/sinners, which is the exact opposite of what the other group is saying!” To a pro-variationist, the fact that they are making literally the same argument makes them identical -- “you’re still putting people in your little ‘keep or cull’ boxes for exactly the same reasons, you just wrote different names on the boxes to keep or cull according to your personal taste.”

I think a lot of the things associated with right-wingers could be more accurately associated with people on the pro-selection end of the spectrum in general. It’s known, for example, that right-wingers tend to have a more sensitive disgust reflex and, as a consequence, be generally more xenophobic. You can see this in the way xenophobes talk of making room for outsiders; they talk of invasion, contamination, infection, hygeine, purity. LGBT exclusionists, lefties and righties, talk in the same sort of language. So do antis.

It’s also notable in the sorts of innocuous-seeming things that such people get really angry about. Right-wingers and authoritarians are known for their trend of an almost comical hatred of modern art. The idea that anything can be art, or that art can be measured on any level that isn’t strict complexity and realism of paint and sculpture, causes a surprising level of dislike in such groups. (See also arguments like ‘what is a video game’, ‘does this even count as a game’, althoughpeople thankfully seem to be bored of that now). Exclusionists are equally renowned for campaigns against inclusive terms like ‘queer’, and TERFs get obsessively nitpicky about people’s genitals to a really creepy degree and get very uncomfortable when you mention the ‘grey area’ in biological sex. This is normally assumed to be just dislike at people challenging their arguments, but I think it’s deeper. I think it’s like the modern art thing. Any kind of radical inclusivity is threatening to pro-selection thinkers, not because it’s a challenge to their rules and definitions -- they can have those arguments perfectly comfortably -- but because it is an attack on the very concept of meaning. “Words mean things! Groups exist! You can’t just... just get rid of groups and open up categories to include more people without putting them through a serious, rigorous proving ground first! You can’t just call anything you want to ‘art’, you can’t just call anyone outside cisheteronormative expectations part of the LGBT community, you can’t just call people men or women based on how they feel! That’s chaos! How can any progress be made if we just decide words don’t mean anything??”

(I also think this is a much-overlooked aspect of the same-sex marriage debate. Yes, most of that was garden-variety homophobia, but I’ve known a lot of people who were perfectly fine with ‘the gays having equal rights’, they just didn’t want it called marriage. To a pro-variationist, having the same legal language for partnerships regardless of the sex or gender of the participants is really important -- it’s a shield against future discrimination as the laws relating to either marriages or civil partnerships change over time. To a pro-selectionist, changing the definition of words related to fundamental cultural activities is a huge deal. “They’re eroding the very meaning of marriage! Chaos! How much more will the word change? Can people marry animals or cars next?!”)

As I said, this is a spectrum. I’ve met very few people who are on either extreme end -- even the most pro-equality liberal anarchist acknowledges that some standards of behaviour, community responses to inappropriate action and definitions of different communities do have to exist, to protect people, and the most hardocre fascist admits that there needs to be some measure of generating diversity to avoid stagnation and extinction. And people’s default reaction isn’t necessarily their position on all issues -- somebody who’s generally pro-variation might feel specifically threatened by immigration and think a strict proving ground for immigrants is necessary, or someone who is generally pro-selectionist might think that a robust social system is necessary because one’s economic status at birth has no bearing on one’s merit or value. But I’ve always found it to be a very useful general model.

#culture #politics #bigotry #left wing #right wing #queer #lgbt

48 notes · View notes

secretshinigami · 4 years

Text

Maybe Maybe Maybe

Author: @lightsredapple / Zara_Zara (on AO3)

For: @danthegeek

Pairings/Characters: Light/L. Soichiro Yagami

Rating/Warnings: G. Mentions of alcohol

Prompt: “Soichiro and L go out for drinks, discussing the case in the beginning, then talking about Light, L sharing his feelings for Soichiro’s’ son.”

Author’s notes: Happy holidays everyone! Hope you like this danthegeek, I had fun writing it :)

In the early hours of the morning, L was surrounded by warmth. And he was holding onto that warmth at all the points that mattered: there was a warm waist in his arms, a forehead pressed against the perfect space between delicate shoulder blades, the soft rise and fall of a chest under his hands, and legs entwined into a mess of infinity. Between the slits of his slowly waking eyes, the world was a sleepy ocean of twilight. The world felt so soft in the moment. It was something he often forgot the world could be. It was easy to be blinded by all else when he surrounded himself with the indifferent light of computer screens, scrolling, scrolling, searching…

For the longest time, L had been deeply acquainted with empty rooms. He’s seen it all, rooms violent with furnishings to rooms desolate with sparsity, and after many years of traveling they all ended up looking the same. This was because, at the root of it, the essence of any hotel was rooted in its transience. The rooms within its building were meant only to be lived in for a certain amount of time before its guests moved on. This sort of transience suited L just fine. He went wherever a case called him and inhabited many hotel rooms but never lived in them. These places were never home. He’d never sought for such a thing in his life. However, when he woke up that morning, feeling well-rested, easy, slow, warm, all of these states which were caused by one young man—he found that none of these things were easy to ignore. What happened to him? he wondered. Normally, at this time he’d be vividly awake and deep within a case. Normally, he wouldn’t even have slept at all and would’ve been on his fifteenth coffee by then. Even after over a year of this set-up, sleep and rest and calm were consistently very novel things for L…but, honestly, he wouldn’t trade it for anything.

The seconds ticked by and it would’ve been so easy to have slipped back to sleep. And L would’ve done so, but he could feel Light waking. And if Light was awake then he was most certainly going to be leaving soon. In that moment, stopping that from happening was L’s first and most pressing issue of the day. To win, you must attack, so making like a boa constrictor, he tightened his hold on Light. It was the perfect plan. Light wouldn’t want to move because he wouldn’t want to wake L. He was considerate like that. L didn’t get enough sleep, he always said. It would not only be hypocritical of Light to wake L up but it would also go against Light’s code of honor and all that jazz. Yes, this was good. More than good, L thought as he nuzzled Light’s back with this forehead and sighed contentedly. With his victory insured, L contendly closed his eyes but frowned when Light moved. It seemed as if he was trying to escape the pirate knot of limbs L had on him, “L,” Light whispered. L remained quiet because he was “asleep.”

Light fidgeted once more. “L,” Light whispered again and sighed when he got nothing in response. A minute passed where Light stayed with all his warmth and all was well. “I know you’re awake,” Light said, voice just barely a whisper. “I need to get up now…I have class.”

L still refused to respond or let up on his tight hold on the other man. “L, come on.” Light exasperatedly said as he began trying to pry L’s arms off of him. It was difficult because they were as tight as a dead body in rigor mortis. Did L die during the night? After Light gave a good struggle and finally got one leg loose from L’s own, L inhaled deeply as if he were waking and mumbled, “Mmm? Morning, Light-kun.” He felt Light’s back untense somewhat at signs of life from L and L took that opportunity to strengthen his hold on him. At this point it wasn’t cuddling anymore, they were wrestling in a strange sleepy manner.

“Good morning, L,” Light said in a conversational tone, entertaining him even if he definitely knew that L had been awake this whole time and was just being difficult. “I need to get up. Let me go.”

“Do you really need to? Is it urgent? Life or death?”

“Yes, so will you please let go of me?”

“I’m not convinced. If this were truly a life or death situation, you’d sound more distressed.”

“How’s this for distressed…” Light grumbled. And with far more energy than was fair in the morning, Light rolled them over, commencing a brief tussle in the sheets. In one horrible move, Light completely escaped. L stretched one hand towards him, like a dying man reaching for help, but it collapsed when confronted with the merciless look of triumph on Light’s smiling face. With half his face pressed to the pillow, one of L’s eyes watched as Light gracefully walked away and pulled the curtains open, “I’m sorry, L. I have to go.” Light needlessly repeated, except, this time with a pointless apology.

L rolled more comfortably onto his side and hugged his aching shins as he silently watched Light dress. The morning sunshine was spilling in through their window, flooding the room with daffodil yellow. It burnished Light’s skin a golden color, much of it methodically getting hidden away by needless layers of fabric. The soft sounds of his dressing were simple and sensual. They were the only sounds that moved in the otherwise sleepily still room. Head crushed to his pillow, L catalogued Light’s motions with a passive intensity and sighed to himself.

“C’mon, don’t pout,” Light chuckled and finished fixing his tie that didn’t need fixing. He then bent down to peck L on the mouth. Both their eyes were slitted open. The peck was chaste. What was with that? It had to be corrected. L’s hand kept Light’s head from moving away. He tried deepening the kiss but Light pulled away with an apologetic grimace and said, “Morning breath.”

L flopped on the bed as if he’d been shot, “You’re so mean to me, Light…Denying me my rights…You should be prosecuted,” L yawned and sleepily glared at Light.

“A lawsuit from the Greatest Detective in the world? Scary. We’ll talk more about this later, yeah?” Light was a blur as he swept out of the room. The room went quiet.

***

Light wasn’t in fact coming home soon that day. Light enjoyed acting on his freedom and often stayed out of their pent house just because he could. Whether he went out for a walk in the park, or to sweat off energy at the gym, or study in a cafe, he always returned to their place at 9 p.m. sharp. This suited both of them just fine. Each of them were independent creatures at their core, so the time apart was a welcome gift to that part of themselves. Light’s habit on that particular Thursday night was ideal, as L was going to meet someone he had evaded telling Light he was going to see.

***

Like looking through a fishbowl, L gazed at the explosion of colors in his drink. Instead of sipping it just yet, L picked the colorful umbrella off the rim of it and twirled it in his fingers so that the colorful pattern blurred. With his other finger, he slowly pushed the food menu towards his company, “Shall we order an entree?” It occurred to him, perhaps belatedly, that it was just about edging on dinner time for most people and Soichiro might be hungry.

“I’m fine, Ryuzaki. Thank you for the offer, though.” Some beats of silence rested between them. It would’ve been devastatingly awkward if they were anyone other than who they were. L was unbothered by such silences, in fact he often encouraged them, because when suspects were confronted with an uncomfortable silence they tried often to overcompensate for the silence, slipping up in the process. However, he didn’t need that particular advantage of silence in this instance because Soichiro wasn’t under interrogation, of course. Anyhow, the gravity of the awkwardness was dulled somewhat by Soichiro’s unrelenting efforts to keep up the appearance of being unphased by such things.

Years of experience in the force curated a disposition that was as cool as a glacier; but, historically, L was responsible for testing that coolheadedness. Particularly when it came to the terrible suspicions cast against his son that ended up proving untrue. The emotional trauma from that whole period had yet to leave Soichiro and it made him somewhat embittered towards the detective in front of him; this was despite knowing that the things that had to be done during the investigation were necessary for catching as big an evil as Kira. Soichiro only wished Light hadn’t had to go through everything he was put through.

Soichrio watched as the little pink umbrella spinning in L’s fingers escaped and whirled to the ground. L blinked at where it fell but did not pick it up, that was when Soichiro decided to speak and go straight to business, “Ryuzaki, why did you ask to meet me…Is everything ok? How is Light?”

“Light-kun is well. He has his three balanced meals a day, follows a reasonable sleep schedule, and is working very diligently in his studies,” L ticked off on his fingers as if consulting a mental list, “He has also begun trying his hand at baking. A skill of which you can imagine I am very appreciative of.”

“Oh that is good. I am glad to hear it.”

“And how is Yagami-san?” L pressed his fingers to his drink and slid it towards himself to take a sip of it. After L did so, Soichiro lifted his sake and drank from it. The burn from his drink tickled his throat and offered a little bit of comfort from the unease of having L’s big fish eyes looking directly at him.

“I’m doing fine, thank you, Ryuzaki. I feel better than I have in months actually.”

“If I may ask, how so?”

“Well, the Kira case may have closed two years ago but I haven’t felt this way in a long time,” He thoughtfully paused, “Like things are finally starting to settle.”

“Settle?”

Yagami senior swirled the dark liquid in his glass very quietly. It was quite busy in the bar, but not the loud sort of busyness. The noise level in the place was just enough to hear the clink of the ice cubes inside. That was the only tick that betrayed Soichiro’s discomfort with sharing about himself. He was not a man used to sharing the more introspective parts of himself but he would try for the sake of his former boss, the detective who had caught Kira, and most importantly the man who his son had chosen to spend his life with.

When Soichiro had found out that Light and L were in a relationship, he was admittedly very surprised…And not exactly thrilled. The two of them had told him, Sachiko, and Sayu just the previous year during Christmas dinner. Soichiro had already been surprised when Light had asked if he could invite Ryuzaki to it, but he just thought it was because the two of them had become very close friends during the investigation and had kept in contact. However, it did strike him as a little odd that Ryuzaki was still in Japan a year after the Kira case closed. But he had reasoned that any number of things could’ve led L to stay in the area or even draw him back—another case, perhaps. But no, through a series of subtle gestures during that fateful dinner, the nature of their true relationship came to light. Admittedly, Soichiro was a little uncomfortable with this revelation. He was not alone in this because Sachiko was as well. The two of them were of the same generation and mold, one that was generally more conservative in their beliefs. Sayu was shocked but no less understanding. She got over her surprise quicker than her parents. Soichiro regretted his reaction. He wished he had been quicker to accept and understand. It felt like he failed his son by not doing so, and it hurt him to know the way he acted had hurt his son in the process. Their relationship suffered for it and grew weaker than it had ever been.

It was through some self-discovery and acts to educate himself in areas he had previously been blind to that he came to understand this relationship Light had built with the man before him. Ryuzaki, or L, may have been quite an odd personality and not at all the sort of person who he and Sachiko thought their son would give his heart to. But he understood it—at least, Soichiro thought he did. L may have been a bit strange, but no one could deny the intellect nestled behind the explosion of black hair. Soichiro wasn’t blind, during the investigation he noticed the way Light and L seemed to click. Listening to them talk to each other was like watching a million fireworks go off at once. It was beautiful to see his son’s intellect and genius at its peak but it was like the sorts of conversations Light and L would have were far above the world’s heads. Soichiro also noticed that just as much as those two connected they also crashed violently against each other, quite literally at times. Both of those things were novelties to him in regards to Light. Soichiro had never seen his normally patient and even-tempered son lose his temper at someone else. Much less throw himself into a physical altercation with another person. That uncovering of his temper was surprising. Equally, on the other hand, he had never seen his son so engaged with another person. It was like all this time his son had been sleepwalking through life, doing everything perfectly, of course, but he’d never seen him so alive until then. It didn’t make sense but then it completely did.

“Crimes have returned to the numbers they used to be at before Kira. And with that, they are very…Normal. Nothing on the scale of Kira and his madness. It’s almost like how things used to be a couple years ago but not quite. For one, I’m trying to be home more.” The Kira investigation had forced him to confront his mortality on more than one occasion. Such a confrontation left a lasting impression and was not so easy to shake off. Soichiro may have watched how work life and criminal life may have returned to normalcy; however, he knew that he himself couldn’t follow in those same steps and go back to living life as he used to. Light was already living away and making his life elsewhere, but Soichiro decided to make efforts to try and be there for Sayu and his wife. “I’m still very busy, but my daughter recently showed me an article about the benefits of balancing work and private life…So, I’m trying to do that for them..”

L nodded and took a long draught of his drink. Soichiro took that opportunity to nurse his sake. L set his sweet drink down and wiped his mouth with the back of his hand before saying, “Please don’t take offense at my saying this, but I notice Yagami-san has changed.”

Soichiro blinked. He had not expected that. “I’m not offended. I appreciate it,” He coughed and quietly said, “I’m trying.”

“I think it’s admirable. I cannot boast of such a thing,” As if to emphasize that comment, L suddenly pulled out a cherry stem he’d twisted to a knot in his mouth. That, and his familiar way of sitting combined to send a message that said: I’m the same as always. It was strange receiving a compliment such as this, especially from the person who was giving it. L was putting himself down to give Soichiro that compliment. But on the other hand he also could’ve been mocking him. It was always hard to tell these sorts of things with L.

Soichiro’s discomfort with the situation had only begun to wane but he still felt compelled to get up and order more drinks. So, after getting a slightly stronger glass of sake and another colorful concoction of a drink for L, he felt ready for anything. The extra fortitude the sake gave him did not quite prepare him for L’s next question, “I was thinking over what you’ve said and my attention has caught onto one particular thing. You said you have been trying to change for ‘them’ .. your family, but what of yourself?”

Soichiro paused, “I’m not sure I understand the question. Isn’t the fact I’m trying to change already to do with myself?”

“I suppose,” L looked away and sipped his drink as he thought. The truth was he was kind of bored with this train of conversation even though he was the one who had put it in this direction. These kinds of things, the sorts of things to do with hearts and feelings didn’t really interest him unless it was to do with…No one, really. No one except Light. That exception refocused him on the topic at hand and why he was there, “I only meant to ask, are you changing entirely for your family? Such a thing seems like a very selfless undertaking to me.”

“Well, my family are a very big part of it. Almost everything I’ve done has been for my family, keeping them safe, secure, and cared for,” Soichrio paused in thought and initially took a sip of his sake before he thought of something painful and took a much longer drink of it. Fire tumbled down his throat as he remembered requesting to be imprisoned with his son. He had spent long hours in that cell of his just hoping and praying that the real Kira would slip up and clear his son of all suspicions. Just even thinking about the well of love he had in his soul for his family made something expand in his chest like a bomb exploding in slow motion. It was just too much. He loved them all fiercely and would tear down the world for any one of them. The emotion pounded through his skull and shone sharply in his eyes, “Everything I do, I do for them. At least that’s what I always believed. Yes, my job took me away from home for many many hours, but I always thought it was worth it because when I finally got home at the end of the day I knew the streets were a little safer for my family and everyone else. That was something that always drove me to this field of work. It was why I became a detective. The world can be so cruel, as I’m sure you already know, and probably know far too much of, but there is also good in it. People can be kind just as much as they can be cruel. My family gave me balance because when I returned home, I returned to love.” Soichiro wiped a corner of an eye that was burning with something mysterious.

“Out of the darkness and into light.”

“Pardon?”

“Forgive me, it was an ill-timed joke. Thank you for sharing what you have, Yagami-san. Speaking as honestly as you have is no easy feat.”

“Thank you,” Soichiro said. Feeling very odd after unpacking all those thoughts. He hardly remembered L’s original question and he felt he didn’t quite answer it. Or maybe he did.. He wasn’t sure.

“Have you spoken to Light-kun recently?”

Soichiro looked down, “No, I haven’t.”

L extended his hand, “If you’ll allow me your phone I can give you Light-kun’s number. He changes it every so often.” After poking Light’s number into Soichiro’s phone—Light most definitely wouldn’t be too pleased with that but he’d get over it—L slid Yagami senior’s phone back to him and then said, “So as to not take up anymore of your time, I will tell you why I asked us to meet here,” Soichiro leaned forward slightly, alert. “As you know, Light-kun will be graduating just a few months from now. With his incredible skills and talent I feel he will be an invaluable asset to my team. I already offered the job to him and he has accepted. We will be leaving Japan in early June.”

“I see,” another surprise. But to a certain extent he also expected this. Sparkling pride filled him at the news but it also made him a little sad. Although he already rarely saw Light now, his son would be leaving the country soon and that would stretch their distance to a grander more physical sense. But he was a little confused as to why L was telling him this. “Are you asking for my approval? Light is an adult and can make his own decisions. If that is what he wants to do, I support him.”

“I wasn’t asking for that. But I’m certain he would appreciate hearing that anyway.”

And then it clicked. L giving him the phone number and then telling him that he and Light were going to leave… “I think so too,” He blinked at L and saw him differently. He felt he just saw a layer to the man that he was not aware existed. So, he was changing as well. He thought that much of it must’ve been Light’s influence and Soichiro smiled very faintly at the thought of it. He didn’t drink nearly enough to feel a buzz or loosen his tongue, but the knowledge that this was probably the last meeting he’d ever have with Ryuzaki gave him enough courage to say, “You know, I think you’ve changed as well, Ryuzaki.”

“Oh?”

Now that he said it, he pushed away embarrassment because such a comment felt too familiar, but Ryuzaki had told him the same thing so it couldn’t be as impolite as it felt. Especially since Soichiro meant it well. “Be honest, Ryuzaki. How do you feel for my son?” When Ryuzaki and Light had visited their home and announced their relationship a year ago, the status was all that they had shared. Of course, such a thing had to be backed up with feelings and he was more than certain they existed. But he wanted to hear it confirmed in some way. Specifically, from the man who was soon going to take his son away.

“I love your son, Yagmai-san,” There it was. Said factually and flatly, almost coldly. But that was Ryuzaki’s way, and perhaps the factual way in which it was said lent it an undeniable weight of honesty that could not be ignored.

Soichiro released a breath he hadn’t realized he was holding and asked, “He feels like home?”

L blinked at Soichiro. It was an unexpected question given the sentimentality of it. It was even more sentimental than the one about L’s feelings. L knew of his own feelings but he’d never romanticised them in the way Soichiro’s question was asking him to do. Did Light feel like home? he wondered. What was a home anyway? Despite the questions that were stirred up inside him, L bluntly answered, “He is my home.” L told himself he’d contemplate that statement later or discard it as something trivial. He reconsidered the latter due to Soichiro’s big smile of happiness and relief. He’d never seen Light’s father smile that way and it made him curious, “What is your home, Yagami-san?”

“My family, of course.”

“Is it true even if Light is away?”

“Yes,” Soichiro’s grin dimmed somewhat, but it was not sad.

“I don’t need to apologize for taking him away then.”

“That’s right.”

L lifted a corner of his mouth, “Good. I wasn’t planning on it.”

***

Later that night, when L had his head on Light’s lap and was dozing away, Light’s phone rang. L blinked his eyes open and watched as Light impassively checked it. L said, “You should get that.”

Light raised an eyebrow at him, phone held aloft and vibrating in his hand probably with only seconds left to live, “Oh?”

L just stared at him without an answer. Light frowned slightly but his curiosity was a persuasive force. He flipped his phone open and tucked it between his shoulder and chin with one last weary glance down at L. “Hello?” One of his hands resumed idly running through L’s hair but with less intent than before.

The volume was too low to hear anything, especially with the tv. But a low and staticy “Light” could be heard.

“Dad?” Light said in initial confusion before looking down at L. A flash of realization passed in his eyes as Light realized the answer was right there in his lap. Quickly getting over his surprise and trading it for weary caution Light asked, “Are you ok?” He moved L’s head off his lap and got up, walking away to another room where he closed the door. Sealing away his voice as he spoke on the phone.

Hmmph, why didn’t Soichiro call a little bit earlier? Preferably, before L had his head on his son’s lap? Lolling on the couch for a bit, he waited for Light to return, but the call was taking longer than expected. When he tried listening through the door, he couldn’t hear anything, which led him to believe Light had gone into the room’s bathroom to add an extra layer of distance.

Forty minutes passed before Light finished his call. L had lost interest in the movie he had not really been watching and turned off the tv to read. But he was not really interested in the book either and put the book down when he saw Light reappear. Light remained in a meditative silence as he returned to the couch. L watched him the entire way, trying to pick up on what Light felt and what he was thinking. Light reclined on the couch and moved so he faced L, propping his chin on his hand he matched L’s stares and quietly regarded him, “That was my dad,” he needlessly said.

“I know.”

“Of course,” Light rolled his eyes but turned more serious and said, “I don’t appreciate my phone number being handed out so freely. Nor do I like how you’ve interfered in my family business. But I appreciate the inventions behind it all, just don’t do it again. I can handle these things on my own.”

L nodded and found his toes a very interesting thing as he stared at them. “You’re mad at me.”

“I’m not. Sure, I’m a little put-out but I’m not angry. As I said, just don’t do something like that again.”

Unable to contain himself anymore, L asked, “How did the call go?”

“It was fine,” Light shrugged in a far too deliberate manner. “He just talked about work and I talked about university. Nothing important.”

“You spent 45 minutes in there.”

“He was very intrigued by my class to do with the history of Japanese Criminology.”

“Hmm.”

“Where did we leave off again?” Light turned the tv on again and resumed the movie they’d been watching.

When they were in bed once again, drifting off to sleep, L wondered about what Soichiro said, did Light feel like home? He felt an arm encircle his waist and drag him back into Light’s chest. So Light really didn’t mind what I did, he thought and relaxed into his hold. It was a reverse of earlier that morning when L was holding him instead. Now Light was mirroring that position of the past but in his own way. His forehead was pressed to the back of his neck and their legs were fitted together, not tangled. Is this home? He thought, as he idly played with Light’s fingers. L sighed and then Light sighed with him. Maybe.

#fanfiction #death note #lawlight #soichiro yagami #light yagami #l lawliet #l #submission #lightsredapple #danthegeek #Mello's Birthday Mayhem 2020

44 notes · View notes

excitedlysuffering · 4 years

Text

Neji Headcanons Collection

Requested from my wattpad account

For everyone who has requested, I’m slowly getting through them, but I’ve been busy and exhausted lately so it’s taking longer than I wanted it to, I’m sorry!

What He Looks For In An S/O~

• Neji is a pretty stoic, introverted guy, so he’d need someone who was more on the introverted side as well. However, he would love an S/O who could bring him out of his shell a little

• He definitely seems like someone who would prefer to date a fellow shinobi so he didn’t have to worry about them and since they most likely aren’t apart of the Hyuga clan, them being a ninja would help his clan be a little more approving

• He needs a PATIENT S/O

• Neji is new to relationships and someone who understands that and wouldn’t rush him would be ideal

• Although Naruto changed Neji for the best, he can still be a little insensitive sometimes, so a partner who has a thick skin is important

• Neji hates small talk with a passion, so he would look for someone who could hold intellectual conversations or who didn’t mind silence

• As an introvert, Neji is something of a homebody, but make no mistake; this boy is always training so you’d best be ready for rigorous training being a regular past time

• COMMUNICATION is key in a relationship with him

• As smart as Neji is, he does not have the aptitude or patience to deal with mixed signals, so just talk to him, please

Relationship With Neji Stuff~

• Neji isn’t clingy by any means, but you’re his girlfriend and he expects to see you often, and will easily become concerned or upset if his partner starts to seem distant

• Trust is the most important thing to him, if he’s dating you he clearly trusts you A LOT, and it will upset him if he notices you don’t trust him as much

• Your relationship will most likely be lowkey, in public at least, but that’s not because he’s ashamed, he’s just an incredibly private person

• Although Neji will enjoy sparring with you, he will also be up to other ideas for dates

• He loves taking walks with you, whether it’s after dark, before average people are awake, or in the middle of the day

• He’s the kind of person to have a certain amount of time set aside for you, whether you spend it out and about, or inside, he won’t interrupt that time unless it’s unavoidable

• He’s very good at picking up your moods and such things, but he doesn’t always know what to do about them, so he’ll help you in ways he knows how tea and training

• He has a great memory. Whether it’s certain dates, the timing of your week, or little things he’s noticed about you; you can trust he won’t easily forget it

• PDA embarrasses him, but he will allow hand-holding and the occasional cheek kiss

• He takes so much pride in his hair, he won’t allow you to touch it until way later in your relationship, but once he does… he’d rather die than admit, so sometimes he’ll wordless put his head in your lap and scowl until you take the hint

• Neji doesn’t just date around, he’s looking for something serious, so if he realizes that you’re not what he’s looking for in a wife he will immediately (and respectfully) end it

How To Lose/Annoy Him~

• Generally, Neji is a very forgiving person since he’s needed to be forgiven many times, but there are some things he won’t tolerate; cheating, slander, and genuine disrespect

• An S/O being rude to someone for no reason would turn him off

• He really can’t stand gossipers and busybodies so if you want to lose him, go off I guess

• Laziness is a major thing for him. He can understand being tired of at your limit, but he really can’t handle his S/O just lazing around for a long time

• Immaturity is a big no-no. Neji comes from a clan who only recognizes maturity and formalities so he would be uncomfortable with an overly childish S/O

• Selfishness or being chronically inconsiderate can and will make him angry

• He won’t even entertain someone with bad hygiene like he really doesn’t understand how someone could be okay with not being clean?

• Incessant complaining and whining will grate on his nerves like anything else

• Not respecting his boundaries, even if you don’t understand them, will have him running for the hills before you could even say ‘Byakugan’

Soft Neji Things~

• Neji isn’t one for constant affection, but once he realizes how much he enjoys the lotus position (you sit in his lap, facing him, legs around his waist) it’ll be a regular occurrence. Whether he’s reading or just savoring your presence you’d better get used to it

• He loves to read and sometimes if you ask beg he’ll read to you and he has the smoothest most ASMR voice ever??

• He actually enjoys shopping with you because he loves helping you choose (and he likes to spoil you)

• I strongly believe that Neji plays an instrument (piano, flute or violin) and sometimes he’ll play for you

• If he’s had a really bad nightmare or his family is stressing him out, don’t be surprised if he climbs in your bed at a random hour of the night

• Locked doors or windows have never stopped this boy, so you’d best expect him to just walk in like he owns the place

• Considerate to the max, he’s always thinking about you and doing small things for you

• You actually bring out a new side to him, he’s more playful and free around you

Random Neji Facts~

• Neji made it into a game without your knowledge to see how many times he can scare you by just waltzing into your house

• He’s incredibly competitive, so the second you mention being the best at something, even in jest, prepare to have to prove it in competition

• His love language is in between quality time and acts of service

• He doesn’t really expect gifts or anything, so if you really want to see him light up, get him a little ‘I’m thinking about you’ gift

• Neji likes to journal, he likes to write down little things about his day, or ideas or even quotes that he heard and liked

• He really enjoys domestic activities because he didn’t really think he’d be able to find anyone to do that with

• He loves receiving and writing letters, it’s intimate and it’s special and he’ll keep everyone you send him

• Neji has a love/hate relationship with his hair; he’s very proud of it, but he hates all the extra work that goes into taking care of it

• He always carries extra scrunchies/rubberbands on missions in case his hair gets loose

• He gets sunburns so easily, he’ll always have sunscreen during the hottest months

Little Things~

Favorite:

• Place to kiss- Your wrist pulse point; it’s intimate and it feels so natural for him, especially when he’s holding your hand

• Way to hug- He loves to place a hand on the back of your head and one on your back; he loves the feeling of being so close to you

• Things to do with you- He loves doing small things with you; reading, drinking tea, or cuddling

• Cuddle position- When he’s not busy, he loves to lay back on the couch with you on top

• Type of date- Lowkey ones, maybe a stroll through the park, or going to a nice little cafe/restaurant

This or That-

• He enjoys spring the most, he loves seeing all the new life after a long winter

• He’s a hardcore morning person, he lives to be productive and the day won’t wait for him to ‘get in the mood’

• He’s a good cook, but as I’ve mentioned, his love language is acts of service so you cooking for him means a lot to him every time

• Loves to read, either on his own or with you and his favorite genres are classics and nonfiction

Conflict Happenings~

• He has a very sharp tongue, but he really hates arguing with you and will try to avoid that for as long as possible

• However, if something needs to be addressed, he will not hesitate

• Would prefer to have a calm, rational, debate, so if either of you loses your cool, don’t be surprised if he just up and leaves

• However, if you say something that crosses the line… God/Pein/Jashin/Kami have mercy on you, this boy will go off

• After the fight is over, he’ll need space to calm down, but once he is, apologies and makeups are quick and sincere

• He refuses to fight over small insignificant things, he finds it beneath him

• He will listen, though, because if something is bothering you, that’s valid to him

• Don’t push him or test his limits, it’ll make him uneasy and feel like he can’t trust you, which can lead to your relationship self destructing

• After fights, whether big or small, he needs some good ol’ fashioned cuddles (you both do honestly)

• He’s a firm believer in not going to bed angry, so even if you’re still upset, he’ll do everything in his power to get rid of his own irritation

• It’s hard to hurt his feelings, but if you do he’s cut deeply, so watch what you say

Modern Neji~

• OMG this boy is one of those people that are always smartly dressed and no one can change my mind

• He’s not a teacher’s pet, per se, but he’s very polite and is always doing his best

• He’s one of those gym obsessed people, but very lowkey about it

• I could definitely see him into fencing and/or martial arts

• He’s the kind of person to only hang out with his closest friends because he feels most comfortable with them

• Most people would know he was from the esteemed Hyuga family, but no one would really process it because he’s not overly flashy and doesn’t really mention it

• He’s still pretty antisocial but after Naruto pretty much shoved his way into his life he started to open up

• Has so many fangirls and is always being asked on dates but is so confused, like why do these strangers always follow him? And who are these gifts from??

• I can really see a turf war between Neji’s fangirls and Sasuke’s fangirls over who’s better

• He most likely majors in business and finance to inherit the Hyuga company or at least have a fundamental role in it

• I think he’d like a roommate, especially if he lives off-campus

• I could see him living with someone like him so he’s not constantly overwhelmed by someone with Naruto’s personality

• Neji is always the model student and I could see him tutoring a few people (begrudgingly, of course)

• He’s always doing his best, but it might not seem like it? Neji is very good at retaining information, so the only time you’ll catch him really studying is if he knows he has trouble in that area

• His living space is meticulously clean and probably kinda bare

• He doesn’t really feel the need to decorate because it’s temporary, but if his roommate wants to he won’t care

• Neji is not a partier, but if his friends drag him to one he might stay for a while

• He’s such a lightweight and he might find himself drunk quicker than he thought possible

• Doesn’t have much of a hangover besides waking up disoriented and dizzy

• I love Neji honestly

Masterlist

#neji hyuga #neji #headcanon #naruto scenarios #naruto shippuden #collection #canon #modern #requested

266 notes · View notes

wonderfulworldofmichaelford · 3 years

Text

Michael in the Mainstream: Crash Bandicoot

Reviewing video games is not my forte. Like, sure, I can review the Metal Gear franchise because it’s near and dear to my heart and it’s incredibly story driven to a cinematic degree, but I’m not super good at touching on game design or any of that. I stick with movies. But then there are a lot of games I love and want to talk about, such as this game, Crash Bandicoot, and it’s like, how do I talk about this? This is a platformer that is very light on plot and is more about precision platforming than anything, and I’m just not really good at talking about gameplay.

But I’ve come up with a solution! One that I plan to use going forward for a few other games, too! I’ll start with a few paragraphs with my basic overview of the game, and then I will do a ranking of my favorite levels, and then how I’d rank the bosses. I’m much better at talking why I enjoy the challenge of specific elements of games like these then I am talking about the game as a whole, so let’s see how this turns out.

Crash Bandicoot was the first video game I ever played, and so is extremely near and dear to my heart. It’s a rather simple game, a “save the girl” platforming adventure in the vein of something like Mario, where an intrepid hero travels through platforming challenges to save the love of his life from an evil mastermind, though as the main character is a furry animal with a bit of 90s ‘tude, and his archenemy is a mad scientist who utilizes cyborgs to stop you, there’s a dash of Sonic in here too. Being a simple platforming game like this, you’d think there wouldn’t be all that much to the story… but surprisingly, that’s not totally the case (although the story is still relatively simple to later entries).

Crash was meant to be the ultimate soldier in Dr. Neo Cortex’s army of evil marsupials and other assorted critters, an army he presumably was going to use for world domination. After rigorous training, Crash was set to be brainwashed and turned into a mindless slave, but something got screwed up and Crash remained a good, heroic guy. He ended up chased out a window and washed up on the beach of a nearby island, and set out to save his buxom, big booty bandicoot babe Tawna from the creepy clutches of the cantankerous Cortex, causing chaos and crushing crates as he went along. The manual included with the original version of the game actually outlined sort of a little story for the first island, showing how the levels involved Crash infiltrating a native village, defeating its leader, and then riding a hog to escape on his way to the next island. It’s kind of fun and imaginative, and the next island keeps it up, with Crash having to brave ancient ruins to make it to the volcano on the other side of the island, before finally going through Cortex’s toxic power plant, causing a reactor meltdown, and climbing Cortex’s castle to confront him as his island burns to the ground. It’s a fun, simple story that’s not too challenging on the mind while still being engaging.

Perhaps the best thing about the game is the music, which was done by Josh Mancell with the assistance of Mark Mothersbaugh’s Mutato Muzika production company. Let’s not beat around the bush here: Every single track in this game slaps. Basically every track in the original trilogy slaps, but I feel pound for pound this game just hits all the right notes with its music. It perfectly sets the tone for each level, with eerie levels like Slippery Climb getting foreboding music and unsettling yet somewhat whimsical levels like Road to Nowhere getting music that perfectly suits it. This is the biggest downgrade of the remake; they redid the score, with no option to go back to the old tracks, and while some of the updated tunes are great, they don’t really hold a candle to the original (especially the creepier levels, which got dumbed down a fair bit to the point of narm).

The one thing this game is being known for these days is its pretty brutal difficulty, at least with the original release. A lot of the staple elements of the series like checkpoints saving the boxes you had previously broken and an actual save room were not present, so every level (including the brutal ones where the margin of error was incredibly slim) needed to be completed perfectly in one go. The challenging road to 100% completion was absolutely brutal, but thankfully the remake polished things and brought it more in line with its sequels to the point you only need a flawless run on colored gem levels. It can still be pretty tough since the colored gems are located in the hardest levels of the game, but it’s a lot easier than it once was.

The original game is a great, fun game, but only play the original release if you really want to test your skills; the remake is the way to go. The game holds up amazingly well even today, so no matter which version you end up playing you’re in for a fun platforming challenge.

Anyway, let’s get on to the levels!

TOP 10 LEVELS

10. Generator Room

There’s something to be said about the various one-shot themed levels of the third island. Toxic Waste is an interesting one we’ll talk about later, The Lab is a fun penultimate level, and Cortex Power is a frustrating slog of confusing backtracking. The Generator Room, though? This is unnerving atmosphere and dark ambience at its peak, with the eerie, minimalist music and the looming Cortex faces lending a chilling sense that you’re being watched as you make your way through this dark platforming challenge. It’s not the most exciting level, but among the one-shot themes it stands out for being a heaping helping of nightmare fuel… Though moreso in the original game. The remake sadly toned things down a bit too much, though it’s hard to blame them, really.

9. Native Fortress

The level that caps off the first island is a more challenging remake of The Great Gate, and closes out the story of the first island by showing how Crash escapes the territory of Papu Papu’s tribe. It’s a pretty fun and reasonable challenge for the point in the game, but my favorite aspect of the level has always been that, when you get the red gem, you get to fly up in the clouds and experience the painted background of the other two islands with less clutter. It’s just a simple background image, sure, but I have always found it very pretty and breathtaking.

8. Road to Nowhere

Everyone’s favorite! This is one of the more challenging levels if you don’t know what you’re doing because of the tricky and precise jumps you need, but it just has so much atmosphere and pleasant music it’s hard to get mad even if I screw up and plummet to my doom a few dozen times. Bouncing off of hibernating turtles to make long jumps and inexplicable evil hogs help make this memorable. Frankly, if you want to direct your ire to a stage, direct it to The High Road, the third island’s more challenging take on this level’s theme and which is a joyless, frustrating experience.

7. Castle Machinery

This level is honestly a bit of a breather for being so late in the game; sure, it has a lot of tricky jumps and an annoying crate bridge you need to really think about to conquer, but overall it’s just an improved take on Heavy Machinery without an obtuse branching path to figure out. Still, this level really makes the list because, if you have the right colored gem, you can just immediately skip the entire level and gain thirty free lives in the process in one of the single funniest moments in the game.

6. Toxic Waste

This level is simple, straightforward, and to the point. It’s one long-ass hallway where Crash is on a narrow walkway and has to avoid incoming barrels being tossed at him by the Mafia. It has no branching paths, no crazy elements, just Crash, some barrels, some boxes, and some bad guys. It’s almost too basic, but what saves it is the atmosphere of it all and the sheer awesomeness of the music, no matter which version you’re playing. It’s a level that has stuck in my mind since I was a kid. In a way, it also set the basis for colored gem unlocks in the games to follow, as avoiding the barrels is more of a puzzle than anything, much like the tricky puzzles you had to solve to unlock the colored gems in Cortex Strikes Back and It’s About Time. It’s a neat little first step even if it’s not quite there yet.

5. Boulder Dash

I almost didn’t include one of these levels, but God, these levels were trendsetters! The whole “Crash gets chased by dangerous thing” trend began in this game, and this second take on the boulder chase from the second island is a lot more fun and challenging than the earlier version of the level. And if you get the colored gem, you’re taken to a pretty underground alternate exit with tons of crates, which is pretty dope.

4. Fumbling in the Dark

The only one of the secret levels that requires a Cortex key to make the list, Fumbling in the Dark is a remix of Lights Out, the level it branches off of. That level is a bit of a cakewalk if you have the right gem, with an alternate exit being available to you before the level’s challenge ramps up. Not so with this level! You’ve gotta do some tricky timed jumps as quick as possible so you can get to the next Aku Aku mask before the light runs out. It’s a pretty fun and fair challenge, and it pushes my platforming skills to the limit. I also just really enjoy the creepy, Gothic aesthetic of the levels inside Cortex’s castle.

3. Hog Wild

This is, hands down, the funniest level in the game. From Crash’s really suggestive eyebrow waggle which leads to him tackling a pig to the extremely goofy music, this level is just an absolute blast. It does have an equally fun yet more challenging remix as an optional secret level, Whole Hog, but I have to give props to the original level for being the most hilarious thing I ever saw when I was little.

2. Slippery Climb

Where Stormy Ascent is a brutal, unrelenting challenge, Slippery Climb is more of a tough, but fair challenge. It’s definitely up there with Sunset Vista and The High Road in terms of difficulty, and the fact you’ve gotta do a flawless run of it if you want the red gem is daunting, but this is the most thoroughly rewarding mandatory level to conquer. You’re gonna feel really cool when you take this one down, guaranteed. Maybe not as much as when you take down Stormy Ascent, but still, this may be the toughest level in the game.

1. THE GREAT HALL

youtube

WOO YEAH BABY! LOOK AT THIS CHALLENGE!

Ok, ok, here’s the real number one:

1. N. Sanity Beach

This is the first level in the game and, thus, one of the easiest. And yet I placed it above all the levels I find to be more fun and challenging. Why? Well, for one, the pure nostalgia of it all. This was my first level in a video game, and I have fond memories of traversing the beach and jungle. For the other, this is one of the most perfect tutorial levels I have ever seen. Basically everything the game has to offer is laid out to you and slowly dished out to you: you start with a couple crates and a free life, move on to experience some enemies and pits, you can get total invincibility if you’re smart, you’re introduced to branching paths and backtracking… Everything is dished out to you at a solid pace so that any new player will be able to figure out what they’re doing with relative ease. Plus, the music slaps, and interestingly enough halfway through the level changes to a different song (the only level to do this). It really does encapsulate the game as a whole in one tiny package, and for that, I think it’s my favorite level of all.

Boss Ranking

The best way to describe the bosses in the original Crash is that they are incredibly basic. Most of them have simple patterns, easy tells, and don’t take much effort to take down. There’s not really anything here that will put your skills to the test, but none of them are really bad per se; in fact, considering how hard the levels can get, it’s sort of a breath of fresh air when you get to a boss that can be taken down without thinking hard.

6. Papu Papu

Coming in last place is our first boss, the big chief of the first island himself. He’s a pretty simple and straightforward boss battle: just jump on his head a few times and he’ll be out cold. It’s pretty nice to ease in new players, but it’s seriously not much of a challenge (though none of these bosses are particularly hard, mind you).

5. Koala Kong

So far, this has been Koala Kong’s sole major outing, as he was pretty quickly replaced with the more engaging Tiny Tiger in terms of dumb muscle.Tiny at least has some semblance of combat prowess and strategy, while this guy is just tossing boulders at you to spin back while he’s flexing and posing like he wants a part in the next volume of JoJo’s Bizarre Adventure. He’s certainly not the sharpest tool in the shed. Still, he’s not bad or anything, just a bit of a generic battle compared to the last three or the one before him.

4. Ripper Roo

Ripper Roo is a bit of a frustrating puzzle boss, requiring just the right timing to get in any damage on the guy. Still, the fun and bouncy music coupled with the amazing stock laugh does help make him a bit more memorable than the previous two bosses. I will say he’s probably worse in terms of an actual boss battle, because he ends up being more an exercise in precision than the typical dodging and waiting for the right moment to strike, but he’s also a funny kangaroo in a straitjacket, and I think that counts for something.

3. N. Brio

The longest boss in the game, Brio comes with a massive health bar that you’ll shave off pretty quickly for his first phase if you’re careful, and whose second phase features him hulking out into an incredible monstrosity. He’s simple and straightforward, much like all the bosses to be honest, but I think the bosses on the final island all have solid presentation to make up for that. Brio just comes out at the lower end, which is honestly a running theme for him in Crash games, as his battles are rarely the best out there and few can match his debut.

2. Pinstripe

Pinstripe may not be the most challenging boss in the world, but damn is he cool. A tommy gun-toting potoroo gangster who goes full-on Scarface and starts blasting up his office when you walk in while cackling like a madman? Awesome. Defeating him is also heavily implied to be the reason Cortex’s castle eventually starts burning down, as he accidentally shoots the generator upon defeat, which is a neat little touch. If nothing else, Pinstripe is just fun, and he has killer theme music to boot.

1. Cortex

Cortex begins his reign as the big bad of the franchise with a final boss battle that, while lacking in serious challenge, has such good music and presentation that it’s hard to really care. The fight is simple and straightforward: you dodge his blasts, and hit back the ones of a certain color so they blast his health off. All of this is done from atop his dirigible, as his island burns down in the background. The bosses just don’t get any cooler than this.

#Michael in the Mainstream #review #video game review #Crash Bandicoot #Naughty Dog #Platformer #nostalgia

5 notes · View notes

ardellian · 4 years

Text

I. Am very ANGRY.

For all the trans people who read this - you are amazing, you are brave, and fuck everyone who dares to tell you how you are allowed to express who you are.

Anyway I went through JKRs essay on trans issues and tried to deconstruct it because a prominent Swedish political figure just supported it and these are EXACTLY the kind of arguments I have had to counter and it SUCKS. I will have to sit through this shit being thrown at me again not far from now. So this is... venting, I guess.

This is going to be long and if you want to understand it I guess you should read what she’s written; it’s on her homepage. But also don’t read it because it will probably make you sad and angry. It’s transphobic and ignorant, and just, please, stay away from it if you know that will make you feel like shit. I’m also going to be quoting her in the text below, so I’m putting it under a cut.

M’kay.

First, what even is she trying to say with this essay? She says she’s worried about the “new trans activism.” What exactly is worrying with this new activism? Well, she doesn’t say it outright, but it seems to be that she believes it’s getting too easy to transition. That the “rigorous process of evaluation, psychotherapy and staged transformation” is being eroded, and this is bad.

Through the essay I can find two main arguments she has to support this claim.

1. Cis youth (in particular cis girls) will be fooled into to thinking they’re trans.

The UK has experienced a 4400% increase in girls being referred for transitioning treatment. Autistic girls are hugely overrepresented in their numbers.

Littman mentioned Tumblr, Reddit, Instagram and YouTube as contributing factors to Rapid Onset Gender Dysphoria, where she believes that in the realm of transgender identification ‘youth have created particularly insular echo chambers.’

She also supports this idea by sharing a personal history of being uncomfortable with gender roles, and confusing that with gender dysphoria:

“The allure of escaping womanhood would have been huge. I struggled with severe OCD as a teenager. If I’d found community and sympathy online that I couldn’t find in my immediate environment, I believe I could have been persuaded to turn myself into the son my father had openly said he’d have preferred.”

“Fortunately for me, I found my own sense of otherness, and my ambivalence about being a woman, reflected in the work of female writers and musicians who reassured me that, in spite of everything a sexist world tries to throw at the female-bodied, it’s fine not to feel pink, frilly and compliant inside your own head; it’s OK to feel confused, dark, both sexual and non-sexual, unsure of what or who you are.”

3. A concern that fake trans women invading women’s spaces would make “natal women” less safe:

“A man who intends to have no surgery and take no hormones may now secure himself a Gender Recognition Certificate and be a woman in the sight of the law. Many people aren’t aware of this.”

“When you throw open the doors of bathrooms and changing rooms to any man who believes or feels he’s a woman – and, as I’ve said, gender confirmation certificates may now be granted without any need for surgery or hormones – then you open the door to any and all men who wish to come inside. That is the simple truth.”

Okay.

Let me make an observation here before I try to counter these points. She’s having very different problems with the ease of transitioning for trans women and trans men. If it’s too easy for trans women to transition, men will use this as an opportunity to prey on women. If it’s too easy for trans men to transition, young girls will be in danger of forsaking their womanhood. She clearly identifies with the young afab people who question their gender, but not with trans women who want to be recognized as such. Let that sit with you for a bit and I’ll see if I come back to it.

Let’s see if I can argue against these two points first.

1. Cis youth (in particular cis girls) will be fooled into to thinking they’re trans.

Her statistics aren’t wrong. There has been a huge increase in trans youth. This increase is especially prevalent in neurodivergent afab people. Trans health care, at least where I live, is struggling with how to deal with this. Those diagnosed with autism spectrum disorders often have difficulties with feeling comfortable in their bodies and the language used around that can be similar to the language used around gender dysphoria. Many people are concerned, as JKR obviously is, that these people might think that transitioning would get rid of these symptoms, when in fact they stem from something completely different. These people may transition and still have these symptoms. They may be disappointed.

The conclusion you’re implicitly supposed to draw from these statements, and those like what I quoted above, that these young trans people aren’t really trans. That they’re somehow being tricked by trans activists. You have to believe two other things for that: that young neurodivirgent people can’t interpret their own lived experience in a correct way, and that transitioning is harmful.

Because why would it be a problem if a young person questions their gender, identifies as trans, transitions, and then changes their mind? Who cares if they have an autism diagnosis? It is only a problem if transitioning is bad for you. And the part that people like JKR seems to think is harmful is that they might have “altered their bodies irrevocably, and taken away their fertility”. But the unaltered body holds no moral superiority over the altered one. While fertility is something many people desire and something many who lack it grieve, it is not something that inherently gives your life more value. To JKR, the inherent harm of transitioning can only be justified if the person is really trans.

The tendency of a specific group to display a higher prevalence of identifying as trans is then used to cast doubt on their experiences. It’s a “social contagion” - they’re not really trans. But why does any of that matter? So what if a person identifies as trans because they see themselves in another’s story and go - that’s true for me too? Why can’t you believe them?

Well. Because you don’t really believe trans people are real. You believe that when young people speak of dysphoria, they are referring to the experience you had when you were young. And you’re happy with being a woman now. So surely they just need to accept themselves for what they are and they won’t be trans anymore.

I get it. I recognize myself in what JKR writes here. I felt “mentally sexless.” I also “found my own sense of otherness, and my ambivalence about being a woman, reflected in the work of female writers and musicians” and this reassured me. Find a woman who has not during a period of their life hated their body, I dare you. The world we live in does cause women to have strange relationships with their bodies. And it’s very easy from there to make the logical leap to the idea that young trans men are just girls who never found that reassurance! I might have also thought so, if I hadn’t connected with trans men in my teens, and actually tried to understand their experience, and realized that my negative feelings about my body not living up to some standard of beauty, about not being woman enough in some way, and not wanting to be “pink and frilly”, was not the same as their experience. I mean - I didn’t like my body because I thought it should look like a beautiful woman’s body, but they felt bad about their bodies because they thought they shouldn’t look like women at all! Young boys don’t find reassurance in texts about womanhood. Because they’re not women.

So I feel a bit sorry for her. Because I think that she sees herself in these young people, and it terrifies her - what if I could have turned out to be trans? But that would only be a problem if you think being trans is a problem. So maybe you could have been trans, JKR. Why does that bother you?

And god, if you want to talk about things that pressure young people into irrevocably altering their bodies, how about the “rigorous process of evaluation, psychotherapy and staged transformation“ that tries over and over again to make sure, double sure, triple sure, that you really are what you say you are. Trans people who want access to gender-affirming care have to show no weakness - if you slip up and say that you might not want surgeries, that can be used against you and you get nothing. Trans people repeatedly say they have to perform their gender to the extreme in order for health care providers to believe them. They’re being questioned and doubted and pushed and to get through that, you have to dig in and fight. This is not a process that encourages careful consideration and doubts - it’s a system that says: all or nothing, hesitate and you’re out.

So we get to her second argument:

3. A concern that fake trans women invading women’s spaces would make “natal women” less safe:

Here she draws a line between real trans women, who have passed through some rigorous testing process, and men who fake it. She uses her history of abuse as a cause to be worried about the safety of women if the gender binary were relaxed. The only argument she makes here is the one I already copied up there:

When you throw open the doors of bathrooms and changing rooms to any man who believes or feels he’s a woman – and, as I’ve said, gender confirmation certificates may now be granted without any need for surgery or hormones – then you open the door to any and all men who wish to come inside. That is the simple truth.

Let’s be charitable and say that she means men who would fake being women when she writes “any man who believes or feels he’s a woman“, and not trans women who just don’t perform womanhood according to her standards. But still the question remains - why oh why are you so scared of seeing a body that doesn’t agree with your ideas of a woman in a changing room? If that “fake trans woman” is there, and doing nothing wrong, then why are you so bothered about it? Why? Is the sight of male secondary sex characteristics inherently harmful to women? No! Are you afraid that someone might experience sexual attraction when looking at your body? Then do you think lesbians should also have separate changing rooms? No, you obviously don’t! Sexual harassment is never acceptable, and just because you have a same-sex space doesn’t make that space immune to it. Opening it up to non-conforming bodies does not make sexual harassment somehow acceptable. Those who enter spaces with sexual harassment in mind should be dealt with - but the presence of non-normative bodies is not sexual harassment.

Trans women are women, JKR says, and I sympathize with them - but only if they display their womanhood in a way that agrees with my idea of it. And they’re not like me. Only if they have the right kind of bodies, have gone through medical procedures, want to do these surgeries, will I extend my pity.

And fuck that.

Look, the kind of logic she presents here paints trans people into a corner where the only acceptable way of being is to subscribe to a certain kind of body. Which harms the very people she claims she wants to protect - young people questioning their gender. Especially non-binary people, whom she doesn’t even acknowledge.

And now let’s stop being charitable - JKR doesn’t believe trans people exist. She believes that those who say they are trans are tragically confused and we should only accept their words because we are nice. We should accept their delusions because we pity them. She doesn’t understand her own opinions this way, I’m sure. But fuck her understanding.

She’s upset because the idea of “womanhood” is moving away from her. She feels - I’ve felt this too! - that this push for increased inclusiveness is taking the focus from the real issues. Things that affect all women. But claiming that women have “unifying realities that make them a cohesive political class” is something that white women say. When anyone talks about “the real issues”, they usually mean “issues that affect me.”

I mean that’s privilege 101, people.

Ugh.

In conclusion, I’m still angry.

#jk rowling #jkr #transphobia #i'm sorry for venting on you #please don't interact with this if you know it will hurt you #look to be prefectly clear i am a cis woman so if i'm out of line let me know #i would be happy to stand corrected #but i #i'm just fucking tired

118 notes · View notes

lawlyleia · 4 years

Text

I have some things I'd like to get off my chest.

I took my very first LSAT diagnostic test 4 months ago. And it was overwhelming and confusing. I scored a 127. Which is one of THE lowest scores possible. I felt so ashamed I kept telling everyone I hadn't gotten my score back (on a instant response test 🥴). I gave myself three months to absorb as much knowledge about the lsat as possible while still working two jobs. And I took the official LSAT in January.

You see, I didn't know I wanted to go to law school. My undergraduate career was me- kinda involved on campus, working to survive, and barely passing most of my classes. College to me is like vegetables. You know they're good for you but they're not exactly exciting. The community and the people at college were exciting. But school itself wasnt. And it wasn't until the beginning of my very last semester of undergrad that I sat down and asked myself what I wanted to do.

Which should tell you alot about me. I am average. I am not always on top of my studying. I don't take rigorous and in depth notes. I don't do my homework when I should, let alone on time. So when I decided that the only thing I felt would not only fulfill me but keep me supported was to be a lawyer, I had my work cut out for me.

Somehow through all the guilt of studying only one night a week and then in December 3 nights a week and countless late night binges of LSAT prep youtube videos. Throughout knowing that other law school hopefuls have had years of experience on me and studied daily;that those same people have way better GPAs and resumes, than me. I took the test in January and I scored a 145!

An 18 point jump!! 🤯 WHAT THE HECK! Now, this is me still being average af. I just barely made the cut off for the lowest score the law school Im hoping to get into allows.

My plan is to apply anyways just to know what the process is like, not miss the financial aid deadline and hope for the best. Realistically of course, if I don't get admitted I'll just study some more- do one more test and hopefully have gotten way better and will be a shoe in for the next time I apply. (I've also applied to regular schmegular grad school but that's not what this journey is about!)

Wish me luck!

9 notes · View notes

mementofloreo-archived · 3 years

Text

@sorrowmarked || smoochie prompts || hehehehehe[this is cut bc it is SUPER FUCKING long. This is literally the longest thing I've written for you I think]

His team has had a couple of practice matches against the soccer club from Ken's school since they both entered high school, in part thanks to Daisuke's friendship with him. Even without any influence from dark gears or things like that Ken has managed to remain an excellent player with a wide reputation.

Daisuke is unknown, of course. There was no soccer club at his middle school, after all, so he wasn't able to play competitively. He stayed on top of fitness training, even adopting some of the rigorous conditioning routine his sister had used for prep after being scouted by a pro team. Still, with no reputation to boost him he had to earn his place on the main lineup when he entered high school.

...Which he's done, really. He's far exceeded anyone's expectations, especially his own. His drive, his vigor, and his honest love for playing have earned him a lot of strong friendships, and apparently also skyrocketed the morale and motivation of his teammates on more than one occasion. They went from a club thought of as 'not bad, but nothing special' to semifinalists at the prefectural tournament all within the course of his first year. They'd lost to Ken's school, in fact, by a single point shave in the last two minutes of the match.

At his school, first years who join the club via application and not recommendation don't play starting positions in tournament matches(common practice, really). Daisuke still managed to distinguish himself, though. When he was played as a starter in practice matches against Ken's school he was usually placed in a midfield winger position. It gave him some flexibility for movement while relying on the one thing the coach and captain already knew he had, which was stamina.

When their first tournament rolled around, he was put in as a substitute for their attacking midfielder. The position was considered the playmaker, as far as team structure. They were responsible for helping to direct the flow of the team's offensive play, connecting the defensive positions to the forward ones and managing the support for the striker, who was the primary goal scorer(and the position he had played in elementary). For Daisuke, it felt like a test, an opportunity and a show of faith all in one, and so he'd pushed himself past his limits to live up to those expectations.

His fierce, quick, and precise play style coupled with his apparently 'freakish' stamina and adaptability in the position have since earned him a place as its starter as well as the team's vice captain in his second year.

When he was ten or twelve, he'd have been gunning for the striker position. It was flashy and considered the really 'cool' position in most formations.

Now, though, he's stopped caring about looking cool. He wants to play his best, he wants to have fun- and he wants the rest of the team to have those things as well. Realizing that his play sense and his technical skill are best suited to that position when those goals are in mind, he's both content with and proud of his current place.

Ken is a striker. And in their practice matches this season his team has, as usual, come out on top(even if it's usually close).

In the prefectural finals this year, Daisuke's team drags Ken's into a lengthy and brutal double overtime- in the pouring rain, no less. Everyone is exhausted, sore, soaked and filthy. Losing momentum, losing cohesion, desperate for a goal just so things will be over.

...Daisuke, though, ignores it. His burning legs, the sharp pain of his overworked lungs, the chafing of his drenched uniform, the slick ground beneath him and the way the water impedes the ball's movement. He puts himself in a mindset as if he were playing a one on one scrimmage against his sister. She's a professional player on a high ranking team in the highest tier women's league of Japan's professional circuit and has even earned a place on its national team.

If Daisuke's stamina is freakish, then Jun's entire spectrum of skill is on the same level as a natural disaster. The ferocity and lack of hesitation she shows on the field would terrify any normal high schooler, boy or girl, and even a lot of capable players from the men's league.

Which means that even a casual match against her demands ignoring his body's pleas for a break and pushing past its screaming to keep playing at his top form no matter how exhausted he is.

That's the extent he exerts himself to in that double overtime. He's in a state where he barely even registers physical sensation because he's so focused. He barely even registers the directional tips he shouts to the other mid and forward positions, and he doesn't register at all the captain calling for everyone to follow Daisuke's lead.

There's a single thought in his head: keep moving. If he stops or even slows down for just a split second, he knows he'll keep losing steam and he won't get it back. He has to barrel forward no matter what until the game is over. He doesn't pay attention to the faces or numbers of the opposing team. He focuses on keeping the ball in play, keeping his body in motion and staying at least aware of where his teammates are, though he doesn't differentiate between them very well.

When he scoops the ball right out of Ken's grasp, turns sharp, rockets past him, he doesn't know that it's Ken. He doesn't try to close the full distance to the goal either. The moment he sees a small gap in the defense he shoots. For the left corner and with every ounce of strength he has left.

The ball hit's the keeper's open palms- and blasts right through them like they're made of paper, making a loud snap sound and spinning against the net. Daisuke watches it sail in, speechless, and slowly he sinks to his hands and knees, well past being completely spent.

His awareness comes back to him gradually in the several seconds both the players and spectators are left in shock to process the split second reversal and upset of a team that made it to the nationals last year. Even the referees take a few second to declare the clean goal. But once they do, everything erupts around him.

He hears it, registers the shouting and the celebration, the exhausted and frustrated but still impressed acceptance of the other team. And he lets himself laugh breathlessly in relief, still completely unaware that he left Ken dizzily in the dust a few moments ago. Right at that second, he's mostly glad he still pre-medicates with his inhaler before any kind of exercise and keeps it on hand as a rescue. He's going to need it.

His teammates, bless them, have the presence of mind not to jump on him the way they would normally. The captain and Ken make sure he's not injured and help him to his feet, and once he confirms he can walk with some support they help him to the sidelines. The teams shake hands, exchange congratulations. Both for a hard earned victory and a well played match despite a loss. The coaches and officials are able to get the attention of the crowd enough to let the players have some breathing room for a few minutes.

Ken informs Daisuke of exactly what he did in those last few seconds while he digs for his inhaler and then takes a long drink from his water bottle. Daisuke is a little shellshocked by it all now that he's properly registering it, but he's happy all the same. He's helped carry his team to nationals, a first time accomplishment for them.

Moreover, he had the time of his life with this match, even as exhausting as it was. The frail little kid he used to be would never believe he could accomplish something like this.

He makes a note to himself to call Jun with the news- this isn't the kind of thing he should relay via text. She'd just drop everything and call him to yell about it anyway.

There isn't a formal locker room building at this field, but there's covered areas around the benches and a lot of the seating. Daisuke and a lot of his teammates take some time to rinse the mud and sweat off of exposed skin, towel off, change into dry shoes from their cleats, put their warmups on to keep from catching cold.

Everything is so hectic that when he finally shoulders his bag and shambles off the grounds a half hour later he's completely forgotten that Hikari was planning to try and be at the match.

So when he sees her he's not really shocked, but he does sort of stare at her for a few seconds, brainless.

She's been his girlfriend for less than three months. Having her so openly focused on him is still a new experience. In general he's really not used to being anybody's first priority. He still pinches himself sometimes to make sure he's not dreaming when Hikari ducks under one of his arms to curl against his side on the train or in front of the television.

Still, he manages a weary smile, and greets her. "I'm glad you managed to make it out," he says, and his voice is hoarse, "I know you weren't sure you'd be able to see the whole game, or even be here at all."

He lifts his neck towel and wipes some lingering rainwater off of his face.

...She's a little flushed, he notes. Wearing a decent raincoat and carrying an umbrella. She's just a bit damp, where he's still pretty drenched. (the moisture and humidity add just a touch of wisp to her hair though, lift it just a little from its usual straight line. It's cute.)

A half suppressed laugh trickles out of her as she looks up at him. Daisuke's not very tall- he's right around average height- but he's strong, filling out a lot as he nears the end of his growth period, so Hikari looks almost tiny next to him now. (She certainly feels delicate when he hugs her)

Her eyes are shimmering. It's easy to see she's feeling pretty emotional right now, and she still hasn't said anything. Daisuke rifles a hand through his hair awkwardly.

"...Uh...Hikari-chan?" He asks, "Are you okay?"

"Yeah," she blurts, beaming, "Sorry. You were just- you were incredible out there. I think you left everyone there starstruck."

"O-oh," he feels himself flush, "Y'think? Those last few minutes I was running on autopilot, so I wasn't really-"

The rest of whatever rambling he was launching into freezes and catches in his throat. If real life came with record scratches or freeze frames, this would be one of those moments.

She's usually the one to kiss him first. He's a little shy, still, not completely confident taking the initiative with affection yet.

But this is- she's never jerked him down by the collar before. Certainly not so suddenly and so sharply that he's actually unbalanced and brought in.

It's a hell of a kiss, to be frank. Firm, held out for so long, her hands moving to his shoulders, pulling herself in as close as she can until he has the presence of mind to lift her at the waist and kiss back.

He's outright dizzy when she finally lets him break away for air, and Hikari is flushed and beaming.

"Uh," he fumbles, "Oh, uh. Okay."

She peppers his face with short, sweet little pecks until he's laughing, and then she hugs him tight.

"I know how hard you worked to get here," She murmurs, "I'm so proud of you. Congratulations, Daisuke."

He tenses just a little in response. Hearing this kind of praise from anyone is always a bit of a tearjerker for him, but from Hikari it's a million times more significant.

"Yeah," He breathes, setting her down and holding his hand out for the umbrella. "...Let's get to the station, though. I want to get somewhere I can change into dry clothes. And then maybe pass out for a couple of hours. I'm beat."

#「ʜᴇʀᴏᴇꜱ ᴅᴏɴ'ᴛ ᴄᴏᴍᴩʟᴀɪɴ║ꜱᴏ ɴᴇᴠᴇʀ ʟᴇᴛ ᴛʜᴇᴍ ꜱᴇᴇ yᴏᴜʀ ᴩᴀɪɴ」 [Daisuke]#「ᴡʜᴇɴ ʟɪꜰᴇ ʟᴇᴀᴠᴇꜱ ᴜꜱ ʙʟɪɴᴅ║ʟᴏᴠᴇ ᴋᴇᴇᴩꜱ ᴜꜱ ᴋɪɴᴅ」 [Daisuke🎔Hikari;sorrowmarked]

2 notes · View notes

sunflowerdigs · 4 years

Text

I get the frustration with Forlex and with Miluca. Because what's the point of cosmic soulmates if we never get to experience them? Tbh, I'm somewhat baffled by the people who now want an entire season of Malex pining. There are...not many shows currently on with diverse, adult queer rep where the actors have the chemistry of Malex. And where the poc isn't just a character brought on to be the perfect man for the white guy but is a character in his own right.

That said...these two relationships do have a function in the story (or at least Miluca did). There are two breakups in the finale, Echo and Miluca. And they don't happen for the same reason, but I do think they are connected.

Liz's reasons for doing unethical work in her lab are just excuses. In her heart, Liz knows that the rigorous process for testing new treatments is there for a reason - as the flashback showed, she was initially against Gynotech because they seemed to take shortcuts in their research. She has never been frustrated by the process, just by the fact that she could never secure grant money to get very far into said process. What changed for her, though, was Max dying and then her work bringing him back to life.

Liz has lost a lot of people in her life. But she seems to pride herself in being able to pick herself up and keep on pursuing her ambitions. But when she lost Max, suddenly she lost the part of herself that could do that, and that scared the everliving shit out of her. So she clung to the one thing she knew and she got lucky, so now she's using that thing to run away and put distance between herself and Max. Because she's scared of being so connected to someone that she stops being a whole person without them (fair).

But guess who just learned, through a failed relationship, that running away doesn't work?

Liz and Michael's plotlines have always...idk of it's really mirroring because they kind of oppose each other? As Liz flies, Michael falls, and vice versa. Liz came back first season and gave in to her feelings for Max; Michael got Alex back first season but ultimately ran away from his feelings. In second season, Liz was with the person she was meant to be with, Michael was not (fun note: the heart worked at first, the pacemaker didn't). Now, in third season, Liz is running away from herself and from her person as Michael is finally starting to find himself and run towards his person.

Anyway, the point of Miluca was to show Michael that, ultimately, he can't run away from who he is (and, in turn, Alex). Alex and Michael are kind of working backwards in relation to Max and Liz, I think. They're doing the hard work up front so that once they're together, they're just...together, no falling apart again. Michael and Liz got an extended honeymoon period, so the hard work starts for them now.

So in order to understand Miluca, I think it's worthwhile to look at what Liz is doing now. Liz is running from the overwhelming strength of her feelings, and that was what Michael was doing, too. Liz thinks that if she runs towards what she knows, she'll be safe. So did Michael - he got with someone who had only ever known the Michael who didn't have any dreams, got drunk, fought, and ended up in the drunk tank, so that he would never be forced to leave that particular comfort zone. Liz isn't being willfully destructive, and neither was Michael. Quite the opposite, they both think/thought they're moving towards some kind of clarity (ugh, verb tenses). But ultimately, much like Liz isn't really considering the possible consequences of her actions because she needs so badly to act, Michael had a hard time actually listening to what Maria wanted because he needed Maria to be this very specific thing (safe, uncomplicated). And, ultimately...she wasn't. And ultimately, she knew that he was trying to escape from something by being with her. And Michael really learned the futility of running away.

I will say, Miluca could have been great if there had been any time for character development in s2. We could have seen Michael really, really trying and Maria being kind of mystified by it. And we could have seen Maria not initially intending to get into anything deep with Michael (he's..Michael, after all) but ultimately giving in because he's so attentive. We could have seen that attentiveness gradually turn sour and become controlling behavior, because Michael's reason for being attentive is to keep his demons out rather than protect Maria. We could have seen Maria start hiding the use of her powers from him, taking off the bracelet when he's not there and putting it on when he is. There was...a lot of potential there.

Anyway, that's kind of my thoughts. While reading it...keep in mind that you can twist almost anything in media to suit a narrative you want, so. Don't take this as gospel or anything. It's just an interpretation - I may have a completely different one tomorrow.

(Ah, right, and Forlex, the point of Forlex is...to give Alex some actual happy dating experience to boost his confidence? On a really basic level, both Alex and Michael need to know what's out there in order to realize how unique their connection is. In some senses, yes, they could have dated Forrest and Maria at the same time. But since Alex was already "ahead" of Michael in his journey of self-rediscovery and Forrest is meant to propel him further forward on that journey (while Maria was meant to...not take Michael backwards, just show him the danger of standing still), Alex would have ended up leagues ahead of Michael instead of just a few miles (meters, really), and we would be going into S3 with a Michael who has just realized he has a lot of work to do and an Alex who has done all of his work and is just...now about to have to wait a really long time. It kind of sucks, but I also think this is why there's going to be so much time between s2 and s3. So that a lot of Alex's work with Forrest can happen off-screen, as can the boring parts of Michael trying to pick himself back up and live again (enrolling in school again, studying, making flashcards with Sanders, chucking those flashcards into the firepit when he gets frustrated, digging out their ashes in regret 5 minutes later, that kind of thing).

#malex #rnm spoilers #rnm speculation #look who learned to cut

27 notes · View notes

soldierswar · 5 years

Text

Oh Baby

Dad!BuckyXReader. Angst/fluff

You could read this as either the first one-shot to my fic, sick. Or you could read this as a prologue. Either way works. :)

Plot: You have a new baby that you are madly in love with. But the baby blues are stealing some of that joy away from you. Luckily you have Bucky, a great father and husband to help you get through it.

TW: Depression

................................................................................................................................

You were madly in love. You loved your 3-week-old baby more than anyone you had ever loved in your whole life. In your eyes, she was the most beautiful human being that you had ever set eyes on. She had her dad’s sky-blue eyes, with tiny flecks of the exact same color green of your eyes around her pupils. When she was born, she had a full head of Bucky’s chocolate brown hair, your nose, your chin, and even some of Bucky’s facial expressions. You wondered what other features of yours and his she would inherit as time went on and she grew older. Suddenly the thought of her growing older than she was now started to make you feel sad. A lot of things made you feel sad nowadays.

You didn’t know why you felt this way almost all of the time. The day Frankie was born was the happiest day of your life; despite the idea of ever having a kid was one of the most unplanned event that you could ever imagine. You and Bucky had disclosed, and agreed that you never wanted to have kids. Your lives were too busy, and you both loved what you did. Plus the idea of having a kid was absolutely terrifying. You didn’t know how to be parents. But one day almost 7 months ago while minutes away from taking off on a mission that didn’t involve Bucky, you were called off of the jet only to be yelled at by your CO for trying to get on a mission while 12 weeks pregnant. 12 weeks pregnant? You had scoffed at your CO for even suggesting that that was a possibility. In fact, you laughed in his face as though it were some weird prank. Someone had obviously planted those results on you. There was no fucking way. True, you had admittedly skipped out on your bi-monthly medical check-ups three times until that day. So you came to the conclusion that someone found out about it and planted it on your medical records so that they could get away with doing what they wanted for at least a little while longer. 3 pregnancy tests later, and a follow-up doctor’s appointment the very next day confirmed their own statements. And yet, although you had both been scared out of your minds for nearly 24 hours, when you heard the sound of that strong heartbeat echo around the room, you felt an overwhelming sense of calm. You had a hard time mustering up the courage to look at the screen at first, but in Bucky’s eyes you could see an expression of awe…even love while fixating on the footage of that little form resting calmly inside you. That look alone gave you the courage to turn around and see what was your little girl. You were then both immediately in love. So why were you feeling like this right now? This was supposed to be the happiest time of your life. Sure, you were a little (very) sleep deprived, our nipples felt like raw, engorged chew toys, and you were recovering from an incredibly long, and difficult labor/birth that bordered on traumatic. It was eventually the best day of your life, but even thinking about that pain made you start to tremble. Why did everyone say that you would forget the pain in a split second? Now for the past week or so, Frankie would start wailing, and she would not stop for a long time. You had no idea what she was crying about, or how to fix it. You felt so helpless in those moments, especially when she would cry angrily as though to tell you to figure out what the fuck she needed, and now. Now was one of those moments. Her diaper was clean, you tried feeding her but she refused; you tried rocking her, and putting her down for a nap. And yet, nothing was helping. You stood in the middle of her nursery with her head resting on your shoulder as you softly bounced her, rocking her side to side. Nothing. You felt tears start to form in your eyes. You didn’t know what you were doing wrong. Maybe she just hated you. Bucky swiftly walked into the room. “Y/N, is everything oka-” “We’re fine,” you snapped. “Y/N, just let me take her for a little while,” “I said, we’re fine! You think I don’t know how to take care of her?” This caused her to cry even harder. You shot him a severe look, signaling him to go away. When he finally left the room, the tears that you tried to hold back began to flow, and you broke out into silent sobs so as to try not to upset her even more. You were failing, and you didn’t know what to do about it. . . . After another half hour, she had finally tired out and went to sleep. But God knows how for how much longer now. You made your way to the living room and plopped on the couch and hugged your knees in an upright position. You nearly started rocking yourself, but you didn’t have it in you to even do that. You didn’t even have the energy to push yourself sideways to make yourself comfortable to get some sleep. So you just stared off into space. You didn’t even have enough energy to even have thoughts at this point. “Y/N,” Bucky sighed, sitting next to you on the couch, setting a light hand on your shoulder. You jumped, not expecting the physical contact. Especially after how badly you had treated him not too long ago. “Y/N, you really should get some sleep.” You shook your head, just barely as you continued to stare off into space. “She’ll probably need me soon, so there’s no point,” “Then let me take care of it.” You shook your head once again. A little bit stronger now. “Y/N, do you not trust me with the baby?” You frowned, but didn’t move your eyes or head to his direction. “Y/N…” Now you snapped your head towards him, feeling a burst of energy fueled by anger come out. “How could you say that?” You exclaimed. “Y/N, you never let me take care of her, much less touch her nowadays. So I’m asking you again. Do you not trust me to be around her anymore?” You sighed, fighting another burst of tears attempting to make their way through. It wasn’t that you didn’t trust him with the baby. In fact, it took a little while for him to even trust himself to hold her. On the day that she was born, you decided that you needed to spontaneously enforce the sink or swim method on him. So you just handed her off to him giving him no option but to hold her, or she would fall. And you knew that he was never going to let that happen to his precious little doll. So who the fuck was he to accuse you of that? You shot up, crossing your arms. “Great, so now I’m not just a horrible mother, but a terrible wife too? Is that what you’re saying?” “Y/N,” he said softly, keeping a short distance from you. And that’s when the tears came out in loud sobs. You couldn’t control it, or hold back as you did before. You turned your back to him with your head in your hands. You suddenly felt him wrap his arms around you, and turn you around. Your head was now resting on his chest forming a large wet spot onto his light-grey shirt. He rocked you side to side as though you were the baby now that couldn’t stop crying. You didn’t deserve him. He sat you back on the couch and had you lay down with your knees curled up, and your head resting on his legs. “Y/N, I’m sorry for what I said, but please just tell me what’s going on. You act as though you have to do this alone.” That was it. You felt like you did have to. You felt an immense amount of guilt about how much you had put her in danger for the first three months of your pregnancy. You had carried on doing missions, and engaged in multiple rigorous, and dangerous fights. All because you neglected to go to those stupid check-ups. When you found out about her presence, you felt a desperate need to protect her. Since she was inside of you, it hardly even felt like a task. As long as you were safe, she was safe by default. She was comfortable, secure, and had all of her needs taken care of by default. Now that she was out in the world, it was a different story. You had been so close to her for so many months. It was the closest bond that one human could have with another human. On a technical scale, you were the only one who had any sort of physical contact with her until the moment you gave birth to her. Now that she was out in the world as an autonomous being, that thought scared you. You wanted that closeness back. You wanted her protected in your belly once again. Now it felt like she couldn’t even bond with you. She hated you now. You didn’t know how to properly be a mother. So you tried, and you tried day and night and but continued to fail nonetheless. But while trying to learn how to care for her properly, you didn’t realize that in the process you had been alienating her from her father. Or rather, you had been alienating her father from her. It wasn’t fair to him to feel that way. So, you explained the exact thoughts that you were feeling as you continued to sob on his lap. He did nothing but listen while stroking your hair. “Y/N you’re not a terrible mother,” he said in the hushed tone that he knew soothed you. “And you shouldn’t feel like you have to do this alone. You’re crashing, and I see it happening more and more by the hour. You can’t keep going on like this without eventually ending up in a hospital.” You sniffled, finally regaining the ability to stop the tears. Within a split second, he scooped you up and carried you upstairs to your bedroom to set you onto the bed, covering you up in the warm blankets. The pillows underneath you felt so soft. Softer than they had ever felt in your life. “Now rest,” he whispered before kissing you on the forehead. “What if she gets hungry?” you muttered drowsily. “Fridge.” Oh right…You had completely forgotten that you had left milk for her in there. You just felt too guilty to use it to let him bottle feed her. But the bed was so comfortable, before you could even finish the thought, you drifted off into sleep. … The next few weeks were still hard; but not nearly as much as before. You let Bucky help you, sharing the load. How you had felt before didn’t go away overnight, and you still felt tired a lot of the time. But you didn’t feel like you were going to crash as hard as before. Slowly over time, the spontaneous waterworks began to subside. Eventually the more you got the hang of things, it was much easier to take care of her. With the added help of Bucky of course. You didn’t realize how much less of a weight on your shoulders it was when you let him share some of the load. You bonded with her more and more, and so did her father. You melted when you secretly watched that tiny baby lay comfortably in his arms. One time you broke out into sobs at the sight of them. Bucky had fallen asleep with her in his arms as she slept comfortably. When he woke up hearing the tear induced gasp, Bucky thought that he had done something wrong. But it was the opposite. You smiled through the tears and explained that they were happy tears. And as the months went by, you celebrated the new milestones that she accomplished. You weren’t as sad as you thought you would be in the process of watching her up so fast. You loved seeing how much her fire-like spirit and determination to learn how to do new things and navigate the world flourished. She would give you the biggest, and happiest one-toothed smiles when crawled around the living-room floor with her chunky baby legs; and oftentimes would explode into the most infectious bouts of laughter. It was impossible for anyone not to light up at the sound of it, especially in public. As mentioned before, it still wasn’t easy adjusting into parenthood. But you set your mind into realizing that this was another journey in life that you would conquer every day, and enjoy every step of the ride. But when those moments came when you felt like you were failing, Bucky stepped in and reassured you that it was just the opposite. He reasoned that you felt that way not because you were a bad mother, but because you wanted to be the best damn mother you could be. And that you were doing a hell of a good job at it. And he was doing a hell of a good job at being the best father. Parenthood may have been a journey that neither of you had wanted in the beginning of your relationship. But now, you couldn’t imagine life without your little family.

(PS note: Hope you enjoyed. Thanks for reading my stuff, I love you all. Feel free to send in requests!)

#buckyxreader #buckyxreader fluff #Bucky Barnes #dad!bucky x reader #dadbuckyXReader #Parent!BuckyXReader #BuckyXReader angst #Winter SoldierXReader #WinterSoldierXReader

80 notes · View notes

bellarxse · 4 years

Text

Get to know: Cesca Joyce (TMOHB)

100 Questions (https://the-moon-dust-writings.tumblr.com/post/159843387908/100-oc-questions) to get to know Cesca Joyce, MC in The Motion of Heavenly Bodies

1. How do they present themselves to others? Soft femme – she has had the importance of femininity and her appearance drilled into her from an early age by her mother, but she has withdrawn from the idea of high-maintenance femininity as much as she feels she can

2. Do they like animals? Cats and marine life. She doesn’t like dogs.

3. How do they dress? Often as casual as she can manage, and often in something which hides her chest.

4. How many language do they know? Fluent in English and German. proficient in French. Likes to watch K-dramas with subs, so she can pick up on the odd phrase now.

5. How big is their family? Parents divorced. Two full siblings, two paternal half-siblings.

6. What is their purpose in the story? Uh..they’re the main character. Ha. No, Cesca’s “arc”, such as it is at this point, is going to be about the importance of recognising and pursuing your own desires rather than letting people tell you what you should want.

7. Do they know how to fight? The extent of her knowledge is basically that you should tuck your thumb into your fist if you throw a punch. That’s basically it.

8. What is their back story? Distant father (working in international finance), mother (thwarted model, pregnant too young and unable to cope) at home with children she never wanted in the first place. She wants them to be the successes she never was, to shine with radiance that blinds the world. Sarah, their first daughter, is genial and hard-working but painfully plain, and the youngest, Alice, is manipulative and cruel, and looks it. But sweet little Franze, with her angelic curls and innocent blue eyes? Yes, she will do nicely. But it isn’t long before she rebels. Skinned knees and grubby hands (“Mutti, look what I found!”), and a profound disinterest in how to make herself more beautiful. So Julia tries again, taking away her rocks and microscopes and replacing them with vanities and lotions and potions, until Franze is a dejected little doll – almost literally, listless and lifeless. A teacher at school flags up “Cesca’s” (Franze’s) behaviour as being a “concern”, and threatens to involve child protection services. But how could it possibly be a concern? This is what little girls are supposed to be like.

9. Why is their name their name? Conceived on holiday in France – and it’s generally considered an upper middle-class name in both countries

10.Do they have any nicknames? Francesca (anglicised), Franze (German diminutive), Cesca (English diminutive – her favourite), C (school friends)

11.Do they have a romantic interest? …I mean, yeah, that’s the point – but that would be telling. So instead, let’s talk about her only other long-term relationship, Julian, when they were both 17. A son of Father’s friend—and Father is friends with some of the best society has to offer, he’s told her himself—he is sure of himself and charismatic enough to make Cesca believe it as well. She thinks he loves her, though he only ever really loved chasing her, and she cries when he breaks up with her, not one week after they had had sex for the first time.

12.How do they cope with struggles? At work, depends on the struggle. She tries to judge carefully what the best course of action would be – either she’ll take some time away to let it simmer; or she’ll keep at it until she finds another way in. In her personal life, she avoids whatever she can get away with.

13.Do they have anyone they can lean on? More than she knows – she’s never tested it with anyone else other than Sarah. She isn’t always sure how her friends feel about her, not truly, especially after she is selected to go on the show without them.

14.How do they react to someone dying? Lot of numbness. She can seem insensitive or uncaring, but it takes a while for it to sink in.

15.Can you name 5 personality traits they have? Reserved, analytical, emotionally perceptive, avoidant, sensitive

16.How did they become a character? Because I was fed-up of the S3 MC being just different flavours of the same bold, confident person. I mean, it’s a CYOA game, there aren’t exactly many opportunities to feed in complex hopes/wants/fears, but even the S2 MC could choose to be “cool and mysterious” or “all out”.

17.Do they get along with others? She often chooses the path of least resistance – so often people think they get on with her better than they actually do, because she isn’t always honest with how she feels about things or people

18.What flaws do they have? Arrogant (mostly at work), naïve, perfectionist, practical, rigorous/over-zealous

19.How do they influence the story? A little too spoiler-y for now…

20.What do they look like? Honey blonde curls (usually pinned back), blue eyes, 5’ 3”. Quite pale, even after weeks in the Spanish sun – it would take a lot more time and effort for her to tan. Some freckles, but not many. Looks delicate at first blush, but is deceptively strong for her build. Bottom hourglass.

21.What are their hobbies? Collecting and listening to old vinyl records. Swimming and free diving.

22.What are their ticks? She blushes at the drop of a hat, and she bites her lip. She doesn’t intend it to come off as sexual or flirty (quite the opposite) but people don’t believe her.

23.Do they like children? If you ask her, she’ll laugh and tell you no, loudly. But Sarah has just had twin boys, and Cesca thinks that she might just die for them anyway, even if they don’t need her to.

24.How do they react to being around wild animals? Aquatic animals – loves it, very affectionate/serene (even when she went cage diving with sharks). Land animals? More of a mixed reaction, depending on how physically large/imposing they are.

25.If they were given the task to prank someone, who would it be, what would they do and would it work? She doesn’t so much prank people as plot to ruin their lives, particularly careers.

26.Do they have survival skills? Not really – her mother didn’t think it was necessary for girls, and she has thrown herself into science since.

27.Are they more book smart or street smart? More socially savvy than she gives herself credit for, but mostly book smart

28.How do they get out of a difficult situation? Depends on the situation. In a dangerous situation, she will call for help. In a socially awkward position, she’s like to use her looks to get out of the situation (e.g. sending someone off to get her a drink from the bar and then disappearing into the crowd). In a romantic situation, she’d use her intellect and talk through in excruciating detail why they’re not compatible.

29.Do they use their body, mind, personality or force to get what they want? See 28

30.What music do they enjoy? Older music, from the 1960s-1980s (90s at a push). She does like some more modern things, but usually if they’re either drawing inspiration from older trends or europop. Trashy Europop is a guilty pleasure of hers.

31.How do they overcome obstacles? Grit and determination, mostly.

32.When faced with a difficult decision do they get stronger or break? At work, stronger. Emotionally, she’s never fully broken down but she’s come close a few times.

33.Do they have any special powers? Just her brain.

34.How do they change throughout the story? She gets a little more assertive in articulating what she wants – but there will still be some room for growth

35.Do they have any friends? If so, are they close knit? Two close friends from school, who would do anything she asked of them (in terms of emotional support), but she is too scared to ask them. So their friendship appears more superficial than it actually is, in terms of what they do together

36.How is their family life? She only really sees her older sister. She avoids Alice (younger full-sister) like the plague and doesn’t make an effort to see her father’s new family. Will basically shut down if she has to see her mother. Christmas is not a happy time for her.

37.Are they likable? I certainly think so, but she’s my ambitious little alien baby so…

38.Are they the hero, or anti-hero? Depends on your viewpoint – certainly some of her “competitors” wouldn’t see her as the hero…!

39.Do they make questionable choices? I mean, we’ll see.

40.How do they become who they are? Through putting her head down and ploughing on. Ultimately running away from…

41.How was their childhood? …being made to feel like the only thing that mattered were her looks. Her mother tried to enter her for pageants and the like, and it was actually one of the terms of the divorce – her father wouldn’t give her mother any alimony if she made Cesca compete in anything like that.

42.Are they close with anyone who is going to screw them over? Again, we’ll see, don’t want to get into plot elements too much…!

43.How do they adapt to different situations? Do they adapt at all? She adapts because she has to, but she’s not particularly good at it.

44.How do they speak? (e.g. soft-spoken, hot-headed, vulgar) Usually soft-spoken, which makes a genuine laugh all the more startling.

45.Are they opposed to violence? There’s something about having been raised to be a good girl and knowing how people should behave in polite society which makes taboos like violence more exciting.

46.When is their birthday? 1st January 1997

47.Are they quick to judge? She tries not to, but she can make snap judgements based on appearances or actions that she finds hard to shake

48.Do they have anything they are trying to hide from others? How she doesn’t like being complimented on her looks, because they just wouldn’t understand.

49.Do they act different around different people? She is much more confident around her work colleagues, because she feels like she can show off her processes, rather than dumb herself down for people. She is very reserved around people she doesn’t know well and most of her family.

50.Do they enjoy the arts? Not a huge fan of reading, unless it’s science-related. Loves music, especially on vinyl. Likes films, usually action/thriller/horror.

51.Do they like science? Loves it. There’s a kind of beauty about it, about how it lets her order the world, and how she can see the world reflected in her microscope.

52.Are they more emotional or logical? I mean I don’t agree with the premise of the question, because it’s a false dichotomy, but she would say she’s more logical. Make of that what you will.

53.How do they deal with their emotions? Distraction tactics. Which means that there’s some stuff that she’s just…never dealt with. Massive issues with her mother.

54.How do they cope with sadness? She’s almost constantly sad, and she’s never really let the weight lift from her shoulders. It doesn’t bother her personally – it only really bothers people that care about her.

55.What is something they care about? She cares about the environment – she tries to be as sustainable as her budget allows, and she’s almost fanatical about saving water. (So she’s clean but she showers only as often as she needs to)

56.Would they die for anyone/anything? Probably her nephews.

57.What do they do when they are happy? Being happy looks very like being sad – she behaves much the same way, but she might fidget less or smile slightly.

58.How would they come across to other characters? E.g. messy, lazy, caring, childish Calm, shy (especially in the context of Love Island, since she doesn’t cope well with being flirted with overtly), clinical

59.Do they have a phrase they use over and over? No? Not yet, anyway

60.In a crowded room are they in the corners, sides or middle? She would gravitate to the sides, so that she can see everyone more clearly. If she’s with friends she trusts (and particularly if she’s had some alcohol) she’s not averse to being in the middle of the room, but it’s not her first option.

61.Are they comfortable being in a crowded room? She can find it overwhelming.

62.How do they relax? Listen to records, watch TV. She usually needs to relax by herself and “de-person” for a bit.

63.Have they ever harmed anyone and regretted it? Verbally or physically? She is usually the one to break off any budding relationships, usually before they become sexual. So for some of these early relationships, they were hurt because they thought she was really into them, but they were usually at an early enough stage that it was fairly minor emotional pain.

64.Do they like to dance? Not unless she’s drunk some alcohol. She doesn’t feel like her body moves very naturally, she needs her inhibitions to be much reduced before she even considers it.

65.How do they get around their environment? (vehicle use) She cycles a lot. She learned to drive when she was 17, but she’s a nervous driver and she doesn’t like it.

66.What about pet peeves? Loud chewers. It’s a sensory thing, she really doesn’t like it. Linked to this – people who talk with their mouths full constantly (she’ll allow it if you’re surprised or if you didn’t expect to be asked a question but if it’s your default? Get in the bin)

67.Do they have a disability? No.

68.How do they react to getting flowers? It depends on the person – if they’re someone who she would like to receive flowers from, it can make her month. If it’s from someone she wasn’t expecting, she can be a bit unsure of how to react – are they are thank you? Are they a proposition? She really doesn’t like receiving flowers from a “secret admirer” or something like that.

69.Would they ever wear a flower crown? Not usually, maybe for something like a wedding? And definitely not if she’s the only one.

70.Do they like themselves? Sometimes. She likes herself when she’s at work and successful. She usually likes herself when she spends time with friends. If she’s left on her own for too long she can start to doubt herself.

71.Who do they dislike? People who aren’t genuine/honest. People who focus on their appearance too much.

72.What is their motto? When she read “If I look back, I am lost.” in the first ASOIAF novel, she had to take a few minutes.

73.Do they have any markings on their body? A few minor scratches from falling off her bike a couple of times. Some freckles, more on her arms than her face.

74.Have they ever been abused? Physically, not at all. Emotionally? Most of her interactions with her mother and her sister are hostile in some way or another, and her father’s attitude can best be described as neglectful.

75.What is their biggest fear? Not to get too body horror about this, but her recurring nightmare is that she makes someone (and the person changes depending on what’s happening in her life) and they push/hit her and she’s hollow, or she smashes to the ground like porcelain.

76.What are their goals? She wants to finish her research into biodegradable plastic, and ideally start a second study to see if the same desired results can be achieved with fewer/cheaper resources.

77.How do they go about achieving their goals? She keeps her head down and ploughs on.

78.Do they have a fight or flight response? Yes, but she almost exclusively chooses to flee.

79.Is there someone in their life that they care about more than themselves? Her sister and her nephews. I don’t necessarily think that her having fewer people she cares about more than herself indicates that she’s selfish or overly arrogant. It’s just that her feelings are a little more subdued, so she doesn’t necessarily think about most people in that way.

80.How would they fare in a zombie apocalypse? Pretty badly, probably – unless she was in an area that hadn’t been affected yet, and she was able to work on a cure/”silver bullet”.

81.Do they have any tattoos? If so, are they significant? No, but she’s not averse to getting them. But if she gets one, she wants it to be significant, and she doesn’t want it to be linked to something that she might regret (like a relationship)

82.Are they good at mental math? Frighteningly so.

83.Do they get along with others? Again, she often takes the path of least resistance, so she seems to get along with lots of people, but she can get quite resentful.

84.Are they lazy? No

85.Are they self-motivated? Yes

86.How do they cope with anger? Short answer, she doesn’t. She was told from an early age that girls don’t get angry, and that means she struggles now to pinpoint when she is feeling angry. She often experiences other symptoms, like headaches or nausea, which she will treat instead of expressing herself.

87.Have they ever been in a situation where they were helpless? Physically, no – she’s been lucky. Emotionally – she felt helpless for a lot of her childhood, and then worries now about letting someone else make her feel helpless again.

88.Are they organized or messy? Pathologically organised – think Monica from Friends.

89.Can they remember a lot of information at once? In the right context, yes. At work, she’s like a machine, remembering formulae and compounds. In her personal life, she often gets overloaded. But she picks up on a lot, and it’s a sign that she likes you if she notices or remembers little details about you.

90.What is their occupation? Environmental scientist (specialising in chemistry, but her degree is in biochemistry).

91.Do other characters respect them? Yes, I think so. Especially at work, she’s seen as one of the key members of the team. In her personal life, it depends – she chooses friends carefully, and her friends respect her. Her father and siblings (aside from Alice) respect her more than she’s willing to notice. Her mother doesn’t, and Alice (younger full sister) loathes her.

92.If they were given minutes to live, what would they do? Who would they want to see and say? She would want to spend time with her sister. She wouldn’t want to talk about her feelings, but she would be more physically affectionate.

93.How do they deal with stress? Burying herself in work. Also, free diving is a good stress-reliever for her, because it requires so much of her concentration that she cannot afford to think about what is stressing her out.

94.Do they have a more submissive or dominant personality type? Depends – very dominant at work, less so among family and friends. I’ll cover NSFW stuff in a different post, but the short answer is, “it’s complicated”

95.Do they have a pet? No – she would like a cat, but she feels bad about leaving it in a London flat all day.

96.Do they have a stash of weapons? …no?

97.Where do they live? Who do they live with? She used to live in Putney with Ellie and Tina; now she lives alone in a small one-bedroom flat in Westminster that’s really meant for students.

98.How do they calm themselves down? Listening to music, staring at a wall. I’m a little worried that I’m making her sound crazy, but she can feel the tension leak out of her, and she can move on, at least in the short term.

99.Are they co-dependent? She makes an effort not to be – she is so affection- and touch-starved, though, that she is in danger of seeing another person as a source of self-worth.

100. Are they a day or night person? Day person – she wakes up very early (probably at about 5am), even when she doesn’t need to, and so she struggles with late nights. She isn’t usually smug about being an early bird, but she will let herself be a little more overt if there’s a particularly annoying Morgenmuffel…!

#cesca #litg fanfic: tmohb #tmohb headcanons #tmohb cesca #i Don't Like doing moodboard but skyler samuels is too pretty not to #i might revisit the moodboard at some point to make it prettier #maybe fix the colours or sth idk

5 notes · View notes

cfiesler · 5 years

Text

the tenure-track detective agency

I tweeted about a dream, then realized it should be a television show, so I tweeted the whole first season plot. Featuring an academic who has to solve a murder so she doesn’t have to teach another class, and her librarian sidekick who is very helpful because of the research she’s done while writing Sherlock and Veronica Mars fanfiction. The whole thread is on Twitter, but copied in plain text below the cut for your reading pleasure. #sixseasonsandamovie

The Tenure-Track Detective Agency: Season One

I recently dreamed that one of my colleagues was wrongfully accused of murder, and because of the trial, could not teach their fall class. I feel like an "oh god I have to solve a murder so I don't have to teach an extra class" anxiety dream is like next level #academiclife.

S1 opens in mid-summer when a tenured computer science prof is found in his lab surrounded by simple robots testing conversational agents, busily chatting about top-voted reddit posts while he dies from blunt force trauma. The murder weapon is a dusty teaching award.

Our hero, an overworked assistant prof, is updating the syllabus for her machine learning class that just doubled in size, when she receives news that she has to pick up a section of intro programming b/c the instructor was just arrested for murdering another faculty member.

Our hero has THREE WEEKS to exonerate her colleague so that he can teach the class as planned, instead of her. Her tenure case hangs in the balance. What follows is a montage of frantic syllabus writing and murder investigation.

She visits the scene of the crime. A PhD student is frantically deleting data from a hard drive, and claims the IRB made her do it. Our hero distracts her and pockets one of the prototype conversational robots in the hopes it might have been a witness to the murder.

Our hero has a conference call with the set of brand new PhD students who will be teaching assistants to the intro programming class and informs them that their jobs start now and they need to dig through Lexis Nexis for case law about chain of custody and robots.

She visits the library and finds the librarian who usually answers questions about copyright, because she must know the most about law. Cue enthusiastic quirky sidekick, who actually doe knows a lot about murder investigation because she writes Sherlock fanfiction.

She visits her colleague in prison. She should probably be investigating the murder he is wrongfully accused of, but instead has many questions about the syllabus for his class she is now forced to teach. She tries not to sound bitter as she asks him for his slide decks.

Her colleague, clad in his orange jumpsuit and holding a prison phone, is understandably very upset about having been wrongfully accused of murdering another professor. But as she stands to leave, he calls out, "Wait! Do... do you think this will hurt my tenure case?"

She visits the detective in charge of the case. He says that her colleague's alibi for a 3-hour time period surrounding the time of murder is damning. "Who spends 3 hours answering email?" he demands. "Besides, professors don't work in the summer!" She fears this may be hopeless.

With the help of her librarian sidekick who convincingly impersonates a lawyer, our hero gets her hands on the the transcripts from the police interview of her colleague after his arrest. She assigns a PhD student to conduct a rigorous grounded theory qualitative analysis.

Word has gotten out that she is investigating the murder. Someone pins a note to her office door: "FOLLOW THE GRANT MONEY." She pulls up the dead prof's CV on his website only to find that it was last updated in 2003.

She interviews his PhD students after (out of force of habit) having them sign consent forms that detail data storage practices. None of them had seen their murdered advisor in person in years except when he mysteriously appeared to add his name to their published papers.

The librarian sidekick uses a bobby pin to break into an admin's office to retrieve grant spending records. It appears that the murder victim has been funneling funding earmarked for students and travel into "equipment." Almost $1m of invoices from a mysterious tech company.

(In case you were wondering, the librarian sidekick also writes Veronica Mars fanfiction and ABSOLUTELY knows how to pick a lock because of important research. She also wrote House fanfiction so let's hope she gets to diagnose Lupus by the end of this tale.)

Meanwhile, the PhD student has finished her grounded theory analysis of the arrest interview, and concludes (with an appropriate limitations section) that the interrogation was conducted under duress. The police officer promised to write him a tenure letter if he confessed.

Our hero buys many pizzas and puts the qualitative analyst in a room with the teaching assistants doing legal research and tells them to work on a motion to get the confession thrown out. She has to promise them they can all be co-authors on a major journal publication.

Cut to a scene where our hero spends hours answering emails from students trying to enroll in THE CLASS SHE SHOULDN'T BE TEACHING b/c they're on the waitlist but they need this class to graduate & also will she be taking attendance. Between emails she studies 18 U.S. Code §3501.

She visits a clinical prof at the law school to ask for help. You remember that this is TV so wonder if he is the obligatory love interest. He suggests they discuss 18 U.S. Code §3501 over drinks. She laughs: DO YOU THINK I HAVE TIME FOR THAT. You write hero/librarian fanfiction.

She interviews more students. Admins. Faculty. They initially were shocked the murder victim got tenure, but he'd seriously stepped up his game in the last couple of years. Not just more productive research, but he spent time on his teaching! And service! And apparently... sleep!

This trend becomes more shocking when she finally visits the victim’s family. They too noticed a change. They’d seen him *more often* in the year leading up to his tenure review. Now our hero doesn’t just want to solve his murder, SHE NEEDS TO KNOW HIS SECRET.

Meanwhile, the librarian has tracked down shipments from Mysterious Tech Company not to the victim's office but to a Mysterious Storage Unit. This is a clue! They brose YouTube videos about breaking into storage units. (YT tries to show them flat earther videos but they resist.)

HOT ON THE TRAIL, our hero makes the mistake of checking her email. She has a nastygram from a journal editor who reminds her that her promised review of a paper is 1 week overdue. The murder investigation halts while she spends hours on labor for which she will not be paid.

Our hero reluctantly suggests "major revisions" even though she knows this means more unpaid labor in a few months, and then regroups with the librarian. They head to the storage unit; we discover that the librarian drives an impala convertible.

They are nearly there when our hero's phone dings with a calendar reminder; she has a committee meeting in fifteen minutes. She can't remember which committee it is, but they turn around anyway. After the meeting, she still isn't sure which committee it was.

Our hero gets a phone call from her colleague who is wasting away in prison while wrongfully accused of murder. He doesn't ask about the progress of her investigation. He's just called to ask her if she can take over some of his committee assignments.

FINALLY our hero & the librarian get to the storage unit, which with the help of YouTube videos they break into & discover... rows of gently humming servers, and also robot parts everywhere! It's very uncanny valley in there, y'all. You're like, woah is this show actually scifi.

Our hero sits down at a computer. Did you know that even CS profs can have terrible password practices? Our hero read @lorrietweet's papers so the first thing she tries is "monkey" and VOILA she is inside a private github repo. (She has an ethics-related twinge, but he IS dead.)

Our hero emails the students enrolled in her machine learning class, sends them the github repository, and offers them extra credit for a forensic analysis. This is the best service learning activity she's ever come up with.

Our hero checks her email again (WHY DOES SHE KEEP DOING THIS) and has a message from her department chair reminding her that murder investigation does not count as a service activity. ('We've already had discussions about tweeting as not a good use of your time' he reminds her.)

We're getting very close to the season finale, and there's another montage: meeting with student investigators, tinkering with robot parts, answering emails about course overloads, talking to the police, revising a journal article that is due soon, formatting a new syllabus...

Over a bottle of wine in her office, our hero and her librarian sidekick put together the final pieces by doing rigorous affinity diagramming on a whiteboard. There is one final thing to verify. They enlist one of the murdered prof's PhD students to help. This is very exciting!

She visits her wrongfully accused colleague one last time in jail to give him the good news about her findings. He doesn't listen, far more concerned with making sure that revisions on his latest journal article get in on time, so she helps him & then leaves to go exonerate him.

Our hero gathers the relevant parties: detectives, faculty, PhD students, a public defender who she forgot existed. They meet in a windowless conference room. She has prepared a powerpoint presentation. It shows a table of contents: Intro, Methods, Findings, Discussion.

She speeds through the beginning (stopping to answer a question from a prof about the sample size for the qualitative analysis) and finally gets to the point: "I have discovered that the murder victim had a dark secret. And in the process uncovered the REAL killer!"

(Her librarian sidekick cheers from the audience. She is wearing the deerstalker from her Sherlock cosplay, which our hero reluctantly refused, saying that she probably shouldn't cosplay at work until after tenure.)

Our hero continues: "Our analysis of his private github repo revealed the REAL source of increased productivity in the year leading up to his tenure case - particularly striking since he also managed to save a failing marriage. Impossible, you say? That's what I thought! But..."

"It turns out that he solved the problem of not enough hours in the day for assistant professor levels of research, teaching, and service with ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE!" The department chair nods. Artificial intelligence can indeed solve all problems.

Our hero reveals a beautiful powerpoint slide that details their analysis of the code and its conclusion: Prof. Murder Victim had programmed an AI to do all of his service and administrative work, most of his teaching, and a big chunk of his research collaboration.

From answering emails to grading assignments to delegating tasks to student collaborators to reviewing papers (ESPECIALLY reviewing papers), Prof. Murder Victim had managed to streamline his duties into the things that were most important for tenure & avoid everything else.

And he was able to do what can be so rare in some departments - have a lot of time for himself, which repaired his relationship with his family. "But then..." our hero began ominously, "he thought... why can't I create an AI for that too so I can spend more time on my research?"

Our hero gestures at the door, and in walks a PhD student with a humanoid robot in tow. It is a half-finished, uncanny valley nightmare of the murder victim. "He was murdered by his own creation!" our hero shouts, as she reveals her final slide with a list of collaborators.

There is a long, heavy pause in the room. The detective looks stunned. The librarian sidekick pulls out a flask and toasts our hero. Then suddenly, the department chair leaps to his feet and says, "HE WORKED FOR THE UNIVERSITY, WE OWN THE PATENT!"

The room erupts into a flurry of activity. PhD students start updating their CVs. The prof who teaches tech ethics immediately starts writing a paper. The department chair posthumously grants the murder victim full professor status in recognition of his contributions to robotics.

The detective quietly comes over and asks our hero for her evidence. She produces a full paper with 12 figures, 78 citations, and 17 authors. He says that it may take some time to sort this out. She says, the guy you arrested starts teaching in one week, better be sorted by then.

Our hero has approximately thirty seconds to bask in the glow of her triumph when her phone dings informing her she has a committee meeting in 10 minutes. She checks her email and 4 students are asking for copies of the syllabus for the class she's hopefully no longer teaching.

That night she receives an email from the dept chair: (1) Remember this is not part of your tenure case; (2) Our colleague has been released from jail & will resume teaching his class; (3) The ethics instructor just got a grant with a course release so you'll need to teach that.

Before she can start sobbing, she opens an email from one of the students in her machine learning class, telling her that the work they'd done analyzing that code was the most amazing learning experience of his life and can they please do more stuff like that.

After a long moment, she opens up a new document so that she can start creating a syllabus for Computing Ethics & Responsibility. She adds a sentence: "You may be occasionally asked to participate in real-world problem-solving activities as part of your grade."

The season finale ends with the librarian joining our hero in her office and producing a sign to hang on the door: THE TENURE-TRACK DETECTIVE AGENCY. It is a joke, of course. ... or is it???

If you read to the end, I feel like I should mention how difficult it is to write a story linearly while not knowing the plot and without the ability to edit at all, and also that it would make my life to see hero/librarian fanfiction on AO3. :D

And if you’re a TV exec or literary agent:

(And if you’re someone who is going to write tenure letters for me: don’t worry, I also did a lot of research, teaching, and service today. ;) )

#academia #murder #fanfiction #mystery #sherlock #veronica mars #faculty life #archive of our own #twitter #fiction

221 notes · View notes

angel-deux-writes · 5 years

Note

for the fic meme thing, and here I hope no one has asked this: 1, 17, 26, 28 :'D

I had barely any time yesterday for this, so I’m finishing these off now! Be prepared for a long one!

1. Describe your comfort zone—a typical you-fic.

My comfort zone is probably Season 8 canon divergences, at this point. The easiest things I’ve ever written for this pairing have been my “we should kind of forget about season 8″ series stories. They always flow the best, and they’re the quickest to finish once I actually get rolling. There’s a certain amount of bitterness still left in me after Season 8, and so it’s easy to take little jabs at it and keep the tone light and fun even when I’m working with some angsty plots.

I also never thought I’d say this, but: high school/college AUs for Jaime/Brienne are really comfortable for me, too. I mean it’s a tested and true formula: ugly girl and handsome guy. Except Brienne is actually ugly and not just “cute but weird” or wildly unpopular because she has glasses and slightly frizzy hair? I love playing with that!

17. Do you write your story from start to finish, or do you write the scenes out of order?

Start to finish, absolutely. I tend to flesh out the plot beforehand, so I don’t even do much rearranging once the story is actually done!

26. Do you beta yourself? If so, what kind of beta are you?

Does this just mean do I edit my own works? Because yes lmao. I’m very self-critical. I’m an editor irl (technical editor, so like the most boring form of editor), so I tend to be really rigorous with my editing. I write on my phone, so the formatting is all wack and I’m not super careful with typos (especially since I just got a new phone for the first time in 4 years, so my typing is all off!!). My editing schedule is therefore:

1st Pass: format in Word, fix super glaring typos from my clumsy fingers typing on my phone

2nd Pass: content edit. This is typically the most intense edit. This is where I fix story issues or add scenes when I realize that I’m not clear enough with something/want to add more detail. This typically adds a LOT of words to my process (HCM was 197k at the end of the first draft, and it got to almost 300k during the second pass)

3rd Pass: Phone Edit. I typically download the whole story onto Word on my phone (or, with HCM, a few chapters at a time, because otherwise the scrolling is impossible because it’s sO LONG). I’ll read through the chapter and add MORE detail, MORE content. Usually this is just spicing things up a little bit, adding some variety or some humor or more details. Or jazzing up my sentences/rewording things that feel stale or boring. The brief flashback scene in HCM where Robb thinks about he, Sansa, Theon, and Jon playing in the godswood was a Phone Edit addition. I’ve found that editing it on my phone helps because I typically read fic on my phone, and sometimes the change of medium does wonders for my edits (this is why I typically print out drafts of my novels to read them on paper after I’ve done a computer edit, but i’m not doing that for fic! So the phone it is).

4th/5th pass: sometimes only a 4th is needed, but on occasion I go for a 5th. Most HCM chapters get a 5th pass, because anxiety, and I think Two Halves had a lot of 5th passes as well. 5th pass is typically if I’ve received feedback for earlier in the story, and I read the Phone Edit and realize that I “need” to incorporate the feedback into the 4th edit. So I add/alter whatever scenes I need to, and then I give myself a few days and then re-read the chapter for a 5th edit so I can make sure it’s fine. Whichever is the last edit, I read aloud to myself, and then I post it when I’m satisfied. The Robb + Jon scene at the end of the last chapter was altered due to feedback, so it only went through the 5th pass, and I think it definitely shows. I was eager to get the chapter up and announce the hiatus so I could relax lmao.

28. Share three of your favorite fic writers and why you like them so much.

Oh god, okay

@agirlnamedkeith writes stories that I’m always almost immediately invested in (usually because she mentions them ahead of time, so i’m already frothing at the mouth for them by the time she posts!) We also have a lot of the same vibes and a lot of the same opinions, so sometimes it’s like “oh wow she’s writing this SPECIFICALLY FOR ME SOMEHOW”

@slipsthrufingers, despite bullying me about the one time I made the best of a horrible choice between two men, and despite having read my old fic 10 years ago, is another one of my faves. She excels at both humor and softness, which are my two favorite things, and I get sucked into her chapters so easily, and can picture everything so vividly! I’m not even usually a “visual reader”, if that’s even a thing, but with her stories I always am.

@ddagent‘s longer fics are genius, and the speed and gut-punching quality to her prompts means that I can read them quickly at work and get a quick boost of that serotonin. One thing I like about my own fic habits in this fandom is that I’ve covered a lot of different AUs, so imagine how much I love the variety of her catalog! There’s something for everyone there. Lord Commander Jaime is a particular favorite, but I will never shut up about those Secret Santa kids.

ask me questions!

#fic writers meme #this got away from me a bit but here we are #dangpanterita

15 notes · View notes