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anime-grimmy-art · 4 years ago

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What do you do when there’s not much to an AU? You make up your own stuff, ofc. And as is per usual when I make Character Designs, I make up a shit ton of lore too.

The ramblings under the cut, but what I’m really interested in, is what you guys think. Do you guys have any headcanons/ideas for this AU? Let me hear them! Also, if you don’t wanna read on tumblr, here’s the Google Docs link: https://drive.google.com/file/d/151yshHxnb_--P6eMKkwkI2dee9xC_Llb/view?usp=sharing

Before I get into the characters’ roles, here’s some general facts and backstory of their town:

- Basically, it’s Undertale meets Harvest Moon / Stardew Valley. Well, kinda. I at least used that approach for coming up for the jobs for the characters. You know, how there’s always a general store, a doctor, a smithy, etc.

- The usual story of a HM game is that you come to a town that’s way past its glory days and you, as the player/farmer, help them get back to that. The “backstory” of the town is that that already kinda happened. I’ll get into it more in the character description, but basically when Asgore was still mayor, the town got really popular. Then yadda yadda, a certain tragedy happened, two kids died, and the town suddenly got very bad publicity. There was a lot of stuff going on back then, bad reputation being spread and also a lot of law stuff, cos, you know, supposed child murder ‘n all, so Asgore made the decision to shut off the town to ppl from outside. This was in the interest of most monsters living there, because as fun as it is to have a lot of people coming there, most just wanted to live a quiet life. Not everyone was happy with that though, so many moved away from town and some others are trying to get the town back on its feet. But more on that later.

On to the characters:

I’m just gonna start with the skelebros, cos it’s their fault in the first place I got so invested.

Basically, they are what the player is in hm/sdv. They just showed up one day, took over the abandoned farmhouse and began their life there. The two came to town way after it was “closed” and since then a new mayor has opened the possibility for new residents to move in. Their farm helps the economy of the town a lot and the mayor, like usually in hm games, is trying to use that to make the town more known again. The skelebros aren’t really working towards that goal however.

So, now a bit more detail on them individually.

Papyrus:

- The design is mostly based on what’s “canon” in this au.

- He works mostly on the fields and is in charge of the crops. Their fields aren’t spectacularly big, but still big enough to plant a few dozen rows of veggies.

- Paps also helps out a lot in town when he has the time. He helps Asgore with his plants, he goes fishing with Undyne, helps Toriel carry crates around and so on. This is inspired by the part-time job mechanic in HM ToT.

- Unbelievably, in this AU Pap is not an absolutely awful cook. Since he helps out at Muffet’s and Grillby’s a lot, they tend to show him some tricks to cooking. Even though Pap’s not a big fan of the greasy or overly sweet cooking those two do, he picks up a lot.

Sans:

- Again, design mostly based on the “canon” look. Maybe a bit more baggy.

- This is finally an AU this dude gets to rest. Since there are no resets and he doesn’t have to see his bro die again and again, for once in his life, he’s not a sad ball of depression. He’s just a chill and lazy dude that loves to make puns. Though, since he’s not too experienced with the feelings of loss, helplessness or grieving, he still tends to hide behind puns and fakes smiles if he does feel bad.

- Sans is in charge of the animals on the farm. Papyrus begrudgingly gave him that role since Pap’s loud demeanour and hectic movements usually scare the animals. Sans’ relaxed attitude draws the animals to him naturally and even if Pap mostly finds him sleep against a tree, in a stack of hay or on one of the sheep, the animals are always fed, healthy and relaxed, so Sans seems to be doing his job.

- Sans always has a small chic sit inside his hoodie or hat. Is it always the same one? Who knows, maybe.

- Sans also, somehow, can produce eggs out of thin air. Grab into his hoodie pocket, in his pants pocket, in his hat, in his slipper, there’s suddenly always an egg there. On good days he can even make butter or cheese appear.

Gaster:

- He’s literally just a scarecrow in this. Though, if you ask any of the bros why they designed their scarecrow that way, they won’t have an answer.

Frisk&Toriel:

- Frisk is mostly based on what I wore myself as a kid in summer. Just a loose shirt with a cappy. Toriel basically has her ut gown, just with an apron on top.

- Frisk just appeared outside the “magical” forest one day. Napstablook and his cousin found them and brought them to Toriel, who has been taking care of them since.

- Toriel runs the general store in town, but also often takes care of the few kids that still live there.

- Frisk usually helps out in Toriels store, plays with the other kids or sits around at Asgore’s. They’re notorious for nabbing small snacks, mostly from Asgore’s plants. You’ll always find them munching on something.

- Frisk was in town before the skelebros. Since they’d moved in, Frisk often went to spy on their farm. After a small incident with angry chicken, Frisk got to know the two better and now they see them as something between brothers and uncles.

- But Frisk honestly gets along with everyone. Just like in UT, they’ve not only been adopted by Toriel but literally everyone.

- Toriel and Asgore’s relationship is not as bad as in the main game, since, you know, Asgore didn’t kill literal children, but there’s still tension between them. Back when Asriel and Chara died and the whole thing with the bad rep for the town began, Toriel felt betrayed by Asgore focusing more on the town than giving their deceased kids the grieving they deserved. They’re not divorced, but Toriel still moved out and said needed space to think. Now that Frisk is in the picture though, the both of them are slowly coming to even ground and may even be able to talk things out and clear up the uncertainty of their decisions.

Asgore:

-Asgore has his UT Ending / Deltarune clothes, just with a gardener’s belt.

- He’s the previous mayor of the town, but after all the crap that happened, he stepped down from the position. Now he has his own little shop and sells seeds, saplings, homegrown veggies and fertilizer. So, basically what e.g. the Marimba Farm is in HM AP

- His main customer is Papyrus and they’re on friendly terms. Asgore is worried about how much and how hard Pap works, so he often gives him a discount.

- Since his family’s past tragedy, Asgore is kind of nervous around kids. So, when he first met Frisk, he hoped they’d not visit him too often. But to his chagrin, Frisk took an instant liking to him and spends a lot of time at his shop (and steals eats the fresh grown veggies). Now, he’s really grateful for that, because for one, he loves Frisk as dearly as he had his own children, and also because now the tension and mistrust between him and Toriel seem to grow smaller day by day.

Undyne&Alphys:

- I gave Undyne a pretty basic fisher’s outfit. Alphys basically has Elli from HM’s outfit, just a bit more doctory stuff added. She still has her canon lab coat too.

- In essence, Undyne and Alphys have 2 completely different jobs. Alphys is the resident doctor and Undyne runs the fish market.

Two things. Yes, I know Alphys is more a mechanic than a doctor, she fits the aesthetic though, so she’s the doc now. And no, Undyne being a fisherwoman is not cannibalism, think of it more as a shark hunting smaller fish.

- The reason I lump them together is because they act as the local “smithy”. Alphys is still really tech savvy in this (I mean, Mettaton is still part of this AU), so she takes on most problems with electronics and stuff. For Undyne, I didn’t want to lose her Royal Guard’s Captain image, so she’s really good at handling tools (and weapons, but Al doesn’t let her make them anymore). So basically, if there’s a broken tool, you can be sure that either Undyne or Alphys can fix it.

- As for relationships, those two are still an item. Alphys is still really shy and a shut-off, but since Undyne and Pap become best friends, she gets to know the skelebros better. She and Sans especially get along well, since most of the time Undyne and Papyrus are let loose, they sit back and talk about science-y stuff. (no, Sans doesn’t have a background in science but he’s still into sci-fi)

- Alphys has a bit of a strained relationship with both Asgore and Mettaton.

Back when Chara and Asriel died, it was because of “illness” (maybe poisoning?). Alphys feels awful because with her back then limited knowledge on medicine she couldn’t help the two. Asgore doesn’t hold anything against her but Alphys can’t help but feel guilty.

Alphys still built Mettaton’s body in this one. The two had a really big disagreement, because Mettaton hated the fact the town was going to close, and he couldn’t understand how Alphys could feel otherwise, even more so endorse the idea.

Mettaton, Napstablook, Mad Dummy/Mew Mew:

- Napsta and Dummy are pretty self-explanatory, they got straw hats. Mettaton’s outfit is a bit of a joke cos it’s a play on “work at the top and party at the bottom”. The tie has two different sides, one with the yellow red pattern, the other completely red. His “top part” is the business part, because when he’s on tv or in the mayors’ office, you don’t usually see his feet. The bottom is his party/dance part, cos his dancing/entertainment channels mostly feature his legs.

- Mettaton, still a robot, Napstablook and Mad Dummy are all still cousins in this AU.

- Originally, they all lived and worked at the Blook Farm, the Animal Farm of this AU. Mettaton, however, despised that simple live and after befriending Alphys and her building him a body, he left the Farm to pursue bigger things.

- Mettaton runs the local tv network. From weather to game shows, he does it all. He also runs the tailor shop in town that sells his designer clothes and merchandise. After Asgore stepped down, Mettaton also took over the role of town’s mayor and now works towards making the place more known again. Not everybody is happy with him doing that though.

- One of those people is the Mad Dummy. He can’t stand people anyways and he always claims that history would just repeat itself.

- Since the whole family is made of ghosts, they have different dummies and scarecrows they can use to take care of the animals. To mock Mettaton and kinda get back at Alphys for giving MTT such an opportunity, Mad Dummy found the blueprints for the Mew Mew robot and now modelled one of their scarecrows after it.

- Napstablook isn’t fond of taking over obejcts like his cousins do, so he mostly takes care of the snails. Somehow, he can interact with them even when incorporeal.

Muffet&Grillby:

- The two of them run the Inn together. Muffet cooks in the daytime and makes desserts, Grillby manages the bar in the evening.

- The two still can’t really stand each other but working together like this benefits them both because their rivalry just spurs them on more.

- Even though Grillby is a patient person, somehow Muffet is the only person who riles him up enough to retaliate. (Well, maybe except for Sans, he’s a strong second).

So, basically everything between those two is a challenge in some way. Even if Papyrus doesn’t notice, even his cooking lessons are a challenge for them.

- Even though they’re constantly bickering, after working together for so many years, there’s a strange level of respect and trust between them. Even if back when they first started this business, they’d pour salt into an already open wound, nowadays they’d know better and just take a step back from the other or even comfort the other (on very rare occasions only).

Asriel&Chara:

- They be dead. Kinda.

Some Characters that’d live in that town too but that I haven’t made designs for:

- Gerson is the original smithy of the town. He’d grown up in a family of smiths, but he’d always had an appreciation for the sea. That’s why, when the town became more deserted and Undyne had a good enough skill level as smith, he took up the Captains hat and now mostly spends his days out on sea. He also ferries people to places if they need him to. Oh, and just like in canon, Undyne learned most of her skills from him.

- Burgerpants is a poor dude Mettaton basically kidnapped when he was trying to get fame in the city. Now Burgerpants works wherever MTT needs him to, be that as cameraman for the tv shows, cashier in his tailor shop or his slave secretary in the mayor’s office.

- MK is Frisk’s best kid friend. MK’s parents are in charge of shipping the goods out of town and paying the individual people. MK’s the one that usually collects the goods at the end of the day.

- Other than that, there are only a few people in town. I’d imagine the older folks or the really young families stayed in town after it was closed. I think the librarby dude would still run the library. Some Snowdin residents like the stone family or the dogs also might still live there.

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wincore · 4 years ago

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field day | jung sungchan

pairing: sungchan x fem!reader

synopsis: when you, as cheer captain, are best friends with the pride and joy of the soccer team, rumors are bound to fly around.

genre: high school au, soccer au, bff2l, fluff

words: 7.5k

warnings: language, jung “the risk i took was calculated but man am i bad at math” sungchan

request: sungchan + ball + “ everyone is looking at us. is that a good or a bad thing? ” (from the first option) ^__^

song recs: after school - weeekly / pleaser - wallows / some - bol4 / sweet talk - saint motel / love so sweet - cherry bullet

a/n: i tried recalling some hs memories for this and im hoping i wasnt the only one that went through the “shipped with a random dude” ordeal LOL. i haven’t written shorter fics in a while so i’m glad i got to. tq for requesting, lovepie <33

In high school, peer pressure tends to come in different forms. For you, it’s taken the shape of this.

“Kiss! Kiss! Kiss!”

You look around your classmates, scanning each and every face chanting with glee like you’re a star player scoring the winning point. The tall figure shifts beside you, glancing at you like a blinking idiot. You’re not even on the losing team but it feels just as frustrating.

You glare at the boy beside you. The trouble is Jung Sungchan. The trouble has always been Jung Sungchan.

“Come on!” Chenle calls with a teasing grin from the buzzing crowd. The little shit. It’s getting hotter with each minute you spend by the green soccer field and its dusty chalked lines, just at the tip of the bleachers. You didn’t even get enough time to breathe before you were surrounded, the soccer team pushing a stumbling Sungchan onto you. It’s too sunny for this today.

“The star soccer player gets a kiss from the lead cheerleader after a winning game! That’s the rule.” Chenle announces.

Sungchan looks at you and you turn to him, the both of you looking at each other like fish out of water. Even though you’ve clarified at least a hundred times that you’re just friends, your peers don’t seem to be satisfied. (“Famous last words,” they say.)

“No,” you say, firmly.

“No,” Sungchan agrees, nodding his head wisely.

“Don’t copy me,” you say, smacking his chest, and a quiet ‘oof’ escapes his mouth.

The fact that you’ve been best friends since Sungchan offered you a light green crayon in elementary school just fuels the idea that you have to date. There’s this difference between elementary school kids teasing and high school kids teasing—it was so much easier back when boys were afraid of cooties from girls. It was innocent too. Now, it’s more of nudges and sly grins, teasing with unnecessary innuendo. (What else do you expect from teenagers experiencing puberty?) It doesn’t stop you from being best friends though. Sungchan still visits on Fridays to get on your mom’s nerves and help you with homework (or try to). You still have all the little trinkets he’s gifted you over the years and the lock to his phone is still your birthday. You’re best friends and strictly that.

When you got into the same middle school though is when it started going downhill. Holding his hand was awkward, touching him in any way was awkward and god forbid you compliment him on something. The kids around you would run across the halls saying “(name) likes Sungchan!” or the other way around sometimes. Heathens, the lot of them. But at the very least, he wasn’t too fazed and you wonder how he could be that even-tempered. If it was just you feeling that way, then maybe you did like him more than he did you.

You shake it off.

Sungchan’s much more grown now and at least a foot taller since his awkward adolescent years; he looks handsomer too but you wouldn’t be caught dead saying it out loud. After all, it’s only going to spark another debate on the anonymous school forum. (“(name) finds Jung Sungchan attractive, they’re totally dating.” “I knew it. A boy and a girl can’t be friends, especially if they’re both good looking.”) If you’re being honest, you hate the rumours so much—it’s one of the reasons, apart from puberty, stopping you from being as close as before. However, you do understand that this is how the passage of time works. You’re not going to be spending all of your time with each other, yes, but you still regard him as important. Your life is too busy now, with exams and practice—and you’d think a busy bee would get some honey as reward.

Sungchan’s curls stick to his forehead, unruly after he wiped at them with a towel. The sunlight plays with his eyes when he looks at you intently and you shrug. The smell of sweat is starting to make you nauseous. You remember that you too need to take a shower.

“I’ll see you tomorrow,” you mumble.

“Not today?” He asks.

You shake your head. “The girls have a plan.”

It’s not just the sweat. Or the crowds. You don’t like being here at all. There’s one more problem with this place.

You hate soccer.

And by hate, you mean you despise it. Like you’ll throw up at the sight of it. What’s so riveting about a bunch of smelly, sweaty guys excited about chasing a patterned ball? You’ve tried to understand it but every time your dad explains the rules, you find yourself zoning out of whatever alien language he speaks.

Sungchan has been the closest to getting you to understand the game and even then, you refused to learn. It’s not like you’re society’s definition of girly—but you’re not a tomboy either. The school has granted you the “ice queen with a warm interior” stereotype so you’ll just go with that. To be honest, you’re just a little more awkward at open affection than your friends. (And Sungchan has the “friendly beagle” stereotype which you’ll agree is partly true. He’s more of a retriever though, with that size.) It��s just funny how you can never seem to know who you are but other people see so clearly.

You hurry up to the locker rooms and hope for a better evening than this afternoon.

The sky burns blue and you wipe the sweat off your brow once you step out of the changing room. Cooling off from your shower has gone to waste. Adjusting your school skirt, you take your usual strides to the school gates.

Ryujin seems to be showing Yuna a very flamboyant dance move while the latter hypes her up. Ryujin is in her gym uniform because she has no care for her reputation apparently, but she makes it work. Yuna’s about to show her own move when she notices you and waves at you vigorously enough to make you jog towards her and stop embarrassing herself in front of the after school crowd. But then again, she’s too cute for that.

“We got bored waiting for you,” Yuna explains, voice hoarse from her cold. Poor thing wasn’t let into performing because of it. “Do you wanna see our cool new move? Ryujin came up with it!”

Ryujin rolls her eyes. “You’re trying to advertise me to (name) so she can recruit me into cheerleading, aren’t you?”

You smile and cross your arms, facing Yuna who’s been caught mid-act. She smiles sheepishly and pats your shoulder like she just said a funny joke.

“Actually…” You begin and Ryujin holds up her arms in a cross.

“No. Never. I’m already part of the hip-hop dance club.”

“I was going to say that I’ll join you instead.”

Yuna gasps in betrayal, big eyes widening, and Ryujin grins before sticking her tongue out and potentially ruining her image with that expression. She doesn’t care, however.

“Anyway, I can’t wait to get to college and join a dance club.” Ryujin looks at the two of you excitedly. “I keep getting snaps from Yeji and feel so jealous.”

Yuna pouts. “Don’t be so happy about leaving me.”

“Aw, is the baby afraid of not getting any more sisterly doting?” Ryujin teases and you laugh at the disgruntled expression on Yuna’s face.

“Don’t worry,” Ryujin continues with a sly grin. “Taehyun’s here to keep you company for another year.”

Yuna turns red in the face, a high pitched complaint emitting from her throat. “I told you to keep quiet about that!”

“Oh, what’s this?” You wiggle your eyebrows. “We’re starting boy talk early today.”

Yuna huffs. “At least, mine’s just a crush. I don’t know what relationship status: complicated you have going on with Mr. Soccer Captain.”

You flush hotly. “There’s no relationship status to be complicated about! Seriously, why does everyone think we’re a thing?”

“You’re cheer captain and he’s soccer captain,” Ryujin answers logically. “Plus, you’re best friends.”

“You have a lot of sexual tension,” Yuna answers honestly.

You make a face, slipping your arms into theirs and pulling them along the sidewalk. You better get something to drink before the sky starts to turn purple from pink tinged blue.

“Ooh, another desperate attempt from (name) to not get teased,” Ryujin leans back to whisper to Yuna.

You stop walking. “Wait. Where are we going?”

Yuna shakes her head. “I’ll lead the way.”

Skipping over the concrete sidewalk, you laugh at your friends and their stories (read: Ryujin gushing over Yeji’s college dance club and Yuna’s newfound crush on Taehyun). The blue sky has tinged orange by now but it’s the sort of colour that sits in between more significant timeframes, like night and evening. Passing by a city square, you eye the people with wonder. A girl in a pink skirt skateboards smoothly over the concrete, her boyfriend filming her with a loving smile.

“We’re here!” Yuna announces.

You look around the large open plaza, with people of all ages and in different attires trying out skateboarding and rollerblading over the grey concrete. It’s been getting popular lately, with idol pop stars taking to it too but you never knew there was this big a community. There seems to be a few stalls renting out skateboards too. The wind caresses your hair, evening cool settling in nicely on your skin. The sky is purple but it’s lit up with the city buildings and street lamps flickering on. It’s not a bad day at all.

Someone catches your attention. A boy that sticks out like a sore thumb everywhere he goes.

“Sungchan?!”

Your eyes somehow always settle on his figure, tall and standing out in the crowd of teenagers. He clutches his blue bag, the one he’s had since third grade, close to his chest and looks more like a tourist in this place than a frequent visitor. He’s not the only one in school uniform now that you’re here.

“(name)!”

You hate how you love the way his face lights up when he sees you. You’re not actually into him. It’s your friends brainwashing you.

“I was going to invite you,” Sungchan says, a sorry smile on his face.

Ryujin and Yuna frown at each other but you can’t exactly ask the reason for it.

“Isn’t it great we had the same plans?” he beams at the three of you.

Yuna suppresses a smile and you wonder why. It’s not like your friends would know he’d be here—you’d know first as best friend.

"How did you guys come across this place?" He asks, eyes round with curiosity.

"Somi's Tiktok," Yuna answers, smiling. "We thought she works here but if she really was, guys would be swarming this place."

Ryujin raises her eyebrows. "Speaking of which, I can clearly see why there are so many girls here."

Sungchan beams, turning to you for affirmation and when you don't give him any, he drops his grin to a more polite smile.

“I don’t work at the stalls though,” he answers. “I’ve just been here a few times.”

“You’re trying to learn, aren’t you?” Ryujin asks, raising an eyebrow.

He nods. However, you furrow your eyebrows at her. How does she know? Eyes widening, you realize it must be the school forum. You remember reading a post about a student wanting to learn skateboarding and the wording felt familiar but you didn’t think much. How they figured it out, you will never know.

“Oh! Oh, I think my nose is bleeding. Oh god.” Yuna sniffs vehemently, her finger at her nose. “I think I’m going to need Ryujin to get me to a clinic.”

Linking her arm through Ryujin’s, Yuna makes an apologetic expression and runs off into a particularly crowded area.

You blink. The realization dawns.

"They just left me," you tell him, exasperated. "How could they just leave me?"

He shrugs. "My team left me at a rival school's field once."

Great. Your last outing before midterms and your friends have abandoned you. If this is the case, you wonder why they complain about you spending so much time with Sungchan and allegedly ignoring them.

You regain a sense of your surroundings and turn to him. "Wait. They really left you?"

He nods diligently, eyes trained upwards as he tries to recall the memory. "I told you, didn’t I? On the plus side though, I made friends with the opposite team."

"That's so… cute."

Your cheeks heat up at saying it out loud. If Sungchan is affected by it in any way, he doesn't show it. Instead, he has his usual smile on.

“Do you wanna try?” he asks. “Skateboarding. Or rollerblading but I personally don’t recommend that.”

He curls his lips, shaking his head slightly. You laugh. Of course this beanpole has trouble balancing on skates.

"I- I figured you'd be good at skateboarding. Since, you know, you're so balanced and all."

You raise an eyebrow. "You wanna add skateboarding to your resume or something?"

"Yeah, that and the ability to imitate dog sounds. Wanna see?"

"No, thanks. I’ll pray this weekend to cure your furry behaviour."

Before he can respond, you’re interrupted by a whirlwind of colours and excited calls. A few girls run up to the two of you, younger and probably in middle school, flocking to Sungchan like bees to honey. Never in your life have you felt so ignored as in this singular moment.

You blink, turning to Sungchan who looks like a rather helpless, flustered eye of the hurricane. The winds don't seem to be stopping any time soon.

You clear your throat trying to get their attention.

"Wow, you brought your girlfriend?" One of the girls exclaims, sounding disappointed.

The other girls make similar whines of disappointment and you have half the heart to whack them over the head and tell them to focus on their academics instead of boys.

"You're so lucky to have him as your boyfriend," a girl comments, round eyes brimming with jealousy.

“He’s not my boyfriend,” you declare sharply.

Sungchan looks at you with his doe eyes, blinking cartoonishly. You nudge him with your elbow.

“Yeah!” He agrees, with far too much gusto to be believable. “I’m not (name)’s boyfriend. I have no idea why everyone keeps saying that.”

“Let’s go, babe,” you say, resisting the urge to stick your tongue out at the girls. They’re younger than you and you have high school dignity, you remind yourself.

Slipping your hand into his, you take a few long strides away from them before you realize what you said.

“I- I did- I didn’t mean to call you babe,” you sputter, pulling your hand from his to look at him with wide eyes.

“It’s okay though?”

Sungchan raises an eyebrow and slips his hand back into yours, smiling.

“I don’t mind the rumours, you know?” He says honestly but his smile feels all too teasing. “Maybe we should go out for real.”

You huff, separating yourself from him again. “Maybe you just love attention. Disgusting.”

You point an accusatory finger at him and he bites at it playfully.

“While you're here, wanna see a cool trick I learned?" He straightens only having to tilt his head to look at you.

"If it's you falling on your face, then yes."

"I mean, hey, I could totally do that. Done that several times actually."

You smile despite trying your hardest not to. You like this about him—that he’s easygoing enough to make you look at life less seriously. If it’s with him, you could quit everything that makes you unhappy and start everything you love.

“So where is your skateboard?” you ask, walking side by side with him, who has finally learned to match your pace.

“It’s with one of my friends,” he answers, and points to a tall girl with long brown hair, wearing a pair of tomboyish shorts and T-shirt. Another girl with short hair and a bucket hat accompanies her, wearing a long hoodie and shorts, but she leaves before you reach them. They must be from a different school because you’ve never seen them before. The first thing that pops into your head is that they’d be good replacements for your cheerleading position if you were ever to leave. You shake your head. Now is not the time.

“That’s Jimin!” he introduces, and you wonder how he’s this way��how he makes friends so easily.

Jimin waves at Sungchan and then proceeds to ask if you’re his girlfriend with a big smile, like a script being followed everywhere you go.

She seems a little disappointed at the answer. “Well, I was going to suggest one of the couples skateboards.”

You flash her an awkward smile.

“But those are pretty difficult! I’ve been here for a month and my idea of skateboarding is still sitting on it while Soeun pushes me around. That’s my friend, by the way.”

“Ah.” You nod. “This is my first time skateboarding, actually. The only ‘sport’ I’ve ever done is cheerleading.”

Jimin furrows her eyebrows before her eyes widen. “Wait a minute. You’re the cheerleader best friend that Sungchan wouldn’t shut up about!”

Sungchan flusters, in the subtle way he usually does, and waves his hands robotically trying to explain. “I was just saying- that- that you’d be good at skateboarding. Because of the cheerleading.”

A boxy grin accompanies his explanation.

“Right.” Jimin covers her face and sends an obvious wink your way. “Anyway, you can have my skateboard for the day.”

She hands over a smooth black skateboard with white wheels, but on closer inspection you find that they’re light-up wheels instead. It’s oddly fitting for someone like Jimin even if you’ve known her the entirety of ten minutes. Sungchan is good at finding friends, rather. Soon enough, she runs off after making Sungchan promise he’ll deliver the skateboard home.

The trick Sungchan wanted to show you was a failed kickflip. At the very least, it made you laugh so hard you almost spit out the strawberry milk he’d bought you. Sipping his own banana milk, he sulked for a moment or two, telling you to try it out and see how difficult it is.

On the contrary, Sungchan was right. You are good at balancing on skateboards. But that’s where it ends. You don’t think you’ll be naturally good at kickflips, though being able to glide through the plaza while Sungchan runs after you with the drinks puts a big smile on your face. It’s the most fun you’ve had in a while.

Accompanied by Sungchan’s panicked “oh no”s and “oh we messed up”s, the two of you try the couple skateboarding move too; no one’s watching you here. It’s fun to see him stress over a skateboard because frankly, you’ve never met anyone as easy-going as Sungchan. (“I’ll figure it out along the way,” he says when you ask if he’s studying for finals, and proceeds to get a decent enough score). Suddenly the wandering gap is closed again. You’re not going to worry about stupid rumours from now on.

But for some reason, ‘you like him as a friend’ doesn’t sound right either. Despite having said it so many times, you might not believe in it. You shake off the thought. This evening, at least, you’re going to enjoy with Sungchan without thinking of teenage drama and hormones.

"You still don't think you and Sungchan make the perfect pair?" Yuna pouts.

You narrow your eyes. "I don't take opinions from traitors."

Chaeryoung leans back on her chair, and whispers to you asking if you’re okay. At least someone is concerned about you.

“It hurts to be left by my own friends but—”

“No, I meant, are you okay? Why aren’t you dating Sungchan already? You’re so cute together! And you’re best friends��Netflix writers literally daydream of this.”

You groan, throwing up your hands in defeat.

“And,” Yuna adds, knocking her chair closer. “Who’s really the traitor here? Us who ditched you with the love of your life—or you, who runs off every time she gets a call from her boyfriend?”

“Sungchan is not my boyfriend.” You cross your arms.

“She even shares her lunch with him more,” Ryujin complains from the side. “And they’re not even in the same class. Unlike me, by the way. Class 1 Shin Ryujin. Same class as you, (name).”

You slump, resting your forehead against the desk. At this point, you wish the teacher would walk in and start the class already. Unfortunately, lunch break isn’t over for another ten minutes and lady luck clearly isn’t smiling upon you.

“Speak of the devil!” Ryujin announces monotonously, leaning against her desk.

Sungchan and a few of his friends from the soccer team wave at you and the girls from the classroom door. Noticing Taehyun, Yuna quickly fixes her hair and you would tease her if Sungchan hadn’t casually strolled up to your desk and sat down on the chair in front of you. Long legs barely contained in the space, he adjusts himself by resting his arm on the headrest and his chin upon it. It’s all normal. However, when he leans down to match your eye level, you hear the sudden pit-a-pat of your pulse in your ear. At this proximity, you can even see the mole on his lip that he’s pointed out before. The sunlight from the open windows is pulling golden strings over his eyelashes and his lips aren’t dry as a desert like you expected. You know he uses the watermelon flavoured lip balm.

“Too close,” you croak. Embarrassed at your own voice, you rise sharply and glare at him.

“Is your heart fluttering?” Sungchan asks, smiling as he looks up at you.

You roll your eyes.

You can hear Yuna’s giggling and before you can shoot her a glare, Sungchan calls.

"Do you have any bandaids?"

He points to a rough scratch at the base of his palm, fingers slender and less calloused than what you'd pictured. Then again, soccer players don't use their hands much, do they?

You blink. "You came all the way here for bandaids?"

"Well… I remembered you keep band-aids in your phone case. And the nurse hates me."

You giggle.

Yujin mouths from behind Sungchan, “He just wanted to see her.”

You would feel flattered if you didn't know these people and their shenanigans. They'd do anything for some drama (and to get two innocent people into the dating trap).

“Why would I waste my cute band aids on you?” you mutter under your breath. “They’re limited edition, you know?”

No way are you sticking Ice Bear on your urban hazard of a best friend. A tall, cute, surprisingly polite hazard but he still annoys you nonetheless.

However, Sungchan's pleading smile has grown on you.

You reluctantly take the band-aid out of your clear phone case, the pink panda doll attached to it swaying with the movement. Proceeding, you take Sungchan's hand and lay it on your desk. With careful focus, you place the band-aid, admiring the size difference of your hands before snapping to reality.

Enough with the pink cloud of thoughts, you scold yourself.

When you look up, the proximity makes your heart skip a beat despite the logical part of you saying you shouldn't. Your faces are too close and this time, you don't even have the energy to croak it out.

"Thanks, (name)," Sungchan smiles at you.

Right then, the sound of a chair sliding harshly against the floor makes the two of you jolt away from each other. All of your friends and his friends seem to be sporting Cheshire cat grins and you don't like it one bit. You don't like not being in on the gag.

"Anybody up for gaming after this? My treat." Chenle looks around. “Sungchan is banned from the arcade soccer game though.”

"'Ey," Sungchan complains.

"Hey, Jisung and Ryujin are banned from DDR too but that's because they almost broke the handles off last time."

The memory makes you smile. Sungchan was there too, and you don’t know why you’re only just recalling all the memories with him in it, carefully and in detail. Every one of them seems to have been amplified, the little interactions suddenly coming to mind.

“(name)? You’re coming?”

You take one look at Sungchan and give up. Even if this is another childish ploy by your peers, you don't mind spending some more time at the arcade with infuriatingly addictive games. A tiny part of you is even willing to go along with them and see if it turns out the way they want it to.

“I’ll go,” you mumble, and the rest of the group cheers.

“But I have cleaning duty today.”

The group groans.

“Just get someone else to do it. Like a junior.”

“Isn’t that bullying?” You ask, frowning.

“Ask nicely. Anyone would be willing to do your bidding, (name).”

“Chenle, will you do it?” You give him a sickly sweet smile. “You’re class president after all.”

Chenle wrinkles his nose. “You’re getting stupider every day, (name).”

You sigh. “Fine. I’ll ask one of Yuna’s classmates then.”

“By the way,” Chenle announces. “Only twelfth graders are invited—”

A bunch of groans interrupt him.

“Quit whining.” He crosses his arms, glaring at them. “What do you even have to worry about? We’re preparing for the exam of our lives. Oh, and Jisung is an exception.”

“We’re only two years apart,” Yuna mutters under her breath.

“Oh, and from class 5, only Sungchan is invited.”

Another round of complaints pass and Chenle breaks into laughter. “Just kidding.”

Your friends are and will always be an odd bunch. Sungchan has previously proved to be the weirdest (several times) and it makes him the most lovable too. But then again, you don’t have free space in your timetable to put in teenage crushes, much less falling for your best friend. What you do have time for this afternoon, however, is relaxing at the arcade.

“Let’s go! I am so good at this. Think I’d impress your Steve Curry?” Ryujun gloats, after having scored three hoops in a row at the arcade basketball game.

“It’s Stephen Curry,” Chenle corrects. “And no, let’s focus here. Our goals are—”

He points to the two figures by the DDR machine, looking like a real couple. He’s been acting as damage control for the rumours and making sure you don’t drift apart because of it. They really don’t make guys like him anymore, Chenle sighs. He should get a friendship award or something.

“—those two.”

Really, Sungchan better be thanking him by the end of this. He’s never met anyone quite like Jung Sungchan, especially because Chenle cannot picture himself liking the same person since elementary school.

“Man, now I wish I had a girlfriend,” Chenle mutters.

Ryujin snorts. “Who’s going to date you?”

“You don’t have a boyfriend either,” Chenle reminds and gets a basketball to the shoulder.

“Why are you playing that when you don’t even know how to use it?” Your voice rings through to them.

“I said I’ll figure it out!” Sungchan reasons.

Chenle and Ryujin stare at the two of you blankly, as you bicker over a claw machine game and they share a look.

“Do they need our help?” Ryujin whispers.

Chenle shakes his head. “I think they’ll figure it out from here.”

Soon enough, you were laughing at Sungchan’s failed attempts and trying to outplay him. Your friends have already given you the shove. Chenle and Ryujin share a high five and that’s where the new story begins.

You finally know the thrill of a teenage crush. It makes you so damn infuriated that it had to be Jung Sungchan.

Now every time he waves at you from the field or hands you a bottle of strawberry milk or explains the calc notes you missed or does the bare minimum, you need to deal with the quickening of your pulse and a few butterflies loose from their cage in your stomach. It doesn’t help that you’re almost always together.

The two of you currently sit by the school field, Sungchan tying his shoelaces while you cool off with the water bottle he offered you. Practice ended a while ago for you and the girls have receded into the air conditioned indoor gym. The indoor gym is apparently occupied by the gymnast club and you couldn’t be more disappointed that you didn’t join them instead.

If anything, however, you’d rather leave this whole thing and focus on your academics. Hobbies shouldn’t be draining you—they should feel like skateboarding on a lilac evening with the wind in your hair.

With a friend you like very, very much.

“Sungchan,” you call quietly.

“Hm?”

When he looks up, you can’t hold in the urge to fix the hair out of his eyes. You’ve never been very physically affectionate so it might have come off strange. Sungchan looks at you quietly, stars in his eyes and you clear your throat.

“How long have you been playing soccer? It was before we met, right?”

He hums, eyes traveling up and then back to you when he remembers. “Since I was six. You were there at my first soccer match actually.”

“I was? Oh my god, was it the one you lost horribly and the whole team started crying?”

“Yes. Yes, it was.”

You giggle. “Six year old you would be so in awe now.”

Sungchan beams at that.

“Who knows?” he smiles, looking into your eyes with firm determination. “Maybe I’ll be the next Son Heungmin.”

“Even I know who that is so… no.”

Sungchan pouts and you make a face in disgust. “Don’t act cute, it gives me hives.”

“Okay, maybe not Son Heungmin. I could definitely be the next Park Jisung—and I don’t mean him.”

Sungchan points to a boy passed out on the benches, his exhaustion typical of any high schooler while another boy sits beside him, fanning him with a bunch of assignment papers. Jisung and Chenle really are more entertaining than any game on this field.

You turn to look at Sungchan, who’s moving his head around trying to catch their attention. When he finally does, he waves at them and gets big grins in response. He’s not all that bad, you think. In fact, he’s quite possibly the most amiable boy in senior year.

“Just be Jung Sungchan,” you mutter. “Not Son Heungmin or Park Jisung.”

Sungchan turns to you, smiling wide. “Advice taken.”

You scoff. “Whatever.”

Maybe it’s just you but Sungchan has been glancing at your lips very frequently today and mentally thank Chaeryoung for letting you borrow her lip tint. You didn’t know something so subtle could get you this giddy.

“Are you… going to give the CSAT?” You ask, glancing at him nervously. Part of you is sad you only developed your first high school crush in the very last semester. Or if it’s comforting, you could believe you’ve liked him all this time.

“Nah. Sports scholarship,” he says nonchalantly. “I was going to tell you but… I’ve been scouted already.”

You gasp. “That’s… great. Your future’s all settled.”

Sungchan seems to dislike the idea, lips pursing. “I don’t think anything’s settled except for the next step.”

You nod, somewhat understanding.

“What about you?” He asks. “Any university in mind? SKY? I’ve seen you study extra hours at the library.”

You look away, not feeling ready for the conversation.

“I don’t know,” you say quietly. “I don’t know what I like and what I want. I don’t even like cheer anymore.”

Sungchan gazes at you wordlessly but it’s the most comfortable you’ve felt talking about this.

“Maybe I should quit,” you mumble.

You don’t want to commit to something you no longer have passion for. But then again, you’ve spent so much time on it that it’s hard to leave.

“You should,” he responds, honest.

You scoff, shaking yourself from that moment of vulnerability. “But why would I quit something I’m good at?”

“If you don’t like it. If it hurts to leave but isn’t any better when you stay, you should leave.”

You roll your eyes. “You’re quite the philosopher.”

“I’m smart, right?”

You smile.

“Oy, you two!” Chenle calls, making his way to you two with Jisung trailing behind. “I don’t mean to interrupt your flirting but you got a spare water bottle?”

“Are you two going out now?” Jisung asks as a follow-up, and you feel a hot flush for some reason, unlike the previous times you’ve been asked this question.

“No,” you answer. You don’t mind the idea though now.

“Don’t lie,” Chenle complains. “I saw that picture of Sungchan teaching you how to kick a ball. You? And soccer? Something’s up.”

You throw up your hands in exasperation. “Seriously, who keeps up posting to the school page? And where do they get the time?”

"Two people with this much compatibility will always be a hot topic."

"We're not compatible," you retort quickly.

"Wait," Jisung says. "I know how to resolve this."

You raise an eyebrow.

"How do you have your cereal?" He asks, looking from you to Sungchan.

"Cereal first, obviously," you answer.

Sungchan looks up, finger below his chin as he thinks. "I drink the milk first, then eat the cereal and then breakdance to mix it all together."

You pinch your nose. "I swear I question your sanity all the time."

"Hah! That means you're thinking about me all the time."

You look away, rolling your eyes. He responds with an open-mouthed smile and finger guns.

"See?" Jisung grins. "Compatible."

The gruff voice of Coach Lee startles the four of you and Sungchan leaves with a sigh and a promise of meeting after practice. Jisung leaves with Sungchan and Chenle gives you one last teasing smirk before sitting down and going through the assignment papers he was using as a fan previously. You will never understand his miraculous ways of performing his presidential duties.

You don’t have a good feeling about the next match. The only reason you’re even sticking around anymore—as embarrassing as it—is to spend more time with Sungchan. Being with him puts you at ease, even if the school tries to wrap the two of you in a rope of uneasiness. This is your very last practice, for the next match is the final one of this year and then you’ll be back to spending even longer hours at the library with a stack of textbooks. It’s supposed to be a carefree age. At least, adults say that. Your high school life seems to be riddled with worries, and with that thought, you head into the air conditioned room to take a breather off your anxieties.

Only one more match, you remind yourself.

The pre-match buzz is driving you to the edge.

Your form is off, you can feel it already and Coach Kim isn’t as sunshine-as-rainbows as she usually is, courtesy to it being the last match of your life. She’ll never know though, how much you don’t want to do this.

Sungchan waves at you as he usually does before a match, disappointing a third of his fangirls, but it helps you ease. One last time, (name).

Watching the crowd of people, parents and siblings and friends, all excited and talking makes you take a deep breath. You practiced but it wasn’t good enough. You can never do well at something you don’t like anymore. This time, you feel guilty for committing to things half-heartedly. You want to start that fresh new college chapter already, with all of this behind.

There’s ten minutes left. You go back to the empty hall outside the lockers only to pace. This isn’t helping.

“(name)!”

You turn around abruptly to find Sungchan’s tall figure, and you must be looking miserable because his smile falls.

He doesn’t even ask what’s wrong, only takes careful steps towards you. “Do you need water? Medicine?”

His hands hover over your shoulder but he doesn’t burden you with them. You put your face in your palms and sigh, sinking down to the floor in a crouch.

“I want to quit,” you whisper. Your voice comes off more brittle than you’d like, and you realize that Sungchan hasn’t seen you cry since seventh grade when you failed a math test. You didn’t tell him then but you appreciated him studying extra hours for math just to teach you.

“You don’t have to go out there if you don’t want to,” he says quietly, dropping to the floor beside you. “I’ll stay with you.”

You stare at him dumbfounded. “Don’t be ridiculous! They’ll lose without you—you’re the ace, Sungchan!”

“There will always be an ace,” he retorts. “Maybe Jisung will finally get to shine. Or anyone else. I don’t mind spending an hour with you alone.”

You feel a hot flush spread over your cheeks. Looking away to the side, you mumble an ‘alright’ and only glance from the corner of your eye to see him smiling. Jung Sungchan is the most unreasonable boy you’ve ever met. Perhaps it makes him somewhat loveable too.

“It’s your last match,” you whisper helplessly.

“I’ll join the college soccer club and get to play more matches.”

You sigh, giving in. If he’s so adamant, you think that perhaps there is something in you worth sacrificing his game over. It makes an oddly warm feeling bloom in your chest. Sungchan is so damn convincing with his words. You wonder if it’s really okay.

With shoulders touching, an awkward silence takes over in the next second. You turn to him and open your mouth, watch him do the same and close it at the same time he does.

“You know,” he begins, “I was kind of lying about not worrying because I get the feeling coach will evaporate me tomorrow but—I can handle it. Mostly.”

You stare at him with wide, worried eyes. “You don’t have to do this, Sungchan. I’m the one running away.”

You slouch, pulling your knees closer to your chest and burying your face in them. The urge to scream is boiling within you but you can’t get caught. Not now.

“Sometimes to run is the brave thing,” he responds, insightful. “If you’re not up for it, it’s better to quit early than to regret it in the long run.”

You don’t know if it’s the fact that he just quoted Taylor Swift or spoke like your old school counselor—but you find yourself laughing. He makes sense. Sungchan, in his weird, oddball ways, always makes sense. And in that same way, he feels like home.

“You’re so good to me,” you say, looking up at him and at a proximity you’ve never been before.

It’s his turn to fluster, though he doesn’t do so as visibly as you do. He clears his throat, shifting his eyes around before meeting yours. “I- This is bad timing but… I like you. I really do. Since third grade when you drew that birthday card for me. I have it in my bedside drawer, by the way.”

He looks away and makes a face, probably wondering why he said that out loud.

You press your lips tight to prevent the smile that tugs at them. He looks at you with a wobbly smile, trying his hardest to resume his usual dignity—but he’s just a boy, after all.

“My type is dumb and pretty, though?” You tease, the smile escaping. “You said it yourself.”

He blinks. “Well, I am pretty but if you want me to be stu—”

You shake your head. “I like you too. You don’t have to act cute.”

He pauses, thinking. “I have never acted cute in my life ever. I was born cu—”

You hold his face between your thumb and forefinger. “You do that again and you die.”

He breaks into a smile.

“I’ve never met someone quite like you,” you whisper, embarrassed of your own feelings bubbling up from the bottle you had kept them in.

He laughs, open-mouthed and pretty.

“Actually, hey, I didn’t like you all this time from fifth. I liked you and then I didn’t like you and then I liked you again—”

“Okay, I get it.”

His shoulders relax and he smiles at you. You look up at the clock on the wall by the entrance to the field and bite your lip. You don’t love performing anymore but you know all the girls do, even the stand-bys. Jisung might not have to take over Sungchan’s position but you bet one of those tenth graders would love to take yours, the same way you did back then. They’ve practiced harder than you too and it’s only a matter of deserving.

You take a deep breath and get up, pulling up Sungchan by the hand. He raises an eyebrow, inquisitive eyes scanning over your face and you smile at him, strengthening your resolve. You should have done this way sooner.

Sungchan plays. You don’t let him sit it out with you.

Halfway through, you cheer the hardest you ever have, plastic decorative gemstones stuck by your eyes borrowed from the other girls cheering. It’s much more fun, you think. You’ve never experienced soccer like this. You’d love to sit at stadiums and join in victory chants. There’s enough weight off your chest to yell your lungs out.

Sungchan scores a goal almost immediately after and sends a thumbs up over to you. You laugh. This is the best break you’ve ever taken from cheerleading.

“Ooh, is this perhaps the (name) effect?” Chenle’s voice rings through the speakers and you feel yourself shrink slightly under the eyes. Out of the corner of your eye, you can see your homeroom teacher signal very angrily to the commentator box. You shake yourself off it. So what if everyone’s looking?

Sungchan places his hands on his hips, chest heaving and sends another signal to you before beelining for a straight goal. You whoop and the girl with a notebook beside you is visibly annoyed at this point but you don’t care.

Without doubt, your school wins and you watch as Sungchan runs to his team, a big smile on his face. The second he’s done getting pet by the team, however, he rushes to the bleachers, skipping over the steps to you, panting when he stops. The risk he took was definitely not calculated. He holds up one finger while he heaves.

“My cheering worked best this time, it seems,” you say to him, laughing.

His face is flushed from the exertion but he laughs heartily. “You could be yelling profanity at me and it’d still encourage me.”

You shake your head at the cheesy line. He takes a step forward, well inside your space but you don’t mind. He leans in.

“Everyone is looking at us,” he says under his breath. “Is that a good or a bad thing?”

You look behind him to find the whole team, along with your girls sharing furtive glances and giggling at the sight of the two of you. A few of the junior girls slap each other’s arms, bouncing on the balls of their feet in excitement. You’re not a celebrity. But everyone wants to cheer things on once in a while, don’t they?

“Good,” you answer, before pulling him by the shirt into a chaste kiss. When you pull apart, Sungchan’s face is so struck with awe that you want to look away but instead you bite back an obvious smile. It’s about damn time, someone from the soccer team yells.

“Woah. I think I scored a goal either way,” he says, an offbeat smile on his face.

“Oh come on, we didn’t even get to chant ‘Kiss! Kiss! Kiss!’ yet—oh shit, the mic’s on.”

Chenle is definitely getting an earful from your teacher after this. The two of you wave at him at the box and end up laughing at him trying to hide behind the desk.

As expected, the whole crowd surrounds the two of you in less than a minute’s worth of time, with several congratulations and “good score” offered to the two of you. The boys mess up Sungchan’s hair while the girls compliment you on how cute a couple you are. There’s also the question of when you started dating that pauses the buzz and makes everyone look to the two of you for an answer. Sungchan turns to you and you turn to him, and there’s no way you’ll tell half the school that your confession came in a private hallway outside the field—teenage imaginations run wild.

Instead, you slip your hand into Sungchan’s and run down the bleachers and towards the exit, laughter spilling from your lips. There’s only one place you can think of going to spend a cool blue late afternoon with.

“Skate plaza?” He asks.

“Skate plaza,” you answer.

#cznnet #neowritingsnet #nct x reader #sungchan x reader #nct fluff #sungchan fluff #nct imagines #nct scenarios #sungchan imagines #sungchan scenarios #nct x you #sungchan x you #nct sungchan #jung sungchan #nct oneshot #sungchan oneshot #nct fanfic #sungchan fanfic #moonwrites

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patt-writes-stuff · 4 years ago

Text

Beach Days with The Genshin Characters!

Wc: 1.7k+

Type: Headcanons

CW: umm nothing except mentions of alcohol and maybe people being creeps? (None of the chars or you tho it’s very brief)

A/N: HI IM BACK FROM THE DEAD! These were supposed to be a lot shorter but I got too excited. If you by any chance wanna see some for your fav character lmk! I know it says request are closed in my bio but since it’s just hcs it’s a lot less (and I really enjoyed writing these so ajdhdhdk)

🔥Diluc:

This man cannot swim. Tell me otherwise, I dare you.

Kaeya tried to jokingly push him off a lil diving cliff area when they were kids.

He almost drowned. Kaeya was in a lot of trouble.

So, good luck getting this man to actually get in the water. The most he’ll do is sit on the shore where it’s very shallow.

He usually prefers to just stay under an umbrella on the sand and keep an eye on you.

Calls you every two hours in advance and helps you reapply sunscreen.

He’s very pale so I feel like he burns pretty easily, meaning he needs to reapply super frequently otherwise he will become a tomato. He brings like three bottles of the good shit. Tch, rich boy.

If you ask him to build a sandcastle, he will pretend to be annoyed but do it anyways. Ends up finding it kind of enjoyable.

He has the maids prepare a nice picnic basket for the two of you!! It’s got all your favorite foods plus grape juice cuz y’know.

If any creepy peeps approach you, don’t worry. He brought his vision and his claymore.

Of course, he won’t have to resort to such violent lengths. Everyone in Mondstadt knows who Diluc is and they probably know you’re his s/o, so they’re usually smart enough to mind their own business.

If they don’t, don’t worry. Diluc’s glare is more than enough to scare them away.

All in all I definitely recommend a beach day with him! I’ll give it a solid 8/10 (-2 for not wearing floaties and getting in the water with you or letting you teach him how to swim.

🖌Albedo:

You guys definitely 100% take Klee out with you on a beach day.

You guys bring snacks, beach toys like buckets and shovels for optimal sandcastle building, a picnic blanket, etc.

Jean definitely packs a lot more stuff for you guys to take with you than you actually need.

It’s only cuz she’s worried for Klee and is nervous about not being able to go with you guys though! It’s very sweet really.

Klee tries to bomb the fish and cause havoc at the beach 😭

I think Albedo is a good swimmer and gets in with you and Klee so that he can help her (which is very cute omfg)

He’s set total workaholic, as we know, so it took a lot of convincing to get him to put down his experiments and accompany you to the beach (however, he’s particularly weak to yours and klee’s puppy dog eyes so he caved eventually)

Though, looking at you and Klee happily building sandcastles and decorating them with pretty seashells of all shapes and colors, he can’t really find it in himself to complain.

He, of course, takes this opportunity to take out his sketchbook and draw the waves, seagulls, you… Of course he won’t let you see the sketch book no sir. He’s a bit embarrassed to be honest, but an artist such as himself recognizes beauty when he sees it so he simply had to draw you. (God I love him so much)

If a creepy person approaches you,- well don’t worry. The sight of a small arsonist child blowing up fish is enough to scare them away 🥰

At the end of the day, all three of you are all ticketed out. Albedo has to carry Klee back to Mondstadt because the poor baby fell asleep the moment you started drying her hair with the beach towel. You’re, of course, carrying back Dodoco and your bags. (You also manage to sneak a peak at Albedo’s sketchbook and find some very pretty drawings of you and Klee with your sandcastle)

At the end of the day, you guys tuck Klee in and read her a bedtime story (she woke up and insisted). Afterwards Albedo takes you back home and thanks you for coming with you and Klee (which you ofc say wasn’t a problem because how could you not???)

All in all? I’ll give it a solid 10/10. You’ve got tasty food, fun times, your boyfriend and his cute kid adoptive sister (yes I am very biased idc)

🦋Xiao:

I think it would take a lot of convincing to get Xiao to go out on a beach date with you.

He’ll probably see it as a distraction getting in the way of his slaying of monsters and demons.

However, he also worships the grounds you walk on (hehe, simp XD), so I don’t think it’ll take that much convincing on your part (especially because it’s is self appointed duty to keep you safe so if you insist on going with or without him, he supposes he’ll have to go)

Is definitely a bit tense at first. He doesn’t know how to let loose and chill so while you’re sun tanning on a beach chair he’s like 🧍‍♂️ahdgshjsjd

Eventually calms down a bit though! You get him to relax and eat some almond tofu you brought along with you. It definitely gets him to perk up.

I don’t think he would mind getting into the water but I do think he’d rather walk along the shore and collect pretty seashells and sea glass.

He later gives the ones he deems pretties to you (he hands them over to you with a blush on his face and pretends it’s not a big deal and he definitely gets all pouty and grouchy when you coo at how adorable he is)

As for creeps, Xiao is both intimidating and well known in Liyue. No one is brave enough (or, let’s be honest, dumb enough) to approach you with any bad intentions.

Sure, Xiao has sworn never to harm a human/citizen of Liyue but that doesn’t mean he can’t scare the absolute shit out of them.

I think Xiao would definitely enjoy a beach day 🥺🥺. He’d find it very relaxing to go out with you and just hear the sound of waves and feel the sand under his feet.

He’d definitely hint at wanting to do it again later. Of course, he won’t tell you. No, that’s a foolish mortal activity and he has much better things to do.

Wait no, don't turn around, yes he will go with you next month.

All in all, I give Xiao a 9/10. It’s a very relaxing day (which he deserves 😤). And you get to see a whole new side of him.

💎Ningguang:

OK SO ORIGINALLY I WASN'T GONNA WRITE ONE FOR HER (at least not in this post) BUT THEN I THOUGHT OF LADY NINGGUANG TAKING YOU TO A WHOLE ASS PRIVATE BEACH

She knows you don’t care about how exclusive the beach you go to is (in fact, the fact that you don’t care about where you are or what you do is one of the things that make her fall more and more madly in love with you) but you deserve the best so she’s gonna go all out.

She’s a busy lady so days like this where the two of you get to go somewhere and be together are few and far between.

She knows it’s hard to be in a relationship with someone who is busy 24/7, so she appreciates how you remain by her side despite all hardships. (Y’all are a whole ass power couple istg)

The two of you spend your day relaxing. Sun bathing, drinking piña coladas, maybe taking a dip in the ocean. It’s all very pleasant!

Ningguang doesn’t quite feel like the type of person who would sit in the sand and make sandcastle, however you’re more than welcome to make some yourself. She finds it endearing <3

If you insist on her helping, she’ll eventually comply. She loves you too much to say no. I feel like she’ll either be terrible at it or like a total architect.

Sand is technically like tiny rocks right? So maybe she can use her vision to help her? If that’s the case, she’s making a replica of the Jade chamber out of sand.

If any creepy person comes up to you don’t worry. Ningguang will buy the whole beach and then use her right of admission as owner to permanently ban them from the beach you’re at.

The only downside to a day at the beach with Ningguang might be that there’s a big chance she’ll be called to tend urgent matters, seeing as she is the Tianquan of the Liyue Qixing and all.

If that does happen, she’ll be sure to make it up to you somehow, whether it be rescheduling or taking care of the matter as soon as possible so that the two of you can get back to your day of relaxation and fun.

All in all?? Lady Ningguang will treat you like total royalty and the two of you will have an amazing time! I give her an 11/10 (she would literally buy a whole beach for you to be comfortable I mean c’mon)

🍃Venti:

BEACH DAYS WITH HIM ARE SO FUN!!

Swimming? Yeah, he’d love to! Sunbathing? Sure! He’ll ever conjure up a light breeze for the two of you. Sandcastle building? WELL OF COURSE WHY DO YOU THING HE BROUGHT ALL THESE BUCKETS AND SHOVELS?

No but seriously, he might be the best person out of everyone here to go to the beach with. He’s fun, free spirited, and he’s a traveling bard who’s been alive long enough to know where all the best beaches in Teyvat are. (He also knows a guy- er, well, dragon I suppose- who is willing to fly them to any place).

He’ll play some soft tunes while you doze under the sun.

HE PICKS PRETTY SHELLS AND GIFTS THEM TO YOU!!!

He will bring booze. I’m pretty sure this is a necessity. If you’re a little upset about it, he’ll probably “eheh~” his way out of it. That slick bastard.

If you really insist on him not drinking, he won’t consume much alcohol.

If some creepy person approaches you and tries to ruin you your day of beach time fun, all of their stuff will suddenly be blown away, causing them to scramble back to their spot and (almost embarrassingly) flail around trying to catch everything. What a shame…

At the end of the day, he’d be a little sad to leave. Definitely makes plans about tbe two of you going back soon.

I gotta give him a 10/10 he’s just so fun omg.

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prof-peach · 3 years ago

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if fans wanted to include peach in stuff they write, would that be okay? and how would they write peach's personality? aside from "FIGHT ME" anyway, i think that much is a given lol. i only really write the anime characters 'cause that's what i know, but it sounds like it'd be kinda fun to try making a version of ash that fits into this blog's universe! nerf'd Obviously, but i think she'd probably appreciate how hands-on he gets when training his pokemon!

Ok, I get a lot of these messages, and I often hear folks wanting to throw peach into their stories and comics and writings, and I will always simply ask that if it’s published online publicly, to be linked to it so I can snoop and enjoy the content too. If someone asks about her in your work, let them know about the blog I guess? But literally I love that people take this stuff, these characters and stories, and make new stuff with it. No ones making money off my work here? So where’s the issue? Go for it buddy, knock yourself out, I’m all for it.

For you, and all the others out there who want to add peach, and other characters to your world building, I will give you a detailed rundown of the main lot, and how they behave, what they do, how they function. You can use that, use bits, or use none of it, I do not mind at all. If you’re creating something, you’re in control, not me.

So, peach doesn’t actually fight people as much as you’d think. She’s very aware most cannot and do not want to do that, and so she likes to keep to herself with regards to that aspect of her life, she doesn’t ask to spar with people, or even bring it up at all, but people ask her all the time, even if they clearly would lose or become hurt should she miscalculate during the fight. She looks at people like they usually create problems, and often has a somewhat reserved nature to other humans. You have to work quite hard to get anything more than formalities out of her. She will dead-pan handle people with blunt and very to-the-point statements, aid whenever possible, but very quickly get back to handling the Pokemon she so carefully tends. Her focus is clear, she’s all about hard work, her very small select family, and the Pokemon.

Her brutal, loud and brash personality only comes out with friends, family, difficult humans, OR any Pokemon. She will joke and laugh and play with Pokemon, but clam up around humans, maintaining tight body language and generally will be a little cold by regular standards. She does however have some weaknesses in this emotionless shield she puts up. When peach was young she was always angry, which swung so fast to sadness, back and forth. Her teenage years it just got worse and worse, it was crippling at points. She is to this day, full of fire and rage, even sadness, but now she has learnt to control it, to use it. When she sees that in others, it’s familiar, and she is pushed to drop the front, and be very real with the person. Underdogs I suppose, people who get bad reps, but deserve the same as everyone else. She can’t ignore it.

Once you start to pry open her personality, you’ll find she’s a lot more laid back and fun than originally appeared, you just have to work hard to find that side of her. She will meme reference, can’t dance to save her life, loves her coffee, and can be caught in quiet contemplation while gardening. This hobby is her calmest, and often is why she can stay so level headed when her quiet rage boils up again. Without time outside she will become grouchy, a little snippy, and lethargic. Will not go in the ocean for any reason other than life or death, is fine with ponds and rivers, or water at wading height. Likes the rain.

With regards to her training others, they usually have to tolerate her somewhat strict nature. She is a little....unforgiving, holds a grudge if you make a lot of mistakes, and has no tolerance for ignorance in the age of information that we all live in. In previous posts I’ve mentioned she’s only recently selected two students, after many years of testing kids who want to learn from her. Hundred tried out, only two have ever been approved. How she teaches is very fast paced, be prepared to get some scrapes and bruises, she will test your physical and emotional tolerances with intense tasks, carefully watching students like a hawk. Bad posture in your stance? She’ll be the first to tell you to sort it out. Not hearing your Pokemon partner? Right, now you spend the day without using words trying to communicate, let’s see how you like not being listened to.

This is a woman who has spent her life saying very little, and watching everything, she watches Pokemon and can see an issue from a mile off, and in battles, her observations are why she can react fast, and chose effective strategy to avoid damage and achieve results. Don’t let her body fool you, her strongest asset is analysing, watching, planning. Those skills have over the years transferred to people too. As a student, mistakes don’t go unnoticed with this professor.

Her methods are harsh but fair, and should you prove yourself, she will protect you with her life.

Because of her disinterest in kids and lots of noise, she does pass the training of students on to the other staff members whenever possible. Grey takes on the lions share of battle lessons, he is far calmer, more open and friendly, with patience for people, and an empathy that peach sometimes struggles to have. When you go through a lot of harsh training, and difficult events, it’s hard to change how you feel or think, with peach, well, she’s been through it. Most do not come out the other end in one piece, but she did, and it made her strong. You may think I mean strong like buff and big, and yeah sure she is, but I mean it mentally more than anything. Peach will not quit. She has learnt to destroy the boundaries that stop people getting hurt, gone is the fear that freezes you in your tracks, that feeling that you’ll pass out if you go one more step. She’s learnt to ignore it.

This means she’s a little forgetful at how it is to be normal, to be vulnerable and soft and squishy like students so usually are.

She has her issues, but for the most part, visitors get a laugh, a smile, a calm assertive confidence, and facts. She will indulge those who have genuine interest, or show a connection with nature, an understanding of the balance that needs to be struck for everyone to live well together.

Despite her many flaws, she’s fiercely protective, and will go above and beyond to defend the island, it’s staff, the Pokemon and the visitors. Injustice is her biggest gripe, along with littering, and she doesn’t stand by quietly if something happens that seems unfair.

You will not see her without Valka, her vulpix, close by. That Pokemon doesn’t like to be touched by strangers, at all, and will run the second someone comes at her with that intent. Peach will scold you for pushing yourself onto her, should you persistently try to get close to pet Val. They are in sync, if peach is sad, Val is sad, if Val is stressed, peach is stressed, and so on. They are inherently connected, it’s just been that long, the psychic bridge between them has been built, and reinforced over the years.

The only other Pokemon who follows her so endlessly is Booker, a teddiursa who’s pretty rough looking. He quietly trots behind, grouchy and stoic, they fight closely together a lot. He lost his mom a long time ago to poachers, and peach took him in, and changed her whole life for him. Not many people know, but Booker was the reason she left the rangers, changed career, and got so strong. Will tolerate people petting him but isn’t keen at all, grumbles a lot and tries to move away.

You may also need to know about the others, for the sake of writing, she here a few more bits that may be important to you, or others wanting to do this.

Grey is very tall, very burly, composed, tells bad dad jokes, is a bit of a goof if allowed to be. If he sees a pun, he’ll say it. Can’t help himself. Very nice guy to work with, good at keeping people calm and grounded. Pokemon are drawn to him like a moth to a flame, he gives off warm energy, and has inhuman amounts of patience. If you wrong his family however, he will snap back.

He grew up in the city, loves to swim and hike and cycle, can snowboard, is really sporty. A total brain box with held items, and boosting stats. He will explore many paths, to make sure visitors and students get the information they need, in a way that can be remembered and retained for later. Is a huge guy, but will get on the floor to play with a tiny Pokemon. Treats big “meaner” looking species like babies, very good with all pokemon.

His free time is spent either tinkering, swimming, or trimming his bonsai trees. This guy stares at screens a lot, so appreciates time away from them. Peach built him his own little greenhouse for his trees and tools, which he keeps clean and loves dearly.

His methods as a teacher are built around fun and games, he makes hard work easier to do by distracting trainers from the difficult bits, and focusing in on something more interesting or compelling.

His most commonly seen Pokemon would be a houndoom, Saxon, old battle veteran, retired now to herding and being a good boy. Very gentle, loves a pet.

Pari, now a fully fledged nurse, often oversees the labs front desk and pokecentre features, such as healing pokemon, and informing trainers who come to visit. Her skills with eggs and hatchlings is high, she’s great with younger Pokemon, and hands out good advice to trainers a lot. She’s not a fighter, never was, but can find any file, any study, any book, and any refrence you may need. A true bookworm, loves her romance novels, chat shows and upbeat celebrity gossip mags. Will cry at a lot of stuff, be it sad or happy.

She’s got a seriously upbeat personality, but if caught off guard or shocked, she gets a little flustered. Too much chaos will overwhelm her, but usually she’s on top of things. The years spent on the island have made her better at maintaining composure in emergencies. With lots of siblings, she’s very competent with others, and has a good ability to disarm cagey people with her jolly nature. Because of this, she can sometimes gain information from trainers that some of the more harsh professors may not have access to. Charming is a word for it.

Her partners are an eevee, and a happiny. They are quite sweet and well adjusted, the eevee gets a bit bouncy if you get it too excited.

#if you dont want to use the refs #im really cool with it #just enjoy yourself buddy #pokemon #prof.peach #peach talks #prof.grey #pari #dotaku island #dotaku staff #PLEASE #just ask me if you dont know something #or feel i missed something in what i wrote

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blue-bird-kny · 3 years ago

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Cuddling HC Part 2

I know this is real short, but I’m happy to be working again! Please enjoy~ Amanda

Warning: None.

`(Words 900)

↳{Includes: Genya, Muichiro, Mitsuri}

Genya:

With Genya, cuddling isn’t something that is openly discussed or even acknowledged, you guys have more of an ‘I don’t hate you and you happen to like me’ type of relationship -at the beginning at least, eventually, you break him. However everyone needs a little hug after a long day and as you both fight demons for a living, every day is a long day.

He would not initiate the cuddling whatsoever, so you start small to not scare him by introducing small bits of physical contact. First, you’d rest the palm of your hand on his arm calmly, squeezing lightly or rubbing soothingly. Then, you’d take any moment of pause to rest your head against his shoulder. He froze the first time you did it, but now he sometimes itches to the weight rest against him. It wasn’t till one late night after washing and dressing that you’d stop the man, wrapping your arms as best as you could around his whole being to pull him in close, missing the way his questioning glare shifted into something of warm gaze. You held him for a second...then two, releasing him shyly for fear that you’d made him uncomfortable. “I’m sorry I didn't think-” “That was nice” his comment was low, but you still heard it.

After that, there was no stopping this man from wiggling himself into your grasp at one point or another, it was like a child who waited every night for his teddy bear. He’d never ask with words, it was always the small quivers of his thin-set lips when he was anxious, it was in the way he would hesitantly brush his fingers against any part of you he could get a hold of, it was especially obvious in his eyes that swam with a sort of desperation only you could understand. So, when you were both tucked away from the dangers and worries of the rest of the world, you’d sling your arms around him again, pressing his head against your chest, nuzzling into each other's warmth with a soft sigh.

Muichiro:

Muichiro’s favorite activity before meeting you was sitting around to watch the day slowly turn to night, so now that you are in his life, his favorite thing to do is be with you (bonus points if you're both doing nothing together). Cuddling was a natural activity that simply happened; you’d cuddle in all places and positions.

On sunny days you’d find yourselves outside, enjoying the cool breeze that helped to combat the hot rays from above. You’d lay against the plush grass without worrying about stains or getting dirty with Muichiro’s head balanced lazily on your stomach. His fingers would feel around for yours if they weren’t already buried into his long strands, twirling them around each of your nubs when you got tired of braiding them. Sometimes you’d hum a tune you’d heard once as a child or while in some town, playing this silly game with Muichiro where you’d make up lyrics and he’d have to continue them.

When the rain turned your usual spot to mud, Muichiro would build some semblance of a fort near the fireplace while you boiled tea. “ Careful Mui, it’s hot” you warned, placing the steaming glass cups on the floor, Muichiro pushed together the cushions laying back while bringing you with him. He hummed first this time, singing a silly tune about a fish who wanted to visit the moon that made you laugh. Life felt simple and sweet.

Mitsuri:

Mitsuri wanted nothing more than to die knowing she had an epic, romantic love story like the ones in the fables she heard as a girl, a bond that she found in you. Cuddling with Mitsuri was special in all sorts of ways and always felt like the right way to settle things. Sometimes cuddling was a chance to be vulnerable together or a way to talk about each other’s day when free time had been sparse for either of you.

One of your favorite types of cuddles followed a big meal enjoyed together. Neither of you were professional chefs, but on special nights you both would go all out and cook too many delicious dishes that you always finished. You’d become so full that you'd allow the dirty dishes to pile up in the sink, you’d both change into comfy sleepwear to get into bed. On some nights, you both have just enough energy to stay up to talk about life, but on others, it was a bit harder, the warmth of each other pressed together and the swollen bellies made sleep sound so good.

Sometimes cuddles are born out of relief only a demon slayer would understand, the kind where your stomach can’t leave the floor and your throat is too tight to speak. Some missions are harder than others, especially at the rank you’re both at, so when Mitsuri couldn’t be found after one mission you became restless and riddled with worry, horrible ‘what if’s?’ drowning out all reason. When you found her cut-up and disorientated, you couldn’t help but sob at her side as medic’s tended to her; she was hurt badly, but alive. You babied her for every night she was in recovery (and some after because she loved the attention), cuddling her even if your arms were asleep.

Main Masterlist

#demon slayer x reader #kny x reader #mitsuri x fem! reader #mitsuri x reader #muichiro x reader #genya x reader

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kingdomtual · 3 years ago

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So, had some thoughts on Jahan’s character...gonna probably keep making these types of theory/thought posts on kingdom’s lore and whatever else comes to mind...bet you thought I couldn’t get more annoying? ;) but I even have a special link to these on my blog now so this is probably gonna keep happening LOL check out my thoughts below if you so choose

So, basically I’ve been thinking about how Jahan has the most characterization prior to his chapter, and I find that super interesting. I don’t know if it’s because his chapter is last so they’re building him up, but I’m super curious!

And that’s not to say that the other kings didn’t have any characterization before their chapter, but I think their chapters usually leave a lot of surprises we don’t know about them. (I’m sure Jahan’s chapter will have surprises for us, too)

Like, most notably, Ivan’s chapter was wild to me. We got to see a lot of ‘Fate’ Ivan prior to his chapter, but then we were introduced to Chaos Ivan, and then chaos Ivan killed the Ivan that we had known LOL and for Dann, we’ve seen his tough guy side a lot and his helpful leader side, but we didn’t really get to see that sorrowful side that we see in Ascension. I could go on and on.

But for Jahan, prior to his own chapter, there are sooooo many interesting character beats about him. I think they’re most notable in Excalibur and Karma, but we see it again in Ascension, too.

So let’s dive in, starting with Excalibur.

Obviously in Excalibur we get to see a bit about all of them. Mostly pertaining to their fighting skills and whatnot, they’re usually surrounded, but there are some unique points for a lot of the characters, like Ivan and Louis have some sort of magic, Dann seeming to know more than he’s letting on by showing Arthur the destruction that he somehow didn’t know about, Chiwoo just vibing on that swing, etc.

Jahan, though, in Excalibur is super interesting to me. He has a very mysterious look, obviously he’s holding sand because he comes from a desert land but I always thought that the way he letting sand sift through is hands was also kind of like how an hourglass has sand falling...like they’re running out of time, but he also most notably saves Arthur’s life.

Jahan rescues Arthur from explosions and then swears allegiance to Arthur with his special knife that we see him fighting with later.

Jahan comes across as a benevolent aid who seems to put himself at risk for others very easily, and he sees Arthur’s determination to retrieve his crown and knows they share the same goal. He makes me think that he’s the guardian of the other kings, honestly, because of his ability to just swoop in for the save him. He knew without Arthur they would be lost.

Now, onto Karma.

Jahan plays a big role in this story, too, and one that isn’t too different from what we saw in Excalibur. Less fighting, sure, but it still holds true to some of the same themes in his character.

Jahan is mostly seen alone in that room with the tree, and he’s kind of tending to it, trying to take care of it and such. It almost feels as if that place is like a sad memory to him, and I think it’s because of where Chiwoo ends up.

So, Jahan in this chapter is obviously Chiwoo’s closest confidant. We don’t see Chiwoo spending time with any of the other kings, but he goes to Jahan often. I think it’s to be speculated that Jahan was one of the ‘reasons’ why Chiwoo fell into disarray, because he was trying to protect everyone he cared about and not paying much attention to his subjects, but then that leads into the curiosity as to why Jahan or the other kings needed protection. The Kingdom of the Clouds seems to be far and away from most things, so maybe it was a haven to them at one time when they were in danger, but in protecting them he lost everything else.

But we see Chiwoo whispering to Jahan, we see them meeting up in this room with the tree. Jahan remains there, while Chiwoo does not, which I think is interesting. It’s almost like Chiwoo goes beyond Jahan’s influence and he can’t bring him back, can’t try to talk him into doing ‘the right thing’ or whatever he needs to do to save his kingdom. But Jahan is still waiting there to see if he can talk to Chiwoo again.

But I think the main point with Jahan’s character in all of this is that once again he is the confidant/guardian that is doing what he can to help the king. He’s being there for him when things aren’t going well, he’s trying to help. In the end, the kingdom still falls, but I doubt Jahan’s efforts to help Chiwoo in some way, or to create a strong bond of friendship, were wasted.

Now Black Crown.

Much less happens with Jahan in Black Crown. The main focus of that MV is really just the raging battle between Fate and Chaos, and the corruption of the Black Crown.

I think it’s interesting to note, however, that during that scene with all of the kings standing around the crystal ball and they’re arguing with each other...Jahan is the only one who really isn’t. He’s present, but he’s not actively engaging in the argument like all of the others are.

It might be nothing, but I think Jahan had the least amount of faith in the black crown and therefore was just...there to watch and possibly do what he could to protect the others. Again, that guardian behavior that we have seen in the past two chapters.

He’s also quite powerful, because we see him in the chapter when all the others have fallen, and he rouses them to get up again. He withstood the attack when others could not, but he did not abandon them and made sure they were alright.

Onto Ascension

That first thing I noticed was that all of the glory versions of the different kings were very peaceful, very pretty. Mujin’s got his pretty fan, Ivan has his calligraphy, all of them are just chilling, but Jahan...Jahan most notably has a sword with him the entire time.

I think possibly the only time he doesn’t have it with him is during that scene where they are all on the bridge together. But otherwise, Jahan is always ready. It’s almost like he knew what was coming before it came, or perhaps that he truly is just that guardian figure that is looking out for all the other kings, no matter the era.

But what am I saying all of this for??? Well, mostly because I think it’s interesting how we’ve had so much insight into Jahan’s character before his chapter and I think this understanding of him is going to be crucial in his chapter! He’s this guardian and benevolent confidant that has served all the other kings in some way, but when his chapter comes...who will protect him?

Extra Note: My friend @baobeejun reminded me of the Kingdom of Sun’s motto: ‘In the end, the sun will protect you.’ I had completely forgotten, and what a fitting motto for Jahan! Maybe...just maybe...my thoughts on him aren’t too far off!

Anyway, those are just my thoughts on Jahan. Please, share yours! Would love to hear them! Or if you wanna talk about the other kings! Yeah! My inbox is always open!

#kingdom #jahan #hok theory #yeah I'm sorry idk my brain just was like NO WRITE THIS DOWN IT'S IMPORTANT #I'm sure it's not but LOL #yeah okay

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handsmotif · 4 years ago

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The Queercoding of Pinky and the Brain

This originally was just me infodumping to my friends on discord, but I decided it might be interesting to some people on here, so I polished it up and made it an actual essay lmao

To start, we’re going to break this into 2 sections -- the relationship between the mice, and Pinky’s relationship with gender, because queercoding doesn’t just mean gay!

For a 90′s show, Pinky and the Brain (and its mother show, Animaniacs) was very progressive for its time! But there were still lots of things that they couldn’t slip by censors, and thus, that’s where we have to read between the lines. And that is something I wanted to clarify here before we dive in, the actual meaning of queercoding. It’s NOT the same as queerbaiting. Queerbaiting is when the people producing certain media purposefully dangle the possibility of queer representation to lure in audiences (most prominent examples are BBC Sherlock, Riverdale, and Supernatural I GUESS? who knows abt that last one anymore), but never follow through, purely for profit. Queercoding is when media producers WANT to write in queer representation, but can’t, usually because the censors won’t let them. So, they must resort to subtext. (example: the policemen from Gravity Falls) It could also be unintentional, simply assigning certain characteristics associated with the LGBT community to characters. (example: Bugs Bunny, many Disney villains) Either way, it heavily relies on the audience picking up subtext, but whether it’s malicious or not varies, depending on the media. Bugs Bunny is an example of positive accidental queercoding, while a lot of Disney villains are negative examples.

Now, to actually discuss the gay little mice! Pinky and the Brain, whether it be intentional or not (based off comments from Maurice LaMarche, Rob Paulsen, and Tom Ruegger, signs strongly point to intentional, but it’s never been explicitly confirmed), is an example of positive queercoding.

There are many moments that I could pick out to discuss here, but we’ll start with some VERY on the nose gay metaphors.

Remember Romy? If you don’t, that’s their actual biological son! Romy came about due to a cloning accident, where their DNA got combined and spat him out.

There’s SO many things I could say about Romy. Every appearance he makes has an overarching gay metaphor as the plot. His first appearance in the episode Brinky (yeah it’s literally titled their ship name), it deals with his dads (WHICH I ALSO WANT TO POINT OUT, he DOES call them both dad, and they do both call him their son) disapproving of the fact that he wants to leave home and not follow in their footsteps of taking over the world. Brain even goes as far as disowning him whenever he tells him, which is certainly something a lot of queer people can unfortunately relate to. Also seen a lot in this episode is Pinky and Brain arguing even more than a married couple than usual, which pushes Romy away even further. Later, when Romy eventually does leave, and Brain starts to regret chasing him away, he tries desperately to reach out to him, but Romy doesn’t want anything to do with him. They end up tracking him down to an apartment building, where Romy is now living with his human girlfriend. When questioned about their relationship, the girlfriend, named Bunny, goes off on a tangent about how people shouldn’t judge others based on labels or relationships (hello?), and that Brain needs to be more tolerant. Brain apologizes and Romy forgives him. Happy ending.

Romy’s only other appearance is in the comics. Essentially, the plot of this one is that Brain wants to become the president of the local high school’s PTA, but he needs Romy’s help to make it look like he has a normal home life. He also enlists the help of Billie, the obligatory Woman introduced to make sure Brain doesn’t look as gay as he actually is, that he has a crush on. She pretends to be his girlfriend, and Pinky pretends to be Romy’s uncle, while they make up the story that Romy’s actual mother was lost at sea. Because if the organization found out that Brain has a son with a MAN??? THINK of the controversy! Anyway, the plan works, and Brain actually manages to get elected as president. Throughout this though, Pinky gets WEIRDLY jealous that Brain keeps brushing him aside for Billie. To the point where during Brain’s inauguration, Pinky actually dresses up as the wife/mother lost at sea and storms into the room.

[ID: Comic panels of Pinky, Brain, and Romy on stage at the inauguration ceremony. Pinky busts into room wearing drag, saying, “Yoo hoo! I’m back from years lost at sea to be with my son and ungrateful husband! Narf!” He then hugs Romy, while glaring at Brain. He goes on to say, “I’ll stand by your side, even though you left me behind!” The people in the audience begin to question this, saying, “Oh great fuzzy bangs!”, “What’d she say?!”, “He deserted her to be with that other woman!”, “What kind of monster is he?!”. Brain then rips off Pinky’s wig and says, “This isn’t my wife! This isn’t even a woman! It’s my roommate, Pinky.” Pinky replies, “Well, yes... But Romy really is my son! Poit!” And Brain responds, “N-Nonsense! He’s my son!” More people in the audience angrily speak up, saying, “What’s that?”, “He lives with a guy who likes to dress up in women’s clothing and the both claim to be that kid’s father!”, “Grumble! Mutter!” /END ID]

Needless to say, this doesn’t end well for them. What we can conclude from this is that homophobia exists in the Pinky and the Brain universe, and our characters are directly affected by it.

Moving on, And-There-Was-Only-One-Bed is a pretty common occurrence with these two. Their cage is big, they have plenty of room for two beds, but? They choose to sleep together? Even in some times where this has been inconsistent and they DO have separate beds, they’re always RIGHT next to each other. (what if we put our minecraft beds together ❤😳)

I would like to mention the episode, You’ll Never Eat Food Pellets In This Town Again! This episode is interesting to say the least. Deals with a lot of the meta of the show. Anyway. In this episode, Brain has a nightmare that he’s in a loveless marriage with Billie. You know, the woman he’s supposed to have a crush on. In the end, he wakes up from the nightmare in the same bed as Pinky.

Speaking of female love interests, Pinky is seen having multiple relationships with characters of different species. Any time this is brought up by Brain, Pinky counters with Brain being too intolerant. An honorable mention with this is in Wakko’s Wish, when Pinky is with Pharfignewton, and Brain’s constant pestering about their relationship could be read as jealousy. Pinky needs a mousy date, after all!

Something else I would like to mention is in one episode (I forget what it’s called, I’ll try to look it up later and edit this), Brain is applying for a job. The employer asks Brain if he’s married, and Brain hesitates before saying he “has a roommate,” but that he’s occupied with his own things, which then cuts to a shot of Pinky applying lipstick.

Leading into part two of this essay, Pinky’s relationship with gender! Pinky has always been very gender nonconforming, and loves to wear dresses, do his makeup, and make himself look pretty. For the most part, this is played pretty straight, and not as a gag, like a lot of shows tend to do! It’s just a casual fact about him that he likes to present femininely sometimes.

This does play into their taking over the world plans pretty often, where Pinky wears drag, usually either to sneak into somewhere. Like in one of their earliest appearances on Animaniacs, Noah’s Lark, where they pose as a couple to board Noah’s, and I quote, “love boat.” After boarding, Noah says to himself, “Who am I to judge?” Okay. Yeah. Alright. Anyway.

I actually had less to say on this than I thought I did, but I wanted to make sure to emphasize that Pinky at the very least is coded as being Not Quite Cis, and that he’s played a key part in helping a lot of people watching the show figure out that they’re also Not Quite Cis.

Wrapping this up because I’m hungry, but I want to throw in some more honorable mentions that I really do not see any type of cishet explanations for:

They literally go on a romantic date at a very fancy restaurant in Brain’s Night Off. This is played extremely casually, and the only remark from anyone that they receive is that they are “much smaller than the usual clients.”

Pinky, on at least one occasion, daydreams about him and Brain being a married couple, and wanting to be a housewife (the original malewife ❤)

There’s an issue in the comics where Pinky has a crush on another male mouse, and when Brain gets annoyed, Pinky reassures him that he thinks Brain is cute and quite the catch too

Brain attempting to kiss Pinky in the reboot??????

Brain actually did conquer the world once in the Halloween special, because Pinky made a deal with the devil for it, and thus Pinky got sent to hell! Brain actually went to hell and gave up the world to bring him back

Brain was extremely close to conquering the world once more in the Christmas special, but after reading what Pinky’s feelings for him were (nothing romantic, just Pinky basically just praising Brain for being so hardworking and an amazing mouse, and lamenting that he never gets anything for it), he gets so emotional that he sabotages himself and wishes everyone a Merry Christmas instead

TLDR; these mice are very queer and need therapy, and are probably the most heavily queercoded characters that I can think of in children’s media.

#animaniacs #pinky and the brain #patb #brinky #FLOPS ON THE FLOOR this took a long time to write

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pascalpanic · 4 years ago

Text

Conferences (Maxwell Lord/Lorenzano x f!teacher!Reader)

Summary: Alistair Lorenzano is a third grader in your class, whom you absolutely adore. Upon meeting his father, Maxwell, you suddenly have much more interest in the Lorenzano family. Set after WW84.

W/C: 2.9k

Warnings: language, flirting, talk of divorce and trauma, lots of talk of children and such, especially Alistair. brief nondescript mentions of Maxwell’s shitty childhood. uh. Spoilers for The Great Gatsby lmao

A/N: well! I haven’t written for max in a long time but the ship request (which are CLOSED) i received here really made me inspired! hope u guys like it :)

Alistair Lorenzano was a joy to have in class. You mean it too, not like when you don’t have a comment for a child’s report card and you just stick that phrase on the bottom. No, Alistair is a genuinely good kid.

The little dark haired boy walked in proudly on the first day, even as none of the other children came over to say hello or pal around with him. He seemed lonely, but he marched up to your desk and placed a beautiful apple on the desk, giving you a gap-toothed grin and introducing himself with a handshake. Alistair didn’t talk to his other classmates much that day, or any other day really. He was usually preoccupied with a book of some sort.

He sits alone at lunch and recess, usually burying his nose in a book as the other children play. He’s progressed quite quickly, reading big wordy books the other fourth graders surely couldn’t handle. When a child has no one to play with, Alistair will sit with them and talk. He’ll always help a struggling classmate with their long division or come up with a good synonym for them. He rarely raises his hand, but he’s almost always correct.

He’ll come in early most mornings. He doesn’t talk much about his family, but he says his dad works early in the morning and that he has to drop him off earlier. That’s fine with you; the kid is a good conversationalist and will read quietly while you arrange lesson plans or grade spelling tests.

You wonder what his family is like. All you know about his father is that he works early in the morning. His mother has dropped him off late several times, but that always led to more early mornings; presumably his father’s doing.

As a teacher, you tend to shy away from family-based assignments. You’re fully aware that some of your students won’t want to share what their parents do for a living, or talk about them at all. That’s why you don’t know much about the Lorenzano family- you don’t ask and Alistair doesn’t share.

Conferences are approaching soon as you approach the midpoint of the first semester. Most parents don’t come if their children are doing well; typically, only the parents of struggling children make appearances. That’s why you’re surprised to read the note Alistair hands you when he walks in, thirty minutes before class begins, as always.

You frown reading the little note of paper, pushing your glasses up your nose. “You’re sure that your father needs a conference?” You ask the little boy. He looks confused. “I’d love to meet him,” you say hurriedly, sipping your morning coffee. “It’s just that… you’re a very smart kid, Alistair. Usually it’s the parents of kids who don’t do so well that sign up for conferences.”

Alistair shrugs, taking off his puffy fall jacket and hanging it on his hook near your desk. “I don’t know. Dad just said he wanted that time,” he says, pointing at your paper.

Dramatically uncapping a colored flare pen, you make a show out of writing down the name for your 7:30 time slot: Mr Lorenzano. “Well, I will see your dad then,” you tell the kid with a smile. He seems pleased that you’re excited. “What’s his name?”

“Maxwell,” Alistair informs you, sitting at his desk and cracking open his book.

You repeat the name, writing it down in the purple pen you chose. “Your family has very elegant names,” you tease Alistair.

Alistair shrugs. “Dad likes to sound fancy.”

Maxwell has never met you, but he feels that he knows you like an old friend. Alistair absolutely adores you, tells his father about you at any chance he gets.

You sound wonderful. He supposes that Alistair would adore any female figure in his life right now. Vanessa, the former Mrs. Lord, has all but rejected her son. When Alistair would spend time at her place, she’d practically ignore her own kid, prioritizing whatever she wanted to do. Several days, Alistair was late to or completely missed school thanks to Vanessa’s ignorance.

That’s why Maxwell has taken nearly full custody now. Vanessa didn’t argue it. She was glad to have Alistair out of her hair. Besides, she resented Maxwell for endless reasons, usually unfounded. She wanted to see him struggle.

But Maxwell thrived. Alistair and his father are as close as can be. Maxwell now works a menial job, after the whole Dreamstone fiasco, but he’s managing to make ends meet. When they have enough money left over, he’ll take Alistair to the movies or buy him a new lego kit.

Maxwell hasn’t found love since Vanessa, but he thinks you might be the one for him. One could call him a hopeless romantic; his heart builds and breaks as easily as a wave on the shore. You sound so nurturing and lovely, so wonderful to the one Maxwell loves most. That’s partially why he scheduled the conference with you.

The other part was that Alistair is a budding genius in Maxwell’s eyes. He flies through thick books day in and day out, and Max wants to accommodate the skills in his son. He constantly tells him how proud of him he is, but he wants to make sure he can keep helping him learn.

On the day of the conference, Maxwell is nervous. Why is he nervous? He combs his closet several times to find one of the nice suits from his glory days, but decides it to be ridiculous. He’s not sure how much Alistair tells you about his family, but he’s sure you know he is no longer the television personality Max Lord. Instead, he settles for a dress shirt and pants, tossing on a light jacket over it. The fall air is turning crisp, especially in the evenings.

Doña Gloria from next door knocks on the door at promptly 7:00, and Alistair pops up to answer it. He loves the old woman, and wraps her in a big hug. Gloria walks inside the apartment, grinning at the sight of Maxwell’s outfit. “Ah, making a good impression on the boy’s teacher,” she nods in approval.

“Hoping to,” he nods and adjusts the suede jacket over his lapels, fidgeting with the zipper. “Alistair, why don’t you go find that game you wanted to play with Doña Gloria?”

The child runs off obediently and the woman straightens his collar for him. “Little Maxie has a crush,” she sings.

“Gloria,” he frowns as he messes with the cuffs. “I’ve never even met the woman.”

She gives a knowing smile. “But you know her. You know her through Alistair, all his stories. I’m sure she will love you, mijo.”

“Well, it doesn’t matter,” he sighs and pats his pockets, checking for his wallet. “She’s Alistair’s teacher. I can’t just-“

“You can do whatever the hell you want, Mr. Lorenzano,” the woman chuckles and reassures him. “Go get her.”

He shakes his head. “It’s a conference, not a date,” he says as he walks towards the door.

“It can be both!” Is the last thing he hears before he shuts the door, making him laugh.

Conferences, as always, are a pain in the ass. You sit and make small talk with parents, discussing their child’s skills with their times table versus their writing proficiency, their standardized test scores and how they stack up.

As the night passes, you grow more frazzled. Your hair, neatly tucked back, falls out in strands, and your glasses seem to slide down your nose more and more often. Some parents verbally abuse you for their children’s poor scores on their science test. Others try to get to know you a little too personally. All part of a day’s work.

A hopeful smile dares to peek out as you read your schedule and arrange your sampling of Alistair’s works. You’re eager to meet his father, to meet the man Alistair so rarely talks about but clearly adores.

There’s a knock on your classroom door at 7:30 on the dot. Shoving your glasses up your nose one time, you hurry to the door and allow the man in. “Hi, nice to meet you, Mr. Lorenzano,” you tell him and shake his hand, leading him to your desk.

Something about him seems familiar. He’s very attractive, that’s something. He doesn’t have his son’s dark, nearly black hair, but rather a light brown with bits of blonde interjected throughout. He has his son’s deep brown eyes, and his very presence makes you smile. He looks put together, dressed similarly to other fathers you’ve seen tonight.

You tuck your skirt under you as you sit in your chair. The man’s voice is smooth and beautiful as he speaks. “It’s nice to meet you as well. Alistair talks endlessly about you at home.”

Smiling, you shuffle some of his papers. The man is distractingly handsome, you find as you scramble to grab Alistair’s math test. “Well, he’s a very special kid. I adore having him in my class, truly. Your son is going places, Mr. Lorenzano.”

“Please, Max,” he shakes his head, producing something from a pocket. “Oh, and… for you.”

The sight makes you nearly laugh, but instead you break into a grin. The man’s large hand holds a shiny red apple, perfectly shaped. “Thank you,” you laugh and set it on your desk. “You know, I have no idea where that silly custom comes from.”

“I should ask Alistair,” Maxwell chuckles, his face heating as he takes in the beauty of your smile. “He knows so much. It wouldn’t be a stretch for him to know that.”

Nodding, you hand over an assortment of Alistair’s schoolwork and artwork. “He really does. I appreciate having a fellow avid reader in my class. He’s so bright, it’s… wild, really. Do you or… Mrs. Lorenzano,” you say, treading lightly, “do anything supplementary that advances his learning?”

Max looks down at the papers. “Well, she isn’t Mrs. Lor- Lorenzano anymore,” he shakes his head, his eyes not meeting yours for a moment. He stumbles, nearly using his former business name of Lord. “But no. I have nearly full custody of Alistair, and he flies through books. It’s absurd,” the man laughs, his pride in his eyes as he looks at you. “I mean, neither of us were ever as smart as this. I don’t know where he got it from.”

You frown at that. “You seem very smart, Max. May I ask what you do for a living?”

His brow furrows. “Alistair hasn’t told you?”

You shake your head, adjusting your glasses. God, Maxwell wants to do that for you, push them up your nose or better yet, take them off and kiss you deeply. “I don’t push kids to talk about their home lives. Some don’t want to share,” you shrug.

“I wish I would’ve had a teacher like you in my day,” he chuckles sadly. “I... well, I work currently for a corporate office in Arlington. It’s nothing very exciting, or anything that requires skill.”

You shrug, smiling a little. “It must be an important job or they wouldn’t pay you to do it.”

His chuckle is a little more upbeat. “I suppose. I just… my family was very poor when I was a child. I don’t want Alistair to feel ashamed that I don’t make as much money as his other classmates. Tell me, he doesn’t seem very social. Is he…?”

You want to phrase it properly, so you stutter for a moment. “Well, to put it plainly, no. Alistair does not talk much with his classmates. He’s a very quiet boy, as I’m sure you know. It’s not that they ostracize him, but rather that he chooses to be alone. He’s always reading rather than playing soccer or whatever,” you shrug. “It’s most certainly not exclusion on the basis of… having less money.”

Maxwell’s shoulders relax a little. “Well, I’m glad. Honestly, I don’t mind that he’s quiet. I’m glad he’s learning.”

“I’d usually disagree, but I have to say the same,” you chuckle. “He’s a really good kid, Max. You should be proud to have him as a son. Don’t tell anyone, but he’s my favorite student.”

He’s absolutely beaming with pride. “That’s all I could ask for. Thank you.”

“Of course! How could I not love that kid?” you chuckle as you admire a drawing Alistair made of a scene from his favorite book. “Was that all you wanted to talk about?” You ask, unsure if he had more concerns.

Maxwell’s almost startled by the question. “Oh! Yes, I got sidetracked,” he chuckles, pushing his hair out of his eyes. He’s painfully beautiful, and his laugh makes you laugh in return. It’s safe to say you really like the Lorenzano family. “He just goes through book after book, it’s endless. Do you have any recommendations for continued reading? I want him to keep going like this, truly.”

Tapping a pen against your gradebook, you think on it for a moment. “I guess the best way would be positive reinforcement, but not reward. If you, say, incentivized it, he might see it as a chore to earn the money or toy or whatever.”

Maxwell nods as he listens, a small smile on his face as he listens to your voice and intellect. Yes, his theory earlier was correct. He does have a crush on you. “Naturally.”

“So, my recommended course of action would really just be praise and support. Tell him you’re proud of him. Offer to take him to the library to pick out some more. Those little things mean more to a kid than we can know.”

Max does know, actually. He knows because he was deprived of them as a child, because he tries to use them as often as he can so Alistair never feels the way he felt. “I can most definitely do that.”

“Great,” you nod, fidgeting with the stem of the apple in front of you. “If he ever wants to do more math or puzzles or such, the library has lots of great resources for that as well. I also have lots of worksheets I could send home with him.”

“If I can tear him away from that book,” Maxwell chuckles. “Do you have any favorites? You mentioned you read a lot.”

“Oh, god,” you laugh, and Maxwell is enchanted by the sound. “There are too many options! My favorite book of all time would probably have to be the Great Gatsby. I love the classics.”

Maxwell’s smile turns bittersweet. Jay Gatsby’s life reminds him far too much of his own for comfort now. Before, he’d call himself a Gatsby in reference to lavish parties and living large. Now, he feels like Gatsby dead in the water. “Wonderful book,” he nods. “F. Scott Fitzgerald is a literary mastermind.”

“Do you read too?” You ask, intrigued. His personality shows more and more and you’re desperate for even more of it.

He shakes his head. “Not as much as Alistair, I’m afraid, but when I have the time.”

You grin. “My plans for tonight are to go home and read with some takeout. No one to disturb me or anything. I’m very much a homebody, so it’s usually just me and my gradebook and my houseplants. Takeout is the most excitement I get. I’m looking forward to working through this book though; I’m currently reading Wilde.”

“Ah, what book?”

“Picture of Dorian Gray,” you smile and look down at your tote bag with the book tucked into the side. “If I have any brainpower left. Most of these conferences are energy-suckers.”

“How many do you have left?” He asks, curious.

“You’re the last of the night, actually,” you chuckle and cross your arms on the desk, looking over at him and silently hoping he reads your interest.

“The night you have planned sounds lovely, I must say,” Maxwell chuckles. “I do love takeout, but I know of a wonderful place near here. I… we could go get dinner, if you’d like.”

Tilting your head to the side, you scrunch your nose to push your glasses back up. “That sounds wonderful, Max. It’s nice to converse with someone who isn’t 9 years old for a while. And someone so interesting,” you openly flirt now that you can tell he’s picking up on your messages.

“Me? Hardly,” he shakes his head and laughs. “I’m sure you have much more fascinating stories than me.”

“I am a third grade teacher, Max,” you laugh. “If you want stories that involve boogers, the ever-present cooties, and long division, I’m your gal, but it hardly extends past that.”

“I guess we’ll just have to find out. Do you like Italian food?”

“I love it,” you grin. “Does that mean wine?”

“Always,” Maxwell says in a mockingly offended voice, as if you’d even dare to ask such a thing, with a look of disgust.

“Thank fucking god,” you laugh before clapping a hand over your mouth. “Oh shit. Oh-“ you wince as you try to cover your curse with another curse. “Sorry. When school hours are out, I can’t hold back any longer.”

“No need to,” he assures you. “A woman like you could do whatever she wants and I’d be happy to just be in her presence.”

“Mr. Lorenzano,” you tease. “This is a parent-teacher conference!”

“Then let’s head to dinner and continue this in a nonprofessional capacity, shall we?” He asks, standing and pushing back his rolling chair.

“That sounds great,” you smile. Alistair’s father sure is something. Yes, you certainly like the Lorenzano family.

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maxwell-grant · 3 years ago

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If someone were trying to make a new character inspired by pulp heroes, but the new character had to be a teenager, what existing pulps heroes should they look to for inspiration?

I'm not exactly in touch with the yoof so I could be off the mark here, but let's talk about teenager characters for a bit.

Now, I could just tell you to look for characters that appeal to you and use them as a baseline and that's probably the best advice here, but if you want the essay and history lesson: American pulp fiction didn't used to market much to teenagers. Teenagers as a consuming market haven't always been the all-encompassing force they are considered today, and the pulps were largely marketed either towards young boys, or for working class men, mostly the latter. This is part of why teenagers tend to show up in these stories largely as sidekicks, which was something carried over to comic superheroes, and part of why Spider-Man was such a breakout hit, because he was a teenage superhero who was not a sidekick.

The biggest pre-1950s traditional pulp hero I can of who was a teenager would be Jack Harkaway, an 1871 penny dreadful adventurer who would go on to be published overseas, one of those characters who was big enough in his day to inspire imitators a plenty but didn't quite make it past a specific time period. Comic strips had plenty of kid or teenage protagonists who are a bit closer to pulp heroes, like Tintin or Terry Lee, one in particular I'm highlighting above is Ledger Syndicate's Connie Kurridge, arguably the first female adventure hero of American comics. Overseas you can find a couple of prominent examples of teenage adventurers published in what we call the pulp era, the biggest and most influential of which being The Famous Five, but as I stated in answering whether Nancy Drew or the Hardy Boys were pulp heroes, these were not published in pulp magazines, instead their direct opposites in glossy and reputable paperbacks.

There are other examples of pulp heroes who were teenagers and not sidekicks, but nearly all of them are very obscure and you will probably not find much material for them. And the thing is, these characters were not made for teenagers. They were made, for the most part, by grown-ups, and for grown-ups, and I can't say any of them ever really grabbed a teenage audience. Usually, it's the 60s as an era that really starts to pander to and include teenagers at the forefront of storytelling, so a good start for you might be to look at what was going on in the 60s-onwards worldwide in the realms of pulp and pulp-inspired works, which probably means you're going to have to look outside of the US.

Another word of advice would be to look up characters that are beloved by teenagers. I don't think "teenager" is a great baseline trait to start building a character, but if that's the number one priority to you, then ideally you should look for a good baseline of what appeals to that demographic, what appealed to you at that age and why. You're probably going to wind up with a lot of anime anti-heroes in your research though, because teenagers are deeply miserable creatures and few things appeal more to them than characters who are miserable but they act cool and badass and edgy about it. Teenagers are forced to live with the miserable reality of being teenagers with little to no upsides, so I think teenage characters could benefit more from being based on the kinds of characters teenagers would ideally want to read about.

So, "cool, badass and tortured character super popular with angsty teenagers", "rooted in and subverting older storytelling traditions for a fresh new audience", and "60s pulp hero". I think Elric is probably as good of a place as any for you to start.

Elric wasn't just popular, he wasn't even just popular with teenagers (boys and girls alike, which is also quite the feat), he was "cool". He was avant-garde, he was the hip new thing on the block. He wasn't Conan or Bond or Batman, and you'd hardly mistake him for a hero. He got the rock albums and fans tattooing him. He was penned by the guy who was openly called the "anti-Tolkien". Elric was Loki before Loki, the edgy anti-hero before them all. The emaciated warrior with white hair and black clothes and a demonic sword who suffered in a cool way, cool in his uncoolness. When I think of pulp heroes who achieved a substantial popularity among teenage audiences, Elric is definitely the first that comes to mind.

Another good example might be Captain Harlock, easily one of the premier Pulp Heroes among manga and anime due to how heavily Leiji Matsumoto incorporates pulp space opera into everything he does. Not only directly influenced by it, Matsumoto even has actual pulp credentials as an illustrator for C.L Moore's Shambleau, Northwest Smith and Jirel of Joiry. The space pirate, while not created in manga and anime, is one of Japan's premier pulp hero archetypes, and Harlock's as good of a baseline to work with as any.

The most popular pulp-inspired works nowadays among teenage or younger audiences are definitely the ones derived from pulp horror, several creators have been getting a lot of mileage these past decades out of plundering and remixing stuff from it. The big ones are Lovecraft and related works like The King in Yellow, but because they soak up all the attention, it also means that people are sleeping on authors like John W. Campbell, William Hope Hogdson, Clark Ashton Smith and Karl Edward Wagner, Nictzin Dyalhis and Olaf Stapledon, and many, many more, which gives you a lot of narrative real estate to work with should you take this direction.

Additionally, one thing that you could consider is that, for a very large portion of the history of pulp fiction, a significant amount of the most popular stories and characters were those that were based on celebrities and real life figures. The biggest of dime novel protagonists was Buffalo Bill, and following him was Nick Carter, a literary equivalent to Eugen Sandow (the Schwarzenegger of his day). Thomas Edison inspired an entire subgenre of dime novel fiction, even Jack the Ripper was a pulp protagonist in Dutch magazines, because sometimes the term "pulp hero" doesn't take the "hero" part much into account.

The precedent for celebrity stories is older than pulp fiction itself, but it was in the dime novels and novelettes and pulps that the idea really found it's footing. The Shadow's exploits took a lot from Gibson's own experiences with Houdini (who himself starred in fictional stories, one famously penned by Lovecraft). Doc Savage was visually modeled after Clark Gable and supposedly inspired on Richard Henry Savage. Eddy Polo, Charlie Chaplin and Tom Mix were the protagonists of several pulps and comic strips across the world, as well as Al Capone (who starred in pulp magazines in Germany and Spain), who fought Nick Carter in a Brazilian story guest-starring Fu Manchu (reportedly based on real figures Sax Rohmer claimed to have met) and Fantomas. Today obviously there are much greater restrictions at play concerning celebrity images, but if dime/pulp magazines were around today, we would have quite possibly seen figures like Keanu Reeves, Tilda Swinton and Lil Nas X either star in their own magazines or be used as models for rising protagonists.

So I guess one other way you could go on about creating a pulp hero, who's either a teenager or appeals to teenagers, would be the route of taking a look at some celebrities that either are, or appeal to those demographics, because if pulp magazines had stayed around unchanged past the 60s and 80s and whatnot you definitely would have seen the likes of David Bowie, Will Smith and Dwayne Johnson get their own magazines. I don't know much about what celebrities are popular with teenagers these days and I'm not about to start caring now, but you could take a look at some icons you like, or liked when you were younger, and think about what made them appealing to think about as characters, and how you could apply that to something closer to a pulp story.

A word of advice would also be that, if you want to make a character inspired by pulp heroes, if you want to create a convincing modern pulp hero, you might want to look less at the pulp heroes themselves and instead those that they were inspired by or working to defy and stand out when compared to. You take the building blocks and rearrange them in a different way. If you have a specific character you want to design yours in reference to, you can send me an ask or a DM about them and I'll dig into my files to give you a few pointers, and what kind of history or cultural predecessors they have that you could take a look at to make something more genuine.

#replies tag #pulp heroes #pulp fiction #jack harkaway #captain harlock #elric of melnibone #bloodborne #darkest dungeon

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lemonandpeachess · 3 years ago

Text

Small Moments

Pairing: Wrecker x Female Reader

Rating: G

Word Count:2,220

Summary: You and the squad have a little bit of downtime before completing a job from Cid. This time allow you to think ahead for the future of the squad, and of Omega.

AN: I hope you all enjoy! This is my first bit of writing in a long time so we’re keeping it pretty simple. xx

Gif credits to the owner <3

The noise was no stranger to you, the deep and seemingly endless drumming above your head. An icy coolness slips into your skin underneath your clothes, your eyes slipping shut at the sensation. While for the most part you enjoy your time on the ship with your crew and it feels just as much of a home as you could ask for, it did have its drawbacks. The closest thing to a simple rainfall you got to experience while cruising through space were meteor showers, and landing in the middle of one of those was not the most relaxing experience. You feel a small, hand wrap itself into your own, giving it a small squeeze. Your eyes cast down and you smile at the sweet brown eyes peering up at you from beneath wet, blonde curls. Omega has her hood over her head, holding down the side with her opposite hand against the wind.

“I sort of missed the rain (y/n).” She says, looking up at the sky and smiling, the raindrops sprinkling down on the two of you. You lift your head back up, sticking out your tongue. Omega looks at you, her brow furrowed. “What are you doing?”

“Catching raindrops. You can do it with snowflakes too. We used to do it on my home planet when I was small.” The tiny clone follows your actions, laughing as she lets go of your hand and makes a show of running around you, catching the water droplets from above.

You were thankful that for both the sake of you and the squad, and for Omega herself, that she had taken the business of being a part of the team so seriously. The young one dove into everything that was ever handed to her, from Hunter’s hand to hand combat routines, to Tech and Echo’s near constant technological learning. She was a fighter, and a determined one at that.

Your heart was heavy at times however, thinking about how she was still a child. She should be able to enjoy the things children enjoy. The sweet, small things that with adulthood and the burdens of growing up, we all tended to forget and appreciate. You took it upon yourself to make your training for Omega to be how enjoy things she could not before, to make her feel like she wasn’t restricted, or stripped of her curiosity. You encouraged it.

“I wouldn’t do that if I were you, my data shows that the atmosphere on this planet coupled with the local vegetation means excessive consumption of precipitation could lead to harmful side effects.” Tech says as he walks past, guiding his scanner around you as he too gets off the ship. You purse your lips and look down at your small companion once more, chuckling.

“Bit of rain won’t hurt you.” Hunter says as he comes up behind the two of you, handing Omega her small backpack you had found for her at a market during your last job for Cid. You wanted her to have something of her own and found some amenities to put in it as well. Some new fresh clothes, and a small toolkit among other things, including her beloved clone trooper doll. “We should get inside though. Cid said we can stay at her camp here before we continue to the other side of the planet for the exchange tomorrow. We can’t proceed until late morning at least. Best to get some rest while we can.”

“You don’t have to tell me twice Sarge.” Wrecker yells from the belly of the ship. You hear his footsteps as he barrels down the gangway and feel him join you both. He grabs your own pack from your shoulder and puts it over his own, its size shrinking against his broad form. “You and the kid take your time, beautiful. I can take our stuff inside.”

“Wreck I can take that, it’s just a few things.” You laugh, grabbing for your pack. He dodges your efforts and keeps walking forward, turning to wink at you as he follows his brothers. You huff out another laugh and lead Omega towards the cleared path in the forest. “Well, I guess I’ll just escort you then my lady. I’ll get you settled in in Hunter’s room before I join them so we can go over the mission details for tomorrow.”

“Can’t I be there? I want to know what’s going on tomorrow too!” Omega asks, her shoulders slumping down a moment under her cloak. You squeeze her hand and nod.

“Alright Omega, you can come with me. We’ll drop your pack off and then find our way. Just be weary. I’m not sure what kind of mission this will be or what Hunter’s plans for you are. This may be one you need to sit out, for all I know the both of us might be sticking behind. You’re a part of the squad so I see no issue of you being there. Just be ready to play the part Hunter and the others have planned.” You tell her. Thankfully, Hunter had begun to allow her a little more freedom with her involvement in missions. There were still runs Cid sent you on however that weren’t worth the risk.

“I promise I will!” She says, saluting you. You look ahead as a clearing broke out of the path and you see a glassed-in observatory style station come into view. It looked like a two-story home, perfectly rectangular in shape. The walls were made completely of glass, save for the metal framing around the edges and planforms, holding the building above the ground. You imagined the views of the forest were breathtaking from inside. You had to give it to her, Cid had taste.

“(y/n)? Can I ask just one question before we go in?”

“Go on Omega, I’m listening.” You answer, still looking towards your quarters for the night.

“What are snowflakes?” ***** You sigh as you enter the code to your keypad Wrecker directly behind you as you all retired to your rooms after the mission briefing. Omega left in happy spirits with Hunter as he had a part for her to play in this mission, the situation being a simple drop-off of supplies with payment, nothing too messy. Since Omega had paid off all your debt with Cid, you were able to stick to more low-profile jobs while you figured out a new plan regarding Omega’s safety and the unsettling end of the war.

“The kid seemed happy that she has a job to do with us. I like when she’s able to come out in the field with us.” Wrecker says, starting to take off his uniform. You cross your arms over your chest, still a little chilled from the rain as you look out. You were right before, as the whole building, including your room, was surrounded by windows. Thick, one-way, bulletproof windows, as Tech made sure to point out, given who owned it. It really was a beautiful sight.

The view made it easy to look out into the forest, the leaves on the branches, bright from the rain and crisp air. The foliage swayed back and forth with the wind, creating the most soothing hushing sound, mother natures lullaby. Accompanied of course by what had to be some type of owls, their deep calls coming from their nests in the surrounding trees. Open space had a soothing effect to most. It’s infinite darkness with specks of light, but to you, it was far too quiet. No outside noises penetrated the thick hull of the Havoc Marauder, only the synthetic beeps and whirs of the engines going off in the night could soothe you in the deafening moments.

“I know that ain’t true, you smacked me in the face with your pillow the other night cause you said I was snorin’ too loudly.” Wrecker points out, lifting his chest piece over his head, his upper body now free of the extra weight. You hadn’t realized that you were thinking out loud, though you often did it around Wrecker. He was your partner, for a couple years now. Hunter, Crosshair, Tech, and Echo you trusted with your life. With Wrecker, you trusted him with your life and your heart. You take his chest piece from his hand and set it in the trunk he had carried in along with your bag. “

That is different!” You laugh, coming back to take the final pieces of his suit, leaving him just in his black thermal set. You lay the final piece into the trunk and sit on a chair that faces the windows. “This place reminds me of things I love. The birds, the trees, the smell of the rain. You can’t find that in space big guy. I’m glad we’re able to take Omega with us to these different planets and worlds. It’s important she knows about the world and everything in it. Good and bad. I just try my bests to let her see the good to remember during those bad times. She’s going to have to fight for a lot in her life, an unfair amount…”

“Hey, listen-“You feel Wrecker stand behind you, putting one hand on your shoulder and gesturing for your other one. You put your hand in his and bring the warm top side of his to your lips, kissing it gently. His hands dwarfed your own, as he did most parts of you. You were always safe when you were with him, and you knew if he wasn’t near, it wouldn’t take much to have him barreling towards you at any moment when you needed him. “We’re gonna look after Omega. We made it this far, I’ll stand in front of anyone that tries to hurt her… Or take her away.”

“I know you would Wreck, we all would. She just adores and admires you all.” You say, his fingers grazing your cheek as you speak. You were honest too. If your run in with the bounty hunters wasn’t enough, you knew in your heart that child was probably the most protected thing in the galaxy.

“She likes you a lot too ya know. She tells me all the time.”

“Does she?” You smile to yourself. The word ‘love’ was seldom used around the ship, usually only regarding Mantell mix by a select few. The feeling was always present of course, the brothers all loved each other, and as the time went on, it extended to both yourself and Omega as well. Wrecker had told you after he told you he loved you for the first time in your relationship, that it was the first time he had said it to someone in such a way.

“She does. She thinks your beautiful, and smart and kind. I like her, she’s a smart kid.” Wrecker lets go of your hand and comes around to the front of your chair. You barely have a moment to look up before he picks you up into his arms like you were nothing, carrying you to the plush bed that was made up in the middle of the room. He sets you down gently and crawls into bed with you.

“Cause I think you’re beautiful, kind, and smart too.”

You laugh and prop yourself up a little more as Wrecker settles beside you, who is also sitting up to look at you. You extend your hand and cradle his face in your hand, your thumb brushing along his cheekbone. Before you can reply you feel a yawn manifest in your throat before it escapes, your hand covering your mouth as you try and keep your gaze on your favourite trooper.

“Am I that boring?” He chuckles. You swing your legs back over the edge of the bed, starting to unhook your boots. Wrecker gets up from the bed again and walks to your pack, grabbing your sleep pants from it.

“No Wreck of course not. I’m sorry, I just feel really tired suddenly.” You reply, pulling off your boots and setting them beside the bed, keeping them close just in case. You feel his hands slip under your shirt and you let him lift the fabric from your body, leaving you in just a worn sports bra. As you wiggle out of your tactical pants, he hands you the black sweatpants and you slip them on, relishing in the feel of the soft fabric. You never seem to realize how tired your body is until you properly stop for a moment.

“It’s okay baby, it’s been a while since we had a break. Even when we do, you’re always doing something for us, or for Omega.” He says, joining you in bed again. You lay back on his chest, relaxing into him as you look out the array of windows and out into the wilderness around you. You wished you had time to explore more, and to enjoy your time there, but you could already feel sleep tugging you down, not being helped by Wrecker’s fingers grazing up and down you arm.

“I know- but I still wish we had some extra time. We haven’t had a lot of time together either, just the two of us. I’m sorry I’m wasting it.” You sigh, fingers dancing over his chest.

“Don’t worry (y/n).” Wrecker takes his arm around you and rolls you onto his chest, almost laying you almost on top of him, kissing that spot on your neck that makes your heart thrum. “There’s always the morning. You know how much I like breakfast.”

#bad batch x reader #wrecker x reader #wrecker #female reader #lapbadbatch #fluff

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five-rivers · 4 years ago

Note

Oooh, I just saw the big about prompts!

“Blessings of rot and petrichor, my prince. May you have a home in the dark, and may the distant stars you reach for never fade.”

(Can be inspiration or an actual quote; do what ya want! :P)

The world ended on a Saturday, and it wasn’t Danny’s fault. Even if that Saturday happened to be his sixteenth birthday.

Okay, maybe that was a bit overdramatic. But, honestly, neither he nor anyone else he’d ever spoken to knew why or how things had turned out this way. Just that, one morning, reality shook, shuddered, and took a few steps to the left.

Humanity woke to green-streaked skies, a rainbow sun, and a lot more universe than they were used to. So did ghosts.

This was a problem. It might even be deemed the problem. Humans and ghosts didn’t exactly get along, and even when neither the ghosts nor the humans involved particularly wanted to fight, the new laws of nature and the few who did want to fight tended to ruin things for everyone else. (Cough, GIW, cough, Walker, cough.)

Hence the end of the world. Or, at least, most large-scale governments.

It could have been worse.

Amity Park stopped being a city that day, fragmented with Ghost Zone wilderness, landscape and spatial dimensions shattered in a spiderweb centered on Fentonworks, the portal a wellspring of wild power and unpredictable translocations. Danny had worried that the portal had been the cause of the whole thing, but Amity Park was far from the only place with similar issues (look at New York), and Danny eventually was able to accept that not every bad ghost-related thing that happened was on him.

(Probably.)

Honestly, once everything calmed down a bit, the new world was much more comfortable, physically and mentally, for Danny to live in. Which was weird, but made sense. The new world was split between human and ghost, just like him. It was everyone else who was uncomfortable, now.

Which, again, he felt guilty about, but, yeah. He couldn’t do anything about that, so feeling guilty was counterintuitive. Thank you, tiny Jazz in his head.

It was Saturday again. Time for the market fair.

“Mom and Dad are already out?” asked Danny, leaning over the banister.

“Yeah,” said Jazz, not looking up from her work transcribing an old ghost text into something more palatable to human eyes. She adjusted her green lenses to sit closer to her eyes. “An hour or two ago. Some guys from Chicago came in last night, apparently, and they wanted to get a head start.”

“Okay,” said Danny. “I’m going, too. You want anything?”

“Nope. I’d be going myself if I did,” said Jazz.

“You sure? Nothing for dinner?”

“Nope, I’m all set.”

“Cool,” said Danny, padding towards the door. He pulled his nice, dark coat, the one he’d gotten from Dora, off the hook, and shrugged into it, pulling up the hood.

“No shoes today?” asked Jazz, who had finally looked up.

“Eh,” said Danny. “I guess not. Doesn’t really feel like a shoe kind of day.” He flexed his toes.

“Well, avoid blackberries, then,” said Jazz.

“They should avoid me,” joked Danny. “Good luck with that book!”

“Thanks,” said Jazz, waving as Danny left.

Fentonworks was the same tall, brick-and-UFO building as it had always been, but now it stood alone on top of a small hill rising from a distinctly purple forest. The dark grass waved back and forth like the tentacles of a sea anemone. Bright green portal streaks, cracks in reality, stood out against the foliage, along with a few other buildings that had once belonged to the Fentons’ neighborhood. The sun was blue today, but Danny predicted it would be green by nightfall.

Danny walked down the path, the dirt on it declining to adhere to Danny’s feet. He hummed, quietly, a tune he half-remembered from before the apocalypse. He would not be walking all the way to the market fair, it was too far. His parents had taken the Speeder.

Danny, on the other hand, had a shortcut.

He reached one of the portal-fractures and passed through to a part of the forest where the trees whispered to one another. He took a moment to reorient himself, and continued to the next portal fracture.

As far as he knew, he was the only person who could reliably travel like this. He could have flown, but the market fair was busy, and he preferred to maintain his peaceful life. Phantom was still a celebrity in Amity Park. Even more so now, than before, as ghosts were no longer shot on sight.

Some ghosts even came to Amity Park’s market fair.

He walked through a wider-than-usual fracture which deposited him just outside the main fragment of Amity Park, near the erstwhile mall. The mall and its attached parking lot being the place the market fair took place.

It was busy. There were trucks stamped with the seal of Illinois parked on the edges, presumably belonging to the delegation from Chicago. There seemed to be more ghosts than usual as well, enough of them to make Danny shiver. Had they come from Chicago, or was it just a coincidence? If they had, that would be nice. Chicago had a lot of local influence, and was one of the places that was still trying to hold together something like a national government. If they accepted ghosts, others would follow more readily.

Peace between the two worlds in places other than Amity Park would be very nice.

Danny wandered down the paths of the market fair, not in any particular hurry to get to his parents’ booth. He was always more interested in the other things at the fair. Even if he rarely bought anything.

People seemed to be mostly moving in one direction. No, they were being drawn in one direction, with people tugging their companions onward. Danny, not having anything better to do, went with the flow.

Which led back to where the Chicago delegation was set up. Several people were standing in front of the trucks, arguing.

“How can you lose an entire bevy of ghosts?” demanded the man who appeared to be in charge.

The target of his ire merely shrugged.

“Can’t lose people like that, bub!” shouted someone from the crowd. There was a titter of laughter.

“Didn’t you have a big, fancy announcement, fed?”

More laughter.

“Yeah, what did you want to say?” This voice had an echo to it, and the the man looked extremely aggrieved.

Nevertheless, he took a deep breath. “We were led to believe,” he said, cheek jumping, “by certain ghosts, that there was a way to negotiate with the ghosts and... reverse this nonsense.”

Wow. So, Chicago got scammed. That could have repercussions. Danny hoped Amity Park wouldn’t see too much of the fallout.

“Wouldn’t you jump on any chance to stop this?” demanded the man in response to the jeers, gesturing at the sky and its pulsing bands of light.

“Tell us a better story!” shouted Ember, who had struck up a much more cordial relationship with Amity Park after the apocalypse. “One that we’ll remember!”

The man turned away, throwing his hands in the air. “Go find them!” he shouted, presumably to his subordinates.

The crowd broke up.

Danny was curious. It was one of his defining characteristics, both as a human and as a ghost. He followed one of the Chicagoans as they walked into the market turning this way and that.

“So,” he said, “what story was your boss fed?”

The woman jumped and looked down at him, disconcerted. (Yes, he was short. That wasn’t his fault. Except that it probably was, via the portal accident.)

The woman sighed. “Why not, it’ll be out before too long. We were told that the rightful king of ghosts was in hiding here, or something stupid like that. I don’t think they ever said he could fix the world, even. Only that he could be negotiated with.” She kicked the ground. “This is so stupid. There’s no ghost king. This is never going to get fixed.”

“It’s not so bad, is it?” asked Danny.

“How old even were you when it happened. Ten?” asked the woman.

“Excuse me, I was sixteen,” said Danny, crossing his arms.

“That’s cute,” said the woman, dragging her hand down her face. “You’re like thirteen, tops. Not nineteen. Jesus. Go bother someone else, kid.”

Danny rolled his eyes. “Well, you aren’t wrong that there’s no ghost king. Last guy who called himself that got beaten up and locked in a sarcophagus forever.”

Then, just to mess with her, because she’d been rude, Danny turned invisible and left before she turned around.

Now... He should probably try to warn people about the scam artist ghosts. Or would they know from the other people watching?

Danny flicked back into visibility and continued perusing the various stalls, making small talk with the owners, bringing up the Chicagoans when it was appropriate.

He was passing by the covered entrance of the mall, one of the most crowded spots in the market fair, when his ghost sense went off, indicating an unfamiliar ghost was nearby. He scanned the crowd for the ghost. He didn’t have to look very hard. Strange ghosts tended to draw eyes, even in Amity Park.

Especially ones that looked like this. Inhumanly tall, cloaked, and moving smoothly. Glimpses under their hoods showed faces riddled with decay- or at least the appearance of decay. The three of them held instruments. Flute, drum, and summoning bell.

Danny stood to the side to let them pass. After all, they weren’t doing anything bad as far as he could see.

They did not. Instead, they stopped in front of Danny. Typical.

Then they started playing their instruments. And kneeling.

Aaaand the crowd was getting bigger. There was the person from Chicago, too. Could he escape without turning invisible with all this attention on him?

Probably not without showcasing his ghost powers. There were people who knew him in this crowd. Like Paulina. And Star.

“Um,” said Danny. “Hi?”

The leading ghost looked up as the sun’s light turned emerald green.

“Blessings of rot and petrichor, my prince. May you have a home in the dark, and may the distant stars you reach for never fade.”

Out of the corner of his eye, Danny saw the Chicagoan’s jaw drop.

“I think you might have the wrong guy,” said Danny. “I’m not anyone’s prince.”

The ghost grinned, sharp and white. “We came to give our blessings, my prince. You do not need to accept them for them to exist. We offer, also, our service and our hope in this new world that you are so suited for.”

Yeah. This was going to be a problem.

#danny phantom #ask #answer #prompt #prompt fill

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tlbodine · 3 years ago

Text

The Horror Genius of Five Nights At Freddy’s

I’ve been playing FNAF: Help Wanted VR on my Oculus Quest lately (a birthday present to myself -- I know I’m late to that party!) and it’s reignited in me my old love of this series. I know Scott Cawthon’s politics aren’t great, but I don’t think there’s any malice in his heart beyond usual Christian conservative nonsense -- and I think he stepped down as graciously and magnanimously as possible when confronted about it. Time will judge Scott Cawthon’s politics, and that’s not what I’m here to talk about. I want to talk about what makes these games so damn special, from a horror, design, and marketing perspective. I think there’s really SO MUCH to be learned from studying these games and the wider influence they’ve had as intellectual property.

What Is FNAF?

In case you’ve somehow been living under a rock for the last seven years, Five Nights At Freddy’s (hereafter, FNAF) is a horror franchise spanning 17 games (10 main games + some spinoffs and troll games, we’ll get to that), 27 books, a movie deal, and a couple live-action attractions.

But before it exploded into that kind of tremendous IP, it started out as a single indie pont-and-click game created entirely by one dude, Scott Cawthon. Cawthon had developed other games in the past without much fame or success, including some Christian children’s entertainment. He was working as a cashier at Dollar General and making games in his spare time -- and most of those games got panned.

So he tried making something different.

After being criticized that the characters in one of his children’s games looked like soulless, creepy animatronics, Cawthon had his lightbulb moment and created a horror game centered on....creepy animatronics!

The rest, as they say, is history.

The Genius of FNAF’s Horror Elements

In the first FNAF game, you play as a night security guard at Freddy Fazbear’s Pizza, a sort of ersatz Chuck-E-Cheese establishment. The animatronics are on free-roaming mode at night, but you don’t want to let them find you in your security room so you have to watch them move through the building on security camera monitors. If they get too close, you can slam your security room doors closed. But be careful, because this restaurant operates on a shoestring budget, and the power will go off if you keep the doors closed too long or flicker the lights too often. And once the lights go out, you’re helpless against the animatronics in the dark.

Guiding you through your gameplay is a fellow employee, Phone Guy, who calls you each night with some helpful advice. Phone Guy is voiced by Cawthon himself, and listening to his tapes gives you some hints of the game’s underlying story as well as telling you how to play. A few newspaper clippings and other bits of scrap material help to fill in more details of the story.

Over the next set of games, the story would be further developed, with each new game introducing new mechanics and variations on the theme -- in one, you don a mask to slip past the notice of animatronics; in another, you have to play sound cues to lure an animatronic away from you. By the fourth game, the setup was changed completely, now featuring a child with a flashlight hiding from the monsters outside his door -- nightmarish versions of the beloved child-friendly mascots. The mechanics change just enough between variations to keep things fresh while maintaining a consistent brand.

There are so many things these games do well from a storytelling and horror perspective:

Jump Scares: It’s easy to shrug these games off for relying heavily on jump scares, and they absolutely do have a lot of them. But they’re used strategically. In most games, the jump scares are a punishment (a controlled shock, if you will) -- if you play the game perfectly, you’ll never be jump-scared. This is an important design choice that a lot of other horror games don’t follow.

Atmospheric Dread: These games absolutely deliver horror and tension through every element of design -- some more than others, admittedly. But a combination of sound cues, the overall texture and aesthetic of the world, the “things move when you’re not looking at them” mechanic, all of it works together to create a feeling of unease and paranoia.

Paranoia: As in most survival horror games, you’re at a disadvantage. You can’t move or defend yourself, really -- all you can do is watch. And so watch you do. Except it’s a false sense of security, because flicking lights and checking cameras uses up precious resources, putting you at greater risk. So you have to balance your compulsive need to check, double-check, and make sure...with methodical resource conservation. The best way to survive these games is to remain calm and focused. It’s a brilliant design choice.

Visceral Horror: The monster design of the animatronics is absolutely delightful, and there’s a whole range of them to choose from. The sheer size and weight of the creatures, the way they move and position themselves, their grunginess, the deadness of their eyes, the quantity and prominence of their teeth. They are simultaneously adorable and horrifying.

Implicit Horror: One of the greatest strengths to FNAF as a franchise is that it never wears its story on its sleeve. Instead of outright telling you what’s going on, the story is delivered in bits and pieces that you have to put together yourself -- creating a puzzle for an engaged player to think about and theorize over and consider long after the game is done. But more than that, the nature of the horror itself is such that it becomes increasingly upsetting the more you think on it. The implications of what’s going on in the game world -- that there are decaying bodies tucked away inside mascots that continue to perform for children, that a man dressed in a costume is luring kids away into a private room to kill them, and so forth -- are the epitome of fridge horror.

The FNAF lore does admittedly start to become fairly ridiculous and convoluted as the franchise wears on. But even ret-conned material manages to be pretty interesting in its own right (and there is nothing in the world keeping you from playing the first four games, or even the first six, and pretending none of the rest exist).

Another thing I really appreciate about the FNAF franchise is that it’s quite funny, in a way that complements and underscores the horror rather than detracting from it. It’s something a lot of other properties utterly fail to do.

The Genius of Scott Cawthon’s Marketing

OK, so FNAF utilizes a multi-prong attack for creating horror and implements it well -- big deal. Why did it explode into a massive IP sensation when other indie horror games that are just as well-made barely made a blip on the radar?

Well! That’s where the real genius comes in. This game was built and marketed in a way to maximize its franchisability.

First, the story utilizes instantly identifiable, simple but effective character designs, and then generates more and more instantly identifiable unique characters with each iteration. Having a wealth of characters and clever, unique designs basically paves the way for merchandise and fan-works. (That they’re anthropomorphic animal designs also probably helped -- because that taps into the furry fandom as well without completely alienating non-furries).

Speaking of fan-work, Scott Cawthon has always been very supportive of fandom, only taking action when people would try to profit off knock-off games and that sort of thing -- basically bad-faith copies. But as far as I know he’s always been super chill with fan-created content, even going so far as to engage directly with the fandom. Which brings me to....

These games were practically designed for streaming, and he took care to deliver them into the hands of influential streamers. Because the games are heavy on jump-scares and scale in difficulty (even including extra-challenging modes after the core game is beaten) they are extremely fun to watch people play. They’re short enough to be easily finished over the duration of a long stream, and they’re episodic -- lending themselves perfectly to a YouTube Lets Play format. One Night = One Video, and now the streamer has weeks of content from your game (but viewers can jump in at any time without really missing much).

The games are kid-friendly but also genuinely frightening. Because the most disturbing parts of the game’s lore are hinted at rather than made explicit, younger players can easily engage with the game on a more basic surface level, and others can go as deep into the lore as they feel comfortable. There is no blood and gore and violence or even any explicitly stated death in the main game; all of the murder and death is portrayed obliquely by way of 8-bit mini games and tangential references. Making this game terrifying but accessible to youngsters, and then marketing it directly to younger viewers through popular streamers (and later, merchandising deals) is genius -- because it creates a very broad potential audience, and kids tend to spend 100% of their money (birthdays, allowances, etc.) and are most likely to tell their friends about this super scary game, etc. etc.

By creating a puzzle box of lore, and then interacting directly with the fandom -- dropping hints, trolling, essentially creating an ARG of his own lore through his website, in-game easter eggs, and tie-in materials -- Cawthon created a mystery for fandom to solve. And fans LOVE endlessly speculating over convoluted theories.

Cawthon released these games FAST. He dropped FNAF 2 within months of the first game’s release, and kept up a pace of 1-2 games a year ever since. This steady output ensured the games never dropped out of public consciousness -- and introducing new puzzle pieces for the lore-hungry fans to pore over helped keep the discussion going.

I think MatPat and The Game Theorists owe a tremendous amount of their own huge success to this game. I think Markiplier does, too, and other big streamers and YouTubers. It’s been fascinating watching the symbiotic relationship between these games and the people who make content about these games. Obviously that’s true for a lot of fandom -- but FNAF feels so special because it really did start so small. It’s a true rags-to-riches sleeper hit and luck absolutely played a role in its growth, but skill is a big part too.

Take-Aways For Creatives

I want to be very clear here: I do not think that every piece of media needs to be “IP,” franchisable, an extended universe, or a multimedia sensation. I think there is plenty to be said for creating art of all types, and sometimes that means a standalone story with a small audience.

But if you do want a chance at real break-out, run-away success and forging a media empire of your own, I think there are some take-aways to be learned from the success of FNAF:

Persistence. Scott Cawthon studied animation and game-design in the 1990s and released his first game in 2002. He released a bunch of stuff afterward. None of it stuck. It took 12 years to hit on the winning formula, and then another several years of incredibly hard work to push out more titles and stoke the fires before it really became a sensation. Wherever you’re at on your creative journey, don’t give up. You never know when your next thing will be The Thing that breaks you out.

If you want to sell a lot of something, you have to make it widely appealing to a bunch of people. This means keeping your concept simple to understand (”security guard wards off creepy killer animatronics at a pizza parlor”) and appealing to as wide a segment of the market as you can (ie, a horror story that appeals to both kids and adults). The more hyper-specific your audience, the harder it’s gonna be to find them and the fewer copies of your thing you’ll be selling.

Know your shit and put your best work out there. I think there’s an impulse to feel like “well, nobody reads this anyway, so why does it matter if it’s no good” (I certainly have fallen into that on multiple occasions) but that’s the wrong way to think about it. You never know when and where your break will come. Put your best work out there and keep on polishing your craft with better and better stuff because eventually one of those things you chuck out there is going to be The Thing.

Figure out where your target audience hangs out, and who influences them, and then get your thing in the hands of those influencers. Streaming and YouTube were the secret to FNAF’s success. Maybe yours will be BookTube, or Instagram, or a secret cabal of free librarians. I don’t know. But you should try your best to figure out who would like the thing that you’re making, and then figure out how to reach those people, and put all of your energy into that instead of shotgun-blasting your marketing all willy nilly.

You don’t have to put the whole story on the page. Audiences love puzzles. Fans love mysteries. You can actually leave a lot more unanswered than you think. There’s some value in keeping secrets and leaving things for others to fill in. Remember -- your art is only partly yours. The sandbox belongs to others to play in, too, and you have to let them do that.

If in doubt, appealing to furries never hurts.

Do I take all of this advice myself? Not by a long shot. But it’s definitely a lot to think about.

Now if you’ll excuse me, I have to go beat The Curse of Dreadbear.

#horror analysis #writing advice #fnaf

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sineala · 4 years ago

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A Few Thoughts About Hurt/Comfort

I have been asked this month to make a post about hurt/comfort in Avengers comics. And I love h/c -- I actually have a massive number of WIPs right now that are h/c -- so I am very happy to talk about it! Anyway, this is not really all that planned out and this mostly turned into an excursus on Tony Stark's pain. I'm sure you're all surprised.

Like pretty much everyone else, I'm sure, I have found that everything lately has been... pretty tough. And the coping mechanism that really got me through last year and this year was reading and writing a lot of h/c, on the theory that, however lousy a day I'm having, I can absolutely make sure that Tony Stark has a worse one. And then I can make sure he gets hugs. Wish fulfillment? Why, yes. (Once at Hallmark I was trying to find a "get well soon" card, forgot what it was called, and described it to my wife as "a hurt/comfort card.") I think Marvel Comics -- the Avengers side, in particular -- is an interesting canon for h/c for a lot of reasons. Though, honestly, if you asked me to recommend you, a hurt/comfort fan, a new fandom, I would probably just hand you some Starsky & Hutch DVDs. Go watch "The Fix" and get back to me later. If you like that, there's way more where that came from. But there's still lots to love in Marvel! Superhero comics are really a goldmine as far as the hurt side of h/c. Because superheroes, and you probably have noticed this, get hurt a lot. They get hurt repeatedly, in fantastical ways that are probably impossible in real life both physically and emotionally (at least, I don't think anyone's invented mind control yet), and even the heroes without superhuman healing powers tend to get physically hurt a whole lot worse than actual people can take. Currently in Iron Man comics, Tony has a broken back and is dealing with this by locking himself into the armor as a backboard and injecting himself with massive doses of painkillers. He's busy! He's got stuff to do! He doesn't have time to lie around and heal! So, basically, if you name a kind of pain that you would like to see happen to a character, it's probably happened to superheroes. Multiple times. The downside, though, is that comics do not really deliver that well when it comes to the comfort part of h/c. They could. It's not inherent to the medium that they don't. But because of the serial nature of comics and also the fact the primary audience is dudes who want to read about people in spandex punching each other, a lot of the time they don't really feel the need to provide closure and write about people dealing with any of the hurt. (Raise your hand if you're still annoyed with the end of Hickman's Avengers run.) But at the same time, I think that's a quality that makes Avengers ripe for h/c fanfic. Because, generally speaking, fandom likes to provide the things that canon doesn't, and fandom is more than happy to provide the comfort. If you enjoy canonical h/c in comics, I think you really can't go wrong with Iron Man. One of the big innovations of modern Marvel Comics was the concept that heroes would also suffer from relatable human problems, and in practice what this means is that a lot of heroes start with a fully-loaded angst-ridden backstory and origin story, ripe for h/c. So Tony starts out by incurring a heart injury that he fully expects is going to kill him, which he responds to by vowing he won't get close to anyone so they won't be sad when he dies, and throughout the early Silver Age is constantly on the brink of death as his heart nearly gives out on him practically every issue. And then even after his heart gets (mostly) better, there are various plots involving his armor being detrimental to his health and him choosing to fight on anyway. It's hard for me to think of another superhero hitting that particular variety of h/c in exactly the same way. Sure, superheroes risk their lives constantly, because this is how superhero comics work, but Tony is the only one I can think of who is this constantly this badly off, physically. Like, think of all the other heroes who have had a continual solo presence as fan favorites across Marvel history -- Captain America, Thor, Spider-Man, Wolverine, maybe even Deadpool. You know what those guys all have? Healing factors! For the most part, they are not running around continually on the verge of death, and while there are certainly memorable arcs involving several of them being severely injured and/or dead, you really have to work at it. It's not their constant state of affairs, whereas Tony is the kind of superhero who shows up to a fight already bleeding out under his armor. Yeah, I know Extremis gave him a healing factor. But he didn't have it very long, and also he did some extremely dangerous things while he did have it; I'm pretty sure I've never seen Wolverine saying that he'll just solve a problem by cutting off his own foot. So, anyway, yeah, there are a bunch of good arcs involving h/c for Tony. If you're looking for physical injury, he has a whole bunch of heart problems over the years, gets several new hearts, then ruins his brain, et cetera. That level of hurt is basically the background pain of Tony's life; every so often, his heart will get damaged or he'll have to live in the armor or the armor will be killing him, et cetera. If you're looking for more unusual trauma, I am, as always, going to rec Manhunt, a relatively obscure arc in late v3 (IM v3 #65-69) in which Tony has an extremely bad week. His tech is stolen and used to bomb a building. Then he gets shot in the chest. Then while he's at the hospital a nurse tries and fails to poison him, and she then tries to beat him to death. Then he checks himself out of the hospital and a helicopter shoots missiles at him. Then he becomes a fugitive from justice. And then, oh, yeah, he has to fight the Mandarin. It is... a lot. (Volume 3 of Iron Man is pretty good as far as h/c possibilities. You've got a lot of physical pain, Carol's drinking arc, the Sentient Armor, both DreamVision arcs, and Manhunt. Manhunt is finally supposed to be out in trade this month, by the way.) There are of course the drinking arcs, which probably count as their own type of hurt. But if you haven't read the second drinking arc (IM #160-200), please do. Marvel likes to up the stakes on events (Fear Itself, Secret Empire) by making Tony drink, and it does work, I think. I feel like I've spoken at length about Tony's drinking elsewhere so I don't really want to rehash it all here. And then there's the emotional pain. Angst and drama is something that happens to a whole bunch of characters, yes, especially in comics, but somehow Tony seems to end up with possibly more than his fair share of it. Fandom likes to make a lot of Howard Stark's A+ Parenting, so much so that you might think, if you didn't know canon, that this was just fandom running with a throwaway mention of Tony's terrible childhood and making it worse. But, no, canon really does go there with a reasonable amount of frequency. Howard's actual first appearance is in a flashback where he's ordering teenage Tony to break up with his girlfriend because she's the daughter of one of Howard's business rivals. And then we get into the verbal abuse, and the physical abuse, and the time Howard made Tony take his first drink, and the part where Howard was a demon in hell who Tony fought while he insulted him. And more! Currently, in canon, Howard is alive again and is in league with Mephisto for the express purpose of ruining Tony's life. Also when Tony was a baby, Howard tried to trade him to Dracula. I think you can make an argument that fandom is actually showing restraint when compared to canon. Tony also has a whole lot of Terrible Exes whose presence and/or former presence in Tony's life can be used for a lot of hurt. If you've read any amount of fanfic, you probably know that the exes who get the most play in fandom are Sunset Bain and Tiberius Stone -- not that Tony and Ty were ever canonically a couple, of course, but fandom is definitely enamored of this idea. Ty and Sunset both have relatively similar interactions with Tony in canon, in that they are both liars and emotional abusers, heavy on the gaslighting, with the purpose of becoming more successful than Tony. They both also attempt to murder Tony, although this is after he figures out they're evil, at least. (Yes, I know, this is not how either of them usually appear in AUs.) Tony also has a bunch of exes who also have just straight-up tried to murder or otherwise hurt him, sometimes while they are dating, and sometimes before Tony dates them: Whitney Frost, Indries Moomji, Kathy Dare, and Maya Hansen come to mind. There are probably more I'm not thinking of! But, yes, if you want to write about a guy in a series of terrible relationships, please consider Iron Man comics. If mind control is one of your favorite flavors of hurt, Tony's pretty good for that too. We all know about The Crossing. I suppose when I say "mind control" I mostly mean "armor control" because there are an awful lot of plots where someone else makes Tony's armor do whatever they want it to do and Tony is along for the ride -- Demon in a Bottle, Sentient Armor, and Execute Program are the first things that come to mind. There is also a fairly obscure What If that is What If Iron Man Lost The Armor Wars in which Justin Hammer apparently really wants Tony in a mind control collar to take off all his clothes and lounge around in his underwear. No, really. I think a lot of pain for Tony often revolves around his issues with control, generally -- his alcoholism comes into play here again. The entire aftermath of Civil War is also notable for its propensity to hurt Tony over and over and over. Is he stoically soldiering on through his grief after Steve dies? Hell, no! He cries, like, six separate times. He 100% blames himself for Steve's death. It's great. Everybody loves The Confession and the funeral in Fallen Son, but one of my personal favorites is Avengers/Invaders, in which Tony is confronted with a time-traveling Steve from WWII and in order not to screw up the timeline, he can't tell Steve he knows him. He is clearly not coping well. He shuts himself in a room with a giant wall of pictures of Steve! Also there's a part where he has to try to convince Steve he can trust him and he ends up having to tie Steve to a chair to talk to him, and Steve looks at him and asks, "Who did you kill to get where you are?" and I feel like that is probably one of the worst moments in Tony's life. No wonder he gave himself amnesia. So now we might want to ask, okay, but why is hurting Tony in fanfiction so much fun? I mean, I can tell you why I think it's fun. I can't speak for anyone else. One reason is that he is very emotional and very affected by everything he does. Sometimes you will see people complaining that the heroes of m/m fanfic cry too much and this is not realistic. This is not a problem if you're writing Tony! He can cry as much as you want and it's perfectly in character. I don't think it would be as fun to hurt him if he didn't express so much of his pain. But he does. He also feels guilty, and for me that's a very satisfying character element. If he were well-adjusted and didn't blame himself for so many things, it wouldn't be nearly as fun as watching him blame himself for everyone whose death he thinks he is responsible for, whether or not he is. And then he just keeps going, and it's, y'know, nice to watch him be resilient, too. So, I guess, I think hurting him is interesting because it's easy to hurt him, his weak points are pretty obvious, and he reacts a lot. Steve doesn't hurt quite as much as Tony does, in canon. It's certainly possible to hurt him -- I mean, they did actually kill him after Civil War, after all -- but I don't think the canonical patterns of hurting him are as numerous. Obviously deseruming Steve is a fairly popular go-to in terms of physical hurt; he's been deserumed at least three times that I know of. I think's easy to see the appeal there of taking a character who is fairly physically resilient and making him... much less so. Certainly Marvel seems to see the appeal. But other than that I don't think he has any other really common way to get physically injured. Unlike Tony, whose origin story is basically "oh no, I've acquired a disability," Steve's origin story is "I drank a serum that cured all my disabilities." Which, I mean, great wish fulfillment but there's not really as much there to poke at. Pretty much all of Steve's pain is emotional, but, unlike Tony, his pain isn't often specifically in response to someone directly, purposefully hurting him. Hickman's Avengers run is a big exception, yes. His pain seems to come up most often as a kind of situational angst. He feels like a man out of time. He feels out of touch with the modern era, with people his own age. He feels guilt because he feels responsible for Bucky's death. He feels like he can't trust the government and therefore he can't be Captain America. He worries that he doesn't know how to have a normal life. And, yes, these are deep and important worries but it's different than, like, Indries Moomji dumping Tony with the intent to make him sad enough to start drinking. Very few of Steve's villains want to personally ruin Steve's entire life the way Tony's villains do; mostly they just want to do things like bring back the Nazis. In terms of Steve's potential for h/c, I think Steve is harder to hurt than Tony is. Physically, he is definitely harder to hurt. You can deserum him, sure, but unless you want everything you write to be a deseruming fic you're probably not going to want to do that more than a couple of times. And if you want to hurt him physically while he has the serum, you have to hurt him hard. Usually past the point where a regular human would ever survive it. He's also harder to break, emotionally, than Tony is -- which means it's very satisfying when you can get him to break, but this is a guy who's only cried twice (that I remember) in canon. So if you want to get him to cry, you really, really have to wreck him, and he doesn't have as many obvious weak spots. He also doesn't generally sit around blaming himself for things that aren't his fault, and the whole "stewing in guilt" genre of plots for him basically came down to "he was sad that he thought Bucky's death was his fault," and that's really the biggest regret he seems to have, and also Bucky's not dead anymore. The Steve/Tony relationship itself, I would think, is also appealing to h/c fans because canon provides a lot of ways for them to hurt each other. Some people only ship pairings who would never, y'know, take turns beating each other half to death in major event comics. (And for a lot of Marvel Comics history, that was also Steve & Tony, so if you want them to be BFFs who have never fought, you can just set your fic earlier.) They have definitely hurt each other both physically and emotionally, so if you're looking for something easy and satisfying as a h/c fan, you can just read or write something where they... make up. What about Marvel characters other than Steve and Tony? Surely some of them are angsty, yes? Well, yes, but also it depends on the particular flavor of angst that you like. If you like the way Tony hurts, you may very well enjoy Doctor Strange comics, because they have a very similar attitude towards life -- they are both former alcoholics whose origin stories involve physical disabilities, who routinely make tactical decisions that negatively affect their continued existence and/or happiness a whole lot. It's very much an "I must suffer alone in the dark and no one will ever know what I am doing to save the world but it's the right thing to do" sort of vibe. Like, you can read comics where Strange is lying in hell with two broken legs, hallucinating that Clea has finally come to save him. Strange's biggest fear, akin to Tony's control issues, is basically that one day he's going to be an asshole again, so he's out there trying as hard as he can to do good. Also, if you like tentacles, he has all of them. I mean that. Carol also occasionally hits similar angst spots, and her drinking arc is great. A lot of people like Natasha, too; I have read zero Black Widow comics but I get the impression many people enjoy her brand of angst. The mutant metaphor is a little different in terms of overall vibe, but some people really like it as a source of angst -- the whole "protecting a world who hates and fears them" thing. It may not work for you, but if you like your hurt to include things like systemic oppression, go pick up some X-Men comics. Start with something like God Loves Man Kills. I feel like I liked this sort of thing a lot more as a teenager but that I kind of aged out of liking the mutants quite so much. It's also worth mentioning that not everything that hits the spot in one universe will be the same in the others, and I'm mentioning this because I feel like I have to say something about MCU Bucky. MCU fandom seems to get a lot of mileage out of Bucky's guilt about being the Winter Soldier, everything he was forced to do, et cetera. I have definitely read my share of those fics, and FATWS sure went right for that angst too. But as far as I can tell, he doesn't hit the same way at all in 616. And I like him a lot in 616; I'm always pleased when he shows up on a team. (He was so good in Strikeforce. Everyone was so good in Strikeforce.) But the thing is, 616 Bucky is, basically, phenomenally well-adjusted, given everything he's gone through, and I'm including the time he wrestled a bear in a gulag. He gets over having been the Winter Soldier, and now he's just, y'know, a guy with a cool arm who likes to bring guns to every fight to horrify his teammates, and he snarks at Clint. If you're looking for that angst, that is really not him these days. He's all better. So pretty much all that is canon. So what do we do in fandom for h/c? Well, as far as I can tell, a decent amount of it is canon-based or very canon-close -- there are a whole lot of stories exploring the angst of Civil War or Hickman's Avengers run. Tony's drinking comes up a fair amount, and if one of Tony's Evil Exes comes back to haunt him, it's pretty much only Tiberius Stone. I don't think I've read a lot of fic with Steve getting deserumed; it doesn't seem as popular in fandom as in canon. When Steve gets hurt, he tends to just get physically whumped pretty hard, and there's a fair amount of that for Tony too, but of course Steve can take more. There's also a thriving, uh, subgenre of pain involving Hydra Steve doing terrible things to Tony, presumably the terrible things he would have wanted to do to Tony in canon if Tony had had a flesh body. There's the usual kinds of h/c setups that appear in basically every fandom as well -- sickfic, whump, dub-con/non-con. You get the idea. But since fandom in general likes to take specific inspiration from canon, there's a lot of fic where the hurt tends to resemble things that happen more in canon. Like, I feel like comics fic probably has more tentacle fic and more mind control than canons that don't come pre-stocked with those. Probably everybody has a whole lot of "tied up by bad guys," though. And then, of course, fandom brings the comfort that canon does not. This is true in pretty much every fandom -- I mean, you aren't going to find a lot of actual canons where Character A saves Character B from mortal peril and then there's gay sex -- but, like I was saying, comics don't provide a lot of closure before it's onto the next thing. Usually with a different creative team, who has no interest in wrapping up anything from the last team. Steve and Tony talked about the incursions exactly once after Secret Wars and nobody mentioned the part where Steve spent several months trying to hunt Tony down and kill him. Tony is never going to remember the events of Civil War. Hydra Steve died ignominiously in a fire and no one has ever talked about him again. Honestly, if you're looking for a way to get some comfort in your fanfic, picking an event, any event, and just having the characters talk about it will be way more than any of them get in canon. I feel like honestly that can often be a pretty satisfying to read. And even though comics canon physically hurts characters pretty often and pretty badly, they also often skip right past the recovery. Maybe you'll get one page of a character in a hospital bed at the end of the story arc. Maybe you won't. Demon in a Bottle has one splash page of Tony going through alcohol withdrawal and then he's all better. I think Manhunt skips to Tony getting out of the hospital at the end. That's just not a story that they want to tell very often. The second drinking arc is notable in that it devotes almost as many issues to Tony's recovery as it does to getting him to rock-bottom. Similarly, Steve is done with his Nomad angst way way faster than you probably think he is (though The Captain does go in for a fair number of issues). So one of the things we often want to do in fandom is focus on all the bits that canon skips over, both in the "why did no one ever mention this story arc ever again" way and the "wow, so how long are they in the hospital after that" way. That's really all I can think of about h/c! I'm off to write some more of it!

#posts i actually wrote

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lilsuzn · 4 years ago

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MLQC Gavin - Fluff abc headcanons

So by the popular demand - I am back.

Just kidding. No one was asking.

Fandom: Mr. Love: Queen's Choice

Warnings: None (the reader is gender neutral)

Dedication: @marytheredqueen

A = Admiration (what do they absolutely adore about you?)

You need to trust me when I tell you that Gavin had indeed tried to find at least one thing he could dislike about you. Many times.

Yet your body seems to have no flaws. He checked quite a few times at this point.

Your heart is pure. Loving. Patient. Loyal.

Whenever you’re at his side… The world is at peace. No pain exists, nor does suffering.

You are his purpose. You are his equilibrium. Nothing matters as long as he can be by your side.

B = Body (what is their favorite part of your body?)

Your beautiful eyes.

There will never be anything more beautiful than the way they shine before your lips meet in a loving kiss.

C = Cuddling (how do they like to cuddle?)

Him on his back.

You in his arms. Laying on top of him.

Your head rests on his chest, no matter if it’s your front, side or back that presses against his muscular torso - it’s perfect.

He also likes the smell of your shampoo… it’s just intoxicating for him.

D = Dates (what does their ideal date with you look like?)

He likes doing things outside with you.

Attending festivals, engaging in new, interesting sports, indulging in some street food or picnics.

He’s a sucker for long, romantic walks too, soooooo

He takes you out to the festival. Buys all kinds of yummy food for both of you to share. Wins you an enormous plushie and then carries it around for you. While holding your hand. Tightly.

Then takes you for a night stroll, to then kiss you under the sky full of stars before you turn back.

E = Emotions (how do they express emotion around you?)

He only feels like he can really express himself around you - so it will get intense. In all the best ways.

Gavin doesn’t shy away with showing you his affection, even if he tends to have a slight problem with voicing it sometimes.

His expression softness, his fingers brush delicate circles on your skin.

He doesn’t need to say anything. You know.

F = Family (do they want one? If they do, when?)

Oh he really, really wants a family.

Two kids… or maybe more.

A dog for them, maybe.

House with a big garden and a treehouse.

He wants to play and fool around with his kids. Put them to bed. Support them. Be proud of them… Everything his father never did.

G = Gifts (how do they feel about gift giving? What are their habits when it comes to this?)

When you want something, no matter how silly it might be - it’s yours.

Don’t even make me start on what you need.

Because there are very little things (and all of them are about you) that could make him happier than seeing you happy because of what he gave you.

H = Holding Hands (when/how do they like to hold hands?)

It's not optional.

There will be hands holding whenever it's possible.

It’s as much for your safety as it is for his comfort.

All these guys with eyes better don’t use them to stare at you.

See this hand? This beautiful gem of a person is with ME.

Likes to hold your hand while snuggling on a couch. Or in bed while falling asleep.

Holding hands is like a physical projection of the bond that’s between the two of you - and he loves it.

I = Injury (how would they act if you got hurt?)

He would blame himself. No matter what. It might be ridiculous, but he would always feel guilty for not preventing it from happening.

Wouldn’t leave your side. Would help you with anything and everything.

If there’s a concrete person or a group of people that caused your harm... Insert a very, very angry and strong bird cop with a gun.

J = Jokes (do they like to joke around with or prank you? how?)

You would have a light-hearted relationship in which he would tease you from time to time and he wouldn’t be mad if you did the same to him.

However he’s not one to prank you. He would find no enjoyment in it.

K = Kisses (how do they like to kiss you?)

Gavin loves to be kissed and he loves to kiss. All over your face. All over your body.

Any kisses are game. Slow and passionate ones. Heated ones. Sweet, delicate, loving, appreciating - he loves them all as long as he can share them with you.

L = Love (how do they show you they love you?)

Acts of service - He looooves to spoil his lovely sweetheart (you) this way. Wants to bring you food, tidy up your apartment for you, brush your hair, paint your nails… Just ask him and he will do it. Whatever it is. And then he will do things on his own initiative, because he likes to surprise you. You smile so beautifully when he does…...

Gifts - He likes gift giving as I already mentioned in G, but it’s no indication of love to him. He just enjoys your reactions. Prefers to show his love differently.

Physical touch - His number one and you can not convince me it is not. He’s a snuggly bear who loves kisses. You are just so soft and warm and he loves you sosososososo much. Would never want to hold this way any other. His physical affection is something reserved only for you.

Quality time - see Q.

Words of affirmation - Gavin is not very good with words. Not that he can’t be when he wants to, but he kinda doesn’t want to most of the time. It’s uncomfortable. He’s feeling unconfident doing so. He prefers other ways, but when he does speak up… It’s the most adorable and loving thing you will ever hear in your life.

M = Memory (favorite memory together?)

It was your first 'real' date, but even though you both confessed love to each other, you weren't a ‘official’ couple yet.

At least there was no proper act of becoming a one.

You walk through the park on an evening of a chilly fall. Not many people in sight.

You just finished a lovely dinner date. Gavin even bought you a dessert to share.

And it just felt right. Everything.

The way your fingers were laced. How you both couldn't spot peeping at each other.

"Will you be my girlfriend Y/N? Please?"

He sure was pretty sure you wouldn't deny him, but he didn't expect you to throw your arms around his neck and kiss him the way you did.

"Nothing could ever make me happier than that, Gavin."

N = Nightmare (what is their worst fear?)

He’s scared of losing you.

Either by you walking away from him after discovering that you “deserve so much better”

Or by not being alert enough to protect you…

Surely, he would prefer the first option, but he can’t deny that both would hit him harder than anything else ever could.

O = Oddity (what is one quirk they have?)

Gavin is a little bit of an odd duck in general, but I think he has one major weirdness about him.

I would call it… A Keanu Reeves complex.

He doesn’t like compliments. Always feels like they’re far from true, because he always feels like he’s not enough and maybe even never will be.

Which is so far from true.

Like, Vivi, come on! You’re so freakin perfect!

P = Pet Names (what do they like to call you?)

He usually calls you simply by your name, but the boy has his moments.

Moments when he can help but call you all sorts of the cutest names.

Little angel, starry eyes, little munchkin along with the classics like honey, babe, sweetheart, treasure and my precious.

Q = Quality Time (how do they like to spend time with you?)

How?

Often.

Intensely.

Calmly.

Comfortably.

Restlessly.

He just wants to be by your side. Any. Chance. He. Gets.

R = Rhythm (what song reminds you of them?)

Moonlight by Ariana Grande

Because Gavin’s sweet like candy, but he’s such a man...

Or A Drop In The Ocean by Ron Pope

S = Secrets (how open are they with you?)

Not at all. At least at first.

He gets better with time, but you still need to ask for it. He would never just come to you to lean on your shoulder and tell you what troubles him.

T = Time (how long did it take you to get together?)

Well. A lot.

Because of what I say in X below.

He just assumes that you don’t reciprocate his feelings, because he doesn’t deserve it.

He eventually tells you about his feelings under your insistent questions regarding the subject.

And then? After he finally tells you?

That’s when it escalates quickly.

U = Upset (how do they act when you’re upset?)

At first he tries to keep it inside. Not let you see… But it’s pretty obvious since he doesn’t talk to you. Barely throws any acknowledgment your way.

It would take quite some convincing for him to tell you what’s wrong.

Unless it’s jealousy that is a reason behind his anger. Then he will show you just how upset he is…

Not necessary in a bad way, tho...

V = Vaunt (what are they proud of? Do they like to show you off?)

He’s very proud of you. Always.

Even when you think you’re a failure, he still recognizes how hard you work and how smart you are.

And he also prides himself for earning love of a woman as wonderful as you.

But he’s not a show off. He doesn’t like to be in a center of attention. He doesn’t care for compliments or recognition.

He knows how wonderful you are and that’s all that matters to him.

W = Warrior (how do they feel about you fighting? Would they fight for you, beside you, etc?)

Well, it goes without saying.

Yes. Obviously.

This is Gavin. He does it actively throughout the whole story like it’s the only thing he knows.

X = X-Ray (how well are they able to read you?)

He’s not an expert in emotions.

He gave MC a blood stained letter and was surprised she was troubled by that.

Okay, let’s not sugar coat it - he’s not good at it at all. I said it.

I’m sorry. I wish it was different for you Vivi.

Y = Yes (how would they propose to you?)

I think in Gavin’s case it would be no kneeling with a ring type of thing, because he personally sees no value of that.

Of course, he would if you told him that that’s what you want, but if you don’t…

It would be a beautiful, summer evening. The both of you watching a beautiful sunset from the rooftop of a high building.

Last months you spent together were absolutely wonderful. Life with you by his side was much happier than Gavin could ever dream of… And the way the golden sunlight graces your skin is so, so beautiful.

It wasn’t the first time the thought crossed the bird cop’s mind. He caught himself thinking about it more and more often as your relationship progressed… And before he knew it, the words left his lips.

At first you were sure you must have misheard, so you asked him to repeat. And he did.

His beautiful eyes glimmered with so much love… just as much as you felt for him.

How could you say no to that gorgeous man that adores you so much?

And after that, expect to someday come back home to find the most beautiful and meaningful ring in the world waiting for you to wear it.

Z = Zen (what makes them feel calm?)

Gavin is a man who enjoys simple things in life.

He likes to cozy up with you on a couch on his birthday.

Watch a sunrise and drink cocoa with you on Christmas.

He obviously enjoys various sports, especially if he can enjoy them with you.

But what really, really makes him perfectly calm? Driving Sparky with your hands around his ways and your chest pressed against his back.

The feeling of freedom mixed the warmth of your closeness… how could anyone ask for more?

#mlqc #mr love queen's choice #mlqc fluff #mlqc gavin #mlqc headcanon #mlqc hc #mlqc gavin bai

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