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screamingintothestarss · 2 months ago

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winner!

summary: you go to an arcade with crosshair

pairing: crosshair x reader

rating: 16+

warnings: light swearing, banter, slightly suggestive content, crosshair being a gremlin, light fluff?

word count: 3.1k

notes: so sorry for the lack of content, school is eating up all of my time rn but we ball regardless. enjoy!

───── ⋆⋅☆⋅⋆ ─────

“You coming?” A low voice drawls, its serpentine timbre rattling around in your ears.

A carton of mantell mix is plopped into your hands, and you flash the vendor a pretty smile before turning to the voice’s owner.

“Thought you weren’t excited,” you quip, popping a piece into your mouth.

“I’m never excited.” It comes out flat and lifeless, but you know him better than that. Like the popcorn crumbs on your shirt, you brush him off and head towards strobing lights and neon signs.

He’s like a shadow, you’d say: a silent protector–an assassin. He remained in the shadows so your light could shine. Wherever you went, rest assured he was somewhere nearby, keen eyes clear-cut and focused. You remained in his scope, and if someone else dared to come into the picture, he wouldn’t hesitate to take the shot. He took pride in it, silently puffing out his chest and putting on a show for you, and you loved it.

Deft fingers snake their way toward the carton, breaking the shadow, and you quickly pull the box close to your chest.

“Nuh-uh, you said you didn’t want any!”

“Well, I do now,” he counters, a playful lilt to his voice.

“Crosshair, you do this every time. You always say that you don’t want anything, and when I get something, then, and only then, do you want it!”

“Maybe I just like you,” he drawls, and you hate how it has you reeling, stripping your head of all logic and replacing it with cotton candy and heat. You sharpen your tongue, but before your words can spear him, the carton of mix is plucked from your hands, and you groan.

“Are you kriffing-”

A large hand digs in and pulls up a handful. He’s full of smug, lithe body craning down to your ear only to shovel it into his mouth, and then he’s crunching into your ear–loudly. Bleeding behind the eyes, you’re seeing red, and you shoot him a withering glare. He stares at you; your brows knit together and lips all pouty–he thinks he’s fallen in love for the fifth time today.

You’re not having it.

You shove his face away from your ear and try to retrieve your snack, but he’s dodging your attacks with infuriating finesse. You’re flailing around his lean form, arms swinging this way and that without avail. It’s almost like a game: you go left, and he’s going right; you step forward and he’s stepping back: going up? Well, he’s coming back down. Your simmering frustration boils over, and he laughs, the sound burrowing into your ears like a parasite.

This is the most fun he’s had all day, he thinks.

He activates his finisher: holding the mix in one hand and raising it straight into the air. You were done for.

“I swear I’m actually going to kill you!”

“Mhm.”

Then he’s staring at you, and he has to keep himself from getting lost in your colors. He figures red doesn’t suit you though, and sets the box into your hands with a dull thunk. He stalks off, dripping with audacity, and you try not to slip on the puddles.

“You’re such an asshole!” It’s venomous: slick and corrosive, but non-lethal. A part of you knows it’s all in good fun, but it doesn’t assuage the feeling of wanting to rip his head off. You stick an indignant hand into the mix, and your eyebrows shoot up.

It’s nearly empty.

“Your mother’s a droid!”

He ignores your insults, a sly smile smudged across his face. His arms are loosely folded across his torso as he uses his side to keep the door propped open for you. You smack his stomach as you brush past him, and he laughs through his nose, staring at your backside as you fade into bright lights.

A cacophony of strobing lights, sounds, and smells override your senses as you try to gauge where to go first. Familiar blue and white lights catch your eye, and you make your way over.

You stand before a skeeball machine, setting your snack down to run a hand over its console. You’re about to lay a heavy hand on the start button, but realization hits you.

“Kriff, I forgot the-”

“Tokens?” That slithering tone wraps itself around your ears again, and you swallow the annoyance bubbling up your throat. You lazily whirl your body around, and find that same smirk you wanted to wipe off of him earlier. He’s leaning against the body of a machine, little gold coins clinking in his palm as they shift. He’s devilishly alluring, and it's the effortlessness that has you perplexed. He’d be doing the most mundane of tasks, and it would have you fiending, your eyes tracing long fingers and even longer legs.

Cool brown eyes slide up and down your frame, stripping you bare on the arcade floor. You have half a mind to smack him, a staccato tch tch tch snapping off your tongue, but instead you redden, the tips of your ears ablaze.

“T-thanks.”

He slots a coin into the machine for you, and the start button blinks to life. You turn towards him, a question waiting behind your lips.

“You’re not going to-?” The words die in your throat as he gives you that look, and you huff.

“You’re such a buzzkill, you know that?”

He tuts. “You’d lose.”

Oh. Oh.

So that was the game he wanted to play.

Crosshair loved to goad you on, pushing your buttons to see what made you tick. You both were in a constant game of tug of war, and he wasn't cutting you any slack. If this was the hill he wanted to die on, fine: you just had to pull on the end of your rope a little harder.

You flutter your eyelashes at him and shrug. Fronting nonchalance, you lay your hand on the start button with a smack. Blue and white lights snap to strobes of rainbow, and balls dispense from the holder with a hiss.

It's on.

───── ⋆⋅☆⋅⋆ ─────

You're moving like a well-oiled machine, gracefully rolling smooth little balls up the lane into little holes.

75 points turn into 100, 100 quickly turns into 250, and 250 shoots up to 500.

Crosshair stands behind you with folded arms, feigning uninterest, but the way you're looking right now chips away at that mask as your points rack up.

The timer runs down, and you get a few more tosses in before flashing red lights put you to a stop. A cheeky grin lines your face, and you saunter over to him, tongue slick with audacity.

"Read it."

"What?"

"My score."

He stares at you for a moment and scoffs. That smug he'd been dripping with earlier was drying up, and you were loving it.

Wordlessly, he strides over to the machine and cranes his head to peek at the purple 8-bit font.

"25,000." The number rolls around uncomfortably on his tongue, and he isn't sure he likes the taste.

Then you're at his side, laying an insincere hand on a broad shoulder.

"Remember it when I wipe ass with you."

Your warm breath fans in his ear, igniting the sparks in his chest. His sharp eyes slide over to yours, oozing with challenge. He straightens, and the glow of the machine highlights that familiar glint in his eye.

He reaches into his pants pocket, retrieving two tokens, the cheap metal slotted between his pointer and middle finger.

"The bet?" And the way it rolls off his tongue has you short-circuiting.

You don't break eye contact though, keeping that grip on your rope. You pluck a token from his fingers and the number falls from your lips with an enviable coolness.

"One hundred."

───── ⋆⋅☆⋅⋆ ─────

"Your balls were coming out faster."

"Well maybe if you focused on your own balls instead of mine, you'd have won," you snark.

"Don't have to, you give mine enough attention already."

"Crosshair!" you hiss, a confusing blend of heat and embarrassment settles at the base of your stomach, and you're unsure if you want more.

He's laughing again, and that bug in your ear buries itself even deeper, and you wish you could snatch it out.

He may have been down one hundred credits, but he'd gladly throw them to the wind if it meant he could keep drawing reactions like these from you.

But you didn’t need to know that just yet.

He was having too much fun right now.

Your annoyance dissipates as wide eyes lock onto your favorite fighting game: Star Fighters 6. His gaze follows yours, and that smirk plays across his features again. You turn to him, but he’s already staring back at you, and he feels that familiar fullness in his skull; those flowers you’d planted up there all those years ago were beginning to bloom.

He knows you feel it too, and he’s tempted to hook an arm around your waist and lug you through those doors, but you made a bet.

“Crosshair…” you say tentatively, debating giving in to that heady feeling in your gut.

He hums, your voice like a hook in his ear, and he’s being reeled in. He hears his name slip past your lips again, and he’s about to make a break for the surface until he feels something being shoved into his hands. He looks down, and you’d placed the mantell-mix-carton-turned-ticket-bucket into his hand, moving on to play your video game. Like the sun shifting behind a cloud, your warmth had disappeared, and he’d claw his way into the stratosphere to find it again.

You slip a coin into the slot and tinny theme music sounds. It’s balmy and familiar: a blast-to-the-past wave of nostalgia that swaddles your ears like a warm hug. You never held onto your credits for long, laying them in the hands of some moody teenager for tokens in a heartbeat. You made it your own little mission: rocketing up leaderboards, dismantling high scores, and leaving some poor kid in tears. Times were a lot simpler then, so you kept the memory tucked close to your heart, eventually giving him access to that little corner too.

“C’mon, let’s do this one!” You’re beaming, and Crosshair commits it to memory. He almost tells you to stop, wanting to cover your pretty face and lock that smile away for himself. Selfish–he’s selfish.

He nods and slots himself next to you, his frame brushing against your own. You pay it no mind, your head swimming in the bloody waters of combos and finishers. The character selection screen blinks up on the monitor, and you click-clack away at blue buttons; selecting your favorite character and adjusting her stats like it’s second nature.

Crosshair hesitates for a bit, the grip on his rope slipping. He’s like a fish out of water when it comes to stuff like this, flip-flopping around and mouth hanging open after you’ve knocked the air out of him. He was privy to what went on inside that pretty little head of yours: you had the advantage. He’d allow it, for now.

He selects a character and does whatever with the stats before pushing a slender finger down on the start button. You don’t even try to hide the snicker tickling your nose.

His expression is incredulous, a silent what the hell? that has you nearly keeling over, your knees knocking together.

“Nothing,” you sing, and the melody has him suspicious.

He’d picked the worst kriffing character, you thought.

You mash the start button and your characters blink into existence, standing across from each other in some type of natural arena. Their stances exude battle readiness and you lock in, colorful lights fading into black and gray.

You grip the joystick and jerk it to the left, mashing down on the buttons simultaneously, hitting Crosshair’s character with a lethal combo that has him floored. You’re merciless–decisive. If he liked to come at you with all teeth and fangs, then you wouldn’t hesitate to bite. Your moves are devastating; each one leaving his ego all bloodied and purple–but he’d patch himself up later. He wasn’t finished with you yet.

───── ⋆⋅☆⋅⋆ ─────

To say you were shocked was an understatement. That tick tick ticking in your head comes to a full stop, a creaking and crackling of nerves that has you sick. You’re short-circuiting, a droid in disrepair, all of your bells and whistles are going off and Crosshair’s reveling in the chaos. The thought is like poison, something you’d use to silence some unruly senator.

He’d beat you. And he cheated!

“You’re such a-!”

“Winner?” You want to grab that serpentine tone of his by the tail, wrap it around his throat, and pull.

Your eyes flit to the monitor, its bright chromatic screen flashing winner, winner, winner! in the same shade of red you’re seeing right now.

“You pushed me over so you could get the power up! I had you!”

“You would have lost anyways, your health bar was too low,” he shrugs, loose and nonchalant like throwing credits at a dancer. He’s staring at you, feasting on your reaction, and he’s far from satisfied. He’d pulled you over to his side, your feet skidding in the mud, but you had no intention of falling over.

You didn’t want to admit that he’d picked up on the mechanics rather quickly; what took weeks of memorizing a myriad of move sets and tactics for you only took a few rounds for him. You let the salt in your head settle in on the fact that he was a super soldier, learning and adapting quickly was in his genetic code.

It didn’t make it sting any less, though.

“I want a kriffing rematch!”

“Fine.”

You kick his ass this time.

───── ⋆⋅☆⋅⋆ ─────

Tickets spill from the bucket, the papery material stringing down the container like vines on a tree. They sit up high and bouncy, and you try to gauge where you’re even walking by peeping through the holes.

“You're sure you can carry all that?” He asks for the fourth time, and you have half a mind to chuck it at his handsome face.

“I told you, I got it-”

You collide with something firm and unmoving, and the bucket slips from your palms.

“...sorry,” you’re muttering into his back.

He turns and peers down at you with a pointed look. You don’t even need to meet his eyes to know that it’s there; you’ve seen it plenty. Whether you spilled something, tripped, or stumbled over your words, he’d either laugh or give you that look, a pointy silver brow and the pretty little corners of his mouth downturned ever so slightly. He’s steadfast; severe and unyielding, as Tech had once put it. He was stubborn, sure, but you’d grabbed him by the horns and steered him into your orbit. He was always there for you, like air to your lungs, he’d given you life. It didn’t matter how much shit you spilled or how many times you fell, he’d be there waiting, a rag in one hand and the other reaching out to you.

He’s taken the ticket bucket from you now, and you pretend you’re not grateful.

You shift in your shoes, that familiar ache bleeding into the soles of your feet. You’d both made a day of it, bouncing from game to game like that pinball machine Crosshair whooped you on. You both came to a draw, but the game was far from over. You’d pick it back up another day, you thought.

He feeds the tickets into the counter and that familiar crunch crunch crunching has your ears tingling. You peer over at him, your eyes rolling over the steep slopes and angles of his face, and you think maybe if you were some mathematician, he’d be a perfect object of study. He’s like your favorite meal, you think, you know what he looks like, feels like, tastes like, but you’d never grow tired of him. Never him.

“Take a holo, it’ll last longer,” he drawls, not even having to face you and your shamelessness.

You’re snickering, and he strolls up, handing you a coupon for 2,500 tickets.

“That’s all?” your voice is incredulous, dripping with suspicion. Surely you’d have more than that, considering how you both had nearly gutted the place.

“Mhm.”

You blow, laughing to yourself. You weren’t one for the prizes: a cornucopia of cheap plasticky gizmos and doodads that crumbled like Tatooine sand as soon as you forked over your fortune. You figured a special someone would appreciate the gesture, though.

“Maybe we can get Omega something?”

“We’d have to get Wrecker something too, you know how he is,” he says, and it’s that faux annoyance in his tone that has you chuckling.

“I know just the thing!”

───── ⋆⋅☆⋅⋆ ─────

“Why’d you get two?” you prod at him, and he bats you away with a hip. Wordlessly, he extends an arm, holding out one of the cartons of mantell mix up to your face. Your eyes narrow, and you see a serpent tempting the unassuming, its tail wrapped around something forbidden and primed to strike.

“You’re screwing with me, aren’t you?” The question is cautious, wrapped in suspicion with a pretty little bow of skepticism on top. You weren’t exactly too keen on having an instant replay of today’s earlier events–served with a side of embarrassment and a bruised ego.

He shakes his head and a small smile splits his face; it should be something sacred, a rare jewel coveted by some royalty on a faraway planet, but instead, it has you narrowing your eyes even further.

You reach a tentative hand out, and ease the box from his hands, ready for him to attack at any moment.

He doesn’t, but instead waves a white flag of truce, and you delightedly munch away.

You both make your way towards the ship, the Mantellian sun making its final descent into the horizon, and Crosshair stops for a moment to watch you glow in its light.

You’re perfect, he thinks, and he feels his heart melt into putty. It was as if the galaxy had compressed itself into your form, lighting a path his gaze could always follow. He chuckles to himself, remembering when he’d first met you, all starry-eyed and pure mischief. He’d readily admit that he found you rather annoying and cumbersome at first; like a raging Wookiee in a cantina, you’d made a mess of his carefully crafted space–a mess he slowly grew fond of. Like ringed ripples in a pond, you created movement within the stillness of his heart, and one day he’d pluck one of those rings from the surface and place it on your finger.

“You coming?”

Lost in the weeds, your voice pulls him back out again.

“Mhm.”

✦ . 　⁺ 　 . ✦ . 　⁺ 　 . ✦

#i swear i'll start adding more fics #i'll try and keep myself on a schedule lol #crosshair x reader #tbb crosshair x reader #the bad batch fanfiction #star wars fanfiction #clone x reader #tbb x reader #the bad batch x reader #tbb crosshair

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taffingspy · 4 months ago

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i need to romance this man with a chubby dwarf lady

#spy's sketches #dragon age #emmrich volkarin #ive been trying to doodle emmy stuff since the reveal trailer but i keep being busy with work #but god.... sweetheart necromancer? fcking sign me up #adding this man to my list of ''nerdy guys who would probably talk incessantly about their subject''#i... have such a type #reading tevinter nights + the short story took me out idk if i could even cope w/ his actual romance #honestly whether it's cute or angsty idc i just know i'll be smacked emotionally

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regionalpancake · 1 month ago

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(pst...made you a present @song-spero 😘 )

"you ok there, buddy?" "yeah, why do you ask?"

Based on this post [x]

#regionalpancakeedits #star trek la sirena #seven of nine #hugh borg #third of five #star trek picard #fun with watercolour!#not me getting nostalgic about Sirena's chipped red railings 😭#this was a good way of keeping myself SAT DOWN while trying to get better - I am Not Great at resting 😅 “I'll just-” no bitch- REST.#added this on the original post before - but changed my mind! what even is tumblr etiquette? (I have no idea)

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thatscarletflycatcher · 4 months ago

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Tumblr isn't letting me find again @fictionadventurer's and my own posts on epistolary novels, but I have been thinking about it again, because I fell down a Goodreads review rabbit hall and I have thoughts again.

So many people dislike the style, and honestly, I don't blame them, because it's so often done... not well. It is in some aspects, a deceptively easy one, and in others, deceptively hard. And because I'm trying to write a novel with this format myself, I have been thinking about what makes or breaks an epistolary novel.

I talked yesterday about TGLPPS, because it is an interesting case to analyze. I have thought many times about it, and cannot think of a single non-merely-aesthetic reason for it to be told in an epistolary style. A lot of it depends on -British- people who have survived some terrible war conditions willingly opening up to a stranger about their experiences, and that's made... even more difficult if the medium is letters? typically writers will appeal to tropes like making the reserved character drunk, or have them share an extreme experience in isolation with the stranger to create sudden intimacy. None of this is possible in writing; if anything, one is much more self-conscious about the things one writes than the things one says; verba volant, scripta manent.

It seems to me the story would have flowed much more naturally if Juliet had been stranded on Guernsey for some reason -like the first author herself!- suddenly Dawsey commenting that he got a book from her library makes so much more sense! Yes, certainly, if you met a stranger out there, and they introduce themselves and you realize you have a book that once belonged to them, you would tell them so! And it is in this way that the epistolary format does violence to a story that would otherwise sound much less contrived.

Another problem is the large cast of characters and multiple settings. For all I complain about Dracula, Stoker manages this pretty well (of course he has the model of The Woman in White, but TWiW has fewer povs), at least on the first half, because structurally the storylines of the characters are converging, and that does a lot to guide the reader in the understanding of the character's relationships. TGLPPS's relationship structure is more of a multidirectional flow chart, and that becomes confusing really fast.

Another novel I read reviews for recently is one set in WWI, composed of back and forth letters between two lovers torn apart by war, and one common complaint was... that the climactic scenes, the times they meet, etc all happen... off-camera. It is a fair complaint, but also one I cannot really blame the author for, because that's what usually happens with real life compilations of letters of that kind. Sure, usually the editor/compiler will fill in the blanks sometimes and add an epilogue of sorts explaining what happened afterwards, and that is possible if you are writing it fictionally too, but some may think it spoils the effect of immediacy and whatnot, which, fair too.

But it makes me think of how aware Jean Webster was of these difficulties, and how deftly she managed them in both Daddy Long-Legs and Dear Enemy. Both novels have aged badly in terms of content and message, but they are very interesting stylistically.

DLL is a bildungsroman with a dash of romance; through Judy's letters to daddy long-legs we can see how she grows as a person, gaining independence intellectually and economically, and as a writer, as her grammar and vocabulary change and grow. Between making Judy an orphan who hates the orphanage where she has lived her whole life, and one where she lived past the usual age of being thrown into the world, Webster does away with the need for letters between Judy and her friends and family: all her friends and family are her college roommates and her benefactor, who is the person she writes to. The benefactor scheme also makes it so that she doesn't have to write dll's replies, which in turns makes it much more natural and acceptable for the reader when Judy writes him the ending's love letter describing the feelings and impressions of their finally meeting in person and in truth; Judy has become a writer, and she is so used to write to him as another person all the time, that it just makes sense for her to write to him one more letter at the point where her benefactor and her lover become one and the same person. She has written a novel where the core is the correspondence between lovers AND managed to include as well all the moments of their meetings that we would otherwise miss.

Dear Enemy is a similar, but longer and more ambitious story. Instead of one relationship-connection (Judy and Daddy's), we have Sallie as a nod of connections: she's Judy's friend, Jarvis' "employee", the boss of several characters, has a tense colleague-boss relationship with the visiting doctor, a boyfriend of sorts in Washington, and a family we have met before. It is, in that way, a similar setup to TGLPPS: a urban girl of means becomes a fish out of water in a different setting till she ends up assimilating to it, and settling definitely through marriage. But Webster does a few things differently to make it click.

For starters, it is clear to her that this is the story of Sallie's maturation -I have sometimes talked of Dear Enemy as a novel where a Mary Crawford-like character undergoes a transformation arc. The happenings and stories she meets and tells Judy about along the way serve this arc, besides standing on their own as case studies to illustrate the problems, ideology and solutions proposed to the secondary themes of the story (education and social reform). I feel like TGLPPS is much more interested in Guernsey's survival through the war, in which case Juliet's story is already a frame, which, again, makes the epistolary format cumbersome rather than complementary.

Dear Enemy adds more correspondents, but it is very austere/economical with them, and narrows the letters we see to only those Sallie sends. YMMV regarding if it was too much cutting or not, but the undeniable effect is structural soundness; you are never confused by what is happening or who is writing to whom. We can guess the Honorable Cyrus Wykoff probably wrote some indignant letters to Jervis, and those would be funny to read, but... would they be worth the break in the flow of the narrative? I don't think so. To this effect, just having Sallie write a line to the effect of "I expect at this point you have at hand an irate letter from the Hon. Cyrus" is enough to paint a picture for the reader. Perhaps a letter or two from Dr. MacRae would have helped develop his character more -definitely a first read of the story obscures how much misdirection there is in Sallie's narration to Judy, which in turns tends to create an impression of suddenness to the closing letter that doesn't come across well to the reader.

The choice of Sallie mainly writing to Judy is, IMO, a really good one too. It not only establishes a connection with DLL, but it also allows for the intimacy that makes disclosure believable (something TGLPPS struggles with, as I mentioned above). When you add a few letters to the doctor and Gordon and Jervis, you also get a better perspective of Sallie's personality, how she deals not only with a friend, but with acquaintances, romantic partners and coworkers.

From all this it is pretty evident that for Webster the main function of epistolarity as format is aiding in showing psychological and moral development. But that's not the only thing the format can be really good for: perspective is another, and Austen uses it to great effect in both Lady Susan and Lesley Castle.

Both stories deal with mainly static characters, but who have very strong perspectives of the same situation, and it is this singularity of setting and story that anchors the narrative to avoid confusion, while the variety of perspective brings interest. In Lady Susan, we are dealing mainly with the marrying off of Frederica and seduction of Mrs. Vernon's brother, Reginald. There where Lady Susan paints Frederica as an undisciplined, irrational and ungrateful daughter, her sister in law, Mrs. Vernon, paints her as a sweet girl and a victim of her mother's ruthlessness and lack of love. Both agree that Reginald is being seduced, but, of course, with opposite goals: Lady Susan wants him to succumb, Mrs. Vernon, to escape, and this is a delicious struggle for the reader to follow!*

Lesley Castle being an earlier effort, and unfinished, does show some of the defects I have mentioned before (mainly, the relative confusion of having several correspondents in separate storylines), but illustrates well this same perspective effect: Margaret writes to Charlotte about the new Lady Lesley, and the new Lady Lesley writes to Charlotte about about Margaret and her sister... and in these contrasts lies the main interest of the narrative.

Some conclusions to these musings, then:

Not every story is suited to the epistolary format.

The epistolary format seems to work the best when it is used for either A) showcase psychological and moral development B) to play with perspective on people and/or events.

One of the main difficulties of the format is finding a narrative element to anchor and structure the letters around.

It must have a core couple of correspondents, or at most, two. More than that will make it confusing (unless, perhaps, the story is very short and about a single event or two).

A delicate balance must be found so that the secondary correspondence doesn't cut the flow of the main one, and if possible it must feed into it.

*It is interesting how Love and Friendship, being such a delightful -and I sustain one of the best ever- Austen adaptation, is by force of the perspective switch towards a more impersonal third person, more about a love story between Frederica and Reginald than a struggle between Lady Susan and Mrs. Vernon. Which isn't dissimilar to how adaptations of DLL end up being more about the romance between the leads than Judy's coming of age in college; tropes aside, I feel like if the epistolary format is well embedded in the story, it's going to be nearly impossible to reproduce the effect in adaptation.

#writing #epistolary novels #Jane Austen #Jean Webster #Daddy Long-Legs #Lady Susan #Dear Enemy #Lesley Castle #Thinking about Percival and Nadine of course #and how in the end it is trying to be both a psychological and a perspective story #And that might be more than I can chew #But the story is definitely about growth and change in the main character and love interest #And perspective seems so necessary too #Eleanor is the last person alive Percival feels responsibility for #Of course he'd write to her in a light way with jokes and anecdotae #so that she doesn't worry about him #whereas in day to day life he does not have the energy to behave so towards others around him #and both things are important to understand him!#It's the other way around with Nadine #she keeps the cheery façade IRL but can relax when she writes to Beth #And both seem so necessary to me!#But then there *are* things neither tells to anyone and those I'm struggling hard with #I have considered adding journal entries as well back and forth #and remain unconvinced one way or another #anyways this is the way I'll spend 10 years writing an 80 page novelette at this point XD

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alexjcrowley · 2 years ago

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Saying Swiss Army Man is about gay necrophilia is like saying Oedipus Rex is about a guy who fucks his mom. You're only technically correct.

#it's called reductio ad absurdum you dumb down a concept until it looks ridiculous #which is totally fine for jokes and laughters but for the ones out there who blatantly made fun of the movie without even watching #like this shit is so cringe a farting corpse oh my god this must be the worst movie ever #FUCK YOU FUCK YOU FUCK YOU #YOU THINK YOU'RE COOL BEING DETACHED AND IRONIC ABOUT EVERYTHING WHY DON'T YOU TRY TO FEEL SOMETHING FOR ONCE #TE LET YOURSELF BE TOUCHED CHANGED TRANSFORMED EMOTIONALLY BY THE CONTENT YOU CONSUME #I know Oedipus fucking his mom is the supreme meme I love it too but seriously read it #As someone who had tl study it believe me read it #I am not the joke police I just don't like when people are serious about dismissing pieces of media because oh no cringe alert #Allow yourself to be vulnerable and to be open when you consume something #Oedipus Rex was just the best metaphor that's why I quoted it #Oedipus Rex changed me and keeps changing me everyday believe it or not there's nothing I wouldn't give to have his strenght #He had the courage too look at himself in the mirror I never did #I feel like I am having a mental breakdown over Oedipus again I'll switch back to SAM #Swiss army man is a masterful lesson in life and art don't let some assholes make you believe otherwise #swiss army man #paul dano #daniel radcliffe

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meownotgood · 4 months ago

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started writing a smutty machine herald viktor fic because I wanted something quick and fun to do in between working on the aki fic. and I somehow wrote 3k words in a day of pure filth but also way too much emotional angst

#try to write a short smut fic without adding Feelings challenge #for me. impossible #I don't even know what came over me I never write that much in one day 😭#I'll def keep working on it but I'm also going to keep working on aki fic so I can post chapter 2 #thank u. and thank you for understanding me #sorry for making content that specifically caters to me it will happen again

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factual-fantasy · 4 months ago

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Tumblr wont let me make my master posts 💀💀💀

So I was trying to compile all the links together to make my Octonauts master post. Things were going well, but then at some point Tumblr just decided to stop saving my draft.

It'll save, but if i add simply one more link, it breaks and wont save until I remove the link. Why is this happening? Is there a link limit? if there is, there's no way I've hit it.

I might be jinxing myself here but my FNAF master post has almost 3 times the amount of links that my Octonauts one does. And the FNAF one still works fine and can be edited. Does it not like the amount of emojis I used? Does it not like that I changed a lot of the text to multiple different colors? Does it not like that I put the links side by side instead of one long continuous row? it shouldn't because the FNAF master post has links side by side and has 99 ask posts all smushed together..

Has anyone seen of heard of this problem before? Does anyone have any ideas on how to fix this or what I might be doing wrong? This is the second time I'm trying to make this master post and if i cant salvage this draft, it might just bag it all together-

#I'm wondering if its somehow the emojis and the text color changes #since the FNAF master post doesn't have ANY of that #but why would that stop me from adding links..? :(#I'll try to keep messing with it but in the meantime any advice would be greatly appreciated <:))

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fuckinmemesman · 2 months ago

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have no fear, I came back with a positive post to make up for yesterday's complaining!

#my mentor gave me a super good review for something new we're working on #(like said i did better than anyone else in this role ever did on their first try which is good enough for me!)#also was dicking around on my laptop today and found out i have a bunch of free dropbox space for the next year #which is cool because i'll never PAY for dropbox but i can always use another 100gb #(ignore how stressed i'm gonna be when it expires and i have to relocate all those files bc it'll be cool up to that point)#i'm also trying to come up with ideas to display all this merch collection i'm building up so if anyone has any ideas!#i am listening #i ordered a bunch of zines and pins and charms and i wanna display them without accidentally damaging them #i'm thinking some kind of weird shrine in the living room #so everyone who visits my house has to check out the klance obsession #i just think that'll be funny #also i wfh in my living room so i'd get to see it all the time there #OH okay and finally #i got so much writing done this month #like i did fail a bunch of my fandom goals for the month but it's still an impressive amount of words added to my WIPs #and that's a win i'm gonna celebrate #if i can keep this up i'll have a huge chapter fic finished this year and ready to post in early 2025 #and and and i got ANOTHER raise so #might even be able to splurge on some nice art for some of the chapters

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spaghett-onaplate · 9 months ago

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sixth day at my new school and i didn't sit alone at lunch today 🥳🥳

#woohoo!!#some girls invited me to sit with them so i did and chatted to them and this other guy #some of them are in my classes!! they were all very nice #honestly i was aiming to just try and fit in with the cishet boys and last week when i heard the rumour i was gay i was kinda freaked out #but i've scoped out the situation and it's not unsafe to be out (as bi. not anyone's business i'm trans)#so i realise it's better to just be open and have better chances of finding the right people than living in fear and squashing myself to--#--fit in with the wrong people. bc if i can't be fully myself around someone then why would i want to be good friends with them??#so yar i'll stick with other queer guys and supportive girls. gay guy/straight girl friendships are stereotypical but it's an ecosystem tha #works in a situation like high school tbh #ooo and i guess he was away today but the guy from a couple of my classes who i think is cute is in that group so added bonus #o and actually unrelated but at recess i went to this queer group thing i was invited to by a teacher last week #(recess is first and lunch is sceond)#i wasn't sure if i was going to go (mostly bc of my 'blend in' mindset) but i'm glad i did!! it was pretty nice #mostly just nice to get an idea of 'safe' people and teachers yaknow #'people and teachers' -- those aren't two mutually exclusive categories of being ajdsgjf but ykwim #and if i didn't go then i probably wouldn't have been in the better mindset for being just myself with everyone at lunch #so wahoo yippee :D #now i just needa keep talking to everyone and putting myself out there a bit more and i'll find the right people :)

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drumlincountry · 8 months ago

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#Eefa sells her labour #Look I am PRO CRIMES AND PRO SCAMS #but the guy who has scammed himself into the social media manager job at my work is a fucking nightmare #If he would sit in a corner and quietly scam the company out of a salary for a position we DO NOT NEED #I would respect him #However he keeps making it harder for me to to my job #And physically taking things i'm working on away from me to butcher #Like I don't want to brag but i'm a trained and experienced facilitator. I was a university lecturer #Do you really think itms your job to add more animations into my slide shows??? Social media man???#He is also clearly like. Using Google to search for images because he keeps adding incorrectly id'd species #I will find a nice creative commons pic of a plant i'm talking about and he will be like #:) I have my sources *changes it to something that lives in new zealand* :)#Like dude u don't need to be an expert but you have to understand that there are things you don't know. That I DO.#I have been trying to avoid him as much as possible but occasionally I'll be like. OK I am going to give him a chance #Maybe he's not that bad #And i'll let him look at an Instagram post or something #And then he RUINS EVERYTHING AGAIN #Me Fein

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manofthepipis · 1 year ago

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OKAYOKAY, question because a lot of people have different answers in the Deltarune community and I wanna hear your take on it!

How long do you think the Ads have been around? Time clearly moves differently from the light world versus the dark world, with Jevil being in jail "for an odd hundred years" and the darkners having full backstories supposedly on a portal that seems open yesterday. (Personally, I like to think they always existed and the dark world only made them personally accessible to the lightners [double-sided since they interact daily] within that day. Especially since the "Spamton is 45, May 3rd 1978." headcannon is near and dear to my heart. I love middle-aged men with trauma. I also REALLY like the idea that Spam was in his early twenties when he was at the peak of his fame, (if they have adolecent years of any kind) and then completely fell off before he reached his thirties. Especially since a lot of people consider that to be the prime of their lives.

On that topic, how long do you think the Adds were friends before Spamton went MIA? Do you think they had some type of childhood years? Is there a significant age gap between any of them? How many years did they have a relationship to where his absence significantly impacted their lives like that? I'd love to hear it <3

thanks for asking!! i'm actually rlly intrigued at this topic :D

I don't think the addisons have such a thing as a 'childhood' or 'adolescent years' actually haha like i imagine them as quite literal programs, who once developed by lightners, just kinda spawn into their cyber world, already familiar with how to operate. The concept of age is irrelevant, but is replaced with 'order of appearance'. Honestly i've always headcanoned spamton as the first addison on the scene, with the next following later. (Online advertisements rlly got hot in the early 90's, so there's a definite gap between him and the rest of the ads).

spamton's just always had that middle-aged shady car salesman vibe to him ever since moment one to me.

i'd feel they were around spamton for quite some time before he got his special call, say a couple years or even close to a decade. enough time to have been a witness of the extent of his desperation, while also getting to know the good side of him to max out their regret by the time we meet them in the trash zone.

but like in the concept of time it's so weird from light world to dark world. Like jevil's been locked away for ~100 years but the extra classroom hasn't been unused for that long presumably? That and spamton's whole deal and timeline. Truly, I've pondered that time also gets a metaphoric transition into the dark world, and becomes weird. Kind of like how the light world characters have a set time compared to us, the players, who are waiting 2+ years for their 'tomorrow'. It's kind of like that but for the dark worlds. I'm clinging to time being sort of ambiguous until it's explained in further chapters :D

i do share the headcanon where the fountain being opened let the dark world be accessible, as we get spade king's whole deal of their world being abandoned=the extra classroom closed and then him like hating lightners.

even if i'm completely wrong lol i will die holding the "spamton is a middle-aged guy with trauma" headcanon so close to my heart and everybody else can try to pry it from my cold dead hands :)

#ok for personal add headcanons-#if we're being rlly accurate banner ads appeared in 1994 #but i've already built up banner being the eldest among the other ads beside spamton and it's too late to go back lmao #click on ads also appeared in 1994 #so if anything the ads just appeared in the same year or roughly a year from eachother #sponsored online ads are the more recent of the bunch #but ya i try to keep these guys as far away from being human as possible while also giving them some human traits #as they're just computer programs #aaaaa all this talk of time it's wrapping my head around something insane #asks #rlly interesting question i love talking about time #we see spamton as 45 but he'd be like '[fourtee]-FIVE [[Golden Years]]???? YOU'VE GOTTA BE [yanking my chain]!!'#'ARE YOU CALLING ME A [[Older television model in stock]]?!?! I'LL HAVE YOU KNOW I'M A [Timeless] [[Big Shot]]!!!'

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