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chrysalis-the-butterfly · 11 months ago

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My Thoughts on the Roger Rabbit Novels

Who Censored Roger Rabbit?

The Plot: It's the 1980s, and human beings and comic strip characters ("toons") live side-by-side, albeit not on an equal social standing. Roger Rabbit approaches private detective Eddie Valiant and asks him to investigate a dispute he has with Rocco and Dominick DeGreasy, the brothers who own his comic strip. Roger claims his life is in danger, but Eddie, who's somewhat racist towards toons, doesn't take him seriously - which comes back to bite him when he finds Roger's dead body. Now Eddie has to work out who killed Roger, as well as who killed Rocco DeGreasy on the same night.

What I Liked: This is a very well-paced story. It sets up the mystery straightaway, it cracks along at a good speed, and you don't have the full truth of whodunnit until the very end. The chapters are short and punchy, and even the time spent on plot points that turned out to be red herrings never felt wasted. I was always eager to pick the book up again and read just one more chapter!

Also, in any other novel, the twist regarding Roger's killer would be a massive "What the heck?" moment, but here, it's set up far enough in advance that it doesn't feel unnatural when it comes.

And as a fun minor detail, Eddie casually mentions being one of four children, and then the next novel, Who P-P-P-Plugged Roger Rabbit?, gives him two brothers and a sister! It was probably a coincidence, but I was glad to spot it!

What I Disliked: I really wasn't a fan of the way Jessica Rabbit was portrayed. Who Framed Roger Rabbit subverts her femme fatale image, but Who Censored Roger Rabbit? plays it straight, which didn't appeal to me as much. I prefer the "looks like she could kill you, is actually a cinnamon roll" trope over the "looks like she could kill you, could actually kill you" trope.

At one point in the story, Jessica claims she was forced to pose for a racy comic, but when Eddie speaks to the owner of said comic, the man claims Jessica posed for those pictures willingly and was actually eager to make more. At the time the story was published (1981), one might just about have got away with such a portrayal, but in a post-#MeToo world, it's discomforting that Jessica's allegations of coercion and sexual abuse aren't taken seriously. (Also, the man who owns the racy comic is a creepy crossdresser, which ... what? Why was that in there? That didn't need to be in there.)

As a consequence of Jessica's portrayal, her relationship with Roger is nowhere near as sweet as in the film. Their entire marriage is basically a sham. No, thank you. Give me "honey bunny" and "love cup" instead, please.

Verdict: I saw the film first, and I prefer it to the novel. Who Framed Roger Rabbit will always be my favourite piece of Roger Rabbit media. But I can appreciate Who Censored Roger Rabbit? as its own thing - a product of its time, to be sure, but also a well-structured and fast-paced read.

Who P-P-P-Plugged Roger Rabbit?

The Plot: It's 1947 (more or less), sometime after the events of Who Framed Roger Rabbit. Roger Rabbit, Baby Herman, and Kirk Enigma are three toons in line for the lead role in David Selznick's upcoming adaptation of Gone With the Wind. A box belonging to Selznick, a box of great importance, has gone missing, and Eddie Valiant has been hired to find it.

What I Liked: Who P-P-P-Plugged Roger Rabbit? has my favourite portrayal of Roger (after the film and the comics). We spend a bit more time with him than in the previous book, so we get to hear more about his worldviews and his backstory. We also get to see what a sweetie pie he is. He's an emotional bunny who loves his wife, just like in the film, and I frequently wanted to hug him.

A key highlight for me was the moment when Roger was singing like a Disney Princess and summoning a chorus of birds to wake Eddie one morning, which Eddie did not appreciate. Can someone animate that? I'd love to see it!

The second half of this novel also introduces Jessica's twin sister Joellyn (the six-inch-tall woman on Eddie's shoulder on the cover), and I enjoyed getting to know her. And, without giving away too many spoilers, I greatly preferred this rendition of Jessica over the one in Who Censored Roger Rabbit?

What I Disliked: Unlike the first novel, this one was pretty slow to get going. Eddie isn't actually hired by Selznick until Chapter 7, and most of the time before then is spent establishing Eddie as a down-on-his-luck private eye, using people and locations that show up once and then are barely used again. Some of that fat could have been trimmed, I feel. It made reaching the end of the book a bit more of a slog.

Something else that bothered me was the high volume of old-timey slang, brand names and Americanisms that I, as a twentysomething Brit, did not recognise. I could read an entire paragraph and think, "Well, he's either drinking alcohol, smoking cigar or eating a foodstuff, but I'll be darned if I can tell you which is the right interpretation." I think the noir detective vernacular was slightly overdone, to the point of incomprehension.

Verdict: I thought this would be my favourite of the novels because it seemed the most similar in tone to the film, so I was disappointed by my lukewarm reception to it. Maybe I was disappointed because I'd hyped it up too much in my mind? That's not to say I didn't enjoy it - I greatly preferred the second half to the first, once Eddie found out what was actually in this mysterious box - but I think it could have done with a few more edits before publication.

Who Wacked Roger Rabbit?

The Plot: It's the 1940s or 1950s, sometime after the events of Who Framed Roger Rabbit, and director Barney Sands is shooting a movie set in Toontown starring Gary Cooper and Roger Rabbit. He's been receiving threatening letters warning him to stay away from Toontown and stop making this film, but he can't afford to let down his investors. So he hires Eddie Valiant to be Cooper's bodyguard while filming takes place. But Eddie soon finds himself wrapped up in another mystery, involving a porcine crime lord called Willy Prosciutto and the corpse of Clabber Clown.

What I Liked: The majority of this novel takes place in Toontown, so we get some really cool worldbuilding details. We find out how the school system works, which churches are based in Toontown, and how crooked toons launder their money. I was particularly intrigued by the calm and serious toons in the Sanatorium - apparently, if you're not loud and goofy and bouncing off the walls, you're considered insane, which is the opposite of how humans think about mental health.

The blonde humanoid toon on the cover is Caitlyn "Honey" Graham, Willy's girlfriend. I really like Honey. In fact, she might be my favourite of the novel-exclusive characters. Throughout the book, you're trying to work out if she's a good bad girl or a bad good girl, or if she's really just a bad bad girl. If Who Framed Roger Rabbit ever gets a sequel or prequel or spin-off cartoon series, I'd love to see Honey on screen.

What I Disliked: The Roger we meet in this novel is a bit too stupid for my liking. In Who Framed Roger Rabbit, Roger made seemingly nonsensical choices, but he had his own (cartoon) logic to explain his actions, and he was even proved right in his assumptions a few times. So I much prefer to think of Roger as the kind of toon where you're never quite sure if he's truly dumb or merely playing dumb for the sake of a gag. Here, he's just straight-up dumb, and that's not as fun to read about.

Verdict: This was the book I knew the least about before I read it, so I was more cautious going in - but it ended up being my second favourite of the Roger Rabbit novels. I enjoyed learning more about Toontown and its residents. My favourite parts of the film had been the toony parts - Roger, and Jessica, and Roger and Jessica together - so I guess it makes sense that I'd enjoy the novel that takes place almost entirely in Toontown.

Jessica Rabbit: XERIOUS Business

The Plot: It's the 2020s, sometime post-pandemic, and Jessica Krupnik is a human in a toon-less world. She's working a dead-end job in a crime-ridden part of town, her stepmother bosses her around and belittles her, her stepsisters treat her like a servant, and her stepbrothers sexually harass her. She's basically a modern-day Cinderella. But instead of a fairy godmother, Jessica is rescued from her life of drudgery by an opportunity to apply for a role at XERIOUS, a crime-fighting organisation of secret agents. She gets the job, and is later put on a mission with Robbe, one of XERIOUS's most experienced agents, to catch a criminal mastermind called the Klown.

(And this is somehow a prequel to Who Framed Roger Rabbit. Despite being set decades after that film. And starring a human Jessica instead of a toon Jessica. Cartoon timelines be weird, y'all.)

What I Liked: This was the most fun novel to read! I think that's because it was a spy novel spoof, rather than a gritty noir detective story. The other three novels could be quite dour in tone - yes, cases would get solved, but people would get hurt in the process, and relationships would be irrevocably altered, so there was always this undercurrent of sadness in the seemingly happy endings. After three novels in a row of that, a story spoofing spy novels was always going to feel like a breath of fresh air. Gary K. Wolf has stated that he wrote this book in lockdown and had a lot of fun doing so, and I feel that coming across in his writing.

Robbe was another great novel-exclusive character. I can't say too much about him, because that would massively spoil things, but I can say that I enjoyed witnessing his development over the course of the novel. To give the most spoiler-free explanation I can, Robbe starts out as a suave and competent spy, but also a misogynist - until something happens to him in the line of duty that shakes his confidence. Watching him grow and try to be a better person, especially towards Jessica, while also dealing with the aftermath of his accident, was truly engaging. It even got me thinking about the portrayal of disability in fiction, which I did not expect a Roger Rabbit novel to do.

What I Disliked: For a novel called Jessica Rabbit: XERIOUS Business, Jessica herself was disappointingly under-developed. The first three chapters follow her miserable life and her desire for adventure, for respect, for something more. And then there's a two-year time skip and whoop, she's suddenly a confident and glamorous secret agent! And she's ditched her glasses and dyed her hair, so she's beautiful now! And she achieved her impossible hourglass figure with nothing but diet and exercise, despite being a human and not a toon! Sigh.

There was a real missed opportunity here. Robbe already has a plot where he starts off skilled and arrogant, but then has his worldview challenged and needs to learn to embrace vulnerability. So we could have had Jessica experiencing her own story of growth alongside him, but in reverse! We could have watched as, over the course of the novel, she transforms from the beaten-down self-conscious little girl into the sensational woman she was always meant to be. Robbe would start on top and fall down; Jessica would start at the bottom and claw her way up. The parallels could have been awesome!

Gary K. Wolf has admitted that, as a man, he would struggle to write a novel about women, and it shows. The sexism Jessica experiences doesn't have any nuance; the story just says, "Harassment is bad" over and over again. There's one moment where the Klown is sharing his nefarious plan to change the world, and Jessica responds, "I like the current world." And ... huh? You like the sexual harassment you receive on an almost daily basis? You like the system that trapped you in a dead-end job? You like all the poverty and crime and misery the world has right now? The story could have really benefitted from a feminist and/or intersectional analysis.

Also, in an effort to make Jessica seem smart, the men around her are extremely stupid, unable to see through the Klown's flimsy disguises. That is ... not the best way to make your female characters appear intelligent.

Verdict: My favourite of the Roger Rabbit novels! It's not perfect, but my criticisms are born out of love and a desire to see this concept reach its full potential. But even as it is, I still found this book a lot of fun to read, and I can excuse a few flaws if I'm having fun.

Final Ranking (Compared to Other Roger Rabbit Media)

Who Framed Roger Rabbit

Roger Rabbit and Roger Rabbit's Toontown comics

The three shorts

Jessica Rabbit: XERIOUS Business

Who Wacked Roger Rabbit?

Who Censored Roger Rabbit?

Who P-P-P-Plugged Roger Rabbit?

#who framed roger rabbit #wfrr #who censored roger rabbit #who p p p plugged roger rabbit #who wacked roger rabbit #jessica rabbit xerious business #roger rabbit #jessica rabbit #roger rabbit x jessica rabbit #roger x jessica #eddie valiant #baby herman #caitlyn “honey” graham #willy prosciutto #robbe #the klown #sid sleaze #david sleznick #kirk enigman

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equalbxz · 2 years ago

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- welcome to my loa blog -

disclaimer: this is a friendly and caring environment. i want everyone in here to feel safe, which means i do not want to see bullying, cussing one another out, negativity or similar things here.

the name is klea and i go by she/her. this blog is about loa and also my journey of understanding and manifesting. i myself know the loa for about maybe a year? about the law of attraction i know since 2020.

about me

klea, she/her, leo sun, 14, abolutly love rap + hiphop + r&b + afrobets + kpop, entp, i speak french + english + herman somewhat fleuntly but i soo bad at writing french im not even kidding yall 😭

what u will find here

so i will post this bout my journey like updates, vaunts, law of assumtions, success stories (if you want to send me some), asks (again only i u want!) and so much more! dw there will be masterlist... someday

i will always try to answer your questions as accurate as possible. and when i finally manifested my dream life, just know that i will make a face and life reveal!

some blogs that inspire me: @sexyandhedonistic @blushydior @fleurlx @lotusmi @koreanprincess @222barbie @777dream-of-me @voidsuccess @urfavstargirl @nailisaa @coquetteprincesss and so many more!!

(i keep on updating :P)

yours truly, equalbxz <;33

#loassumption #neville goddard #master manifestor #law of assumption #law of manifestation #edward art #void state #loa blog #loa #manifesting #subliminals #manifest

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snarky-wittgenstein · 1 year ago

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Happy Pride!

it's been a while since I've done a headcanons post so here's some of my own sexuality headcanons for some Royal Tutor characters that I've been thinking of sharing for a while

🌈👑🌈👑🌈👑🌈

❤️Licht❤️

Hetero or possibly comphet. He's always bragging about being popular with the ladies but as the series goes on there's really not much to back up this claim. I once saw a headcanon that he might have had a little bit of a crush on Maximilian from back when they were living in town. It's not a headcanon I share but I thought that was interesting

🧡Leonhard🧡

I don't know and he probably also doesn't know. Maybe he'll figure it out one day, but it's not important to him right now. He'll like who he likes, it doesn't matter as long as they get along and can have fun together. If I were to give a label I think aromantic pan demisexual could fit

💛Bruno💛

Similar to Leonhard, I don't know and I think he has not stopped to consider it because he's too occupied with other things. He'll probably like someone who shares his academic interests, and he probably thinks it's a given that he'd marry a princess for practical diplomatic reasons. I like the idea of him developing some sort of relationship with Smerdyakov but I'm not sure how old he is so I haven't given it much thought. I'm not sure if sapiosexual (or sapioromantic??) is an ok thing to call him, so if I were to give a label I like greyromantic demisexual

💚Kai💚

Aroace with strong aesthetic and sensual attraction to any gender. I'm not sure if this makes him very compatible with Beatrix's expectations (and I think she also might be comphet) but I think they would be quite understanding of each other and able to work something out

🩵Eins🩵 (WARNING spoilers for vol. 15!!)

I think he also hasn't given it much thought because he's always just assumed he would marry a princess and that's the set path for him in life. But Princess Matilda meant a lot to him after he got to know her, so I think he could be demi hetero

💙Ernst💙

Definitely definitely gay for Eins I could almost say this is canon and the tragedy is delicious

💜Herr Mitter-Meyer (aka Felix Sommer)💜

I find it funny to think what if he was straight and just has no time to date, but I also like to think that he and his bartender/manager friend Herman Koenig have something going on, and he did seem very focused on Viktor's looks the first time they met. Actually I have no headcanons for this I just wanted to put this here

🩷Viktor🩷

Biromantic and possibly also bisexual

♥️Heine♥️

Demiromantic gay ace (possibly greysexual) with strong aesthetic attraction regardless of gender. Maybe this isn't super related but I also headcanon that his favourite thing to read during his free time is girl-meets-guy romance novels varying from the cheesy type to Jane Austen. I also like the idea that he's trans but I'm not sure if I would call it a headcanon for me

👑🌈👑🌈👑🌈👑

These are just my headcanons for fiction, based on what I can remember about the characters right now and I feel like I've forgotten a lot, so they can change any time and for any reason, and also sometimes I have multiple different headcanons existing at the same time

I'm probably also projecting somewhat and I'm not super well versed in all the ways we can identify, so I'm curious to know if anyone else also shares these headcanons. I've seen some pretty nice ones out there, let me know what's yours!

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hip-pouch · 3 years ago

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Random hcs about the dbd killers (most are about their preference in physical appearance):

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The Trapper || Evan MacMillan: I don't think he would have a preference in physical appearance, but he would like a feminine, traditional kind of s/o that looks at least presentable(and obedience would be a must) (i'm sorry but he comes from the 19xx era where the guy is the head figure of the house and all that traditional family shit)

The Wraith || Philip Ojomo: ok so hear me out, i know literally 99,99% of the fandom portrays him as a shy, awkward boi because oh he's invisible but imo i think he's more miserable than shy/reserved. Like he went through all that trauma, had his face melted while trying to kill one of the killing crews, had been tricked into killing so many people without him even knowing, then he snapped because of the horrible things he was made to do, killed his boss etc. I think he cloaks because he doesn't identify as the monster he was made to be. So, if he ever got the luck of finding an s/o, I think that in his misery he is way past the point of caring abt physical appearance, so his s/o could be a brown spot on a banana and he would still love them to no end. (pls just tell him he is not a monster and that he's pretty he needs it )

The Hillbilly || Max Thompson Jr. : Another traumatised boy, he screams of body positivity. As long as his s/o loves him and treats him like a normal human being he will see them as the most beautiful thing in the world.

The Nurse || Sally Smithson: she literally just wanted a domestic life filled with love ( and children!!) so she doesn't care about physical appearance that much.

The Shape || Michael Myers: He doesn't care at all about physical appearance. Like preference? What is that ? He lived most of his life locked away in a white room like ?? He loves his s/o because they keep his inner demons at bay and treat him like an actual human being, not "pure evil". The fact that they have a body is just a bonus ;)).

The Hag || Lisa Sherwood: Again, another miserable soul, she just wants to be loved and taken care of (plus I hc that she is self conscious af) so ber s/o could be anything (idk if that makes sense, like she is super acceptant of anything her s/o wants to be/ look)

The Doctor || Herman Carter: jail. This man is not mentally capable of love bye

The Huntress || Anna: yeah she loves little gi- Ok fr now, she would like someone small and fragile so she could take care of them. Doesn't care about the other aspects.

The Cannibal || Bubba Sawyer: Another one that screams of body positivity. He just wants an s/o to make him feel safe and loved (major bonus points if his s/o is stronk).

The Nightmare || Freddy Krueger: jail.

The Pig || Amanda Young: I don't think she's capable of love either. (sorry)

The Clown || Jeffrey Hawk: jail.

The Spirit || Rin Yamaoka: I feel like she would like someone strong, to make her feel safe (bonus points if they're taller too).

The Legion || Frank Morrison (because he's the only one that has somewhat of a lore): He is a horny teen, he would want his s/o to be hot and sexy. H o w e v e r, if we're talking about the friends to lovers trope (+ massive slow burn because of his trust issues), if his (future) s/o understands him and helps him deal with his sad past, if they assure him that they would never abandon him like his ex families did, lo and behold the ultimate simp frank. Wouldn't care about their looks, would do anything for them.

The Plague || Adiris: It says in her lore (besides her being pretty asf) that she was ashamed of her appearance after she got the infection, so i think she wouldn't care about her s/o's looks pretty much (she would consider them beautiful for having a healthy body in general) (but please call her beautiful she is beautiful she deserves and needs to hear that).

The Ghostface || Danny Johnson: His add on is a bottle of perfume, so you can imagine that he would want his s/o to be at least as good looking as him (he would still consider himself the prettier one, because narcissistic bitch). Again, h o w e v e r, if we go with the friends to lovers trope, where his s/o doesn't judge his little hobby and perhaps even finds it cool, he wouldn't mind the looks (he would pamper his s/o himself, even paint their nails because I KNOW THAT FUCKER WEARS BLACK NAIL POLISH AND IS EVEN GOOD AT APPLYING IT).

The Demogorgon: "The creature is untouched by any sense of compassion or restraint". So yeah.

The Oni || Kazan Yamaoka: He would deff want a pretty, feminine, obedient s/o (to stroke his strong man ego).

The Executioner || Pyramid Head (daddy-): He would keep s/o around to keep him company, not for the looks. MAJOR points if his s/o is more on the corpolent side tho, because he is a hulk of a man(?) and yeah big hands need a place to rest on you know ;))

The Trickster || Ji-Woon Hak: Twink.

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battstatix · 3 years ago

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Danny “Ghostface” Johnson Headcanons - Part 3

Relationships!

Main Relationships (that I write):

Dwight: Danny adores Dwight and is deeply fascinated by his competence despite being the kind of person most people wouldn’t offer a second look. Dwight’s ability to outsmart Danny quickly became an attractive trait, furthered by Dwight’s sweet shyness and the eventually obvious fact that he is somewhat aroused by the cat-and-mouse games himself. Finds Dwight very fun to tease and fluster.

Anna: Anna’s hunting prowess became an easy source of entertainment for Danny, who realized he missed being hunted down. Of course, things got sexual quickly given that she’s a big beautiful woman and always found a way to catch him. That being said, he might have accidentally developed feelings for her and they genuinely get along. He likes pampering her and hyping her up.

Killers:

Evan: Despite Evan’s exceeding disinterest, Danny sees him as an ear for his woes, which are usually related to getting owned by survivors. Evan tolerates him but is not particularly invested in his problems. Ji-Woon: Danny fucking hates him (the feeling is mutual) because he’s the only other killer whose ego is as big as his own. He scoffs at the Trickster for being too over-the-top and without tact. Yes, he also thinks he’s very sexy, and he’s mad about it. Is completely oblivious to how similar they are as people.

The Legion: Danny is their friendly but strange uncle figure. He continually gives them terrible life advice and backwards pep talks in a way that seems like he is genuinely trying to be helpful to them. (Evan usually butts in with “don’t listen to that guy”). Surprisingly protective of them, though it’s not as if they really need his help with anything. Might see a bit of himself in the rag-tag group of overly frustrated kids that didn’t get proper support.

Michael: Tall, evil and handsome, so of course Danny has a crush on him. Like most things, it is unknown what Michael thinks about this.

Sally: Danny talks about her like she’s a droll party pooper but in actuality she kind of freaks him out.

Philip: Also sees him as a bit of an Eeyore but puts... something of an effort into cheering him up in his own weird way. It typically doesn’t work.

Amanda: They kind of have a half-jokingly antagonistic good-friends-with-benefits type thing going on. Danny hangs out in her realm a lot when he’s bored and has a tendency of touching things he’s not supposed to. She’s probably the most willing to share (or listen to) hot gossip about the other killers.

Adiris: She literally barely registers that he exists, he goes constantly back and forth on whether he is attracted to her beauty and power or disgusted by the... well. The plague part.

Kazan, Nemesis, Pyramid Head, Pinhead, Carmina: He would like to know them carnally.

Max, Rin, Sadako, Bubba: Similar to his relationship with the Legion, he sees himself as some kind of self-appointed guardian figure to them, which they mostly amusedly tolerate.

Demogorgon: Can regularly be found playing catch with Demo (probably using someone’s arm as the stick)

Lisa: She tried to take a bite out of him once. Avoid.

Jeffrey (Clown): Did some pre-contact snooping on the Clown and decided no thank you. He thinks his particular brand of serial killing gives the lot of them a bad name. (He’s the only one who thinks like this)

The Twins: He wants to put the moves on Charlotte but Victor both freaks him out AND keeps trying to kick his ass.

Herman: He doesn’t particularly like Herman because it’s impossible for him to be sneaky anywhere near him. Herman seems to think they’re best friends for some reason, which Danny sort of grimly tolerates.

Caleb and Talbot: Both of them think Danny is super annoying and have very limited tolerance for his presence. They see him as immature.

Freddy: Nobody likes Freddy because he’s the shitty remake version

The Entity: Danny considers himself particularly devoted to her and is willing to do an awful lot of things to remain the Golden Boy. (Some of those things might involve tentacles) Unknown if the Entity had an influence in his life prior to the fog, though he suspects it could be a possibility once he hears the way others talk about their experiences.

I haven’t really fleshed out his relationships with the other survivors, but Dwight is definitely the closest he’s gotten to any of them. Mostly, he’s amused by the others and their antics, but keeps them at an arms distance and doesn’t really have any personal relationships with them.

#dbd #dead by daylight #ghostface #danny johnson #jed olsen #headcanons

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procrastinatorimagines · 4 years ago

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Isn’t It Obvious?

Fandom: Chicago Fire

Pairing: Blake Gallo x Reader

Warning/s: none

Word Count: 909

Request: Could you do a Blake Gallo x reader where there good friends but both like each other and everyone knows it. So Stella and like Cruz or Herman decide to poke fun at them maybe even intelligence gets in on the jokes and it ends with the two of them together please?

It didn’t take you and Gallo long to find your friends once you entered Molly’s, the warm air that hit you a welcome change from the biting cold outside as the sun was going down.

Herrmann and Cruz appeared to be engaged in an interesting conversation at the bar, both men leaning slightly closer to one another, with Herrmann laughing and Cruz gesturing excitedly.

“What’s going on?” Gallo asked cheerfully as he slid into a chair at the bar next to Cruz, you taking the seat next to him as taking off your jacket.

Cruz balked, face frozen for a second as he looked to you and Gallo, even as your faces turned to ones of confusion. His eyes flicked to Herrmann, who shrugged, not going to bail him out of whatever he didn’t want to say.

Instead of answering, he took a giant swig of his drink, nearly choking. “I er, oh, is that who I think it is? I’m gonna... yeah,” and with that, he made a speedy exit.

“That was... weird, right?” You asked after a moment of processing what had just happened.

Gallo considered it, “yeah, but then, it is Cruz,” he decided.

��True,” you laughed, turing to face the other party present for the conversation for answers, “Herrmann-”

“Sorry, I have other customers to serve,” he said, cutting you off as he went to make his exit too.

You and Gallo looked around the near empty bar, some how even more confused than before.

“Herrmann-” Gallo began, probably going to say just that, but Herrmann waved him off.

“Got to go,” he said quickly, wandering off down the bar and pretending to look busy.

“Okay, something is definitely up,” Gallo conceded, turning in his chair to face you. What was that all about?

“He didn’t even ask us what we wanted to drink,” you sighed, hoping for a stiff drink to warm you after a day spent putting out fires and seeing to rescues in the cold Chicago winter.

You looked around, a little dishearted, and caught Stella’s eye as she busted a table in the corner, smiling as she noticed you and came over.

“Hey, do you know why they were acting so strange?” Gallo asked her once she appeared around the otherside of the bar, gesturing to where Herrmann and Cruz were once again talking, just away from the two of you.

Stella hesistated for a moment, and then sighed, as if pitying the two of you for not knowing what was going. “They’re taking bets on how long it’s going to take for the two of you to get together.”

“The two of us?” You doublechecked, pointing between each other and looking at Stella with a questioning brow.

“What? That’s crazy,” Gallo laughed uncomfortably, no longer wanting to meet your eye.

“Yeah, totally,” you agreed unconvincingly.

“Oh come on,” Stella rolled her eyes knowingly, “I’m only telling you because everyone can see it, it’s obvious,” she waved her arms out, knowing exactly what she was going as you both squirmed in your seats.

“No it’s not, we’re friends,” you argued somewhat weakly.

“Yeah, what she said,” Gallo added a little defensively.

“Whatever you say,” Stella said unconvincingly, finishing off your usual drinks and sliding them across the bar. She walked away before either of you could ask her anything else, still a little stunned by what she’d said.

“Can you believe that?” Gallo asked you once she was out of earshot, pulling a face and twirling his finger by his ear, thinking she sounded crazy.

“Yeah why would they think that?” You laughed like the whole thing was utterly ridiculous. But was it? You’d be lying if you said you hadn’t maybe thought about it.

There was an awkward silence between you as you both took a sip of your drinks, Gallo eventually breaking and clearing his throat. “Is it so crazy? Us?” He dared venture quietly, adding: “no, you’re right, crazy, forget it,” when you choked on your drink a little in surprise.

“No, wait, Gallo, er...” What were you going to say? That you were happy being Gallo’s friend but you wouldn’t mind being more?

"Yeah?” He almost sounded hopeful.

“I mean-, maybe-,” you gestured vaguely, rambling without any clear destination in sight. You shook your head, both laughing at how awkward the situation had quickly become.

"Dinner!” Gallo blurted, a little louder than he probably intended, like he’d been fighting something inside of him and it had finally burst out.

“What?” You replied, taken a bit aback by his... was it a question? You weren’t entirely sure. Did you want it to be a question? ... Yeah, you did.

“Dinner, us, you and me...” Gallo seemed to realise what he was saying and pausing, nerves setting in, “never mind it doesn’t matter, it’s-” he tried to deflect, worried you’d think he was crazy for suggesting it, worried it would ruin your friendship.

“No,” you stopped him, reach out your hand to grab his, certain, “dinner sounds nice.”

“Yeah?” He asked slowly, looking at your hands as he began to grin.

"Yeah,” you smiled, your cheeks definitely a little red as you dared steal a glance back at Herrmann, Cruz and Stella, only to find them looking right back at the two of you.

You didn’t know who’d bet what, but you could certainly make a bet of your own from the smug look of satisfaction on Stella’s face.

#blake gallo #chicago fire #one chicago #blake gallo x reader #blake gallo imagine #chicago fire imagine #one chicago imagine #blake gallo imagines #chicago fire imagines #one chicago imagines #blake gallo one shot #chicago fire one shot #one chicago one shot #one shot

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k1ng-for-a-day · 4 years ago

Text

DBD Headcannons #1: What do the killers think of Élodie Rakoto

No one necessarily requested this, but I wanted to do this anyway since I thought it would be interesting.

🖤Trapper: The tapper doesn’t mind Élodie, but enjoys having her stuck in his traps. Sure Evan finds her somewhat annoying, but he has a soft spot for her. He could tell she was trying to find a piece of her like everyone else was, and he adored that in some way.

🖤Wraith: Honestly the Phillip somewhat understands Élodie, but not fully. Sure he may hurt her, but after a while he could see there was something wrong. He may hook her once or twice, but he’ll make sure to be gentle.

🖤Hillbilly: Honestly Max DOESNT mind her too much. Again he’ll definitely find her a nuisance, but he doesn’t mind. There’s not much connection here.

🖤Nurse: Sally... oh Sally... she definitely somewhat despises Rakoto for her morals, however she does get inspiration from her determination. The nurse definitely sees something in Élodie that she wants to toy with, but unfortunately her insanity takes control of her.

🖤Shape: Michael Myers would DEFINITELY DESPISE HER. Not only will her perks cause him to start an uproar, but her determination and skill would definitely cause him to put her at number one victim. Backstory wise, however, he kinda feels bad for her since her parents passed away. Either way he still somewhat disdains her. More like a like/dislike relationship.

🖤Hag: Lisa doesn’t mind Élodie either, but somewhat cares for her. Sure she still wants revenge, that shit can wait. Lisa feels sympathy for Élodie and hopes she’ll be alright.

🖤Doctor: Honestly, Herman is intrigued by Élodie in a neurological way. He wants to understand and encourage her way of thinking, but he may want much more...

🖤Huntress: Honestly Anna’s motherly figure would DEFINITELY, DEFINITELY COME OUT! Due to Rakoto being a female, the mother and daughter vibe would definitely have more potential. Besides that she would most like try to actually talk with her, but not for too long. She will also become somewhat overprotective, and be very soothing with her.

🖤Cannibal: Bubba is definitely going to have a new meal, and will DEFINITELY act much more stealthy. Honestly he would definitely love to try and kill her, but at the same time he’ll try not to. The reason for this repel is because he has a small bit of sympathy, but not much.

🖤Nightmare: Freddy Krueger... hmm... He’s definitely going to have fun tonight. Ok ok enough of ‘Horny Krueger’ let’s actually get to the point. He would pretty much want to take notes on how her behaviors operate before attempting to kill. Besides that he would have to find out if she is worth the kill in the end. Finding out her family past using manipulation and such.

🖤Pig: Amanda wouldn’t mind her much, however she’d still be a bit suspicious of her. She would have to take notes to figure out Rakoto’s life. Maybe she could do it with Krueger, but I doubt it lmao.

🖤Clown: He really doesn’t care about her much. Literally. He just wants to toy around with her. That’s all.

🖤Spirit and Oni: Rin and Kazan find Élodie to be powerful, but very tame. Personally Rin hopes that Rakoto will eventually find her family whereabouts, and live a decent, peaceful life unlike her own. Kazan, on the other hand, wants Rakoto to use her powers much more tamely in order to prevent her from having a similar incident that he experienced.

🖤Legion: They basically have the same opinions as the clown, but much more vicious and graphic. They would enjoy toying around with her, but would love to see some bloodshed.

🖤Plague: Adiris doesn’t mind her much, but wouldn’t mind if she shared her symptoms with her.

🖤Demongorgon: ⍑𝙹∴ ℸ ̣ ⎓ ᔑᒲ ╎ ᓭ⚍!¡!¡𝙹ᓭᒷ ℸ ̣ 𝙹 ꖌリ𝙹∴ ╎ℸ ̣ ’ᓭ ꖎ╎ꖌᒷ ╎ᓭ⋮↸𝙹ᓭ⋮↸↸ꖌ╎↸╎↸⋮↸⋮⎓╎↸⚍ᓵ╎ ꖎᒲᔑ𝙹

🖤Deathslinger: After trying to make more upgrades for his weapon, Caleb would very much be interested to test it on Rakoto. The main problem is that he doesn’t want her to escape so easily from the pallets, so he might need help from the blight with that one...

🖤Executioner: Pyramidhead just wants her dead. That’s it lmao.

🖤Blight and the twins: Personally Tallbot enjoys Rakoto, (only to test his much desired herbs on her), but the twins are a different case. Charlotte and Victor synthesize with Rakoto heavily. Due to the loss of their mother, of course it would effect them immensely, however they don’t enjoy sharing that too often. When they are able to talk to Élodie, they try to become close to her, but to no avail.

🖤Ghostface: A new victim! A new treat! Danny would absolutely love to have Élodie in one of his photographs, but he can’t figure out why. Maybe it’s due to her curly, Afro like hair, or maybe it’s because of her gorgeous skin. No wait! It’s her eyes! Those beautiful hazel eyes! No... that can’t be it. Whatever attracts him to want Élodie is still a mystery, however he does kind of enjoy her style. He would be immensely happy to have her as a nice little toy.

Edit: My dumbass forgot Danny, so I added him in. Sorry y’all

Welp. That’s pretty much it. Hope you enjoyed it! I’m also taking requests!

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spookyrobbins · 3 years ago

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If you’re given a chance to rewrite how calzona left the show, how would you do it?

(I really love your work! You are an amazing writer.)

okay for my sanity we’re gonna pretend sara was staying for 13/14

i’m gonna leave the entirety of s12 alone but it’ll all work out you’ll see

so arizona gives callie the tickets at the end of s12 and that seems to be it, they’re done, things are very final with them for maybe the first time ever

callie is going to nyc with penny and sofia and she’s going to be happy, just like arizona wanted, that was the last thing arizona could give her

and so s13 opens and the viewer is expecting callie gone, but in sort of a mirror of how arizona ended the previous season, callie shows up with sofia at arizona’s door bc she was going to go, she got all the way to the airport but she couldn’t do it, arizona is sofia’s mom and sofia needs to stay in seattle; and arizona asks callie what she’s going to do and callie says she still needs to go to nyc and talk to penny and deal with the contract she signed for an attending position (arizona might quip about callie needing to grovel to bailey) - neither of them makes any indication about getting back together or anything of the like

so then callie’s gone for a bit and this is important bc arizona needs to meet eliza without callie immediately around

so then callie comes back in the middle of the revolt against eliza and callie is often blindly loyal and she’s hardcore seattle grace so she’d obvs be very much anti eliza

she’d also be the first one to really notice that eliza and arizona are kind of flirting - after all, she’d be the most qualified and she confronts arizona about sleeping with the person trying to oust webber and who got meredith suspended etc

this of course is right on the heels of the custody battle where callies lawyers essentially called arizona a slut so it’s an understandably tender spot for arizona - we get a fun little argument maybe with lines like “i guess i shouldn’t be surprised you have no loyalty” and “at least i’m not sleeping with someone who killed one of our friends” - they both say things they regret and arizona and eliza aren’t even sleeping together at this point

things are icey between them for a little while - everyone is a bit in their feelings - arizona really genuinely tries with eliza and callie throws herself into her work - but there’s still pining looks

and we can have scenes of callie bitching about arizona (bc let’s be real she was never quiet about things) to maybe bailey who doesn’t have a lot of time for it - opens the possibility for callie reflecting on the custody battle - over even more fun callie learning about the “you’re nothing” fight after making some comment about how arizona is being way too intense about schedules or something and bailey saying something to the effect of “maybe it’s because both you and sloan have called her nothing to that little girl, when we all know that sofia is her whole world, that sofia is all she has left”

there is also the possibility of callie complaining about arizona and eliza to someone and someone (maybe meredith or alex once he’s out of jail) saying something to the effect of “arizona never said a word about you moving on, in fact she supported you and was rather courteous about it so you don’t have a leg to stand on” - this portion of the season is very much callies come to jesus moment

and then we get to the season finale of 13 (hospital fire and rapist on the loose as a reminder) - arizona was outside of the hospital with eliza when the hospital exploded; callie was inside and freaked out about arizona bc honestly it would be very like arizona to find herself in the middle of an explosion

arizona of course goes back into help alex with peds and the nicu (eliza is supposed to call the police which is what gets her fired i seem to recall)

so callie takes off looking for arizona but she can’t find her and bc it’s arizona she assumed the worst bc when isn’t it the worst when it comes to arizona and it really puts callies confused feelings into perspective at the thought of maybe losing arizona

meanwhile arizona (all essentially off screen) is dealing with peds and fetal and she’s totally fine just lots of stressed out kids and parents

but callie can’t find her bc there’s just too much going on at least not until it’s basically morning and the fires out and callie sees arizona across the parking lot with alex and in sort of a mirror of the post shooting kiss, tells arizona she loves her and can’t live with out her and she’s sorry it took her so long to realise this, but after the kiss arizona pushes her away and says she can’t do this again

and that ends s13

s14 in the show of course starts with eliza ghosting arizona who then meets carina in a bar and as much as i adore carina i’m afraid she does not get to hook up with arizona

instead eliza still ghosts arizona and then arizona and callie go out for a drink to discuss everything that happened a few days ago and how arizona is feeling about owen’s sister suddenly being found alive when she went mia/kia in not dissimilar circumstances to tim (bc this is my season we get to discuss my love tim)

no confessions of love but they do fall into bed with each other and this is probably a mistake but somehow they keep making it and so then we get arizona and callie basically sleeping together in secret

and all the while callies confession is hanging over their heads but they are not discussing it bc they’re callie and arizona and god forbid they act like grown ups and discuss their feelings instead of just having sex

that is until arizona loses karin (april’s ex’s wife) and it throws her into a depression and callies been here before, she’s had to handle arizona’s depression before and she knows now that she mishandled it and she’s not going to do that again

so she goes to arizona and arizona sort of reluctantly tries to have sex with her but callie turns her down and this turns into an argument but it’s not a bad argument, it’s more of a cathartic argument of callie trying to prove that she’s changed, that they’ve changed and they’re stronger, better than they were before while arizona is torn between fear and telling callie she loves her too - end result they agree to try one more time with a whole variety of stipulations and guidelines

for hm maybe an episode things are fine and light and happy and a pretty pink bubble with them

that is until callie finds out by accident that arizona has been offered the chance to run hopkins fetal dept/have her own research/learning facility there and it’s been blessed by herman - and when asked about it, arizona avoids the question and callie is understandably hurt

on arizona’s side, she’s freaking out bc she knows what happens when she’s given huge career opportunities and she’s with callie - callie resents her for it and they break up and she can’t put them through another custody debacle so when mccale (her peds mentor) and herman offered her the position she basically just kicked the can down the road - this is all made worse by the fact she knows it’s not that callie isn’t open to a move, it’s a move with arizona that callie won’t do

so things are weird between the two of them and pretty much no one wants to get involved and even sofia is picking up on it and she starts acting out in school - maybe gets in a fight or something, which sends arizona and callie into this weird proxy argument about parenting which is very much a soft spot for arizona

by the time of the breast cancer ep, they haven’t broken up (bc at the start they agreed if they broke up they wouldn’t try again) but they’re not really speaking - sort of like how they were in the early stages of the baby fight - but when arizona thinks she has breast cancer the only person she wants is callie - so we get this great part-comedic part-heartfelt scene of owen, april, callie and arizona in an exam room with arizona’s boobs out and callie blurts out that she knows that arizona has a huge job offer from hopkins and she’s really hurt that arizona didn’t tell her bc she thinks she should take it (april and owen leave bc arizona’s boobs are still fully out as they talk) and arizona admits that she didn’t even want to entertain it bc she can’t lose callie again and then callie gets to finally (after like 10 years) actually be excited about arizona’s career and arizona also admits that she managed to get hopkins to agree to give callie head of ortho research or something and her own lab bc they’re interested in the artificial cartilage or prosthetics or something

after like an episode of discussion they decide to move - it’s a huge opportunity for arizona, callie will be able to focus on her research, arizona loved hopkins, the robbins live somewhat close by and it’s a lot closer to miami, and they both agree that maybe it’s time to leave seattle

then we get the weed cookie episode and just like fluffy calzona shenanigans (which are going to be featured in an upcoming fix)

when april is half frozen, callie is very much there for arizona and it’s very evident that they’re stronger than before

and they get say all their goodbyes (which arizona got but callie didn’t really) in the alex wedding episode, they stay for april’s wedding and then they’re off, happily ever after to hopkins

#omg this is long but very fun #anon #no post on sundays #this is also fully what i remember of s13/14 off the top of my head #so the precise ordering could be off #and things could be wrong

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frostedfaves · 4 years ago

Text

Day Dreaming

Pairing: Jake Peralta x fem!reader

Summary: Jake and Y/N becoming our favorite, fluffiest couple. Set to the tune of Day Dreaming by Jack & Jack.

Word Count: 1.1k

Warnings: NSFW activity insinuated just a tiny bit but not really described

N/N = nickname

Y/N looked up from her feet as a car came to a stop in front of her, smiling as she caught sight of the driver. She stood quickly, dusting off whatever residue the curb may have left on her jeans before walking over to get in.

"Sorry to interrupt your previously scheduled drooling over John McClane," she joked as she put on her seatbelt.

Jake rolled his eyes but couldn't help the smile that formed as he turned to her. "So why didn't you call your asshat of a boyfriend to pick you up?"

"Ex-boyfriend, technically. Just broke up with him."

"And he left you out here alone?!"

"Yep! We got into an argument on the way to what was supposed to be a nice stargazing picnic date, and because he has no regard for the safety of a young woman on the streets of Brooklyn at night, he left me here." She held up a single key. "Grabbed this first, but I should've taken the food, too."

"Don't worry. I've got it covered." He finally pulled away from the curb, not stopping again until he parked outside of a small restaurant. "I'll be right back."

Y/N watched as Jake came out ten minutes later, holding a large paper bag and two bottles of orange soda. She took the objects from him with a smile so he could drive freely, her expression shifting slightly after a few minutes.

"Jake?"

"Yes, N/N?"

"Why are you going in the opposite direction of your apartment?"

"Oh, I didn't tell you?" He looked over to her with a softness in his features that made her heart race. "I'm taking you on that date."

Y/N placed a hand over her heart, playful pout on her lips and admiration in her eyes. "God, how did I get so lucky?"

Jake simply chuckled, biting his lip slightly to hold back his thought that just maybe he was the lucky one.

They reached somewhat of an open field after a long drive, Jake turning the engine off and leaving the radio on before getting out. Y/N followed him out with the food, watching in amusement as he dug a blanket out of the trunk and spread it over the windshield and hood.

"You seem really prepared for this," she teased as he lowered the windows and turned up the radio.

"I've always been ready to take you out, just waiting on your permission."

"Well, you have it," she told him as she climbed up next to him, handing him a soda and opening the bag. "Italian subs!"

He chuckled again as he took one from her, his eyes lingering on her profile for a moment before mimicking her actions of leaning back and taking a bite.

Stars on my roof, we parked up on Mulholland Tell you the truth, girl, I think that I'm falling But I love it And you love it too

Jake found himself breaking free of his daze as Y/N took his trash and threw it in the bag with hers before tossing everything through the car window on her side.

"Ready to stargaze?" she asks with a sweetness in her tone that had Jake ready to pull her in his arms and kiss her until the sun came up. Instead he nodded, leaning back against the windshield and pulling her in to rest against his chest.

Late weekends, daydreaming They all want you for the same reason But me, I'm in it for the long haul, girl I want ya til you ain't breathing Until you ain't breathing Hit it from the back, stay screaming

They both collapsed onto the bed, covered in a thin layer of sweat that glistened in the sunlight from the nearby window. Y/N let out a slight laugh that left her body in pleasure filled gasps as she came down slowly from her high.

"Wow."

"Good wow or bad wow?"

She rolled over to face him, a surprised look in her eyes. "Can't believe you have to ask after how loud I just was." She laughs as he does, a grin forming as she finds herself in his arms again. "Do you have to go?" she asks, looking up with a slight pout.

"Are you kidding? I just made up for years of exercising, I need to recover." His cocky smirk faded slightly as he leaned in to kiss her forehead before pulling away again to meet her eyes. "Did you want me to or...?"

"No!" she answers quickly, her eyes widening slightly. "I mean, no, unless you want to. I'm not really used to anyone staying after they fuck me, so. Asshat sure didn't."

"That's because Asshat apparently was blind because he clearly didn't see that he was dating a goddess. Unluckily for him, my eyes work fine—special shout-out to my contacts—and I will be cuddling you post-sexy times for the rest of our days."

Y/N simply snuggled further into his arms in response, pressing her cheek to his chest to hide her rapidly growing grin.

Oh, I love it and she love it too So we love it, it's a dream come true When we're lovin', it feels so brand new It's paradise here in this room

"Babe, you're home!" Jake watches with a grin as Y/N puts her bag beside the door and eagerly comes over to slide into his lap. "How was your day?" he asks after placing a few kisses on her impatient lips and sliding an arm around her waist.

"Well, I spent the day getting a ton of compliments on this new addition." She held out her left hand in front of her, unable to tear her eyes away from the ring wrapped around her finger.

"Oh yeah? How did Herman take it?"

She frowned at him as she wrapped her other arm around his shoulders. "Jacob, I will not be the reason that an elderly man has a heart attack."

Jake's eyes immediately widened. "Well, I'm not gonna tell him!"

"How do you expect him to be one of your groomsmen at the literal wedding if you don't tell him we're getting married?"

"Babe, I had to tell Charles. I think I've gone through enough."

"Ugh, fine, I'll do it. But only because you got that video of Charles' reaction." She giggles as she leans against him, sighing softly as he begins to rub her back. "I love you. I can't wait to marry you."

"I love you, too. And I also can't wait to marry you. Real nervous about dancing in front of our friends, though."

More giggles came out as she leaned up slightly to kiss his cheek.

"Don't worry, it'll just be you and me."

Tags: @halfofwhatisayismeaningless @gaulty74 @ochrythum

#queue #jake peralta #jake peralta x reader #jake peralta x fem!reader #jake peralta imagine #brooklyn nine nine #brooklyn 99 #brooklyn nine nine imagine #brooklyn nine nine x reader #b99 fic #b99 imagine #b99 x reader #b99 fanfic

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bloodybells1 · 4 years ago

Text

PROCESS, ONE: A READER’S JOURNEY

“The essays in this book were memoir until they couldn’t stand to be memoir anymore.” —Leslie Jamison

Had I read that quote even only six months ago (the book to which she refers is her much-lauded personal essay collection The Empathy Exams), I wouldn’t have known exactly what it meant.

How can a piece of writing evolve from memoir? In terms of simple, unvarnished truth-telling, I thought the memoir, as a genre of literature, was pretty much the vessel. Yet here a case is being made for something that sounds like the opposite: it seems one can go beyond even the once terminally-regarded memoir.

Let me think about this further, about my confusion. Maybe my framing is off. Maybe it’s not an issue of evolution or reduction. It’s not that the personal essay is somehow purer than the memoir, as far as autobiographical writing is concerned. The issue is not one of authenticity. It’s about application, or even misapplication, that the quest for truth for which one naturally uses the data of one’s own life could, depending on the circumstances, be more appropriately undertaken in a different genre. The two genres are merely looking at different subject matter. They’re examining completely different lifeforms on the slides, but they’re using the same authentic microscope, as it were.

I relate to the sense of frustration in the Jamison quote, that there’s a feeling that the mission she started out on—writing a memoir—became so inadequate for the real task at hand that it became unbearable, that the pressure of working under a false guise gave way to a different form of transmission.

The memoir became a personal essay collection. It had to. The questions she was exploring could not be undertaken by simply telling the story of one’s own life. Personal data was necessary for the full picture. But she needed other sources, the experiences of others, the realities of phenomena outside of her normal experience, even as they were phenomena that ultimately she ended up relating to in a deeply intimate manner. In her collection, she let us into those experiences, and then we were able to relate, by dint of her fearless storytelling and personal excavations.

Now I’m getting it: a personal essay is fixed on some question and that is what drives the exploration. Personal, say, autobiographical, details are needed for the exploration, and this can vary depending on the subject. But the focus is the external question. That is the different lifeform on the slide. It’s about the question being pursued.

But first, a look at where I started on this journey, with the memoir itself.

The memoir as a work of literature was my singular focus while I was crafting my book proposal a couple of years ago. Simply put, it was what was on the table. Owing to my provenance as a musician and an actor, and my express interest in writing about my life, the genre of the memoir naturally became a thing for me.

So I dove into acquainting myself, not with examples of celebrity memoirs or memoirs by politicians—perhaps the two most popular varieties—but with examples of the finer possibilities in those genres which—big surprise—happen to be written for the most part by writers. I found myself falling in love with the exercise of memoir writing, as opposed to, say, the gratuitous voyeurism that is often offered by the popular variants of the genre.

For me, what became valuable was the quality of the writing; most of the time I was reading the life stories of people with whose work I had, outside of the memoir being read, little to no familiarity. These windows into life were captivating in their own right, these portals into raw experience, the possibilities of narration within the genre of nonfiction, the enlightened self-awareness made evident in sculpting large-scale timelines of one’s own life.

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It’s difficult for me to overstate the degree to which these two books have influenced me thus far.

Nabokov’s memoir is well-known. It’s a work of literature in its own right. It is a great example of the possibilities of the memoir to accomplish something other than realism: the whole thing is a kind of Proustian meta-narrative of his childhood and abrupt departure from Russia after the revolution, like a dream of family life written down. Mary Karr, in The Art of Memoir, heads her chapter on this book, “Don’t Try This at Home: The Seductive, Narcissistic Count.” Indeed, the book reads somewhat Transylvanianly, a bold, exotic yarn full of strange characters unfurled for an audience unfamiliar with that way of life. It reads as alluring and dark, and, yes, quite vampiric. But it is also profound and gorgeous.

While it’s not really a memoir, more of an autobiography, and also not often regarded as exemplary of the form, My Lives, written by Edmund White is an incredible tour de force of portraiture of the most important people in his life, his therapists, his parents, his lovers, his friends, his subjects, they all get a chapter dedicated specifically to them. Imagine knowing a world-renowned painter who decides he wants to do a string of portraits of the most important people in his life and you are one of them. That’s what this is, in literary form. It’s less a story of him than of these people, but, by the end of the book, you, of course, end up knowing a lot about him. His ability to make you see the things that he is looking at, in a very concrete, physical way—the curves of a body, the angles of a face, the ambience of a train station—is unparalleled in my view.

Is there a difference between an (a) autobiography and a (b) memoir?

I think the difference is about scope. The autobiography is explicitly a functional genre that attempts to document a person’s entire life. It is a biography that is written by the person whose life is being written about. It does not usually try to invoke any literary devices and is intended to serve as an ancillary to consumption of the subject’s work outside of the autobiography. It is a kind of “reader” of the subject’s life. It’s main purpose is not to be written well (although if it isn’t it is a grave mistake), it is to convey the near entirety of the subject’s experience on earth.

By contrast, good writing is a bit more called-for in the memoir; otherwise the whole premise falls apart. The memoir, in carving out a specific “slice” of a person, either a period of time or some type of encounter or some activity that they always do, is explicitly intended to amplify and interrogate aspects of being. In this way, the memoir has more potential for inspiration and edification irrespective of the reader’s interest in the subject’s life outside of the memoir. This, to me, is the crucial difference.

For the most part, I am not explicitly a huge fan of the work of the writers below. But their memoirs have touched and inspired me. I don’t think I would have all that much interest in reading the autobiography of, say, Joan Didion. (I might, I can’t be sure, of course). But my point is that I’m not looking for her autobiography, whereas there’re a lot of Didion fans out there that would be waiting for said autobiography.

In this way, autobiography is a kind of fan service, whereas the memoir is a thing unto itself. It is a work of literature written for the purpose of refracting aspects of being alive. To appreciate that type of writing you need not be familiar with anything else that person has done on this planet, anymore than that it is necessary to be familiar with Herman Melville’s entire oeuvre in order to love and appreciate Moby Dick.

It was with the consciousness of the memoir’s self-sufficiency, the irony of its ability to communicate, in its more specific mode, even more broadly than the supposedly more capacious autobiography, that I continued my exploration of the genre and began taking notes for the writing of my own memoir (which is now a personal essay collection, but more on that later).

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Two classics of the genre, here.

Many of us have read Maya Angelou’s book in high school. Both focus on the same thing: a period of time starting from birth and leading just up to late adolescence. Both are written like traditional first-person stories with beginnings, middles, and ends, and, were it not for our knowledge of their source material, might easily pass as romans a clef. I also think that both are examples of “misery lit,” although I think that that genre is overly hip and reductive for Angelou’s work, which is about so much more than just her misery. But they both focus on their childhood traumas in such a plain, unadorned, simple way, it is shocking and, for those of us struggling with these same issues, healing.

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The Apology and The Year of Magical Thinking are examples of how the memoir can focus to a degree of incredible specificity. Both focus on pain but are concerned with different parts of experience. Didion writes only about one year of her life, while Ensler writes about almost the entirety of it, but with a focus on a single, prevailing experience. Both are harrowing in completely different ways and both are exquisite in the way they lift up their struggles to find meaning and truth, things that pertain to the reader’s own experiences and which he or she may also come into touch with in reading these books. They truly are gifts in that regard.

In a manner of speaking, these two books are like two, very long, book-length personal essays. They rigorously explore and interrogate their premises and do their best to extract whatever possible that is meaningful out of that exploration.

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More “misery lit”! I actually don’t mean to be reductive in saying that. Both of these are fabulous stories concerning completely different encounters with mental illness and they are far beyond some hipster term of art. But there is a lot of memoir writing out there that explores the darker ways some of us were brought up and I don’t think there’s anything wrong with simply naming a certain type of writing that courageously explores how our childhoods might have been compromised.

In The Glass Castle it’s about her father’s mental illness and in An Unquiet Mind, it’s about the author’s own journey discovering and treating her bipolar disorder. Walls writes her story very much like it’s a novel, like Angelou’s memoir, and, also like Angelou, she writes it from the perspective of her child self and it is a compelling account as a result, full of tragic innocence and complicated encounters far beyond the reach of a child to properly grapple with.

Jamison’s book is very clinical, although she recounts her episodes frankly and shockingly and really brings you in to her subjective experience of insanity. These two books—not to mention Eve Ensler’s—have given me the courage to begin exploring my own encounters with mental illness and childhood trauma and to commit those experiences to writing.

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As I continued to research I started coming upon a very interesting type of memoir, the experimental memoir. That’s really interesting I thought. How does one write a memoir as a form of experimental art?

Not that this one is expressly experimental, but Robert Graves’ book is slightly off-putting in that fecund, experimental way: the bulk of it is dedicated to his experience in the trenches and it’s told with grit and harsh realism. But it starts with his schooldays and ends briefly, and curiously inconclusively, with scenes of fatherhood and tutelage. It’s a rather unique rendering of a life. Towards the end he admits that his original idea was to use the notes that he took on the frontlines for writing a novel but changed his mind after realizing that he would be desecrating his experiences and his memories and his sacrifices by layering a plot and storyline onto them. He then decided to write it simply as a factual account.

Dark Back of Time, however, is a full-on experiment in autobiography and it is always slipping in and out of reality, imagination and historicization. He spends a large amount of time writing about an old soldier who died accidentally on a hotel balcony in South America but he gets to this through talking about the reactions that his peers in Oxford had to one of his novels which they suspected made use of their lives. Truly an eye-opening experience to read autobiographical material refracted in this way.

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I haven’t read these three yet. They are “on deck,” as it were. Eat, Pray, Love needs little introduction, obviously. The Speckled People was highly recommended by a fellow writer and Lying came up in an online search as a prominent example of the experimental memoir.

At this point, it was already clear to me that I was writing a different kind of memoir than any of these examples. I realized that I was in effect writing personal essays without knowing it. I knew very early on that I wanted to eschew responsibility for an overarching narrative of any sort. I wanted to commit myself to specific topics that could be covered discretely in one chapter each. When I read the Graves’ passage regarding the desecration of his time on the battlefield, I thought of my own “war stories” and thought similarly that trying to give them a plot, while not exactly a “desecration,” would feel unnatural and inauthentic. What was feeling natural was to pick separate experiences in my life and devote a chapter to those I felt were strong enough for further elucidation. The time I got stuck on a mountain overnight with a friend. The shock of coming to NYU. The decision to leave the music industry. There were so many other parts of my life that seemed to deserve specific treatment in this way. I naturally started coming upon essay collections as a result.

II.

I took an online course by Alexander Chee called, “How to Write an Essay Collection” and afterwards it became much clearer what kind of book I wanted to write. I read about half of his reading list for the class and, along with the volumes I’d already dug into, I learned what a personal essay really was and what it wasn’t, and knowing this difference demonstrated to me quite clearly that the book I was writing wanted to be an essay collection in the truest sense of what an essay really is. The Leslie Jamison quote at the top of this blog post became true for me as well. My memoir could no longer stand being a memoir and had become a personal essay collection.

During the class, Alexander Chee recounted an irony regarding his own personal essay collection. He said that he found it curious when readers of his book would tell him that they found so much of him in it. “There’s actually not very much of me at all,” he said; and he mentioned this in order to illustrate what a personal essay collection is and what it isn’t. The reason why there’s not that much “of him” in his essay collection, nor, for that matter, why there isn’t much of any author’s life in any of their personal essay collections, is that a personal essay, despite being “personal,” is primarily geared towards externals not internals. “Pity the personal essayist,” the author Sloane Crosley writes in her New York Times review of Jamison’s latest essay collection, Make it Scream, Make it Burn, “fated to play with a reader’s tolerance for that most cursed of vowels. Too many “I”s and you’re self-absorbed; too few and: Where are you in this piece?”

Self-absorption as a liability in writing is understood enough, though, when it comes to autobiographies and memoirs, the liability becomes unavoidable and, if anything, necessary. We read those books exactly for the purpose of the big drop into an author’s psyche, willingly diving down the subjective abyss, basically swimming in “I”s (the best ones allow us to do this gleefully).

Not so in a personal essay, where the restriction on egoistic license holds. And yet: how do we include and implicate ourselves into the topic? without stepping on traps of self-absorption? This is what Chee was talking about when he said that there wasn’t much of him in his essays: not that he didn’t implicate himself in his narrations—he very much did—but that he skillfully observed this precarious balance.

That balance is undertaken quite differently depending on the author (and in my synopses of the collections I’ve read recently I’ll try to speak about how they’ve assigned “percentages of self” into their essays, what the “lean-to-fat" ratio is, for example, when “fat” could be understood as the strictly autobiographical portion of the essay). It can also vary according to the essay. In some cases it’ll be necessary to fully implicate oneself. In others, perhaps only a passing mention of the author’s impression of the events is needed. But there’s an essential aspect to what makes for a great personal essay, irrespective of ratios of personal to objective, that Charle’s D’Ambrosio captures beautifully in the introduction to his own essay collection:

My instinctive and entirely private ambition was to capture the conflicted mind in motion, or, to borrow a phrase from Cioran, to represent failure on the move, so leaving a certain wrongness on the page was OK by me. The inevitable errors and imperfections made the trouble I encountered tactile, bringing the texture of experience into the story in a way that being cautiously right never could.

This is kind of a Copernican revolution to me. I mean, it had never really occurred to me that you could be wrong and that would be a good thing. In writing I had always striven to make sure that I didn’t insult researchers, journalists, experts and scholars by misrepresenting the truth. Yet, here was basically a license to get it all wrong and admit it on the page and have that be a virtue of the writing.

What this tells me is that what remains key in the personal essay is not some authoritative stance, but the very uncertainty of the perspective, and how that might invite opportunities for a much more intimate relational structure with the topic matter on the part of the reader. This isn’t about ingestion (of data, of info, of ideas, etc.) but about contact. I see that as being very similar to the relationship between reader and author in a memoir, this premium on relation. The only difference—and for me, a very consequential one—is that the primary target of a personal essay’s sight is not the self qua self, but some implication with the content of reality on the part of the self. That intersection is what fascinates me more at this time than simple self-narration.

In this way, a personal essay can kind of be like a stop sign, a signal to halt the gyrating (mostly online) world, with its hyperlinks and ads and other pseudo-references. In fact, in his brilliant collection Proxies, Brian Blanchfield takes on this very task and turns the internet off when writing each of his essays in the collections. In order to take solace within the much more subjective account housed within the pages, an account at once open and tentative, based as it is in doubt, and hermetically sealed, shunning the greater world’s insistence on certification and realism, the essay becomes a prismatic utility for investigation, where perspective and subjectivity are king and certainty and objectivity are actually limiting.

The memoir offers something very direct to the reader: the author’s own struggle with, or journey through, some issue or period in life. The author is the chief protagonist in the drama, the star of, say, the cinematic adaptation of the book. The issues swirl around the protagonist but the camera stays trained on him or her. What I started to notice was that my mental gaze was always scudding away from the protagonist (me) and over to what else was in the frame. And so the personal essay as I began to learn about it became a much more appropriate vessel for these concerns, even as I knew that I would need to implicate myself in the action, keep myself in the frame. Striking that balance in a way that is both specific to me and my experiences and yet observant of the proper limits of the genre, so as not to veer away and “regress” back into memoir, has become my chief objective with each of the essays that I’ve been writing.

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These three collections might be my bible for this project. Each are very different in style and application, but each is similar in that joyous experience of reading a paragraph and being so stunned by the insight that one has to turn the face away from the page for a moment (or two) to let it sink in. Baldwin is, of course, the king of this sort of thing. There were times while reading his essays when I actually had to straight up close the book and put it down in order to absorb what was going on. The title essay which is about Harlem, his father, and his early awakening to the depth of his country’s racism, is perfection on both the level of content and form. It does what an essay does best: leave you with the unequivocal residue of human feeling twisting around the grander issues with which that essay is concerned.

Each essay, in all of these volumes, is like a discrete nugget, a piece of writing, contiguous, open and alive, that can be read and reread, like an oracle you visit throughout your life, which, using the same words, speaks to you anew each time.

Ambrosio’s essays are absolutely nimble and virtuosic; his language is muscular and sinewy; his sentences are lean and long and you can ride them effortlessly and when you finish them and their paragraphs, you are left with an image of a truth that was planted in your sight without you knowing. It’s an exhilarating experience.

Blanchfield’s essays are a revelation of subjectivity. This volume was part of Chee’s reading list and I can’t express enough gratitude for having been directed to it. Perhaps Blanchfield is the master of nesting the autobiography within the confines of an essay. When he toggles between the external and the internal, you don’t notice it. It’s effortless. His ability to tell a giant story in one paragraph is inspiring. The tone and delivery is somewhat sacral, he’s a poet, after all. But it is also delicate, graceful, poised and elegant. And deeply personal. How someone can title an essay “On Frottage” and turn the reader’s attention to the true significance of the topic—AIDS and the gay scene in the 80s and 90s—and all of the social significance intertwined in it, along with implicating himself in a nakedly autobiographical way, is beyond me, but I am happy to be in the audience for it.

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What I love about these two collections are their stealth and form. Their stealth comes from how they read, not so much as casually but as without artifice or adornment, and how this aspect lets the reader’s guard down, only to have some extremely penetrating conclusion arrive at the end of each essay, in a manner that the more plainspoken style did not necessarily anticipate. Chee’s prose particularly comes across as either supremely and dryly witty or as modest plainness, but when you finish one of his essays the takeaway is anything but those things; it is profound. Jamison as well. As for their form, they tend to do some adventurous things. One of Jamison’s essays uses a kind of diagram of storytelling which she learned in a writing class to “tell the story” of a traumatic episode involving a horrific episode of violence she experienced in South America. The essay is called “The Morphology of a Hit.” It’s a perfect example of something else that I really love about personal essays which is their ability to take leaps in form when that form enables a type of storytelling that otherwise isn’t possible. Chee does this very thing in a somewhat humorous essay, the titular one of this volume, which is just a long list of life hacks and writing tips. I’m really grateful for the insight that this man has given me into the writing process. My copy of his book is signed, as I first became aware of him at a reading of his with Edmund White at NYU which my good friend invited me to. So I’m very grateful to that friend as well! He also introduced me to Edmund White so it’s a double whammy!

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I would’ve never encountered these collections of my own volition without their inclusion on the reading list in Chee’s course, but I’m very happy that I read these. McCarthy’s essays are quite old, dating to the 50s and 60s, I believe, when they were originally published in The New Yorker. They’re all centered around her childhood years, either living with her grandparents or in an orphanage and they are remarkable portraits of intimacy and observation. The same with Ginzburg’s collection, although she writes in a much more enigmatic style. What inspired me most about her essays was how simultaneously aloof and vulnerable they are: she has a way of, say, writing about England, without ever even mentioning the name of the country, yet contriving a recognizable and incisive portrait of it, all from the vantage point of her own experience of the country during a certain time. Finally, there’s really nothing quite like Wojnarowicz’ book. It’s slightly Beat in tone, sometimes surreal and ecstatic, and then progressively more plainspoken and political. But it is all so very raw and pulsing with the heat of experience and desperation and anger. Wojnarowicz was an incredible artist, a sculptor and photographer and he lived in the East Village of the 80s and reports from the frontlines on the AIDS crisis. His work bears the stamp of a deeply tuned in artist confronting the hypocrisies and injustices of his time.

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I put these three together mostly because these collections are explicitly comedic, although each has its own manner of using humor to communicate a deeper message. Jonathan Ames is well-known as a very funny novelist and the creator of the TV show Bored to Death. His essays are very short and very direct. There’s almost no commentary and he just narrates the events. The approach of leaving room for not knowing is very noticeable in his work, as he often qualifies his observations with humility and openness. The work comes across as very tender as a result. Irby is laugh-out-loud funny. I don’t know how she does it but she has a way of sending herself up and making fun of herself and her limitations that is both funny and painful at the same time. Commercialism, body positivity, and personal achievement are only some of the themes that are explored through that lens of self-effacement. Her ability to put herself under the most lacerating gaze of the authorial microscope and coming out the other end of that examination as a strong individual is unparalleled. I consider this volume must-reading material. In terms of exquisite construction and intelligence I would have to put Sedaris up high on the list, though his work is popular enough and his collections prodigious enough that his reputation for that kind of writing needs no further illustration here.

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Virginia Woolf is popular as an essayist for collections published much earlier than Moments of Being, such as The London Scene. The essays here are actually very raw and unedited and so very sprawling, though obviously of high literary quality. She wrote them down like diary entries and then they were found after her death. They feel similarly to McCarthy’s essays in their naked observations of early childhood and family life. Juxtaposing this collection with DFW’s Consider the Lobster is a bold choice on my part, but it’s for the purpose of elucidating my previous point about that delicate “lean-to-fat” ratio I spoke about earlier in this blog post. Woolf’s posthumous collection is “all fat,” one could say, in that her focus is almost exhaustively on her own life and personal upbringing and subsequent marriage. These essays are basically memoir writing in the guise of the personal essay. DFW’s essays, by way of intense contrast, are almost “all lean,” in the sense that he spends almost no time talking about his personal life. The closest he gets to that is his essay on 9/11 where he goes over the details of where he was when it happened. The rest are what you’d expect from the author: penetrating accounts of the subtleties and hidden motivations of the cultures and people he investigates. He is basically like the most intelligent wartime journalist where his “wars” are the John McCain presidential campaign of 2000, the AVN Awards Ceremony, or the Maine Lobster festival.

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I have yet to read these collections but I’m very much looking forward to them. Hemon’s essays are about his upbringing in the war-plagued Balkans of the Nineties and subsequent emigration to the US. Didion’s basically needs no introduction as its de rigeur for essay writing. I’ve included Benjamin’s because of his critical insight. He’s not writing about his personal life, but his gifts for analysis will be really helpful to be exposed to for anyone undertaking the task of writing a personal essay. I have not included a picture of Susan Sontag’s collection Against Interpretation because it’s on order, but that one is also on deck. As are two other collections not pictured: Mary Oliver’s Upstream and Rebecca Solnit’s Hope in the Dark.

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dweetwise · 4 years ago

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I feel like Doctor/Hillbilly is so niche but I really love the ship atm, may I rq some hcs of them mayb? 😔💕

[oo this is a rarepair if i’ve ever sen one! hope you like because i definitely got carried away!]

getting together fluff, some nsfw mentions at the end!

Herman X Max headcanons

Max has always admired the more authoritative killers, like Evan and Herman, while Herman has always mostly ignored Max. Herman is kind of a snob in that he values intelligence above all else, and just brushed Max off as an uneducated, well, hillbilly

Max isn’t stupid and is desperate to prove himself to Herman. This causes him to awkwardly approach the older man and request that he “Show Max how to make ‘em gennies sparkle an’ go boom”

Herman raises an eyebrow. The kid wants to learn how to overcharge a generator? It’s not an easy task and took Herman several weeks to perfect. Herman promises to get back to him later, causing a disappointed Max to wander off

Herman writes a numbered step-by-step idiot-proof guide to learning the technique, even throwing in a few rough sketches of the machines in case Max doesn’t know what some of the terms mean

When he finds Max and gives him the instructions with a smug grin, Max’s whole face lights up, until he looks at the papers and his smile drops into a disappointed frown. “Is something the matter?” Herman asks, prepared to give the young man a stern lecture for questioning his hard work. “Ah well, this ‘s mighty fine of ya Her--err, sir! Thanks!” Max drawls nervously before sprinting off with the papers

Herman doesn’t see Max for the next few days and assumes the scatter-brained youth gave up on learning altogether. He’s in the middle of complaining to Philip about Max squandering all his efforts, when Philip points out a crucial fact, “You know Max can’t read, right?”, and Herman feels like smacking himself in the face for not thinking of the possibility sooner

Herman swallows his pride and ventures to Coldwind farm to teach Max his technique the old-fashioned way, expecting to find the young man moping in a corner somewhere or perhaps making stick animals or whatever it is hillbillies do

Instead, he finds Max by the generator in the shed, hunched over and tinkering with the machine with papers scattered about the entire floor. “Hiya Herman!” Max greets him enthusiastically, wiping his oily hands on his overalls

“Max, what are you doing? What are these?” Herman questions and glances at the papers

“I did it! Look!” Max exclaims and gives the generator a solid kick, short-circuiting it and causing it to spark violently. “I uhh--I couldn’t read ya book, so I look’d at tha pictures ya drew an looked inside a genny to see wha I was s’posed ta do,” Max explains, gesturing to a pile of papers next to him where he’s--Herman inhales sharply in surprise--drawn pages upon pages of mechanical diagrams of the machines, pinpointing the exact locations the kick will impact!?

Herman is at a loss for words, completely taken aback by the other man’s resourcefulness and technical skill. He sees Max looking at him nervously, clearly awaiting some sort of response from his tutor. “Excellent work, boy. Would you like to accompany me in my next generator experiment?” Herman compliments and Max goes beet red and shuffles his feet awkwardly. “Tha’ would be mighty fine, sir.” Max mumbles

Max starts spending a lot of time in Herman’s office, assisting him with any research that requires a knack for machinery. Herman often visits Max’s tool shed in the farm, where they test many of his ideas and Max tinkers with the generator to troubleshoot for or fix any failures

Herman, recognizing and impressed by Max’s potential, demands the younger learn how to read so he can further participate in the research. Max is giddy at the prospect, but after a couple of disastrous attempts Herman admits he’s a lousy teacher and bribes Sally to teach Max by offering the redhead unlimited access to his office

Max is happy and making great progress with his reading, and Herman feels a strange sort of pride for his protege. That’s why it takes him completely by surprise when one day, Max decides to kiss him out of the blue. Herman pulls the man off of him and demands answers. “Just what do you think you’re doing!?” he asks sternly. “S-sorry! ‘S just, me an’ Sally were readin’ them books a-an I thought ‘s what people do, like them fellas Heathcliff an’ Cath’rine--”

“Of course Sally has you read that fictional garbage over the anatomy books I provided,” Herman sighs and runs a hand over his face in exasperation. “’M sorry Herman, Sally said ‘s what people do when ‘ey luv some’un,” Max explains, shuffling awkwardly. “Hold on. Love? Me?” Herman asks, voice uncharacteristically breaking into an even higher octave from the shock. Of all the stupid things--

“Ya! I luv ya,” Max says without hesitation, beaming. “And you want to kiss... me,” Herman clarifies, trying to wrap his head around this sudden turn of events. “Already did. An’ I wanna kiss ya more an’ do naughty things with ya in a hayloft,” Max cheerily remarks. Herman feels his brain short-circuit from the implications coming out of his seemingly innocent apprentice’s mouth. “Come ‘un, I ain’t dumb, I know wha Evan ‘n Phil dis’pear in tha woods fer,” Max grins with a slight blush.

Herman’s always been a quick thinker, so he manages to run through all possible outcomes of this scenario in his head. It’s stupid. He should reject Max. But he can’t say that he’s not intrigued, and seeing the kid’s enthusiasm... Herman finally just shakes his head fondly and allows himself to lean into Max’s personal space. “I know you’re anything but dumb, kid. I also don’t think you know what you’re getting yourself into,” he can’t suppress a dark chuckle, half expecting the younger to feel intimidated--

“Try me, pops,” Max challenges instead, grinning. “That’s it you little shit--” Herman has the time to give an idle threat before Max’s laughing mouth shuts him up with a kiss

It’s not the most healthy relationship as there’s a clear power imbalance but Herman is kind of a narcissist and gets off on it. Though he does genuinely care about Max, he’s not gentle and you’ll never hear him use the phrase “Are you sure?”

Max loves being praised both inside and outside the bedroom. Herman is stingy with his compliments, only giving them when he’s genuinely impressed, which makes them all the more special to Max

Max has a daddy kink ok I don’t make the rules. He doesn’t realize it and probably doesn’t even know what it means, but Herman is perceptive. When he takes a gander and urges Max to call him ‘daddy’ during one of their trysts he doesn’t expect it to do much of anything, but hearing his lover cry out the word and almost spill himself makes him realize it’s a control thing and now he’s very much on board

Herman tops at first, but once he sees Max’s enthusiasm and the younger learns to channel his energy, they fall into a habit of Max topping. Herman discovers himself to be a bit of a power bottom and begrudgingly admits that Max fucks better than him, making Max’s confidence soar

The other killers quickly find out about their relationship because Max can’t shut up about his adoration of Herman. They get some snide comments from the Legion brats and a blushing Amanda threatening Max to “Stop oversharing your fucking sex life or I’ll reverse beartrap your dick”, but nobody seems to really care what they do behind closed doors--with the exception of one

Evan is pissed, being somewhat of a father figure to Max and 1000% ready to bash in Herman’s skull for seemingly taking advantage of the younger, impressionable man. Max is upset a the accusations, Herman pretends to give a shit about Evan’s opinion because of Max, and eventually Philip and Sally have to get involved to calm Evan down, vouching for Herman’s non-sinister intentions and Max’s ability to make his own decisions

[i came up with max’s personality on the fly but i kind of love him now?? also i don’t know how old herman is but i always hc max as early twenties at most so have some age difference on the side]

#dbd headcanons #herman carter #max thompson jr #dbd doctor #dbd hillbilly #doctor x hillbilly #dbd #dead by daylight #request #dweetwrites

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its-jijii · 5 years ago

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bsd character traits

howdy. idk how to start this. okay recently have been analyzing characters and,, i realized that most characters in bsd have traits (mainly one) that are blown rlly out of proportion. no spoilers below the cut i just don’t want to spam dashboards with longass posts 😩

so. a lot of bsd characters can be incredibly simplified and easy to explain. most characters that i can think of have a certain personality trait or something that makes up a lot of their character? for instance, i can say some of these traits and you’d be able to point to a certain character. childish and arrogant. happy and optimistic. obsessive and stalkerish.

ranpo, kenji, and higuchi. it’s like that for most characters, though. most of these traits are normal, or their causes are normal (such as higuchi’s “obsessive” behavior likely being a result of some mix of anxiety and idolization). anxiety and idolizing is okay and normal and moderation, but those traits are combined and amplified, which makes up a large portion of higuchi’s characterization. being optimistic is pretty normal,,, but kenji’s character is centered around being incredibly happy.

now this isn’t to say that this is a flaw in character design, or that it makes characters flat or boring. rather, i think it’s a pretty neat and interesting writing on asagiri’s part. y'know that post that’s like “if you can recognize a character by their outline, you know that it’s a good character design” or something like that,, yeah i think it's kinda like that but in writing instead of drawing? if you can write down a list of traits and think of certain bsd characters, then you’ve got a lot of the character covered already.

that isn’t to say that these traits are all that a character is, but mainly how they’re characterized and viewed. of course there is more to these characters, but if you were trying to summarize something, it’s very easy to simplify things to those traits. i think of this kind of like taking a character at face value.

looking at a character’s dominant trait(s) and mainly associating that with them seems like taking their (entire) character at face value. and i don’t think that’s necessarily always a bad thing! but i think it’s also important to look past those fronting traits and see smaller parts of the character, or the reason characters are that way. looking past dazai’s intense suicidal character and secrecy, you find that he can be manipulative. looking past alcott’s intense anxiety, you’ll see that she is actually very intelligent and capable, but those traits are mainly covered up by her “face value” trait.

then, there’s the matter of how strange or abnormal these traits are. honestly at first, tanizaki or kenji didn’t stand out as “extreme” anything,,, that i think is bc asagiri does a good job at making some things subtle and weave perfectly into their character. some stuff, like akutagawa’s intense desire for approval and determination, can’t really be missed. tanizaki may seem like an all over kind of moderate character, but i think that it just happens to be that his “extremes” are more normalized or hidden.

for instance, tanizaki seems pretty anxious. mainly noticed this in his first appearance where he was pretending to be a bomber- bouncing his leg, apologizing thoroughly afterwards and making sure atsushi was okay, etc. seemed like he was having some anxieties over the matter. this stuff is pretty normal given the situation, and in smaller amounts is normal. the situation definitely made those actions seem more situational and less like a part of tanizaki’s character.

there’s also tanizaki’s hidden extreme, which is his obsession and protectiveness of his sister (which i also wrote about a bit). again, loving and being protective of someone, especially a sibling, is pretty normal. but with bsd, it seems like these normal traits are just,, blown out of proportion? suddenly they’re very intense, very extreme, and you tend to associate those traits with the character afterwards.

kenji’s “extreme” would be his optimism and happiness, which again doesn’t seem like an extreme, likely cause it isn’t bad. unlike negative traits like possessiveness or being gloomy, happiness when amplified doesn’t stand out that much. extreme possessiveness or antisocial behavior definitely stands out more. kenji’s happiness is simply a part of his character, and it seems like it's more like “him” than an attribute he has. he doesn’t have happiness, he is happy. really fuckin happy. kind of alarmingly happy?? i’m scared of him but that’s for another post.

anyway uhhh now that i’ve kinda talked about the traits and why they do or don’t stand out, i’m gonna just. do a list thing. with everyone’s traits. yes. i’m sorry this is gonna be rlly fucking long,, this is everyone’s “extremes” and maybe why. also this order is coming straight off the wiki sorry in advance 🥳 not including smaller side characters (office assistants, elise, and herman melville)

ada

atsushi - he’s kind of complicated but atsushi seems like a mix of extreme anxiety, desire to prove himself/do good, and babey. he’s absolute babey. most of this is due to past abuse in the orphanage. some of his smaller traits include fear of pain/death, bravery, and kindness. sometimes these traits contradict each other which is why i say he’s complicated. while afraid of pain and death, his desire to prove himself pushes him into brave and risky acts. while he is generally kind and he wants to do good for others, that sometimes means being brutally honest or pushy. (see: interactions w/ aku, especially in cannibalism arc)

dazai - extremely suicidal and fake (fake happiness/outgoingness). mainly, though, is his over the top suicidal ideation. he is incredibly suicidal, and if asked to point out the most suicidal character in bsd, there’s a very clear answer: the suicide maniac. dazai is also one of the incredible geniuses in the series, which surfaces quite often. some of his smaller traits that i said earlier would be that he’s manipulative, a liar, and insensitive. personally i think these are some of his most intense traits, but it also seems like he’s one of the characters taken at “face value”, with these other traits overlooked due to his excessive suicidal ideation/being eccentric. i could ramble more but i will save my dazai shit-talking for my other analysis. oh and i say that his faking expressions is different from lying. one is purposefully being deceitful for personal gain, where faking an emotion/reaction is simply to hide one’s true feelings.

kunikida - extremely strict and idealistic. heavily imposes his standards on not just himself, but everyone around him. can make him easily angered. some of his less evident traits are fear of failure and sadness over not being able to save people. his fear of failure can be hidden by his strict and confident nature. he also tends to act very neutral and unaffected when discussing past failures (usually people dying), which gives off an uncaring attitude. contrary to that, though, kunikida cares a lot! while it’s somewhat unclear as to why kunikida is so set on his morals, it may be his way of dealing with perfectionism issues and fear of doing things incorrectly. if all that is supposed to be done and all of his beliefs are written in his notebook, it is easier to stay to a strict schedule.

ranpo - childish and arrogant. i could leave it at that because that's 90% of him but i won’t. ranpo’s inflated ego was likely born from some kind of entitlement (im sorry that sounds mean let me make amends). with him being a great detective and the ADA being founded for him likely contributed to him having a great feeling of importance and intelligence. honestly that’s understandable though, he is a respectable genius. underneath those domineering traits are strong desires for praise, to fit in, and some motivation issues. ranpo really wants to believe that he is gifted, as he would feel like the odd one out if he didn’t have one. he will do anything for fukuzawa’s praise, which is probably linked to some childhood issues. lastly, his motivation- it’s connected to his tendency to find everything boring, and if something is boring, it isn’t worth his time.

yosano - sadistic and dominant. this sounds like weird bedroom shit but i swear it isn’t. mainly, the sadism comes to light when she’s using her ability or when she’s fighting- both which include her using weapons on other people. her domineering personality is also not always evident, as she is able to talk with a calm front if the situation needs it, mainly in civilized ADA meetings. otherwise, yosano will get intense and competitive, with an underlying desire to win. to some degree i think this aggression comes from wanting to stay in her position in life- she worked to get there, and she won’t back down from anything that may challenge or disrupt that.

kenji - overly happy and trustworthy. this is pretty clear from looking at him, but again doesn’t stand out that much,, it’s an extreme, but it’s an extreme feeling rather than mindset/goal. his happiness also doesn’t hurt anyone, so it’s less noticeable when he’s working with others- it often won’t affect them, aside from perhaps encouraging them or cheering them up. kenji is also, as we have seen, too trusting. he believes that trusting others is a good thing that will always lead to a good outcome. since this is an extreme belief rather than a feeling, it’s projected on his surroundings a bit more. i can’t explain any of his underlying traits or causes as we don’t know a ton about him :<

fukuzawa - kinda tough to say, but i guess extremely calm and protective? i wanted to say emotionless but he definitely has emotions, he just conceals them very well. rather, he tends to stay calm in almost every situation, no matter how bad it looks. he is also very protective of the detective agency and yokohama as a whole. underneath the mask, fukuzawa is caring- he literally never shows it, but i’ve never seen him scold someone, get mad, or punish someone (except post-cannibalism, but that wasn’t bad). he often looks angry but isn’t really, nor is he super strict. his past is still a bit too unknown for me to guess at why he’s like this.

tanizaki - extremely..... protective......... i just wrote about this ik but yeah uh. tanizaki is protective to the point it’s scary and he’s a danger to others. aside from that, tanizaki often seems very anxious, though he’s usually quite subtle about it. like i said earlier, it usually blends into the situation- if he’s in danger, of course he’s anxious. but, it seems that even when the danger has passed, he has lingering worries about whatever just occurred (getting scared at the mention of yosano’s treatment, desperately trying to find a way around punishment for disobeying fukuzawa). i feel like there’s more but my mind is blanking sorry y’all 😰

kyouka - emotionless? again she definitely has emotions, but similar to fukuzawa, rarely ever shows them. mainly what i mean by this is that she has a very underwhelming reaction to everything. if in danger, she won’t hesitate to do whatever, even if it’s violent, all without an expression. when bad stuff happens, she also doesn’t react much, unless atsushi is in danger or smth. one underlying extreme fear she has is being “evil” i guess? or just fearing the mafia. she absolutely doesn’t want to go back to the mafia, would rather die than kill again, and often has openly fearful reactions when faced with mafia members. her lack of fear and blank expression is probably a result of being desensitized to violence and also bad trauma from the mafia B(

katai - tired and isolated. seeing as how katai literally works from his futon, it’s safe to say that he enjoys sleeping and to some degree is lazy. he doesn’t really do anything, which also is a part of his isolation. i wouldn’t say antisocial behaviors since he isn’t aggressive, but basically he avoids social interactions like the plague. he never leaves his house, is horrible at talking to people, and is completely fine being cooped up in a small space for a week with no human contact. i’m sure people enjoy their alone time and sitting in bed.... but uhhhh....... yeah literally living in bed for a week with the only human contact being having take out dropped off? kinda extreme. his less evident trait goes hand in hand with social isolation- anxiety, or more specifically, social anxiety. what we mainly see of katai is during the small pre-cannibalism arc, which also shows his social anxiety. had the chapter not included going outside and interacting with girls, it would likely be unnoticeable. he is comfortable at home and doesn’t have that much of an issue with facing people and talking to them. however, he was very awkward in his interactions with higuchi (talking to her and pointing another way), as well as not knowing how to confess his love for gin.

akutagawa - i’m so sorry in advance, akutagawa’s is rlly long bc he is kinda just. extreme. so uh, desire to get praise/prove himself, and few but extreme emotions. akutagawa’s most defining trait is his obsession with being acknowledged by dazai. unfortunately, it doesn’t end there- his very character extreme, a constant black and white fluctuation with no gray in between. there isn’t much of a spectrum with him, as it will be all or nothing. this applies to his view of others, view on the world, himself, his emotions, and actions.

his emotions have been stated to be none at all, or intense anger/hatred and deep respect. his view of others seems to also be on opposite ends of the spectrum. either he likes them & respects them deeply, or he despises them. i can’t think of anyone who is in a neutral zone with him,, maybe he’s indifferent about some people, but i believe the majority of people fall into those two categories. then there are his actions, which are overly brutal even in the mafia. he uses excessive force and slaughter, aiming for flashy crimes to get dazai’s attention.

his view on the world doesn’t fluctuate as much, instead seeming to be fixated in one view- the world is cruel and harsh, and there are weak people and strong people. to him, the natural order of things is that the weak must die to make way for the strong. he also applies himself to a similar belief- either he is stronger, better, and more capable than everyone else, or he is weak, a failure, and would rather die than face defeat. extreme!

mori - lack of impulse control and being an organized mess. by organized mess i mean that he thinks a lot, is smart, and leads the mafia,, buut he also seems not the best at some tasks (darts. professionalism. being a doctor?? didn’t he lose his medical license?) mori’s bad impulse control can be tied into his disarray kinda. this is hard to word but it’s kind of like when he’s presented with an issue, he immediately and casually defaults onto an extreme solution (three way war? okay let’s kill the president of the ada!) while i’m sure these things have been thought out beforehand, it’s his sheer wack presentation of things that make him look immature, irresponsible, and kinda bad at his job.

chuuya - loyalty and irritability/aggression. while i do not believe we have seen the extent of his loyalty, it is worth noting that even after four years he trusts dazai with his life, despite dazai being a dishonest and irresponsible bastard. not trustworthy imo, but chuuya’s lingering feelings of loyalty do hold out. though not full trust and likely expecting something to go wrong, he still ends up trusting dazai. otherwise, chuuya is shown to be very loyal to the mafia, going measures to make sure dazai wouldn’t frame him to get kicked out. then there’s his irritability and aggression,, he’s shown to easily get angry and start fights with little provocation. some underlying(?) traits are his confidence (and sometimes arrogance), and his uhh,, diplomatic abilities?? idk what to call it, but if needed, he will calm down and focus to talk things out and make deals. most of these traits i believe can be linked to his old gang and possibly how they treated him due to his status as a powerful ability user. some of these also don’t seem extreme- he’s not extremely diplomatic, after all. buut these traits strongly contrast each other to make the switch more evident and dramatic.

higuchi - obsessive and stalkerish behaviors. personally i believe that this behaviors are rooted in a mixture of anxiety, loyalty, and idolization. i don’t know that higuchi has explained her infatuation with akutagawa, but it’s likely that she just admires him a lot. she also is shown to have a crush on him, which leads to the ideas that she’s obsessive and stalkerish. while i don’t deny those behaviors, i think that they’re mainly loyalty and anxiety dependent on idolization- except blown out of proportion and so extreme that she seems like a stalker. as she is loyal and deeply respects akutagawa, she also cares for him and his well-being considerably, as shown by the many times she interjects when his health is at risk. she is very, very anxious about his health, which likely is the cause for some of her obsessive behaviors (following him everywhere, trying to assist him constantly even when he says no, risking her life for him, etc). however, some isn’t all, so some of her stalkerish behaviors are genuinely rooted in a crush. but again it seems like this crush is just rlly fuckin extreme which is why she’s so persistent and radical in her attempts to help him/win him over.

kajii - curiosity. idk that this one needs a lot of explaining? his main focuses of curiosity are of god and science, but alone i don’t believe those things are extreme obsessions- he isn’t shown to praise god religiously (haha) like a certain someone, and obsession with science is already a kind of fixation on learning and curiosity, even outside of bsd. the entire concept of science is the study of the unknown. curiosity is a necessity if you are to be interested in science; its basis is observing, creating hypotheses, designing experiments, and then testing said hypotheses several times before compiling results and data into a conclusion. kajii’s fascination with experimenting is rooted in his desire to observe what happens, gather results, and learn from the experience. he is inherently curious about many things, but yes, most notably science and god. as for why..... no clue tbh.

kouyou - it’s kind of a control thing, whether it be with controlling/leading people, or being in control of tasks/responsibilities. there’s also a protective nature displayed, most notably of kyouka. in that sense, kouyou demands an amount of control over people and situations to execute action. her appearance also gives the impression that she is very specific and selective with her attire and how she presents herself- choices she has made, not mandated by anyone else. kouyou holds the position of one of the mafia’s five executives, and there’s nothing really to suggest that she is a bad leader or that she abuses her power.

while sometimes misguided and blinded by her own experiences, kouyou’s intentions are often to protect, help, and teach, which are not bad at all. her execution of these could be worked on, but at heart she is trying to do good. currently this intense protective nature is fixed on kyouka, though it is alluded that there may have been a somewhat similar relationship with chuuya. as for why she is this way, she has already explained it with her past relationship in which her lover was killed while trying to escape with her. she doesn’t want that to happen again to those she loves.

q - he’s a mix of stuff, but mainly intense switches in mood/mindset and chaos. there’s also an underlying desire to be loved and to be not used, or “cursed”. q holds the belief that his ability is a curse that he never asked for (understandably), and has expressed that he wishes that he wasn’t forced to use his ability. paired with this wish to not be used is his wish for love- while never explicitly stated by him, he reacted very badly to being told that god is real but doesn’t love him. however, he probably wishes for more than just god’s love. q’s intense loneliness and wishing for someone to care for him can likely be attributed to the fact that he is only 14, has no friends, and seemingly spends all of his time locked up somewhere in the port mafia dungeons because he’s too dangerous.

on the more evident side, q has extreme mood switches; he can bounce back and forth in between not wanting to hurt anyone or use his ability and then hating everyone and cursing everyone. his expression of these emotions are usually extreme, too- crying, sobbing, and begging can morph quickly into screaming, howling, and cursing others. these mood swings and hatred for others can also be attributed to his status in the mafia. it’s only natural for him to hate people when he only sees himself being used. his ability also is on the extreme side. both in what it is (mind control) and how it’s triggered (someone hurting him) speaks lengths of exactly how extreme his ability is. another smaller extreme that just occurred to me is his pain tolerance. he can be seen joyously causing intense injuries to himself which indicates that smaller and self-inflicted injuries are completely manageable for him.

oda - oda is weirdly like the opposite of what this post is about. there’s nothing really extreme about oda, unless you want to say he’s extremely bland? (i’m sorry hear me out) the entire thing with oda is his lack of emotions or opinions, and while i’m certain he has them, he very rarely expresses them. fun fact but he literally never smiled the entire dark era?? even with the kids 😭 okay but other than his extreme... lack of expressing feelings and opinions.. i think he’s very protective/concerned for others. he of course cares extremely about the orphans in his care, and he also cares for ango and dazai. i think that it can be said that oda’s main extreme is his fucking uh,, adopting orphan children. cause if i’m not mistaken he adopts like 15 kids in beast. he’s a serial orphan adopter. as for why, i don’t rlly know. i can guess that his stoic nature is some mix of trust issues and desensitized reactions to death/killing. under all that he’s strongly dedicated to his goals and future (caring for the kids and writing his novel).

hirotsu - honestly. not sure. he’s actually not that extreme. but, to me, his “face value” traits would be that he’s uptight and overly dedicated to tasks, though not to the extent that kunikida is. he was shown to harp on tachihara for being a few minutes late, killed an entire warehouse of people for stealing from the mafia, and tended to take successfully playing dazai’s video game a bit too serious, as he very formally apologized to dazai for his failure. he also seems to be dedicated to the task of supporting yokohama as best as he can, as he stays loyal and productive in the mafia even at his age. i would say that he’s loyal for staying that long (and he is), but he’s not extremely loyal, as he is shown doing random favors for dazai. however, these favors are usually to help support yokohama, so i guess he’s extremely..... uh supportive and trusting?? idk man hirotsu is just not that intense. intensely mysterious and cryptic maybe.

gin - though not exactly a character trait, gin is selectively mute. selective mutism, though normally a childhood anxiety disorder, can persist in late teens and adulthood. most likely, gin is mute by choice- and selective mutism is on the more severe end of the anxiety spectrum. while normal anxiety could cause someone to be shy, anxiety around others that’s so intense that the person can’t speak? yeah. there are, of course, other causes, but based on her interactions with others, it can be inferred that she chooses to stay silent out of fear or anxiety. she is capable of talking in select situations, and she can talk normally to some people. otherwise, she stays silent mostly, which makes her most outstanding trait her muteness. otherwise we haven’t seen enough to say if she has any other extremes. i also don’t have a definitive reason for why she’s mute.

tachihara - tachihara is another character with not many extreme aspects. what stands out most to me is probably his punk and carefree attitude. while he does easily get angry and violent, he can be just as quick to dismiss it if the situation calls for it. he is shown to be a bit more relaxed than his fellow mafia members, and he seems more into having fun with his job than being proper about things. his appearance also gives off vibes of a punk kid with an attitude, probably a mixture of kinda-spiky light hair, loose shirt, and weird fluffy cropped jacket. his attitude and appearance screams laid back to me. plus he dual wields in a weirdly casual way? he doesn’t have two guns to make his shots count and take on more enemies, he has two guns because he’s trigger happy and doesn’t care how bad his aim is. with two guns you don’t need good aim, you’ll eventually hit your target 😎 not enough known about him to say why he’s like this.

ace - not a lot is known about him since he existed for like two chapters BUT. ace is shown to be very greedy and ambitious. he frequently lies and plots to backstab others. if he’s an “extreme” anything, he’s an extreme snake, liar, and manipulative bastard. he also has extremely slimy vibes but that’s probably just me associating all liars and manipulators into super slimy feels. as for why,, yeah no idea? he’s just extremely greedy and willing to step on whoever to get what he wants. that seems to be it though.

the guild

fitzgerald - extreme greed and determination. fitzgerald, while already wealthy, seems to seek more wealth at all times. even if it looks like he is bargaining, offering a large amount of money for something, or even randomly gifting people, he has an ulterior motive. fitzgerald is a businessman and would not strike deals unless they were ultimately profitable for him in the long run. his greed can sometimes be subtle or played off as something “good”, such as when he confronted that one businessman. the businessman admitted to the crime, attempted to pay off fitzgerald into silence, but was backstabbed in the end as fitzgerald provided evidence against him to the court despite the money given.

another one of fitzgerald’s biggest traits is his persistent and determined nature. he is shown to not give up on his goals, no matter what the cost is. he wants to revive his daughter and help his wife? then he has no issues invading a foreign country, waging a gifted war against their gifted organizations, and willingly cursed ⅕ of yokohama with q’s ability, despite the fact that they were all innocent bystanders. as he stated, he was willing to raze yokohama to the ground to get the book. when defeated, it took a bit to convince him to try again, but once he decided to go for success again, it was almost simple for him to regain his status and wealth.

as for why he is so greedy, that isn’t really touched on or explained. his determination and independence can be chalked up to his “rules of success” or whatever. some of his underlying extremities could be social incompetence/ignorance, which honestly kind of makes up a lot of his character? beneath the absolute rich boy is an absolute ignorant rich boy. he seemed to struggle to understand why nathaniel felt responsible for mitchell. he also talks to alcott very flippantly despite her nervous reactions to him (and frequently ignores her warning to not follow dangerous plans). he doesn’t know what it’s like being poor, seen when he just walked into another person’s room in a hotel, thinking that he also owned that room.

montgomery - extremely playful and eager. the eagerness and playfulness kind of go hand in hand, as she is very excitable and loves to use her ability to mess with people and play games. this is evident in how over the top her speech is and how emphasized her actions are (the creepy big smile, her gesturing & clapping, etc.) her eagerness is mainly focused on winning and catching people in her game. these actions tend to blend into her character more than an intensified trait. an underlying strong desire is her desperation to fit in and have a place to belong, which is tied into her over-eagerness to win and do well. this is a result of her upbringing in an orphanage where she was unwanted. having no place to call home, she has fixated on creating a place where she can stay and fit in with others; particularly with other ability users, as she was outcast for having an ability when no one else did.

steinbeck - though not as extreme as some other traits, steinbeck is above average in attributes like determination and a lack of empathy for strangers. his determination, for lack of a better word, will be used more as an umbrella term for his loyalty, thoroughness, and efficiency in his work. when needed, he will finish tasks assigned quickly and without skipping details. he is good at sticking to plans or an order and does his job well. despite disagreeing with fitzgerald’s ambitions and methods, he stays with the guild and even plans to lead it after its fall. his motivations are also rooted in his love and loyalty to his family. however, his intense thoroughness and determination also seems to lead to decreased empathy for others. he willingly went with the emergency plan, despite his ability causing q to curse ⅕ of innocent civilians in yokohama. he was also ready to sacrifice haruno and naomi for the purpose of fulfilling his mission. an underlying (and not as intense) trait is how laid back and casual he is. despite his jobs being cruel and sacrificing others, he does it easily and with a smile.

lovecraft - very very tired. being tired sometimes is normal if you didn’t sleep well, but lovecraft is constantly exhausted and on the verge of falling asleep. basically every scene with him includes him talking about how tired he is, or how much he wants to sleep. there were also instances of him briefly falling asleep in inappropriate scenes, such as when kunikida shot him and during the fight with dazai and chuuya. after the guild fell and his contract with fitzgerald expired, he immediately jumped into the ocean to sleep. aside from being incredibly tired, lovecraft has a few other feelings (though not as severe): being hungry and feeling anxious. hunger isn’t mentioned as much as being tired, nor is his anxiety; however, lovecraft has expressed that he feels anxious around people, as he never really interacts with them or goes out in public. before he was in japan with steinbeck, he apparently hadn’t been outside in four years. another extreme shut in! a bonus thing that we don’t know much about, but lovecraft seems to be bound to contracts he makes; even if he wants to do something else, he must “fulfill [his] contract”. assuming that he has no choice but to do what the contract requires, once he signs a contract, that’s a very powerful thing going on.

hawthorne - well uh. incredibly religious, and extremely dedicated/loyal. the religious part is arguably the biggest part of his character; he is a pastor, dresses like one, carries around a bible, and uses his rosary to activate his ability (which takes the form of verses from the bible). his purpose in life, and in the guild, is to pass on judgement to sinners and punish them. it is his strongest motivator, and he mainly spends his time speaking to god, reading the bible, and deciding how to use his ability to follow god’s will. all religion related- he’s incredibly dedicated. he is also loyal to margaret mitchell, to the point that it diverted him from god. his desire to save her and help restore her honor was also a big thing for him; eventually, this goal overtook following religion, which is a considerable achievement. i say that it overtook religion because he began working with fyodor in order to help mitchell- that was a mistake, as he currently is brainwashed into following fyodor’s orders without ever thinking on his own. he is no longer using his ability to follow his life’s work and to follow god. more underlying traits of his include arrogance and a lack of expressions. basically, doesn’t express much, though his tone tends to be arrogant a lot of the time.

mitchell - with much unknown about her and little screen time, it’s a bit difficult to peg any extremes she has; however, she does possess a lot of arrogance that affects several aspects of her life. first and foremost, this arrogance tends to interfere with her relationships. mitchell is quick to start fights over petty things, automatically placing herself above others and asserting it quite forcefully. secondly, her arrogance disrupts how she acts and perceives others. as stated before, she believes herself to be above everyone else. however, beyond simply stating that, mitchell complains about having to do work when she believes that she is above that, too. she thinks that everyone else should be doing the work, and was shown to get angry at hawthorne when he wasn’t giving orders on the ship. another instance of this arrogance is her severely underestimating enemies, and becoming in critical danger as a result. a less noticeable trait is her honor, sort of? though it seems similar to her arrogance and inflated ego, mitchell is obsessed with restoring honor to her family, to the point that she would risk her life for it.

poe - hoo boy. poe has a few extremes: severe social anxiety/isolation, competitiveness, and a self esteem issue (sort of). poe faced ranpo in a battle of wits some time in the past, and when defeated, apparently fell into a deep depression. normally, someone would accept their failure and move on, but poe instead gained a lot of self-doubt and negative emotions. to recover from that fall, he became obsessed with facing off with ranpo again and winning. he is extremely dedicated and competitive, as he prepared to face ranpo again for six fuckin years. he is stated to be reclusive and shy, talking quietly and hiding his face with his hair. his profile says he dislikes noisy crowds and “being invited to a party and ignored by the only person he knows”. in short, he is not one for socializing or being the center of attention.

some of his underlying traits are his mood swings or conflicting feelings about others. though they aren’t super severe, it is worth noting that it happens quite frequently- he was confident when facing ranpo, then switched to a very depressed and sullen mood when ranpo didn’t recognize him. he was happy when he believed he beat ranpo- again, quickly transformed to intense disappointment and feeling of defeat when he realized that he lost. his conflicting feelings of others is mainly evident in his weird relationship with ranpo. he appears excited and overjoyed to watch ranpo use super deduction, but when asked if he was a fan, replied that they were rivals. when he trapped chuuya and ranpo in the book, he laughed in delight at potentially trapping and winning against ranpo in this way. immediately after, he was struck with the possibility of ranpo actually dying in the book, to which he got quiet and a bit scared about.

twain - another character with a lot of arrogance? but also a lot of excited reactions and constantly looking to mess around and have fun. he is shown to be very laid back and casual about his job, not getting disappointed when faced with defeat; rather, he laughs in excitement about someone being talented enough to escape his sniping. most scenes with him include inappropriate bouts of jokes and requests to engage in silly activities. however, he dislikes being ignored or left behind, so he tends to go with the flow anyway. more regarding his arrogance; twain believes his ability and talent to be great. his last appearance includes him commenting on how he is going to go home and finish writing his autobiography. not much is known about him, so it’s unclear why he is significant enough to write a book about. plus, his likes list himself and praise as the first two. a less evident trait of his, referenced in his likes and dislikes, is what he likes to do. sniping, of course, seems to be his favorite- this is likely because he likes adventure (and probably dangerous tasks/jobs), and dislikes plain or boring work. he likely gets bored easily, similar to ranpo, and needs an engaging and interesting task to entertain him.

alcott - most obviously, alcott has severe anxiety, though mainly it’s related to the social aspects of her life. this timidness and fear of talking to others dominates most of her character, and when thinking of alcott, the first thought that comes to mind is “oh, that really anxious and shy tactician.” alcott, for an unknown reason, relies heavily on approval from others, mainly fitzgerald. she has low self esteem, which also contributes to her fear of talking to strangers; she will run and hide if other people confront her. she only seems to feel more comfortable with fitzgerald, her boss, and poe, her fellow shy writer friend. other than her anxiety, alcott is also incredibly intelligent. it’s overshadowed by her “face value” trait, but is still very prominent. her work as a tactician means that she plans, but even her plans are the epitome of intense. using her ability allows her to write packets of potential outcomes to situations she really has no way of predicting. she also writes what to do should certain problems arise, though her cautious nature appears again as she often strongly recommends that fitzgerald does nothing.

the rats/decay of angels

fyodor - fyodor is another kind of tough one, but i’d say that it’s a mix of intelligence and composed attitude. another character with a very limited range of emotions- iirc there was one time he looked surprised, occasionally looks annoyed or confused, sometimes smiles, but mostly has no expression at all. he has dulled reactions to external stimuli, similar to kyouka, and likely hides his reactions or feelings like fukuzawa. one thing that is known, however, is that he is one of the genius characters and that he is constantly plotting and thinking. while he may not react to things happening around them, i am sure he notices them, takes them into account, and sometimes incorporates them into his complex plans. his ability to predict things rivals alcott’s, to the point that he predicts what everyone will do, how to trick them, and how to exploit the mistakes they will make. unlike alcott, his ability does not allow him to maximize his genius and complex plotting; all of his thinking and planning is done in the moment or before his plans are set into action, which is still impressive on its own. as for why he is like this, completely unknown. he also has a god complex, different from kajii and hawthorne��s religious beliefs. not only is his entire motivation to “cleanse the world of sinners” (ability users), but he has called himself god before. his religious beliefs seem to go beyond simply believing in god or following god’s word; no, he is god, and his job is to kill all ability users.

goncharov - goncharov didn’t show up much, but from what we saw of him, his main extreme is his dedication and loyalty. specifically, goncharov is very dedicated to fyodor- he underwent surgery to have “[his] unhappiness removed”, which makes him appear constantly smiling and declaring how happy he became with fyodor’s help. he is almost obsessive in his loyalty to fyodor, calling him “master” and apparently having similar interests (likes classical music, implied to have tea with fyodor, etc.)

pushkin - again, didn’t show up much, but from what little we saw, he is very ambitious. he found joy in the way his ability was used in the cannibalism arc, stating later on that it was a genius technique and he would find it fun to do it again but with prominent world leaders. ambition is one thing and desiring to cause chaos similar to the cannibalism arc but with world leaders… yeah he must get really bored.

mushitarou - though not quite a character trait, mushitarou is extremely… clean? particular? just by looking at him, you get the impression that he is self absorbed, probably grooms himself a lot (look at his HAIR), and that he is confident. he is also shown to be very demanding, which is where his “particular” thing comes in. he requires everything to be done a certain way, with very specific and high standards. with his ability, he also believes himself to be unbeatable, though this cockiness may have led to him being caught by ranpo. fr if he’s sitting there yelling how he’s gonna get away with it, does he expect to still get away with it?? anyway. i don’t really know why he’s like this or other underlying traits, as our info on him is still pretty limited. i guess he cares about his friend a FUCK TON.

gogol - oh boy. gogol really likes freedom and being a clown. now, being a clown seems like a weird kind of extreme we’re talkin about… but i think that this trait is mainly just emphasized with how outgoing and excitable he is. he dresses like a clown, loves playing weird tricks and games, and frequently gives people “quizzes”. his body language also characterizes him as moving around excessively. overall just a mega clown. then there’s his love of freedom. his recently released character profile states that he dislikes “brainwashing, subordination, being unfree”. all his dislikes are tied into each other and definitely tied into his odd obsession with being free- hell, he even died saying, “this is a prison break! over the innate brainwashing known as morality, i choose the freedom of my soul!” basically, a reality where he must follow what others want is too confining and he would rather die to free his soul than continue living that way. pretty extreme!

sigma - uh my boy has only existed for like 7 chapters but. we’ll go with he’s extremely secretive and also babey. so, with the secrecy, it’s more like he has very bad amnesia and most information is unknown about him. real name, backstory, age, birthday, weight, height, ability name- none of that is clear, so he is either keeping it secret or doesn’t remember (possibly a combination of both.) from what we have seen of sigma, though, he is very kind and considerate of his customers and other people. he is formal and protective of not only his casino, but those staying at his casino. he has spent a lot of time memorizing everyone’s names and info about them for the sake of maximizing their safety and enjoyment. for being a member of a terrorist organization, sigma is a sweetheart. his kindness and innocence are more traits that blend into his character more, so it isn’t as evidently an “extreme”- but i do want to say that he has extreme memory issues and for being in a terrorist organization, he is incredibly sweet, which seems somewhat out of place.

others

ango - ango is very, very hardworking. another dedicated madlad. in dead apple, ango was shown to have willingly pulled several all nighters writing reports on the incident. when we were first introduced to him in the mafia, he was shown to be going above and beyond with his job; rather than writing a list of the people who died, ango wrote out a biography for each person, basically. he was uptight and against slacking in his job, attempting to refuse dazai and oda’s offer to go drinking, and very against being hugged by them when they stank of death. a bit of a clean freak with how uptight and orderly he was. he held a high ranking position in the mafia as an informant, where he handled much of their sensitive information and deals. his job also required him to work as a triple agent- initially in the special abilities department, then sent to infiltrate the mafia, and then in the mafia was sent to infiltrate mimic to work as a double agent. overall, his job(s) required a lot of him and he gladly overworked himself in all of them.

gide - he’s kinda weirdly obsessed with a specific goal? so less a personality trait or even mindset that is amplified, but a strange goal where he, as the leader of mimic, was determined to lead himself and his men into battle with worthy opponents who could kill them. their sheer determination to fight others with the goal of dying, basically a suicide mission, was what stood out. plus, gide was willing to go to horrifying extremes to provoke oda into fighting him. he believed oda to be the only one capable and worthy enough to kill him in battle, and once he realized oda refused to fight him, kidnapped and killed oda’s orphans, essentially angering oda into fighting and killing hm, also killing oda in the process. so still pretty extreme, but also extremely specific.

shibusawa - shibusawa’s extreme traits are boredom, intelligence, and collecting. intelligence is actually kind of dubious, as we don’t know to what extent his intellect is, but it is implied that he at least believes himself to be a genius and in some way or another, superior to everyone around him. he thinks of everyone else as boring, life as boring, and as such is constantly searching to cure his boredom. this boredom is probably his strongest motivator for most things, such as conducting the dragon’s head conflict. this boredom also might be an influence on his collector tendencies, as i believe they work in tandem in his ability use. bored of everything, he finds it interesting to collect things- his ability allows him to separate ability from ability user, so of course he finds it entertaining to watch people duel their abilities, his reward being another ability gem in his large collection. his collection is massive, and seeing as how all of his gems are from getting ability users to kill themselves with their abilities,,, yikes shibu that’s really intense and hardcore 😰

and with that, i think that’s about the end of this post (thank god). i decided against including the hunting dogs in this, as there is not enough known about them to determine what their extremes are and why. also its 5 am and im kinda lazy :( i wanna say that this post is also kind of like a spectrum. almost every character has a trait/goal/mindset/habit that’s intense and kind of characterizes a lot of the character; but, some characters are less extreme than others, particularly characters that don’t convey a lot of expressions. and like i tried to explain earlier, some traits don’t stand out that much and seem more like they’re a part of the character. not every “extreme” written here is the level of extreme that akutagawa’s obsession is, for instance.

a last note to end on is that i wanna talk about intelligence in bsd. it seems like a pretty all-or-nothing situation for the most part; either a character is of average intelligence or they’re a fucking genius. now, most “average” characters are still witty, innovative, and capable of basic detective skills, but there is still a large difference in say, kenji and fyodor. both are pretty dangerous and extreme in their own aspects, but in terms of intelligence, fyodor has kenji far outmatched. i’m gonna rank the different geniuses of bsd and their intelligence type. this is entirely personal opinion btw

ranpo- on top of having amazing intuition and deduction, ranpo is excellent at analyzing small details in a short amount of time. his sheer speed at completely solving impossible cases, even with little evidence, is what makes him so remarkable. he also is pretty good at being a tactician, though his strength mainly lies in solving mysteries.

a tie between dazai and fyodor. maybe fyodor a bit smarter tho. both are incredible tacticians, and their strengths lie in analyzing what their enemies are plotting. they are good at reading people and figuring out how to best use them, and lying/faking their way to get what they want. dazai is also a pretty good detective.

i am sad to place alcott at third bc tbh she might be a two or tied with ranpo. alcott is fucking brilliant as a tactician and her ability allows her to create complex and detailed plans, correctly able to plot out every possibility her enemies may take. she hasn’t been shown to have any particular skills in reading people or crime solving, which is why she is placed third.

the debatables: don’t actually know the extent of their genius, but they’re apparently pretty smart and capable. mori, shibusawa, and ango?? i feel like im bsing my way now im sorry LMAO

honorable mention: katai

alright that is all im out. thank u for reading this hell i didn’t mean for this to be 8,000 words but its fine. probably. originally was gonna do shorter explanations for everyone and then reblog with more in depth but fuck it, its all here.

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