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carminecherry · 4 months ago

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RAIN STAINED CRIMSON | mikey sano

this is part five of the series kill the lights

⇝ PAIRING: timeskip!biker!mikey sano x fem!reader

⇝ SERIES SYNOPSIS: after moving by yourself to tokyo, you black out at a party and wake up with a new friend. as she sweeps you up in her fast-paced city life, you feel yourself falling deeper and deeper for her mysterious brother. but something dark is brewing in the city. as his past threatens to resurface, mikey must fight not only physical enemies but the mental battle of his feelings for you. he can't resist you , but could he ever forgive himself if something happened to you? he'll love you selfishly and protect you savagely.

⇝ PART FIVE LENGTH: 3.6k words

⇝ PART FIVE WARNINGS: violence, injury, blood, distress (18+ minors do not interact):

all characters are 20+; Alternate Universe! Canon Divergent. you meet up with emma for another coffee date and get the debrief. however, on the way back to your apartment, the comfortable life that you've known will be stained in darkness. there is a world of suffering that has never touched your life until now... something is set into motion and nothing will be the same.

⇝ AUTHOR'S NOTE: this one was pretty heavy to write. happy spooky month but please take care of yourself! more chapters coming soon! keep an eye on the tags and stay safe! <3

DO NOT INTERACT WITH THIS WORK IF YOU ARE A MINOR. BY CLICKING THE READMORE, YOU CONSENT TO VIEWING ADULT CONTENT.

You woke to rain. The droplets tapping on your window, drawing you out of sleep. The sound is barely louder than the hum of your AC. It was peaceful. The darkness the thick clouds provided left you dozing in and out for a few more minutes. The sky was churning shades of black and gray, thick like torn wool. The gentle patter of the droplets didn’t match the scene.

You finally rise, starting your routine. Your phone is your companion this morning, as your TV screen sits, black. There was still a gnawing feeling after the news stories yesterday. Two violent attacks in one day are highly irregular, at least here in the city. You knew your mental health would suffer more if you shuttered yourself inside for a second day. Seeing Emma would be good. Surely, her sunshiny personality would wash away some of the anxiety prodding you for attention.

You leave, locking the door behind you. The rainy weather provided some relief to the heat of the previous week. It came in gentle waves, washing over you and your umbrella. The commute to the café was uneventful. You had a dutifulness that kept you from burying your nose in your phone like you would normally do. You watched the world pass by out of the train window, thin streams of water chasing each other. With each droplet the stream acquired, it grew fatter and heavier, rushing across the pane. You entertained yourself with this as you approached your stop, placing bets on which stream would win.

Emma was waiting for you near the ticket gate. She lit up when she saw you and you already started to feel better, your shoulders relaxing. You tap your train card to exit and the moment you’re through the gate her arms are around you. You’re starting to acclimate to Emma’s physical affection. “It’s so good to see you!” she says, swaying with you. “You too! I’m glad to see you’re in one piece” Releasing you, she whines, “I thought I was gonna die yesterday!”

You begin the short walk to the café. “I thought you were gonna die two nights ago. How come it hit you so hard anyways. I thought you were some crazy party girl, shouldn’t you know your limits by now” You tease. At that, she taps her umbrella into yours, the droplets shaking off. “You see, it’s because I’m a ‘party girl’ that I willingly surpass those limits, my friend. Often.” With that, the two of you arrive at the café.

It's quaint, tucked under the train tracks. The old brick is covered in thick ivy that hangs heavy with rain water. You push open the door, greeted with cool air and the smell of freshly ground coffee. The grinder hummed pleasantly, the sound of soft music mingling with the ambient noise. Your eye is caught by the source of the music; a vintage record player. There is natural wood throughout and dark, warm accents.

It was cozy and small with only a few other people seated at the counter. One typing away at their laptop, another lost in the pages of a fat novel. You tried to peek at the cover to no avail as you approached the counter and ordered. There are two worn leather sofas near the front window, the ivy from outside giving some natural privacy. The two of you sit there, sinking into the seats. You chat, waiting for your drinks. You feel at peace

***

“I can’t believe I did that!” She said, burying her face in her hands. “It’s all good, I think Mikey and Draken took care of it.” You say, taking a sip of your iced coffee. “On my LIFE, I’m swearing off liquor!” You look at her incredulously. She flicks some of the condensation water from her glass at you. “At least until next weekend.” She compromises. “Speaking of, there’s an event at a club I promote at. I get plus three if you want on the list.”

This grabs your attention, “Really? That sounds like a lot of fun! I’d totally be down. What’s the vibe?” “It’s a hip-hop place, they want more cute girls in there to drum up drink sales. Basically, we just go, shake ass, and get free drinks from guys that pay the event markup. The club makes a fat stack and we party for free.” She says devilishly.

You could get on board with that. It’d been ages since you’d gone clubbing. You used to be a bit of a club rat in your university years. You imagine that clubbing in the city would be more fun than at the grungy college clubs you used to frequent. A question popped into your head, “You said plus three, are you going to invite anyone else?” “Yeah, Senju already said yes. I wish I could’ve introduced you at the party. I know you guys are gonna get along great. I also invited Yuzuha. She’s gonna try to make it work with her schedule.” Emma says thoughtfully pulling out her phone. You nod, the prospect of making more female friends is exciting.

Emma turns her screen to you, displaying a pretty girl with short, fluffy, white-bleached hair. She’s pixie-like with small defined features. “This is Senju” Emma says, swiping through a few pictures on her social media page. “And this is Yuzuha.” Emma turns her phone back to you. Yuzuha is more mature in appearance, sensual. She has long, silky, coppery hair that falls over her shoulders. “They’re so pretty.” You say, awestruck, unable to look away from the pictures as she scrolled through Yuzuha’s feed. “Wait till you see them in person.” She winks.

“I’ll make a group chat later so we can coordinate and you can add them.” She says, placing her phone on the table. She laced her fingers together and rested her chin on them. “So, you and Mikey?” She says, a glint in her eye. Catching you mid-sip and off guard. You choke on your drink, some of it going down the wrong way. As you cough you manage, “What do you mean?”

She laughs, a twinkling sound that cuts through the buttery air of the moody café. “You’re too easy to read. How charming~” The compliment adds to the redness in your face as you get your coughing fit under control. “No, I’m not.” You counter, doing your best to pull a stoic expression. She laughs in your face again. “You’re blushing ! Too cute, trying to be serious.” She gushes, your face growing hotter.

“I mean, he gave me a ride home if that’s what you mean.” Turning to your drink for a distraction. “Boo~ you’re so boring. I’m talking about at the party. Gimme the goss.” “I don’t know what you’re talking about.” You half mean it. You didn’t want to tell Emma about your dark fantasies about her brother . “Don’t be like that~'' She teased, the look in her eye told you she had something in mind. “Why? Did you hear something?” “You. Mikey. Sofa.”

Your heart skipped a beat. “Oh, I mean we talked.” She hummed incredulously. “No, really. We just talked about bikes and stuff.” “Boooooring.” She huffs, thudding into the leather of the sofa as she reclines. “I thought it was gonna be something juicy. I heard you had him wrapped around your finger.” Your mind raced to replay the evening. In what way shape or form had you had that man “wrapped around your finger”.

“You should check your source. I think they might’ve mixed us up with the couple on the sofa before us.” You pictured the pair again, their hot and heavy conversation. “He was practically inside of her before Mikey showed up.” Now this piqued Emma’s interest as she sat up from the sofa, leaning across the table to you, a conspiratorial look in her eye.

What had his name been? “Yeah, it was some guy Mikey knew, his name was like Hakk- something.” “Hakkai?!” Emma supplied excitedly. You shot her a finger gun, “That’s it! Blue hair, mouth scar.” You dragged your finger across your lips tracing the phantom scar the blue-haired man sported. “And she was GORGEOUS. Long brown hair, big,” You gesture to your chest, mimicking the woman’s endowment. “She was like on top of him. A houseplant might not have been the only thing Yuuki would be replacing if you catch my drift” The thought of cleaning velvet makes you cringe. “Once she saw Mikey she switched it up pretty quick though.” Remembering the way she had fawned under his gaze.

Emma made a face and snatched up her phone, “No. Way. Is this her?” Emma showed you a picture of the woman from the sofa, but in this picture she was in the arms of a different tattooed man. Another solid 10. “Yeah, that’s her!” You confirm. Emma makes a noise, fingers flying across her screen as she types a message to someone.

“That’s Sera. Not to not be a girl's girl, but she’s a total wannabe and a homie-hopper. Hakkai should know better than that. I miss when he couldn’t even look at women.” You nod, soaking in the tea. Picturing a little Hakkai freezing up when a girl tried to talk to him was an endearing image. One in stark contrast to what you’d seen on Friday. “She’s been trying to get with Mikey for ages and she won’t take no for an answer. I guess fucking all of his friends is her plan B.”

You hum. You’d met your fair share of fuck boys and girls in university. After hooking up with a couple of them you decided that you preferred to stay out of the drama. “I guess that explains some things. They cleared out after he saw Mikey.” You sip thoughtfully, nearing the end of your drink. Remembering how Mikey hadn’t acknowledged the pretty brunette’s presence. It was starting to make more sense now. “That tracks” Emma replied, her phone buzzing but she makes no move to check it.

She finishes her drink, the ice settling as she returns the glass to its coaster. She runs her fingers up and down the side, tracing a pattern in the condensation. “Well, whenever you’re ready to talk about what happened with you and Mikey, let me know. He’s been acting weird all weekend” She said in a teasing tone. “Nothing. Happened.” You impress upon her. Tucking that crumb of information she tacked on at the end in your pocket.

“Whatever you say~” She shrugs, finally checking her phone. She smiles rising from the sofa. “Mikey usually doesn’t let anyone on the back of his precious bike. So do with it what you will.” Two crumbs in your pocket. Your blush returns. You try to turn from Emma but it’s too late. She snickers.

“Let’s do this again, next Sunday. We can have ‘Sundates’.” She proposes. “I’d like that.” You smile moving to exit. “I’ve got some errands to run out here so I’ll split after we get to the station.” You nod. The two of you call back a ‘thank you’ to the barista as the bell above the door jingles.

You say your goodbyes at the station and board the train. The rain falls harder now, in heavy sheets that pelt the windows of your train car. The train lurches to a stop one station before your home station. The doors open to the platform and an announcement plays, “Due to extreme weather conditions, the service on this train line will be temporarily suspended. We apologize for any inconvenience.” The message plays on a loop and you curse how close you were to getting home.

You weigh your options. Truthfully, it wasn’t a far walk. Maybe 15 minutes. The platform grew more crowded as people retreated from the rain. The growing crowd made you nervous and you decided a 15 minute walk is preferable to elbowing your way onto a packed muggy train when it does start running again. You ready your umbrella and venture out into the storm. Thunder clapped loud enough to shake the trees, a sprinkle of extra water added to the downpour you were battling. It was amazing how loud just the rain was.

Your visibility was poor and you were having second thoughts about this adventure. You were about halfway at this point, too late to turn back. Over the sound of the rain you heard something. A voice. You stop dead in your tracks, frantically looking for the source. Again, a voice cried out. The pain in the voice sliced through the deafening rain. Your body was moving before you could think. If you had, you probably would’ve frozen. You round a corner, carelessly splashing through the puddles in the sidewalk. You’re met with an alley, tucked between two large buildings, the space somewhat sheltered from the rain.

It was then you saw a figure crumpled on the ground and a larger one standing over them. The larger figure, a man, loomed over them. His dark hoodie drenched in rain. Your eyes scanned down his back and landed on the knife in their gloved hand. The blade reflected back a sickening red. Your body starts to shake. You want to run, to disappear. The body on the ground curled into the fetal position and cried out again.

“Help! Someone. Please.” Their voice cracking. The gurgle in their words made your stomach twist. The hooded figure stomped them once, then again. The wounded cried out with each impact. “ Oi oi- .” The attacker punctuated each blow. “It’s no fun if you don’t fight back~” His tone was saccharin and sing-songy. It makes your skin crawl. “I swear I didn’t-” The attacker kicked them hard in the stomach. The sound of retching pushing you over your fear threshold. “ If you’re gonna FUCK around you better be ready to find OUT! ” The hooded man’s deep voice echoes off the walls.

Now was the time to act. You could slip away unnoticed, pretend none of this ever happened, or better yet, call the police and have them sort it out. But in your heart you knew that if something didn’t happen now, that person was going to die. Thunder crashed again and you took a deep breath, forcing your body to move. Your eyes land on a pile of trash, tied up for pick up. Next to the bags you see a rusted pipe. You wrap your fingers around it, wet and grimy. You test its weight in your hand, dropping your umbrella, breaking into a sprint. The hooded figure stooped, coming to kneel over the smaller who tried to crawl away. He raised the knife.

CRACK! It was a sick, wet sound as you brought the pipe down on the man’s head. His body went limp on top of the figure below. You kick the knife hard and far into a pile of trash bags before grabbing the wet material of his hoodie and heaving him off and away from the other. You step, splashing a puddle that stains the hem of your pants red. You rush over, kneeling next to the injured figure, their body shaking harder than yours. You let the pipe drop. The figure crawls to you, hugging your legs with little strength. You see now he’s just a boy. No older than 18. His lip trembles, tears pouring from his eyes. He looks so scared.

You move to cradle him, your body blocking the rain. “T-thank you.” He cries weakly. You nod, the lump in your throat prevents you from responding. You look him up and down, your vision blurring through the tears. You count 2 stab wounds to his chest and stomach. The red is spreading through the material of his T-shirt faster than you care for. You manage, “I’m going to call for an ambulance. Can you press on the wound?” You wiggle to free your phone from your pocket, fighting the water on your screen to dial the emergency number. “Which one?” He tries to chuckle before wincing. He still has a sense of humor, that’s a good sign. You hit the speakerphone button as the line starts ringing.

It quickly connects and you steady your voice, telling the operator, “Hello! Please, I need help. There’s been a stabbing, um..” You look around, realizing you don’t actually know where you are, “Are you at the location now?” the operator asks, she has a soothing voice. “Yes!” You say ardently. “Alright, I have your location on my screen now, we have emergency service vehicles on their way to you, but it’s going to be a few minutes. Are you with the victim now?” “Yes, I’m here, he’s here. He, uh, he has at least two stab wounds to the torso.” You tell her frantically. The words feel strange and clinical.

“Okay miss, we’re going to apply pressure to the wound. I want you to look for something you can use, like a towel or blanket.” You look around the dirty alley. “Nothing, there’s nothing.” You say, a sob escaping. “That’s alright, so what we’re going to do is, I want you to use your hands to apply pressure.” “I-I am. I’m doing that.” “Good, you’re doing great. EMS is almost at your location.”

The stab wound in his chest seems to open further as the red seeps between your fingers. You quickly adjust your hands to apply more pressure to the wound, wiping your tears on your sleeve. “Please tell them to hurry.” You say pathetically, more tears streaking down your face. He starts to fade, his eyes fluttering “No. Stay with me.” You say firmly.

He’s fighting. He locks eyes with you, “I don’t want to die.” He whispers, voice cracking. “Please, please, please.” You mutter, each a prayer that EMS will arrive. “I’m scared.” He says with a strangled voice. “I’m here with you. I’m here.” You cry. “ Mom .” He begs. You hear from your phone, “We’re going to do this together. EMS is a minute away. Hang in there” You hear a groan as the hooded figure reanimates. The boy sobs out, his limp body unable to move. “Please, please, please.” You pray. The hooded figure groans again, bringing a hand to his head.

“Miss, I need you to talk to me, what’s going on?” You hear the operator ask. “Police! We need the police. The man, he’s waking up.” You squeak, your veins feeling electric. Then you hear them. Sirens in the distance. “Police are on their way, miss. They’re almost there. You’re doing so well.” The operator encourages.

The hooded figure pushes himself up feeling around. He sees the two of you, his masked face streaked with blood. His or the boys you couldn’t be sure, “ You bitch. ” He says venomously, his golden eyes searing into you. The sirens are so close. “Please.” You beg the universe. He looks around once more, seeming to hesitate before he takes off; staggering out of the alley. Your eyes follow after him, sure you'll see him reappear.

The body in your arms slackens. “No!” You cry, jostling the boy. “No, please.” You move again to adjust the pressure. You see them from the other end of the alley, the flashing lights of the ambulance.

What happens after is all a blur. You lean back on the wall of the alley, watching them work. You can’t look at your hands but you feel the warm liquid growing cold and sticky. He has a pulse, you gather from the paramedics. He lost so much blood, too much blood. They load him into the back of the ambulance and they are gone.

You don’t remember when, but the police must have arrived. You feel a blanket being wrapped around your shoulders as you're led to a police car. “Yes. No.” Those are the only words that remain in your vocabulary. “Miss, are you injured?” “No.” "We're going to have the paramedics check you, okay?" "Yes." “We're going to take you to the station the station to help us file the report, are you able to do that?” “Yes.” “Is there anyone we can call for you?” “No.”

You don’t know how long you were at the station. How many questions you answered. You hear word that the boy was in serious condition at the hospital but doctors were hopeful. They said you saved him but it hardly felt like it. There was a familiar hole in your chest. How long has it been since this old friend visited you? You let the world move around you, there was a child-like comfort in releasing control to someone else. That a parent knows best and will act in your favor.

A police woman, perhaps a decade your senior, takes you to another room. She has kind eyes and her touch is soft. She helps you change out of your clothes. She told you they would be evidence. She uses warm, wet rags to clean you. You sit there and let her gently wipe between your fingers. She is attentive and steady. She moves slowly, like you're something fragile. Right now, you are. The minutes tick away before she is dressing you in a light, baggy shirt and sweatpants that are a bit too big. You let yourself be led to a police car. The edges of the sky taking on that luminous blue that previews sunrise.

You ride in silence. It’s not long before you are home. The engine is turned off and the officer exits the car, opening the door for you. He offers you an arm and you take it. “If you need anything. Please call or message me. Any time.” He hands you a crisp, white business card. You pocket it, quietly thanking him. He walks you to your door and makes sure you get in safely. You stand in your entryway, back against your door until you hear the car pull away. You slide down the wall and sit there. The smell of the cheap, plastic shoes from the police station is unpleasant. Still, you sit.

#mikey sano x reader #manjiro sano x reader #manjiro x you #mikey x reader #Mikey Sano #Mikey Sano smut #tokyo revengers x reader #tr x reader #tokyo revengers fanfiction #tr smut #tr x you #carminecherry fics

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foursaints · 6 months ago

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helllo! u sometimes talk about ur mutuals circle and i was just wondering would u like to namedrop them? cos i think i already follow some of them but i feel like they probably all have very correct opinions and good taste and would like to follow them

oh i would love nothing more than to namedrop. in fact i will make you an index of what i admire about them (readmore for length)

@fernhelm <- leading scholar on the black sisters, arthuriana, and the overlap between marauders & ancient greek classicism. we are neighbors and childhood friends irl but that's unrelated

@jewishregulus <- THE regulus black understander & originator of the carrow twins. half of everything i say is paraphrased from the essay length saintsivy dms

@carniferous <- THE james potter understander & creator of nuanced tenderness and melancholy & one of my favorite fic authors before we became friends.... read their theatre-based fic NOWW

@sixlane <- i passed the Premiere Bartylily Understander hat to lane long ago.... we all definitely already know lane of "get him back (read on ao3)" fame but it bears repeating. one of the few fic authors who i stalk for updates. but i also stalk for anon responses because they are always uniquely thought-out and hilarious

@itsjaywalkers <- LAURIEE is one of the best people on here & i scroll their blog like the morning news. the vibe on there is always so fresh and fun and kind and playful (and occasionally searingly tragic or erotic). THE james potter enjoyer on this website. this is the other fic author who i stalk for updates.....

@quillkiller <- jen was my first mutual on here 🥺 (hi jen). our most beautiful resource for Bellatrix Black enjoyment and nuanced discussion of feminist theory. i consider them half of the powerduo of Rarepair Creation on this site (hi kara) that has given us bangers like effiebarty and regtunia and the most searing wlw fic

@static-radio-ao3 <- im embarrassed to talk to mil because their jegulus fic is just genuinely that good. its crazy how every single one reads like a fully fleshed-out romcom novel i would read in one sitting at barnes & noble. another barty understander i daresay

@sugarsnappeases <- THE OTHER HALF OF THE RAREPAIR BUREAU. kara's microfics hit me like 9/11 every single time (that searing bella sirius-death character study? the BARTYLILY DRESS FIC?) and they are another lesbionic understander of women. when people say they want more marauders girls content they should just go to kara lmfaooo

@rottin6 <- can't talk about layla without offering my hand in marriage sorry. princess of the bartylilysphere i rather think... hottest most erotic microfics i've ever read in my life, thank god for the people who understand barty's Trashboy Dick on a cerebral level

@veryinnovative <- we all definitely already know ino but that's okay. probably divinely gifted to come up with the most unexpected & niche AUs that still manage to make perfect sense and hit every single time.

@moon-seas <- KAYY. my favorite artist on here hands-down. a true dirtbag barty understander & they produce the most stunning digital collage-work. a privilege to see

@sommerregenjuniluft <- now where would i be without lune's barty understanding... yes their jegulus microfic porn is masterful but WHAT ABOUT their ability to put barty in the strangest situations ever (he's an electrician?? a circus clown, now???) and have it integrate perfectly with his character. that's good writing babe!!!!

also you should follow @dracure @royalthorned @morsmortish and @katakosmos for more good rosekiller content. we don't talk but I admire from afar ......

#a #we were just talking about my parasocial anons. but really the parasocial one was me all along

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morning-softness · 2 months ago

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Story Title: Listen to the Voice that Told Me

Fandom: The Magnus Archives podcast

Link: https://archiveofourown.org/works/47329336/chapters/119258467#workskin

Summary:

In this world of monsters and fear, where every day Jon is forced to read another description of the horrible fate that could befall someone—anyone—unlucky enough to encounter it, there are those—human and no longer human—who have singled out the Archivist as their target. And since pretending ignorance is obviously no protection, Jon’s determined to find out as much as possible about the threats he’s up against. After Prentiss's attack on the Institute and the discovery of his predecessor's corpse in the tunnels beneath it, Jon knows two things: 1. accepting the Head Archivist position put a target on his back and 2. he can't trust anyone, especially his assistants. As if he weren't already vulnerable enough, Jon discovers he's been cursed by a Web artefact to obey any order he's given. Can Jon find a way to break the curse before anyone else finds out?

Warnings: canon-typical worms, spiders, the Not Them, the Distortion, Jon's canon-typical Season 2 paranoia, canon-typical breaking and entering, nightmares, smoking, panic attack, stalking and invasion of privacy, strained relationships, arguments, power imbalance, manipulation, mind control, threats, abuse of power, Elias being a creep, burns, self-harm? (canon-typical Jon intentionally puts himself in danger because he thinks it’s worth it), thoughts of death and suicide, blood and murder (discussed), cursing, mentions of food and unconventional eating habits, alcohol, mention of drug use, roller coaster mention

Characters: Jonathan Sims, Martin Blackwood, Tim Stoker, Sasha James, Elias Bouchard, Michael Distortion

Pairings: General (no romantic or sexual relationships)

Chapters: 11/11

Words: 54,751 (Making this the longest fic I've ever completed!)

When I Started: February 2023

I'm putting the rest of this under a readmore, because it got a bit long and rambley, but TLDR: Thank you so, so very much to @bunnies-in-the-archives for getting me started, to @wipbigbang, @nyctolovian, @prairiedawn, @liminalspacedout, and all of the wonderful people who commented on my fic for helping me finish. Even if you've already read it, please check out Chapter 2 to see the awesome art that @liminalspacedout did for this fic.

How I Lost My Shit: This fic really got away from me in terms of length. The classic problem of "the more I write, the further I am from finishing." In my original outline, I planned for 8 chapters and estimated that it would be somewhere between 15,000 and 25,000 words. Instead, the final version ended up being 11 chapters and 54,751 words! At about the halfway point towards the original ending, I also realized that the ending I'd planned for wouldn't work because 1. it involved Jon knowing information that he wouldn't find out until Season 3, and 2. it actually didn't resolve one of the problems introduced at the beginning of the fic. The ending I finally settled on is something like the third or forth version.

In addition to the fic itself fighting me, life also kept getting in the way. I got a new pet and promptly discovered I was allergic to it. I moved to a new apartment. My pet got sick and I took on a lot of overtime to cover vet bills. I took on additional tasks (essentially doing unpaid overtime) in pursuit of a promotion that I was turned down for. I went through a few rough periods mentally, and hit a couple different stretches of writers' block that lasted for months. I took on yet more additional tasks (working essentially 6-7 days a week) and actually got promoted this time.

How I Finished My Shit: A few major things helped me get back into writing this fic and eventually reaching the finish line.

1. I joined @wipbigbang. Just the excitement of that alone helped me push out about 1,500 words on the first day, although the initial enthusiasm didn't last very long before I got bogged down in the details again.

2. I was paired with an artist, and from the very first thumbnail sketches that @liminalspacedout shared with me, I was over the moon at how clearly they'd captured my vision of the main character. I knew I had to finish so that everyone else could also see their artwork for this fic. I think this carried me through a solid 2 more chapters before I stalled again.

3. A friend in a writers' discord group that I was part of recommended the website 4thewords.com as being a fun way to kind of gameify the writing process and to break a large task down into smaller and more manageable parts. I'd heard of it before, but I didn't realize there was a free version. Using that has been a lifesaver for me in terms of completing not just this fic but honestly anything involving writing these past few months.

4. The incredible @nyctolovian who had been my beta when I first started writing the fic was willing to come back and beta read the rest of the chapters after I started it again, and gave me some really good feedback on what worked and what didn't in terms of plot and characterization.

5. Several people in the @themagnuswriters Discord helped me brainstorm ideas for the ending of this fic, which was the part I was stuck on the hardest and longest.

6. The wonderful @prairiedawn beta read the last two chapters in a single day and helped me get over the last hurdle to finally reach the finish line.

7. Several people commented on the fic, and a few of them commented on multiple chapters, highlighting their favorite parts or speculating about what might happen next. It really made me feel like this fic was worth writing, that there were people who appreciated it and wanted to see more of it, in spite of all its imperfections.

#wip big bang #tma #the magnus archives #tma fanfic #morning_softness writes

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huntershowl-moving · 4 months ago

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SHIPPING INFO // ANSWER THE FOLLOWING FOR YOUR MUSES SO PEOPLE KNOW HOW SHIPPING WORKS ON YOUR BLOG.

WHAT IS YOUR OTP FOR YOUR CHARACTER(S)?

i don't have one particular otp — big ships change depending on the Era hellhound is in!

HOW LARGE DOES THE AGE GAP HAVE TO BE TO MAKE IT UNCOMFORTABLE?

nothing illegal obviously — other than that, aside from long-lifespan characters whose mental maturation is slower, i generally stay away from with 10+ year age gaps when the younger muse is under 20. just feels like a weird power dynamic i guess?

ARE YOU SELECTIVE WHEN SHIPPING?

yes! ships on this blog cannot be pre-established — i tend to lose interest fast if they don't build up naturally, either through lots of ooc plotting or through writing. on top of that, seph is ... piiiiicky. she has very specific Types. generally, ships with very gentle, soft, mentally well-adjusted characters are possible, but transient — seph falls out of love after a point, but remains staunchly protective of them.

the long and short of the matter is she's a freak, and you kind of have to match that to be compatible as a long-term partner. but even then they don't always line up perfectly! idk. seph's weird. simultaneously very easy to ship with and very hard to ship with.

WHO ARE OTHER CHARACTERS YOU SHIP YOUR CHARACTER WITH?

oh i've got lots of good ones going on right now!! pls forgive me for gushing. focusing on currently heavily-plotted and/or written ones for this bit bc otherwise it will be pages and pages!! if i forgot someone you have full permission to impale me on a pike i am SO SORRY. (all of these will be under a readmore at the end of the post for length!)

there are more sort of beginnings/potentials for ships that haven't been explored yet which i haven't included here, but i'm truly excited to see where each and every one of them goes!!!

DOES ONE HAVE TO ASK TO SHIP WITH YOU?

yes absolutely hahaha — at least communicating ooc about it is necessary! i'm much more comfortable shipping with partners i mesh well with as a mun and have an easy time talking to.

ARE YOU SHIP-OBSESSED OR SHIP MORE-OR-LESS?

LOOK I. LISTEN. LISTEN... IM FERAL FOR SHIPS. FERAL. even though seph is picky about them — and i promise it's not personal if it doesnt work, it truly is just her dumb creature ass being unable to normal.

WHAT IS YOUR FAVOURITE SHIP IN YOUR CURRENT FANDOM?

N/A for this blog, but as a fun trivia fact, i'm deep in satosugu hell rn

FINALLY, HOW DOES ONE SHIP WITH YOU?

it's all vibes babey. we just start writing their non-romantic dynamic buildup, and if it clicks (or even if u just think ur character would have a crush!) we talk about it ooc and plot some more, then plot some more and before u know it, the angst hammer looms over ur head

Tagged by: @bearratic (thank youuuu!!) Tagging: (points) do it

ship gushing below. <3

@vsagis' villain izuku— i had to put u first bc u kickstarted this shipping renaissance. seph and izuku clicked instantly and started a long-term trajectory that i don't think either of us writers expected. they're just freak enough to match each other, just soft enough to genuinely care. we're really putting these two through the horrors(tm) and watching them fall hopelessly, horribly in love. <3

@spiritcrown's pasha — how could i not mention pasha!! i was so happy to see you back, because pasha and seph's relationship was soooo formative for seph's development wrt romance. seph is absolutely, completely and utterly devoted to pasha. they worship at the altar of her. they would bend heaven and raise hell for her.

@crowshoots' jesper — UAHGHGBBHBH INCOHERENT CRYING NOISES. the first thing seph noticed about jesper was extremely respectable fighting skills, but even then they were definitely uhhhh touch and go for a while there before they started to simmer down and. pin each other down and — one thing led to another and jesper's being antagonized by her antagonists and they're too deeply in love to go back!! i love them. i l

@crowgreeds' kaz — HHHHHHHHH god. hi siri i know ur not around the dash much but idc im writing u into this. kaz and seph both have such a darkness in them that the other recognizes and not only feeds, but when necessary, balances. they're ruthless and violent and mean but at the same time, they have such a softness for each other that they both thought was dead. also, you're the recipient of probably the best rp reply i've ever written (that fucking. hellhound kill description. my GOD im feral for seph protecting him)

@tewwor.... goose is2g we really have the creatures ever. litho — FIRST SHIP!!!! FIRST SHIIIP i still cant believe it took 4 irl years for them to finally admit their stupid feelings. now they're soulmates and there's no turning back. he's the reason seph likes poetry in every verse. the softest snarkiest ship. probably the closest to a true YA-style soulmate seph has. she hasn't forgiven him for all the twilight jokes though tough luck jie & ricochet — the boys... the absolute chaos trio... i never expected seph and jie to fall for each other but honestly i should have. he falls so neatly into her "equally feral" type. ricochet is so calm and seph is kind of intoxicated by that. sheathed claws kind of vibe. just love these three their dynamic balances itself so well

@spungolden's dio — two femmes raised as weapons with deeply suppressed emotions, chillin in a murder alley, five feet apart cause theyre not g— (theyre gay. theyre so gay) these two are so sweet they sometimes make me tear up. they skipped the trauma stage and went straight into lesbian domestic fantasy with only occasional murder.

@chaoslulled oh boy(s). toji — brutally in love. they saw and embraced each other's monster, refused to shy away, and now they somehow revolve in this strange orbit of violent and incredibly soft with each other. i think he's the first of the current ship lineup that seph has in-thread said the L-word to. this ship was so easy to jump right into, the chemistry was like lightning in a bottle. satoru — one of the most genuinely unexpected slowburn ships i've stumbled into. these two read each other for filth INSTANTLY as lonely motherfuckers who, in some way or another, had loved and lost. they haven't even gotten to the oh-shit moment in the slowburn yet but i'm lookin forward to it yakuza sukuna — THE PAIN. THE SUFFERING. AUHHHGHGGGG HOL YOU'RE FUCKING KILLING MEEEE. these two are mirrors in the worst possible way. they've got their throats stuck under their boss' boot heels; they've been disfigured, they've had their siblings used as leverage, they've been made into muzzled dogs. despite hating each other at the start, they can't not recognize that, and it's led to this fierce protectiveness that isssss whoops evolving into feelings. i'm sure nothing will go wrong

@eraserisms' shota — AHHHHHHH god okay most of this ship has been pure plotting vibes and responses to memes, but i truly cannot wait to get into writing more of them because they own my heart and soul. i think they know each other to the marrow in a way that's not super common for seph, and the gentleness and caution with which they're starting to explore revisiting their care for each other is heartbreaking in the best way

@sasouken BEE!!!! ok chronologically(??): deku — so precious and wholesome from the start. your honor he's just a little guy with a big dumb crush. when i tell uuuuuu some of our plotting has literally made me tear up a little??? the absolute bleeding heart on this boy??? HURTS ME??? one day they'll hold hands casper — slated to be our angstiest dynamic, i just Know it. two motherfuckers who love their siblings, inextricably involved in a tangled web of crime and violence. two people who have lost so much and don't want to lose anyone ever again. i will die i WILL satoru — such... a different vibe than i was expecting in an amazing way?? his dynamic with seph is so fuckin sweet? so much physical touch born of trust and comfort. also again: her first ever fwb (for now), which is truly a wild thing to experience. sukuna — i .. . dont even know what to say about this one. (affectionate). he unlocked an entirely new dimension of freak in seph's psyche and attraction style that i couldn't comprehend before we started writing them but retrospectively makes so much sense. what the fuck is going on with these two i have no idea but i am OBSESSED with it. also writing them getting down nasty has been extremely fun, i'm enjoying it a lot

#>> OUT.#>> NOTE.#im not sorry for ship gushing.#long post cw

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boyfhee · 2 years ago

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𝐔𝐍𝐄𝐗𝐏𝐄𝐂𝐓𝐄𝐃 · enhypen collab / CLOSED

ABOUT · we all have heard of right things going wrong, something along the lines of right person wrong time, things that weren't supposed to be this bad— but how about the other way round? perhaps, you wake up one day to find out your new neighbour is your ex and suddenly you're gravitating back towards him, a sworn enemy that makes you heart flutter after the one time he stood up for you, the person you rejected last week now lives in your head rent free, falling for the person who was supposed to help you with your crush— everything that started in all the wrong ways possible, but the stars plays into your hands, and maybe you could get something unexpected out of it.

GUIDELINES —

1 · first come, first serve. no reservations of slots. there is a 3 slots limit per member ( i am not writing 😆 or maybe i will if any slots are left, who knows ) to join, send an ask with the member you're writing for and the two keywords that are hidden in the rules. reblog the post once you've been accepted ( for clout and boosts 🫶 )

2 · your work can be x reader aligned or x oc aligned. no idol pairings.

3 · as obvious from the theme, this is supposed to be an all fluff collab. of course, you can start off with any genre, switch to something else in middle, go off with your imagination, but long story shot, a happy ending is a must. additionally, you can take inspiration from movies / drama / novels or poetry / songs & artworks / anywhere else, with proper credits. first keyword is earl grey.

4 · no nsfw works, suggestive is fine for legal members only. all the warnings should be mentioned as such. you work should have synopsis, genre, warnings and word count before the main content. use a readmore cut after 500 words. add the tag ❝ @ : uc. ❞ in the first five tags for me to track it. alternatively, you can tag me in your work or send me the link to make sure your entry reaches me.

5 · minimum word count is 1k. you're free to write one shots ( 1k-3k ) full lengths fic ( 3k+ ) no headcanons, timestamps, drabbles, one shot text fics. if you choose to write a series ( written or smau ) please make sure to complete it once you've started. only full length completed works will be accepted. you're free to post teasers except it won't be reblogged. ( please note that the numbers in brackets are just approximate values and not limits )

6 · deadline is 31st december, 2023. you can drop out before may 31st. a link to the discord server for this collab will be provide once you're accepted, it's not mandatory to join. if you have any questions, you can send an ask or dm ( at chiyuv / shoyotime / torhues ) second keyword is tea.

SLOTS & FICS — ENTRIES IN GREEN ARE CLOSED

HEESEUNG · @dearhee

JAY · @notthatsamkim

JAKE · @amakumos / @asahicore

SUNGHOON · @taejays / @seungiepup / @redm4ri

SUNOO · @luvhyun3

1 ⋆ YKWIM : @astrae4

synopsis: Kim Sunoo is irrevocably in love with Park Y/N. From the moment he laid eyes on her, he knew she was the one. However, things seem to be against him! Firstly, he’s an idol. Secondly, she’s also an idol! And finally, she’s Park Jongseong’s sister. However, Sunoo thinks his prayers have been heard! He just can’t believe that it had to take a scandal to be closer with his loml.

JUNGWON · @jennaissantes / @ayayiiie

RIKI · @yyunari / @jaeyunverse

1 ⋆ PEOPLE EATER : @homelycat

outline・countless unwanted meetings lead to an inevitable relationship. from begrudging small-talk to mellow confessions; patience and pride learn from one another.

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methed-up-marxist · 1 year ago

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This is my reading of the first chapter of the first book of a multi-media project I've been working on for over a year now but hoping to resume making serious progress on. It's about how the boy i had a crush on in secondary was really mean to me, about being physically disabled and loving football in primary and ofc about the relationship between militarism, autism and the body aswell as how I really love stupid sci-fi shit. I'm sure you've seen me post some aspect of it before and ignored it, and if you tried to read it but got bounced off by the clunky grammar and tone, but if you would ever engage with it I encourage you to engage with this - I think I've made something atleast exciting to listen to and genereally more clean in purpouse. Most direct influences are starship troopers, "queer new wave" or whatever and warhammer 40k. This is really important to me and if u consider me important to u I'd really recommend giving it a go. Below the readmore is the first 3 paragraphs, to access a transcript of whole thing and read along click the hyperlink

“WAKE UP, WAKE UP THIS IS A DRILL, I REPEAT THIS IS A DRILL” the 2am drill alarm rang out through the barracks. “I guess it’s drill time” thought Fuckjaw to himself as he rubbed his eyes and slowly swung his legs around so they hung off the bed. “I love drill time” he murmured to himself. “I know you do” came the voice from the bottom bunk, that was Shitarm and Fuckjaw would’ve done anything he could to have been waking up in the same bunk as him, but the rule was one marine per bunk and if Fuckjaw liked anything more than cuddling marines he liked rules. Tragically the rule was part of a larger collection of regulations, guidelines and dictates known as the parameter protocols designed to prevent any affection getting out of hand. “Do you feel we talk too much?” Asked Shitarm as they put their armour on, the alarm blaring constantly. “Well you definitely do” Fuckjaw responded, gently helping him place his helmet on. They weren’t allowed real power armour for training, the barracks coup near the start of the war had made sure of that, and the pliability of the far weaker plastic made it possible to feel the hole in the back of Shitarm's skull where a bug had skewered him last year. Both of them sunk their shoulders in a despondent recognition, but they had agreed not to talk about it. The rest of the room was going about much the same. The armour, even its weaker version, was too cumbersome to put on alone. Formally the protocols insisted no one help another put on his equipment, but you try to find room in the budget to put an armour-equipper in every bedroom.

Marching, albeit with little care for pacing or formation, out to the training arena revealed the same wide open space as usual. Grey fortification-like walls lined the perimeter while the area was little more than a sand pit filled with target ranges and cabinets holding guns, knives and the remnants of first aid kits. In all honesty it was a deeply impractical arrangement, the corridor through which they had marched was the only point of access to the arena and yet the targets mostly lined the space near the entrance/exit (many people had been accidentally shot upon entrance/exit) while the cabinets sat on the far side in the middle of it all stood instructor Verbnoun. Verbnoun barked at them as soon as the first two of their formation set foot on the sand "Decaysquad! Line up against that wall: the drill was not a drill, I repeat the drill was not a drill". As the squad fanned out and stood with their backs fast against the wall, exactly an arms length plus just a little bit more apart from each other, their minds raced with questions. This was explicitly a training camp for injured marines. "We woke you up last, given your undiagnosed damages” the barking continued, although "undiagnosed" is a cumbersome and hard word to yell even for a man as used to yelling as Verbnoun and it stumbled out of his mouth. "The city is under attack" he continued, less loud now clearly embarrassed by his difficulty with the word 'undiagnosed', “obviously we don't trust you right next to the bugs but conveniently… almost too conveniently” he muttered suspiciously “we have 6 turrets that we need the 12 of you to operate”. Lieutenant Fuckjaw couldn’t restrain himself in the immediacy of his correction “it's not a coincidence sir!!! the turret batteries are designed to be operated by one squad in an emergency” he blurted out as quickly as he could, already covering his mouth with his hand in apology before he had finished the sentence. The gesture was itself pointless, the communication module of the armour was located in the chest due to its clunky nature, but Verbnoun’s embarrassment led him to accept it as sufficient apology and simply point to the turret battery sitting on the far side of the base with a subdued “get going”.

Back into the entrance/exit corridor they ran, a glance back to the closing door showed a frantic instructor yelling into his mic as the two diagonal metal panes finally slammed shut meeting in the middle. “What do you think he’s doing?” Shitarm asked, looking to Fuckjaw as well as one can while running. Before there was a chance to respond, sergeant Exilethroat yelled back from the front of their formation “he’s doing his job, which is exactly what you should be doing”. He always was a bossy little bitch, that’s why they made him sergeant. Barreling through the absolutely empty military industrial complex (complex like the building) would have most likely been a deeply eerie experience, if there had been someone to turn off the 2am drill alarm. The bugs always attacked at night, or at least they did following the breeding accords [of (date)] signed with the bats - echolocation was a distinct advantage in the dark. Arriving now at the turret battery entrance after a good 20 minute run, the newer members of the squad were visibly exhausted, used to the mechanised armour doing most of their running for them. Fuckjaw and Shitarm always ran up the back, their war torn bodies a threat of embarrassment to anyone who found themselves struggling to keep their distance. They huddled into the elevator to take them up to the controls. It was a service elevator, the exact same one used in the construction of the tower the controls were at the top of in fact. With each step someone took they felt it move gently, then creak slightly less gently. There was piss on the floor and frankly it could've been the piss of the person who built the thing. As it only went between two floors the control panel was just a cracked little glass button - press to go up if you're down and down if you're up. Pressing it began the ascent and every bump or wobble as it moved up rippled through the marines, armour clanking together. Fuckjaw’s arms dropped to his sides, trying to make himself as small as possible and while he couldn't get a proper look through the needlessly large shoulder pads that displayed their rank and squad he was sure he felt the pressure of Shitarm’s hand pressed against him.

#Bandcamp

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triple-moon-rp · 23 days ago

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Lua's List of Propositions for the Hotel

(This is free for anybody that works at the hotel to comment on, mainly any Charlie's, Vaggie's, and Lucifer's. Just going to put the whole thing under readmore due to it being long. It is written in first person instead of my usual 3rd)

After a few months of research and observation, I would like to offer a compilation of changes that I believe will allow the Hazbin Hotel to better meet its mission.

Peer Support:

The drive for acceptance among peers and friends plays a large influence on how people behave. While peer pressure is more harmful, having access to peer support helps encourage positive growth. This group should consist of volunteers, people with personal experience with what our guests have been through and have overcome. Finding them in Pride may be difficult, so perhaps seeking those that work or reside in Sloth and even Heaven if those in charge can be convinced to permit it. We also need more experts on mental health and rehabilitation in general as they can give more insight and viable suggestions for improvements.

Abusers and their Victims:

Since this is a limited operation for now, there's not much we can do to mitigate past abusers from potentially ruining the progress of their previous victims. Ideally, we would house them in completely separate buildings, investing in more property will be crucial but that will require allocating resources to it. In the meantime, we should focus on preventing the abuser being alone with the abused for any amount of time. One way of doing so is with a buddy system, one person accompanies the abused in communal areas that can help de-escalate situations where confrontation is impossible to avoid.

Permanent Sanctuary:

There's one important issue that I believe needs to be addressed and that is we need to consider what to do with Sinners that will always pose a risk to themselves and others not because they are "pure evil" but due to irreversible damage or developmental issues while they were still alive. We need to consider the possibility that for some cannot or even will not be able to make Heaven their new home, that Hell is the only place left where they can truly belong. Permanent resident or not, I don't think turning them away and forcing them to try to survive on their own is necessary. So long as they follow the rules, they should be welcome here at the hotel and enjoy the same accommodations as any other guest unless there is another facility better suited for them.

Manual Re-Judgement:

From my current understanding, Heaven relies purely on forces no one truly understands to make judgements. We should present a case to them showing that it is no longer sustainable nor reasonable, and that instead the entire council should look at all the evidence supporting a person's character and manually decide for themselves for once what deems a person good and safe enough to live in Heaven if that person desires to do so. If over 90% of the council approves of a Sinner's ascension, they should at least be allowed to stay in Heaven but under parole for a certain length of time deemed reasonable by the majority. If there are no signs of reverting to old harmful habits during that period, they should be allowed to completely integrate themselves among the Winners and seen as a changed person even if they don't look like it physically or weren't beamed up to the gates. We will need to prepare potential incentives for Heaven to participate before this discussion however, but it is something I believe will be ultimately necessary to actually meet the hotel's original mission. Otherwise, we need to shift our focus off Heaven completely, and focus purely on rehabilitation and social reforms in Hell.

#lua : ic #blog canon events : Lua #//I think I wanted to add more but that's part of the curse of having good ideas when you're not able to write for a while.#ic responses are absolutely welcome to this post if it gives ideas

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rhyselinn · 2 years ago

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In Defense of Toby Fox’s Halloween Hack

Twitter is all in a tizzy about the Halloween Hack as of late. The apparent reason for this is because the Halloween Hack uses a word commonly used as a homophobic slur, not taking into account that the hack was created in 2008 (when the internet was a different place) and that 2008 was 14+ years ago (and people are known to grow and change over this time). There appears to be some amount of discussion over whether Toby Fox should be “cancelled” for this.

I’ve seen a fair bit of banter from both sides on this, but what I haven’t seen people on the internet talk about is the CONTEXT of the game in which this word is used. And while I don’t spend a lot of time talking about HH due to Toby’s stated embarrassment when people draw attention to it, if the internet’s gonna go dig up old drama for some reason, then by golly, I’m going to go dig up my old love for this game.

So if you want to come take a wild ride through some internet history and literary analysis, then go buckle your seatbelt and click the Readmore.

(content warning: discussion of homophobic slurs)

A quick bit about me: I am an adult on the internet, and I fall into the original Halloween Hack (hereafter abbreviated as HH)’s target demographic: teenagers who existed on Starmen.net, an Earthbound fan website, in 2008. I am also a current admin for Starmen.net, which puts me in a good position to comment on the history and culture of the site as a whole, and how that ties into the reception of HH.

Starmen.net has a long and rich tradition of events called Funfests, in which the site staff run a combination art/writing/music/etc contest for the site members, usually coalescing around a theme such as “Earthbound”, or sometimes “Winter” or “Halloween”. These events offer prizes such as forum avatar/rank privileges, and historically they sometimes even offered physical prizes. The 2008 Halloween funfest had an entire website made for it, which you can view here. Toby Fox submitted HH to this 2008 Halloween Funfest under the internet handle Radiation.

This is the context of HH: a passion project made by a teenager for a fan website full of other teenagers/twenty-somethings. If you go to a high school science fair, you could rightfully lambast every project for being undeserving of a Nobel Prize, but that’s not why we host high school science fairs OR Starmen.net Funfests. These events are an opportunity for teens to show what they are capable of and receive commendation from both their peers and a panel of judges selected specifically for this age demographic and venue.

For perspective, here’s what one of the hosts of the 2008 Funfest had to say about HH:

“Radiation nearly outclassed himself with this effort of skill labour and love. What a lot of fun. Despite getting repeatedly killed in the sewers this was one thoroughly enjoyabe hack. I Think I’ll go and play it again!”

HH won an award in the 2008 funfest-- a #1 in the “Most Effort” category. For some perspective, few people on Starmen.net go to the lengths of creating an entire game for a Funfest (and HH has a playtime of roughly 5-6 hours!). Of those who do, most of the resulting games are consistent with the output you would expect from a teenage userbase, since it’s not fair to expect teenagers to produce professional-quality work. That said, I can say with confidence that HH is a standout in the areas of both effort and quality.

Another thing that needs to be said of HH is that it is not a standalone game made in today’s modern game engines-- it is a hack of a preexisting game. Earthbound's codebase is notoriously complicated, and a lot of the tools that modern Earthbound hackers use to make their jobs easier (eg Coilsnake, Ebmused) didn’t exist in 2008. Toby had to do a lot of manual coding grunt-work to make HH, up to and including manually typing hexadecimal values into his computer in order to compose Megalovania. (Source: Toby wrote a really in-depth post about the process he used to make HH way back when, which I’m referring to here, but it’s unfortunately been deleted since then.)

I can imagine a hypothetical objection at this point: “ok but high effort homophobia is still homophobia”. In this post, I am also going to argue that Toby’s usage of this word can be considered artistic merit when taken in context, but you’ll have to bear with me for a bit while I explain that context. I’ll also talk about some of the cool and neat things this game does along the way because I think they’re worth talking about.

HH is, at its core, a derivative fan work of the video game Earthbound. And while I love Earthbound deeply, I also recognize that it’s a cult classic that not everyone has played. So while I encourage people to play the game I love deeply, I’ll also sum up a few relevant plot beats here so folks can understand the source material HH draws from:

--Ness, a thirteen year-old boy, meets a creature named Buzz Buzz from ten years in the future who tells him that an alien named Giygas has destroyed the world (direct quote: “All is devastation”). As such, Ness and his friends must save the world.

--One of Ness’s friends is a shy boy named Jeff with a penchant for shooting bottle rockets at enemies

--Jeff’s dad is an odd character named Dr. Andonuts. Dr. Andonuts is a reclusive scientist who lives in a snowy region called Winters who sent his son off to boarding school at a very young age. Andonuts’s lab includes no other signs of life, certainly not any indications of a wife/Jeff’s mother. Andonuts ends his conversation with Jeff by saying “Let’s get together in another ten years or so.”

--Towards the end of the game, Dr. Andonuts uses a device he created called a Phase Distorter to send Ness and his friends to the venue for the final battle. This is very clearly telegraphed as a one-way trip, as the kids’ brains are described in text as needing to be transplanted into robots to get there, but the kids go along with it anyway because the world is at stake.

--The kids go on to fight the final boss in a spectacle that words can’t do justice to here. All I’ll say is that after a long-fought battle, in the grace of an unexplained Deus Ex Machina, the souls of the four kids are impossibly returned to their bodies so they can enjoy their happy ending.

These are all canonical events that happen in the base game of Earthbound. Earthbound’s sequel, Mother 3, was released in 2006, two years prior to HH, although the English fan translation wasn’t released until around the time of the 2008 funfest, interestingly enough. Mother 3 does develop Dr. Andonuts’s canonical character somewhat, but I won’t discuss it in further detail here other than to say it mostly re-emphasizes his odd, solitary nature and his overly cavalier attitude towards his science experiments.

It’s also worth noting that in an oddball game like Earthbound, there are a lot of weird and funny idiosyncrasies to theorize on. There are pencil-shaped statues that block your way, which need to be removed with a device called a “pencil eraser.” Ness and his friends fight robots, aliens, and Krakens, but they also fight handbag-wielding ladies and walking mushrooms. Dr. Andonuts’s character oddities, while strange, fit nicely into the evenly distributed mesh of oddities that comprise Earthbound’s world.

Derivative works, particularly fan works, exist in conversation with the source material. They answer questions posed by the source, interpolate details left out of the original, and otherwise build on the world of the original in a collaborative way. This conversation sometimes happens in a one-on-one manner, between fan and original creator, but it also happens in conjunction with the fan community as a whole. When a theory takes traction, it will begin to appear in more and more fan works, growing in popularity and notoriety until it is “accepted” as the most common interpretation of canon’s strange idiosyncrasies. Newer or more fringe theories are less likely to be taken as a “default” interpretation, but they are more likely to be taken as “fresh” or “interesting” until/unless they, too, begin to gain traction.

HH exists in a few conversations: one with the source material, one with the fan community of Starmen.net (and the broader Earthbound community as a whole, although there was much more overlap between the two back in 2008), and one with Starmen.net’s Funfest culture. In order for HH to be well received by the Funfest judges, it would need to be aware of the community sensibilities as well as push the boundaries of the fan conversation with Earthbound as a whole-- a careful balancing act of being both interesting but also recognizable.

So, the fundamental fan question that HH tries to answer is “why is Dr. Andonuts LIKE THAT?”

This is an absolutely fair question, and Toby was certainly not the first to ask it, although his answer in the form of HH is one of the most high profile now.

HH is set in the world of Earthbound a few months after the final boss fight in autumn, but one where Ness and his friends did not magically return after their one-way trip to the final boss. Word has it that Dr. Andonuts has turned evil and must be defeated. On its surface, this is standard fare for a throwaway plot for a Funfest submission, but the magic of HH is that it does not treat this premise as a throwaway plot. It sets out to earnestly discuss why this happened by delving into Andonuts’s psyche.

Coming back to the idea of derivative works existing in conversation with the source material and interpolating unexplained details: Earthbound does not explain why Dr. Andonuts lives in solitude, nor does it give any hint as to the identity of Jeff’s mother. It also gives no indication as to why Andonuts didn’t seem to have bonded well with his son other than the handwavey explanation that Andonuts is just “like that”. HH initially poses the question of “why did Andonuts turn evil”, but leaves the reader to puzzle that out while battling monsters in Earthbound’s RPG engine.

At first, Toby offers a partial explanation: in HH, Dr. Andonuts is portrayed as feeling immense guilt at having sent his son into what he perceived as a death trap. (quote from the game: “The world is dead, and I’ve become senile with guilt and rage.” He also says stuff like “what’s the point in living without them”.) As such, he turned evil and created zombies to storm the world of Winters, causing a surge in refugees and desperate survivors. This is why the main character was sent to kill him.

(image transcription: a picture of a menu with the text “What do you do!?” followed with a single option: “Kill him”)

But in order to see the depth of this explanation, the true answer to the question “why is Dr. Andonuts LIKE THIS”, the player must hit “B” to cancel out of a menu at the correct moment, something Earthbound players tend to learn by habit from closing the equipment menu so many times, but never used as a plot-relevant mechanic in the base game. HH takes this subconscious muscle memory and turns it into a mechanic gating off half the game if you don’t “spare” the enemy, a precursor to the “spare” mechanic that would debut seven years later in Undertale.

When the player does this, they enter Dr. Andonuts’s “Magicant,” a dream-construct representing his inner psyche, with his hopes and dreams and fears all laid bare. The main character is tasked with finding Dr. Andonuts’s lost Courage. In the base game, Ness enters his own Magicant, so this feels familiar to a veteran player, but it also gives Toby the chance to more closely examine Dr. Andonuts’s character than he otherwise might be able to do.

Over the course of the rest of the game in Dr. Andonuts’s Magicant, the player continues to control the main character, a bounty hunter named Varik, but the NPCs in the game often mistakenly treat Varik as Andonuts. The dialogue we see from these NPCs reflects memories from Andonuts’s own life. We see a lot more characters try to make connections with Dr. Andonuts (”hey don’t you want to play baseball instead of doing math?”), but these are apparently rebuffed througout Andonuts’s life. One NPC guarding the entrance to the path leading to this lost Courage advises “Be careful. Be yourself.” We see memories of Dr. Andonuts’s presumed wife/Jeff’s mom, who is an OC Toby created for this work to answer the questions posed by canon.

Varik is tasked with fighting three “demons” behind three doors, where each demon is said to be stronger than the next. Since this segment takes place inside Andonuts’s mind, these are unsubtly implied to be Andonuts’s inner demons. The second and third doors represent Andonuts’s relationship with his son and his guilt over getting people killed; the first door is relevant to this post, so I’ll talk about it in more detail.

Inside the first door, Varik sees Andonuts’s memories of something called “Remember Me,” who despite being faced in a battle, is friendly and affectionate and causes no damage apart from being “hard to think about.” This enemy has a stock overworld sprite of a male NPC from the base game.

(image transcript: a smiling purple sprite in an Earthbound-style battle. The text box says “The Remember Me? was a little hard to think about again”)

At the end of this map, we see a cutscene in which it’s implied that Dr. Andonuts felt disconnected from his wife, perceiving her as an incessant insect. She says things like “Lately, you’ve been acting kind of... disinterested in me. Is there something wrong with me?” She asks if Dr. Andonuts has been hiding something from her, which triggers the following battle:

(image description: an Earthbound-esque battle against three enemies, each a sprite depicting a closeup of a man’s muscular body: a bicep, a chest, and a swimsuit-clothed groin area)

All three of these enemies are named NO. The music that plays in the background is deliberately unsettling, and their battle moves consist mostly of “flexing in a masculine way”, “slapping their buddies in a masculine fashion”, and “being hard to think about again”. After three turns, these enemies deliver a series of un-dodgeable moves that kill the player before it’s possible to defeat them, ending the game. The only way to proceed in the game is to select the Flee option in the menu.

To summarize the themes being presented here, Dr. Andonuts is gay and repressed his homosexuality to try to preserve his relationship with his wife due to his lack of courage. From a game design and literary merit standpoint, this NO battle is actually a really poignant way of portraying Andonuts’s mindset and all of the fears that kept him in the closet, portraying men’s bodies as an enemy that he must fight, or in failing to do so, must run from. Remember that Earthbound takes place in 199X-- none of the 1990′s were known for being especially tolerant of gay men, nor was 2008 when Toby made this hack; 2008 was the same year that California passed a bill intended to ban gay marriage. In another since-deleted web page, Toby said that one of his motivations for creating HH was “the lack of non-stereotypical, major homosexual characters in media”. With that in mind, this is a surprisingly sensitive portrayal of the pains of repressing one’s sexuality, especially from a teenager.

Toby also portrays some complexity in Andonuts’s relationship with his son Jeff, making the case that Andonuts helped Jeff in his fight against Giygas as a way of living vicariously through him to feel like less of a monster. From this standpoint, it’s easy to see that Andonuts’s abrasive language might be a defense mechanism for his own self esteem issues, calling others monsters to deflect from the fact he sees HIMSELF as a monster.

(image transcription: a screenshot of the main character fighting Andonuts from the end of the game. The text in the textbox from Andonuts says “you idiots. look at your decaying, frostbitten bodies”)

(and just as a side note, I think the reminiscence of this dialogue to Flowey’s dialogue in Undertale is funny and interesting)

Dr. Andonuts says the following: "If I can't live with myself, why should anybody else? Ergo, nobody will live. Then, everybody will understand all the pain I went through. When everyone understands me... They'll cherish me so." This isn’t the expression of a healthy mind, but it is a portrayal of someone who’s experiencing some serious pain. I’d also argue that it’s a nuanced and sympathetic portrayal of a character who is clearly in a crisis.

Another Andonuts quote: “you’re going to kill me, because that’s what a hero does. he has to kill that monster, right? even in this form, i am shaking with fear. i don’t want to die. leave me alone”

The second-to-last fight in the game is against an enemy called Id. In Freudian psychology, the Id is the representation of one’s most base desires, in contrast to the Superego who restrains a person from operating on these desires. The game up until this point does a good job at portraying Dr. Andonuts’s Superego-centric repression strategies, so getting to see his underlying base desires directly is a novel development. The enemy Id consistently reiterates a desire to be left alone and for the main character to not kill it. At the end, it apologizes for not being much of a fight. Only then does Varik fight Dr. Andonuts proper, and without the Id, all that’s left is the Superego-fueled repression, labeled in-game as “hatred”.

Andonuts’s villain monologue starts as such: “I know what this feeling is. It’s hatred for the person who came so far just to destroy an old man. My mind is gone. All that is left is pure hatred.

YOU SEE THIS BURNING, BLOODY UNIVERSE. YOU SEE THIS ULTIMATE, UNLIMITED POWER? Varik. I HAVE FUCKING HAD IT WITH YOUR SHIT. you little fuckers are going to have your bodies ripped in half. i’ll shove your asses so far down your throats that when you crap, you’ll sing fucking beethoven.”

This monologue is the precursor to the infamous line:

(image transcript: a screenshot from the final battle, in which Andonuts says the words “tl;dr: eat shit, faggots”)

As established earlier, this is a line uttered by a gay character who is in a tremendous amount of pain, which would make it an act of slur reclamation. We could argue about whether Toby Fox is in a position to justify this usage, but I refuse to have that conversation because I don’t think real life queer people should have to out themselves in order to justify the art they make. Whether Toby Fox is actually queer or not is, I would argue, immaterial to the story he’s trying to tell here, which is nuanced in a way that a homophobe would be unlikely to write.

We can also have the conversation of whether this word choice is a good decision or not-- and there are, I would argue, a lot of parts of this game that a storyteller with more experience and maturity would have handled better. There are some parts that come across heavy-handed and needlessly edgy, and there are parts that could have been handled with more grace. We can discuss whether “bury our gays” stories were stale by 2008, or whether stories of queer pain had fallen out of vogue for stories of queer joy. But again, this is a work made by a 16-year old, and being needlessly critical of a fangame made by a teenager for a community of predominantly teenagers feels needlessly meanspirited. Just because the game has been unforeseeably thrust into the public light like this doesn’t mean we need to eviscerate it from a 2023 lens. It’s not fair to Toby Fox, neither the original 16-year old creator nor the adult celebrity today.

So I’m not going to do that. What I am going to say is that a queer reading of this work would indicate that this word usage may very well have been a decision made with artistic intent, and a death-of-the-author reading of this work might indicate that this word has artistic merit anyways. If a gay character sees gayness as bad and uses a slur associated with gayness to demean his opponent, that does fundamentally say something about this character, and in this case it reinforces the existing themes that Toby had put in place. I wouldn’t recommend people in 2023 take this approach in storytelling lightly, but I can see and appreciate the spirit in which the game and this word choice appear to have been made.

In the end, Varik does defeat Dr. Andonuts and kill him.

(image transcript: Varik standing above the machine containing Dr. Andonuts’s dead body, not depicted onscreen. The text box reads “You feel a little like this situation could have been avoided.”)

This is one of the last text boxes of the game, and I think it’s a good ending note for this work-- saying that queer lives do NOT need to go this way, that we do not need to bury our gays, that this genuine pain that Dr. Andonuts experienced is not an inevitability.

In conclusion, I do love Halloween Hack for what it is, imperfections and all. It was very clearly a labor of love made by a very earnest and well-meaning teen, and a lot of the things that would later go on to make Undertale so popular are present in their nascent forms here. HH has some genuinely interesting things to say about Earthbound, from both a plot and a character standpoint, and it’s clearly a good-faith attempt at grappling with queer and psychological subject matter. If people on the internet were to engage sincerely with it rather than judging it (and its creator) based on one out-of-context screenshot, I think they might find a diamond-in-the-rough that still manages to be an absolute gem of a fangame.

#earthbound #halloween hack #undertale #toby fox #tw slurs

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unmotivatedartistry · 2 months ago

Text

@mooseonahunt

WHO ARE THEY?!! GLAD YOU ASKED!!! (oc ramble under readmore)

IGNACY SOKOŁOWSKI!

Wiesław relative indeed! He's his younger brother! Originally when I made Wiesław he was an only child, but IGNACY! They don't talk often now, they're in separate regiments. Rough relationship between them, but Wiesław harshly denies how relieving it is to see Ignacy alive. Ignacy openly admits it's a relief. They're polar opposites in many ways, but they still care about each other, even if it's rough. (Can go more into detail if anyone wants?!)

Ignacy went into the army later than Wiesław, and he did it originally in England rather than Wiesław who joined the army in Poland and then transferred in England after getting his face blown off. (despite it Ignacy is very patriotic, he has a heavy Polish accent, whatnot. Important. He hates the Polish government, that's why he went to England.) He's a Captain (working to be major but not yet </3) in the SRR (Special Reconnaissance Regiment) in Britain! It's like SAS but instead of counterterrorism and stuff they do surveillance and reconnaissance. They work very closely with one another, so that's how COD comes into play.... Ignacy works often with the TF141 in means of giving information and stuff :3.

Anyways yeah he's good pals with his fellow captain, which is Price. They're buddies. He also really likes Laswell when he momentarily worked with her. He's friendly with the 141 but has had a bit less contact with them compared to just Price and Laswell. Old people gang (Ignacy is like 40)

Alright, physical appearance wise!!! Skip if uninterested

He's ~6'5 (he's a TALL man.). Physically from his face and stature, he's similar to Wiesław (his jawline down to his chin usually dips in at the center, or at least, it's SUPPOSED to) (he's skinny and has sagging shoulders. like an upside down U for his shoulders) (also his nose is prominent just in a different way, Wiesław's is pointy whereas Ignacy has a curved nose bridge and round point (?) at the bottom). Some differences, his hair is shorter than Wiesław's (not pictured, it's shoulder length whereas Wiesław's reaches more armpit-level) and it's not as curly. He has more wavy, loose-curls whereas Wiesław's is tight curls. And Ignacy wears more of a pony tail rather than a bun since he doesn't have enough hair. Again, nose too. His face is longer than Wiesław's too. He has burn scars* (WILL TALK ABOUT LATER!!!) the entire bottom half of his face, spanning down the front of his neck, chest, stomach, the inside front of his arms, his right hand, his lower back and the back of his thighs. Whereas Wiesław's scars are prominently red-orange-brown type of scab color, Ignacy's are a reddish purple magenta scab color like burn scars I've seen. Also droopy eyes and very warm skin. While pale, he blushes very easy. So he has this naturally very warm appearance. But he wears a white balaclava.

Story time? Yeah.

So, he went into the army after leaving college prematurely at ~21 or so. He'd heard about his brother dying** in the army. Y'know, to honor him, and whatnot. ** (he didn't die. I'm referring to the grenade incident with Wiesław. Their mother told Ignacy Wiesław died because she hated Wiesław pretty much (he was the scapegoat child)) He didn't exactly quickly get the hang of it. He wasn't strong of course, he wasn't inclined towards strength at first, of course, shit changes. I can't draw muscles but He has them. So, he's a captain, that's the 2nd thing in officer shit after Second and First Lieutenant. Of course, the scars gotta come from something, right?

He was a second lieutenant at the time. There isn't a real big story about this, he was working with the SAS at the time for some mission. Of course, like all bad stories, it was a bloody trap (they were going for a negotiation with some... idk. russians or cartel guys or whatever). They got trapped in a building during "negotiations", and the room suddenly smelled like gas. And then there were flames. Don't sue me over it being sorta kinda unrealistic. Anyways, yeah. He watched over half of the team he was working with burn to death, and had passed out before a backup rescue emergency evac team came and managed to evacuate whatever bodies they could. Ignacy was just lucky to be one of the ones who survived. (it's funny because Ignacy could best be anglicized to Ignatius, which comes from the latin word for fire. It's like fate chose out this for him. HAHAHA i love being the fate in my character's stories and fucking them over. sorry ig.)

It took almost a year to fully heal, but strangely he came back to the military even with the PTSD. Mostly because it's just fire that triggered it, and he strangely was good with control. Unlike Wiesław, but I digress. From then on he became a captain and whatnot. His life isn't too eventful besides the whole fire thing and then Salt but we're getting to him

Personality?

He's generally nice and friendly. He's like Price in some ways but also not. He's distant as a person since he doesn't like to talk about himself (nothing trauma related, he just doesn't like to) but he's very friendly to his team. Can be harsh when he wants (needs) to be. Generally kind and whatnot. Awkward smiles is his #1 thing, Awkward uncomfortable smiles. I don't think I've drawn him without one. Why? I don't know. He's just uncomfortable sometimes. He's insecure about his scars (not surprising??) but doesn't mention it. He can be fatherly to the young people under him. Like Privates, corporals for the soldier side and for the officer side the second lieutenants. He's very nice to the scared confused soldiers not used to this work despite . uh they should be. Also he's strangely good with other people's PTSD and anxiety stuff. This is important later. But, uhhh, yeah. Kind but distant. Also he gets confused a lot (in casual talk) since he gets lost in translation sometimes. And he murmurs to himself in Polish when he's alone. Uhh.... yeah. That's all I have for him rn.

Fun facts:

Math nerd. He was going to be a math teacher in a university in poland before going to the army.

Very Bad in language. English is okay at best but so is Polish so he's incomprehensible sometimes.

Very good hearing???? You could drop something across a house and Ignacy would hear it and be worried.

Not that religious. Passively religious. Goes to Church only on the big holidays. Goes more often when he meets Salt.

He listens to classical music AND THAT'S IT. Drives Salt insane.

Refuses to use call signs or nicknames. He will full-name you with no harm intended (there are exceptions. he's not an asshole it's just that in Poland it's disrespectful to use nicknames with superiors and whatnot so he interprets it as vice versa)

Alright....

VINCENT "SALT" ALLEN!

He joined the army when he was 18, fresh. He was just obsessed with anything military so he got in the SECOND he could. He is a smart guy, like, took too many AP courses in high school for a sane human being (got by with pretty good grades too, not perfect), he just likes the military and always wanted to go after his dad went. So, he's a sergeant!! Working on getting into an officer position (lieutenant).

Important thing? He's autistic with little to no empathy and a flat affect. This is important. I'll explain more in story time.

Physical appearances:

He has greyish skin, strangely like a corpse but not exactly. More orange-yellow undertones to his skin. His hair is this weird dirty blonde/brown color. Didn't draw it but it has some spots where it's blonder and some spots where it's darker. He has a kinda flat nose and small eyes. Long face. He's ~6'2 and decently skinny too. Shoulders are meant to be rigid, kinda in a line since he's tense 24/7. And his hands are shaking damn near always whenever he's outside of a mission. He has a scar on the right side of his nose. It's a shallow one, but it's there. He has freckles, generally going in a diagonal fashion from bottom left to top right (it's faintly drawn but it's intended in newer drawings bc the postit note drawings are a lil outdated). Half of his right ear is missing. The right side of his neck has an X-like scar. Now that I think about it, a strange amount of his scars are on the right side of his face. Oh well.

Story time!!

...He doesn't have much of a backstory. He had a good childhood aside from being bullied to hell for his flat affect. He used to be called a psychopath and all, so there's a bit of that, other than that, good childhood.

The military was... fine. He used to be in the SAS and was a damn good soldier. He went through a lot of shit there. Nothing specific. He's gotten shot, stabbed, tortured, held captive, the whole nine yards really. Mostly because he takes too much risk.

He transferred to the SRR when he was 24 or so (6 years into being in the army) and that's where he started getting familiar with Ignacy. They had worked in the past since, yk, SAS works closely with SRR. He also vaguely knows the 141 from this. Hardly. When he transferred to the SRR, Ignacy damn near immediately took him under his wing. They've been INSANELY close since then. Like, inseparable. It's a little worrying sometimes.

Vincent got diagnosed with PTSD around a few months in SRR. It hit him hard. You know how Ignacy is good with PTSD? Yeah. He's essentially Vincent's rock. When Vincent can't sleep at night, he camps out in Ignacy's room since he has insomnia from PTSD as well. They often end up asleep in the same bed since the other's presence is soothing. Basically, Ignacy holds Vincent's hand the entirety of navigating life with PTSD as a young ass 25 year old with no life direction and a shattered sense of self after, yk. War?

Personality!!!

Yeah so uh. Flat affect!!! Autism!!! No empathy!!! That's the more important part about him. Alright, a big distinction: SALT vs VINCENT.

Salt is what Vincent acts as when in the army. Ignacy has a physical mask, while Vincent has an emotional/behavioral one. Salt is extremely distant and closed off, he shows very little emotion and he's monotone 24/7. He can be violent and angry at times, but generally is a terrifying calm. He's terrifying too. For the people under him, anyway. Ignacy does not find Salt scary at all. To him, it's an obvious facade of violence, anger, and whatnot as a defense mechanism. Really, he seems some of Wiesław in Salt. It makes his heart hurt sometimes. He has a bad habit of pushing away the people trying to get close to him or those already close to him. Hence why he has very little friends aside from Ignacy, who just... really doesn't want to give up on him. He's also VERY violent-dog coded. Like, all of those quotes involving anything dog motif relates. Vincent is SO "I'm not a violent dog. I don't know why I bite." and "I get mean when I'm nervous like a bad dog." and so on so forth. I LOVE IT.

Vincent? Vincent is a scared kid. I'm sorry, but he isn't even fully developed. I know he's a full grown adult. But he, by Ignacy's standards, should be in college. Being happy. Anything! Going to shitty clubs and drinking himself blackout drunk at a shitty party instead of getting life-altering trauma and making life-or-death decisions 24/7!!! Vincent is anxious 24/7. He's nice, he tries so hard to be nice. He has this internalized fear from his childhood of being a psychopath or a horrible person, this haunting guilt that has followed him his entire life. He has little empathy, it makes it hard for him to really be what society expects for a "good person". He still wants to be one. Especially that validation seeking part of him. He freaks out the most with certain "air" sounds (think wind or a computer fan) or static noises, or any steady ambiance like that. It's always unnerved him and made his anxiety worse. Social anxiety is included. He's VERY awkward around people whenever he isn't "Salt". He's lost a lot of fundamental sense of self and doesn't know who he is half of the time. Suffers a lot from dissociation. He doesn't know what to do with himself socially though. He somewhat self-harms. It used to be worse in high school where it was the stereotypical show of SH, but now it characterizes itself more in occasional social self-sabotage and scratching the SHIT out of his arms. Also he burns himself whenever he smokes. And he smokes A LOT.

Alright, fun facts.

Why is he named Salt? He had really dry eyes in training and needed eye drops for a while after some gas training. Fucked up his eyes a little. He was whining a little too much one week around his drill sergeant, and the man got so pissed off he put a shit ton of salt in some water and replaced his eye drops with it. Temporarily blinded him. The soldiers found it fucking hilarious and called him Salt ever since. (the actual inspiration for the callsign "Salt" was bc my tag for COD is saltdier as a pun on soldier. so)

He's immune to nicotine addiction. This is rare as FUCK but it's caused by a cluster of genes on chromosome 15 :D

Vincent actually knew Wiesław before Ignacy, but hated him So Much because he was a dick to him and snobby as fuck. Also reminded him of himself. Doesn't hate him as much now.

He chain-smokes like crazy whenever he gets REALLY anxious or after a very long/hard mission. It's a miracle his lungs are relatively fine.

He's gotten tested for ASPD (antisocial personality disorder) so many times out of this irrational fear of being a psychopath. He still believes he is one sometimes. It's a bloody phobia at this point. (I've realized after a little research that I may have accidently made Salt with OCD. Maybe yes, maybe no. If he is, I'm leaving him undiagnosed because it was unintended.)

anyways yeah thats them. they're in love btw fight me about it

#simon says #oc rambling #oc rant #vincent “salt” allen #vincent allen #ignacy sokołowski #wiesław sokołowski #he's only mentioned in passing but still #long text post #long post #what's the character count on this??#just checked. it's 5 pages in a google doc and 2442 words. what

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plaidbooks · 9 months ago

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What tips/advice do you have for writing:

Rafael

Sonny

Peter

Mike

Under a readmore for length:

Rafael: I find him to be the hardest, just because he's so smart and quick. Maybe work backwards with him--think of a good quip or a direct line of reasoning that he will follow, then muddy the waters with other, incorrect thoughts from those around him. That way, he seems like the reasonable one that is following a good train of thought.

He's also quick to hide his real feelings on things--he's private and not really a vulnerable man. So, he wouldn't be confessing feelings (whether love or frustration) on the first opportunity to do so. Also, as much as he hates his father, I do think that he's picked up the habit of anger > other emotions. Thought he can be patient, we've also seen him get angry or frustrated quickly over over emotions.

Rafael is a slow burn type of character, I think.

*********

Sonny: He is a fixer! Yo do not go to Sonny to vent, because he will be giving advice, whether you want it or not. This can be a good thing, or a flaw, and can be written both ways.

He also wears his heart on his sleeve; he's pretty open about emotions. Though, there's definitely times--especially when he's frustrated--where he'll drop a snappy, one-liner that he expects you to ask about so that he can go into his frustrated monologue.

He's also the king of "I don't understand what's happening, but I do understand that you are upset, so I will support you anyways." Like with trans victims, he openly says he doesn't get it, but he never misgenders them and still fights for justice.

Though Sonny is seen as the goofball in early seasons, I do think he's one that will stay up until 3am having deep, philosophical talks and really dive into feelings.

*********

Peter: He's a little harder, especially if you only watched svu (like me). We don't have him long, so a lot of him is made up. He's definitely more in touch with his feelings than Rafael, but he's not on Sonny's level of openness. I think he's willing to share the good things, but not the bad.

We've seen that he drinks quite often and had a threesome to take his mind off things (of course, if you're planning on having him in a relationship, I do not see him cheating), so he has some trouble with his negative emotions. He doesn't have good coping skills, and he hides himself away rather than opening up to someone.

Peter also came on after Rafael, whom the squad loved. There's a lot of mistrust and trying to figure the new guy out that has the squad disliking him. However, Sonny shadowed underneath him a little, too, so he sees Peter's real side; how he works and how passionate he is behind closed doors.

**********

Mike: Like Peter, we don't have a whole lot on him. Unlike Peter, we do not have another show this character was on first for more research. As such, we really get to make him up.

His dad was always super strict with the squad, so we can only assume he was even worse to his son(s)--Mike has a brother, remember. And a mom, who is divorced (if I recall correctly).

But even with this and the constant pressure from his dad to follow the latter's dream, Mike is still a team player. He's nice, approachable--his one flaw is that he's trying to be perfect so quickly.

Personally, I think he puts on airs at work--as in, he's puffed up and Work Mike. But at home, he's allowed to relax and be himself. He has no one to impress--even in a relationship, I think he strives to have someone who he doesn't have to be Mike Dodds in front of.

I hope this helps, and good luck writing!

#answered #anon #writing advice #rafael barba #sonny carisi #peter stone #mike dodds

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lunarflare64 · 5 months ago

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hello i would very much like 2 hear abt blood&sugar. whats it about :O

!!!

Unskippable cutscene activated

To start things off, we have everything stored in @blood-and-sugar for organisation, and we're starting to have a pretty elaborate masterpost system so its not that hard to find anything, but! An introduction to everything is for sure needed!

We are reluctantly putting it under a readmore for everyone's health 🤣

Its still in the stage we call "the sandbox" where we are just gonna keep fleshing out the world and the general timeline until the actual STORY story fully comes to us, but we do have quite a lot to work with already and you can probably tell which parts are going to be key in the actual story

This is a story about incubi, succubi, and hitmen. The incubi and succubi belong to a species called the concubines, and they come from a parallel pocket dimension, a sort of reverse earth where the sea is land and the land is sea. The major natural gateways are places like the Bermuda Triangle, but minor gateways can be found anywhere by familiars, and pegasi can create their own gateways whenever, and pegasi magic is vital for concubines who travel between dimensions, it makes it so the interdimensional travel doesn't pulverize them. This magic is given by tattooing pegasus blood onto the back, giving them wings

Concubines come to earth primarily to harvest the emotion that, when left to their own devices, would only seep through the cracks between dimensions very slowly, and they need it to be able to reproduce so a shortage of it results in a major drop in population. We'll probably go over the specifics of it another time, this is already getting lengthy

NOW FOR THE ACTUAL PLOT

We have a few groups with their own thing going on, the OG 4 and the Nightclub Crew largely deal with Indigo (succubus) and Lilly (human), who fucking hate each other, because Lilly is a hitman with a very good reputation thats being ruined by Indigo, who always coincidentally kills her marks (it really was a coincidence for a good while there, a major one since Lilly travels all around the world for her hits). Indigo's whole deal is that she's a newbie on the scene and has an ego the size of the sun, and its completely unearned. She can convince people to sleep with her easily, but she's a pillow princess and really fucking bad in bed in general, which tends to make people laugh, which tends to make Indigo angry, so she kills them. Very reasonable proportional reaction, definitely.

There's another situation in these two groups, more the Nightclub Crew specifically, but that needs the other groups explained first

The other two groups are the Rice-Carter Family and the Vampires

Connie Rice-Carter is a 76 year old human, and her wife Viva Rice-Carter is a 482 year old concubine (concubines live to 500, so Viva is retired and on the way out). Viva is supposed to spend her retirement in the concubine dimension, but she likes humans and refuses to give up earth so every time they catch her she escapes. The reason why she's not supposed to leave? The same reason why Briar Rice-Carter exists. Concubines reproduce around the ages of 400 to 450, and its (sort of) done asexually, so retirement is needed so no eggs (did we mention they lay clutches of 3 eggs?) are laid on earth. But whoops, escapee Viva underestimated the energy she'd gathered, and one final clutch was laid on earth, with one survivor (not that surprising in unideal conditions), our boy Briar. Connie took in Briar's egg, and went to great lengths to keep him hidden and safe until he reached a life stage that looked like a regular human baby (which usually happens 13 years after hatching), before officially claiming him as her own and raising him in human society (she'd had 3 kids in her previous marriage, so Briar has human siblings he grew up with). Viva wasn't around a whole lot herself because (along with being actively on the run) concubines don't actually raise the eggs they lay, they have a specific job for that and if they don't sign up for it parenthood isn't even remotely on their radar. Viva's attempts to help when she WAS around also fucking sucked, 0/10 parent, literal cults have done better (thats next).

And now the Vampires. Yes actual vampires. Blood/energy consumption and all. But also not, because vampires are actually human concubine hybrids, made by collecting concubine blood and having a human consume it. The few that know about this don't typically find it appealing or ideal, but there is a portion of those few who belong to cults. These various unrelated cults consume concubine blood on purpose, and sacrifice either the parent or the child. Naturally, the vampires raised in these conditions don't come out mentally stable. They have 0 personal connection to their concubine heritage, and, hating that the race IGNORES vampires stuck on earth and forced to live horrible lives, a group of vampires eventually gathered, and started killing every concubine they came across. The leaders of this group are the twins, Jody and Tanner Robbins (mostly its Jody leading though). The only concubine they haven't outright killed is also the only concubine that kinda gets them, Briar.

Briar is stranded on earth too, and while they have a good relationship with Viva, her part in raising them fucked him up a little. He's not against the vampires' plan (he knows it'll fail, that it wont help, but he doesn't care), and on occasion he even kills with them. He gets particularly attached to Tanner, and the two have ego fuelled boasting contests, simultaneously fighting and showing off. They'll get together eventually, give them time.

And now Elias. Elias is one of the few concubines on earth who isn't a harvester. Instead he's a hunter. A bit like an assassin, but he also captures alive on occasion (he's caught Viva before, but basically every hunter has, its no great achievement, and they all know she's gonna escape again). He was sent to deal with the vampires, but when he tried to kill them, they just as easily tried to kill him back, and that unfortunately hit a spot hidden deeeep down inside of him that made him find it adorable, and after a few attempts to kill them, he gave in and adopted them (they hate this turn of events just as much as he does), becoming their mutually reluctant mentor/father figure.

Unfortunately, with all these concubines and vampires gathered in one city like this, it drew in the attention of someone EVERY hunter has on their kill on sight list. The immortality seeking cannibal (and Viva's former mentor from when SHE was a newbie), 612 year old Emvianyí. She eats humans, vampires, and concubines. Anything that would give her more energy to hold her form together (for concubines, dying of old age is dissolving into mist. Forcing your form to stay together for so long tends to make it dense and brittle though, so Emvianyí is covered in jagged cracks). Her goal is to find the home of the pegasi, because their lungs are said to contain the key to true immortality (at least for concubines). She's an absolute menace, and the only concubines she DOESN'T want to eat are Viva and Briar, because she still cares for her student, and that extends somewhat to her son (she sees him as her grandson, he does not see her as their grandmother)

Viva, life living and retirement enjoying old bat that she is, has long since accepted and embraced dying of old age, and she's pissed that her former mentor is both ruining her fun and trying to drag her into extending her lifespan. In return, Viva decides that she is going to drag Emvianyí to the afterlife with her kicking and screaming. She is going to FORCE Emvianyí to accept her mortality, and regardless of if it means having to kill Emvianyí herself or keeping her in the house like an indoor cat, Viva is going to live her final years peacefully with her wife

But there's one last factor. In the Nightclub Crew there is a little nobody coworker named Neal, he had no idea his friends and coworkers were living such insane lives. He got ignored and forgotten a lot, and him being an absolute doormat, he never said anything. He felt pretty neglected and isolated in the group, and when he found out about the concubines and everything going on with them, things even his human "best friend" Quarren was deeply tied into, he kinda lost all hope of ever actually fully being welcomed into the group. Just not interesting enough. Too plain, too normal, nothing interesting would be brought to them by him. In comparison to their lives, Neal has absolutely nothing worth paying attention to.

At least until Emvianyí comes along. She doesn't invite him really, its more, he heard her talking about what eating a pegasus can DO, and he invites himself along. Emvianyí, luckily, finds this amusing, and encourages his power hungry desperation. He eventually tries out cannibalism for himself, but since he can't gain power from eating a concubine or vampire (all he's gonna get out of that is a baby), its very slow going. Not really much to be gained for him from that in the short term. He helps Emvianyí escape tight spots with hunters, and generally navigate earth since she can't really pass as a human anymore (the cracks in her skin + when concubines reach old age they can't hide their wings, tail, or horns anymore, and their skin turns an odd bright colour. Their hair also typically becomes misty, but Emvianyí herself is too brittle and dense for that one)

AAAAAAAND THATS ALL WE'VE GOT!

We're pretty proud of it so far, considering this is only two months worth of on and off worldbuilding, and its the first time an original idea of ours has ever left the ground

Again, for more details like the actual full cast or a bunch of memes or a really interconnected masterpost system in its infancy (we would NEVER have tried to make it if the blog had been any older than it is, it would just be too much too organise, its the kind of thing that needs to be done from the start), its all at @blood-and-sugar

#blood&sugar

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carminecherry · 4 months ago

Text

ENCLOSURE | mikey sano

this is part four of the series kill the lights

⇝ PAIRING: timeskip!biker!mikey sano x fem!reader

⇝ PART FOUR LENGTH: 2k words

⇝ PART FOUR WARNINGS: mentions of violence (18+ minors do not interact):

all characters are 20+; Alternate Universe! Canon Divergent. a friend from university invites you to his house party. as the drinks flow, you slip into a pleasant buzz. that is until a particular masked man makes his appearance, unveiling himself.

⇝ AUTHOR'S NOTE: a short chapter with a little spice at the end ;) more chapters coming soon! keep an eye on the tags and stay safe! <3

DO NOT INTERACT WITH THIS WORK IF YOU ARE A MINOR. BY CLICKING THE READMORE, YOU CONSENT TO VIEWING ADULT CONTENT.

Your eyes flutter open as morning light trickles into your room. You bury your face in your pillow, trying to buy a few more moments of sleep. You had been having the most wonderful dream. It felt so real. Those delicious lips on your neck. Your hands running over his toned chest. The heat of your bodies pressed to one another. Please, just five more minutes. Five more hours. But your body betrayed you.

With a frustrated whine you turned over, resigning yourself to being awake. Rubbing your eyes, you feel your mascara clump under the pressure. Shit, had you fallen asleep in your makeup? You sat up, blinking sleep from your eyes. Your throat was dry to the point of being a bit sore but other than that, you had escaped one of Yuuki’s house parties without a hangover! You could count on one hand the times you’ve woken up after one of Yuuki’s parties without hating your life.

You rise, feeling gross from sleeping in your party attire. Quickly shedding your clothes and tossing them in the wash, you move to your bathroom. You washed your face gently and thoroughly, each splash of water a prayer that you didn’t get a breakout. You brush your hair and hop into a nice warm shower, rinsing off the unpleasant feeling that comes from not completing an evening ritual. Also taking the time to finish what your dream didn’t. After toweling off, you slip into the pajamas the sober you from last night had so kindly left out in preparation for the drunk you. Things don’t always go to plan, clearly.

Whipping up a quick breakfast, you rummage through the door of your fridge for the carton of iced coffee, grabbing a yogurt cup before closing the door and moving to your spot in front of the TV. There is decent counter seating at the small island in your kitchen, but you usually opted for sitting on the floor in front of your coffee table, resting your back on the sofa. You click the button on the remote and the screen illuminates, the news coming back from a commercial break.

You dig into the meal as you finally check your messages. The sound of the TV is mostly white noise as you open several messages from Emma. There is a thread of spam from the party. Her spelling getting progressively worse.

11:00 I lost you Im heading back frm the bathroom.

11:03 OMG Senju is here! You’d lioev her! Come meet her! *Blurry selfie

11:07 Where arrrreee yyyooooooouuuuu??,,

11:08 Og shit I forgot you an Mi

1:20 Y/N I lovw yoi thx ro tnotight

10:00 Fuck me. I’m so hungover. What happened last night?

You reacted to the message from this morning and quickly typed up.

“I’m so sorry! I Didn’t see these last night!!! … Are you sure you wanna know?”

You send the message before clicking out to open a message thread from Yuuki,

1:30 “It was great to see you Y/N. Hope you got home safely!”

You heart the message and reply,

“It was seriously AMAZING! Thank you so much for the invite! I hope the damage is’t too bad. LMK about next time uvu”

Just then, the report on the news caught your ear and your attention was dragged away from your phone screen. “Developing story: There was an Arson Attack at a car dealership in Roppongi in the early hours of the morning, Saturday. Police are reporting extreme property damage and evidence of a robbery as well as several cars missing from the lot. Two employees are in serious condition at the local hospital. A security guard has been placed under arrest. He is suspected of conspiring with the attackers after reviewing security tapes from the crime scene. The situation is still developing and anyone with information about this event is being urged to report details to the number below.”

The TV replayed clips from the security tape showing three masked figures and the security guard. They cut to a wide shot of the building now with a reporter in front, smoke still rising from the charred building as a phone number scrolled across the bottom of the screen. You shuddered. Japan was a safe country, but it meant that when something did happen it was big news. The faces of the two employees appeared on the screen, one younger and one who looked to be in his fifties. You mentally wished for a speedy recovery for the two of them. The news cut away to the newsroom and switched to the weather. It’s jarring how the world keeps turning, you think.

Your phone buzzes and your attention returns to the smaller screen in your hand. You take a big bite of toast. You read a new message from Emma.

“Noooooooooooo~ Is it bad, I’m gonna KMS”

“It’s not BAD bad, you were cute ;p But you should probably buy Yuuki a new houseplant”

“skull emojis”

“Regardless, I had a blast with you last night <3 I’m still up for coffee tomorrow if you are~”

She hearted the message and replied,

“Yeeeeesss~ I wanna check out that cute place you told me about in Shimbashi!”

Now it was your turn to heart the message,

“Meet at the station and then head there together? What time is good?”

“How about 11?”

“Sounds good to me! See you then!”

You finish the last of your yogurt, taking a sip of your coffee. You pull yourself up, depositing your dishes in the kitchen sink with a small clatter. Today was shaping up to be a lazy day. Your phone buzzes again, a message from Emma appears on the screen,

“Mikey is here and being annoying, do you care if I give him your number?”

You can’t help it when your heart beat increases, images of your dream flash in your mind. You type out,

“Sure! No problem, thank him again for dropping me off last night <3”

“Thank him yourself, I’m going back to bed”

She concluded by sending his contact details. You input his contact as Mikey with a strawberry emoji next to his name. A smile plays on your lips. You followed Emma’s instructions and typed up,

“Thanks again for last night!”

As you send the message you get another from Emma, a picture attached. You click it before shutting your phone quickly, face heating. You compose yourself. Opening it again. Emma’s message read,

“What the hell?”

And attached is a shirtless picture of Mikey, seeming to toss a plastic bag of something at the camera. It’s a bit blurry but the bruises wrapping around his ribs are clear as day. Mortified doesn’t even come close.

“AAAHSHHSHHSHHGGG!!!!!!!”

“Did you guys get into a fight or something? Please tell me you won ;p”

“Oh my god! *dead* I didn’t realize I was holding on so tight :’)”

“He drives like a maniac, I don’t blame you you should squeeze harder next time, just Heimlich him”

Emma’s joking helped to calm you down. You still felt an icky feeling that you had hurt him.

“If this job hunt keeps tanking, I’ll consider it the next time he’s hitting 100mph on the highway”

She likes your message before sending a short video. You press play. You see Emma chucking a pillow at him and yelling “Put on a damn shirt!” before the video cuts. You laugh, sending a pillow emoji. You open your chat with Mikey and follow up with another message,

“Hey, I saw the damage, sorry about that”

A bubble with 3 dots appears.

“I’ve had worse.”

He replies. The period at the end makes his message weirdly formal. You pause, unsure how to continue the conversation when another message pops up.

“You’re welcome.”

Period again. You like the message and respond,

“Next time I’ll squeeze lower, maybe we can get a cool pattern going.”

You cringe and move to unsend the message. A+ flirting. He likes your message before you do.

“Maybe we can come up with a better story too. Something other than you being a little wuss. Something that’ll impress the guys.”

“I’m not a wuss >:( look what I can do to a tough guy like you, and not even a scratch on me.”

He is typing a response for a while, you migrate to lie on the sofa under the AC.

“Touche.”

Is all he responds with. Feeling the conversation go dry, you lock your phone. You lay there, soaking in the cold air. You start a mental list of chores for the day; vacuum and mop, do a load of laundry, run to the grocery store. The joys of adulthood. You didn’t hate it as much as you used to. You learned to find peace in those little moments. Mindless tasks that allowed you to clear your head. An added bonus is having a tidy environment does wonders for your mood.

When you were younger you lived in organized chaos, your parents constantly chiding you to clean up. When did you become so sensitive to your surroundings you wonder. You peeled yourself from the couch, pulling up a podcast to keep you company while you set to your tasks.

It's always nice to have an enclosure day once in a while. Today had been much needed after all of the socialization yesterday. You hang your laundry to dry out on your balcony. Before retreating back indoors. Your house sparkled and you reveled in your hard work. You throw on a simple outfit for a grocery run. Your list was short, it would be a quick trip. You kill the AC in your room and check that your balcony door is locked before hunting for the remote to turn off the TV.

As you flip your couch cushions over, another news report flashes across the screen. “Breaking News. A young woman has just been attacked and stabbed in Roppongi. The attack occurred in broad daylight. The attacker is still at large. Witnesses say the attacker is a male, mid to late 20’s, around 180 cm and medium build. Residents are being urged to stay out of the area for their own safety. Be warned, footage of the attack taken by security cameras and bystanders are now circulating on social media. The suspect’s identity is still unknown. Viewers, please be advised that the following clips are graphic in nature. Those with any information about the attacker are being asked to report to the number at the bottom of the screen.”

The news cut from the caster to a grainy video shot on a cellphone. The woman’s body is blurred out. It showed the man standing over her before fleeing into an alley. The man was masked and the video was grainy and slowed in an attempt to reveal any identifying features. The same scene from a different angle is played. Finally a collage of screenshots of the man’s covered face are displayed on the screen.

The woman’s picture came up on the screen with her name and age. She was 22 years old. There had been no gore in the video, but you felt sick to your stomach. You flipped the TV off, sliding down the couch to sit on the floor. You weren’t close to that area of the city but you couldn’t help feeling scared. This type of crime, so violent in nature, is not normal here.

What really gnawed at you is that she was young, just making her way out in the world. You wondered if she had just graduated university. Your mind was spiraling. What dreams did she have? Why had that man done this? That pit in your stomach grew deeper and you felt sweat begin to prickle on your body. How long had you been sitting there? You hit the remote control to turn the AC back on. The TV remained off. You reassessed your fridge with new motivation and decided a grocery trip wouldn’t be necessary tonight.

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