#at this point I can envision this 'person' very clearly as if mind is the room and they're right here

[katyspersonal]

When I figure that genuinely saying things like "Lol I hate how I am that type of a villain who is cartoonishly immature and draws mockery memes of their enemies", "My favourite thing about [friend] is how they always admire and validate me no matter how insane I get", "Damn, FUCK, why the FUCK did they do that to themselves?!" (when someone blocked me) or "Whoever hates me is either jealous or horny" is extremely out-of-character for me but then I remember that I do have DID that I refuse to organize a proper system for and I had bad memory gaps recently, so it is probably just another shard and there is hoping that this fraction of me won't linger for long

[empty-vessel-of-a-person]

How I Envision "Intimate Time" with the LaDS Boys be like.

MINORS DO NOT INTERACT

Zayne

The Sensual Partner.

I feel like Zayne is a very sensitive and emotionally attached person so being able to connect with him through mind and soul is the best way to get him stimulated.

I never see him as the one who will inflict pain in his partner in any way. He is to gentle for that.

He will always tends to your needs first before his own. We have seen this on Hidden Motive. He did lose control of himself and become "intense" as M/C describe him. But in the end, even if he is clearly still in need, he asks M/C if what he is allowed to do.

He is the type to enjoy the goosebumps forming in your skin whenever he touch or kisses you.

He always listen to you. No plea or request will make it pass his ears and he would always deliver what you ask

He would always whisper his thank you (Zayne's Translation: I Love You) (F.U. Astra!!!!) when you both finish.

Sylus

The Intense Partner

This guy is rough. We all know that. The manhandling and almost stalker-ish behavior he have when it comes to you is all the proof we need.

He also is the type of partner who will make you experience different and new type of high.

He is confident and know what will make your body tremble for him.

He is also type of partner to takes pleasure from your pleasure. Don't get me wrong, all the boys are like this. But unlike Zayne, who takes pleasure from your equal needs for each other, Sylus on the other hand, take it from your pleasure alone. The more happy you are the more satisfied he gets.

He is the type of partner, who will leave marks on you on visible area of your skin.

He is also a type of partner to whisper "lewd" things to your ears and not be ashamed of it.

But no matter how rough he is, he will always cuddle you after you both finish.

Xavier

The Wolf in Sheep's Clothing.

We can all agree that the soft-spoken Xavier is a predator in bed. To say I am shocked on his No Restraint card is an understatement. That sweet thigh-nuzzling to unexpectedly throwing you to bed is shocking yet so hot.

Xavier longs for you and that's why I think he jumps to every opportunity to touch you and go so feral about it.

He is the king of roleplay. I bet with the right coaxing, he will do whatever you want or be whatever you like him to be. We have seen this in several occasion and the most recent is on Mystic Adventures in Misty Invasion Event.

I bet that he is a very passionate lover and will definitely takes his time on getting you prepared and worship your body especially your legs.

Since Xavier doesn't talk much, he most likely show his affection by cuddling and touching. Teasing you with his soft feather like touches that leaves you breathless.

Rafayel

The Pure Partner

He is so pure hearted I could cry. Somebody pointed this out and my big shoutout to you because I can't remember where I read it. We have to remember that Rafayel is a Lemurian. What maybe something that is normal for us in the art of intimacy, may something new for him and this made him unsure or shy about being intimate.

I feel like it will be your duty to give him in the art of intimacy. We know how much he can blush and even that kiss on tub gives me a feeling that he really wants it to happen but is unsure how to do it.

I feel bad for him that we've been so intense with him during the Misty Invasion event. If my understanding is correct, he is quite sad because of his old friend. That guy must be important for him and although we are oblivious of his significance to Rafayel, we should have been more sensitive.

And speaking of sensitive, I feel like Raf is a hyper-sensitive one. Every touch we give, every emotion we pour on him magnifies 10 fold if not a thousands.

He really wants us for him to wait 800 years and during that time, i bet he's not been with anyone and then suddenly we are going feral on him (well who can't be? hehehe)

But imagine this, you taking the lead for him and guiding him to what makes you both reach that pleasure. Slowly slides your hands from his shoulders, torso, and pelvis while whispering to him "you're doing great" and he will moan for you.

Full disclosure: I am a Zayne Girlie but Rafayel's bedroom voice can make me sweat. He knows how to use his voice (A true merman!!!!) to lure you in. (Kudos to his wonderful duber!!!!)

And lastly and the most important thing that I love about Rafayel, is how he is always available and ready for you no matter how unsure he is.

[plutoswritingplanet]

could you do a request of Buggy (opla) falling for Luffy’s older sister? (Adopted or blood relation, doesn’t matter) like he takes her hostage but she doesn’t seem to mind. She know she can escape at any time, but keep annoying buggy to a point where… he doesn’t see her as a hostage anymore, more like treasure? And she starts to maybe feel something for the clown?

You Started It (Buggy The Clown x Reader)

a/n: how did i know the first request will be about the clown lmao. i took some liberties when writing this but i hope you still like it <3

Warnings: Buggy Being Kind Of An Asshole, Captivity, Some Suggestive Themes

Summary: Poking the bear isn't the wisest things you could be doing in your particular situation.

Part 2.

You've memorized every nook and cranny of your shoes. The time you've spent in containment has really opened your eyes, when it comes to how little you actually knew about the clothes you were wearing. For example, your right shoe was slightly bigger, molded by your foot. You must be putting more weight onto your right leg, when standing. The hem of your shorts is made with a very close cross stitch, making them slightly sturdier and thicker. Right where the material folds, just above your knee, you've managed to pick out a small hole, the strings of abused material hung sadly and tickled your skin.

There wasn't really much to do, while being kept in a cage, in the backstage of a circus which belonged to the infamous Buggy the Clown. Well, except studying the stains on your shoes and waiting for the Captain to visit you, which he did quite frequently.

"Entertainment purposes" is the reason he declared, when you've asked him why on earth is he keeping you locked up in a hanging cage. But you weren't so easily fooled. You knew from the start, that the role he has envisioned for you to play, was that of a Hostage and Bait. So, inevitably, when your younger brother and his merry band of misfits come to save you, he'd be able to even out the score. Which was a shitty plan, in your opinion.

They've kicked his ass before, they can do it once again.

So, that's why you're here, feet dangling above the floor, as you hum to yourself. Anything to pass the time. That is, until you hear the door to the backstage open, and a familiar tone of voice calls out.

"Hostage!"

Really, how did he even expect you to stay in the dark about his plan, while calling you like this? The man was clearly insane.

Buggy the Clown stands before you, makeup disheveled as always, with his Captain's hat abandoned in favor of a striped bandana. He's excited, which is evident, by the way he can't seem to stop moving, jumping from one leg to the other, hands fidgeting at his sides.

"How are you feeling, my dear Hostage?" he asks with fake concern, and just as your mouth opens to answer, he interrupts "Ah, never mind that, I don't care."

You don't even try to hide the annoyed expression on your face.

"You can sing" he states matter-of-factly, pointing a finger right at you.

"Barely."

"Can you dance though?"

"Barely as well."

He hums in thought, pacing the floor in front of your cage. Finally, he stops, looking at you with his head tilted to the side. His eyes rake over your body, and it brings a sudden wave of discomfort to your bones.

"You'll be performing in our next act."

Again, his tone leaves no space for an argument. Still, you were never an agreeable person, smiles were more of your brother's thing. So, you straighten out as much as the cage allows you and cross your arms in front of your chest.

"Do whatever you like, my brother will get me out of here before you can say Welcome to my big show".

"Welcome to my big show" he says immediately, then, raises his finger, as if he's waiting for the entire crew of Strawhats to fall from the sky.

They don't, obviously, and he gives you a pointed look, to which you respond with a roll of your eyes.

"Besides" he turns around and opens one of the chests laid out on the table "Aren't you a bit old to dote on your younger brother so much?"

The question genuinely offends you, and as he pulls out another bandana, this one red, covered entirely with big white polka dots, your eyes glimmer with venom.

"Aren't you a bit old to play dress up?"

He turns in a blink of an eye, and with terror mixed with disgust you watch his hands detach from his body, slamming into the cage. The force of impact sends it flying right into the nearby wall, the back of your head smacks against the metal bars. The swinging of the cage coupled with the stars erupting before your eyelids from the impact make you feel dizzy.

Then, Buggy takes a step towards the cage, connecting his hands with the rest of his body, and your prison stops swinging in an instant.

"I should kill you for that" he says lowly, his blue eyes bearing into your face.

"You started it" you choke out an accusation, trying very hard not to vomit.

He stays completely quiet, just watching you for a long while, his hands slowly loose tension. Then, as if his rage has entirely dissolved, he smiles, teeth completely exposed, as his cheeks crease. God, you'd do such a better job at his make-up, given the chance.

"You're funny, Hostage" he shakes his head, and suddenly, for some unknown reason, it downs upon you, just how close to you, he's standing.

"Sing for me some more" he says.

And then, his hands push back with sufficient force to send your cage flying again. You groan at the movement, another wave of nausea almost making you loose your breakfast. When you finally have the perfect, biting comeback, he's already gone, the door slamming after him. You're alone again.

A sigh escapes your lips, as you press your forehead to the cold metal of the cage. You've already memorized all the details of your own clothes, and the room was too dark to see anything more. So, you start observing the cage. The way the light shifts up and down on the bars, the way the brown paint seems to peel away under your thighs. Then, you look up, towards the place where all the bars have been stuck together.

And then your eyebrows furrow. Because just above the ceiling of the cage, you can see something poking out. Something roughly the size of a fist and colored a pale, fleshy color. You raise yourself slightly in your seat, to get a better look, and immediately regret doing so.

It's an ear. His ear. Detached and placed right on top of the cage. That's how he knows about your singing, the bastard.

An idea brews in your brain, mischief spilling out of your growing smirk. You pull yourself up, until you can reach the top of the cage. Your arm is just slender enough to slip past the bars, and your fingers brush against the cold flesh of the ear. Before Buggy, wherever he is, can react, you snatch the ear from the top of the cage, keeping a tight grip, as it starts to jump in your hand.

Then, you take a deep breath, place the ear close to your lips… And give the most blood-curling, shrill scream you could muster.

Immediately, you hear a string of curses coming your way, and a second later Buggy bursts into the room, a murderous expression on his face. You open your hand, and the ear nearly bursts out of your fingers, flying back to it's owner like some sort of deformed beetle. The sight, for some reason, is so incredibly funny, you can't help but choke out a little giggle. Which soon becomes a quite big giggle, which in turn morphs into a full blown laughter.

You can't see the Captain through the tears of laughter forming in your eyes, so when he knocks on the metal bars of your cage, you nearly choke from surprise. He's looking at you strangely. Not quite as angry as before, but there is something else lurking behind his eyes. As if he's enveloped deeply in his thoughts, but at the same time completely present and focused on you. Your laughter dies down in an instantly, and you reach up to wipe your tears, clearing your throat awkwardly.

"I've captured myself a comedian, huh?" the man leans closer to the bars of the cage, placing his forehead against them and looking at you from below "You trying to take my place as the funniest person in the circus? Hm, Hostage?"

You risk a smirk, leaning down towards him. He watches your movements with a curious expression, eyes darting all over your face.

"Yeah" you whisper "So, you better watch your back."

At that, he smiles one of his brilliantly wide smiles. This one however, seems the most honest out of every one you've seen up to this point. You try not to linger too much at the way his eyes seem to shine in the dimly lit room. Or how the stubble on his face makes his features sharper. Or even on the way his arms flex as he leans against the cage. And definitely, without a shadow of a doubt, you're not focusing on the fact, that he's standing nestled right between your dangling legs.

So, before your brain conjures up any unwanted ideas, you clear your throat again and straighten up. Buggy notices the shift in your posture, but doesn't move, instead it seems as if a lightbulb has literally appeared beside his head. Desperate to change the subject, which hasn't been even brought up yet, you wave your hand in the general direction of his ear.

"Your ability is pretty useful" you try to sound as neutral, as humanly possible.

"Oh?" he tilts his head back and gives you a suspicious look.

"Yeah, that eavesdropping thing was really cool… And slightly disgusting" your nose scrunches "But mostly cool."

He hums low in his throat, his hands slowly letting go of your cage. Still, he remains standing between your legs, your knee brushing against his prominent hip bones.

"Are there" you swallow "Any limits to this ability?"

Now, his eyebrows jump straight under his bandana, and you definitely do not like the slow smirk filling his features.

"I mean, like, can you detach your nose? Or um… I don't know, your fingernails?"

Finally he steps back, stretching his arms to the side, as if he's giving you a show, and in a way, he does. There are muscles, hidden under those circus clothes. His exposed forearms are nicely shaped, with thick veins running the length of them. You really don't mean to ogle the man, but fuck, he is handsome. In an "insane-sadistic-clown-who-is-also-a-pirate-for-some-reason" way.

"I can detach every single part of my body with no effort" he says, his smile growing.

Before you could really think about your actions, your gaze falls downward, right to his belt keeping his trousers up. Mortified, that your brain would even go there, you tear your eyes up, and with a horrified expression, look upon a face full of excitement.

Then, Buggy raises his hands to his heart, feigning a scandalized expression, which would've been funny, if you weren't currently blushing in the lovely shade of a ripe beetroot.

"I'm sorry… that's not… I didn't" your words come out a jumbled mess, and Buggy wheezes out a laugh.

"Oh would you look at that" he puts his hands behind his back, as he slowly starts to stalk towards your confinement "You know, with how sheltered your little brother is, I didn't expect you to be such a dirty pervert."

You choke on air, arms flailing inside the cage, as you genuinely are at a loss for words, You can feel your face grow impossibly hot, the heat spreading all the way to the tops of your ears. The Clown still advances, until his face is pushed right between the bars of the cage, a smile on his lips and a glint in his eye. You don't know what to do with yourself, as the man continues to laugh at your outrage.

Finally, his right hand flies from behind his back and stops right above his head. Then, as if making a show specially for you out of his unusual abilities, he lets his pointer finger remove itself from the hand. Involuntarily, you make a face, and try to push yourself as far into the cage, as humanly possible. Which, given the size of your prison, does practically nothing. The finger aims straight at your nose and presses it with slightly more force, than a friendly "boop" would.

"You started it" he throws your own words back at you, and watches your dumbfounded expression with a smile and a giggle.

Finally, he steps back, all his body parts in place, and you can breathe again at last. Then, with a flourish, he bows down before the cage, before giving you a slightly unbalanced twirl. At that, you can't help but smile, almost fondly. He's not so bad, when he isn't actively trying to murder you and your friends.

"Anyways, get ready, your grand performance is in a week" he concludes, and you sigh deeply.

So he hasn't let this one go.

No matter. A week from now, you'll be out of this place. The thought fills you with joy, and strangely, with some sort of melancholy, which you have to jot down as nausea, just to protect your own mental health.

"Hostage" the man says, as a goodbye, bowing once again, this time with fewer theatrics, and begins to walk back towards the door. "Captain" you respond in kind, inclining your head slightly.

He stops in his tracks, back turned to you, before slowly, twisting his body, to look you in the face. He wants to say something, his mouth opens and closes, and anticipation floods your stomach. But then, his lips pull back into one more smile, more reserved, more private. Now, in this rare moment of tranquility, he looks truly handsome, and your heart jumps to your throat at the realization. He gives you one last look, shakes his head at the floor, and exits with a soft click of the door.

You're, once again, left alone with your mismatched shoes and the hole in your shorts. This time, however, your head is filled with tender thoughts, one that could keep you company, until another visit befalls you.

[liliannadelaphinehartifelt]

Alastor - [ MASQUERADE PT. 2 ]

xxxxxx xxxxxx xxxxxxxx xxxxxxxx xxxxxxx

A/N: I physically can not refrain from writing smut with angst or implied angst… please forgive me.. ❤️

WARNINGS: [ NSFW ] + [ MDNI ] + [ SMUT ] + [ MATURE THEMES ] + [ MALE READER ] + [ SLIGHT ANGST ]

xxxxxx xxxxxx xxxxxxxx xxxxxxxx xxxxxxx

“Would you mind if I came to see you again? I'll be in town by the weekend.” You tried not to smile too hard as the question left your lips, carrying through the telephone’s gentle crackling to resonate to the receiving end clearly, and the man you'd grown to cherish after a few short months of quiet correspondence gave a low response.

“I'll have you all to myself?” Alastor tugged your inquiry along with his own, smirking as you huffed dramatically and no doubt rolled your eyes at his words.

“As always, Al. You know I'm not one for having many friends,” you admit, slumping further into your living room sofa as if to sink through cushions and disappear from the blooming embarrassment you felt hearing him laugh again.

It was your second favorite thing about him. His honest charm was the first, and that had yet to change since the last time you'd enjoyed his company. Exactly six months ago, during your second visit to the City of Jazz, it was fun!

Alastor had essentially filled the void you'd been unable to conceal, keeping you on your toes at every turn and stringing you along in affectionate mind games you knew better than to entertain.

It was difficult not to, though; he knew what to say, what to do with you, and how to handle you. At times, you considered the idea of him being no ordinary man.

Devilish.

That's how you'd describe him to anyone who asked. Alastor was a striking character, able to overshadow your persona with a gentle smile, making you feel very accessible.

You weren't allowed freedom from judgment, public image, and parasocial expectations like every silver screen star was subjected to. Fortunately, you had no obligations with Alastor, no point to prove, and you amounted such casualness to the building of mutual bonding.

He understood fame and its demands.

He understood you…more than most.

Alastor interrupted your wandering thoughts with a witty comment, “Hm, touche, but I suppose I'm the exception.” You scoffed, grinning at the ceiling before making an equally snarky retort.

“Don't sound so full of yourself..” you heard him click his tongue, a sharp sound you wished to hear in person again sooner rather than later.

“But it's the truth, mon cher. Plain and simple.” he concurs, and you shift to sit up straight, reaching for the glass on the coffee table before you, studying the few ounces of liquor before downing the bitter liquid. “Am I welcome or not, Mr. Hartifelt?” You suck your teeth, nose scrunching as the alcohol flushes your veins, promoting your nerves to settle and easing your heart rate as you wait for his answer.

You felt a thrill from just speaking to him. It was beautiful, really, and scandalous to some degree.

Falling for a man you’d met only a handful of times shouldn’t be possible, but here you were, waiting with bated breath to hear his decision to see you again.

Please say yes…just one last time.

Alastor smiled, taking his time to contemplate your offer while leaning back in his desk chair, eyes trained on the intricate soundboard he sat at. He'd grown attached to you in one way or another, unsure if it was pure curiosity or pity on his part. Both reasons hadn't plagued him before your first encounter, and Alastor refused to acknowledge such impractical emotions, reminding himself that you were nothing more than a tag-along for him.

A lonely soul he could very quickly leave behind.

Nothing more. Nothing less.

That's what he forced his conscience to believe, willing itself to envision his compliance to your request as intrigue rather than genuine affection.

“I wouldn't dream of you refusing you, my friend. I look forward to spending time with you soon,” his answer was concise, a brief hint of satisfaction in his tone, and you immediately blurted out a joyous remark of relief.

“Then it’s settled! I’ll see you in two days,” a bright smile stretched across your face as he laughed softly on the other end, “You make it sound as if I’m your only reason for living, my dear.” Alastor shakes his head at his statement, knowing it held truth and proud to know he had such an effect on you.

Am I really that obvious to him?…

A stab of embarrassment hit you square in the heart, a subtle frown replacing your grin as you reflected on the time you’d spent with the radio host. He’d taken you anywhere and everywhere in New Orleans, insisted you join him for dinner on nights he wasn’t broadcasting, and even made an effort to view your recent film. However, he avidly proclaimed his hate for lackluster visual media.

However, he never criticized your films, choosing to compliment your scenes, or congratulating your recent success on his broadcast, as any good friend should do.

You couldn’t recall when Alastor had ever let on he knew of your attraction to him. Yes, he pried at your emotions for the hell of it a few times, but he’d never explicitly acknowledged it.

This was the first time he’d even alluded to such feelings, and your nerves were alert instantly, mind going blank as you navigated your flustered state before murmuring into the phone with a sheepish smile.

“You think very highly of yourself, Alastor..”

“Apologies, my dear. I’m partial to being honest with you. Take it as a form of flattery, if you will.”

His attempt at a modest apology failed, but you had no intention of stamping out his smug nature. Alastor’s blatant confidence was refreshing, and though you wished to keep speaking with him, your evening wasn’t absent of essential events to attend to.

You bid him goodbye with a heavy heart, wishing him a good evening despite knowing he’d put off sleep until the early morning to keep broadcasting as long as possible, and he returned the subtle sentiment before ending the call.

Hours passed, pictures were taken, interviews were conducted, and fans were screaming your name, but the only person on your mind was Alastor.

The following two days felt tortious, a strained waiting game you couldn’t wait to finish, and the second you arrived back in New Orleans and found the time to slip away from your manager, you headed straight for your usual rendezvous spot with the acclaimed radio host.

Club Intime

—- ——- ——- ——- ———

There he was, relaxed in the seclusion of a velvet lounge booth, merely hidden away from the rest of the dimly lit speakeasy. Alastor wasn’t one to socialize unnecessarily. He was content with observing others through the lenses of his round glasses that were beginning to fog up from the fumes of his cigarette, a cold glass half full of whiskey set before him to aid his solitary sedation.

From afar, he looked out of place, cordial, and put together, unlike the rest of the patrons waltzing around. The only unkempt detail about him was the state of his bow tie and collar. He’d undone it the second he sat down, nimble fingers unlacing the stiff ribbon before trying to unbutton his dress shirt's first two clasps. It was a habit he’d yet to avoid after a long evening of work and one you thoroughly enjoyed.

The insignificant results hit just the right nerves, drawing your eyes to his clean-cut features, caramel skin, and hidden scars that he’d once called “unavoidable trophies.” From what or who you weren't sure.

You’d thought to ask him why he felt so highly of his wounds, concerned they’d hit deeper than he let on, but Alastor reassured you through a tight smile your sympathy for him wasn’t needed.

He was a proud man, very sure of himself, and it showed even in a room full of illicit drinkers and rowdy partygoers. Intimidating was the easiest way to describe him, and you felt exactly that way as his hazel eyes settled on you from across the room: intimidated.

You stood at the club's entrance, letting one of the hosts take your coat, but as he asked which table you preferred, you politely declined his offer before looking back at Alastor.

He hadn’t moved, still staring you down with a gentle smile, glasses pushed to the top of his head, and drink in one hand while the cigarette dangled above its rim nestled between two of his fingers.

God, he was beautiful, like a demon straight out of hell.

Alastor tipped his head, signaling you to come his way, and you did with a certain excitement in your eyes. He studied you just the same as you’d done to him, watching your form intently as you snaked through the bustling crowd toward your regular table with him, and by the time you were close enough to call his name, a shameless grin was on your face.

“Al!” You shouted above the drumming music, slipping to sit beside him in the blink of an eye, and he didn’t hesitate to make room for you. “I see you made it to town safely, my dear!” He placed his drink down, taking one last drag from his cigarette before putting it in the liquor. You blushed at the sight of him exhaling the smoke, brown eyes trained on you and an expectant glint in them as he shifted to face you.

“Y-Yes, well, you’ve been an excellent guide the first few times I’ve come here, so I suppose I’m used to the city now.” You smiled at him softly, hoping he’d disregard the stutter in your voice, but knowing him, you were sure he’d caught it very clearly.

Nothing ever got past Alastor.

He hummed, flattered by your praise but more interested in your apparent nervousness. You had yet to act unbothered by him, which amused the radio host.

“Glad to know my assistance was helpful. Do you plan to stay longer this time round?” Alastor rested an arm on the table, chin finding his open palm, and his head now level with yours.

Fuck, I forget how tall he is sometimes…Jesus Christ…

You gulp, blood running hot as his gaze bores into yours, searching for an answer you had yet to give him. It felt hard to breathe for a moment; all you could hear was your heartbeat and the muffled noise of the club.

Why’d he always have to be so close?

Didn’t he know who you were, who he was, what this looked like to other people?

Granted, the onlookers were drunk or too dizzy from dancing to focus on you both.

But the risk of it all, that unmistakable boldness Alastor embodied, had you nervous in all the right ways.

After a beat of silence and staring, you mustered up the courage to give him a response. “Seeing as I have time off from filming, I’ll spend it here. A change of scenery is an actor's best challenge.” You broke eye contact with him, staring into the crowd to keep from fidgeting as he nodded with a low hum, “So, in other words, I won’t be rid of you anytime soon?” Alastor chuckled as you feigned offense at his question, head snapping towards him and a discreet frown on your lips.

“That was quite rude of you to say, Mr. Hartifelt. Especially since I came all the way here to see you…”

A mischievous spark lit up his eyes, smile growing devilish as you glared at him, “Ah, so I am the apple of your eye, mon cher…”

It wasn’t a question.

He didn’t pose the observation as anything else, wanting to bait you into a confession, and he succeeded quicker than you realized.

“No, I did come to experience the city,” you retort flatly, tempted to order a drink and down it to freeze the nerves burning your skin.

Alastor glanced around, assuring no one was invested in your exchange, before dipping his head to whisper in your ear. “Don’t lie to me, cher. I can see it written all over your face, and I must admit it’s a delight to see.” You could practically hear the wicked grin on his lips, sweet and sinister all at once.

Damn. It.

You paled as he pulled back, smirk ever present as he waved a waiter down to order another drink as if he hadn’t reduced you to a fluttery mess beside him.

You sat pin straight, willing to breathe, and on the verge of zoning out completely.

“And what would you like to order, monsieur?” The waiter addressed you, brow raised as you flinched from the sudden question, “I…uh…I-I’ll have the…” you inwardly panicked from the lack of coherent speech left on your tongue, but the building embarrassment dulled as Alastor spoke up for you.

“He’ll have the same as me. Double it and bring the tab as well. Merci.”

“Je vais le faire sortir tout de suite, monsieur. “ The waiter nodded, taking down Alastor’s request quickly before throwing you a strange look and strutting away.

You had to pull it together, or the image you worked so hard for Katina would crumple at one man’s behest, and deep down, you didn’t mind.

It was tiring being perfect, faking your entire personality for the masses's support, and the longer you lingered in Alastor’s company, the more enticing it was just to let it all go.

To drop the mask you wore like an overbearing shroud.

Just once, you’d like to be another person, someone less empty and carnally fulfilled.

One night wouldn’t hurt, right?

You glanced at Alastor, entranced by his lax manner, foot tapping to the swinging melodies and his eyes scanning the room as if searching for prey.

One night with him…wouldn’t be your end, right?

He didn't pretend with you, nor sugar coat his thoughts and actions in hopes of impressing you, and on more than one occasion you both sought some form of imtalcay from the other.

This man had seen what others couldn’t, so why deny yourself a chance at fleeting freedom?

He could pick you apart and put you back together again, and you wouldn’t mind.

So long as Alastor remained the only man to see through you.

One night.

That’s all you asked him for when your drinks arrived, and you were prepared for him to reject your offer, but the sting of refusal never came.

He accepted the arrangement, smile wide, and his eyes hazing over with lust the moment your question reached his ears.

“I thought you’d never ask, cher….”

The night was a whirlwind after that; the tab left on the table tallied to a large sum from the amount of alcohol ordered, and by the end of two hours, you were utterly inebriated.

You met the comfort of your hotel room not long after your time at the hidden bar, stumbling through the door by Alastors lead, laughing softly as his grip on your wrist tightened when you reached behind to close and lock the door.

If you'd seen the malicious edge to his smile as your lips met, you could've sensed danger before it arrived. Maybe if you'd stopped to think properly as clothes were tossed to the floor and his hands met your bare skin, you would've been weary of how cold they felt. Maybe if you'd perceived the rapid pace of your heart as fear for your life and not a side effect of mind-boggling pleasure while he fucked you to the point of tears, you could've vied for safety.

If only you'd seen through his mask, through his glamorous praises, and listless stares…

Maybe you could've survived and tried to fight him, but the rewards of cracking under his pressure rendered such critical thinking useless.

Once. Twice. A third.

Alastor took you from one height of pleasure to the next, forcing whatever bit of raw honesty he could out of you with a series of unforgiving thrusts, swallowing your breathless moans with shallow kisses. He'd never let you utter a word of refusal, using your body to the fullest without a second thought and scarcely sympathetic of how much you could take from him.

At the mercy of your fourth high, you clung to him, nails digging into his scarred back, head tucked into the crook of his neck, and your chest heaving with quiet groans of his name. Alastor could feel the stray tears on your cheeks, melting on his skin, exciting him to no end. “Oh, you poor thing..” he teased you through gritted teeth, biting back a smile as your walls tightened around his cock, another whine rippling your throat at the condensing remark.

“To think so many adore you, and yet here you are…” Alastor pressed his weight down onto you entirely, hands tight on your hips as he deepened his strokes, reaching places inside you that felt almost foreign. You gave up trying to speak, scratching down his back instead as a wordless warning for release, but he didn't let up.

“…showing your true colors to me. I could almost feel sport for you, Cher.” his tone dripped with vague pity, full of satisfaction as he buried himself in you, earning a soft gasp on your part and a fulfilled grown from him.

A warmth enveloped your core as he spilled his cum into you, adding to the amount he'd already so graciously given and triggering your release in seconds.

“Don't want you to feel bad for me..” you huff tiredly, eyes rolling as your cock twitched and leaked between you. Alastor hummed, eyes lowering the sight of skin glossing over with the sticky white fluid, “I pity any soul as desperate as yours, darling…”

“Desperate?” you question him with a lazy smile, ready to correct his comment but failing to as he pulled out of you, leaving you empty and restless.

“Desperate to be loved by any and everyone…” Alastor clarifies, staring at you with a soft smile on his lips as he leans down to graze them over your parted ones.

“Even by a killer like me…”

xxxxxx xxxxxx xxxxxx xxxxxx xxxxxx xxxxx

I finally completed this!!!! I'm seriously considering getting an Alastor blanket to curl up in because the stress I've been feeling this week is wild…❤️

Quick side note: do you all realize Alastor would be the most toxic partner in history? Yes, he's sweet, respectful, dashing, and everything else needed to be a surface-level perfect companion. But once you get past all of that, there's not a single aspect of your life Alastor wouldn't control, stalking you, weaving webs of lies to isolate you, using minor signs of affection as a way to keep you close, and buying you gifts to mask all his deep seeded antagonism. He would be your dream man but a total nightmare in one way or another.

[ BONUS CONTENT + ]

Pilot Alsstor was something else I love him so muchhhh ❤️ credit to creator

[suzukiblu]

WIP excerpt from "Krypton lives and Kara did not sign up for this".

“Yes,” Kara says instead of anything about war crimes. She doesn't want to stress the kids out right now. Especially when they clearly don't have the context to understand what she's actually upset about, given what she knows of them so far. 

“Why?” Match asks, still obviously incredulous. It might be the most expressiveness she's seen from him so far. That level of reservation is normal, coming from another Kryptonian that she’s just met. But Kal kept gushing excitedly about how emotive and expressive Earthlings are every time he called, so . . . is it actually that Match is reserved, or is it that he really just isn't feeling anything? 

Or is he just that unwilling to show any trace of an actual personality? 

There really isn’t a good option there, she’s pretty sure. 

“Because I want you to like it,” Kara says. “So: sweet, savory, or spicy?” 

“. . . uh,” Thirteen says as Match just stares at her like he thinks she’s sun-drunk. “Is the . . . ‘bai’ fruit the healthiest one, or . . . ?” 

“It’s a dessert, kid,” Kara says. “None of them are ‘healthy’.” 

Milk rice isn’t unhealthy, necessarily, but that’s not the point of a damn dessert, now is it. 

“Uh,” Thirteen says, then looks . . . anxious, for a moment, before visibly drawing himself up and steeling himself to blurt: “Spicy.” 

“Okay,” Kara says, envisioning backwater-planet war crimes before glancing to Match. “What about you, then? You like spicy?” Kal doesn’t, but Kal wasn’t built in a lab and raised on Earthling MRES. 

Match just stares blankly at her, the corner of his jaw tightening. 

Maybe she shouldn’t have phrased it as “like”, she thinks, and once again considers calling up Atrocitous with her ring size. No reason. Just because. 

Two very specific reasons, actually, but also ten thousand reasons. 

“There’s three of us,” Kara points out. “I can just make all three.” 

“‘Dessert’ isn’t nutritionally useful,” Match says, his tone flat and expression bland. Thirteen half-eyes him, looking both restless and like he wants to say something. She’s still not sure how well they get along; still isn’t sure how to expect them to get along, especially once they’ve both settled in. Kal was not helpful on those grounds. 

She’s also still not over how awkward both their dialects sound. Especially with the memory of Kal at their “age” so easy to revisit in her mind. He never looked or sounded a thing like either of them, even with the exact same face and voice. He definitely also didn’t have the muscle definition they do, which those bizarre tight outfits of theirs do absolutely nothing to conceal.

Kal could’ve at least gotten them an over-robe or two, for Rao’s sake. Fuck, five minutes off-planet and he loses all sense of decorum and rational thought. This is why no one wants his job! This! This is why! 

. . . also the unsolicited cloning thing, she supposes. Also that. 

Only Kal would manage to get his DNA stolen on a planet called “Earth”, of all the godsdamned places.

[tangent101]

Have we gotten Rachel wrong this whole time?

There are plenty of theories about Rachel Amber in the LiS community. Some folks like to think of her as a manipulator who only was out for herself. We have others who think she was deep in love with Chloe and would never cheat on her and everything she did was to get her and Chloe out of Arcadia Bay. It seems like everyone looks at Rachel and sees something new. But… what if we were all wrong? What if Rachel was something else… someone who tried avoiding conflict by talking to people and agreeing with them… and thus everyone saw her as they wanted to see her?

There is actually some evidence toward this in the game. First, Chloe herself points this out, though in a way that is perhaps less than flattering: "She blended like a chameleon. Clearly more than I knew… or wanted to know…." People take this as to Rachel was able to see what makes a person tick and just become the person that someone else wanted… but we can see several people who had a rather negative view of Rachel. So what is it about those people that had a negative viewpoint of Rachel?

First, we have David Madsen, who detested Rachel and saw her as a bad influence and a criminal. He was investigating Rachel and had photographs he felt were of her being a drug mule. Next, we had a truck driver who talked about Rachel really wanting to get out of town. And of course there is Mark Jefferson who also had a… twisted view of Rachel, though it also seems Rachel was so enthralled by Jefferson that she may have been sleeping with him (and both Stella and Victoria seem to be interested in what's going on in Jefferson's pants as well, though I'm not sure why, he's not that charming).

The truth is that Rachel was something other than a manipulative gold-digger or the like. She were a teenage girl who disliked conflict and was adept at listening to people and when talking to them would agree with them? I mean, consider her two breakup letters, one to Frank and one to Chloe? Rachel so wanted to avoid conflict that she left a letter to Frank because he scared her. She did not want a fight. She wanted out. So she left… with a note basically giving her reasons and essentially ending things. (Frank thankfully accepted that.)

Chloe also got a letter. Honestly… given it was all crumpled up, I half-wonder if Chloe had read it while high one time and crumpled it up and forgot about it afterward. But we have a very important line here: I don't want you to hate me. I don't want you to hate me. That's a very interesting thing to say. There is no deliberate malice, this is someone who has found someone else who just rings all those bells but wants to keep the friend aspect. She still wants the laughter, the moments of sharing a glance and both having the same thought, the things she envisions friends do… but to walk away from the sensual intimacy.

Remember what Victoria Chase said to Max in the Dark Room, that she was just a teenage girl? That's Rachel. Rachel Amber was not a seductress or a narcissist or a monster. She was a teenage girl who was avoiding conflict in her life, but in doing so ended up in a shallow grave in a junkyard. Because quiet girls don't make history… they end up used, abused, and discarded. They end up on the rooftops willing to throw themselves to their deaths because no one would listen to them. They end up abandoned because they were not good enough, because they ultimately were not willing to stand up to those who would use them.

Max, before Chloe reentered her life, was one of those quiet girls who ends up used and discarded. The reason folks keep seeing Rachel in Max is because Rachel stayed quiet and let people make up their own minds about her. And they saw in her what they wanted.

Or at least, it's one way to interpret Rachel Amber.

[teamsasukes]

ok in my opinion, many things are wrong with the idea that sakura viewed sasuke only as a prize to be won to boost her self-worth; that when it comes to sasuke, she's forever frozen in time as a 12-year-old girl who can't see beyond his good hair and great grades. this post is my attempt at thoroughly unpacking and refuting that notion

when we meet sakura in part 1, she is obsessed with societal standards and her admiration for sasuke is almost entirely rooted in that. he's the ideal future husband -- from an ancient clan, stoic, intelligent, skilled, and by sakura's own description, "cool" -- these are things that she has been conditioned to want! so this is the sasuke that she envisions, until...

until they get put on a team together, and sakura gradually comes to realize that perhaps sasuke is not what she's made him out to be in her mind. he talks about crying, about being afraid. he's paralyzed with fear in their first mission. naruto may very well be stronger and more capable than him! oh, and sasuke gets into silly fights with naruto all the time. none of that is "cool." suddenly he seems less like the ideal future husband and more like a real person with flaws and baggage of his own.

that sakura's view of sasuke changes is so apparent through how radically her behaviour around him shifts between the early formation of team 7 and the chunin exams (and any point after). sakura goes from being unable to listen to a bad word about sasuke (maybe even the ones that are deserved) to defying him when she deems fit. she even praises naruto at his expense, because societal views are not at the forefront of her mind when it comes to the two boys anymore -- they're just naruto and sasuke. they're her friends! she goes from calling kakashi out for bad-mouthing the uchiha clan because she's doesn't want to risk sasuke getting mad at her, to calling naruto out for a similar statement, not due to personal involvement in the equation, but simply because it's not right.

and people typically agree with me up to here. it's when we get to sakura cutting her hair in the forest of death that opinions diverge, and some people tend to think that sakura should have "gotten over" sasuke to propel her character development forward. i don't necessarily find this reading invalid -- it's certainly a more straightforward direction for her character to take. sakura's goal was sasuke, now sakura's goal is to be strong. the problem is that there was always more nuance to her goal of winning sasuke's heart than people afford it in fandom discussion, and similarly, i don't think that the progression needed to be as clear-cut as "sakura gets over sasuke" to still be meaningful. in this case, i feel like people's expectations about what should have happened following this scene might preclude them from seeing the growth that this moment did produce.

sakura cutting her hair in the forest of death is the critical point her arc built up to for all of part 1. sakura is insulted by the sound nin for pouring so much time into her appearance when her training is clearly not up to par, and she cuts her shiny and perfect hair in a declaration that she will no longer derive her self-worth from the validation that would come from romantic attachment (to sasuke, or anyone else). instead, it will be from standing shoulder-to-shoulder with (or even ahead of) her teammates in battle -- so that she can protect them rather than the other way around. then the flashbacks during her fight with ino make it explicit that sakura has wanted to become a skilled shinobi -- one who could match up to ino -- all along, but since that is not a socially acceptable goal from a girl, she instead declares them rivals over sasuke's heart. the boy is not important here (haha, it always sticks out to me that when she asks him out before the chunin exams, sakura is more bummed about sasuke's assessment of her skills than his rejection). she doesn't even think of sasuke while fighting ino, lol -- she grandstands about how only she can "get him," but that's for the purpose of riling up ino, so that there's no chance she'll go easy on sakura. sakura wants to know, definitively, that she can match up to ino. and she does.

in light of all of this, people often say sakura had "no reason" to like sasuke -- after all, i did spend the entire last paragraph establishing that sakura's pre-series crush on sasuke was an immature infatuation that had nothing to do with sasuke and everything to do with ino. but, again, team 7 spent months together on a team and sasuke and sakura became actual friends! he was a good teammate to both naruto and sakura, if a little rough around the edges. i don't think it's implausible for sakura to develop real feelings for sasuke during this time. and if that is not enough, if you need deeper, thematically fulfilling reasons -- well, i sort of object to that on principle. i think friendship, having fun with one another, being at ease around each other -- these are all perfectly good reasons to fall in love with someone. and you may say that naruto also fulfills this criteria, but if sakura was physically attracted to sasuke and not naruto -- well, i think that's fine too, and it certainly doesn't warrant any moral judgment. people say often that sakura should have ended up with lee or naruto -- the first of whom stated outright that he loved her because she was beautiful, and the latter who introduced her as a "pretty girl" -- but whether their feelings are shallow is not endlessly dissected. (it's not narusaku or leesaku i protest to here, just the double standard)

but for the record, i think kishimoto did write in enough for us to understand why sakura would fall for sasuke in particular. i discussed this in another post, but alongside ino, sasuke sparked the most significant character growth for sakura. he was the first to make her reevaluate her treatment of naruto (and by extension, her rose-tinted view of the world), he was the first (and only) of their teammates to express disappointment that she wasn't investing in her own skills, he figured out when she felt insecure and reminded her of the areas in which she was more proficient than the rest of the team. sakura's initial idealized view of sasuke does not endure for a number of reasons, one of which is that the real sasuke actually expects her to hold her own and sees potential in her. for sakura, whose main motivation as a character is to become stronger for her teammates, this must mean a great deal! we mostly lose track of this element of sasuke and sakura's dynamic in part 2, which is a shame, but when she cracks open the earth with only her fist, naruto and kakashi are utterly astonished, while sasuke just smiles -- like it is no surprise, like she's been capable of it all along -- so there is that, i guess.

(and for more on thematically fulfilling, see this post on what i think could have played out if sakura were not relegated to a side character in all but panel presence in part 2. but really, i find it so interesting that sasuke and sakura both repeatedly have a lot of trouble suppressing their compassion to do what is expected of them as shinobi. apart from sasuke, i think sakura is also the only character to express that human life has inherent value -- at least, she says something along those lines when she fights sasori.)

anyway, post-forest of death, sasuke version 1 has pretty much dissipated in sakura's mind -- the only place he ever existed -- and sakura's treatment of sasuke changes further. she stops intruding on his physical boundaries, stops flirting, stops asking him out -- she's there for him, but as a friend first. she hugs him in the hospital, but that's not necessarily a romantic gesture (she's physically affectionate by nature, which is why she ambushes naruto with a hug in the same manner at the end of the pain arc) and sasuke finds it comforting (signalled by many things, chief among which is that naruto leaves the room after observing sasuke's face). and yes, she confesses to being in love with him twice afterwards, years apart, but that is only because she is extremely stressed and panicked and wants him to stay for his own (and the second time around, add in naruto's) safety. her first confession is too centered on her own feelings, while the second is just woefully oblivious (through little fault of sakura's -- she doesn't know why sasuke is so intent on destroying the shinobi world), but neither of them come with the condition of sakura wanting sasuke to stay only so he can be with her. sakura wants sasuke to be safe! she wants him to be mentally sound! she lets him know that she cares about him!

i absolutely need to reiterate: at no point in part 2 does sakura display any sense of entitlement to sasuke. she always pleads with him to stay, rather than demanding anything of him. and even in the privacy of her own thoughts, sakura ponders bringing sasuke back in a few contexts: she wants sasuke to be okay, she is so sorry for burdening naruto, she needs to help naruto, and if sasuke comes back, they can all be a team again. romance does not even enter her mind. it is such a willfully egregious misread of the text to say that she only wanted sasuke back so they could be together.

moreover, it is honestly just nonsensical to me when people say sakura wanted sasuke as a prize, because it laughs in the face of her entire character arc and completely ignores why her pre-series crush existed at all. back then, sakura wanted sasuke as a status symbol. as of part 2, though, he is decidedly not what konoha's society would see as the ideal man. in the eyes of the state, he is a wanted criminal. sakura, meanwhile, is a student of the hokage, one of the most skilled medics in konoha at the ripe age of 16, and one of the most powerful shinobi of her generation (a feat achieved entirely through her own labour). she has stood next to her teammates in battle and helped take down a literal god. she does not need sasuke to feel fulfilled. nevertheless, she chooses, every day, to care about him, even though it would be infinitely easier not to. and if sakura wanted to haul around a status symbol in the form of a boyfriend, if only to bolster her already impressive profile (which she would not. that's the point!) -- naruto, konoha's new favourite traumatized teenager, is like. right there. but sakura loved naruto before he was proclaimed a hero by konoha, just like she continues to love sasuke even though he is very far from the coolest boy in their class.

my feelings on chapter 699 are... mixed, because the way things resolve for sasuke is just so sad, but what we see play out between him and sakura is: 1. sakura asks to come with him 2. sasuke is 100% comfortable saying no (how do the "sakura forced sasuke to be with her" truthers reconcile with that one, lol) 3. sakura appears mildly disappointed but like. she'll survive. that's it. then he thanks her, taps her on the forehead (but promises he'll see her soon, in an inversion of what that gesture meant from itachi), and we leave them in a pretty hopeful place, all things considered. there's room for reconciliation, for growth, for love. (and i don't want to hear about post-699 because i don't care. i don't consider it canon, and pretty much no one on tumblr does either, except to occasionally shit on ships they don't like)

this ended up being way too long, but i want to say: if you don't like sasusaku, that's your prerogative. i'm not here to change your mind. i certainly think they should have been written better in part 2 (but i'd argue that, like, 99% of those issues are just a natural consequence of sakura being continually sidelined by the narrative, rather than problems inherent to the relationship itself). regardless, i think too often people let their opinion of a ship impede character analysis. to claim that sakura relentlessly propositioned sasuke and that she saw him as a prize does such a huge disservice to how much she has grown and what she has accomplished over the course of the series.

[mysteryanimator]

I love your animations, but I'm still struggling to view them without thinking about their last canon interaction. Can you tell me what you envision their makeup would be like?

(Lol I’m so sorry to all the ppl who work on Nocturne reading this 💀 and just generally everyone)

Thank you so much that means a lot! But now, you’ve unveiled my trap card and given me an excuse to write my thoughts on Mizrak and Olrox, so this will get pretty long. Also, this may end up being very subjective/personal taste in some parts so I hope everyone doesn’t mind (and hope you don't mind the funky grammar!) This is an open discussion too, I’d like to hear everyone’s thoughts! 

Now with that out of the way here we go!

(This is old unfinished storyboards for a previous iteration of their makeup scene I did back in jan, never finished them due to uni/another project, I'd like to someday tho because guh the themes.)

Now first of all, I’d like to think that a proper makeup/conversation wouldn’t happen for a bit and would be drawn out because they’re both still hurt, angry, sad, and confused at not only each other but themselves. They’re not the type to get into loud verbal arguments for this, definitely some verbal jabs at each other though. Mean petty comments, oh absolutely. I’d like to personally believe they’d still yearn for each other, perhaps even more so after Olrox indirectly confessed and Mizrak practically turned it down. 

Now, there are soooo many different ways that they’d even see each other again, many different ways it could come to that initial point where they’ve made up. Though I’ll go with one of my personal idea (which people keep egging me on to animate WHICH… I dunno I don’t have free time rn so I’m just blurting it out into written format while I can 😭 I want to though, maybe later in the year for fun if season 2 doesn’t beat me to it). 

Have to establish my vision, but I’d think that Richter, Maria, Annette, Alucard and Mizrak are hopping from abandoned town to abandoned town due to the inability to return to Macheoul for the time being. While Olrox has been on his own (doing what, I’m not even sure my personal headcanon for this.) I think Alucard and Mizrak have a conversation about Alucard’s past in a group setting and it strikes a chord with the monk- since after all, Alucard’s dad is THE Dracula, and his mother (bless her, I miss her) is human. You know how that whole backstory goes, and it parallels Olrox a lot. Also Mizrak and Annette will absolutely have a deep conversation too. Just solely from the comment that was made: 

“We’re all descended from gods, we just have to learn how to draw their power.” Nocturne s1 ep 2

Annette clearly having powers from Haitian gods, absolutely challenging how Mizrak was only certain of one God. Yes, Mizrak is extremely stubborn and it will take him a bit, but he’s different from the Abott in the sense that he will not let religion blind his path to good. He ‘uses his head’ as said before, not god, not the church- his head. Mizrak’s idea of the church and his faith is now a mess and it’s up to him on how he interprets it and rewrites it knowing what he knows now (this is important I swear when it comes to the makeup scene).

Now we’re at the actual scene at hand: Olrox and Mizrak making up.

Side note: oh god I’m practically writing this whole thing as if its going to be played out for an episode, but that’s how it works in my brain LOL but you asked so you shall receive. I am so sorry HAHA

There’s been a lot of build up from this point where they have been meeting up here and there by themselves, but you can clearly tell whenever they do they both hurt and yearn- which would lead to their proper makeup scene. I’m just inserting this for fun, but I’d imagine this would take place in an abandoned church in the town they’re camping in for the night. For a lot of symbolic reasons; devotion, sacrifice, forgiveness, gathering. This along with the simple fact, Mizrak’s relationship to the church has changed completely from here. I’d like to think that even when he’s trying to rekindle that connection with God, it leaves that icky overcoat on his skin. 

“Faith is a company in the hardest of times, when the world abandons you.” Nocturne ep 3

The church indeed had saved him from whatever terrible horrific thing happened to him in the past, however whatever saved him can still be horrible and terrible too. It is infallible.  It is cruel in an attempt to gather community and peace. So, yes- faith can be company when the world abandoned him, but his faith is no longer with the church. He’s taking it back and finding some place else to rest it. (Olrox, it’s Olrox, probably ooc but I’m making it Olrox). 

In this church, the conversation between them will initially start as a discussion about religion, faith and that whole sort of deal. It’ll open up about Mizrak exact struggles from his mouth and how he particularly feels about it, then we get more insight onto Olrox’s thoughts, his perception of the church and perhaps even a deep dive into Aztec history again. Maybe even talk about Olrox’s Quetzalcoatl form, though really this is self indulgent. It’s an aspect I’d absolutely love to be explored and I think it being discussed in revere in a Catholic Church,  with Mizrak actually being open to it due to his new perspective? Oh my god, sign me up. Regardless, it would hold similar energy to episode 6: Gulity Men to be Judged. There’s a weight to it. 

Then it gets heavier when the conversation pivots.  

Mizrak’s attachment in the church was due to him caring about people and, hypothetically, to save him from whatever detriment came for him in the past. The last canon interaction, their falling out they had in season 1 was because he cared about others. To a fault. Now, here he is, standing in front of someone he cares about. It’s going to open a conversation between what’s happening between them and finally properly discuss what happened from their last canon interaction in nocturne season 1. 

A lot of finger and hand brushing from Olrox, which at first I’d think gets no reaction as an attempt for restraint before Mizrak warms up to it and even reciprocates by doing the same thing. All of this is very gentle in my opinion. It’s slow, tender, and most importantly vulnerable. It has the physical contact reminiscent of their first fast rough and tug in the courtyard and piggybacks off the vulnerability they both have when they both stand next to the window in episode 6. They probably also just physically get closer to each other at the moment. Just gradually though. The distance gets closer and closer until their foreheads are practically touching without them realizing it. They’re comfortable though, they don’t want to leave. 

They absolutely get to a point where they both admit to saying “I love you” without straight up saying “I love you” because that’s just a very them thing. Or maybe they do straight up state because Olrox does admit he was in love (with his partner) and doesn’t shy from that fact. It’s a nice conversion of the trope and great to hear from a mlm couple to say I love you… but man do I do love when characters get all poetic-y when their profess their devotion to each other by literally talking in prose, so maybe with good writing both can be done and still be quite powerful but still be gentle. 

In my interpretation YEAH I’LL MAKE THEM KISS AFTER THIS, this is my vision after all. Also, yeah they’re gonna fuck. In the church? Perhaps. Is it a tad OOC, maybe. HOWEVER, consider imagery and symbolism. I just think the image of it would be great, even if it was censored to hell and back, it can be so artistically done. Just imagine the implication alone with me for a second. I think the whole concept of doing it in a church is an interesting build upon the quotes from the show;

“God is not here. This church is an empty box.” From the first Castlevania series.

“House of God? This place is just a heap of bricks and stone.” From Nocturne said by Maria. 

The church is a husk, especially having it abandoned- it’s rather what you do with that box that makes all the difference. The people inside are the driving force, so I think it’s both poetic and funny to have Mizrak and Olrox fucking in an abandoned church. Surface level: fuck you god I’m fucking my hot vampire boyfriend in your house. Deeper level: I could write a whole thing on this but I’ll refrain. You can get the gist of breaking free of restraint, and devotion and letting himself be human, rather than a soldier (which he already slowly does). 

Though also this sex scene isn’t necessary, I just like exploring explicit content in artistic ways, especially if I can throw in religious symbols and heighten that hunger/devotion to a person- but the “I love you” in the church is pretty powerful already.  

Then after all of this they take it at their own pace. However, they only live life once and continue together like that- they both know this concept very well because of the very nature of who they are, so they spend it in each other’s company. 

Now you also get the squad’s reactions, well namely because I do not think this would be an easily hidden thing. Like absolutely could get away with it in season 1, but everyone will know something is up for sure in my iteration. The 'hypothetical' Mystery Animator season 2 iteration. As subtle as their longing stares and quiet hand touches may be reserved for just them- those little interactions are loud.

Richter would absolutely be in shambles over Olrox, the killer of his mother, and Mizrak being a thing. Both in a “this is the most horrible thing that’s happened in my life” and also a he’s going to be an absolute shithead to Mizrak and make fun of him, lightheartedly of course. Alucard would absolutely have an interesting perspective because again, his parents. Maria already has disdain for the church plus the “vampires are evil… and evil has to be fought.” However, in the presence of Alucard, I think a lot will change because he’s half-vampire. Annette, I’m unsure of what her reaction would be, because I’m very sure she’d be receptive to Alucard being a vampire and then would appreciate Olrox’s mindset and values. However, gonna keep hammering, Olrox killed Julia Belmont which I feel will be comedically hammered in if Olrox decides to hang around the squad occasionally. 

And with that, we’re done! (I think)

Thank you for reading 🫶 this probably will not happen in cv s2 but it’s fun blurting out my hc. I’m really excited to see what they do, and even perhaps even go in the opposite direction due to episode limitations… maybe a season 3 👀 who knows.

[canmom]

what's the book for? part 0

I watched this three hour video! It is primarily a critique of the story games/Forge mode in TTRPG design, seeing it as the fruit of a condescending behaviourism, which to youtuber Vi Huntsman is painfully reminiscent of the 'Applied Behaviour Analysis' abusive treaments that are often applied to autistic children! Oof! Quite a charge...

...though it only gets there after the first hour or so! There's a segment where they do a stage production of an abridged version of a segment in Sunless Skies!

So... despite 'three hour video essay titled Art, Agency, Alienation' being kind of a punchline in itself, despite occasionally the kind of indulgence you tend to only see in got-way-too-big video essay channels, this video is actually pretty legit. I used to be quite the story game partisan and this is perhaps the best critique I've seen of it!

I think the thrust of Vi Huntsman's critique has merit, but it ends up feeling... honestly broader than I think they meant it - many dimensions seem to apply to almost any printed TTRPG. I also found their conclusion, which calls for more adventures and similar to support the 'folk art' of RPGs, extremely underwhelming - more a statement of taste than an answer to the blistering criticisms of the previous three hours.

So here's my own attempt at an answer. Or at least to lay out the premises we'd need to reach an answer, I'm not there yet!

tl;dw

Let me try and break it down into a tl;dw version. (I'll brush past the lead-in which talks about The Stanley Parable and Severance, used to frame the discussion.)

First up, ABA is an abusive practice inspired by radical behaviourism. In ABA, a behaviour analyst decides how a child should behave, and applies crude reward/punishment structures to get the child to do as they want, without trying to understand the underlying reasons. For example, an analyst may try to stop a child covering their ears when flushing the toilet, even though this is painful for the child. This analogy runs through the video. It is clearly quite personal for Huntsman, who I'm fairly sure is autistic themselves, and apparently worked at some point in attempting to apply the 'treatments' cooked up by the behavioural analysts.

Now, there is a perspective in game design that believes that the designer's responsibility is to create structures of rewards and perhaps punishments to push a player towards a specific intended experience - i.e. 'incentives'. In this light, game design is envisioned almost as a kind of spooky mind control to create behaviour in players, though the methods imagined to do so are in fact very crude.

The other element Huntsman introduces is the notion of 'Suitsian games', after the philosopher Bernard Suits, which are self-contained rules structures creating interesting obstacles to reach some kind of arbitrary goal (for example: capture king, place ball in hoop), where the interesting aspect is the new 'agency' created by the limitations of the rules. Huntsman argues that TTRPGs are not Suitsian games, and it's a big mistake to act as if they are.

They present some examples of a disdainful attitude among designers that players are like children whose behaviour is determined only by the game itself, despite all evidence to the contrary. A particularly damning example is a podcast episode in which a game designer who is also an ABA behavioural analyst attempts to explain how games should more deliberately apply direct incentives in their design.

This attitude, Huntsman argues, results in games (here books you can buy instructing you what to do) which attempt to meticulously shape play (the actual thing that happens at the table) to push it towards a very specific intended experience, often by rigidly defining processes for nearly every stage of the game, similar to a board game. This undercuts the open-endedness of TTRPGs, the major strength of the medium.

The roots of the pernicious ideology, in Huntsman's view, go back to the Forge forums, a cultish forum about game design run by a terribly arrogant man called Ron Edwards, known for Sorcerer and Trollbabe. Many of the major game designers active in the indie scene today come from the Forge, and they tend to somewhat nepotistically promote each other, including writing a very self-back-patting textbook.

In a section termed 'the can of worms', Huntsman suggests that elements like the 'agendas' and 'principles' and 'GM moves' amount to designers taking undue credit for player creativity, with designers claiming that fairly boilerplate GM advice framed as rules is what makes the game work, with the corollary if the game doesn't work you weren't following the GM rules properly and thus weren't really playing the game.

Some of these games tell you off for interesting ways you might hack or vary their rules, insisting that they be interpreted strictly and narrowly to get the 'intended' experience

This is all about selling a product - the idea that you need this specific book in order to create a certain kind of experience, when in reality the book does very little to actually contribute to the 'folk art' of playing an RPG together.

The main example used to illustrate all this is Root: The RPG, a TTRPG adaptation of the extremely popular asymmetric board game about forest animals having a civil war. The TTRPG is printed by a company called Magpie Games which specialises in PbtA designs, probably best known for Masks. They tend to do very well on Kickstarter, but their games - often IP tie-ins - are not especially memorable. Vi Huntsman praises the original board game, but has little positive to say about the TTRPG spinoff.

From what I saw in the video, Root is definitely a strong example of a shallow PbtA game which borrows the surface-level forms of Apocalypse World (moves, agendas, etc.) to create something bland and unengaging. It commits many design sins - far too many uninteresting moves, a dearth of evocative prompts to get you into the idea of the game, locking certain reasonable actions to specific playbooks, repetitive prose, a lack of conceptual clarity, dogmatic insistence that its rules must be followed to the letter... Clearly we can all skip this game.

But...

the role played by a roleplaying book

What's more interesting to me is the broader critique.

The video does not directly address Root's obvious parent Apocalypse World in much depth. Huntsman notes that most of Root's ideas are cribbed from there and that Magpie Games have been less and less likely to acknowledge Vincent and Meguey as time goes on; the pair are also included in the Pepe Silvia wall used to illustrate the reach of the Forge. However, they do not really address whether their criticisms apply to Apocalypse World.

To my eye, Apocalypse World is still a lot better than almost all of its many, many imitators. Part of that is the strength of its prose - and that is actually very important, for reasons I'll get into. So I think it would be better to look at the best of this tradition, rather than its worst.

But before we can get into that, the real question for me is this. What is the relationship between the paper object in your hands or PDF on your computer, and that mystical thing that happens when you and your friends gather around a table and tell a story together for four or five hours?

Begin series.

[heartgold]

what are your gripes with umimanga? i personally really hate the whodunnit part of it, don't make me rant about the confession of the golden witch whole deal also, ugh. 😭

i have mixed feelings on it (particularly confessions) but it's less about the content itself and more about how it can be used as a replacement for engaging with the story? most things that are "revealed" in the manga aren't actually manga-exclusive or even difficult to reason out from the vn if you put in the work. i think the problem here is that the manga's release was meant to "end" umineko's production cycle and gift the longtime readers who reached the answers with the solution as ryukishi envisioned it. however it means readers can now choose to skip out on engaging with the text by themselves (the Entire point of the work) and go read confessions to get their Umineko Ending Explained immediately.

(basically: i understand ryukishi's intentions when releasing it. how well it worked in practice is debatable. on one hand i go insane over any crumbs of sayo's character and confessions still makes me ill to think about. i love her so much and she's relatable to a scary degree. on the other hand, having direct access to her suffering just like that without having to engage with her story feels so wrong. it feels like an absolute evisceration. it's particularly bad knowing anyone can just forego seeking her heart in the text and go straight for the guts like that...)

however i find it really silly when people try to argue that sayo's portrayal in confessions is "ooc" or contradicts the work when this is explicitly ryukishi's "this is what i had in mind while writing the culprit" answer. the problem is those people likely interpreted her character differently and ofc that's fine (umineko is very Word Of God Isn't The Only Truth), there are some things the manga revealed that i find less interesting than how i interpreted them personally so i stick with my own reading on those aspects! golden truth is a thing! but i've seen people claiming natsumi kei distorted ryukishi's vision or whatever and that's blatant cope lol. you can just not like it and do your own thing. your engagement and interpretation are important too.

i find the people who act like the manga is the "superior" version thanks to revealing things explicitly Very annoying though. it's clearly not the point. the manga just doesn't work as a replacement for the vn! i like to think of it as a bonus you should only look at once you're done with digesting the vn and have arrived to your own answers. umineko is ALL about experiencing and engaging with the text and seeking the answers between the lines bc you Care about the heart within it. i avoid referencing confessions in my posts whenever possible and instead point out to where certain things about sayo were heavily hinted at in the vn itself all along bc some people really think they're not there and the stuff from confessions came from nowhere. i've also seen people claim vn ep8 and manga ep8 as a whole have opposite stances which is SUPER silly, i think you just didnt understand what the vn was getting at or interpreted it differently. which is fine! the manga being more explicit about it definitely makes it easier to see the vision. but i find those vn vs manga arguments obnoxious bc they're intentionally doing different things and the manga is supplementary material.

[degenerata69]

"Enamorado tuyo" (In love with you) by Uruguayan band, Cuarteto de Nos, is such a stancest song, and it could very well be sung to each other when trying to get over their relationship, in denial that they love each other.

"And if you think I'm in love with you, that's an invention, I intuit, don't give credit to murmurs." This part is self-explanatory: they have always been known to have each other's back, and suddenly, it's not the case. Nobody believes they stopped caring for one another.

"Because I rarely call to tell you I love you, and more than once, I've done it to the wrong number" This represents the need that they have to contact one another but won't out of pride; Stanley's call that he hanged up despite desperately needing his brother, as well as Ford saving Stanley's scam number; the final straw between him and Bill when the demon called Stanley to tell him he was going to kill himself and remark he "never loved him." Ford was angry for a reason, Bill lied.

Also, the "and more than once I've done it to the wrong number" is them convincing themselves they love other people instead of their twin. Stanley's failed marriage and Ford's "Muse."

"Rarely is the time I get desperate to have you by my side, and that doesn't mean it has a meaning." This one is entirely on Ford being the worst person ever. At his lowest point, the only person who comes to mind who he can trust is Stanley, and once he is there, he only asks him to get away instead of embracing him. Stanley's clearly not the case. He misses Ford every single day of his life, but he can hide it from others.

"If you think love is what I feel, please, don't make a fuss. Don't tell your people about our issue. " This adds to Ford's paranoia and secretive nature. He wants all the details about his private life to be private.

"Don't dress up. Don't pretend you are never seen. I have envisioned singing you 《see you later.》 Don't dress up. Don't pretend you are never seen; I have a song that says, 《See you, lady》" This is Stanley after bringing Ford back and seeing how his brother just pushes him. He wants to pretend he is stronger than that, and he would part ways at any moment despite not wanting to.

"I rarely see your picture on my cellphone. It is still there because I'm too lazy to press *delete.*" This is the holding onto pictures and objects that remind them of each other. Especially Ford, who has a picture of them as kids in his coat, which was always in his pocket.

"I'm not that obsessed, to clarify, if you think that's why I sing this song." This is just them reiterating their denial.

Overall, I already love this song and find it so fitting, even if we make it not incestuous, it would still remark their relationship.

Also, because the Latin American dub was made in Argentina (which is next to Uruguay and very culturally alike) it's easy for me to envision them singing this song and fitting them so much.

[rayclubs]

say more about Edgeworth and Gumshoe's dynamic, I'm intrigued 👀

Gumshoe and Edgeworth are both Peak Comedy and Peak Romance to me. I'm fully serious when I say I don't ship them, I tend to "ship" people who are good for each other and whom I could envision being a successful romantic couple. That's all to say, I don't personally make up scenarios in which these two are together, that is just how they are. Their weird queerplatonic tomfoolery is engraved in canon. As much as I joke about Will Powers yaoi or Miles Edgeworth having two hands to hold the updated autopsy report with, there is nothing my character analysis can do to erase or even lessen the impact of what they have.

With that said, there are some aspects of their dynamic that I think are very cool and funny and important but get no attention from the fans whatsoever. Like, take their six-year age gap. For any other two people it'd be negligible but with them it just fucking slays me. Or the fact that Edgeworth is Gumshoe's boss. Or actually two of these facts combined. Imagine running errands for a twink that should be calling you "sir" but you can't be mad at him because all the blood rushed from your brain to your boner when he called you "Detective". Imagine growing up so emotionally constipated that a middle-aged depressed bear with an overhanging threat of crippling poverty takes pity on you. Picture it with your mind. Take my hand.

I also think you could write so much angst with these two but the fans are sleeping on the most hard-hitting points. Do you think Edgeworth eventually grows self-conscious or even resentful of the class divide that clearly lays a ravine of distance between them, but he's neither emotionally intelligent nor socially competent enough to negate it? Do you think Gumshoe bears the burden of Edgeworth's guilt but can't allow himself to take a break to get over it and feels or even ends up being left behind as a result? Jokes aside, someday I hope I'll read an actual middle age crisis fanfic, but with the way things are looking, I just might have to write one myself.

Anyway uhhh. I think Missile fucking hate Edgeworth and bite him every time cheers

[catherine-the-doll-ballerina]

I'm sending this to three T70s blogs! What are your very most controversial/unpopular That 70s Show opinions? To get the ball rolling, I'll confess a few of mine since I'm on anon and can't be attacked :) 1. I always shipped Jackie/Eric to the point where they're a true OTP of mine. I have no idea why. Usually when I ship non-canon couples, it's because they're very close friends whose personalities seem incredibly compatible to me...but Jackie and Eric aren't especially close (despite being in the same general group), and they don't seem very compatible or even to care about and respect each other that much. (Though Jackie's "hero" line melts me!) Tbh, it probably just comes down to the fact that Jackie and Eric are by far my two favorite characters. I love analyzing, writing about them, and envisioning how they might have worked if I conveniently ignore 97% of canon. I'm pathetic :) 2. I wouldn't really like Hyde in real life and don't think he was a particularly good romantic partner at all. (*ducks*) I mean, he was an improvement over Kelso, but who isn't?! I just think fandom idealizes him a bit too much. It's a matter of taste, though---the super 'edgy, rebel, proudly rude, 'duuude, I shoplift and smoke a lot of weed and would rather set myself on fire than eat in a mainstream chain restaurant' kind of guys just aren't my personal type :) 3. Sort of related to the first two confessions: I don't think Jackie and Hyde would make each other happy long term. They had some wonderful moments on the show, but I really just don't think they'd give each other what they want. 4. I don't really get how some newer fans turn Laurie into this root-worthy 'girlboss' who's just misunderstood- she's supposed to be unrepentantly, hilariously terrible, and she is! Sometimes it really is as simple as that :) 5. (*whispers*) More often than not, I enjoy Kelso. Obviously as a boyfriend to Jackie, but as a character who - for me - really does add a lot of humor and energy to the show. i can't wait to read yours, and please don't hate me for mine!

I agree with everything you said. Jackie & Eric are my true otp. And I don't really care for Hyde. He's actually my least favourite character.

Now for Laurie. Yeah, it boogles my mind how younger fans see her as a girlboss. She's not. Laurie is a horrible example of how a human being should behave. People can blame Kitty all they want. But even if she didn't slut shame her. Laurie would still have low self esteem. That's what happens when you live a destructive lifestyle.

Now here's my unpopular opinions

Making Hyde biracial was fucking stupid. The boys clearly Irish and that's why he has curly hair.

I don't like Brooke and Kelso as a couple

Fez is over hated

I would have preferred the storyline where Eric's a single dad

Eric had every right to punch David.

Jackie & Fez are not as bad as fans make them out to be

Most Jackie & Hyde stans are borderline psychotic. They didn't end up together. Get the fuck over it.

[allthelittlecreepycrawlies]

With A Flap of Wings, Part 9

(Note: This is the last section I wrote before getting hit in the face with writer's block. I know exactly how the rest of it goes, I even have a bullet point outline for it, I just... yeah. Anyway, I hope you've enjoyed everything posted so far.)

---------------

It has been a little over four years since their son's odd state of continued existence was revealed to the jianghu. 

With Xunyao at the summer lectures, Mingjue and Zonghui off handling a pack of troublesome boar yao, and Jinghe traveling with her mothers and aunt, Nie Haoran is taking advantage of the weather and empty family halls to spend time with Huaisang while getting some records updated. 

It is well after lunchtime and he has been bogged down in dates and names long enough he would normally start getting a headache when he finally notices that the familiar hum of his saber has... changed. 

Over the years, the blade's spirit had grown heavier, more ravenous, pressing against the back of his skull like a tiger that knows there's meat to be had just outside its cage and is testing to see if it can be reached one way or another. 

And now it's… calm. He can just picture it sated and purring as it naps sprawled out by a hearth fire. 

He blinks, then looks down to find that Huaisang has dozed off curled up at his side, the saber resting on the grass between them and translucent fingertips just barely touching the hilt. 

Nothing about him seems to have changed, but... 

Curiosity piqued, he checks to see if his son will continue sleeping for a while yet, then gathers up his work and goes to find his second and the sect's head healer. 

— 

After an initial examination and a few careful tests, Liu Feng cautiously agrees with the hypothesis that Nie Haoran has formed. 

Whatever form of spirit Nie Huaisang has become, contact with him seems to, at least temporarily, soothe the previously endless and unstoppable hunger of the saber spirits. 

His mind spins with this information. 

Their family's curse had been weighing more and more on his mind as he had watched the boys start going on more and more difficult solo night hunts and his daughter's bonding ceremony drew closer. 

He has been feeling older than his actual age more and more as of late, dealing with twinges and pulls and headaches that left him tired and irritable, the first signs of the inexorable decline that awaited them all. 

It is likely already too late to completely save his own generation, but if this could stop, or even just slow down the sickness brought on by the sabers' needs, then perhaps the next one…

But he doesn't yet know what the possibilities he is envisioning would cost Huaisang in return. 

Would his son have to be bound to the garden permanently, as the masterless sabers had been bound to the tombs since the birth of the sect? Or, worse, would the sabers overwhelm him, draining his soul until there was nothing left to move on? Both of those potential futures make his stomach twist in a mix of horror and guilt, especially since he has no doubt Huaisang would agree to any plan suggested to him, personal cost be damned. 

After all, his son has already cast his own life aside for them once already.

He decides to have the healers work on refining the tests and continue testing. He will consult every useful opinion, from the elders to his oldest friends to his wives when they return home.

Only once he has a much clearer picture of the situation and several potential plans to choose from will he bring this up with his son.

—

The research is not easy, nor is it quick. Years pass marked in searched shelves and discarded ideas, and almost too quickly, a decade has come and gone. 

Nie Haoran knows his health will not hold out much longer. Even though Nie Huaisang has caught on to what he is trying to do and clearly wants to assist- 

-he has not failed to notice that his son now very purposefully sleeps with one hand resting on the saber’s blade whenever they share a few shichen in the garden- 

-he will not risk his child. 

He and his wives are reading over the latest set of scrolls Lan Qiren has unearthed for the project when the air around them suddenly vibrates with such a strong burst of spiritual energy that even Nie Leiyun, with her lack of cultivation, gasps and clutches her chest. 

"What-" 

"The garden!" 

Bolting from the library, they find Meng Shi and Nie Zonghui attempting to help Nie Xunyao to his feet in the hallway, the young man pale and trembling from where he's been violently heaving all over the floor. 

"What happe-" 

Another unseen explosion ripples through the building, and now there are dozens more pairs of footsteps running through the halls as the other disciples and servants react to the confusing invisible assault on the Realms. 

"Zongzhu, where-" 

"Fuqin! A-niang!" Nie Mingjue calls as he rounds the corner, Nie Jinghe and two disciples right behind him. "It's Sang-di, he-" 

"Were you with him when this started?" Nie Linsong asks and her son shakes his head. 

"No, but I… I think I know what's going o-" 

The next pulse rattles the floor under their feet and the thinner walls, and as it finishes passing over, Nie Haoran feels his nose start to bleed. Looking around, his children and nephews and disciples are in similarly bad shape, Nie Jinghe clutching her head and starting to cry from the pain and Nie Xunyao having vomited on the floor again.

"Take those two to the infirmary," he says to the disciples who look the least affected. "Jue-er, let's go." 

Meng Shi immediately follows the disciples carrying her son, but Nie Leiyun looks torn between the misery of the child with her now and the child suffering in the garden. 

"Go with Jinghe," Nie Linsong says, squeezing her hands. "We won't lose him." 

Fighting back tears, their wife nods and follows the disciples helping her daughter. 

"Tell us what's wrong with him," Nie Haoran orders as he, Linsong, Mingjue, and Zonghui make their way across the courtyard, trying to calm panicked sect members and servants in their path. 

"I think today is the day I was supposed to die."

His mother stops short so fast that his father nearly bowls her over accidentally. “What?” they both ask almost in unison.

[nonranghaes]

your sweet svt drabbles are such an inspiration to me. I've been getting into writing fics slowly by writing just short ones off a single scenario, and i have too many prompts and ideas coming from my head (which is great !) that i already had laid out but i just couldn't find thee tempo to start. Soo I'm trying to get more inspo by reading around tumblr and to my luck i landed here! i found your writing style an exemplar to how i wanted to write (bonus if you'd like to give some writing tips? 🥹). Your drabbles looked effortlessly written, they're simple yet so expressive and visually evocative. Reading them makes me feel like it's easy to just get the idea off my head and picture it in words OK I'LL STOP HASJB it's literally midnight o clock (when the strong urge to give one of my prompts a shot kicks in)

aaaaaAAA AND IF I START CRYIN????

honestly i dont rly know if i have any solid writing tips haha i like reading a lot since it can teach me a lot abt what i like in writing and what i dislike!! + reading helps u pick up on how other ppl describe things and how their writing flow. idk if that makes sense though. like... book i just finished (a death in tokyo) is very to the point and practical with its writing. it was written in a way that i could clearly envision a lot of things and my mind would fill in the holes since its set in a real world setting. other stuff i read might take care in describing things in more detail, but reading higashino's work kinda made me understand further how just plainly stating things can have its own power and paint a picture just as well--just depends on what you're writing and what kind of vibe it should have, yknow?

like. i wouldn't expect a thriller to have the same writing flow as a romance novel, but the gritty details can still have importance depending on what the topic is. little things like that. genuinely, imo, the best writers are those who read a lot and my advice is rly just to kinda read everything u feel safe w reading!!!

also i think ive said this a lot on wooahaes but ive also been writing since i was like. 11. if not younger lol so ive had a looooootta time to practice and refine and get to where i am now and i'll still be improving into the future hopefully!!!

other than that... hmm...

i'll admit this one isn't something everyone can do (and obvs no shame to ppl who can't!) but i always try to envision the space i'm writing and the people within it.

i think for me personally, i care a lot about the physicality of whoever i'm writing? if they're nervous, are they acting shifty? are they wringing their hands? is this a situation they want to get out of, or are they nervous because they're kinda excited for what's to come? how are they vocally, too? are they the kind of person who rambles when they're nervous, or do they get really quiet? is it obvious, or will it seem normal if they're quiet/chatty?

like... with the mark lee drabble where he's nervously dragging out the question of "what if we kissed?" it was kinda important to me to just kinda have him dragging it out because once he says it, there's no way to take it back, and once he says it, the nerves take over in a "and now i must ramble, lets talk about anything but what i just said, so the aquarium-" where even though we don't SEE mark, we still can tell he's a nervous wreck over it all. its little things like that that just kinda stick out to me?

mmm but for my drabbles specifically... i think i kinda function off the fact that i'm not writing an actual fic here? if i wanted to write something longer, i'd put it on wooahaes (and sometimes i do! i've had a couple fics now i was gonna just post as a drabble but then they kinda ran away from me). i've deleted parts of drabbles before because i felt like they were getting too irrelevant. the point of a drabble, to me personally, is to just kinda give somewhat a quick snapshot of a moment. i think my stuff usually takes place in a single place as far i can remember, because changing scenes makes it feel like a bigger thing (barring stuff where there was a short flashback).

i think it can help to have an idea of what you want to capture if you're writing a short drabble. reader/seungkwan caring for one another, minho teasing reader over the cats, reader trying to get one over on joshua (ft seungkwan). occasionally the more fantasy-ish stuff is like "merfolk reader in love w jisung" and "merfolk reader saving minho" or "android!shua being saved from the facility by reader" comes to me, too. i just kinda write purely by vibes and what i wanna write. idk if this helps but i usually do try to have some idea of what exactly i wanna do!! the times i have opened a post and closed it again bc i had nothing..................................... yeah

(obvs no shame in those moments ksdhfds i just always end up sitting there like. what was i doing again.)

ummm idk what else to say!! i can always try to give advice on other stuff if u ever have specific questions but this is all ive got rn <3 good luck!!!!! i believe in u!!!!!!!!

[asphyxiatedredherring]

Ok, the poll I just reblogged about aphantasia has me thinking way more than I can put in the notes of that post. I can see things very vividly in my head to the point that it upsets me if I can't move the image 360° or there are obstructed/blurry parts. Like when I envision a layout of a building I can see a moving map with a path but it's very unsettling that there's parts that just aren't clear enough for me to see or I know is incorrect but I can't see what I don't know so there's gaps. When I have a missing piece of an image, that part is just too blurry for me to see all the way or like looking through a fog. This is similar to my thoughts when I have brain fog. I can see them, but they are too far away for me to read, are too blurry, feel like they are going in slow motion, or are just incomprehensible even though I can the thoughts are there.

When I take written notes, if I remember them at all, I can see my notebook in my handwriting, and I can see the format and ink colors. If I don't have the content of the notes memorized, then I can see the writing, but no matter how hard I look at it, I can't read it. It just isn't comprehenable language, and the words change or move when I zoom in and focus on them like how eye floaters move when you try to look at them. A lot of times I can remember where on a page something is written but not quite what it says.

I hate that I can't physically replicate what's in my head no matter how hard I try. There's places like locations I go in my mind sometimes (I haven't recently), and I hate that I can't put them on paper. It just can't be translated. And there's parts I want to see more of, but I just can't. I can't connect it all clearly into a map that makes sense or see things zoomed out enough or connected to each other.

Also notable is that when I envision myself speaking I can hear my voice, but my mouth doesn't move. I can only see myself speak with my mouth closed or it moves incorrectly like a puppet mouth moving randomly and doesn't match up with my words. I also almost always see my thoughts (and dreams) from 3rd person perspective. I see myself doing things from a zoomed out angle like a movie. Almost never 1st person like I'm looking out of my own eyes.

So yeah, I'm just thinking a lot about thinking and would love to hear about how other people think and see things in their head. Do you see things written own in your own handwriting? Do you have places in your head you go? Do you see yourself from 1st or 3rd person? Does your internal voice sound the same as your external voice? (Mine doesn't. It is completely separate from any voice I've ever heard, but I can still hear other people's voices in my head as they would normally sound). Do you like to move things around in your head like a mental puzzle? Share your thoughts on your thoughts :)