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bestiesenpai · 4 years ago

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youtuber Sukuna

I beg you to read the shitposts I made about this, they are delicious. You don’t have to of course but...if you loved me you would :) s/n = screen name, and I hope you chuckle at Sukunas screen name

Content warning: uhmhm lowkey incel shit(mean internet comments and whatnot)

part two --- part 3

Name: Sukuna. Age: 25. Height: 6 foot 5 inches. Occupation: toxic Youtuber, fitness trainer and hot guy.

Sukuna wasn’t exactly known for being kind. He wasn’t nice to others, rarely having anything good to say about anyone, and he’d made a successful Youtube career out of it. First starting as a fitness trainer at his gym, through encouragement from his clients and the notion of a quick cash grab, he started Youtube.

He didn’t care about it and that reflected in the quality of his videos and editing. He didn’t have consistent uploads, just filming and posting videos whenever he wanted, analytics be fucked. But somehow, that worked out for him, and he quickly found himself with over two million subscribers just frothing at the mouth for his next video.

And those subscribers were some of the worst people. Sukuna didn’t care about fostering a safe space online for others, not in the slightest. His comment sections were atrocious, both on his Youtube and his Instagram. It was full of toxic men one-upping each other constantly and dragging on each other for not being able to work out as much as Sukuna did.

Sukuna was a large part of why his fanbase were so toxic. He himself often made bad comments about others, whether fellow creators or people that happened to appear in the backgrounds of his videos, and on more than one occasion he’d been ‘cancelled’. None of that mattered though, all he cared about was shitting on other people and making money.

Sometimes he played video games and posted it, but not too often. Sukuna often stated he wasn’t so much of a fucking lonely loser that he’d play video games all the time, and so the gaming videos he did post were few and far between. He played angry shooter games and GTA, mindless button clicking he could get lost in for a few hours for a video.

Laying in bed one night after uploading his most recent video, one where he rages at 12 year olds on GTA online, Sukuna was just scrolling through his phone mindlessly. After he uploads video game content, like clockwork, he gets recommendations for gaming channels. He only watches a few of them, mostly leaving mean comments saying what losers they are, but one catches his eye.

He’s never been recommended this kind of video before. The thumbnail is light and bright with some pink aesthetic lights in the back. But the most enticing thing is the person in the middle, cute pink cat ear headphones on and a bright smile.

“Let’s see…” Sukuna mumbles to himself, mindlessly clicking the video. He hasn’t even read the title, he only clicked it because they were cute, and here he is nearly blinded by the bright setup they have.

“Hi everyone, it’s (Y/N) here and I’m really excited today! We’re going to be playing this new game I found!” Sukuna is immediately enraptured by the sound of your voice, watching how your face changes as you talk. His eyes drift off to the decor behind you, cute plushies and healthy plants, and some twinkling fairy lights. There’s books as well, and your chair is one of those ergonomic gamer chairs he has as well but in pink.

Sukuna watches the video dumbly, totally in the dark about whatever you’re doing, but loving it all the same. All he knows is that he likes the sound of your voice, and when you laugh and smile at a funny part in the game, it makes a light flush come to his cheeks.

It only takes one video for Sukuna to spiral into more of your content. He watches a video on your gaming setup, and he’s surprised that so much technology can come in pink. He watches a video on how you edit, a few of you cooking in your kitchen, and even a few vlog videos.

He quickly subscribes to your channel, and when you plug your social media, he immediately goes there. Pulling up your Instagram, he stares at your profile picture and almost audibly coos at you for being cute.

Your profile is just as cute as your videos are and Sukuna barely remembers to follow you before he’s going through your whole feed, liking every picture he sees. Sometimes he leaves comments, only one word though, ‘cute’. He’s never liked something so outright cute before, it wasn’t who he was and it definitely didn’t fit with his brand.

Falling asleep after following you on every platform, Sukuna wakes up thinking about you as well. And he also wakes up to hundreds of comments from all his accounts, bombarding him with questions and screenshots from last night.

‘SUKUNA WHY WOULD YOU LIKE THIS SHIT?!’

‘OMG Sukuna liked (Y/N)s posts!!’

‘Sukuna is so gross and toxic, you better stay away from (Y/N)!’

‘SUKUNA YOU GAY NOW’

‘EW why the fuck do you like this bitch?’

There were hundreds of comments that he waded through. Most were from his fans, expressing disgust at how many photos of yours he’d liked and wondering why he, Sukuna, most heterosexual alpha male on the planet, would like a pretty in pink Youtuber who had bubbly intros and whined when their animal crossing villagers wanted to move away.

Other comments were from your fans, some in awe that he would like you considering how much he said he hated overly cute things. Other fans expressed concern, worried what this might mean for their favorite Youtuber. Did Sukuna want to cause problems, potentially hurting you? He did have a reputation of bullying others, so this wasn’t far fetched.

Checking your Instagram, you didn’t make any comment about it. There wasn’t any update or anything, but on his end he was being tagged in endless Twitter threads with screenshots of him liking your posts and commenting under them.

“For fucks sake.” He grunted, clenching his phone in his hands. The amount of notifications he was getting were starting to upset him and he nearly threw his phone to get them to stop.

Ignoring his phone for the rest of the day, Sukuna went to the gym like he always did and trained with his clients. Some of them brought it up to him, asking him if he had a mind break last night and forgot what he was doing. Sending them harsh glares, Sukuna refused to talk about it.

“Oh my fucking god.” Sukuna nearly wailed when he got home, finally checking his phone. His name and yours had begun trending, and the hashtag #protect(Y/N) was also. Muttering angrily under his breath, Sukuna turned on Instagram live.

“Okay what the fuck!” He shouted, seeing the live become instantly flooded with people all screaming about you and him. “You’re all fucking annoying, you know that?” Glaring harshly at the camera, he read some of the comments that went by.

‘WHY’D YOU LIKE (Y/N)S POSTS FROM 2017’

‘Are you two secretly dating??’

��COLLAB!’

“Who gives a shit why I liked their stuff, you’re a fucking weirdo for keeping track of me. And we aren’t secretly dating, dipshits.” Rolling his eyes, Sukuna scoffed as more comments came in begging for a collaboration. “And think about it you morons, why would we collab? Our shit is too fucking different, what would we even film about?”

Sukuna stayed on Instagram live for nearly an hour answering questions asking about you. Every time he had to answer that you weren’t secretly dating, he got a little more annoyed. Not at the comments themselves but at the fact that it was true; you didn’t even know he existed.

Ending the live in a huff, Sukuna didn’t feel any better than before, and it was made even worse by the fact that everything he said was being relayed to Twitter, and you were tagged in every tweet.

“These idiots!” Staring at his phone, Sukuna couldn’t believe what he was seeing. On your Instagram stories, you’d posted a q&a for your followers, and nearly all of the comments were about Sukuna.

“Hi everyone! No, me and Sukuna aren’t dating!” You said, laughing a little to ease how uncomfortable you were. “To be honest, I’ve never even heard of him before! As you know, my content is very...different from his, so our circles don’t exactly intersect. But I’m always happy to have new followers and potential friends!”

“Fuck me.” Sukuna groaned, cringing at how uncomfortable you looked having to address the sudden onslaught of questions. For once he wished he’d actually given a shit about his online presence, so that maybe one day your circles could intersect. He knew he scared you, he scared a lot of people, and this was just proof.

“Uh, Sukuna if you see this, hi it’s nice to meet you!” You said in the next slide, puffing out your cheeks and waving cutely at the camera. It made Sukuna blush, and he hated it. “Thank you for following me and liking my content! I was very surprised that you found me!”

“Of course I did, idiot, you’re fucking cute.” He muttered under his breath.

“I know a lot of people are asking for us to do a video together and I know our content is really different, so don’t feel pressured to respond or anything, but the offer is open! If you’d like, we can collab on something.”

“On what?” He asked like you were there.

“I cook sometimes, and I know you cook too! Maybe we can make a cooking video? You can teach me how to make healthy food or something!” Sukuna could tell a fake laugh when he heard one, and you definitely had one right now. “Anyways, thank you! Bye Sukuna!” But hearing you say his name cutely like that made him not care.

He nearly responded right away, accepting the collab offer now that you’d spoken about it, but he didn’t want to seem desperate. He watched through the rest of your Instagram stories, going back and replaying the parts where you talked about him over and over and his heart clenched every time when you said his name.

In the dead of night, Sukuna DM’s you after watching your latest video and leaving the simple comment ‘check your DM’s’.

“Fuck, what should I say?” He’s suddenly stumped as he looks at the keyboard. Typing and retyping a message, in the end all he can say is hi. He doesn’t expect a reply, ever, but when he gets a vibration on his phone two seconds later he jumps to read it.

(S/N): hi Sukuna! :)

(cursedgod): hey

Real fucking smart, repeating what he just said.

(S/N): is there something you wanted to talk to me about?

(S/N): I hope you haven’t been annoyed at all the notifications you’ve been getting!

(cursedgod): No it’s okay

(cursedgod): we can collab if you want

Good Sukuna, good. Play it cool, don’t let them know that your fingers are actually trembling because you’re nervous.

(S/N): do you want to?? I don’t want to pressure you! I know we’re pretty different haha

(cursedgod): yeah, let's do it. Cooking?

(S/N): sure!

Looking around his home, he was suddenly assaulted with the fact that he didn’t have any furniture. He barely had a proper bedroom, just a mattress on a bare frame and a dresser. His lounge room was the same with his computer setup in one corner and then nothing else. There was only a couch, a mounted TV and a fold out table and chairs for his dining room.

(cursedgod): I know a studio kitchen we can use, I’ll send you the address

Thank god he’d done promo work for a brand in a studio one day, otherwise he’d be fucked.

(S/N): awesome! I’m free next Saturday!

And just like that, it was a date. Well, a meeting. Sukuna knew it wasn’t a date, but his heart still thumped like it was one. Confirming the time, he ended the conversation with a curt goodbye and obsessed about it throughout the night.

When the day to meet you came, Sukuna nearly ran late trying to pick out his clothes. He’d never cared about looking good or presenting himself well in front of others, whatever version of him he turned up in was what they got. But for you, he wanted to try a little harder.

Waiting outside the studio space, Sukuna rubbed his hands together nervously. You’d messaged a day or two ago offering to put the video on your channel since it probably wouldn’t fit his aesthetic, so he didn’t have to bring his shitty camera equipment.

“S-sukuna?” Snapping his head up, Sukunas mouth fell open looking at your curious face a few feet away, an Uber driving off behind you. You were even cuter in person, just his fucking luck. How was he expected to act like a normal person when his recent obsession was here looking better than he could have imagined.

“Hi.” What comes out is a grunt, not the smooth word he’d hoped. He can see you eyeing him up, taking in all the thick and corded muscles of his body. It made his chest puff out a little, he worked hard for this physique and to have you so openly looking at him made him happy.

“It’s nice to meet you!” Sticking your hand out, you smiled politely at him.

“Same.” Shaking your hand with a firm grip, Sukuna could feel the difference in your palms. Yours was soft and nicely moisturized and he had callouses everywhere and a few cuts and scrapes.

Opening the door for you, Sukuna led you to the studio space he’d rented out. It was a clean and modern kitchen, not unlike his own, but it had appliances and looked actually lived in. Helping you set up a few camera angles, Sukuna felt a pang of nerves hit him in the stomach.

“Sukuna, can we take a picture together?” You asked before starting, and Sukunas brow furrowed deeply. Why would you want to take a picture with him? His expression must have scared you, because you quickly backtracked. “F-for promo for this video, on Instagram and stuff!”

“Sure.” God, did he feel bad or what. He shouldn’t have made that face at you, now you wouldn’t look him in the eye. Crouching down to get the right angle for you, Sukuna watched you pick a cute animal filter.

“Just do what I do.” Throwing up a peace sign, you cutely tilted your head from side to side and smiled. Sukuna tried to do the same but he looked awkward, and most of all he was blushing pretty bad.

You snapped a multitude of pictures, some at different angles and some with different filters, and in all of them Sukuna was blushing at least a little. He managed to smile more as it went on, even laughing at one of the filters.

“Thanks! I’m going to post these really quick and then we can get started!” Giving him a brief smile, you turned back to your phone and set about editing some of the pictures. Looking over your shoulder, Sukuna could see that he looked like a blushing high schooler meeting their idol for the first time and not a grown man.

Once the photos were posted and you tagged him in everything, it was time to start. Setting up your marks on the floor, you took a generous drink of water and cleared your throat.

“Are you ready for the intro? I’ll start it and introduce you, okay?” You’d actually prepared a script for yourself, and showed Sukuna as well.

“Okay.” Stepping in front of the camera, Sukuna bristled at feeling you so close to him. Your arm brushed his casually as you were fixing your shirt, and Sukuna was glad he’d worn his most expensive cologne for this.

“Hi everyone, welcome to today's video! As you know, I’m (Y/N), and today we have a special guest today!” Throwing your arms in the air, you motioned to Sukuna.

“Hi.” He nodded, barely cracking a smile. He could feel you looking at him like you wanted to say something, but he didn’t look.

“So, many people have been asking for us to do a collaboration and it’s finally here!” Clapping your hands lightly, you rocked on your heels and nudged his shoulder with yours. “Do you want to tell them what we’ll be doing today?”

“Uh-” The playful nudge you’d given him was enough to make Sukuna short circuit. “I-I-” He suddenly couldn’t remember how to speak. “Rice?”

“Let’s try that again.” You laughed. “Do you want to tell them what we’ll be doing today?” This time, you didn’t nudge him with your shoulder.

“We’re gonna…” the words were on the tip of his tongue, they wanted to come out and be spoken but he couldn’t do it.

“It’s okay, it’s okay!” Nodding reassuringly, you took a deep breath in and out, and Sukuna shakily copied. “One more try?” When he looked at you, Sukuna expected to see a hint of annoyance in your face, but there was none. You were just smiling softly at him, waiting for his answer.

“Yeah. I’ll uh, I’ll get it next time.” Stepping away from the camera, Sukuna took a drink of water and cleared his throat. Cracking the bones in his neck, he took a deep breath and came back. “Let’s do it.” No more fucking embarrassments.

“Do you want to tell them what we’ll be doing today?” You asked for the third time, slightly swaying your body side to side this time.

“We’re gonna make katsudon today.” Finally, the words he wanted to say came out.

“That’s right! As you can see, Sukuna is really fit!” You immediately hopped in, giving his arm a brief squeeze. “And he knows how to make a ton of healthy meals!”

“Mhmm.”

“So I asked if he could help teach me, and all of you at home, how to make it!” Smiling at the camera, you waited a few seconds before relaxing and turning it off. “Did you like that? We can refilm it if you want.”

“No, it’s okay.” Running a hand through his hair, he pointed to the bag of rice he’d brought. “Let’s get started on this shit.”

Taking fifteen minutes to film the two of you filling up the rice cooker, when it was over, you set about getting aesthetic shots of the other ingredients. Sukuna tried to seem casual off to the side on his phone, but he was really watching you.

Getting started on chopping the ingredients, Sukuna somehow managed to say the things he was supposed to without stuttering too badly. He was amazed that you could make the things he was doing sound so interesting, your narration as you held the camera and tried to do things yourself was impressive to the man that barely knew anything about cameras.

“Sukuna, I need help cutting the meat.” You whined, tapping the meat on the cutting board with a knife. “I don’t remember how you showed me.”

“Here.” Without thinking, Sukuan grabbed your hand with the knife in it and moved it for you. “You just have to move your wrist more, it’s not that hard.” Doing it a few times, when Sukuna felt your chest expand with air against his, that’s when he realized how close the two of you were. “S-sorry.” Immediately jumping back, he stared at the floor.

“Thanks!” Giving him a smile, you kept at it.

“I’ll fry the meat.” Stepping in as soon as you were done, Sukuna already had the hot oil ready. He was eager to cook and do something with his hands instead of - what he felt like - was awkwardly watching you off to the side.

“Okay!” Grabbing the camera, you focused on the pan. “You’re really good at this, Sukuna!”

“T-thanks.” Staring directly at the pan, Sukuna didn’t look away. Even with the hot oil popping up from the pan a few times and burning his fingers, he didn’t flinch at all.

“Ow!” But you did. Your hand had gotten too close, and when Sukuna flipped the meat, some of the oil had gotten on your hand.

“Shit.” Abandoning the pan, Sukuna was ready to drag you over to the sink for some cool water.

“I-it’s okay, it was only a little.” Shaking your stinging hand, you point to the food. “But I think the meat might burn.”

“Shit!”

Narrowly avoiding disaster with the meat, when it came time to cook the eggs, you made a joke about how you liked your eggs in the morning and Sukuna burnt them almost immediately. While not an overtly sexual comment, the implications of the words still affected him.

Somehow, he managed to make the dish come together and while his plated dish didn’t come out the best, yours looked at least halfway decent with overcooked meat and burnt eggs. The only things not messed up were the rice and vegetables, and even then Sukuna was surprised.

“We did it everyone, we made katsudon!” Holding up the bowls, you smiled big and nudged Sukunas shoulder again. “You saw we had a few mishaps along the way, but that’s okay, that’s what made it fun.”

“Yeah, it was fun.” Sukuna chuckled. Despite him being more nervous than he’d ever thought possible, he had fun cooking alongside you.

“Sukuna, will you try mine? I made it super pretty and everything.” Holding your dish up to him, Sukuna wasn’t expecting you to do that. Now he felt bad that his looked so ugly and like a teenaged boy made it; he almost said no.

Eating yours though, somehow it tasted better than he was expecting. It must have been how you prepared it, and the fact that you cared so much about the presentation. Eating it in silence, he let you eat in peace as well for a few minutes and compliment the food to the camera.

“Alright, that’s the end of the video!” Putting your bowl down, you turned to Sukuna. “I had so much fun today, thanks for filming this with me.” Now was his chance to make everything better. Putting his bowl down and bolstering himself with confidence, Sukuna threw his arm over your shoulder and pulled you close to him.

“Thank you (Y/N), I really did enjoy today. I hope we can film again soon!” He squeezed your shoulder and smiled really big at not only you but the camera as well. He knew he was blushing, he knew that even the tip of his nose was a nice rosy shade, but he didn’t care. If people teased him for it, then so be it. But he wanted you to know how he truly felt.

“R-really? You want to?” You asked, looking up at Sukuna from your place smooshed against his body.

“Really.”

“Aww, well you heard it here first everyone! Sukuna wants to shoot another video with me!” Clapping your hands a few times, you waved at the camera. “Okay, bye everyone!”

“Bye.” Sukuna waved too, waiting a few seconds before letting you go and turning off the camera.

“Sukuna, did you really mean it? You want to film another video with me?” You were in utter disbelief. All this time, he’d just seemed very standoffish, if not a little awkward around you. You were happy to film this video with him, he had way more followers than you and it would help boost both your channels, and to hear him say that just made it even better.

“Yeah, I was serious.” Sukuna spoke around stuffing his mouth with the food he still had left. He was more hungry than he thought, the nerves doing a good job of twisting his stomach during the video. Now that it’s over, he can finally relax.

“That makes me really happy.” Eating the rest of your food as well, you leant against the counter. “This is gonna sound kind of mean, but I was really scared to film with you today. I thought you were going to be really mean.”

“Shit, you did?” He grimaced, letting out a sigh. “Sorry I had you worried.” He could already imagine the comments you would get from his fans.

“It’s okay! You’re actually way nicer in person, I was surprised!”

“That’s good.”

“And you’re really buff, you have muscles in places I didn’t even know were possible!” You laughed bashfully at that comment, and avoided looking at him when he stared at you in shock. “I couldn’t help but notice…”

Were you checking him out? Had you been checking him out this whole time and he didn’t even realize? He had seen you eyeing him up when you first met, but were you looking at him like that at other times as well? Now he’d really have to watch your video to see if it was true.

“Thanks, it’s my job.” Could he have said that any lamer? “My job outside of all this, I mean. I’m a trainer at this fancy gym downtown.”

“Oh, I’ve seen some of your videos at your gym! I know which one you’re talking about.”

“You do? You’ve seen my videos?” If he wasn’t surprised before, he was now.

“Yeah, you know I had to do a little research beforehand.” You nodded, beginning to clean up the dishes around you. “And I know you’ve already watched almost all of my videos, so it only seemed fair.”

Did you have to bring that up? Now Sukuna was embarrassed again.

“Y-yeah, I did.” Clearing his throat, Sukuna helped gather the dishes. He took up washing them, another task he could do to get his mind off you. As you took down the camera equipment, he nearly broke several dishes and utensils from scrubbing too hard.

“I’ll call you an Uber.” He said when all was said and done and you were back at the front of the building.

“You don’t have to, it’s okay.”

“No, I want to.” Quickly calling you a ride, Sukuna fiddled with his phone a little more. “Uh, could I- could I-” His voice kept leaving him, and he had to cough a few times. “Can I get your number? I really liked your camera shit and I want to improve mine.” Okay, it wasn’t a total lie. He did like your setup and wanted to make his just as good, but he really wanted your number to potentially talk to you more about things outside of Youtube.

“Sure! Go ahead and type it in.” You were quick to give him your phone, a cute pink phone case on the back of it. Typing it in, he can’t help but notice the little devil emoji you add by his name. He wants to ask, but your ride is already pulling up.

“Bye!” Setting all your camera gear inside the car, you turn and wave goodbye.

“See ya.” Just as you’re about to close the car door, Sukuna gets a burst of confidence. “Text me when you get home, okay?”

“Okay!” And off you go. Sukuna watches the car drive off until he can’t see it anymore. He takes his time getting to his own place, eagerly awaiting your message with every step. But even when you do message him, all he can do is send a thumbs up back and nothing else.

It’s about two and a half days after that that you text him again, letting him know you’re done editing and that you’re going to post the video soon. It wasn’t a very long video to begin with, so the editing was simple enough. Sukuna replied with what appeared to be a lackluster ‘can’t wait’, but on the inside he was shaking. He’d already screenshot all the pictures the two of you took together and added them to a folder.

“Here we go.” As soon as the video went live, Sukuna watched it. He was mortified as soon as it started at the blush so evident on his cheeks, and how it stayed throughout the whole thing. He groaned at the part where he helped you cut up the meat, he almost wishes you’d cut it out. Every little detail that made him embarrassed was there, every little nuance of his actions you’d managed to capture and make it cute.

(Y/N): How do you like it??

You texted him after twenty minutes, eager to hear his thoughts.

(Sukuna): it’s good, good editing and stuff

(Y/N): yay! I’m going to read comments in a few hours, you should too! I bet people will be really shocked!

(Sukuna): yeah no doubt

Oh, he was definitely going to read the comments. Whereas you were going to wait for a fair few to come in before commenting, Sukuna frequently refreshed the page and read the new ones as they came in. You were right, a lot of people were surprised, but he also saw a lot of his fans as well.

‘Ew Sukuna really cooked for that bitch? They can’t do it themselves?’

‘Yeah, why do they have to rely on him? Useless as fuck lol’

‘Sukuna only did this to get laid, (Y/N) looks like an easy fuck’

All of those comments, and many more, made his blood boil. Usually, he wouldn’t care at all about the comments, letting them fester in his comment section and spiral out of control. But for you, it was different.

‘Fuck off and die you pieces of shit. Leave (Y/N) alone or say it to my fucking face’

Sukuna sent that message, along with a variety of other threats, to all the people that insulted you. He didn’t care that this wasn’t his channel and that you would deal with it in whatever way you wanted to. He needed to defend you against the unwanted audience he’d brought you.

Luckily, after seeing Sukunas messages, all of his fans backed off. They knew how serious he was about his threats and there were many rumors that he actually did go and beat people up who said things he didn’t like. No one wanted to be on the receiving end of his torment.

With Sukunas name attached to the video and his heavy presence in the comment section, the video easily went viral. It was easily the most viewed video on your channel, getting on the trending pages of several different platforms.

(Sukuna): hey

It’s nearly a week after the first video that Sukuna messages you, and the hype is still going strong, and your follower count grows greatly from it.

(Y/N): hi! What’s up?

(Sukuna): do you want to film a video for my channel now? We can play a game, I have a few

(Y/N): sure that sounds fun!

Oh how wrong you were. The game Sukuna chose was a scary game, a shooter game with scary zombies and a lot of possible jumpscares. He doesn’t tell you either, so on the night of filming - he insisted on it being nighttime to get the full scary effect - you were caught off guard.

“I don’t know about this.” You whined once you saw the title. The two of you were video calling alongside playing the game together, and Sukuna’s eyes flicked to your figure on the screen.

“It’ll be okay, I’ll carry you, don’t worry.” He had started filming as soon as he’d set up the game, and you were filming yourself as well for him.

“You promise it won’t be too scary?”

“If it’s too scary just close your eyes and I’ll protect you.” Smiling softly at you, he started up the game. The beginning was fine, just a quick introduction to the game, but as soon as things started to get moving, you were scared.

“Sukuna a zombie is eating me!” You screamed, frantically pushing buttons in an attempt to get it off.

“It’s okay!” He quickly got rid of it, and made sure to stay close to your character as the story progressed.

“(Y/N) stay by me, there’s about to be a whole lot of them.”

“Close your eyes there’s about to be a jump scare here.”

“Don’t worry about getting that item, I’ll grab it for you!”

Sukuna nearly forgot he was being filmed, saying sweet things to you to help encourage you and make sure you weren’t overwhelmed. There were many parts where you screamed in fright and Sukuna was there to coo at you and tell you it was okay. He made sure that your character never died, making sure to keep you close until the end of the game.

“Sukuna, that was so hard!” Squishing your cheeks in your hands, you looked at him through your phone.

“It was fun though, wasn’t it? I had fun with you.” Completely abandoning the game, he stared down at his phone with a soft smile on his face.

“Yeah, when there weren’t so many zombies.” You stuck your tongue out at him, and it made him laugh. Leaning his head into his hand, Sukuna grinned when you yawned.

“Aw, are you tired? Better go to sleep soon.” His voice dropped to a lower volume, like you were right next to him.

“I will.” You yawned again and it made Sukuna yawn as well.

“Get off the phone and go to bed, you’re making me tired too.”

“Fine.” Whining out the word, you waved sleepily. “Goodnight Sukuna, I’ll send you the video files in the morning, okay?”

“Night.” Waving back, Sukuna waited until you hung up to turn his stuff off as well.

In the morning, Sukuna was ready to edit. What usually took him a week to edit out of laziness, he took only a day to edit this video with you together. Rewatching the footage, he nearly gagged at seeing how soft his face got when he looked at you, and most of those parts were left in because he couldn’t stand to watch them and fix them.

(Sukuna): videos up

The next day, he messaged you. Once again Sukuna patrolled the comments, swiftly deleting any that said even a hint of a bad thing about you. There was less this time, what with Sukuna adding a warning at the beginning of the video threatening anyone that talked down at you.

This video, like the first, went viral. But for a much different reason. Since Sukuna was emotionally unable to deal with how sappy he was and edit those parts out, everyone got to see how soft he was for you. If the comments weren’t mean, they were screaming about how you and Sukuna must be dating now, because why else would he look at you and talk to you like that?

And much to Sukuna’s dismay, there were also fancam edits of you two together. Any clippable moment of him being sweet on you in the videos you’d made together along with the photos you’d posted on Instagram were edited together and posted on Twitter. You both were tagged in every single one, making sure Sukuna saw all the videos of you and him together. He saved all of them too, delighting in the way you looked with him with all those pretty filters.

By the end of the day, people were trying to put a ship name together for the two of you and he’s seen you repost a few fancams with cute messages of thanks as well. Seeing you receptive to the fans screaming about the two of you made him happy, even if he was still too nervous to text you about anything outside of Youtube.

As more comments came in, people on Twitter were begging him to do a vlog with you. You had quite a few on your channel, going to cafes or filming what your day or week was like. Sukuna had watched them all and was jealous of every single person that appeared alongside you.

(Y/N): hey I’m doing a live on Instagram if you want to join me! I know people really like us together lol it’ll be great for views

(Sukuna): sure

Did you want him to join now? He’d just gotten out of the shower and thrown on a pair of sweats, he wasn’t exactly decent. But he didn’t want to waste time getting ready only for you to end the live.

“Hi Sukuna!” You smiled and waved when he appeared on the screen.

“Hey.” He waved back, not caring about the angle he was holding the camera in. He saw hearts begin to fill up the screen and comments started to fly by, almost all in caps about the fact he was shirtless talking to you.

“Guys, don’t be weird! Who cares that Sukuna is shirtless?” You tried to stop them, but it was clear you were flustered as well. You weren’t looking at him, peeking at him through the screen a few times.

“God you’re all thirsty as fuck.” Sukuna finally looked at himself on the screen. He was shirtless and in bed, hair slightly damp and tousled on his pillow. Reading a few comments, he shot up. “Of course I’m wearing pants, you nasty fuck!” Storming out of bed, he stood in front of the only mirror in his house that wasn’t in the bathroom and turned the camera around. “See, look!”

“Oh.” Gasping softly, you were glad Sukuna didn’t notice you screenshot the live. Clad in only gray sweatpants, Sukuna’s freshly cleaned skin gleamed in the light of his bedroom and every single muscle and edge of his body was on display.

“There, told you I wasn’t fucking naked.” Rolling his eyes, he flopped back down on the bed. None of the comments had gotten any better, all of them talking about how hot he was and how you were so lucky to know him in real life.

“L-let's talk about something else.” You stammered, not showing your face on camera for a few minutes. Sukuna laughed at the comments teasing you for being embarrassed, agreeing with some of them under his breath.

“So, what the fuck are you all doing here?” Sukuna posed the question at the chat, but at you as well.

“Well before you came everyone was talking about you...and you know how everyone has been begging for us to vlog?” You started off slowly, peeking an eye at his face.

“Yeah?”

“I wanted to call you to ask how you felt about that?” How he felt? Why did you want to know?

“You couldn’t have texted me that?” That wasn’t necessarily what he wanted to say, but it made you chuckle, so it was okay.

“No! I wanted to ask so everyone could know!”

“I don’t mind it.” If you wanted to vlog with him, he would do it in a heartbeat.

“So…” Worrying your lip, you looked off camera for a few seconds before looking directly at Sukuna. “Would you like to be in a vlog with me, at a cafe? It’s outside the city, kind of far, but we can rent a car or-”

“Yes.” Sukuna interrupted, nodding his head quickly. “I’ll come. We don’t have to rent a car, I’ll drive.”

“Really?” The comments were just as shocked as you were. Sukuna never filmed anywhere but his home and the gym, this would be a monumental occasion.

“Did you want me to say no?”

“No!” You screamed immediately, nearly dropping your phone. “I just- I wasn’t expecting you to say yes!”

“Well I did.” Sukuna bit his lip, running a hand through his hair and flexing his arm. “So I guess it’s a date, huh?” His normal asshole confidence was back now that you were appearing through a screen and not right next to him. A surprised sound came from the back of your throat, and you nearly dropped the phone again.

“Y-yeah! A date!” It felt good to have you flustered for once and not Sukuna. Laughing heartily at you, Sukuna smirked at the comments.

“Was that all you wanted to ask me or was there something more?”

“No, that was it!”

“Alright.” Licking his lip and letting his tongue hang out of his mouth a little, Sukuna watched you bite your lip as well. “Well I’m gonna go, I got stuff to do, but I’ll text you later (Y/N).” Dropping his voice as he said goodbye, Sukuna left the livestream.

“Holy fuck.” As soon as his phone was off, Sukuna let out a breath he’d been holding in. His heart was pounding hard despite how confident he was in his actions. Flirting was nothing new to him, but with you it felt different and like he’d never done it before in his life.

He watched the rest of your livestream while he finished getting ready for bed, laughing at the comments still teasing you about getting flustered with him. The notifications for Twitter were going off as well, and he knew for sure that there were new fancams for him to check out later.

(Y/N): Sukuna!! You’re so embarrassing!

Texting him after your stream, your cheeks were still burning at the memory.

(Sukuna): hey, you said it would be good for views and it was

(Y/N): I know…

(Y/N): did you really mean it, about coming with me?

(Sukuna): of course. If I didn’t want to I would have said no

(Y/N): that’s good lol!

There was a lull in conversation, and Sukuna nearly fell asleep waiting for you to either text him again or for him to figure out what to say next.

(Y/N): so, a date huh? Are you going to bring me flowers?

Now he was awake. He didn’t expect you to bring that up again, and his eyes flew open. Sukuna’s fingers hovered over the keyboard, mind going blank on what to say.

(Y/N): lol just kidding! I know you only said that for the stream! I’ll text you later about the details, I’m about to knock out

(Y/N): goodnight :)

Well shit. Now he definitely wanted it to be a date.

#jujutsu kaisen #ryomen sukuna #sukuna x reader #jujutsu kaisen fluff #jujutsu kaisen fanfic #jujutsu kaisen imagines #jujutsu kaisen scenarios

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princessofprocrastination · 3 years ago

Text

Not The Same (GeorgeNotFound)

summary : you put out a song, but it attracted the wrong type of crowd and caused too many misunderstandings.

trigger warnings : threats (including death and doxing), panic attacks, taking of meds.

"you're THOSE type of fans, huh?" you read the comments on your newest song release.

and that was the start of your downfall.

you and your dad really enjoyed singing. at any opportunity you two got, you would be doing a duet.

whether that would be at at a close relative's wedding or your at home karaoke set up, you two knew how to entertain people.

though singing was your passion, you ended up being too busy with school and trying to graduate with a diploma to even think about singing again.

but you swore to make a career of your singing after high school. you just loved it too much.

but then, you didn't go to college for music, which pretty much shocked your parents and your friends since they knew your only passion in life was singing.

but you took a different direction. you still wanted to sing and you were trying your hardest to find a way to make that your career.

someday, anyway. but you needed to have a plan to fall back into in case anything goes wrong.

you were a realist, after all.

so off to college you went.

you spent long hours studying for tests after tests, sat through hours of lectures, did endless amounts of projects.

in the end, it was all worth the wait and fatigue. you graduated top of your class.

you went off to be an intern, clocked in more hours before you could fully go into the next phase of your life.

and after those long hours, you finally made the decision (with the support of your parents) to take a gap year.

but before anyone panics. your gap year was not all fun in games where you took to rest and lay in bed all day.

you took the gap year to see if the music industry fits you. to see if you even had the chance to succeed.

and if it did, you could finally have your dream job. but even if it didn't you were not going to be upset if you needed to fall back onto your backup plan.

in the duration of the gap year, you took voice lessons, and poetry classes for song writing.

and with whatever you have learnt, you took that into writing songs that you felt really relate to your life experiences.

so you spend at least a couple months writing multiple songs.

after almost 2 years, you finally came out with your first song. and it definitely got recognition. more than you thought you'd get, if you were being completely honest.

and that was what pushed you to sit your ass back on your desk to write more, and go into your makeshift studio and make the words into songs.

your parents were ecstatic to hear that you were finally doing the things you loved. and you knew you'd never get this far if it weren't for your family's support.

and so your music journey began.

it was going well for years. you were finally happy doing the one thing you enjoyed doing.

and you definitely think you were good at it. seeing and hearing the positive feedbacks from your family, friends and listeners.

you felt good.

but you lost that feeling when you came out with a new single, called ‘fan of you’.

you spent a while working hard on that song and you felt relieved when it was finally released. it was like a weight was lifted off your shoulders.

and you weren’t sure how one thing led to another, if you were being honest. at first, you received good feedback for your new songs. you even gained new listeners and your spotify rank rised.

but then it didn’t anymore.

your twitter flooded with mentions and your instagram full of tagged pictures and dms by accounts you’ve never heard of.

but you noticed a similarity with all of the spam. a guy name george. georgenotfound for short.

you being you, you looked into it. and that was when all of the information hit you. and all you had to look up was your name on twitter, and there it was, the longest thread of tweets you have ever seen in your life.

you took time to read it all, trying to make sure you didn’t miss anything crucial.

there must be an understanding. you didn’t know this guy name george. you’ve seen his face on pinterest once a while when you scrolled, yes. but you never looked into him.

this amazing person took their time to gather every bit of information there was about the scandal, which you were grateful for, or else you’d be scouring the internet for hours.

to summarise what you read, there was this artist by the name of tia jade who came out with a song a few months prior to yours called ‘just a fan.’

it was a good song, some say, and you could agree. it was professionally written and produced. but many fans of george found out that the song was about him.

not just about him, but about her falling in love with him, when she has never met him. and when his fans started to really listen and analyse the song, it got creepier.

basically, the song was about a fan falling in love with a celebrity/content creator and that they want to know them beyond their persona online.

but tia had apologised a little after the song came out, saying that she made that song based on a fan liking a content creator, and not about her falling for george.

but when you read enough of the issue, it definitely did seem like she was making that song to tell her story about falling for george. but she obviously needed an excuse to cover it up.

hence the apology.

and then you read about how they analysed your song, too.

they compared your song to tia’s and found it to have similar stories. stories about how a normal girl is falling in love with the man by the name of george, who had millions of followers on all social medias.

and if you admitted it to yourself, your song did seem to come out that way. especially if your mentality had been there. clearly your song could have been interpreted in many different ways.

you scrolled to the very bottom of the thread where there was a video of the man himself, george. he was addressing the issue.

“i don’t know how this happened twice. i thought once was weird enough, but.” he paused, focusing on building something on his screen.

“having heard of a song being about me again now makes my skin crawl.” he finished. it was short but enough to make his fans understand where he was coming from.

you scrolled further to see the replies of the thread. you wanted to know what were people saying about it.

and you definitely regretted your decision to do that.

threats everywhere. death threats, threats of beating you up, threats of doxing you. god the negative comments were drowned by the one’s that genuinely thought nothing wrong of your song.

you called you mom. this was the time you needed her advice. you needed to be told what to do. you didn’t want to accidentally trigger people.

you and her were on the phone for hours. she listened to you cried to her. she heard the painful sobs that came out of your mouth whenever you reminded yourself of what people were calling you on the internet.

she heard you cry silently on call when you saw your address and phone number being leaked on twitter.

but even through all of that, you joked around with your mom. “well, this was a hell of a way to be trending.”

you did what she told you to do. get a new phone number, stay in a hotel for a couple days while you try to settle the raging crowd of georgenotfound fans down.

in the span of a couple weeks, you got yourself a new number, a new house and a new car. you weren’t taking any chances.

you told no one besides your mom of the new changes, just to be safe.

and no, the threats did not cease. at all. these people did not have a life, constantly up in your dms, telling you to jump off a cliff or them hoping that a robber stabs you and leaves you dying.

you took your time trying to figure out a way to talk to george. or a way to speak out about this.

you didn’t want to write a half-assed notes app paragraph apologising when- first of all, you had nothing to apologise for and second, you had too much to say to fit it all in a notes app.

lucky for you, you didn’t need to start your own channel or make a sit down video on your own.

your recording label had brought up the idea of a documented series about you and how you became a singer about a year ago, and only started filming and posting the episodes a couple months prior on youtube.

so you took the series to your advantage. you pitched in the idea to your manager, to which she agreed to immediately, knowing that it was best you talked about it now.

this was how it played out on the perspective of viewers who watched that episode.

“bless you.” your producer says after you paused your singing in the mic as you stopped to sneeze.

you gave him a smile and a thumbs up from inside the booth.

the camera cuts to another clip.

the cameraman pans as they captured movers coming in and out of your old house, picking up your heavy furniture and boxes into large trucks to move into the new place.

it cuts again. this time it shows you scrolling on your phone with a focused face while your manager types something vigorously on her computer.

the camera tries to focus on your phone, and sees that you were on twitter, reading a lot of tweets under your name.

you exited the app and slide it away, going into youtube next, reading the comments on your song ‘fan of you’.

you scrolled far, clicking on some of the comments, trying to read the replies to certain comments you saw.

the camera cuts into a black screen. which then cuts again into a new scene, where you sat on your new kitchen counter talking to your mother, who sat on the chair in front of you.

your hair was up in a ponytail. a messy one. you were wearing sweatpants and a hoodie that seemed far too big on you, and your feet covered with fluffy socks.

you were nodding to whatever she was saying to you. it was clear your mind was elsewhere as your eyes were unfocused.

the scene cuts again.

you were seen on the couch, your legs were tucked into your arms and your head down, body shaking. it was obvious you were crying.

you were alone, your mother no where to be seen.

that was the first time the camera caught you crying.

the scene cuts as you were going to get up from the couch.

now, you were in the kitchen again, opening the refrigerator to take a water bottle, then walking to your room upstairs.

the camera follows behind you slowly into your room.

it hadn’t been the cleanest. there were a couple shirts on the floor, your bed undone, cups on your side table, your laptop open on your desk.

you were seen opening a drawer, taking out a small white bottle. you unscrewed the bottle and took out 2 pills, popping them in your mouth, drinking water straight away after that to swallow.

the scene cuts again.

this time, you were seated on the couch in the studio, the atmosphere dark and quiet.

your hair was more kept this time, being help up in a clip.

you were wearing straight jeans and a slightly oversized sweatshirt. you looked more refreshed this time. but it was obvious you hadn’t slept in a while because of your eyes.

your eyes that usually held a lot of happiness and joy turned dull.

“it’s been a while since i’ve spoken to a camera.” you offered a small smile. your song ‘just a fan’ was playing in the background of the clip.

the scene cuts again.

“when i released that song, i was genuinely proud of the work i had done.” you paused for a while. besides the song playing in the background, it was silent.

“but i guess the joy didn’t last very long.” the scene cuts there.

it transitioned to a collage of what people were saying about you. it showed clips of people talking about it on youtube. they even showed george talking about it.

and it cuts again.

it showed a different clip this time. a clip of your ex boyfriend and you at the beach on a picnic, that was taken by a close friend of yours.

this was when you were still in college.

it showed all the fun memories you two made while you were still together.

it showed a video of him studying in the library, flipping through his papers and scrolling through his laptop. it was clear he was hard at work, not noticing you filming him.

but then the scene cuts again. and the music turned somber.

your ex boyfriend’s grave.

it was the day you were visiting him. you sat down next to his stone, a blanket under you.

you were just staring at his stone, not moving.

and it cuts again.

“he was one of the most driven person i have ever met.” you told the camera.

“he knew when to be serious and when to have fun.” you looked down in your hands and played with your rings.

“all he ever talked about was becoming a surgeon. he worked hard in his intern years and continued being passionate through his residency.” you spoke up.

“people had only nice things to say about him. the only bad thing they would say about him is that he can be pretty uptight sometimes, especially when he was stressed about something.” you laughed a little.

“i was a huge fan of him, even when we just saw each other in the hallways. he’s just amazing. i’ve always wanted to be just like him.”

“i wanted to write a song about him but i didn’t the song to be sad.” you said.

“and that was when the song ‘fan of you’ was created.

the scene cuts there and goes into another.

you were in the recording booth again, this time, you were singing into the mic.

the camera pans to your producer and manager dancing and bobbing their heads to the beat.

the scene cuts, officially ending it with a black screen with ‘the end’ in a fancy white font.

you busied yourself with writing new songs as your name got trended again on twitter.

and george has never felt worse about himself ever in his entire life.

he watched the episode as soon as dream sent it to him.

“you’re an asshole, george.” dream sends to him, along with the link of the video on youtube.

as the video ends, he decides to read the comments, wondering what it was like down there.

it was the worse mistake he had ever made in a while.

but he knew he deserved it. he did assumed it was about him, just like the last song made with a drawing of his glasses as their cover photo on spotify.

this time, there was genuinely no reason to think that this song was about him, or anyone with a following whatsoever. he just believed what his chat told him.

sure, there were some familiarity of the character in your song and him, but the world did have 7.6 billion people living on it.

“so, here i am apologising.” george says to his camera, live. his tone was very sincere and apologetic.

“this shouldn’t have gotten this far. they shouldn’t have gotten threats at all, let alone death threats. they shouldn’t have woken up to the world knowing where they live and what their phone number is.”

“and if you’re watching. i sincerely apologise. i clearly was full of myself.” george finishes. ending the live with a small wave.

and were you watching? hell yes.

and that was the day the two of you followed each other on instagram.

he used your songs as his intros of his live, (with your permission, of course.) you showed in your documentary that you were watching whenever he was live or watching his youtube videos.

and that was the start to a beautiful relationship.

you sat on the chair, going live. you waved as people started joining. it went from hundreds, to thousands in seconds.

as you were talking and clicking on your keyboard and mouse, playing a game, you felt arms around your shoulders.

you smiled, yet continued playing.

“why are you live on my account?” he laughs.

you disconnected the headphones so that he could hear what you were hearing.

“george, you’re being replaced.” dream said on discord.

george smiles, giving you a kiss on the top of your head. “that was well deserved.”

#georgenotfound imagines #georgenotfound imagine #georgenotfound fanfic #georgenotfound x reader #georgenotfound

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sapphic-lemonair · 4 years ago

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My Last Post Regarding The Tommy Scandal:

Let me start off by just saying holy hell, what a day.

And second:

Twitter is literally the most disappointing platform I have ever been apart of.

I don’t even know where to begin with how badly Twitter handled the situation with Tommy. I’ll admit, it isn’t the worst they’ve acted before, but damn they really didn’t do their best either. It sucks, cause the situation could have been handled better- and it was at first.

Cis Twitter stans are probably some the most confusing bunch I’ve ever come across. The fact that they pick and choose who can get away with doing controversial things is so annoying, and probably one of the most high and mighty god complexes I’ve ever seen. The fact that they called out and made Tommy trend instead of the actual problem itself was just pathetic in my opinion. KSI has interacted with so many other creators before in the past, a prime example being Quackity, yet no one made a single post in calling them out until now. This fact alone just goes to show that Twitter stans will come out of hibernation when they feel like it.

Twitter had made no type of effort in the past to call out KSI when he first made these transphobic comments before. There were no trending tags or @‘s or “lets educate him 🥰” posts for him because Twitter didn’t bother to care about it until now. The amount of hypocritical energy that was brimming through the platform is astounding.

We’ve gone through months of Twitter stans watching by as KSI interacted with other Minecraft youtubers and not a single one of them complained the entire time until now.

A lot of the adults on that platform did nothing but post passive aggressive comments to back handed advice. Adults, actual adults, were mad that a kid they put on some pedestal made one mistake and continued to state about how “disappointed” they were in him. Let me just remind you that once again, there’s no reason for any of the older fans to talk down to minors like some type of parent. Cause you’re NOT. It was very mature of Tommy to reach out to his own mom and take effort to see how he had hurt his words had affected his fans. It’s so abundantly clear that Tommy would never maliciously hurt his fandom in any way, not to mention that his first instinct would be to immediately apologize to everyone as well.

It was honestly mind boggling to see so many adults debating on whether or not is was morally right to forgive a 16 year old for a mistake he would obviously fix. The amount of people who were making threads stating how “it’s valid if you never want to forgive Tommy” was childish in my opinion. You’re adults.....holding a grudge against an actual child??? Like come on.

Twitter stans did nothing but juggle back and forth with “Tommy needs to address the situation right now!” And “Tommy, you need to take a while and think about what you said 🥰”. Yet when Tommy posted his first apology people were mad that it didn’t live up to their expectations. Were they aware that Tommy, like I said, is a whole child who was under the pressure of posting an apology despite not having time to really grasp what had happened? So many people flamed him because his post “sounded so confused” and “Tommy, honey nobody called you transphobic 😘”.

Except you did.

Of course Tommy is gonna sound confused in his apology. He wakes up and the first thing he’s greeted with are hashtags linking HIS NAME to the the word transphobic/transphobia. Of course that’s gonna be the first thing he apologizes for! Twitter basically made nothing but click bait posts that did nothing to properly explain to Tommy why transphobia was being brought up. And even despite this Tommy STILL apologized even when he didn’t know what he did wrong.

It’s so blatantly obvious Twitter realized that instead of tackling the problem at head, aka calling out KSI for his transphobic behavior, they chose to force and instigate a minor for collaborating and apologize on KSI’s behalf. It’s the most childish thing I’ve seen this year. It’s clear that Twitter stans are just awaiting to jump into next drama and put their two cents in before leaving the moment they realize they can’t get clout off their posts.

It’s frustrating because the amount of users making those posts as well weren’t even trans. The amount of “savior complex” energy cis Twitter stans showed while they spoke up over actual trans people who were genuinely upset was so embarrassing. It’s stupid to see how so many cis users got thousands of likes and retweets on their posts and acting on behalf of the trans community.

I’ll just wrap up by giving a genuine thank you to the trans community on Twitter who had the best interests in the whole Tommy situation. I’m sorry that a lot of you got trampled over by the cis users who basically used your problems as clout chasing tactics. You had every right to be upset and I appreciate that a lot of you took the situation with ease and attempted to quietly solve the problem without a hassle. Once again the cis side of Twitter blew everything out of proportion and attempted to but their two cents into the whole thing despite knowing it was an issue for the trans community to handle.

Dear Cis Twitter users, next time don’t be hypocrites and tell other users that they have no right to speak up about the situation before making your own posts for clout and followers. You look like clowns. I’d like to think that in another situation like those Twitter will act more mature....but I wouldn’t count on it. However a super big thank you to trans tumblr users who treated the entire situation with a mature personality. The mass difference between the two platforms shows me that people here have always had the best interest in actually making a difference.

In conclusion: Twitter is a dumpster fire 😁

#tommyinnit #mcyt #hopefully I won’t have to talk about this again #yesterday was so draining I hate Twitter

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captainsspnanon · 3 years ago

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@heritage367, you asked me a question - and I answered. I apologize.

Just so you’re aware, I have been going through this answer so much in my head before I’ve written it down. Unfortunately, I’m very fluent and awesome in my own thoughts, but time to speak or write it, and I lose the thread. This is the best that I can do.

First of all, I want to clarify a few things. As always, all the below is only my opinion and the way I view things. This does not mean that it’s objectively correct in any way. I hope that I don’t offend anyone or think that I’m hating on any of the players in any way. As always, I truly enjoy them all!

Taliesin. I want to clarify the lack of vulnerable emotions. I definitely don’t mean that he’s incapable of playing the emotions, or lacks skill in it. The way I’m viewing things, he’s made a deliberate choice not to play certain emotions at the table, for whatever reason he may have. Maybe he doesn’t want to deal with those feelings in a game, who knows.

He’s good at playing a wide range of emotions, but when it comes to things like grief or fear, he doesn’t play them outright. He’ll do the stunned silence, as I’ve mentioned, but I have two problems with it and it’s why I’m not counting it. One – since it’s just silence, it’s even more subjective and up to the viewer as to what emotions may be felt. And two, and this is the big one – with eight players at the table, I WILL NOT NOTICE SILENCE. I don’t care who it’s from! I’ve missed it from Liam, I’ve missed it from Sam, and I’ve missed it from Taliesin, and on and on. There’s too much action at the table for me to focus on every player, so my focus tends to be on who is talking and who is actively participating in a scene. Silence is a very valid reaction from PCs to a scene, but it’s not going to draw my eye when watching. In C1 and C2 it was more okay because I’d frequently look at youtube comments and see people mention it, so either rewatch the section or make sure to focus on the faces when I watched. But since I’m watching C3 as close to live as I can, and always before the youtube release, I’m just watching what’s waving in my face. I TRY to focus on other faces, but it’s hard when you’re actively invested in the story that’s being told by those who are waiving their hands. In my opinion, it kind of only works either 1) during a rewatch where you’re deliberately focusing on it, or 2) when it becomes a point – such as when Caduceus was in his silent feels on the boat and Jester had to go over and comfort him. Once again, a lot of the silence, while there and present, got buried under the rest of the RP, until it was brought up and dealt with. This is the very rare occasion where I think Taliesin actually did act a vulnerable emotion – a bit, until it ends up getting resolved REALLY really quickly. Like, I feel that even before Laura was finished with Jester’s speech, Taliesin had already decided that it was good enough and he wasn’t gonna do the emotion anymore. (Cad’s alleged dislike of the ocean and how he wasn’t going to let the few bad experiences tarnish his opinion of it so he trained himself to like it? Don’t recall actually seeing it roleplayed every in the campaign, just talked about on Talks.)

The biggest issue with Tal not playing the vulnerable emotions though, is that he always talks about how his PCs are feeling it. Percy was allegedly going through a nervous breakdown the entire campaign, I never saw it. Percy allegedly feared Ripley. Never saw it. Taliesin says that Molly goes and has a panic attack, we never saw any of the emotion, nor lead in for it, nor aftermath of it. Etc. etc. So I get a lot of ‘telling not showing’ with Tal’s PCs in terms of vulnerable emotions, which ends up frustrating me, because I’m sure he would be fucking FANTASTIC at showing it, but it choosing not to. It also ends up making it much harder for me to relate to his PCs. If everything has to be analyzed and subtext, it’s just frustrating rather than fun. Not everything needs to be surface level, but a lot needs to be seen at least some times at surface level to make the effort of deeper review even worth it. (It’s an issue I tend to have with Sam’s PCs as the start of the campaign, but he eventually allows the more true emotions to be seen on the surface and then I like them much more.)

Again, biggest thing here, THIS IS NOT A BAD THING. I’ve said it before, I’ll say it again, I WANT the players to play how they want to play, because I personally think that Critical Role will only survive as long as the cast is still having honest fun. So am I disappointed that I don’t get Taliesin acting out the emotions that he’s claiming his PCs have? Yes. But I need to learn to let that go, because it’s a choice that he is making, and I want him to make choices for his own fun rather than choices for an audience.

OKAY, I’ve rambled fucking enough, on to the rest!

Matt! Matt has portrayed pretty much every single emotion that there is to experience through all his NPCs. About the only emotion I can think of that he may not have done (remembering that my memory is not SUPER great and I can absolutely have missed things) is having an NPC express grief with tears. I think the closest we get is with Essek’s ‘it’s not fair’ speech? Grief is certainly used in many of his PCs, but in some ways it’s almost a little distant – that recognition of being a side player in the story and not wanting to take the limelight from the main characters. Matt himself has cried several times on stream, but again, I don’t think any of it was in character – except for maybe that end Essek moment (which I can’t remember clearly). Aside from that one specific thing (which I also don’t think is a necessity – I don’t require any of these players to actually cry!), I’m pretty sure he’s done the whole gambit in all levels and spectrums of emotion.

Marisha. She plays every emotion her PCs feel to 110% and it’s GLORIOUS. Keyleth, Beau, Laudna, they all are very different in the emotions they feel and they all portray them to the absolute depths. While Keyleth didn’t always hit for me, I could never deny the level of which Marisha sank into her emotions, and made sure that they were seen – whether they were subtle or loud. I admit, I don’t really get people who don’t like Beau. I can kinda understand a bit, but Beau was so full of such a depth of emotion, and without getting ‘in your face’ about it, I’m certain that Marisha made sure that every emotion was seen, even when it was being smothered by cockiness.

Laura – Let’s talk about *harp music* Laura Fucking Bailey. She’s right up there with Marisha in feeling her feels and putting them all out on display. Honestly? I’d love to see some solid fucking RAGE from her. (I kinda was hoping she’s play a barbarian, but I’m loving Imogen so much that I was clearly wrong). I’m trying to think through her PCs, and I do think that the emotions that she hasn’t played so much have been sheer fucking anger, maybe some of the ‘nastier’ emotions like pure spite? Vex certainly had anger and spite in her, but I feel like Laura would love going further, taking the emotions and really CHEWING on them. Maybe I’ve forgotten something from C1, but I don’t recall Laura ever having one of her PCs full on yelling in rage.

Sam is Sam. Which means that for the start of his PCs, he deliberately shows them very shallowly, a few characteristics which make them feel a little more cardboard cutout rather than the rest of the cast. Nott, I’d say, is the one who started the most ‘in depth’, and even then it really was just ‘drunk’, ‘jittery’, ‘steals shit’, ‘caleb’s the best’. However, he also very deliberately adds more and more as the campaign goes on to where you forget how shallow the PC started at the beginning. He’s another one I’m sure has shown the entire range of emotion. It’s a little odd though, because there’s a bunch of scenes with him where the emotions are serious but because it’s SAM and the way he does things that it comes off a bit or more than a bit jokey regardless (‘is that my baby girl?’), but then there are the scenes where he just wants to remind you that he IS a professional actor thank you very much, and he’s going to punch you in the gut whether you like it or not. Also, just putting it out there, he is another one who I don’t think has cried in character, and again I don’t think it adds or detracts from the emotions, because the grief is still heavily present without the need for actual tears. Like Matt, he’s cried a few times out of character, but not in.

Ashley next! You know, despite having so few episodes to her in the first two campaigns, I do feel like she really got the opportunity to showcase everything regardless. Maybe not in the first campaign, but by where she is now, she’s really hit all across the spectrum. Pike, Yasha, and Fearne are just SO different with how they portray themselves and the ‘base’ emotions that they feel, that she ended up hitting everything just because it was all there! I am looking forwards to seeing bigger emotions (if that makes any sense) that I think she’ll be hitting with Fearne. Yasha, while full of so many emotions, was played so quietly, and poor Pike was just not there SO much! My biggest complaint about her roleplay is there’s so many moments where she just feels uncertain with it, and immediately backs off of her choice. How many times has she had a great moment and then immediately backed off with an ‘i’m joking’? She’s done it a bit with Fearne too, but seems to be getting more comfortable with taking her decision and running with it. I really cannot fucking wait to see where she is going to go, and I am 100% here for the ride.

Travis deserves props for taking an emotion that he was uncomfortable with playing in C2 and allowing himself to be coaxed into it, and then taking it and running it the full course. I am assuming (and honestly hoping) that the way he talked about Laura forcing him into it on Talks was an exaggeration and that she genuinely made sure he was comfortable with it along the entire way. Especially considering that she dropped it from her PC eventually and let him take the lead going forwards. And I have no complaints about him seemingly picking a PC for C3 designed to not have that emotion used! It goes back to what I said with Taliesin, I want Travis to play something because he finds it fun to play, not because the audience wants to see it. I do think we also got the full range of emotion from Travis during the course of the campaigns. Grog and Fjord’s grief at times may not have been sobbing (again, not asking for real tears!), but they were noticeable and present! To be fair, I wouldn’t say no to more of an exploration of grief with Chetney, just because it was an emotion that he leaned into the least (unless there’s something from C2 that I’m strongly forgetting) and maybe also didn’t lean into as hard. I don’t want to sound like a dick here, and I apologize if I do, but it also comes down to the fact that I felt the grief with ‘fix him’ and a lot of Fjord without Travis needing to say ‘Fjord is sad’, and that’s an aspect that I didn’t get with a lot of Taliesin’s moments. So while I would enjoy more exploration or leaning into emotions from other players, I still saw that the emotions were there and didn’t need a Talks to tell me out of character what they were feeling.

Liam is last, and maybe not for what you would expect? So, to get it out of the way, Liam HAS shown the entire range of emotions. I didn’t expect so, before I saw C1, just because I knew Vax Was Angsty Boy, but then I watched C1 and realized that Vax was a jokester, a pranker, a bit of a jerk, a lot more levels than just SAD. There’s the running joke of people wanting Liam to have played a jovial PC for C3, ignoring the fact that Vax WAS the jovial PC for at least two long stretches of the campaign (before the dragon attack, after dragons but before vecna), but it got overshadowed by the intense emotions during the conclave arc, Vex’s tragedy, his deal to end vecna, etc. etc. I’m actually enjoying Orym being very placid, because that isn’t something that he had played before – his other PCs were very intense most of the time.

My biggest criticism of Liam’s RP? As much as I love it, sometimes he needs to STOP. I’m not a huge fan of when he has to interject ‘just one more thing’, especially when it’s something so small that I feel like it wasn’t needed. The first thought coming to mind, because of it’s relatively recency, is when the unnamed C3 party was in the theater and Dorian went off on his own and came back, Matt is closing out the episode, and then Liam interrupts to quickly say about how Orym lets go of the sending stone and realizes how tightly he was clutching it. A nice moment? Sure. One that the shippers loved? Absolutely! One that was needed, especially when interrupting Matt? Nope. And I do think that this happens in all three campaigns. Sometimes it’s fine – just a bit of an eyeroll like the moment just mentioned. It’s quick and over and whatever. Other times it’s moments of ‘man I hope the other cast is cool with this’. And let’s be clear, I’m sure they are! (and I usually end up enjoying all the scenes anyway) but it can be rough sometimes.

The other thing that I HATED about Liam’s role play, which luckily he can’t do at ALL in C3 (so far, and I hope I don’t jinx it) is when he has his PC drag another player’s PC to Do A Thing, without really seeing if other player is actually interested or maybe had their own thing they wanted to do. He did it with Vex/Laura SO MUCH in campaign one, it honestly infuriated me at times. He did it a lesser amount with Nott/Sam in campaign two, to the point where I didn’t notice it was a trait of his that bugged me until after I started C1, and now it jumps out at me in my C2 rewatches. Luckily, it IS a lot less and did seem to be mostly early campaign. (here’s hoping I don’t have an unpleasant surprise reminder during my rewatch.) But to my delight, Orym is so NOT a PC that can do the dragging thing, because LOL good luck doing that with Fearne!

……………….WELL THAT WAS A LOT. Hope you liked it!

(also tagging @suicidallyreckless in case you wanted any more CR ramblings from me)

#critical role #spoilers for all campaigns I guess #thoughts on the players #possibly controversial?#i apologize in advance just in case

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annabethy · 4 years ago

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Internet crush au i love the thought that both percy and annabeth try to subtly flirt with each other whist being an ocean apart on youtube (and all of they’re followers know they’re simps) idk just a thought for if you’re still wanting prompts ❤️❤️

oceans apart: percabeth internet crush au

“Not again.”

Annabeth rolled her eyes, pointedly sipping her cup of coffee and ignoring Piper’s whine for attention.

“You’re ridiculous.”

“I’m not sure what you’re referring to,” Annabeth lies.

“Oh, so you’re not sparking up an online romance with the infamous Percy Jackson?”

Annabeth hums, taking another slow sip of her drink. “I am merely responding to his message.”

“Over twitter. In front of millions of people.”

Annabeth snorts, staring at the phone in hand. It was true, really. Somehow, Annabeth had managed to gain quite a big following on youtube during her years spent studying at Oxford, and at some point, a guy from UCLA took an interest in her. It had been pretty hilarious, especially to the millions of people watching her every move, and she just hadn’t been able to put a stop to the online flirting, which is precisely why she was flirting with a man that was oceans apart from her.

“You’re never even met this man,” Piper points out.

“That’s what makes it fun,” Annabeth says. “An online romance. Who doesn’t love it?”

“I’m not saying no one loves it because this is the best thing to happen in all of the twenty-first century, but he’s in California, and you’re not.”

“It’s all fun and games,” Annabeth says.

“Yeah, right.”

Annabeth blinks. “Do you have something you’d like to tell me?”

“You two are practically in love with each other.”

Annabeth flushes. “Are not.”

“What are you typing then?”

Annabeth looks down at the thread being sent back and forth between the two popular youtubers. By this point, their entire conversation was being filled with hundreds of thousands of people having mental breakdowns, thinking the two were actually going to get together.

Not that she would mind that. No, she hadn’t seen him in person, but they’re practically best friends, and he’s a huge sweetheart.

“Nothing.”

“Lies,” Piper says, snatching the phone. “Percy tweeted ‘honey, I think you and I should get married.’”

“He’s kidding.”

“You responded, ‘come to the UK and I’ll consider it.’”

“It’s all just some good-natured fun.”

“He responded, ‘give me a kiss?’ and you said, ‘show up alive, and then we’ll see.’”

Annabeth snickers, snatching her phone back. “You’re reading too far into this.”

“No, I’m not. You two are just in love with each other.”

“You are incorrect, actually.”

Piper raises an eyebrow. “Oh, yeah? What about last week when he uploaded the video that was literally spent listing off the reasons you should marry him?”

“Publicity stunt. It got millions of views.”

“You’re in love with him.”

Annabeth pinches her fingers. “Only a little bit, but no one has to know.”

“Oh, honey, everyone knows.”

A part of her floods with warmth. Ever since he’d first left a comment on one of her videos, their friendship had blossomed. It was just what they did — uploading videos just to tease one another and accept marriage proposals. He’s probably proposed five times by this point, and Annabeth has jokingly accepted five times.

They were the unofficially-official couple as people like to put it, and it was a lovely arrangement in her opinion.

Annabeth’s phone vibrates in her hand, and when she looks down, she sees Percy telling her, bought a plane ticket. on my way babe.

“Oh god,” Piper groans, looking over Annabeth’s shoulder as another smile breaks out across Annabeth’s face. “You two disgust me.”

“That’s funny, considering you admitted that you were our biggest shipper.”

Piper gasps. “Who told you?”

“Jason told Percy who told me.”

“Betrayal.”

“Precisely.” Annabeth hums. “We should be going soon. I have to get another video up in two days and you promised you’d help me.”

“What is it this time? Writing the perfect love letter to Percy?”

“Making a shrine to Percy,” Annabeth corrects.

“You’re kidding.”

“I wish I was,” Annabeth says. “It was his idea.”

“Of course it was,” Piper mutters, but she’s already scooting her chair away from the table of the café and standing up. “Let’s get going then, you booger.”

The walk back to their shared apartment was filled with Piper’s rants about a certain two careless youtubers, and the video Annabeth dragged Piper to film was no different. All things considered though, it went quite well. It might as well be a shitpost, but it was interesting enough and would have to suffice.

The video did take a lot longer to film than expected, so by the time Annabeth was finally ready to go on with the day, it was almost midnight.

“This sucks,” Annabeth says, peeking out the window at the dark sky.

“It’s no big deal.” Piper stretches and yawns, and Annabeth thinks she may fall asleep right there. “London never sleeps so we can still go out.”

“You’re practically drooling already.”

“We have things to do. People to see.”

Annabeth scrunches her brows. “Who?”

“People,” Piper says ominously. As she sits up, she looks Annabeth up and down before shrugging, which doesn’t do much to help her confidence. “You look good enough. Let’s go.”

Piper barely gives Annabeth time to process what was happening before she was being dragged out the door. Realistically, Piper did give her like five minutes to grab a few things, but it felt like no time at all because Piper refused to say anything besides they were meeting up with some friends at a cozy diner in the middle of the city.

The walk there was a bit chilly, so as Annabeth tightens her long black peacoat around her body, she glances at Piper out of the corner of her eye.

“So,” Annabeth says, sniffling and rubbing her nose to soothe the sharp bite of wind. “Would you mind telling me why we’re heading to the city? We never go out late. That’s, like, our motto.”

“You looked cute today, and it would be a shame to waste that by just staying in.” Piper grabs Annabeth’s hand and laces their fingers together to swing their arms back and forth. “I must say I’m loving the white sweater and black jeans. My fashion is rubbing off on you.”

“What fashion?”

“I hate you.”

By the time they finally reach the diner, Annabeth’s fingers and toes are numb, but the view was definitely worth it. Annabeth’s surprised she hadn’t ever seen this place before after having lived here for almost four years, but it’s no surprise Piper knew of it. There were fairy lights strewn up around the outer portion of the restaurant, and there was gentle music flowing through the air. Even though it was cold, the image of this place was a drastic difference, and it melted the aching in her bones.

Piper leads Annabeth to a table outside, and Annabeth is hardly surprised to see Jason waiting for them. He stands up to give each of the girls a quick hug, before they all settle into their respective seats.

“You brought me here to be a third wheel? Is that what this is?” Annabeth says playfully as she sits.

“You and I both know that I’m the real third wheel here,” Jason says kindly. “But maybe it’s Piper, because she’s the only one here who doesn’t make videos.”

“I don’t need to because I was lucky enough to have my best friend introduce me to another youtuber,” Piper says.

“You should be thanking me for your relationship,” Annabeth tells the two of them. “Without me, you would’ve never found the love of your life.”

Jason’s eyes gleam. “And how about you? Have you found the love of your life?”

“I can’t say that I have.”

“I saw the messages between you and Percy earlier,” Jason says. “It was a beautiful proposal, really.”

“I try.”

“When you meet him, you should consider eloping.”

“That’s if I meet him,” Annabeth corrects.

“Of course. My apologies.” Jason grins, and Annabeth is slightly unnerved. “You would make a cute couple.”

“How so?”

“You two are the biggest simps for each other,” Jason says.

“Told you so,” Piper chimes in.

“I’m going to leave if you two brought me here just to insult me.” Annabeth looks beside herself and her eyes focus on the empty chair. “Are we waiting for someone else?”

“I invited a friend, but I’m not sure where he is,” Jason says. “They must be running late.”

“Who is it?”

“Oh, I’m not sure if you’d know them,” he dismisses.

Piper and Jason begin talking again, but Annabeth tunes them out. If she was going to be forced to sit with stranger while Piper and Jason snogged in front of them, then she would be severely unhappy.

Annabeth doesn’t know what to expect, but she does know that she should be worried when Piper and Jason share a conspicuous glance with each other before heading off to the bar, under the excuse of getting them some drinks.

Annabeth groans, lacing her hands together on the table in front of her. She was definitely starting to regret this decision of joining Piper on her midnight adventure, not that it was much of a decision at all. She was dragged alongside her, and if she could go back in time, she would probably end up pushing Piper off a bridge to stop this utter boredom from taking over.

All things considered though, it’s not too terrible. She might be able to drink the night away and forget all this happened, and—

“Babe!”

Annabeth’s head snaps up because of the voice. It was a voice she’d recognize anywhere.

She whirls around in her chair, and right there, standing in all his glory, was Percy Jackson.

Percy holds his arms out as he approaches her, and Annabeth laughs as she stumbles up to give him a crushing hug. They stay like that for a few seconds, and it feels like it should be awkward because they’d never actually met before, but it just feels like a piece of a puzzle if fitting into place.

“What are you doing here?” Annabeth asks, grinning as she pulls away and tilts her chin to look up at him. From here, he’s a lot taller than she expected, and he looks so much better in person than on camera, which says a lot.

“I’m here for our wedding!” Percy smiles cheekily, pulling her in for another quick hug before stepping back and just looking at her. She feels warm and fuzzy under his gaze. “Don’t tell me you’ve already forgotten.”

“Of course I haven’t,” she says, playing along. “But why are you really here?”

“I wanted to see my beautiful girlfriend.”

Annabeth bites her bottom lip, holding back a laugh. “I don’t recall agreeing to this.”

“You agreed to marry me, so I think that means we’re dating.”

“Yeah, but we both know we were messing around.”

Percy clicks his teeth, his eyes sparkling. “I don’t know. You did respond when I called you babe, so…”

“I guess I did.” Annabeth looks over at where Piper and Jason had disappeared off to. They were taking their sweet time, and suddenly Annabeth realized that it was for a reason, and that they knew all along. She doesn’t know whether to thank them or punch them. “It looks like they’re not coming back anytime soon.”

“Yeah,” he agrees. “That might be because I asked them to let me have you all to myself for a while.”

“You did?”

“Of course I did.” Percy stares at her for a while, and she stares back. It feels like she’s known him for all of her life, and she never wants this moment to end. So long talking over the phone and sending messages through videos, and they were finally alone, just the two of them, and it was so much better than she could’ve imagined.

“I’m not sure what to do now,” Annabeth admits as Percy takes a step closer, like he’s done it a million times. Soon, his face is inches away from hers.

“I have an idea,” Percy tells her quietly, his green eyes vibrant in the dim lighting of the outdoor patio.

“And what’s that?”

“Go on a date with me.”

Annabeth tilts her head, lips lifting in a coy smile. “I thought we were already engaged?”

“I’m still working towards that kiss,” he says, and his smile is blinding.

A beat skips, and she can’t help herself, and then—

“Who says you have to wait?”

Annabeth doesn’t know what prompts her to step forwards, but she does anyways, and her stomach flutters when he does the same. There was just something about this situation that seems so familiar, and she trusts him, probably more than she should. But this was Percy, and she knew him. He wouldn’t hurt her.

Percy’s hands go to cup her face, his fingers gently tracing over her skin, cold in the London winter, and there is a blazing heat in her body. For a second, they look into each other’s eyes, and then both of their eyes are fluttering shut as Percy brings her face to his and kisses her sweetly.

It’s slow and gentle, and somehow, she can see a future with them. This has been building up since she first saw his kind words on her video, and it was strengthened through their twitter declarations of love and youtube proposals. She shouldn’t feel like this, but she does, and that’s okay.

He pulls away but his hands stay in place. His smile is so breathtaking, and it fits so well with the delicate snowflakes that started falling and the pretty glow of the fairy lights.

“What do you say?” Percy asks. “I’ll take you on the date of your life.”

“And then you’ll marry me?”

“What’s a date if it doesn’t end in marriage?”

Annabeth’s lips twitch up, and she brushes a strand of her blowing hair behind her ear. She really liked him, and she just knew that it would be alright. He was in Los Angeles and she was in London, and they were oceans apart, but it would be okay.

“I’m holding you to that,” she says, and so he takes her hand, and leads her on the date of a lifetime.

#percabeth #percy jackson #annabeth chase #pjo #percy and annabeth #asks #anon #my writing

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shannygoatgruff · 4 years ago

Text

00:00:13

Genre: Social responsibility

Pairing: Alex Høgh Andersen/OC

Warning: Language, racial slur, prejudice, mention of the YouTube video

Rating: M+18

Header by: @flowers-in-your-hayr

For: @xbellaxcarolinax - thanks for lending me an ear and encouraging me to continue writing this story

Disclaimer: This is a work of fiction based on something I saw that evoked a feeling in me. I don’t know Alex or that guy in the video. I don’t own the rights to use him or anything else in my story. I’m just going off something out there on the internet that I wish wasn’t ever there for me to have to write a story about in the first place.

A/N: So, I don’t know if this is the right time to post this story or not, but it’s been weighing heavily on my heart for some time now. During one of my many Alex rabbit hole stalking internet searches, I came across this YouTube video of him from a few YEARS ago that made me feel a certain kind of way. Admittedly, I went through a ton of different emotions. I made a bunch of excuses for him. I tried to justify him being drunk, young, being from a different country...not understanding his actions. As a black woman, I was saddened, and a little heartbroken, but I truly don’t think there was any malice behind it. I think it was just poor judgment on his part. But, in the end, I came up with, he’s a grown man and as a public figure he needs to be more responsible.

I am in no way trying to sway anyone’s opinion of him, turn you against him, make you seek the video out or anything else. I just needed to speak MY truth and get my feelings out about the situation. I’ve been the black girl in too many interracial relationships and friendships with people that just don’t get it. I am in no way trying to offend anyone - these are just my feelings. I just needed an avenue to speak out.

Anyway, it didn’t turn out exactly how I wanted it, mainly because I was in my feelings, but I think it’s close enough.

I’m still an Alex fan and he could get it, at ANY moment...just say the words, Boo! 😍

I invite your comments, thoughts, and feelings...if you just wanna talk, feel free to hit me up. I’m always open to a good discussion.

With that,

Be easy!

Thirteen seconds…Nia Howard could do a lot in 13 seconds. For almost 10 minutes, she had been timing herself to see exactly what types of tasks she could perform in that amount of time.

In 13 seconds Nia could lace her brand new blue and white checked Chuck Taylor Converse tennis shoe. She was careful to lace the shoe so the strings were only threaded on the outside of the eye-loops, creating one thick solid line across the bridge, hiding the string feeding into the next eye-loop inside the shoe, just like she liked them. This was a trick she learned in Mrs. Hamilton’s 7th grade Math class, and she had been lacing her shoes that way ever since.

13 seconds was all it took for her to guzzle 10 ounces of the Dasani water bottle sitting on her desk. She probably could have slammed more of the water down her throat, but she wasn’t that thirsty to begin with. Had she been parched, or had it been something that she wanted to drink, she was sure she could have gotten more than 10 ounces down in that amount of time.

Nia also discovered that she could refill the liquid nicotine and change the filter in her vape, as long as everything was laid out in front of her, in 13 seconds. She was also able to screw the tank back together, but not put the tank back on the battery base before the timer went off. That part still took her an additional 3 seconds. Hmm.

In 13 seconds, she was able to remove the back of the picture frame, take out the photo, and run her thumb over the glossy paper. It took less than that amount of time for all of the emotions of the day to come flooding back to her as she stared at their first family photo.

It had snowed at least a foot that day. But there they were, outside sitting in all of that powder, freezing. Nia, her boyfriend, Alex, and their then 8-week-old Siberian husky, Vlad. He thought it would be artistic. She thought it would be cold. Vlad thought it was fun, running around in snow deeper than he was tall. But they were still smiling; they were happy. They were in love.

Alex was wearing his favorite navy blue The North Face snowsuit, that he had zipped up to his chin. You could only see the side of his pale face, with his cold red cheek, plump pink lips, and those dark lashes covering his incredible blue eyes. The rest of him was so bundled up, he looked like the abominable snowman. He loved the cold and the snow. Growing up here, these snowy days in Denmark were nothing to him. Nia, however, wasn’t quite as used to it. It snowed on the East Coast of the US, but not like it did in Denmark. Her pink and white snowsuit was more for fashion than warmth. Sitting in the snow in between Alex’s legs, she was freezing and couldn’t wait for them to finish taking pictures.

However, his arms were warm around her, and though his lips were cold against the side of her face, she could feel his warm breath tickle her ear as he laughed and told her how much he loved her. She had leaned against his chest and noted how well her pink and white outfit matched his blue one. Only her dark brown skin made a contrast against the snow and Alex’s complexion, but she still looked as if she belonged.

She sat with her feet flat on the ground, knees drawn toward her chest bringing their brown and white puppy, the perfect mix between their two tones, closer to the two of them. While her head leaned into Alex’s kiss, her eyes concentrated on little Vlad in her lap. She had him turned so the camera could capture his one blue eye and one brown eye, while she gently caressed their fur baby, drawing him in for a kiss on his soft, furry head.

Could they be any cuter? They were the perfect family. They were a good looking couple with a good looking dog.

Thinking about the day that photo was taken quickly made her mind drift back to the first time Alex told her he loved her. She could vividly remember how he grabbed her face and leaned in for that kiss. The way he pressed his lips to hers, and how it set off every nerve in her body. She remembered the way her heart fluttered and how she thought she was going to float right out of her skin. But when he pulled away and looked at her with those blue eyes, he grounded her and brought her right back to the spot where he was. When his eyes shifted between hers, desperately searching for some hint that she felt the same, she knew from that moment that he was the one for her. That entire encounter, the weightlessness, grounding, feeling his eyes look through her and hearing his heart speak her name, couldn’t have taken more than 13 seconds. She was sure it happened all at the same time.

With everything she timed, 13 seconds seemed like it passed in the blink of an eye. It was manageable if she had a task to complete, but by no means was it a significant amount of time. So why did it feel like an eternity, each time she watched that damn video clip? The more she watched it, the longer it became. That damn 13-second video clip brought out of her a new set of emotions each time she viewed it.

At first, it was shocking. She couldn’t register anything she saw because she was too surprised at what she saw. The only thing she could process was the feeling of, Huh?

So, she watched it again, and this time she did so with a goofy smirk on her face. The smirk was the smirk of embarrassment. Embarrassment for her, for him, for them... for not knowing how to feel.

She had to sit with it for a few minutes before she could watch it a third time. Instead of just jumping right into again, she decided to go back to the original email and reread the message. She had been so put off by the video that she forgot what it was that she was being asked to do about it.

When she clicked back on the email from her office and skimmed the contents she could only shake her head. Did they actually expect her to handle this? Really? She was a publicist. His publicist, but come on. This was asking a bit much, no? There were 14 other people in that damn firm that could have handled this, even if Alex was her client. He was still a client of the fucking firm. What was she supposed to do?

Without thinking, she put her thumb to her mouth and started biting the cuticle around her new French manicure. She had been doing so well with that, too. She only bit or picked at the cuticles on her nails when she was nervous or angry – that’s why she made sure to keep her nail appointments every two weeks. She didn’t want to have ugly cuticles on freshly designed nails. Now she just wasted 264 DKK.

By the third time she watched the video, she went numb. She couldn’t tell what she felt, all she knew was her mind wouldn’t let her feel anything. A million different thoughts and emotions swirled around her, but none of them actually hit her, yet. The best way she could explain it was akin to having an out of body experience. It felt like the glass desk she sitting at was getting further away from her while her laptop screen continued to get smaller. She started to see the room she sat in as a person watching this scenario from somewhere else, and as long as she wasn’t directly connected to it, she could continue to disassociate with it. Instead, she could only sit there, with her mouth open, staring blankly at this distant laptop screen, unable to process what the fuck she just saw.

There were no words. No thoughts. There was nothing. Only the feeling of adrenaline coursing through her veins and the sound of her heart breaking in a million pieces, as 13 seconds altered the course of her world.

Ten minutes had to have passed before Nia clicked the replay button on the YouTube video to watch the clip for the fourth time. She was in a better place now. She had gotten up, got a drink of water. Practiced a bunch of things she could do in 13 seconds. She had refocused. She could watch it now and deal with it with a clear head. She wasn’t sure how many times she had watched it before – it hadn’t registered. She was still in shock from that initial viewing. But, she needed to watch it again because she had to dissect it.

Placing her chin in her hand, she didn’t give a fuck if she was transferring her Mahogany Shape Tape foundation and Cocoa Bean Black Radiance pressed powder on her palm. Fuck the papers that were going to be stained from the makeup transfer. That was a gripe for another day - black women that wore makeup always had issues with the transfer. It was the plight of the beauty revolution. She’d fight that battle another day. Right now, there more important things to deal with.

Where the hell were her earphones? She needed to have the audio go directly into her ears. There was no time to have the sound filter throughout the loft’s office and possibly get distorted. She needed every word to go directly from the computer, in her ear, and into her brain for immediate translation. Maybe she missed something. Maybe she misinterpreted it. Yea…that was it. This was on her. It had to be, right?

Plugging in her Beats headphones, she placed them on her ears and turned up the volume on her laptop. She took in a deep shaky breath and hit the replay button for the fourth time.

Nope, she hadn’t imagined it. It was still the same. He was still having fun, hanging out with those same stupid fucking people. He was still talking in that same drunken tone. He still thought everything was so fucking funny and laughed at every fucking thing.

Why did he do that laugh? It was laugh he used when he was really tickled. The one that he accompanied by clapping his hands because he was genuinely amused. It was that laugh that she loved the most. It was that laugh that made her laugh too, usually. It was that laugh that brought tears to her eyes.

What the fuck was he thinking? When was he going to learn? There were so many of these kinds of questions she wanted to ask, but did it matter? Did he ever really have to answer them? It was always going to be different for him for so many reasons. The question was, did she want to stick it out and deal with it?

This wasn’t the first time he had done something so irresponsible, so insensitive. She knew it wouldn’t be his last. The problem was, he never seemed to understand why it was a problem. Quite frankly, she tired of trying to be his teacher.

Just as she sat the headphones back on the desk, she heard the key in the front door lock. She didn’t want to deal with him right now. She needed more time to digest everything before she talked to him, otherwise, this wasn’t going to be a productive conversation.

Nia was not the type of person that liked to argue, let alone, have a conversation when she was angry. Her words were always carefully weighed, and she very rarely said anything out of anger. Hurting someone’s feelings, being misunderstood, and saying something that she would later regret were things that she tried to avoid. It wasn’t that she was non-confrontational, she was just reserved, that way. She didn’t grow up in a house where people yelled or used words to hurt each other. She didn’t believe in doing that, and she wasn’t going to bring that into her relationship, no matter how passionate Alex could get about a situation. But the way she was feeling right now, all bets were off.

“Hallo, Vlad. Have you been a good boy?” She heard his voice from the hallway rise an entire octave as he addressed their 10-month-old Siberian husky. She could tell by the way Vlad whined and his paws scratched against the hardwood floors that he was jumping on up Alex. All of that money they were spending on dog training and Alex was still letting Vlad jump on him. Nia shook her head in irritation. “I missed you, too, boy. Where’s Mama, huh?”

Nia remained frozen to the spot. She did manage to reach for her vape, on her desk, and noticed how the muscles in her neck and shoulders shook with tension. Taking a few deep breaths, she tried to unclench her jaw. She just needed a few more minutes to herself. If he could just go upstairs, or in another room and leave her alone, she would be able to talk to him about this later. But, knowing him, that wouldn’t happen.

He would keep pushing and pushing until he found out what was wrong with her and before she knew it they would be in a fight. A fight that she would be actively participating in.

“Babe?” He called out, making his way across their loft. His voice getting closer to her office door. “Hey, babe,” he awkwardly raised his hand in greeting, to accompany his words, followed by his thousand-watt smile. “I got us cheesecake from a new bakery. Casper speaks highly of them.”

Nia looked at her boyfriend and she could feel the hot sting of tears forming at the back of her eyes. Immediately, she dropped her gaze, not wanting to address him or the situation at the moment. She managed to nod slowly as she continued to work her now jagged cuticle.

To the rest of the world, Alex Høgh Andersen was the model, actor, and photographer that walked on water, ate bullets, and shit ice cream. He was the sexy heartthrob that had over a million Instagram followers. The guy that couldn’t post a picture of taking out the trash without it being sent over 5 continents and 35 countries in a matter of minutes. He had over 2,000 fan sites, and countless fan fictions written about him…fans adored him the world over and he was only 25. He was fucking perfect.

To Nia, he was just her Alex. Her clumsy, silly boyfriend, who never put his clothes in the hamper and always left the toilet seat up. He was the guy that loved to cook but never cleaned the dishes. He was the one that was always singing or beat-boxing or banging on something trying to make music. He was always tried to make people laugh. He was loud, goofy, and drank too much. He smelled awful after a workout and had the messiest bed head when he let his hair grow. He sometimes smacked when he chewed and always talked with his mouth full. He was a clown, but he meant well. He was sweet, and thoughtful and always treated her like she was the most important woman in the world.

Nia never had one reason not to trust him...until now.

“Baby,” he took in the expression on her face and rounded the glass desk to where she was sitting. Kneeling in front of her seat, he turned her swivel chair to face him and took her hands in his, “Baby, what’s wrong?”

She raised her eyes wide and looked at a place on the bookshelf, right over his left ear. Refusing to look into those beautiful blue eyes of his and lose her train of thought. She felt the sweat start at her top lip, something that always happened right before she was about to cry, but she fought the urge.

“Alex,” she tried to keep her voice steady, but she was pumped full of adrenaline and emotion so it shook involuntarily, “what the fuck?” She pulled her hand from him and turned her laptop toward him. Hitting the play button on the YouTube video again, she played the 13-second clip for him.

Alex watched himself, drunk as hell, outside of a night club in Ireland with friends. He asked his friend to do part of a skit from one of his favorite comedians. He knew exactly what was on this clip. He’d seen it, and still thought it was funny. “What’s wrong?”

Nia didn’t say anything, she just let the clip play. Alex’s friend, Danny, this clout chasing, promoter fuck stood in the shot with him. Out of Alex’s mouth came the line from Kevin Hart’s Seriously Funny Comedy routine, “Go night, night, nigga?”

He had said it low as if he was talking to Danny, asking him to perform the line from the stand-up. So what does the little hanger on do? Danny, who is black, does a really bad, really loud Kevin Hart impression for Alex and the camera, “Go night, night, Nigga!”

Alex then comes back in the scene and repeats it and they all laugh because it’s so damn funny. Alex disappears from the screen because he’s laughing so hard, but Danny is still there, shit-talking about having a big dick. When Alex returns, the two of them end the video with a rousing chorus of “Alright, alright, alright…”

She didn’t say anything to him, she just looked. She searched his face for some sort of understanding, some kind of recognition. Something. But when he turned back to face her and all she saw was confusion she felt her shoulders drop and the first fat tear roll down her face. “Wow.”

“Honey,” he lifted a brow, not quite sure what his crime was. He knew she didn’t like Danny, but he hadn’t even seen him since he was in Ireland last. It had to have been a few months. “This was months ago,” he reassured her, with his Danish accent punctuating his English words, “I know you think I drink too much and you don’t like to see me drunk. It’s no good when it goes viral. But, we were just fooling around. It’s nothing to cry about.” He cupped her cheek in his hand, hand brushed away her tear with his thumb. His blue eyes moved swiftly between her brown orbs. “Where did you even find this?”

“Your fucking manager sent it to me, Alex. They want me to fix this shit. I’m supposed to make all of this go away. Me...your fucking black girlfriend - I have to make this racist bullshit you pulled go away.” She should smack him. She should. It would be justified, right? “How in the fuck am I supposed to do that when you think being drunk was the fucking problem with this video?”

“I’m not a racist,” he said with genuine shock, “I don’t understand.”

“Of course you don’t. You never do.” She got up from her chair, suddenly needing to distance herself from him. “Why do I always have to be the one to educate you? You are a grown man. I shouldn’t have to explain this shit! You DON’T get to say that word, Alex. EVER.” She pointed a well-manicured finger in his direction, “It’s hurtful. It’s hateful. It’s ignorant. And coming from YOU, it’s fucking devastating.”

He was confused. What was she so upset about? What exactly had he done wrong? Turning around in his place, he slowly stood up and leaned against the desk. Legs outstretched, arms folded across his chest in a defensive position he could tell that his girlfriend of three years was upset. Not just the regular run of the mill upset, either. Something he had done had really bothered her.

“Nia,” he breathed her name with a smirk on his face, “I think you’re making way bigger a deal of this than it is. Danny was there, he didn’t care. If I had said something bad, he would have told me.” He pleaded with his face for her to trust him on this, it was all a misunderstanding. “We were just joking. Besides, I didn’t say the bad word – the one with the other ending. I changed it. We were just doing the part from the Kevin Hart comedy.”

“Alex,” she straightened her posture and spoke very clearly so that he could understand her. There was something in the way that he was dismissing what she had said to him that was really rubbing her the wrong fucking way, “You are not Kevin Hart.” She did not crack a smile when he did. She kept her face stoic and refused to drop his gaze. “You are not black. YOU don’t get to use that word, or any variation, thereof.”

Rolling his eyes, Alex relaxed his posture and lifted his face toward the ceiling. Is this what he came home for? He could have still been hanging out with his friends for all this. At least they wanted to have fun tonight. It was a Friday for crying out loud, was this how they were going to start their weekend? It was the first one in months that neither of them had to work. They had been planning this weekend for forever, it seemed. They were supposed to be Netflix & chilling, drinking wine, having breakfast in bed…nowhere in their itinerary were they supposed to be fighting over a stupid joke.

Alex’s hand covered most of his face, as he rubbed his eyes and tried to gather his thoughts. He didn’t want to argue. He wanted to change out of his hoodie and jeans, and get into some comfortable sweats. He wanted to feed Vlad and cook dinner with her. He wanted to eat in front of the TV while they caught up on this season of How to Get Away with Murder, which they promised each other not to watch until they were together. “Jesus, Nia, why do you always blow things out of proportion?”

“Why do I.. I’m sorry? Do I always blow things out of proportion? Really?” She looked around the room as if he were talking to someone else, “Are you fucking shitting me, right now? Blowing shit out of proportion? Why do you always have to be such an insensitive prick?” She watched as he threw up his hands and walked out of the room mumbling under his breath. “Yeah, say that shit in English, Alex, since you have such a grasp of the fucking language.”

God, she was doing it. She was doing everything that she never wanted to do when she argued. She was speaking out of anger. She losing the point. She didn’t have one anymore, she was just mad. “Really…I don’t know who the fuck you think you playing with, but I am not the one.”

Taking off his jacket and throwing it on the couch, Alex turned around to face his girlfriend. He paid particular attention to the way her chest rose and fell when she was heated like this. He had always thought she was one of the most beautiful women he had ever seen, but now her anger didn’t match her beauty. “I don’t know what your problem is, Nia, or what you think I did, but I told you, it was a joke. All of this, it’s not fair to take it out on me. You owe me an apology for starting on me for no reason when I just walked in the house.”

He flopped down on the couch and leaned back, pinching the bridge of his nose. He could feel a headache beginning right between his eyes and he knew it was from tension.

“What part of this don’t you understand? You offended me. You offended black and brown people all over the fucking world, thanks to YouTube. I don’t have to apologize for shit. You and your little fucking troll friend need to be apologizing!” She started walking around in a circle, she felt just that crazy at the moment.

Nia looked over at the corner to Vlad. His blue eye and brown eye lowered to the floor in sadness, as his parent argued. Her heart broke for their baby, but it couldn’t be helped. “Obviously your manager thinks this is a big fucking deal if they sent this shit to be fixed. Alex, you can’t go around offending people. You are in the public eye, whether you want to be or not. You have fans that are from every walk of life - do you know how many of them you just insulted? You need to be more responsible for your actions and the shit that comes out of your mouth.”

“Nia, I don’t understand why it’s such a big deal. I hear that word a hundred times a day. It’s not a problem. It’s in every song. It’s on American TV…Danny and your brother-in-law call me that all the time. I’m not a racist. I’m in love with a black woman.” He found himself raising his voice because no matter what he was saying, she didn’t seem like she was understanding, “One time,” he held his finger up to emphasize his point, “I do a part from a comedy that I like, with my black friend, and you lose your damn mind.”

“What the fuck, yo?” Was she going crazy? She tried to inhale clean air, and exhale the poison before she spoke, however, it wasn’t helping. All she could do was rub her temples. “Danish, American...it doesn’t fucking matter does it?”

“What doesn’t?”

“Your privilege?” She rubbed her temples slowly and tried to crack her neck. “I’m gonna say this real slow so you can translate it into whatever the fuck language you need to understand it. I don’t care how much trap music you listen to. You don’t get to say that word. I don’t care if you know the words to every Kendrick Lamar song. You don’t get to say that word. I don’t care how many black friends you have. You don’t say that word. I don’t care what my brother-in-law calls you, or me, or the man in the moon. You don’t say that word.”

She got closer to the couch and bend down so that he could hear her. Barely opening her teeth to speak, she made her point crystal clear, “And I certainly don’t care if you are fucking me or a 100 other black girls, it doesn’t make you black. You still don’t get to say that word!”

“Oh my God, Nia! It’s a fucking word.”

Was she talking to herself? Was he that clueless? Where there no words in Danish that meant anything like it? They had racism all over the world, surely there was a word in his language that used to oppress another culture to the effect that that word had been used to tear down black people, but black Americans especially. Nia didn’t know what it meant to other black people, she could only tell him what it meant to her.

“Do you know what’s like to have no identity, Alex? Do you know what it’s like to still be referred to as the term they used when they listed you in catalogs to be bought and sold like an animal? It was no different than saying the word ‘cow’ – it was a word to describe cattle. That’s what an entire country thought of people that look like me. For no other reason than the color of my skin.” She couldn’t stop the tears from pooling in her eyes. She was so beyond mad that her voice was eerily quiet. “Those people didn’t do anything to deserve it. They were just born next to the equator.” She shrugged her shoulders in defeat.

“That word stripped men of their role in the family and made some impotent and others were turned into bucks that were only good for breeding…it broke them. It made women broodmares, whose job was to have babies to keep plantations going. Families were sold apart no different than how Vlad was taken from his mother because he’s a dog.” She pointed to their puppy hoping that he would understand, “They thought it was okay to do that to my ancestors because of that word. Alex, I don’t care how much you hear that word. When you say it, that’s what it feels like to me. That I don’t exist. That Nia doesn’t exist. That I’m no different than Vlad. But, here’s the rub - in all the time we’ve had him I have never once heard you refer to him as a dog. But now you used the word nigga, and you think it’s funny. So, I have to wonder now, how do you describe me?”

He was dumbstruck.

He didn’t mean any of that when he said it. It was a joke. It was an homage to Kevin Hart. It was fucking funny. He understood that she was hurt, but he didn’t quite get why she was hurting. “I see that this hurt you. I’m sorry about that. It was not my intention.” He reached out to touch her and retrieved his hand when she pulled away, “If it was wrong, why didn’t Danny correct me?”

“That little fucker?” God, she hated him. “Because he set your ass up and you’re too fucking stupid to know it.” She didn’t mean that. She didn’t want to hurt him just because he had hurt her. But she was tired of telling him the same thing over and over again.

“How many times do I have to tell you that little bastard is not your friend? Do you remember how we met? The drunken video he posted of you doing the Haka dance that ended up all over the internet? Do you remember how I had to spin that shit to save your career?” She rolled her eyes and stood up from the couch. “Whenever you pop a bottle, that little clout chaser is always right there with a fucking camera.”

“He’s not like that, he’s my friend.”

“He set your ass up! It’s a game, Alex! Black guys play it all the time. See if you can make your white friend say the word. Only, I’m surprised he didn’t punch you in the mouth afterward. Cause that’s what they’d’ve done in the States. But maybe things worked differently in Ireland.”

“Whatever,” Letting out a frustrated sigh, Alex resigned.

“Right. Whatever.” Walking back into her office, she slammed the lid closed on her laptop before throwing it and a few files into her work bag. “Un-fuckin-believable.” She left out of the office and sat her bag on the floor by the door before she walked across the hardwood floors towards the stairs. “Move, Vlad,” she said lovingly rubbing her big four-legged baby on the head.

Vlad made no intention of moving as if he was purposely trying to stop her from ascending the stairs. Instead, the dog looked at her, then back at Alex, before turning his gaze back at her. “Vladimir, honey, I need you to move.” She watched as her 50-pound defiant child laid on the bottom step and put his brown and white head on his paws. “Fine,” she said, skipping a step to climb over him and made her way up the rest of the stairs, rolling her eyes when the dog followed behind her.

Alex followed behind them and stood in the doorway of their bedroom watching as grabbed a handful of items; a t-shirt, toothbrush, and hair scarf. This entire argument had been blown way out of proportion. Now she was leaving? “Baby, where you going?”

“Away from you.”

Tags: @oddsnendsfanfics @a-mess-of-fandoms @waiting4inspiration @simsadventures @chipster-21 @tgrrose @alicedopey @thelastemzy @naaladareia @alexa4040 @absolutelynotanidiot @pokeasleepingsmaug @blackcoffeeandgreenteaforme @skadithegoddess @geekandbooknerd @dreamlesswonder86 @inforapound @youbloodymadgenius @cruelfvckingsummer @mummybear @flowers-in-your-hayr @honestsycrets @jzr201 @xbellaxcarolinax @ivarthebloodyking

#alex andersen #Alex hoegh #alex hogh andersen #alex høgh andersen #alex hogh fanfiction #ivar #ivar the boneless #ivar ragnarsson #ivar lothbrok #usershannygoatgruff #shannyland #shannygoatgruff #shannygoat #13 seconds #00:00:13 #need to get it off my chest #social responsibility the way I know how #my thoughts and feelings #in my feelings

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moniquill · 5 years ago

Text

I’m going to talk about Greedfall. Fight me.

So recently Greedfall was on 70% off on Steam, and I bought it.

I did so fully in the knowledge that this game is a garbage fire. I knew from the moment I saw the trailers back in August 2019, and I made some posts about it:

https://moniquill.tumblr.com/post/187141616836/greedfall-comes-out-next-month-on-the-10th-get-so

https://moniquill.tumblr.com/post/187185773016/no-i-will-not-absolve-you-geek-friend

https://moniquill.tumblr.com/post/187213116466/i-think-youve-fundamentally-misunderstood-the

And reblogged people saying more and better things:

https://moniquill.tumblr.com/post/187152585746/dalishious-untilthisdreamisgone-akedhi

A particularly large FUCK YOU to Darkfreya, who said this in the comments:

“ I will definitely buy this and hope it does well. We need more games like this. The fact that is a game about colonization does not bother me at all. Your character is neutral (and probably desperate trying search for a cure to a disease that is killing your people) Who you side with is your choice, and I seriously doubt siding with colonizers is seen as being the “good” choice.”

But there’s a valid argument to be made that you can’t REALLY criticize a game just based on trailers and synopses and lets plays and all that. You need to PLAY it, to play it all the way through and get the CONTEXT of the STORY.

So strap in chucklefucks, I did that. All spoilers, no repentance.

Note: I am writing this reaction on the fly as I play. I have had no spoilers except what’s in the promotional material. This isn’t so much a game review as an admonition of bullshit; I will be focusing on the main questline; the things that the game forces you to do to progress the story. I’ll also follow native-specific sidequests.

I am De Sardet, a man or woman who is the cousin of the new governor of The Congregations’ colony on Teer Fradee. I have an unexplained green birthmark on my face. My first quest item is saying goodbye to my mother, the Princess De Sardet, who has the mysterious and fatal illness that’s plaguing the land - the malichor.

There is no mention whatsoever of my father at this time.

In Serene, I futz about doing minor sidequests, meeting my first two companions (Kurt and Vasco), and levelling up by looting boxes and murdering bandits. I get to witness the ravages of the malichor; the streets are full of dead and dying people, there're corpse wagons and bonfires, generally looks like a good time.

I meet with the two representatives of the Not!European nations that The Congregation is a neutral ally to both of. One is Theleme, the super religious spanish inquisition types who dress in Cromwell-era English and French clothing. The other is The Bridge Alliance, who are all about science and technology and seem vaguely middle east to north african flavored - they wear turbans and kaftans, their architecture has domes and minarets, etc. Each representative gives me a quest with MORAL DILEMMAS! Do I deliver the heretics to the guard for arrest, or allow them to escape? Do I do the same for the charlatan alchemist? If I listen to them, they’re all totally innocent, but letting them go is bad for my reputation with the diplomats. Except that I can lie. So yeah… this is pretty much a ‘Do you BE EVIL because you can, or do you act benevolent at absolutely no expense to yourself?’ choice.

As I’m getting on the boat to head to Teer Fradee, I am railroaded into my first boss fight! This bursts out of the side of an adjacent ship:

All I know about it is that it was brought back from Teer Fradee, and that ‘it was supposed to be out for days’ - presumably it’s drugged. It’s visibly injured. I see it take another bad hit from a falling mast in the pre-battle cutscene.

I have no choice but to kill it.

I beat it into submission (with magic, because that's what I spec’d into) and then get a cutscene where it’s helpless and desperately scrambling away from me, gazing at me with intelligent, desperate eyes.

I dispassionately shoot it in the head.

I am hailed as a hero.

Like seriously here’s the video (not mine, just pulled from youtube)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pQfIHBIJiAU

We cutscene across the ocean, Vasco gets real serious with some shorebirds, and we arrive at Teer Fradee.

On the steps of the governor’s palace, I have my first encounter with a native - Siora, daughter of a chieftain, who is here to seek an audience with the governor. She speaks to me in the native tongue, presuming that I will understand. She has a facial marking similar to my own. I use my political clout to get her into the palace. When we meet my cousin the governor, he goes on and on about how similar Siora and I look; as if we could be related.

This is the first clue, in the story, that I - De Sardet - have native ancestry. There is no avenue for me to explore this at this time.

Siora wants us to be allies to her clan in their hostilities with the Bridge Alliance. I’m sent to speak with Mal Bladnid - the chieftain, her mom.

I’d like to mention at this time that the designers clearly went out of their way to NOT invoke NDN visual tropes with regards to be people of Teer Fradee - No beads, braids, and buckskins, no flute and drum music. They have an irish/celtic/norse/pagan vibe, as I read it. They have a ‘what even is that’ accent. They also wear a ton of different styles of face paint, the significance of which are never explained.

The game at large seems to assign characters without regard to phenotype - any person of any faction may be european/black/asian in appearance. There are about a dozen faces in the entire game, endlessly recycled. It comes off as :FINGERS IN EARS, SHOUTING “WE DON’T SEE RACE!!!”:

At the first opportunity to talk to Siora back at my legate pad in New Serene, I can ask Siora if she really thought I was a Native. She says that yeah, she did, because I look like one, and she’s never seen a foreigner who’s an on ol menawi - she doesn’t tell me what that means, and I don’t have an option to ask.

Following the main quest line and going to see Siora’s mom, I learn that she’s already taken off to fight a battle. We catch up at the tail end of the battle, hundreds of people on both sides are dead. I meet Siora’s sister, and I can talk her down from a roaring rampage of revenge. We find out that their mom’s been taken. We spend some time optionally looking for and healing survivors - you can also just let them die. Save them, and you gain a reputation boost with the natives. Then we explore the ruins, which are continental in style, and learn about the legend of super doom battle of old vs wave of colonizers the first - the native people made a pact with the land which raised guardians, and in exchange certain people become ol menawi. What this means is not explained at this time, other than it’s a pact with the land and why the native people have magic.

At this point I diverge from the main quest to find out what happened to Siora’s mom; we go to the Bridge Alliance camp and find that she died on the way there. We have to argue/finagle/blackmail the captain of the outpost into allowing us to take her body.

Upon returning to Siora’s village, we find that her mother’s remains have been delivered, but new complication: there are missionaries from Theleme insisting that they had an agreement with queen Bladnid - the village would convert to Not!Christianity and in exchange Teleme would aid them against the Bridge Alliance. If they agree to this, they’ll have to bury Bladvid according to Theleme religious standards. Siora thinks this is bullshit, we must investigate. It is unclear how I’m supposed to pursue this.

I return to Constantin and report on the ancient ruins where the battle took place. He tells me to go see Lady Morange, who tells me to go check out some other ruins near some mines. This continues the Ancient Mystery questline.

I proceed to San Mateus (which is also where I need to go for main questline things regarding talking to the Theleme leaders on the island)

Entering the city for the first time thrusts me into a cutscene so fucking upsetting that I had to put the game away for a while and come back later. Upon entering the main square, I see a priest strangling a native man, while a creature not unlike the one I was forced to fight back in the first boss battle is being burned alive. The priest is demanding that the native man denounce his gods. He then strangles him to death. I am given no opportunity to intervene. Afterward, when I’m able to talk to the priest, I can declare myself as a believer or not - I can answer yes or no, or attempt charisma to weasel out of the question. If I fail charisma I have to answer yes or no. If I declare that I’m not a believer, we have a fight scene. I am not allowed to kill this man; the fight ends as soon as he’s incapacitated. He wanders off, declaring that he won’t forget this and that I’ll have to fight him again later.

THE BURNED CORPSE OF THE TREE-BEING REMAINS IN THE SAN MATEUS SQUARE FOR THE REST OF THE GAME.

In the palace I meet Petrus, after talking to the Mother Cardinal, Petrus becomes one of my companions. The Mother Cardinal asks me to investigate a native village that she believes is worshipping a demon. Yeah sure I’ll get right on that.

I proceed to Hikmet to talk about their science team’s work on the Malichor, and learn that the natives are very antagonistic toward their people. A soldier interrupts the conversation to tell us that an outpost has been routed in a native attack. I’m asked to assemble a team to investigate a science party that’s gone missing.

I return to Constantin to tell him about meeting the governors; he tells me to proceed with all the questlines I’ve opened and whines about how his parents never loved him. Worth noting at this time that Constantin appears not at all well. He’s pale and has dark circles under his eyes. He claims to be fine, just nauseated.

My main questline threads are now:

An Ancient Mystery

Scholars in the Expedition

Demonicial Cult

I choose to follow the cult one first, because Native involvement.

I proceed to Tir Dob, and meet with the investigators. The leader is frustrated because the natives don’t want to talk to her, and she’s convinced that there’s deep evil afoot. When I talk to the villagers, they dismiss me and tell me it’s not my business. Which, I mean, fair!

Notably, one woman asks about my mark/status an on ol manawi. When I say I’m not bound to anything/I didn’t do anything to bind myself, she tells me that one of my parents must have been a doneigad. I have no opportunity to pursue this.

There is no story-continuing option for me to leave it, or to pursue a path of gaining the villagers’ trust. I am required, by the game’s narrative, to spy on a villager. I break into his house and look at his things; I comment on how terrifying his fresco is and how morbid his altar and how horrible his mask. Siora points out that the mask is just worn to intimidate enemies in battle. It’s identical to the warthog spirit mask I can buy at any number of native merchants and wear. Petrus says that there’s obviously demon worship going on.

I tell sister Ephesia, and she sends me to follow the villager on his journey into a secret place in the forest. He disappears into a sacred grotto. I commune with a tree and experience a narrative, then have to solve a very obvious puzzle to enter the grotto - to invade a sacred place that I am obviously not welcome in. There is no option to refuse to do this that forwards the story. In the grotto I witness a ceremony that’s presented, through cinematography and music, to be SO TERRIFYING AND OBVIOUSLY EVIL because there’s… a small amount of bloodletting? A glowing tree spirit speaks at the end of the ritual and all participants triumphantly shout.

Siora, if in the party, says that the rituals of her tribe aren’t so scary, cementing that the game feels that this ritual is intrinsically horrifying in some way.

We go to ask the chief of the village about what we spied on, and she explains that it’s a ritual to evoke the strength of warriors and invoke a blessing against the Theleme investigators. She tells us that the voice we heard one one of the many faces of nature, and that if we proceed to another location and perform a ritual, we may hear from another face of nature - but that we might not be happy with the results.

We proceed to Vedvilvie, where we meet Aged Hermit. He tells us that a detachment of Bridge Alliance soldiers was here a long time ago, and gives us information about where to find their camp. We explore the swamp, looking at assorted corpses and ruined tents and ancient frescoes, then talk to Aged Hermit again, who tells us about a ritual to summon the earth.

We perform the ritual, and are thrust into a boss battle with Nadaig Vedemen. There is literally no choice but to kill her. The Aged Hermit rebukes us for having done so, calling us murderers and monsters. Gotta say, I absolutely agree with him. Siora tells him to calm down, that we were only defending ourselves. She explains to me that he knew her before she became a Nadaig - that Nadaig are Doneigada who’ve called upon the power of the island to the point of physical transformation. That it will happen to her and to me, eventually. That’s what on ol menawi and the mark means.

There is no opportunity for me, as a player, to avoid killing the Nadaig.

We return to Tir Dob and confront Derdre about sending us into a death trap; she had hoped the Nadaig would kill us. We now know secrets that no one outside the clan has ever known. She asks us not to tell.

I proceed to the Bridge Alliance Scholars’ camp and find they’ve been captured by locals, who want to trade them for prisoners that the Alliance has previously taken. We run into some locals who give us important information about where the prisoners are being held, because they feel it would be better if the prisoners were gone. We meet Aphra, who joins the party and leads us to where prisoners are being held. Two options here - guns blazing bloodbath, or ghost sneak mission where we bust the prisoners out undetected and harm no one. I choose the ghost option. Regardless, upon bringing the rescued scholars back to camp I’m confronted by three natives who I have to fight with. Once defeated, I have the option to either spare their lives or finish them off. Only Siora argues that I should let them live. I do.

We return to Hikmet and talk to the governor. This opens the Search for Panacea questline. Aphra is now a permanent possible companion.

Aphra’s personal quest: More required spying on the natives. Siora greatly disapproves. I have no option to shut this shit down, to tell her ‘No, we are not doing that.’ We spy on the elders, who are having a meditative session where they listen to the voice of en on mil frichtimen. They catch us spying and call us down, chastise us, and then invite us to watch the rest. Aphra makes comments about how ‘it’s almost like they really can hear a voice on the wind; must be delusion-level faith!’ She then says she has to mull this over and to talk about it later.

We proceed to the ruins that Lady Morange mentioned; two of the three required fetch items are in the general vicinity of a Nadaig. It is possible, through sneaking, to reach them without having to fight the Nadaig, so I do that. We find that the people who built the ruins were…. DUN DUN DUN…. From the congregation! We used to be EVIL! Like we’re totally not now!

We report to Constantin, who is looking even more sickly. He tells us to investigate this history with the Nauts and laments more about his daddy issues. He also says that I look too much like a native for it to be a coincidence which, at this point, fucking DUH. This opens the The Prince’s Secret questline.

Meanwhile, on the quest for panacea, I head back to the village where I freed the Alliance prisoners to talk to the chief. There’s several dialog options, since I didn’t go bloodbath when rescuing the prisoners, but there’s also a spying option. One way or another, I gain the information that I need to go to the village of Vigshadir in Frasoneigad to find the Tierna harch cadachtas. Siora knows how to get there.

Upon arriving, I’m told that this is one of the holiest sites on the island and I’m not welcome. Alas, I can’t continue the story while respecting that answer - I can insist forcefully or I can gain the villagers’ trust with a couple of fetch quests. Either way, I end up learning where the Tierna harch cadachtas can be found. I disturb her taking a nap with some salamanders. She’s not at all happy to see me, even when Siora speaks on my behalf. She sicks her salamanders on me and takes off; I have to kill them. I then follow her up a path to a root door that requires an offering to unlock. Siora suggests that it’s a seed; we go back to the village and talk her bodyguard into letting us into her house to poke around. I should mention that there’s a bunch of lootable stuff in her house, and the game doesn’t punish me in any way for taking it. I find the correct seed and we proceed through the root door to a maze that Siora says is SUPER SACRED. Nevertheless, I’m forced to kill a bunch of animals on my way through. I tried sneaking several times; due to bottlenecking, the animals always become hostile. Toward the end of the path, we also come upon an instantly hostile native man, who I am also forced to kill.

We come out on the other side of the maze in Credgwen, just in time to witness the tierna running from and being gunned down by an Alliance solider. Cradling a bullet wound to her abdomen, the soldier is poised to execute her with a pisol shot to the head when Nadaig Fresamen appears and throws him ass over head. The Tierna then tells Nadaig Fresamen to attack us, and I’m once again in a mandatory boss battle where I am forced by the narrative to kill a Nadaig. Once again it ends in a cutscene where I shoot the Nadaig in the head. I think maybe the game designers think this looks badass, instead of coldly sociopathic? The Tierna is visibly distraught, screaming and crying at what we’ve done. She’s about to attack us when she’s shot in the back by the Alliance Soldier, who then says a bunch of Evily McEvil things, then tries to fight us. Upon besting him, I get to either kill or spare him.

I kill the shit out of him.

We bring the very very wounded tierna back to her village, where she wakes up and tries to kill me (Siora calling her off). She explains that the panacea she made is to treat islanders who’ve escaped captivity from the Alliance; those who are captured are gruesomely tortured in the name of science. She suggests that the malichor might be a curse from En on mil frichtimen.

We take this news to Constantin. It is now super duper obvious that he is very sick.

Siora tells us who we need to talk to about En on mil frichtimen, Constantin tells us to do that.

I’m level 16 now.

I hop back to the other main questline, grabbing Petrus and Vasco to go to San Matheus and investigate the Nauts’ problems there. Go to talk to Bishop Domitius but am pulled into a cutscene where Mother Cornelia asks me to get back some sacred tablets that she thinks were stolen by island natives. Yeah, lady, I’ll get right on that. I talk to Bishop Domitius, who accuses the Nauts of being the origin of the malichor. I go to the docs to investigate the rumors. Long story short, the Nauts are fine and I shut down the Inquisition’s investigation of them. When I get back to my residence, there’s a letter asking me to come see some natives at the embassy. Because Native rep[resentation and Native storylines are pretty much all I care about in this game, I pause everything else to pursue that, bringing Siora and Petrus.

I meet with them in the woods, where they’re camped out with the body of an inquisitor they killed. Petrus greatly disapproves. We get some keys and a letter from them, learn that there’s a camp that Native captives are being brought to, and go to investigate the inquisitor’s house for more details. We rummage through his house, find another letter detailing the camp and a chest in the order headquarters. We also find a key to said chest. On our way out, we’re confronted by a bunch of ordo luminus thugs. I have the option to get Petus to talk them down, so I do.

We go back to the place where the natives are holed up and find we’ve been followed by inquisitors. Talk talk fight; we kill them. The natives thank us and say they’ll report this to queen Derdre. I’m now level 17.

I head back to Admiral Cabral to tell her about shutting down the Naut investigation. She tells me that the Nauts discovered the island 200 years ago, the congregation tried to colonize, a few bad apple lords got all tyrannical, and both the natives and thier own workers rebelled against them. The colony was destroyed and only a few survivors made it out. The princes of the congregation swept it all under the rug in humiliation. Then she drops the bomb that I’ve been waiting for the whole game: I am the product of a later Congregation expedition. I’m the child of a Native and was born on a Naut ship. So yeah, I’ve been playing as a stolen child divorced from my native culture this whole time. I’m just gonna leave this link here:

https://www.vox.com/2019/10/14/20913408/us-stole-thousands-of-native-american-children

I immediately go to demand answers from Constantin.

This is a major act shift; things I find out in the next string of cutscenes:

Constantin has the malichor and is totally dying.

Kurt comes in to warn us about a coup d’etat that’s in the works - the coin guard plants to take out all three governors and seize control of the island. Apparently if you haven’t followed his personal questline about abuse within the coin guard ranks, he betrays you at this time. I’ve been doing the companion quests all along but not commenting on ones that don’t involve natives.

After putting down the coup d’etat, I go back to Constantin to rally. We’re now in Act Two, and my main quests are as follows:

The Suffering of Constantin, where I have three leads - San Matheus, Hikmet, and Native.

The Trial of the Waters, where I need to go speak to Glendan.

So I head to Wenshaveye to talk to the healer there. The village is having problems with missionaries and with abruptly and violently aggressive tenlens - animals that are usually docile. The aggressive tenlen attacks started right about the same time the missionaries showed up. Hmm.

There’s an interlude here where I come upon a bunch of merchants fighting a Nadaig and for a brilliant moment I thought I could kill the merchants and save the Nadaig but no. It’s instantly hostile to me and I have to kill it. The killing of Nadaig in this game is treated as a neutral action, like killing wild animals.

So yeah turns out the missionaries brought a vicious white tenlen, holed it up in a cave, it was riling up the others, it killed two village kids who went into the woods to canoodle. I shut all that down, kicked the missionaries out, and was able to bring the healer to Constantin. Plot thread resolved! Let’s go see Glendan.

I can’t get in to see the council without having a seal proving that I’m the chosen representative of a current council member. Fetch quest time - literally I just have to go back and talk to Cadasach, the healer, and he hands me the seal I need. I presume it’s more involved if I’d chosen one of the other healing paths.

I talk to Glendan, he tells me I need to complete the trial of the waters, a new questline opens. Also, the next part of Siora’s questline - promises set in stone - opens. I drop everything and follow that because I’m kind of in love with Siora.

We head to her village and talk to the missionaries, they send us to go see the stone that the agreement was engraved on, we get there and fight a bunch of enemies, the stone is destroyed and we can’t read it. Time to go see the engraver, Caradeg. We get to his house to find it absolutely destroyed. The only clue is a stone bearing the mark of the Dunncas’ clan. So we head to Vigyigidaw. Dunncas tells us that they exiled Caradeg because he wanted to make war on the settlers. Have fun, bootlicker. On my way out of the village I’m snagged by a guy with a side quest; he wants me to get some settlers to stop preventing the clan from going into a sacred glade to replant trees that the settler clear cut. See sidequests for details on that.

Before doing Trial of the Waters, I decide to go check up on Eden and Father Iustinius, bringing Siora and Petrus.

Stolen tablets, lots of talk about how primitive and naive the natives are and how those who aren’t converted are obviously worshiping demons and that’s who must have stolen the tablets.

Siora comments that this place is horrifying, and wonders how the people could have tolerated the priests building continental-style buildings over the top of their village.

We go to talk to the theologians, then to Ler. Because I’m not awesome at Charisma, I’m left with no option except to threaten and bully my way into him giving me the name of an old woman, mother of one of the warriors who left the village. I lose re with both the natives at large and Siora personally. The old woman tells us where to find the exiles, and gives us hints on how to avoid traps and sneak in unseen. She implores us not to hurt her son.

We head for the exiles’ camp. I choose the option where I sneak in and don’t murder everyone, and the old woman meets us as we’re leaving and thanks us for that, saying she’s going to try and talk her son into finding a new clan. We head back to Eden.

They thank us for the tablets, are excited to set out a new expedition, the game tells me to wait 24 hours for the results. So I have to hike my ass to out camp, sleep 24 hours, and haul back to where I just was to find out that a party that went into the swamp ran afoul of…. something.

Siora points out that the survivor was obviously bitten by a poisonous swamp creature and that a local healer probably knows the remedy. We go talk to Ler again.

Ler tells us that the village doneigad is one of the exiles, but that the old woman we talked to earlier knows plants well. I’m pretty sure that if we’d murdered her son to death in the previous quest, she’d refuse to help us. Because we didn’t, she makes us a potion. The wounded guy wakes up and begs us to go and rescue his dumbass loser friends, so of course I do.

We’re going back to Vedvilvie, because of course we are.

We arrive at the camp, listen to both the ordo luminous guy and the research sister whine about how the other is mean/incompetant, and go to investigate the dig sites. We find a dude with a caved in skull who was clearly struck from behind with a mace, a guy who was killed to death by lewolans (big lizards), and a poor chump was was obviously stabbed to death before being fed to lewolans. Siora says it’s pretty clear that Mr Inquisition orchestrated this to frame the research lady. I agree. We go to confront him. Choices: Take a bribe and side with him, tell him to leave the expedition, expose his bullshit to everyone.

The ‘correct’ choice in the game is not to reveal his crimes before everyone, but to banish him. Because [Centrist.jpeg goes here]

We follow the path of San Matheus, come up against a nadaig magamen, murder it to death, and enter a cavern. Long story short, Saint Mat totally became a doneigad. He saw on en mil frichtimen as an extension of the concept of light and prayed to him. Also I found a bitchin’ set of holy armor. I put it on Petrus.

Theleme’s gonna be big mad. We head back to Eugenia to tell her, are confronted by Virgil and the Inquisition. He wants to destroy the relics and evidence that Sait Mat converted to the faith of the island, we kill him to death and go tattle to Mommy Cardinal. I push her to make the decision to reveal the truth to the masses, and to visit the cave herself.

Theleme is not, in fact, big mad.

Anyway, returning to the main questline.

So there’s two options through the cave of testing, bloodbath or sneak. I chose sneak. Touch a basin, have a vision, solve a very easy puzzle - just like the tree one from earlier.

There’s a Nadiag waiting, and the command prompt I have for it after solving the puzzle is ‘Tame’... yanno, like one does with an animal. Because indigenous people are fauna. Fucking gross.

I see a fresco depicting a spirit of the volcano. I go to talk to Glendan. He sends me to find the high king, who is missing. I need to see the rest of the high council: Derdre, Dunncas, Ullan. Guess it’s time to finally deal with the Ullan plotline. See side quests for details.

When I head back to Hikmet, I get a whole string of cutscenes because it’s been a while since I’ve been there - including one where I follow up with the islander rebellion. The governor asks me to parlay with the leaders of the rebellion, where I find out that the on ol menawi who the alliance have been kidnapping from villages have been taken to laboratories for experiments - where they have been tortured and killed. This lines up with all earlier accusations, and with that Hikmet dude who was trying to murder the tierna and me - he said they were going to dissect her. So yeah. I go to thier main camp, and fucking surprise, I was followed by Alliance soldiers who promptly stark attacking. I have two choices: fight alongside the natives or put an end to the rebellion. I, of course, fight on Team Native. I then proceed back to Hikmet to ask What The Entire Fuck, Sir? He denies knowing anything about natives being captured; he assures me that this lab is a medical research center. I declare that I”m gonna take a look at it myself.

I grab Aphra for this, and in the process agree to continue her personal questline. We ask the young apprentices about how to get into the Cave of Knowledge, which, I cannot state enough, IS A SACRED PLACE CLOSED TO OUTSIDERS. Only people who are becoming doneigad are supposed to go there. The narrative makes me. This happening, over and over, gives lie to the premise that the game allows you to make good or evil moral choices - that you can DECIDE to be a good guy or a bad guy. You can’t. You can either choose to violate the sacred spaces of the indigenous people or -not play this game-. There is no ‘Sit Aphra down and tell her that it is implicitly wrong to do this’ option.

So we go to the cave, it has a seed gate, we find some brigands who’ve murdered a native, they’re planning to dynamite thier way into the cave, we can talk them inot leaving or murder them to death, guess which one I chose just guess. We get the seed and enter the cave.

In the cave, we examine several frescoes; one depicts a ritual where, in a circle, someone is pouring blood on a stone in the presence of a Nadaig. Another depicts the same figure, but now marked as an on ol menawi. We then hear people coming and are prompted to hide, because being caught here would sure lose us the trust of the natives. Which we do not deserve at all, after this. The game prompts me to spy on the young people, which I do, listening in on thier conversation. When we leave the cave, Aphra says that clearly we need to spy on a whole, actual ritual. The game teases me with ‘accept’ or ‘refuse’, but the choice are actually ‘start the time now, or later’ - the story doesn’t allow me to ACTUALLY refuse. We show up, and Dunncas actually gives us permission to watch if we don’t interfere.

After the ritual, Alliance soldiers show up. We kill them to death. The chiefs thanks us for having been there. Aphra says we should look into Dr. Asili. So off to the lab we go.

I’m pretty sure, narratively, that I’m supposed to have stealthed my way through this. However, after seeing a pit of burning bodies and people in cages right as I entered, I just bloodbathed my way through. Also arrested the apprentices and killed the fuck out of Asili. Fun fact: Asili gave Constantin the malichor! Also me, but I’m resistant, since native and on ol menawi.

I return to talk to Constantin about the sanctuary and the Hikmet problem and everything and find that he’s gone on a journey with the doneigad healer and things have gone wrong. I set out after him. I follow combat signs and talk to Aiden in wenshaveye, then head to the alliance outpost. We catch up with a badly wounded and unconscious survivor, get him a potion, and then have to wait 24 hours. This is a repeated feature of the game an annoying as hell, because the only way to wait is to return to camp. When he’s awake he describes the attack; animals controlled by some kind of native sorcerer and fire and explosions. A native grabbed Constantin and ran off with him. We continue the investigation - I go to talk to Daren. Daren says that they weren’t behind the attack - no one would ever attack Catasach. Catasach is, btw, super dead. I examine the body. He was killed by something than can wield magma. Good times. Daren tells us there’s a ritual by which a doneigad can see the last moments of his life - only tierna can perform it. Good thing we saved her earlier…. From danger that we put her in….

So we head off to see tierna, and she readily agrees because I avenged her earlier. Pretty sure it would have taken more convincing if I’d let the dude who shot her live. One fetch quest to get spell components later, we’re able to perform the ritual.

Vinbarr did it.

I go to question Derdre, Ullan, or Duncas. The latter two have the best opinion of me, so I hit up Dunncas first. Dunncas tells me to go to Wennshavar. Folks there give me some backstory, tell me to find Cera at the cave of knowledge.

We come upon alliance folks torturing a native woman, presumably Cera. This bitch has a whole ass villian speech. I’m pretty sure she’s one of the people I saved with Aphra’s science team? Could just be a recycled face though. We run down to interrupt. Aphra wants to reason with her, Siora wants to kill her. Yep, it’s the science team I saved. I have several options here; fight them, use intuition to remind them I saved them, threaten them, or let Aphra speak. I choose to let Aphra speak more because I want to hear what she says than anything.

Aphra shames her and reminds her that they left Asili together because of his cruelty. She whines that Aphra knows she’s not REALLY like that, and stomps off like an angry toddler. No fight. Cera thanks us for saving her, leads us to the cave, and opens it for us.

Inside the cave we find a fresh new fresco; it shows Vinbarr going to talk to the spirit of the mountain. He’s gone to join En on mil frichtimen. We see another fresco depicting a nadaig meneimen - the bird/mountain form. Vinnbar’s gonna turn into one. We look at some other murals, I let slip that I’m looking for Constantin, Cera peaces out and seals us in the cave because she thinks we’re looking for Vinnbar on a vengeance quest. We find another way out. The path is now laden with traps because she doesn’t want to be followed. Sorry, Cera, that no one informed you that I am a protagonist and thus no one can prevail against me.

We go to the mountain passage depicted in the fresco, go through a cave maze, and find the mountain trail to the sanctuary. We meet up with Cera, who forces us to fight her. We snag a seed from her body after killing her and her folks to death. Which the game offered no way out of doing. Now we have both seeds and can open the sanctuary. We scamper through some scenic vista and arrive to find Vinnbar burying Constantin with rocks using telekinesis. He says the on en mil frichtimen told him constantine is the bringer of doomtimes. Now we have to have a boss fight. Partway through, he transforms into a nadaig. We continue fighting andf kill him to death.

I sure do murder a lot of nadaig in this game.

We return Constantin to New Serene and I’m pretty sure this is the break into act 3… Catasach made Constantin on ol menawi and he is stoked about it. He has branch antlers and pointy teeth and yellow eyes and feels great. I am concerned.

Time to go talk to Glendan again.

I lose three rep with the natives over, yanno, having murdered their high king to death. I now have to go and talk to the three potential high kings and gain the support of one of them - Derdre, Dunncas, or Ullan. Of those three, Dunncas is the only one who hasn’t tried to murder me or betrayed my trust so… off to Dunncas. His agenda is balance and healing. He easily agrees to let me see en on mil frichtimen if he’s chosen, and tells me how to make sure that he is - if I get a spectacular ancient crown from the grave of the high king that became the first guardian. He expresses distaste for using such a method. Siora is also worried about me making a decision that will impact all of her people. Gotta say that I agree, I have absolutely no place being involved in this decision at all - let’s see if the narrative lets me opt out of meddling! I go to see the other two candidates and hear out their agendas, out of fairness.

Ullan’s agenda is peace and alliance with the colonizers. He also readily agrees to help me.

Derdre wants to repel the colonists and take back the island. She says she’ll let me see en on mil frichtimen only if I rally Eseld/Siora’s tribe and join in the attack on the Ordo Luminous camp. Which, morally, I am absolutely all for. However, it seems like the game is heavily leaning on Dunncas as ‘the right choice’.

But yeah, fuck it, I’m backing Derdre all day long. Lets fuck up some Spanish Inquisition!

I have the option to inform the mother cardinal of the coming attack. Why the entire fuck would I do that?

So I destroy the fuck out of the camp and murder a bunch of inquiition torturers and free the surviving prisoners and gather evidence of war crimes. Then I go to mommy cardinal, who is big mad (Theleme -2 rep) that I didn’t tell her first. Boo. Fucking. Hoo.

Having done that, no there is no way to proceed in the questline without retrieving the crown, which involved murdering a Nadaig Magamen. I get the crown, and Derdre meets me there and rebukes me for entering a sacred place, trying to take the crown and throw the election, as an outsider. She is 100% correct. I give her the crown.

I wait two days and then go see en on mil frichtimen, who tells me that the malichor is the result of how the continental people treat their land. I’d like to pause here and talk about the role of Magical Natives in Green Aesop stories. Let’s review some tropes:

https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/CloserToEarth

https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/InHarmonyWithNature

https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/MagicalNativeAmerican

This some some colors of the wind / Avatar’s blue cat people bullshit, the idea that indigenous people are implicitly and intrinsically more -one with the earth- and that ‘modern civilization’ has lost this, to their detriment, and can only heal through <s>cultural appropriation</s> learning and adopting deep earthy truths known by indigenous people. The point of this in the story is to tell a Green Aesop - https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/GreenAesop - it sets a paradeigm of indigenous people being the noblest of noble savages - https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/NobleSavage - of indigenous people as a simpler, greener form of humanity. It’s othering. I’ve written a lot about this in the past, check out my post about woo: https://moniquill.tumblr.com/post/32577796262/the-following-is-a-post-about-woo

This particular brand of othering of indigenous people directly and personally fucked me up, as an indigenous person, when I was a kid. That could be why I have a personal grudge against it.

Moving along.

en on mil frichtimen alo tells me that Constantin is the bringer of doom times, and that Catasach essentially stole power from the island to keep him alive. I need to put a stop to his endless bitter hateful hunger. So yeah, that’s a thing. I go check up on my dear cousin.

When I show up, emissaries from the alliance and theleme are there begging Constantin for troops and also me; they’re suffering horrible attacks on their outposts and people. They’re blaming the natives. I mean, to be fair I did just crown queen Derdre Kill ‘Em All so….just saying. But moving on, I talk to Constantin about the sanctuary. He...doesn’t react well to the warnings about himself. When I ask him about his body with the island, it sure does seem like he got high on apotheosis and wants another hit. He doesn’t believe that the malichor on the continent is the fault of the continentals.

My main quest lines are now

The attack on San Matheus

The attack on Hikmet

And honestly fuck both those places because both of them were running torture camps but whatever, I guess I’m off to investigate.

Mommy Cardinal over in San Mateus wants me to hit up an outpost that’s being attacked relentlessly by wild animals. Speculation is that ‘island demons’ are controlling them.

Governor Burhan says the same thing’s happening to his folks.

Upon checking it out, the islanders are also being attacked; the animals are attacking indiscriminately, and while having that conversation a guy bursts in to say the guardian of the village (a nadaig glendemen) has turned on his people. So we kill it to death in a boss fight and it’s revealed that the corrupted nadaig was causing the animals to be killrabid. Now that it’s dead, the animals are back to normal.

Samesies over near San Matheus.

A human must be responsible, the creatures wouldn’t be so coordinated otherwise.

Is it my cousin? I bet it’s my cousin.

We go talk to Constantin.

He says ‘ha ha ha nothing to worry about….peace out, my adorable cousin!’ and takes off to parts unknown. I shake down his guards, but all they can tell me is that he’s going north outside the city. I rummage through his papers, and find his journal. Yeeeeah he’s super high on apotheosis and wants to become a god. Like, supplant and replace on en mil frichtimen. And he’s off to ‘get rid of’ some natives in Cwenvar who saw him the other night and might denounce his actions. I’m gonna have to take out my cousin by the end of this game and it will be a tearjerker cutscene. Calling it now.

We head to Cwenvar to talk to the natives. They show me how to spy on Constantin. We follow him to a sacred grove, where he’s clearly gone cuckoo bananas. He’s commanding a corrupted nadaig, which he tells to hold us back - but not kill me. SO we kill the nadaig, and then have a chat with on en mil frichtamen, who confirms that Constantin is trying to gain godhood by murdering god and taking his power. Yanno, as one does. In a cutscene, I list all the people who will totally help me against Constantin. This includes… pretty much everyone, because I’ve diplomatted my way through the game and everyone likes me. Time to go rally armies.

It’s worth noting at this time that on en mil frichtamen calls me ‘flesh of my earth’ and earliet called me ‘the child that was stolen’ - there’s a very ‘YOU ARE THE CHOSEN ONE’ vibe here, implying that I’m only able to succeed at this task because I’m native by blood - I’m not REALLY a continental and thus a Tainted Person made of Endless Greed. It is my native-ness and my bond to on en mil frichtamen, passed down from my donegiad parent, that allows me to be the hero of this game.

I want you, dear reader, to stop and think about the gross racial implications of that.

Moving forward: We go to ask Dunncas for help in how to break Constantin’s links to the land. He gives me seeds to place at the base of the stone Constantin has erected, to topple them. I have to fight a corrupted Nadaig each time. At this interval Siora points out how wise and attuned to en on mil frichtimen Dunncas is, and I express regret at not choosing him to be high king. TOO SUBTLE, GAME.

So yeah, couple of tedious boss fights.

Having broken his links and gathered my allies, it’s time for the endgame. We go back to the sacred grove where I talked to en on mil frichtimen, I get a series of heartwarming cutscenes with my companions and allies as I ascend to Constantine’s heart stronghold.

I reach Constantin. I have to fight a big bad ultra nadaig, which Constantin tells not to kill me.

He has a long cutscene in which he pleads his case, asking me to bond with him and rule together. I can either bond with him and join him in godhood, which is implied to doom all of humanity to eventually succumb to the malichor because no land can ever be healed now, or I can kill him and save the world like a big damned hero.

Then Mr. deCourcillion narrates the epilogue, where I get to hear about the consequences of all my decisions through the game. My decision to crown Derdre results in forcible decolonization of the island and healing thereof, but the old world nations are plunged into war and the malichor gets worse there. Am I supposed to feel bad? I don’t!

In the ‘best’ ending, Magical Native Healers travel to the continent and teach the sad tained continentals how to live in harmony with nature and heal their lands.

Here, have an every possible ending video:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qcUByGfNXgY

Know what weirds me out as an actual indigenous person? Learning that I’m a stolen child way back in Act 1 never resulted in a quest where I in any way question or explore my real ancestry. I never try to find out what clan my real mother was from or if I have any living relatives. I never look into why the Congregation abducted my mother and why I was raised by Princess De Sardet. The game just feels that this is unimportant. The important thing was that I have Magical Native Blood.

So yeah. That’s the game.

In studying the fandom presence of this game, roughly no one is interrogating the fuckedness of the premise or narrative. The active fandom seems to be mostly people who want to bang Vasco, people who think Constantin is a sad wooby who deserved better (including a lot of people who chose the ‘bad’ ending because they wub himb) and people who want to bang Constantin and justify it because he and De Sardet aren’t REALLY cousins… and people who are just here for The Aesthetic. Fun fact there are exactly 12 F/F fics on a03 set in this universe.

Here, have some examples, all from https://www.tumblr.com/tagged/GREEDFALL and https://archiveofourown.org/tags/GreedFall%20(Video%20Game)/works

https://destiny-rahl.tumblr.com/post/616743783790460928/constantin-de-sardet-my-beloved-otp-this

https://swiveldiscourse.tumblr.com/post/615782041344147456/not-sure-who-needs-to-hear-this-but-this-game

https://totallyamoral.tumblr.com/post/615651870535532545

https://archiveofourown.org/works/20766497/chapters/49345631

https://archiveofourown.org/works/20676554/chapters/49106921

https://archiveofourown.org/works/20747450

Lots of people compared this game to Dragon Age: Inquisition when it first came out because the gameplay looks similar. But here’s the thing… the first time I finished DA:I, I immediately wanted to turn around and play it again, as a different character, as someone who made different decisions and followed a different romance and brought different companions with me on quests to see their different reactions.

I do not want that with Greedfall.

My first thought upon fisnishing was ‘Oh thank fuck, I’ve seen this to fruition, I don’t have to play this anymore.’

That is not how I should feel at the end of a game.

I feel tired and broken and hurt and used, much like I felt after reading Sister Raven.

https://moniquill.tumblr.com/post/165881710831/so-today-i-read-a-book-called-sister-raven

Native-specific sidequests of note:

In An Aspiring Merchant, you meet a native merchant in New Serene who’s trying to set up shop; because he doesn’t have the correct paperwork and didn’t follow the bureaucratic process, his stuff keeps getting confiscated. I do not have any opportunity to explore why his lack of paperwork gets his stuff repeatedly confiscated, rather than just getting him sent home.

While I’m getting the paperwork for him, his cousin arrives with a shipment of goods. The guards confiscate the goods again, and arrest the cousin. I go to investigate, and find that cousin threw some punches when the guards once again confiscated all of the goods, and was arrested for disorderly conduct. Ok. So I proceed to the jail and find that he has been sent to fight -to the death- in the arena?! When the prison guard says ‘Hey, it wasn’t me, I was just following orders’ I’m not given an opportunity to ask who’s giving the orders or pursue the miscarriage of justice. I head to the Arena. Despite being a Legate, one of the highest governing offices of the colony, I have no option to put a stop to these shenanigans. I can’t just spring him, or pay bail; I am required to fight beside him to secure his freedom.

Completing this quest opens the Ullan/Vignamri questline.

Ullan wants to trade with Hikmet, Hikmet wants us to secure the roads, we visit another chieftain, he agrees to a meeting, Ullan shows up and shanks him, I shout at Ullan about how that was bad to do, Ullan thanks me for giving him the opportunity.

In Logging Expedition, I follow up on the quest hook about settlers clear cutting a glade that I got in vigyigidaw. Standoff between the natives and the settlers, natives want to plant trees, settlers won’t let them. Three settler woodcutters died recently - after investigation there was a conspiracy to poison them by an elder in vigyigidaw - my character refers to this as an act of vengeance by a hateful old man. Despite having literally just had it explained to us that it was supposed to be an object lesson in why not to clearcut the forest - the meat would have been fine if it had been prepared with a particular (possibly now extinct?) berry.

So we pop all the way down to the congregation colony to ask Mr. Courcillon how to diplomacy this ‘property disagreement’. He tells us to go to the basement archives and then see Lady Morange. Just from a gameplay perspective, this - like many sidequests - is fucking tedious. Just running from one place to another, grabbing a few lines of dialog in each place, with no player decision or engagement. This is a poorly designed game. So we hash out the contract, which was created back where neither side had any understanding of the other side’s ideas of what land ownership means. Manhattan was bought for 60 guilders worth of glass beads, etc etc. https://www.mentalfloss.com/article/12657/was-manhattan-really-bought-24

We have to prosecute the old man for murder if we want a new land deal signed. To prosecute the old man, we have to go stop a mining operation. It’s just one thing after another, and all of it boring and tedious. I had to stop in the middle of this questline and put the game down not because it was upsetting, but because it was -boring-. I hope that the readers appreciate the work I’m putting into making a detailed critique of this garbage fire.

#Greedfall #NDN stuff #Indigenously Angry #Clusterfuck #NDN #Colonialism: The Game

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calamariimpossible · 4 years ago

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Magicians on the internet, crypto, and the email that broke me.

This is a continuation of a twitter thread that Muz (@mzkrx) started to write out in his car but then when he plotted out his thoughts, it made more sense to him to put it down in a blog format rather than a thread. You'll find out why as you read through.

Stuck in the car for half an hour so I'm gonna do a thread (Editor's note: Now a whole-ass blog post) about a strange email I got recently.

So I was casually watching magic tricks on YouTube. the funnest part of which to me is reading the comments. YouTube commenters love explaining how they think the trick is done and it's fun to read through their theories and connect dots between similar tricks, etc.

And then one time as I was scrolling I noticed a comment that didn't make sense. It was a string of an almost sentence. Intelligible enough to not be random words but odd enough to read like a trigger phrase for something.

The closest I can describe it as is like the string Zemo used to wake up the Winter Soldier, but with some syntax to it. Like "many thermos wiggle throughout exotic harbinger of circle ascending fuchsia entrapment".

Initially I thought nothing of it, but then I kept seeing them in these magic trick video comment sections. They're never the same string, and it's always under magic trick videos. from different channels even.

Hmmm.

The profiles that posted these comments are also always blank accounts with zero videos and no profile pic. Just their name. I felt like it was too much of a coincidence for these comments to only be under magic trick videos.

I also knew that the world of performance magic is thick with secrets. That is to say, there is deliberate obfuscation of information whenever you try to go online to find out how a trick works.

Magicians get together online and share information with each other just like performers of every other sort as well but the amount of code and doublespeak they use is an order of magnitude more annoying to decipher compared to say, an engineering message board or a gamedev forum.

Knowing that, I thought maybe this almost parsable gibberish I keep seeing everywhere was also some kind of code these people were using to talk to each other.

So I started investigating.

First things first, let's just Google one of the phrases. Maybe that's enough?

And it sorta was.

Pasting them onto the search bar lent me to only 1 result (wild!) and it was a website that looked really dank. Like geocities dank. Annoying neon colours and badly margined jpegs of tarot card images everywhere and a big bold header text that said something to the effect of:

"Congratulations, you've found our hidden message. This portal is only for those seeking knowledge beyond what is on the surface. Continue below."

* * *

I haven't been doing well. I feel like I say that too much. I say it on Patreon, on my personal podcast, whenever any of my friends ask me how I'm doing, pretty much everywhere. I feel very heavy. I understand I'm not the only one feeling like this during a pandemic.

Duh.

But I have this other version of worry that I can't quite articulate until right now: I'm scared I won't be funny anymore. Anwar and Farid can attest that even during our recordings I don't feel up to being funny. I question my jokes a lot. I barely enjoy telling them. I'm worried I'm letting everyone down.

To me, silliness and absurdism as virtues only make sense when the world has trace amounts of injustice and wrongness that training ourselves to see it in our everyday helps us remind ourselves of what is just and fair. The more we consume silliness, the more we are able to recognize silly and point it out. So we don't ignore it when things go wrong, so we talk about it, manage it. So we can take care of each other.

Maybe I can't be sure if we're all up for taking care of each other right now.

* * *

"Continue below" seems instructive, but it wasn't. Like I mentioned, the margins were haphazard and the CSS was all over the place. Some jpegs were straight up cropped off.

Meaning I can't be sure what "below" meant. But there were clickable images and text so I was readily intrigued.

It was tantalizing. Did I stumble into some secret order of Extremely Online Magicians? Maybe I'll finally find out why there aren't many female magicians out there. Maybe it's some sort of secret initiation to a secret message board full of secrety secrets. Secretly.

Y'all.

I didn't click on any of the linked images or anything. I closed the tab. That was the end of that.

An earlier version of myself would gladly run headlong into this rabbit hole to find out more and sink hours into some goddessforsaken labyrinth of links. But the current version of me recognizes this for what it almost certainly is: an abandoned roleplaying game.

Back in the early 00s when the internet was the realm of nerds and nerds only, it was full of people who loved sharing things for sharing's sake. It used to be punk rock to maintain a blog that only talked about snails or have a lo-fi YouTube channel that uploads biweekly 3-minute news about your house, or manage a little message board where people roleplay as wizards who rummage around the net looking for clues.

That last part was a thing I remember being actively involved in. In '03, a group of online friends and I wrote up a scavenger hunt of sorts where we sent people through various blog pages that we have where the goal is to just dick around and have fun. We wasted each other's time for sure. Hundreds of hours of it for literally no gain at all but for some laughs and fun memories.

The internet isn't like that anymore. People don't share something online for sharing anymore. Not really. There's this idea that if you put stuff out there, you want people's attention because numbers are good. You get a lotta reblogs and RTs and Likes which means people Like you.

If you don't have a lotta numbers, you don't matter. If you do, everyone has to talk about what you said or did because it's 'News' now.

Isn't that kinda gross, you think? That we need people to interact through an app to be sure that we're Liked? I say "we" but I mean me. I've successfully poisoned my brain to believe this to a certain extent too and it's not good.

I felt myself physically react when I closed that geocities magician website tab. I shuddered because my brain went from "this is cool" to "I gotta let people know I found this" to "this'll get me hella RTs" to "ew Muz why did you think that" within 3 seconds and I was disgusted with myself.

As a dude who started my online presence on YouTube and parlayed it into my real life comedy/writing career, I've believed for a long time that doing good work and putting it out there is what it takes for a working creative to make it because that's what I did. So there's this idea that making stuff and having it be seen is some kind of virtuous.

But it's not anymore. People pick fights with children for clout. Newspapers post about people's tweets as if its important. People are investing in crypto, a thing that literally only exists as electrical waste on a grand scale. We're boiling the oceans to yell at each other over nothing and exchange bits of code everyone agrees has ever-rising value but doesn't. Everyone is making and eating junk, it feels like.

So am I making junk? Have I just been making useless junk for literally over a decade now? Is that what I've been good for this entire time?

* * *

So the email.

It was a response from a company I applied to for a job. I applied as a creative writer and they're an advertising agency.

Receiving emails from a prospective employer when you're in need of a job is exciting! So soon after I applied, too. Wonderful. Here's what it said:

We just received your application today but would love to extend the opportunity for you to participate in the Case Competition as a prerequisite of your job application for Creative Writer position with [REDACTED] and stand a chance to be a winner for cash awards up to a total worth of RM1,800.

Yea.

They want me to enter a competition where I compete with other candidates to get a chance of being hired.

This company saw how many people applied for a job with them, and decided to dangle some cash and throw it over the fence to see which candidate will fight for it the most.

I didn't expect to feel vomitous after reading an email but that did it. I almost dry heaved. That's where we are now.

Recruiters see a glut of applicants and decided to play Fall Guys. These people watch Istana Takeshi and think Takeshi is the good guy. It hurts. It hurt me. That email caused me pain.

I can't at all empathise with recruiters who think this was okay to do. They really believed that creative writers will do a little dance for them just for money.

Look, I know we all need to eat. But I can also hate that people undervalue the work of creatives to this painful extent.

I don't give a shit about earning a lot of dough. I just wanna make things that tickle people. I want you to smile more.

That's the whole point of that weird little YouTube comment that led to the quirky website. That's the whole idea of making silly videos and dumb tweets and memes. We just want you to laugh.

But it seems people think so little of joy that they'll do whatever they can to avoid legitimately supporting and paying for stuff that gets them through the day. So much so that they want free work from us for the potential of maybe being able to get paid for more work. It breaks me, man.

I hate that I cannot make a living just trying my best to make people happy.

That's the best way I know to take care of you.

I know I don't just 'make junk' for a living. People have messaged me personally that my work has helped them get through tough times in school, in their relationships, at the office and I am eternally grateful that they took the time to tell me that.

I just also wish my feelings about my work aren't easily brought down by the majority of people who insist its worthless. Even if sometimes those people is me.

So forgive me if I won't be funny for a while. I'm gonna need some time to process this. Thank you for reading. I love you.

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otdderamin · 5 years ago

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Transcript: Wednesday Club Ep19: Love is Love

Looking for some good Queer content? The best Wednesday Club was Episode 19: Love is Love! with Marc Andreyko. They talked about the Love is Love anthology made in memory of the Pulse shooting and talked about the history of queer representation in comics.

This is also the episode where Taliesin and Amy came out as bi. It was so soft and empathetic and empowering the whole way through that I think it gave them a push of confidence to say it.

Interesting history, they pulled this VOD after this aired and edited out that coming out. I suspect someone felt they got caught up in the moment and weren't actually sure they did want that out there. But word spread anyway and a few weeks later it was quietly restored.

The only depressing thing about this episode is how hopeful they were for the future and how much everything's gone to shit in the two years since it came out.

Official Twitch VOD, Bootlegged YouTube VOD

If you can handle the sorrow, I really can't recommend "Love is Love" enough. It's one of the most beautiful books I've ever read. A lot of it is heartbreaking, but there are also a lot of uplifting pieces about pride and joy and love, and those were so special.

This episode is so fascinating because there's are dozens and dozens of little ways Taliesin's subtext was "I'm queer," but it was such a surprise for that subtext to be text at the end. I think it's greatly affected how I read his queer coding in acting.

Reading Taliesin himself in this episode of Wednesday Club is a major reason why I feel somewhat confident in my analysis about the queer subtext he shows in Caduceus (and Percy). He's very deliberate about his subtext, I think the joke is always that it's genuine.

"Well, those are then the Schrodinger's representations which are 'Are they? Aren't they? We're not going to say.' [Stage whisper] But they are."

I think about this quote all the time. What he says sideways is deliberate, and something he personally delights in reading into. This is, after all, him playing out people in the way he would interact, not really for other people. We don't ask straight people to tell us they're straight, they just show it and we all assume it's true. I strongly suspect that's a freedom Taliesin looks for in queer portrayal.

One of the dynamics going on here that's SO INTERESTING is how apparent the age gap is between Marc and Taliesin and Amy. I don't know Amy's age, but I'd guess she's a decade younger. Marc and Taliesin are so much more okay with clunky, subtext, and or tragic representation.

Partly this is just a difference of Taliesin liking sad stories & Amy liking happy ones, but the difference is so much more magnified in this episode. Her standards for what makes good representation are noticeably higher, I'd guess partly because she grew up in a better world.

One of the books they mentioned is "My Brother's Husband" by Gengoroh Tagame. there are two volumes and it's such an outstandingly soft story. One of the best comics I've ever read. Yaichi and his daughter Kana get a visit from Mike, his brother's husband, after his brother died. It's about Yaichi trying to get over his homophobia and teach Kana to be a better, more accepting person than he was. Kana just accepts Mike straight away and thinks he's amazing.

Here is a selection of comic picks from the episode (by no means all of them). Here's Amy's crowdsourced queer comics recommendation thread, which is full of excellent reads, some of which they talked about.

4:45 Marc: "I'm glad [the Pulse shooter] is dead because he did a horrible, unforgivable thing, but part of me wishes someone had been there to give him a hug, you know?"

[I've been thinking about this sentiment and grace for two years.]

10:54 Marc: "We need to hold our government responsible with the same passion we do when Marvel has Spider-Man's costume wrong in an issue."

0:16:08 Taliesin: "It is a thing that happens to me occasionally on the internet, and this book brought this back up pretty significantly, and I don't do this all the time 'cause I only have so much emotional energy for a human being, especially, you know, times being what they are. I've only got so much of my brain power before I turn into a quivering mess."

0:16:25 Marc: "I can't wait for the day we can wake up and not be angry."

Taliesin: "I know. I'm so…"

Marc: "I'm so tired of being mad!"

0:16:31 Taliesin: "I take moments every morning, and of course being on the internet you get a lot of- there's hate and trolling that come my way, and a lot of it is nothing I didn't hear in high school, nothing that I'm not use to, you know, I've got a pretty thick skin, and I don't delve into the comments sections of videos or anything like that because I'm, you know, sane. But every now and then some body gets through and I just kind of want to have a moment of, like, I wish- and I want to test the theory that if I just find this person, I grab them for a second, and like, "Dude, are you alright? Like, do you need therapy because I'm in therapy and it's fucking great, and what can I-" I feel like, "When was the last time anyone asked you if you're just okay, if you need something 'cause, like, what the fuck, man?"

…

0:17:18 Taliesin: "I wish I had the energy for all these kids. I mean, like, it's so- and in real life I can do this, and I've had those moments in real life where you see someone losing their shit and you're like, 'Do you just need a fucking drink and someone to listen to you talk about your shit and not tell you that you're being, like-'"

Amy: "Or fewer drinks."

Taliesin: "I mean, like, often times just sit down, and I promise I'm not going to make fun of you, I'm not going to tell you you're being weak, tell me, like, what, man, what hurts?"

0:17:59 Marc: "I don't think most people are evil. I think that there's a percentage of people that occupy the White House that are pure evil…"

Taliesin: "I've had a couple roommates that I'm not even making a joke that are definitely into that spectrum, but most people are just lonely and sad."

Marc: "Well, most people want to live their life, be happy, and be left alone, and I think for me it all boils down to education is the key because when you have- when you're not educated, you're easily scared and when you're easily scared you look for scape goats. It's what one political party has been making their hay on for a number of years."

31:27 Marc: "We're all the same. We come up with things as a species to divide us when we're actually 99% the same. And we just let that 1% get in the way of everything."

36:01 Taliesin: "I started to figure out that this was the beginning of a process. And I was starting to notice, 'This is going to lead to the types of characters I want to see in my fiction. And I started breaking down this formula of there's things that you have to do in the momentum of pop culture to get the kind of characters you want. And this was one of the thing that you have to do. And I broke it down to metaphorical representation with books like the X-Men where there are no—there were almost no gay characters in the X-Men." Marc Andreyko: "Or Peppermint Patty, or Schroder."

Taliesin: "Well, those are then the Schrodinger's representations which are 'Are they? Aren't they? We're not going to say.' [Stage whisper] But they are.

"But we have the metaphorical, we have the Schrodinger, we hate the stereotypes, which are the these are the things people think they know about these people."

Marc: "The gay hairdresser, the black drug dealer…"

Taliesin: "Then you have the buddyism, which is you have the established characters going, 'Some of my best friends.' And then we can just have a character where this is part of the tapestry. Once we've gone through all of this stuff so that everybody has gotten it out of their system, we've kind of sifted the pop culture to the point that now you can just do it."

Marc: "But that's not just limited to LGBT."

Taliesin: "No, that's any."

Marc: You look at female characters, you look at African American characters, and what's interesting about the LGBT experience now is it's taken 100 years for Black characters, it's taken 100 years for women characters, the LGBT representation- In my lifetime- if you told me 20 years ago that the Supreme Court would say that marriage is a right, I would have said, 'No way.'"

Taliesin: "No."

Amy: "No way."

Marc: "If you had told me there was going to be a gay-straight alliance at my high school, where my graduating class was 1000 people, 99% of the them I'd say, 'No.' My high school reached out to me after the book came out to send copies to their library. The learning curve for LGBT- we have gotten the privilege of having a very accelerated learning curve on the backs of other minorities who are still struggling to get ahead."

Taliesin: "We got to live- you actually get to live to see the work pay off. Which is rare in human history.

Marc: "As you say, that's just the way it starts out. It starts with exotic, then it becomes noble savage, then it becomes villain, then it becomes minstrel, then it becomes best friend, then it becomes lead. That's just the evolutionary trail."

54:32 Taliesin: "Culture is not a rocket ship. We all don't get on the rocket ship to the planet culture and go up to the moon. Culture is like life: it is chaotic, it is violent, it is hungry… It is not normal for everything to just keep getting better all at the same time. It's normal for everything to get better over a period of the long game. In any internal point, chaos—"

Marc: "Well, Love is Love, a tragedy made that book come to life."

Taliesin: "That is the soil in which these things get planted, sadly."

Amy: "But that kid who graduates high school [because the book encouraged them when they thought they couldn't do it], who knows what happens."

0:55:04 Matt: "We've got Blackmarket Bingo asking, 'What does Pride mean to each of you individually?'"

0:55:11 Marc: "Well, pride to me is a loaded word because, as a writer, I think 'pride,' I think 'hubris,' I think pride can be a detriment. There's pride with a lowercase p and there's Pride with a capital P. I think, for me, Pride in the LGBT sense of the word is lack of shame, is owning who you are, and not apologizing for who you are."

Taliesin: "Personal honesty."

Marc: "And being a good person who's an honest person. If you're an honest person and you live your life by the only direction we need as people: treat people the way you want to be treated. I don't care if you're gay, straight, Black, white, Republican, liberal, conservative, whatever, if you treat people the way you want to be treated that is living Pride because you should be proud of us not yourself; you should be proud of the change you can affect to make the world a better place. And I know that sounds like fortune cookies or Opera, or Yanla (sp?) changed my life or something like that, but it is very true. So, a lot of these clichés are become cliché because they are very true. And I think if you just try and live your life honestly and be nice to people. Hold the door, let someone in in traffic, you know, talk to the old lady in line at the grocery store, you never know what difference that's going to make. You never know how that's going to change the course of someone's life, so why not?"

…

0:56:48 Taliesin: "The notion of, 'We're all in this together.' And I will say Pride for me has always been about… and I got a lot of, well, for various reason I got a lot of crap as a kid, but one of the things I got crap about was this notion from some people, this was the weird one, that I was somehow putting effort into being this kind of person. That this took effort, that I was somehow pushing forward a pretense, and I just kind of had to do the, "No, this is actually…"

Marc: 'Who has the energy?"

Taliesin: "Who has the energy to pretend to be this weird and awkward! This is just me letting go and if every- like-"

Marc: "I'm not Andy Kaufman, this is all real."

Taliesin: "This is not an act! this is just- I mean, occasionally it's curated, which is different, especially this being the internet, but like, just the notion that if we all are- and the honesty that I was talking about, it was not honesty to other people necessarily, but just waking up that morning and being the person you feel like being and then just treating everybody the way- and just finding that communication between real people, not people trying to live up to some notion of who they think they should be."

0:57:50 Marc: "Well, once again I'm going to circle this back to a quote Patty Jenkins said, she talked about how the word cheesy is banned on her sets because she said, 'When did we become afraid of genuine emotion and sincerity.' And I'm guilty of this; we've all become too cool for school; we've all become the kids in Heathers and all that. And that's kind of why we're at where we're at now: We're afraid to cry, we're afraid to let down our walls, and I can't even read the quote because I start bawling, but she talks about we're in a really difficult place as a species right now. We should be embracing sincerity and genuine emotion and that sort of thing. We shouldn't be afraid of it anymore. And I just responded to her, I tweeted back, 'Fuck yes!'

1:09:28 Marc: "There's something to be said for the hidden and the metaphor, you know?"

Taliesin: "Yes!"

Marc: "It's great that there's so much acceptance for LGBT characters and LGBT people today, but part of me wishes it was still back when I was in my 20s when you would get- you would see someone as a party and be like, [knowing nod] 'Yeah, I know,' and it was just unsaid or your would know that Peppermint Patty and Marcy are going to have a bed and breakfast in Oregon when they're adults."

Taliesin: "Obviously."

Marc: "And all that secret handshake stuff was… It's immeasurably better now and I'm putting this in… I would never want it to change, but there was something that the not knowing, the not having everyone be in on the joke, was nice because it also gave us an ownership of ourselves where it was the club we could control, we were the bouncer at the door of this club, and of course, ironically, homogenization is a good thing and to an extent of everyone being missed up, but there's something to be said about the subtlety of that, and I think a lot of times the subtlety and the metaphors are far more impactful than the direct."

1:15:41 Taliesin: "You have to be open to new ideas and you have to have faith in your ideas, if you think they're good ideas, that they're not… if they're good enough ideas, the world is not going to break them in half. They don't need to have a fence built around them. If you have good ideas and philosophies about the world, the world's not going to break them, it's going to enforce them.

1:20:10 Marc: "'Cause I always say that being gay is a huge part of who I am, but it's also an utterly insignificant part of who I am. We're all, once again, we're all have the same day to day struggles."

1:54:18 Amy: "I don't talk about it much, but I'm the B in LGBT, for the record. Doesn't tend to come up a lot."

Taliesin: "Are we going there?"

Amy: "Well, I am."

Taliesin: "Yeah, I am, too. Fuck it."

Taliesin looked at her with intense trepidation after she said it. Worried about what that step might mean, but also what it said about him if he did that whole episode about Pride and but was too scared to show it. And then wrote it off with a brief shrug and "Fuck it."

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weregonnaneedmorewhiskey · 6 years ago

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It’s trendy to hate

Ok, so this is kind of a follow up from a previous post from my blog post on cancel culture. Something that I have observed in the last two years on social media is that there is a trend in hyping people up to great success and then once they’ve reached that level, we then see hate start to increase. The first person I saw this happen to was Taylor Swift. After the massive success of the 1989 era, her transition into pop music, we started to see a lot of hate towards Taylor. Part of this I do believe was from the whole Kanye West/Famous situation where Kim had released a recording of Taylor and Kanye’s performance in which we hear Taylor hear the lyric “I think me and Taylor might still have sex”.

We hear Taylor respond to this lyric citing no problems with it. HOWEVER we do not hear that in that recording that Taylor know about the following lyric of making her “famous”, so I’m definitely think to this day Taylor didn’t know about that lyric until The Life of Pablo was released. After this episode of KUWTK aired, the hate for Taylor was immense. Her Instagram comments were filled with snake emoji and a hate train had arrived. Thankfully Taylor was able to take this snake narrative and turn it on it’s head in the Reputation era. Something that I love.

Another example. After Cardi’s Grammy win, she received major backlash from it to the point where she temporarily deactivated her Instagram account. Since Cardi’s Grammy win, I’ve seen a lot of people overnight start to hate Cardi and it begs to question of why do people just start to hate things that are popular. Ella Mai got a fair share of hate the other day when made reference to Jacquees singing trip at Drake’s Assassination Vacation tour where Tory Lanez brought him out as a guest (by the way, you’re in front of 20,000 + people and you sing a cover instead of your original music. That’s the perfect moment to plug your music you idiot). Once Ella, who has had little to say on the situation spoke on how she felt in that moment and yet jacquees did a whole press tour on it, people said she should “get over it” and that’s she’s jealous...a Grammy award winner with two platinum songs and probably another platinum song, a platinum album, a feature with Meek Mill and a sold out tour is jealous of Jacquees’ mediocre cover. Ok go off.

Ariana Grande is another person that received a mass amount of hate after the release of Thank U, Next accusing her of appropriating black culture when Ariana has been heavily influenced by black music from the beginning of her career. Her debut album is a throwback 90’s R&B album heavily inspired by Mariah and Whitney. I could get into the whole culture vulture argument because there is valid point to made about how people roast others for appropriation but let Bhad Bhabie become a thing (this still angers me to this day because she is a joke and a walking caricature)

It’s like it’s cool to hate what’s trendy but is this jumping on the hate train because everyone is? I strongly believe so and this is very dangerous. Kevin Hart in a recent interview spoke on this and I could not agree more on what he said. We need to all have our individual opinions, not collective ones. Why do we build people up only to want bring them down? I just don’t understand this at all. My inspiration for this post was from numerous viral hate tweets about Jennifer Lopez. Recently I keep seeing tweets undermining Jennifer’s career in music and it’s frankly quite annoying and hypocritical and shows that a lot people don’t know the ins and outs of the music industry. The claim that Jennifer has stolen songs is a narrative that has been falsely spread and a couple YouTube video which I will not share the name of because I do not want to hear this narrative at all. For those of you that don’t know, back in 2001-2 the singles I’m Real and Ain’t it Funny remix were co-written by Ashanti. Ashanti’s vocals are also featured as background. Ashanti herself had admitted that she not the so called “ghost voice” of Jennifer Lopez. Also since you lot love Ashanti, I have a crazy suggestion. SUPPORT HER MUSIC AND HER CONCERTS! If you love her so much then why is cancelling concerts because of low ticket sales and not charting. Just saying. Don’t @ me. Period. Slagging off Jennifer does nothing for either one of them when Jennifer minds her, makes money and takes care of her kids and is engaged and you’re making viral tweets like that’s gonna bother her day and brighten Ashanti’s. I’m sure Ashanti would be grateful if you supported her music instead of tweeting.

Ashanti and Jennifer are cool to this day, she’s in the Ain’t it Funny music video and Ashanti is still to this day proud of how successful the songs were. This is a very common practice, there are many examples of this in music. Joe Jonas’ See No More, Lighthouse and Justin Bieber’s Christmas Eve were all written by Chris Brown and Chris’ vocals can be clearly heard in the background and yet no one thinks that Joe and Chris are ghost singing or stole from Chris. Huh. A lot of songs originally intended for other artists get passed on and sometimes their vocals are still on the track. This is a COMMON music industry practice. Some artists write songs from other artists and aren’t even credited for their contribution. An example of this is Jason Derulo’s Want You to Want Me. Want You to Want Me was actually ghostwritten by Chris Brown for his sixth studio album X but the track was abandoned because he felt that it wasn’t cohesive with the album as a whole which I agree with. His demo can be found on YouTube which I will link but unless you go on to Wikipedia, you wouldn’t know this fact. Tracks can be stolen and that has happened but 95% of the time, it is the producer that is responsible for this or a label executive. A sample of the song Firecracker was orginally meant for Mariah Carey’s Loverboy but ended up on Jennifer Lopez’s I’m Real. It was revealed that Tommy Mottola was responsible for this happening. For those of you that don’t know who Tommy Mottola is, he was the head of Sony music all through the 1990’s and early 2000’s. Tommy Mottola is responsible for many artists careers in particular Mariah Carey and Jennifer Lopez. Tommy Mottola was also Mariah Carey’s first husband who she was with until 1997. Mariah has been candid about the mental and emotional abuse she dealt with in the marriage and how she practically a prisoner in her own home as Tommy controlled everything in her life. After their split, Tommy seemingly attempted to sabotage her career and the stealing of the sample was one of this many attempts. A lot of the time when events like this happen, the artist is unaware of this. Yeah 3x uses the melody of Calvin Harris’ I’m Not Alone, something that Chris Brown was not aware of until he met with Calvin Harris and he played I’m Not Alone to him. Calvin knew the producer DJ Frank E and he had uses his melody with Calvin knowing. Thankfully Calvin was then credited as a featured writer on the song and the situation was resolved. I believe to this day and it’s pretty damn obvious that Tommy Mottola used Jennifer as a pawn in his plan to ruin Mariah’s career as revenge. He put Jennifer out there as his new golden girl replacing Mariah and this helped the false narrative of feud between Mariah and Jennifer when neither artist has ever said anything negative about each other and Jennifer has said in interviews that she loves Mariah as an artist.

This became very long winded but I had to discuss this because I’ve had enough but I will say this. Have you notice a theme in the trendy to hate? Because I have. They’re all women. Women are trend to hate and men get all the glory huh? Below is all the songs I mentioned and chicagojlover on Twitter did a thread in regards all the ghost singing rumours that needs to go viral.

https://youtu.be/yy5nkChQ2E0

https://youtu.be/6kXIC_6wQgM

https://youtu.be/3mC2ixOAivA

https://youtu.be/JeTE5cnkhGc

https://youtu.be/g8MyX_ewXfM

https://youtu.be/lbh7RFWS4Ro

youtube

https://twitter.com/chicagojlover/status/1114197870519967749?s=21

youtube

#blogpost #music #blogger #cardib #taylor swift #jennifer lopez #jlo #ella mai #mariah carey

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summerohnine · 6 years ago

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The Only Thing I Know

Tags: songfic, 2009, first kiss, light angst

Warnings: small amounts of swearing

Word Count: 1.6k

Summary: Dan’s young and (possibly) in love but Phil is scared of moving too fast.

Based off of “fallingforyou” by The 1975, as requested by @noodlephil .

[Read on ao3]