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reachexceedinggrasp · 2 years

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Have been hearing from several professional and unprofessional critics alike that 65 was a disappointment, can you give a more thorough explanation as to how the script is lacking? Most importantly what about Driver's acting,did the poorly written script managed to affect his performance in a degradable way?

The actors did great with what they were given, the main problem was that they were barely given anything. It felt like a first draft because the characters have almost no personality, the relationships and themes are undeveloped, and it doesn't do anything with any of the ideas it introduces.

Like, first the set-up is super paint by numbers, serviceable but ponderous and overdone. Then the sentimentality they're trying to bring to it to give Mills pathos is just incredibly hacky. He's a pilot going on a two year assignment to pay for his seriously ill daughter's medical treatment, analogous to a technical diver or someone in the military. The daughter has Occasional Cough disease and is classically precocious while being played by an actress too old for how young they're writing her.

Anyway, they keep hammering on Mills having pictures and videos of her and constantly play them. These videos are entirely free of content and tell us nothing about either character. It's like placeholder dialogue. This is very tedious. I get it, he has a daughter.

But the main thrust of the film is the crash, the desperateness of the situation, and the renewed quest to escape once he realises there is another survivor. Mills the character has to carry almost the entire movie essentially alone, because Koa the other survivor does not speak a language he (or we the audience) can understand. And I think Adam could easily do that, he's a very engaging screen presence even in this, but they give him zero tools. Mills sends one message and then does not make further attempts or audio diary entries or anything like that. He doesn't talk to himself. He doesn't talk to Koa much and when he does talk to her the writers haven't thought at all about how people who don't share a language can communicate.

There's one scene where he draws for her, but it's horribly executed and for the rest of the film he just shouts slowly at her and when the plot needs her to understand, she magically does. There's just barely any effort made to establish a connection between them, we're supposed to care because she's a little girl and remember he has a daughter. It's especially stupid because one of the few things the movie bothers to tell us about Mills is that he's heroic. He considers suicide when he thinks he is the only survivor in a hopeless situation, he doesn't want to endanger anyone by calling for rescue and clearly has guilt issues, but he becomes determined to save that person the moment he discovers someone else is alive. It's clear he would have done this for anyone, it's not because Koa is a young girl.

If he'd had a monologue where he recorded his experiences for anyone who might recover the ship, or messages to his wife, or if he just thought aloud, or if he'd really tried to communicate with Koa, we could have seen some personality from him and the whole movie would have worked imo. Adam is more than charismatic enough to carry that off. But with the boring dialogue, no personality, and cloying hack sentiment the only thing going on... it's just empty when they try to make us care. You can see all the strings. Every device they use is so obvious and so unthoughtful.

There were one or two really funny/cute moments, but it's sold entirely by the actors with no dialogue.

There's also some bad blocking and confusing scene construction that undermines the performances, but it's not super embarrassing or anything, it's just not good. There's no support for the heady emotional moments or some of the intense physical moments, the actors are just adrift trying to sell it without context. So the script didn't really degrade Adam's acting apart from not giving him anything to work with, but the director does let him down. It's not an impressive showing for anyone.

But like, what is the point? We find out his daughter died while he was away despite the treatment. Was that necessary? He needs a dead daughter to bond with this orphaned girl on a hostile planet? He doesn't have an arc about learning to value life or wanting to live again, he is willing to give up out of guilt and despair and then instantly changes his mind when someone else's life is at stake. He's a selfless person, he already was, the only reason he's on this mission in the first place is because he's willing to do anything to save someone. Nothing happens on a character level. I'm not asking for much, it's a very simple story and that's fine, just something to invest in. It also has nothing to say about emotional connection without words or communication or language- why make them unable to communicate if you're not going to do anything with it?

He lies to Koa that her family is waiting for her at the escape pod to get her to come with him and that's supposed to be our stakes (the only stakes the film has besides 'will they die'), but it's just goofy because it's so haphazard and it's so unclear what she even thinks is happening. She's even more of a blank slate than Mills so I felt no tension about the lie or their relationship. When she finds out, it's deeply blah.

It just feels like there's no thought behind it and there's not enough effort put into it to make it as mindlessly entertaining as it should be either. Even a dumb action thriller needs character. There are good sequences, but way too many parts of it seriously drag because of how underwritten it is. I'm also really annoyed about a) the replacement goldfish plot of them killing his daughter so he can bond with Koa as though a man can't just care about a child in danger because he's a decent person and b) his wife is in the opening scene doing exposition and then she is literally never mentioned again. He has no pictures or videos of her. Getting back to her is not part of his motivation. We will endlessly harp on his dead daughter but the wife is chopped liver. Fuck you, movie.

But yeah the scene with the flower may be bog standard but it worked. Adorable, funny, A+ no notes. Again, credit to the actors because this is a super paint by numbers moment but they sold it. If they had leaned into the comedy a tish more, this would be a blockbuster. Every moment of deadpan with Mills, usually completely non-verbal, is stellar. He is funny and letting him be more funny would have saved this. Let him John McClane it up. They already have him getting progressively more injured as the film goes on, if they'd just let him talk to himself and be sarcastic this thing would have worked.

#if you want to stare at Adam being hot and competent it's great for that #he is in almost every single scene and gets to be an action star #it is worth it if you're watching for him and it's certainly not awful or anything #I was disappointed because I expected it to be a lot more fun and/or a lot more character driven #but it's mediocre it's not outright bad #it's shallow I guess I should say #I was expecting it to be interesting #I was expecting some actual sci-fi elements #but if you are here for suspense and dinosaurs- it's pretty good on that #some boring parts and the budget limitations show a bit but they do a lot with what they have #65

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laurencin-draws · 2 years

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a patron requested nemissa this month and that’s part of why i finally finished soul hackers! so... thank you!

#nemissa #soul hackers #Shin Megami Tensei #devil summoner #megaten #i have. a lot of actualy projects i need to do this month.#but i would like to draw more hackies #i liked them #...#four of them #spooky lunch hitomi and nemissa those are my designated scrunklies

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i-am-bitterly-jittery · 2 years

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Five Times Someone Mistook Roman And Remus (And One Time They Finally Met)

1. Austin

[Original post] • [2] [3] [4] [5] [+1]

Word Count: 701

Rating: Teen

Pairing: Intruxiety

Warnings: shouting, accusations of cheating (no actual cheating), swearing, shitty (ex)boyfriends, panic attacks

Also just to be clear Roman and Remus are not in any way related in this, they just happen to look a lot alike

~~~START~~~

This was only their third date, but Remus really liked Virgil.

They’d originally been sent on a blind date by their mutual friend, Patton (who, Remus later learned, had had to bribe Virgil with cookies so that he’d even go), and had hit it off immediately. Remus was an artist whose work focused heavily on horror; Virgil was a fashion designer whose work could be called “Hot Topic-Chic”.

But it wasn’t just their mutual participation in counter-culture and fascination with the darker things in life that made Patton certain that they were “soulmates”. No, it was the way that most of Remus’s favorite pieces were about finding hope in the darkness; it was the way Virgil lined his favorite clothes with a cute kitty-cat patterned fabric; it was the way Remus had named his dog Mr. Snuggles; it was the way Virgil’s apartment was filled with cuddly plushies that he made himself.

And quite frankly it was the way that both of them had horrendous taste in eye makeup.

But no matter what reason Patton had for setting them up, Remus couldn’t be happier about it.

For their third date, they’d gone to Patton’s cat-theme café (which didn’t have any real cats in it since Patton was allergic), and then they’d taken their hot chocolates (since both of them were on medications that prevented them from having caffeine) and donuts to the park across the street. It had been threatening to rain all morning, so there weren’t too many other people out and about, but now the clouds were starting to clear.

Remus wasn’t really sure what had happened — one minute he and Virgil were discussing the darker themes in cartoons, and the next there was a very irate man screaming at them.

Or more specifically, screaming at Remus.

“I CAN'T BELIEVE THIS!” The man screeched. “YOU'RE CHEATING ON ME!? AFTER EVERYTHING I'VE DONE FOR YOU!? AFTER I ATTENDED THAT SHITTY PLAY LAST MONTH!? Oh, don’t tell me, you actually are sleeping with that actor guy? I knew it! That ‘stage kiss’ had way too much chemistry! So, who’s this? Your third side-hoe? Fourth?”

“Okay first of all,” Remus seethed; he had no idea who this man was, but clearly Remus resembled someone he knew, and clearly that someone deserved better. “Back the fuck up! Secondly, I don’t know who the fuck you are, but you have problems, dude. Thirdly, Vee is my only hoe, so write that down!”

“Oh, grow up!” The man sneered. “You think gluing some shitty fake mustache to your face and changing your clothes makes you unrecognizable? Newsflash Ro, it doesn’t, so stop pretending you don’t know me, and let’s have a real conversation like grownups!”

The man reached out to pull at Remus’s mustache, but Remus slapped his hand away before he could make contact.

“Maybe you need to grow up and stop yelling at strangers in parks,” Virgil hissed, but the man fully ignored him.

“You know what? We’re through! Your singing sucks, your acting is hacky, and it is weird that you’re a full-grown man who’s still into Disney! Lose my number, I never want to see you again.”

The man shoved past Remus — knocking the cocoa out of his hand — and stormed away.

“The feeling’s mutual!” Remus shouted at the man’s retreating form. “HE’S BETTER OFF WITHOUT YOU! What a turd.”

“Y-yeah,” Virgil stammered, drawing Remus’s attention to the fact that he was shaking.

“Are you okay?” He asked softly, taking Virgil’s hand gently. “I swear I’ve never seen that man before in my life! I would never–”

“I believe you,” Virgil cut him off, breath hitching. “I do. I’m just bad at confrontation.”

“Okay. Do you need to sit down? We can go back to Patton’s. Or there’s a bench over there if you want?”

“Bench!” Virgil gasped.

Remus led him over to the bench, and sat patiently while Virgil went through some breathing exercises.

“So?” Virgil asked once his breathing had evened out. “I’m your only hoe?”

Remus cracked a grin. “Oh absolutely! Nothing could compare to that ass!”

Virgil lasted exactly two seconds before he was doubled over laughing and wheezing with Remus close behind.

“You’re my only hoe, too.”

~~~END~~~

I don’t think I’m quite sold on the title, but I had trouble finding a short way to word what this is (technically I don’t need to put “Five And One” but shut up)

This is my first attempt at Dukexiety as a pairing, and I’m not exactly sure I’ve quite hit the vibe, but to be fair, it is a new relationship soooo

(I picked Dukexiety mostly so I could have Virgil go “who are you and what have you done with Remus?” to Roman)

General taglist:

@royalty-of-all-things-snuggly @pixelated-pineapple @knight-shives @misunderstood-shadowling

#sanders sides #ts sanders sides #virgil sanders #remus sanders #dukexiety #intruxiety #roman sanders #patton sanders #doppelgänger au #thursday writes #my writing #sanders sides fanfiction

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sapphicscholar · 3 years

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For the OTP ask meme: 5, 6, 11 (ava/deborah)

5. What’s the one personality trait that most attracts them to each other? What’s the one physical trait that most attracts them to each other?

-Oh, it's hella cliche for this show, but their sense of humor! They speak the same language in that realm, generational references aside, and they can make each other laugh (including with jokes that other people would definitely find, at best, not funny). IMO, that combined with the fact that they also know how to get under each other's skin so thoroughly is what keeps drawing them back into one another's orbit....like too-strong magnets that know there's something right about the other one, some connection there to fly to, but that end up flying at each other hard enough to hurt again and again and again

Physically, oh hmm, I feel like for Deborah it's Ava's smile/laughter (gross, cliche, I know) BUT it's indicative of a change in Ava--she's no longer pretending to be all cool and detached and better than the "hacky" comedy she assumed was all Deborah could do; instead, she's opened herself up to seeing what I think Deborah thinks of as the best part of herself. And for Ava, I think it's Deborah's hair (natural, though she's def got some favorite wigs) or eyes because in the "sex-ish dream" she's with a Deborah who's stripped totally bare of the stage persona, much like she is as well in some of their moments of connection (like in New Eyes). (Though I think if asked Ava would say it's the legs, 100%)

6. Is their love blind or accepting? Do they overlook each others flaws and put each other on a pedestal, or are they aware of the flaws each other holds?

-Oh, no overlooking flaws here. They saw each other's worst sides before they ever even got to tolerating each other as people haha! But in all seriousness, I think we see even in the last 2 episodes of the season, the ways they can both wound each other deeply come to the fore again, and yet--AND YET--they still are there for each other in the ways that matter. Deborah wasn't gonna let Ava show up to that funeral feeling utterly forsaken, and Ava isn't about to let Deborah take this new act (and all the vulnerabilities and hurts it dredges up) on tour without her.

11. What’s the biggest sacrifice they’ve made for each other?

-Thinking canonically here (because holy shit an OTP that actually has SO MUCH already there in is just wild): Ava turned down what was once her dream job, which definitely would have come with more money, prestige, and future opportunities, because she knew she'd have to betray Deborah over it. Even with absolutely zero assurances of future employment with Deborah, she was willing to stake it all on the line to defend Deborah's honor and comedic integrity. [Insert the 'and i just think that's neat' gif]

I think the fact that Deborah broke all of her rules (never forgive, never forget, no funerals, etc.) for Ava is big, but doesn't feel like a sacrifice so much as a willingness to change. What does feel like a sacrifice, though, is her choice to put her legacy on the line for a show that Ava helped create as inspiration, co-writer, and the final push at the end. I adore Jean Smart's performance for the full final episode of S1, but there was something so raw in the way the hurt and anger mingle during their final big fight when Deborah points out that it's all a job for Ava, but it's her life. And even with all that, she opens Ava's gift and decides to sacrifice the easiness that comes with a sure thing for the uncertainty of this new act.

#ask me #trying-to-get-somewhere-real #otp ask meme #hacks hbo #ava x deborah #ava daniels #deborah vance #meta

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sankyeom · 4 years

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batter up! | e.s

pairings: eric sohn x female reader genre: baseball player!eric, college au, strangers to lovers, summary: in which you are assigned to interview the unapproachable baseball team ace eric sohn, and things end up going sideways word count: 6.1k (did i get carried way with the concept? yes i did) requested: nope i literally have other requests from months ago that i should get to but i’ve been having writers block and i couldn’t write any of them without it sounding awful sooooo here we are!!! enjoy lol note: all of the boyz are the same age for the sake of the story. also, the start of the plot is based on rowoon’s episode of sf9’s drama click your heart. 𝚖𝚊𝚜𝚝𝚎𝚛𝚕𝚒𝚜𝚝

“So, you want to join newspaper,” the newspaper editor, Choi Chanhee, said as he crossed his arms and surveyed you. It was the start of the second semester, and you soon realised that you had very few clubs and activities under your belt. “What makes you think I’ll let you join in the middle of the year?” Chanhee inquired, raising an eyebrow in question. His full cheeks and baby pink hair usually made him seem approachable and soft, but his hard expression cancelled out any comfort his other features might have brought you.

You blinked at him. “We’ve been best friends since freshman year?” you deadpanned, irritated that Chanhee was making such a big deal out of it. From the corner of the room, you noticed Changmin suppress a giggle by clearing his throat and pretending to cough into the bend of his elbow. “Come on, Chanhee. You’re a reporter short since Bomin quit, right?” you recalled what he had been moaning about for nearly three months. “I can fill in for him! I’ll be great.”

Despite being your best friend and normally having quite a warm personality, Chanhee was skeptical. “Alright,” he decided, drawing the word out and unfolding his arms. Chanhee sauntered over to where Changmin was standing and – after giving him a sharp elbow to the ribs – grabbed his clipboard, pretending to look for something to assign you. You could tell by the ways his eyes didn’t even skim the words that he already had something in mind for you. “If you’re so desperate to join the paper, then you can do the interview on Eric Sohn,” he stated, giving you a challenging look.

So much for him “going easy on you”, as he had said moments before the two of you entered the media room together.

Dramatically, a few gasps sounded through the media room and you sighed. “Who’s Eric Sohn?” you almost regretted asking, since everyone seemed mortified that you didn’t know him.

“He’s the baseball team’s ace,” Juyeon explained while trying to balance his water bottle on his head. It was half full and he had been at it for the entire time you tried to convince Chanhee to let you join newspaper. “Unapproachable as hell, though. We’ve tried to interview him before and believe me, it was terrible,” he added with a quiet laugh, eyes crinkling at the outer corners. “He’s a friend of ours but he doesn’t really say much.”

“Everyone wants to know more about him,” Chanhee elaborated, causing your eyes to flicker back to your best friend. “And if I want to be the best editor in history of the paper, I’m getting that story,” he smiled sweetly, as if he hadn’t given you – what seemed like – an impossible job. “Like you said, you’ll be great!” Chanhee pumped a fist in the air half-heartedly to encourage you.

Sunwoo snorted, lying across three chairs he had lined up for him to curl up on. “Or not,” he sang, tossing a hacky sack between his hands with ease. “Eric’s my best friend and the last time I tried to interview him, he yelled at me for interrupting his practice and had the coach kick me out,” Sunwoo seemed amused by the turn of events, but it didn’t motivate you to carry out your interview. “I’m banned from the baseball field now.”

It wasn’t long before other members of the paper brought up their own horror stories, describing attempts at interviewing the baseball team’s ace. The negativity in the room surprised you; it was supposedly only an interview assignment. Was Eric Sohn really that difficult to be around? And if so, why was your best friend making your first assignment so hard on you?

“So far, this assignment has been proven impossible to complete,” Chanhee explained. “Do we all agree that if Y/n can do this, she gets to join newspaper? No questions asked?” he glanced around at his team of writers, photographers and editors. Immediately, the members all nodded. Chanhee smiled at you.

Well, that answered your questions.

Feeling burdened, you asked Chanhee, “How long do I have for this?”

Chanhee flicked through the stack of papers attached to his clipboard until he found the paper’s schedule. “I can give you about a month, but no more than that,” he insists. “I may be your best friend, but I do have a weekly paper to put out,” he adds, making you nod.

“A month is more than enough,” you promised. “On what days does the baseball team meet?”

The indoor baseball stadium your university had was cold in the mornings. Chanhee had managed to get Eric’s practice schedule from Sunwoo, and the next morning at 5:30am sharp, you arrived at the stadium to try and interview Eric. As you opened the main door, you could hear a loud and clear voice telling everyone to do their warmups so they could start practicing. Since you didn’t know much about baseball, you decided to make your way towards the bleachers and watch the team practice for a while.

Chanhee had shown you a picture of Eric so you would know who you were looking for, and you were slightly miffed that it hadn’t done him any justice. He stood out much more in person; his features sharper and body leaner and stronger from the years of practice. You were almost intimidated by his overall aura and piercing gaze.

Checking your notes, you recalled basic information that Chanhee had given you so that you weren’t completely clueless going into your interview. Eric Sohn was the ace player because he was their best batter and fastest runner. This combination along with his precision allowed him to almost always hit home runs and also be an excellent fielder. A summary of his past scores had also been provided, but that might as well have been a completely different language because you couldn’t understand it.

With a sigh, you tightened your jacket around you in order to warm up more in the cool stadium. Watching Eric practice, you noticed that he wasn’t batting very well on that day. There was a crease between his brows and he kept hitting the ground with his bat in frustration, occasionally throwing it down staring at the floor in contemplation.

You really felt for him.

It was clear that the team relied on him a lot and his reputation of being unapproachable and cold surely couldn’t have been entirely fair, either. His coach was chastising him, pointing his finger and raising his voice as Eric stood still and nodded, face void of any expression. You assumed his coach had told him to take a break, because he started removing his batting gloves and making his way to the bench.

You knew it probably wasn’t the best time to approach him for a favour, but you had been sitting for nearly an hour and your legs and thighs were starting to feel numb. The walk down the steps was welcome, even when your heart raced with nerves as you approached Eric. When you were a few steps away from him, the boy glanced up and raised an eyebrow at you. “This is a closed practice,” he told you.

Of course he had to have the most incredible voice to go along with his looks. Great.

“Um,” You stammered dumbly for a moment, tucking your hair behind your ear to give your hands something to do. “I know. I just- I was hoping you had a moment?” you asked, voice far less confident than you had wished. “I’m on the university’s newspaper and I was assigned an interview on you.”

“On me,” Eric repeated, tilting his head to the side. “Chanhee really doesn’t give up, does he,” something resembling a chuckle left his lips. “I’m at practice right now,” his tone was firm, as if he was trying to tell you to leave without expressing those exact words.

You felt yourself nodding. “I get it… if you’re having a hard time with your practice,” you added, thinking back to how his coach yelled at him. “I understand that and I can leave you alone.”

Eric observed you; you weren’t sure exactly what he was looking for, but he suddenly motioned towards you. “What’s the first question?” he asked. You were pleased that he had decided to do the interview and, in fear of him changing his mind again, immediately opened your notebook to search for the questions Chanhee had wanted answered.

“Right,” you said, finding the right page. “Um, what made you-“

“Heads up!” a shout distracted you from your thoughts. Your head whipped to the side to see who was shouting, only to see a baseball being hurtled at you at a blistering speed.

“Watch out!” Eric exclaimed, jumping in front of you to grab the baseball before it could smack you directly in the face. You flinched at the sound of his hand coming in contact with the baseball, stunned that he had expertly caught the tiny sphere at the speed it was going at.

Just as you were about to thank Eric for saving you, the boy fell to the ground, moaning in pain at the impact. The ball fell from his grasp and he held onto the hand that caught it with his other; tears building in his eyes. You kneeled down next to him, panicked. “Are you okay?” you questioned, concerned at his reaction.

“Sohn!” his coach yelled, running over to where you and Eric were crouched. “What the hell were you thinking, catching a fastball with your bare hands?” the man chastised, kneeling with the boy and calling the team medic over to inspect Eric’s hand.

“Is that bad?” you asked innocently, confused as to why Eric was in so much pain.

The coach gave you a glare. “Get out of my stadium,” he ordered instead of answering you.

You glanced between him and Eric, feeling embarrassed at the situation. “I’m really sorry,” you told Eric sincerely, picking up your abandoned bag and running out of the stadium.

Chanhee was going to kill you.

“I thought you wanted to be on the paper,” Chanhee said with a frown. “Not that you wanted the paper to write an article about you injuring the baseball team’s star player,” he emphasised, making you flinch.

“That isn’t fair!” you exclaimed. “I didn’t do anything wrong! If anything, we should be asking ourselves why a teammate of Eric’s blatantly hurled a baseball in his direction,” you tried to defend yourself. “And I was in the midst of getting that interview, thank you very much.”

“And now I’ll never get it,” Chanhee sighed. Younghoon rolled his eyes at your friend’s theatrics.

“Shouldn’t we be more concerned that our friend is injured than the fact that you didn’t get your story?” he reminded your pink-haired friend. Chanhee waved his hand at him, as if physically swatting Younghoon’s words away, before going back to picking at his lunch.

“Yeah Chanhee,” a voice behind you agreed, and you knew in your gut that it was Eric. Nervously, you turned around to face the blond and saw him already looking at you. Your eyes met and you were startled by how much warmer his deep brown eyes appeared. “You’re being a terrible friend.”

“Well you’re a terrible friend, too,” Chanhee argued. “How many reporters have I sent to interview you, only to have them be humiliated and turned down?” he asked.

“I’m injured,” Eric said as he took the empty seat between you and Kevin. “Can’t you lay off on the newspaper stuff for a while?” Chanhee rolled his eyes but said nothing; you knew this meant that he agreed with Eric but was too proud to voice it.

Eric’s mention of an injury made you glance down at his right hand, seeing it tightly wrapped in a bandage. “Are you okay?” you asked him, observing his hand.

“It’s a sprain,” Eric explained, lifting his hand up for your friends to see. “Nothing major, but I have to sit out of practice for at least a month, according to the doctor,” he added. “It’s a good thing the season doesn’t start until two months from now.”

Your heart sank at his admission. “I’m really sorry,” you told him. “Truly. I never meant for that to happen,” you promised. “Is there anything I can do?” you offered, wanting to help him out since you had caused enough problems for him.

“Sure,” Eric allowed. “First off, you can tell me your name.”

You smiled at this. “I’m Y/n,” you introduced yourself. “What else?”

You were surprised when the corners of Eric’s mouth lifted up into a small grin. “You could walk me to class?”

He had a stunning smile. Something about it made you want to make him smile more.

Helping Eric with his books and bag had become a regular thing. At first, you did it because you felt guilty about partially being at fault for his injury (and because you were curious about him). Soon, you found that Eric was actually quite a bright and excitable person who was a lot of fun to be around.

As Eric was always so busy juggling school and baseball, he never sat with you and your mutual friends during mealtimes. Now that he no longer had to attend baseball practise at the recommendation of his doctor, Eric was able to sit with your friends every lunch and dinner. Even your friends were surprised when Eric started openly joining discussions and laughing at Sangyeon and Juyeon’s terrible jokes. Sunwoo especially was quite startled by this change; as his roommate and best friend, it was a change that he welcomed despite the initial shock.

After a particularly tiring day of midterms, you felt compelled to do something fun instead of spending the whole night cramming for a midterm you were already confident in doing well on. At approximately 3am, you found yourself rounding up ingredients for chocolate chip cookies from your baking stash and tip-toeing your way into the communal kitchen to bake.

Your roommate had been asleep for a few hours at that point, and you knew that most of your friends would be resting after their rigorous study schedules. Thus, as you rolled up your sleeves and pre-heated the oven, you hadn’t expected anybody to be awake to join your late night – or early morning? – cookie escapades.

Which was why you nearly lost your soul when a hand tapped you on the shoulder. You had your earphones in and were humming along to your favourite playlist as you started mixing the dry ingredients for your cookies, and leapt in the air at the contact. Whirling around, you sighed in relief when you saw Eric, stood with pink pyjamas and ruffled hair, instead of your RA. “You scared me,” you told him, even though you knew he could tell from your reaction. “What are you doing awake?”

Eric shrugged. “I heard someone walking down the hall,” he explained. “I guess a small part of me was hoping it was you,” he grinned widely after his cheesy comment, urging you to roll your eyes.

“Very funny,” you mumbled, trying to ignore the way your heart sped up and palms started sweating at his sweet words.

“What are you making?” Eric asked, hopping up to sit on the counter and slipping his glasses on so he could see better. “Cookies?”

You hummed. “Chocolate chip,” you added with a big grin, holding up the bag of sugary delights to emphasise your point.

“My favourite,” Eric noted happily. “Can I help?”

You nodded, listing off the wet ingredients that he could prepare for you in a seperate bowl. You knew he could pour it all with one hand and you would do the mixing yourself afterwards. After handing Eric one of your earphones, the two of you fell into a comfortable silence as you made your cookie batter, the silence only breaking once in a while by your giggles as you bumped into one another. The first time was a mistake on your part, but after that the two of you were trying your hardest to make the other person giggle and squirm.

Once the cookies were shaped and in the oven, you and Eric sat on the floor near them to relish in the heat the oven was radiating. “What were those questions you wanted to ask me?” Eric inquired, referring to the interview questions Chanhee had prepared for you.

Your eyes widened in surprise. The two of you hadn’t discussed the interview since he was injured, and you had nearly forgotten about your assignment. “Oh. They were mostly just about your baseball life and how you keep your grades up and stuff,” you admitted. “It’s not the interview I would have wanted to give, but it’s what Chanhee wanted.”

“What would you have asked me, then?” Eric asked. “What is your ideal Eric Sohn interview,” he added in an MC voice, making you fight off a grin at how silly he was being.

“Well,” you trailed off, trying to find the right wording. “That day I was at practice it looked like you were having a pretty hard time. What was going through your mind?”

Eric went silent. He hadn’t been expecting that. “I was just thinking that it’s hard to be perfect all the time. My team relies on me a lot, and while it’s an honour to be such an important member of the team, it can be really hard when people expect you to be the ace and you don’t perform.”

There was a distant look on his face, as if his thoughts were going a hundred miles a minute. “What made you want to join the university baseball team?” you asked, moving slightly so that you were facing Eric more comfortably.

A smile reached his lips. “I just really love baseball,” he chuckled. “I’ve been playing since I was a kid. Obviously I knew that university baseball was going to be on a different level, but I just knew that I wasn’t done playing yet. The challenge was exciting and it motivated me to be a better player.”

“I guess it worked,” you mused.

“I guess so,” he reluctantly agreed.

“So when did you start playing?” you asked, peering into the oven to check on your cookies. They had at least another five minutes left until they would be the golden-brown colour you wanted.

“I’ve played with my dad for fun ever since I can remember,” Eric admitted. “Of course when you grow up in LA, you watch baseball on TV with your family,” he added, reminiscing in his childhood.

“Dodgers?” you guessed his favourite team, since he said he was from LA.

“Yankees,” he corrected with a shrug. “My family used to go down to Yankee stadium to watch them play during baseball season when we visited New York. Our seats were always all the way in the back in the highest row, but I didn’t care. As long as I got to watch it all,” you laughed at his excitement. “I guess you could say my baseball career started in little league,” Eric recalled, stretching his legs out in front of him. “Sometimes I wish I could go back,” the smile slowly fell from his face. “Everything was so much easier then.”

“I get that,” you agreed with him. “I never played in little league, but I remember going to my friends’ games,” you said, almost picturing the old baseball field with all your friends running around and playing. “I didn’t even know what was going on in the game. All I knew was that I could cheer on my friends. I’d yell for them as loudly as possible and get popcorn to keep myself entertained during the parts where my friends were benched,” you smiled at the memory. “It was just... fun. I didn’t have to think about any grown-up problems.”

“That’s exactly how I felt,” Eric agreed, excitement filling his voice. “I finally got to make friends that loved baseball as much as me, and playing was fun. It was exciting and nerve-wracking, and it made me happy to practice and play another game,” he sighed. “These days, I play because the university relies on me, and because my parents want me to,” Eric confessed. “I miss loving baseball, I-“ he paused, clearing his throat. “I want to love baseball. But with all the pressure and expectations…” he trailed off, alluding to the fact that he no longer loved the sport that used to fill his childhood with happiness.

You bit your lip. “I’m sorry,” you told him, more as a form of empathy than anything else. “What made you fall in love with baseball in the first place?”

Eric pondered. “Well, at first I just enjoyed playing the sport. But the longer I played, I guess I liked being part of a team. I liked feeling supported by the other guys and feeling like I was needed and trusted by them.”

“What’s missing from your team now that makes you feel like you don’t have that?” you wondered.

“I guess my team relies on me more than I feel like I can give them,” Eric confesses, voice cracking slightly. He cleared his throat, and you hesitantly reached your hand out for him to hold. He grasped it tightly in his, thankful for the small sign of support.

“Maybe you can find support elsewhere,” you suggested, slightly holding up your hands and smiling.

“Yeah, maybe,” Eric agreed with a smile, tears slightly welling in the corners of his eyes. You didn’t have anything else to say and were grateful for the alarm quietly going off on your phone, signalling that your cookies were ready. “Perfect timing,” he added with a laugh as the two of you stood up. You pretended not to see Eric wipe away a tear with the sleeve of his sweatshirt.

They hadn’t looked like sad tears.

Chanhee flipped through the pages you had printed out for him to read. He already spent ten minutes reading and re-reading the article you had written. At this point, it was just getting ridiculous. “Chanhee,” you whined, making the pink-haired boy place the papers down.

“This is…” he paused, trying to find the words. “How did you get him to open up like that?” Chanhee wondered, unable to grasp the idea that Eric had given you so many childhood anecdotes and personal stories to fill the pages of your interview.

You smiled. “I just talked to him like a friend instead of someone to interview,” you shrugged. “He’s actually surprisingly easy to talk to. And really talkative once he gets started,” you added as an afterthought.

“I noticed that about him recently,” Sunwoo agreed. This time, instead of lying across three chairs, he was sat upside down on the only sofa in the media room, head dangling dangerously close to the ground. “These days he seems happy to tell me about his day and doesn’t leave a single detail out. It’s kind of crazy to see the change,” Sunwoo told you.

Chanhee help up the pages. “Did he really approve everything in this?” he asked.

You nodded. “Yeah, of course. I wrote it with his permission and let him read it all before I brought it to you. He’s happy with it,” you promised your best friend. “Wouldn’t want to upset my best friend and potential editor…” you trailed off, hopeful.

“Well obviously you’re in!” Chanhee exclaimed, hugging you tightly as you laughed. “You just got me the most personal article of a university athlete I’ve ever published. You deserve it,” he assured you. “Plus, you put a permanent smile on one of my friend’s faces. I didn’t think that would be possible,” Chanhee gave you a meaningful look when you separated, causing you to smile bashfully and angle your gaze at the floor to avoid his gaze.

“He’s way more open than you guys gave him credit for,” you retorted. You truly believed it; the first time you tried to interview him, he had surprised you with how willing he was to help you out.

“And emotional,” Changmin chimed in. “He cried during The Notebook, then he cried again when we put a horror film on afterwards. You can’t win.”

His comment made you laugh, picturing Eric curled up on the couch in the communal dorm movie room while sobbing into Changmin’s shoulder was too good to pass up on. “Make sure you invite me to the next movie night,” you requested. Changmin saluted you in response, Sunwoo throwing a thumbs up in agreement to allow you to join. “Anyway, I need to get going. I’m actually heading to surprise said cry-baby at his first day back at practice,” you informed them, picking up your bag to get going.

“His hand healed so quickly?” Juyeon asked, surprised.

“Not at all,” you denied with a sad smile. “He says it’s still hurting these days. But his coach wants him to come observe practice so when his hand heals he’ll be up to date on everything... Or something,” you shrugged, unsure of how people prepared for baseball games.

As you waved your goodbyes, Chanhee called out to you: “Don’t forget we meet every Monday, Wednesday and Thursday for newspaper!” You were pleased that Chanhee had enjoyed your article and wanted you on the newspaper, especially since so many of your friends were usually occupied by this extracurricular activity anyway.

Once you arrived at the baseball stadium, you took a seat on the first bleacher to wait for Eric to arrive. The weather had warmed significantly since the first time you came a month ago. You supposed the fact that it was an afternoon practice instead of an early morning practice also added to the lack of cold you were experiencing.

“Hey,” a member of Eric’s team approached you with a smile.

Unsure, you smiled back and greeted him. “Hello,” you said.

“You look a little out of place,” he said to you, standing in front of you. “I’ve never seen you here before,” he added.

“Oh yeah, I don’t usually come here,” you confirmed for him. “I’m just waiting for a friend,” you added politely.

“You’re far too pretty to be waiting alone,” he said, which made you freeze up. You hadn’t been approached by guys like him often, but it had happened enough for you to know that they really couldn’t take a hint.

“And yet here I am,” you replied, trying to sound curt.

“I could keep you company,” the guy suggested. You opened your mouth to protest, but he had already taken a seat next to you, far too close for your personal comfort. As you subtly scooted away from him, he seemed to take this as a suggestion for him to sit even closer to you. “I like your hair,” he said, lifting his hand as if he was about to touch it.

A hand grabbed his before he could. “It doesn’t sound like you asked,” Eric told his teammate, right hand tightening on the boy’s, voice clipped and laced with anger. “So I don’t think that’s a very good idea.” Eric yanked him up to his feet, and you finally felt like you could breathe again with the distance between the two of you. With a harsh shove, he stumbled back and glared at Eric, cursing under his breath and stalking off.

“Eric your hand,” you realised, standing up and trying to inspect his injured hand.

“Are you okay?” he asked instead, searching your body for any sign that you were uncomfortable or hurt. “That creep didn’t say or do anything?”

You shook your head. “No, no, I’m fine! But your hand-“ you soon realised that Eric wasn’t even wearing the brace anymore. After the original bandage that was put on it, his doctor had given him a small wrap brace so he could do everyday activities with more ease and support. Instead, his hand was bare and looked completely fine. “Is healed?” you stammered, confused. You glanced up at Eric, who seemed to be avoiding eye contact. “Just yesterday you told me that it was hurting.”

“I lied,” Eric confessed. “I’m sorry.”

“It’s okay,” you forgave him easily. It wasn’t a big deal and you were just happy that he wasn’t in pain anymore, especially since you felt partially responsible for the injury in the first place. “Why didn’t you tell me?” you wondered.

Eric scratched the back of his neck and sighed. “I like having you around, okay?” he admitted. “I figured that after you got whatever you needed for your interview, you would leave me alone and go back to how things were before I was injured.”

His disclosure had stunned you into silence. You opened your mouth to say something twice, but ended up closing it again for lack of knowing what to say. “You thought I was just talking to you for my interview?” you clarified. Eric nodded. “I completely forgot about it until you brought it up a few weeks ago,” you admitted to him. “I was spending time with you because I wanted to, not because I wanted to get interview answers out of you,” you promised.

“Not even because you felt guilty about being involved in my injury?” Eric inquired.

“At first I wanted to help you because I felt guilty,” you agreed. “But after the first time we hung out together I stopped caring about that.”

“Oh,” Eric said, staring at you as if he had no clue what to say. “I really thought you were going to leave…”

You were amused that Eric was so sure of himself. “Did you ever consider asking me to stay?” you pointed out, crossing your arms and raising an eyebrow to tease him.

Eric paused. “Will you?” he wondered.

“Will you?” you retorted.

Eric frowned. “I’m lost,” he stated. “Will I what?”

You grinned, finding his furrowed brows and slightly cocked head quite adorable. “Kiss me,” you told him what you meant. His eye’s widened, lips parting slightly before Eric nodded. Once, twice, three times. You took this as your cue and stepped closer to him, your lips easily finding his as you closed your eyes.

“Sohn!” the sound of his coach’s voice caused you to jump apart. “This is baseball practice. You can practice that in your own time,” he said, although you could tell by his tone that he was poking fun at his ace player.

Eric blushed, clearing his throat. “Yes coach,” he called, smiling shyly at you before rushing off to put on his batting gloves.

Decked out in your university’s colours, you stood in the bleachers with your friends, anxiously biting your lip as you watched the game unfold before you. Eric and his team had made it to the championships this season, and you were more than thrilled to go and support him with the rest of your friends. Eric had been teaching you about baseball for months now, and the more you went to watch him play, the more motivated you were to remember everything he told you.

Your article had been published in the newspaper a week after you handed it in to Chanhee, and the personal interview had made it the most popular issue Chanhee had ever published as the editor of the weekly paper. Needless to say, readers wanted you to write a follow-up interview on Eric and his life on the baseball team, especially after word got out that the two of you had started dating. For a while, you were the talk of the town. You were unnerved by the sudden attention, but things mellowed down soon after people realised that you weren’t interested in satiating their endless questions.

“How much longer is this going to be?” Haknyeon whined, sighing as he leaned against Kevin for support. He had mostly been attracted by the idea of all the great snacks that being at a baseball game entailed, and hadn’t realised that a game without timing such as baseball could go on for hours.

“This is the ninth inning, so most games usually end with this round,” you spouted the information Eric had drilled into you with ease after going to his games all season long.

Next to you, Jacob giggled. “You’re turning into a natural at this,” he complimented, grinning. “Eric would be proud,” he added happily.

“Eric is their last batter,” you said in response, more focused on the game than on Jacob’s comments. “He looks nervous,” you mused, foot tapping nervously on the floor, causing your whole leg to move rapidly.

“Don’t you be nervous, he’s got this,” Kevin assured you, trying to stop Haknyeon from falling asleep on his shoulder. “Despite his injury a few months before the season started, this is the best he’s ever played.”

Hyunjae chuckled. “Yeah, I wonder why,” he teased, pointing over at you behind his hand as if you wouldn’t have known what he was doing.

You shushed your friends. “He’s up,” you said, voice shaking slightly from your nerves.

Eric stepped up to the place, looking like he was at ease and confident. This calmed you only slightly, because you knew that Eric was good at putting on a performance during his games. He knew that if he looked even slightly anxious, it would affect the other players and the audience too. Eric adjusted his grip on the bat and got in position. The pitcher threw the ball and Eric swung, missing the ball by a hair.

You groaned. “Strike one!” the umpire called, holding up a finger.

“Come on, Eric…” you mumbled, folding your hands together and squeezing tightly.

The second time the pitcher threw the ball, Eric swung the bat and hit the ball clean, sending it soaring over the outfield fence, only hitting the ground after flying between the foul poles. You gasped, jumping in the air and cheering. “What’s happening?” Chanhee asked, standing up next where you and Jacob were shouting for joy.

“Home run!” you and Jacob chorused as Eric ran his way to each base at lightning speed, reaching home base and making the winning run for your university’s team. “We won!” Jacob added and your friends all cheered with you, jumping up and down in excitement.

You could see the team celebrating together by screaming and jumping as well, and you clapped along with the rest of the audience. Eric joined their excitement after pulling off his helmet and gloves, making you smile in relief. After opening up to you and your friends, Eric had decided to speak with his team and coach about the pressure he was feeling. The team had reacted better than Eric expected, and soon Eric felt reassured and supported by his teammates.

Once Eric had given his coach a hug, he charged towards the fence separating the field from the bleachers. Instantly, your friends started cooing at you, but you only rolled your eyes. You had gotten used to the teasing after dating Eric for half a year at that point and it no longer affected you anymore. You handed Jacob your bag and raced down the bleacher steps towards your boyfriend.

“Congratulations!” you exclaimed, wrapping your arms around him when he met you on your side of the fence. You easily fit into his arms and heard Eric’s adrenaline-filled laughter next to your ear.

“Couldn’t have done it without you,” he stated, pulling away just enough to kiss you. The cheers coming from your friends were almost defeating at this point but you ignored them, pulling Eric closer to you and deepening the kiss. When you pulled away, he gave you one last peck before beaming. “You helped me fall in love with baseball again, and that’s something I can never repay you for,” Eric told you, causing your heart to swell with pride.

You had noticed the changes in Eric’s attitude towards baseball before the season started. He seemed more excited about his practices and was getting closer to the people on his team. “It’s not little league, but it’s pretty good, right?” you asked rhetorically.

Eric laughed. “Really good,” he corrected. “Not only did I fall in love with baseball again, but it helped me fall in love with you for the first time,” Eric confessed. The two of you had never said that you loved each other, even though you showed it every day with your actions.

You beamed. “I love you too, Eric.”

And with that, you were pulled into another kiss. This one felt more fulfilling and warm than all the previous ones combined.

note: i’m a sucker for cheesy endings so i had to end it like this!!

#the boyz #eric #eric sohn #tbz #the boyz imagines #the boyz scenarios #the boyz oneshots #the boyz fic #the boyz x reader #son youngjae #eric imagines #eric imagine #the boyz imagine #tbz imagines #tbz imagine #eric x reader #deobiwritersnet #fic: batter up!

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spookyspaghettisundae · 3 years

Text

You Are Nothing Special

Shadows shifted. Just shadows. There was nothing in this pool of darkness but us, dust, and grime. But I expected slime-monsters posing as cops to jump out at us at any point in time.

This warehouse smelled like a locker. Stale sweat. And lots of grit, a tinge of rust. It made my nose itch, and I suppressed the urge to sneeze, making me more lightheaded than my racing heartbeat already had left me. The only sound was the soft shuffling of our feet, our half-assed attempts at sneaking through this abandoned place.

Though it was long past midnight and we avoided activating any lights, the dim glow of a corporate logo's glowing sign outside cast just enough illumination through the tall and grime-fogged windows to envelop us in an eerie dark blue sheen.

My hostage-taker-turned-savior had taken the lead, as he always had since we escaped my apartment and those weird creatures. He held two handguns out in front of him, pointing them into doorways and down hallways and pausing to aim every time he rounded any corner. I could tell from his rigid shoulders and constant scowling squint—even with the green bandana covering half his face—just how tense he was. Like his nerves were steel wire, stretched taut and only one tug away from snapping.

Although I had come to implicitly fear, respect, and trust my nameless "hero" over the course of barely under two hours, I was suddenly afraid for him. Up until now, I was afraid of something happening to him because of how helpless that would leave me. But now I was genuinely afraid for his safety. I don't even think it was because I had watched him rescue a homeless man from the weird creatures at the risk of his own life.

And here I was. A gas station attendant with a stolen gun, zero experience in using one, zero knowledge of what madness was taking over this city, and zero skills that would have been any use in survival. Unless you count the ability to keep a hacky sack in the air.

Okay—that was a lie. I can't even pull that off. But my heart, brain, and soul were all trying to escape the prison of my body. I was trying to wake up from a nightmare only to realize every thirty seconds that this was, unfortunately, the inescapable reality I lived in, and the loud drum of my heartbeat drowning out my ability to hear any lurking monsters and the fear that made me tremble constantly ran directly counter to my ability to survive whatever horrors lay in store for me.

Deep breath.

And there he was, rounding another corner like some sort of badass from a crime TV show, pointing those guns into the—

Something cracked. A loud snap. Plastic, maybe. From behind us.

We both swiveled.

Light winked on around us, flaring up across the wide hall we had just crossed. Something loud and metallic dropped, a heavy CLANG. To draw our attention and for gangster-man to point his guns at.

Silhouettes peeled from the shadows all around us. On a catwalk above, from darkened doorways, and from behind a stack of crates nearby.

We were surrounded. By men with guns. They looked like gangsters, too. One of them looked especially funny, dressed in bright white sneakers and comically oversized beige cargo shorts. The tattoos of bullets on his exposed calves and the myriads of other artwork inked into the skin of his bare shoulders and face may have made him look cooler, but I could not let go of how funny the cargo shorts looked on him.

Yet this was no time to snicker about some thug's choice in attire. We were in the middle of a standoff, outnumbered twelve to two. And like I must have made abundantly clear already, I was not exactly a fighter. I'm not even sure if my gun was loaded or if there was some sort of safety mechanism I had to switch to shoot it.

My gangster-guy-savior lowered his guns. To my shock, he pulled down the bandana, finally exposing the lower half of his face, revealing a thin mustache and goatee and a jawline that could cut glass. This was the first I ever saw how handsomely symmetrical his face was, but I did not register it at the time. There was a little bit too much going on here.

Cargo Shorts was not the tallest guy in the warehouse. He was not the most intimidating among them, either. He wasn't even holding the biggest gun—though I'm pretty sure it was an AK-47—thanks for teaching me that much about firearms, pop culture!

Imagine my surprise when I realized he was the boss of this gang. Cargo Shorts slung the rifle back, leaning it against his shoulder. He nodded to my savior.

"D, my man. Took you fuckin' long enough, you big bitch," said Cargo Shorts.

I not only got to see his face, but I also now had a name to go with it.

Well, I guess it wasn't exactly a name, depending on your definition. But among this gang, this was the only kind of name that mattered. I would later learn his full name was "D-Baser". I will fight you if you want to talk about them not being particularly bright, but I will agree that their naming conventions were not that great.

D just shrugged in response to what Cargo Shorts had said. D did not seem like the guy who took shit from anybody but being called a "big bitch" by Cargo Shorts did not faze him at all.

So, yeah, my surprise about Cargo Shorts being the infamous Loco Rocco that D had told me about—his boss, whom he had spoken of with a modicum of respect and reverence—it must have made my eyes grow wide, or maybe I made a stupid face.

Whatever it was, I drew Rocco's attention. He narrowed his eyes as he tilted his head in an exaggerated motion and nodded at me. Not in greeting. He nodded with a certain amount of suspicion.

"Yo, who the fuck is this chick?" Rocco asked.

D shrugged. "I don't know."

"The fuck you mean, you don't know?"

D shook his head and repeated himself, "I don't know. I was on the move, avoidin' the pigs. Took her hostage, iced the pigs, let her go. Let her tag along."

Rocco let that sink in, studying me. He looked me up and down. Not like regular schmucks who checked out my breasts or undressed me with their eyes, but differently. Only later would I come to understand that he was looking for colors, ink, anything that marked me as someone from another gang. Or if my looks stank like those of a snitch.

Or an undercover cop.

I wanted to say something, but I didn't know what to say. I wasn't afraid of things in the shadows or slime-monster-cops anymore, but we were standing in a room full of guys with guns. Sure, they had lowered their weapons and because D was one of them, it was not like they were going to use those guns now. But some of them, unlike Rocco, were undressing me with their gaze.

This was more alien to me than you might imagine because I'm not what some douchebags would commonly call a "looker". Plus, I was dressed in wide sweatpants, probably the ugliest loose-hanging puke-green jacket in my wardrobe and beaten-up old sneakers. Hell, I didn't even have any makeup on; D had taken me hostage right after I rolled out of bed. My hair was probably also a wild mess.

D broke the silence, turning his head to stare at me. His gaze drilled into mine when our eyes met.

"I don't know who the fuck she is, but those cops were about to ice her the same way they were about to ice me. I gave her a piece, let her follow me like a puppy dog, and here we are now. She ain't shot me in the back, and I'mma be real with you, Roc, I don't think she got any fight in her. Like, none."

I blurted out, "Hey!"

Look, I was annoyed. Really offended now. The only upside was that fear of vampires and monsters in the city had been temporarily blown away by this bizarre situation. Unfortunately, it had made way to a different fear.

"Yo, chica," said Rocco with a wave to me. "You lucky we got more important things to do tonight than run a bang-train over yo' ass. Back in the day, we'd call that an 'initiation ritual' for your sort."

Nobody responded to that. My head started spinning and I wanted to throw up as soon as the obligatory barrage of associated imagery overcame me.

"Woah, woah, woah, chica," said Rocco, squinting at me again. He sounded frustrated. "I'm jokin', yo. What do you think we are, some sort o' medieval savages or somethin'? We can't go around town rackin' up rape charges—"

D muttered, "You do any time in the slammer, Spider don't take no kindly to that. And you don't wanna get on Spider's wrong side."

"Word," said another gangster from the catwalk who had been quiet all this time.

Rocco said, "Plus, this motherfucker over here couldn't show his face in church anymore if he had that shit on his conscience." He nodded to the other young man who had just spoken up. "Ain't that right, you little pussy?"

"Fuck you."

Rocco laughed and several others broke out into laughter. I was not sure if they found it funny or it was just habitual to laugh when the boss made a joke. Mainly because I wasn't in on the joke. Insecure as I was, I cracked a nervous grin at that. Maybe because I felt a wave of relief, if even only ever so brief.

I was just baffled at this point. Overwhelmed by the raucously jovial and childish back and forth between these gang members, which formed such a stark contrast from the terrible things I had witnessed prior that night. I had gone from one crippling fear to another and was now just… confused.

The only comparison I can make is this: just think of me as a pot or a pitcher filling up with all sorts of things that don't mix in a drink. You can't tell what exactly it smells like beyond foul, you know better than to take a sip, and you sure as hell don't know what to do with any of it but dump it down a toilet and flush.

Some of the gang members on the catwalk uttered other comments that elicited more roaring laughter from the group, but I had zoned out and didn't catch any of it. I felt like I had slipped into a parallel dimension in which there were no slime-monster-cops or vampires, and where I was just back in bed, having the weirdest dream until I had to wake up in four hours for my next awful work shift.

None of that, though. The record scratched. Or rather, the laughter died down.

Rocco glared at me.

"A'ight, enough fuckin' around. Who the fuck are ya? Rosie? You look like a Rosie to me. You don't gimme a name, I name you."

I swallowed the lump of gravel stuck in my throat and sounded all phlegmatic when I finally spoke up.

"Kelly."

Silence.

"That's a lame-ass name, Kelly."

"Fuck you," I blurted out, with such fury that I surprised myself.

It took me back to growing up and the way our family used to yell at each other at home, or how my brothers and I always insulted each other. The whole bizarre situation gave me a weird sensation of surreal otherworldliness and nostalgia all rolled up into one.

There was that awful drink again—anger mixed with fear. Maybe I turned red in the face, I don't know. I don't know if I looked angry, or meek, or what. All I remember was that I pictured that AK-47 coming off Rocco's shoulder, getting pointed at me, and then waking up in a hospital bed, hooked up to tubes and a whole world of hurt. But none of that happened.

Instead, Rocco emitted a guffaw, this time without the chorus of his buddies to back him.

"Okay, I like this chick, D. You can keep her around if you feed and clean her."

I almost flipped him the bird, but my body did not translate that urge into action.

Any sort of amusement instantly vanished from Rocco's face. When he started speaking again, everybody went dead silent and listened. I sensed a flash of something, like a whole different spirit had overcome him. I had my first inkling of why he was the boss of this gang. He addressed D, not me.

"We got more important shit on our plates, so listen up. You been outta the loop, man. We almost blasted your asses off the face o' the planet, what with you tip-toein' through the tulips like you was. Motherfuckers're comin' for us tonight. Whole city's gone fuckin' loco all at once," Rocco said.

D emitted a loud grunt from next to me. He was focused on Rocco, and I interpreted his reaction as agreement.

"Business is all off for tonight, at least until we know all these Dracula motherfuckers are dead—like, real dead. You know what I'm sayin'. All we know is that they be workin' for that Euro-trash syndicate bitch, Bateson. She got her fangs in most o' the outfits. Like Marv. You take care of Marv and his boys?"

D grunted again in affirmation.

"Good. Where the fuck is Lizard?"

D shook his head and muttered, "Dead. Vamps got 'im."

"Jesus fuckin' Christ," spat Rocco.

"Yo," shouted the religious ganger. "Don't use the Lord's name in vain, motherfucker."

Rocco ignored him, eyes transfixed on D, and—darkness and gravity weighing every syllable down—he asked, "Did you get bit?"

D paused.

Then he finally replied with an equally heavy word, saying, "Yeah."

Rocco rolled his jaw before he set it and then nodded to one of the other guys on the catwalk.

"A'ight, that settles that. Two for two, we know the bite o' these motherfuckers don't turn ya. Ain't like in those zombie movies. So—"

D interrupted him, "I think it's some lab shit. Like deliberate, like some science shit. Not like a virus, but more like an injection. Or a drug, I guess?"

Rocco squinted at him.

"How the fuck you know that? Did Marv's boys squeal before they croak?"

"Nah, they were just a pack o' feral fuckin' dogs. Nah, I heard the cops talkin' about somethin' when I was bein' held in the precinct. Oh yeah, just so you know, the cops are also some sorta monsters."

Rocco paused again.

"I take it that ain't no figure o' speech?"

"Yeah, don't know what they are. Jury's still out on that."

I felt the heat of D's glance sweeping over me and back up to Rocco.

"But they ain't vamps. And they sure ain't human. And fuck, I don't think they're on the vamp's side, either," D added.

"The fuck you sayin', homie? We gonna be fightin' side-by-side with some monster-pigs?"

"Nah," D said with a shake of his head. "I think we're stuck in the middle with all these science-fiction-clowns. I say we get our gear, we get our merch, and we get the fuck outta town and wait for all these motherfuckers to take each other out. But it's your call, boss."

Rocco did not ponder that very long.

I felt like a fly on the wall. Whatever attention I had been given, no matter how unpleasant, that had all completely flown out the window. I would later understand the gravity of the decision that followed.

"We ain't goin' nowhere other than takin' the war to these Dracula motherfuckers. And we ain't gonna suffer no cop-monsters either, whatever the fuck they are. This is our fuckin' city. If all o' these sons of bitches can't get their affairs in order, I say we make a move. When the chips are settled, it's harder to make any grabs or claims to what business and land is ours."

I think he was mixing up some metaphors there, but I was not too big on them myself and I did not care to correct him. The stretch of silence only affirmed that it was a bad idea to draw attention back to myself again. I was kind of enjoying the show.

Some grunts and shouts of affirmation rippled through the gang. Everybody appeared to agree. One of them raised a gun and I expected him to shoot the ceiling like some kind of trigger-happy cowboy, but he just shook it. I was scared for a second that someone might accidentally get shot, then remembered they were all members of a street gang. Then I instantly wondered how many of them had wound up in a hospital or dead over accidental gunshot wounds in the past. My inane train of thoughts was cut off.

The lights went out.

Sparks flew from some wiring high up along the ceiling.

The whooping and cheering stopped abruptly.

"The fuck is this?" Rocco asked.

Several others audibly mirrored his reaction. My eyes had to readjust to the darkness, but I could vaguely tell from some silhouettes that everybody's guns were instantly back in firing position like they had been before. Everybody on edge.

Music sliced through the air. One of those old 50 Cent hip hop songs. A glow emanated from Rocco's pocket, his smartphone was vibrating with a call and that track was his ringtone.

The boss lowered the AK by his side, produced the phone from his pocket, and stared at the small device, the display's glow brightly illuminating his confounded-looking face. He seemed to be pondering the nature of the call or the caller.

He thumbed the display, which cut off the music and then he held the phone flat out in front of him as if to keep the call on speaker.

"Who the fuck is this?"

Everybody was silent. The muscles around my shins started cramping. No idea why.

"I am a friend," spoken by a silky feminine voice, words spilling out from the phone with a faint metallic tinge. Thick Eastern European accent. Vaguely alluring. Dripping with malice. "Or I am the enemy of your enemy. Whichever way you prefer."

"Little busy here," Rocco quipped. "You gonna need to set up an appointment with my secretary. You got anythin' important for me, or you just make prank calls to say cryptic shit?"

Stunned silence all around.

"I am Bess Bateson," said the woman on the phone. "There is a vampire outside your humble abode. It does not ask for permission to get inside."

Rocco's face contorted. With his brow furrowed, he gestured to the guys around him and silently mouthed, "What the fuck?"

"I thought you were the vampire queen bitch herself," Rocco said. "Call off your doggie and maybe we can talk."

"This is not one of mine, Mister Rocco. I would appreciate it very much if you killed it. This is one of the creatures made in a test tube and used by the same kretén who is puppeteering the local politicians and police. This is our common enemy."

Metal screeched outside and my brain concocted a metal image of giant hands twisting steel apart. It made my blood run cold. It made my heart start beating faster again—the brief respite with the gang here had almost taken my mind off this nightmare entirely.

Now it was all back. Crashing, washing over me like a tidal wave.

Rocco nodded even though Boss Bateson could not see him. "Okay, let's say you're speakin' the truth, chica. What do you get out o' this?"

"What I get out of this, Mister Rocco? One less of these abominations around is a net win for the both of us."

Another sound in the distance. Metallic again, but heavy—more like a thud.

The other gangsters were nervously looking around. Some took cover in the places they had originally emerged from.

With no reply from Rocco, Bateson said, "I took the liberty of sending a little toy to aid you. A courtesy. A gift between potential business partners."

Another sound, closer this time. Only with delay did I notice how I had backed into D and instinctively gripped his arm. I was met with an arched brow and a quizzical look from him after which I awkwardly let go.

Finally, Bateson said, "We will speak later about what you did to Mister Marv and his good men. They would have been valuable assets to me, but now you must serve."

Rocco shouted at the phone, "Listen up, putita! I don't know who you think you are, comin' from Europe an' shit, talkin' fancy an' shit, with all your big money an' your Gary Oldman shit, but you might wanna—"

Bateson interjected, "You are nothing special, Mister Rocco. You humans are nothing. Do not think too highly of yourself, little man. Little men with big guns, I eat you for breakfast. Choose your words and actions very carefully."

He glared at the phone and pure rage distorted Rocco's face. I knew before he shouted anything else that she had hung up the call on him. He almost threw the phone away, probably wrestling back control over his own emotions, then put the phone back into his pocket, delving the warehouse hall into darkness once more.

The only thing Rocco exclaimed was "Puta!"

My eyes had adjusted better to the lack of light, making out vague shapes of everything sticking out from in between pools of shadow.

"Stay behind me, clear?" D muttered, loud enough only that I could have heard it.

"A'ight," groaned Rocco. "Did we get a package in the mail today, or somethin'?"

"Yeah," said one of the men. Very low. He sounded like half his mouth was swollen. "Looked like a bomb or som'in, but that wa' no bomb. Looked like some Star Wars shit. I left it in stash with the other guns 'cause I thought it was one of yo's."

"Okay, we're gettin' the fuckin' Star Wars gun and then we're fuckin' this motherfucker up!" Rocco said. Then, louder, "You hear me, you motherfucker? We know you're out there! We're gonna fuck you up!"

D asked, "What if she's fuckin' with us, boss? What if the Star Wars gun is some bomb after all? Why the fuck would she give us a weapon that can kill vamps?"

"I'mma take my chances," Rocco said, sounding almost amused. His voice trembled for the first time. I would come to learn that he sounded like that whenever he went "beast mode", as Slim Jim and Boombox liked to put it.

Someone cheered a clipped "Yeah!" to go with Rocco's intent.

"A'ight, let's go kill us a Drac—"

Ear-piercing screams erupted. One of the gangsters was flailing around.

The first gunshot deafened me, and it made me jolt, instinctively flinching and ducking, even though this had been just one of many gunshots for me to witness that night. I am not ashamed to say I ducked behind D.

More gunshots followed. Some weapons vomited out singular big blasts, others burped out staccatos of automatic fire. The muzzle flares lit up the hall with eerie flashes of light, revealing something awful.

One of the gang was hovering off the ground, suspended mid-air. The tips of his sneakers scraped and squeaked against the floor, helplessly looking for solid footing. Grabbing hold of him was a remotely humanoid pile of glistening black sludge, like living tar. It had engulfed part of him, and I made out something like a head that had sunken teeth into his neck, and shoulder, and back. The ganger's skin began to stretch and look withered like all his blood and organs were being sucked out of him, and squelching sounds accompanied his dying screams, turning into whimpers, all drowned out by the bedlam of gunshots going off.

The hulking creature was a giant and the bullets just splotched into it, provoking no visible reaction.

"Guns ain't doin' shit!" yelled one of the men.

You would think that seeing this, and hearing that would make them stop shooting. But you know what?

You weren't there.

Something came over me. I do not know if it was the adrenaline or something else, or because there is some weird malfunction in the human brain that makes us do things that are evidently pointless.

But I raised the gun in my hand and shot into the creature as well. Not sure if I hit, because I flinched and closed my eyes right when I pulled the trigger. My wrist immediately started to hurt, and I learned how hard it can be to pull the trigger in the first place. Worst case scenario, I had just shot the ganger instead of the creature, but his screams had turned into gurgling and the husk of his body only remotely looked like a man anymore.

My ears were ringing, something paralyzed me, while something else was giving me a rush.

D threw away one of his empty guns, letting the thing clatter. He grabbed me by the wrist and yanked me away, just like in the alleyway when we had been running away from the slime-cops.

It broke my trance and I followed, stumbling along with him. He let go after several steps and I almost wished he had not, because D guided me through a labyrinth of dark corridors, exiting the hall. The shooting continued behind us, more yells erupted, then wet sounds of something slapping around.

Then more screams.

The brief flashes of light from gunshots only went so far, we were soon through a series of left and right turns and our shoes tapped against hard concrete floors and metal grates in quick succession.

D's callused hand shoved something small, cold, and metal into my palm and enclosed it, waiting until I had hold of it.

"Hold this—use this. I can't see shit," he said.

The ringing in my ears was more like a long and persistent busy tone. Was this what Tinnitus was like?

I fumbled around with the tiny object, nearly dropping it, then finally realized what it was.

A small lighter. I flicked it open and flicked the flint, and a little flame flared up. D immediately started to rummage around, tossing a box to the side here, flapping open a cupboard and leaving it open after a hectic glance inside, kicking over a pile of boxes that jingled over there.

It fit, because the shooting and shouting and screaming and other noise continued, now somewhat dampened by the distance we had gained from it. Every human shriek made me shudder, and a far more inhuman shriek joined in on the cacophony, making me shudder even more.

We were standing in some industrial room. The walls looked extra dingy in the little light the lighter shed. But the walls were lined with all manners of oddly shaped shelves, racks, and cupboards with grates for doors and piles upon piles of boxes, many of them labeled and marked with depictions that made it clear that they contained ammunition. Guns. Everywhere.

This place looked like the inside of a gun store.

A really big, illegal, gun store.

D opened the flaps of a big cardboard box and froze. He bent over, reaching inside the box, and pulled out this—

I don't even know what it was. I'm not sure how to describe it. The guy calling it "Star Wars gun" had kind of nailed it. It looked like a huge rifle, but the barrel was filled with holes and rectangular instead of round. The whole thing was covered in cables and odd metal parts jutting out from different places, with little cylinders and doodads and who knows what else attached to it. Just studying it for a split second made my head spin.

When D pulled it out and held it aloft, I could feel its weight just looking at it. I'm guessing it weighed as much as half a fully-grown person, because D was strong, and it looked like he could not run with the—whatever it was. The Star Wars gun.

Let's stick with that.

He shot me a nervous glance and his brows furrowed deeper as the noise neared us. The gunshots came closer, panicked footsteps drew in our direction, and Rocco burst through the door to the gun room. Three more of the crew piled in right after him, but he stood in the frame and fired more shots down the corridor, lighting everything up, yelling angrily as he unleashed a barrage of bullets, like he was going Scarface on this awful vampire-thing.

Something long and dark and sleek whipped through the hall and knocked the AK-47 out of his hands, leaving a dark slime or mucus that splashed his arms and face, and opened a long crimson line all over his skin, where blood started seeping out.

Then another sudden lash of the slime whip sent Rocco tumbling inside the room with a yell, bumping into one of the other guys and him into bumping into me, and—

I dropped the lighter. It clattered into some corner and the flame went out instantly.

Of course.

A ghastly and alien snarl hissed through the corridors and one of the guys emitted a string of profanities in some Asian language I did not understand. Someone was clicking and clacking with this gun and reloading it. I was just scrambling to get back up on my feet and hide in a corner, even though I had no concept of where any corners to hide in were—

The metal door slammed against concrete with a loud thrashing CLANG with the force of a speeding truck hitting it, and I tasted dust and I was ready to die that instant.

HISS.

I guess it's true what they say—my life flashed before my eyes. I saw a moment when my old man had taken me to Disneyland for my seventh birthday and I was dressed up as a little pink princess, a moment in which I was bullying the kid who was crushing on me with some of my friends and immediately feeling bad as we did it, how happy I had been on my first day of college when I was reunited with a childhood friend, or that time I watched a homeless guy slug a crook sticking up the gas station I worked at.

A different flash lit up the room—dark and blue—and the sound of electricity crackled in the air, followed by a hollow WHOOSH and a powerful, persistent hum that made the fillings in my teeth vibrate.

D was holding that Star Wars gun and the weird device was emitting a torrent of arcing lightning bolts, converging on the horrid tar-monster.

Its movements transformed from predatory and menacing to just jiggling and flailing around like a silly cartoon character getting shocked. Just when the light died down, the Star Wars gun glowed up again and D unleashed more lightning at the abomination. Its alien shrieks and hisses had been replaced by garbled blubbering and wet noises.

The smell of wet dog and burnt hair and raw sewage mixed in my nose, made my stomach churn.

D shot it a third time, continuing to shock the creature until it collapsed on the floor inside the door's frame.

Darkness.

Moment of quiet. Though I still kind of felt the hum of the Star Wars gun in my gut, and it made me wonder if it was slowly microwaving the insides of anybody too close to it whenever it was fired.

"Is it dead?" someone asked, breathing heavily, teetering on the brink of panic.

A small light shone out—Rocco held out his phone with the flashlight on it casting a cone of light upon the monster. A constant, bleeding drip, dropped down from the fingers of his other arm.

"No," growled D.

He yanked something out of the Star Wars gun. A silvery metal rod, sharp and pointy on one end. My mind filled in the blanks.

A stake.

He put the Star Wars gun down and crept up towards the writhing mass of black tar and too many limbs.

One of them shot outwards and sliced him across the face, leaving a cut, but that was the full extent of the creature's resistance, rendered almost entirely helpless from the repeated arcs of lightning. D shouted angrily and dropped the creeping advance, lunging at the thing.

He fell on top of the living mud with the squelching sounds to go with it, and D started stabbing away at the creature with repeated yelps that carried a mixture of pain, fear, and fury. Strands of viscous black crap went flying away with each stab.

The same weird sense overcame me like before. Adrenaline, or whatever it was, I do not know. But I took another one of those metal stakes from the Star Wars gun—it seemed like it had a whole row of them just jutting out from one side for easy access—and charged to D's side.

The rest of what followed was a blur. Next thing I know, the rest of the gang who had survived and D and I were all standing around this dead thing in a half circle, with multiple metal stakes sticking out of the center mass of—whatever. We were all covered in black sludge.

My legs wobbled when I bent forward and spat on it.

"Nothing special—fuck you," I said, once more surprising myself with what had overcome me.

Maybe the attitude of Rocco's gang was rubbing off on me. Maybe it was just all the shock and trauma. Maybe it was some dormant part of me that had been awakened that night.

"Damn right, chica," Rocco muttered. He balled his hand into a fist, the same hand attached to the wrist from where a nasty gash ran up the length of his forearm, and more blood dripped from between the fingers of his fist.

"Kelly, motherfucker," I said to Rocco with a trembling voice, glaring at him.

He glared right back at me, like he was one moment away from ripping my throat out. But, in reality, I think I had earned a shred of respect from him from verbally punching back. Also, maybe from joining D in stabbing the living hell out of the creature.

"Damn right, Kelly," Rocco growled. "That puta said we are nothin' special? Fuck 'er, and fuck this motherfucker, too."

He stomped on the sludge pile of the slime-vampire, spraying everybody's pants and shoes with it. His once pristine white sneakers were unrecognizable. His cargo shorts did not look that funny to me anymore.

Rocco growled louder, "Yeah, we may be human, and maybe we ain't special to these sons o' bitches. But we so not special—we are invisible to 'em. These motherfuckers won't see us comin'."

The silence from everybody else in the room was deafening. All eyes on Loco Rocco now.

"E'rybody—get your shit together, get patched up, get strapped. We got a city to take."

D just stared at me.

I nodded.

—Submitted by Wratts

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neonthewrite · 3 years

Text

Sleepover at Adrian's

It's time for the final prize from the 2021 Trust Contest! This is set in the A Little Bit of Family AU (DA) (Ao3), also known as the Adopt Oscar AU. It's just full of good feels and happy moments for itty bitty Oscar.

Charlie, Sawyer, and Elisabeth belong to @creatorofuniverses and she was consulted in the making of this story!

Reading time ~10mins

~~~

Oscar had a list. Lists helped him keep calm about otherwise stressful things, things with too many steps to count on his hand. Even exciting things could be overwhelming. His list was meant for one of the more exciting things.

"Hey bud, whatcha got there?" Sawyer's voice broke Oscar from his thoughts.

Osar held up the paper so Sawyer could see it. “Hi dad! It's my, it's my list for the sleepover! I gotta make sure I bring everything I need when I go visit Adrian!"

Sawyer scanned it, humming thoughtfully. “Looks good, kiddo, but you forgot one thing.”

"Huh?" Before Oscar could check his list again, Sawyer swept him up into a squeezing hug and planted a kiss on his cheek. Instead of concern, Oscar overflowed with giggles.

"Now you have everything," Sawyer announced.

Oscar had to calm down from his giggles to retort. "I didn't forget! I'm gопnа give hugs an’ kisses before I head out! Th- the list is for what I need in my bag!"

Sawyer gasped, playing up his realization. “Ohhhh, I gotcha. Then I guess this-" he kissed Oscar's cheek again, really smushing his face with the action, "-is just for fun. I gotta take what I can get before you head off with your auntie."

Oscar squirmed so he could wrap his arms around Sawyer's neck in an earnest little hug. As he did, Charlie returned from the storage room, where he'd been working off some nervous energy by tidying. Oscar waved at him.

"Mom! I finished makin' my list! Dad looked at it. I'm gonna have all the stuff for my sleepover!"

"Very good, love," Charlie said, making his way over. In some wordless communication, Sawyer handed Oscar off and gave Charlie's shoulder a gentle squeeze. Charlie grinned at Oscar. "You've gotten so good with your lists. Very responsible."

“I like having ‘em, just in case,” Oscar agreed. “Maybe I’ll have an idea for a list to make while I’m visitin’ Adrian.”

Charlie chuckled. “If you do, remember you can ask Adrian or your auntie for help with the spelling,” he reminded him.

“What am I spelling?” Elisabeth chimed in, causing both Charlie and Oscar to jolt in surprise. When Charlie turned, they found Elisabeth had come in via the storage room entrance, and she wore a teasing grin. Her bag, slung over her shoulder, was just as full as Oscar’s, no doubt due to her own list of necessary sleepover supplies.

Oscar giggled again as Charlie set him down. “My list! If I make a new one,” he explained. Then, he pointed at Elisabeth’s bag. “Did you make a list for your stuff too?”

Elisabeth shifted the bag on her shoulder. “I didn’t,” she admitted. “Guess I’ll need your help remembering everything tomorrow. Are you ready to go?”

Oscar looked over at his bag, which sat by the hacky sack chair. It bulged with a spare set of clothes, his pajamas, and some toys. His trusty teddy bear leaned against it, guarding his things. “My bag’s full,” Oscar assessed. “An’ my list is all checked.”

“It’s a start, poppet,” Elisabeth chuckled.

Oscar nodded, then turned to Charlie and Sawyer. “I promise to be good, an’ I’ll write you a letter, just like when I stay at auntie’s, okay?”

Charlie and Sawyer grinned, endeared as ever by their son’s dutiful insistence. Even with Charlie’s quiet worry about him being away for a night, they trusted Adrian and Elisabeth to look after him. They knelt down to pull him into a squeezing hug anyway, Charlie planting a kiss atop Oscar’s head. “We can’t wait to read it, love.”

“Have fun, kiddo,” Sawyer added, giving them both a squeeze.

Oscar giggled, but soon enough he’d gathered up his bag and his teddy bear, stuffing his folded up list in with the rest of his things. He took Elisabeth’s hand and they shared a grin before heading out.

His grip tightened on her hand as they left, nervous excitement settling in. He’d stayed at Elisabeth’s a couple times. He had fun in spite of his nerves for being away from home - he missed his bed and the familiar rooms that he’d helped his parents build.

This time, the plan was to spend some time with Adrian, their human (the friendliest human ever, if Oscar were to decide). Oscar hadn’t taken much convincing. He had fun with his art lessons with Adrian.

Still. He couldn’t have worked up the nerve to ask if Elisabeth hadn’t volunteered to come along.

“I-I wonder if we’ll surprise him,” Oscar mused; they were on the way to the living room entrance above the human’s desk. “Dad still surprises him sometimes.”

Elisabeth snickered. “Well we can certainly try,” she suggested. She gave him a playful grin and a light squeeze of his hand. “We’re quite sneaky, aren’t we, poppet?”

Oscar giggled and squeezed her hand right back. “Yeah,” he whispered. “W-we’ll try!”

At length, they found their way to a door leading onto a shelf above Adrian’s desk. Oscar and Elisabeth peeked out with the door open only a crack to survey the room. Even with a friendly human, they couldn’t ignore those habits. Humans were dangerous to them and the viri couldn’t forget that.

With a couple major exceptions, one of which sat at the desk absorbed in a sketchbook.

Adrian never paid much attention to the door up on the shelf - he had a cup of pencils in the way, and made an effort not to bother the viris' entrances. It made the perfect spot to catch him by surprise. Even after all this time, Sawyer could still sneak up on him.

Oscar reminded himself of those stories as he crept out into the open. He sent Elisabeth a conspiratorial grin over his shoulder, squeezed his teddy bear close for a beat, and then stepped around the pencil cup. "Hi, Adrian!"

Adrian tensed and his gaze whipped up to the shelf. A smile broke over his face. "Hey, you made it! Didn't even hear you come in!"

Oscar giggled. "Yeah! Me an’ auntie are sneaky just like dad. It's time for our sleepover to start! Whatcha drawing? A building?" He sat at the edge of the shelf and leaned forward for an upside down view of the sketchbook.

Adrian chuckled and turned the book around, angling it up so the viri could see it. A few pencil drawings of regular old household objects adorned the page. "No buildings today," he admitted. "It's good to practice all kinds of subjects."

Elisabeth joined Oscar on the edge of the shelf. “Those are lovely. Oscar's been practicing drawing all kinds of things too, haven't you, poppet?"

"Uh huh, I've been drawing made up flowers, an’ um, some animals, and I, I drew some clothes, too!" Oscar announced proudly.

Adrian nodded, everything in his expression encouraging. “That sounds great, Oscar. We should draw more tonight too. I’d like to see how your practice is going.”

Oscar grinned. He’d been counting on Adrian wanting to do an impromptu art session. His lessons were some of the most fun Oscar had. Adrian had all kinds of art supplies. “Yeah! We’ll make lots of fun pictures!” he declared.

Elisabeth chuckled. “What else do you plan to get up to?” she asked, leaning into Oscar to nudge him. “Does your list have an agenda on it?”

“Oh, um,” Oscar stammered. “I didn’t wanna, I didn’t think we needed to plan too much, auntie,” he admitted, some warmth growing in his cheeks. Truth be told, Oscar wasn’t fully sure what the options were. It would surely be different from the times he spent the night at his aunt’s.

Adrian came to his rescue. “That’s alright, we don’t need to worry about that like we do with lessons.” He turned his sketchbook around and closed it up as he spoke. “You’re here to hang out for the whole night, and that’s a lot more time to fill than just one art lesson. We’ll make it up as we go along,okay?”

“That sounds fun,” Oscar agreed. He looked up at Elisabeth hopefully. “Is that okay?”

Elisabeth laughed, then abruptly wrapped Oscar up in a hug. “Of course it’s okay, poppet, I was only teasing,” she assured him. “We’ll go with the flow, it’ll be fun! You just have to decide what you want to do first!”

Even with some of the pink lingering in his cheeks, Oscar laughed along with her. “I was, I was thinkin’, I did have an idea,” he stammered out. Looking at Adrian, he asked, “Could we, could we try hide and seek? I mean, out in the rooms instead of in the walls where I usually play? Auntie an’ mom used to play it when their humans were gone, but maybe it’d be fun to play hide and seek with our human!”

Adrian raised his eyebrows. “I bet it would be very different from your usual games,” he agreed. “We can definitely give it a try, so long as we all know the rules first.”

~~~

It didn’t take too much time for the three of them to work out the ground rules of their game. Adrian would wait in his bedroom for five minutes. Oscar and Elisabeth had that time to find a place somewhere in the living room to hide - they wouldn’t go into the hallway or the kitchen. After some thought, Oscar determined that he and Elisabeth would hide together. His teddy bear would keep watch from the shelf up on the desk; Oscar didn’t want to drop him out in the middle of the floor in all the excitement.

With their rules decided on, Adrian retreated to the other room, his phone ready with a timer. He promised he’d call out every minute that passed so they knew how much time they had left. Oscar practically buzzed with excitement.

“Careful, poppet,” Elisabeth warned, though there was an endeared chuckle coloring her voice as she hooked her climbing string to the edge of the desk. “Don’t get too antsy to climb your string!”

“I won’t,” Oscar promised, preparing his own hook and string with the yellow button tied to the end. “I’m just excited!”

True to his word, he was careful as they made their way down from the desk. The wide open room might make them nervous in any other apartment. Here, it was a safe expanse where the resident human would be mindful of them.

It was also full of good places to hide. Oscar scanned the whole room avidly as soon as his feet touched the carpeted floor. “Maybe the couch? O-or the bookshelf? What about the curtains?”

Elisabeth grinned. “All very good places,” she agreed. “It’s too bad we aren’t hiding in the kitchen, hmm? I could show you my trick with opening the drawer!”

Oscar nodded. He loved the stories of Elisabeth’s antics with Charlie when they were kids. It was a glimpse of a family history that Oscar was grateful every day to be a part of. “Maybe, um, maybe after this one,” he mused.

“Four minutes left!” echoed down the hallway from the bedroom, and Oscar jolted.

“Come on, auntie!” he insisted, grabbing her hand. “Let’s go hide under the couch!”

Elisabeth laughed and let him lead her across the floor. Oscar sent her a few glances over his shoulder, always sporting a mildly mischievous grin. They were going to make Adrian work hard to find them in their hiding spot for certain; Oscar could hardly wait for the reaction they would surely earn. Adrian hadn’t even called out the three minute mark before they ducked out of sight under the colossal furniture.

While Oscar had been content to merely hide under the couch, Elisabeth, slightly stooped under the low clearance, pointed up at one of the thin support struts that kept the whole thing more sturdy. It was in easy reach for her, and there was a narrow space between it and the lining under the couch. The two of them could easily slip into that space if they stayed lying down.

Oscar’s eyes widened and he nodded, silent even though the human was rooms away and couldn’t possibly hear them. He let Elisabeth hoist him up under his arms so he could reach, and soon had scrambled his way up onto the board. Elisabeth was close behind, wriggling into place . “Don’t let your legs hang over the side,” she teased, her voice barely more than a whisper.

Oscar snickered, keeping his voice as low as he could. “He’s gonna be so confused!”

“Ready or not, here I come!”

Adrian’s voice stopped any further whispers. Soon enough, his gentle but unmistakable footsteps returned down the hall, slowing as he reached the living room. Adrian tended to move carefully even without knowing a pair of viri hid somewhere around, waiting for him to seek them out.

“You guys have a lot of options in here,” Adrian mused aloud, his voice somewhere overhead and muffled by the couch. Oscar heard the smile in his tone. “I might be looking for you all night. Past dinnertime, even!”

Oscar gasped, scandalized. Beside him, Elisabeth put her finger to her lips, though she looked like she wanted to giggle herself.

Adrian meandered around the room, occasionally moving a few things around on the shelf or coffee table. He took his time with it, and Oscar’s grin only grew. By the time the human crouched down to peer under furniture, Oscar had a hand over his mouth to hold back any giggles. He shared a glance with Elisabeth as Adrian’s gaze scanned under the couch, right past their hiding spot.

When Adrian was about to push himself back off the floor, Oscar finally gave in and released a giggle. Then, he squeaked when the human’s gaze returned, this time zeroing in on them. “Oh!” Oscar blurted, trying to duck back out of sight.

Elisabeth laughed too. “Ah, he found us, poppet! Guess we won’t miss dinner after all!”

Only half of Adrian’s face could really be seen from under the couch, but his amusement was clear. “I wouldn’t have let you miss dinner, Oscar, promise,” he said. “This is a very good hiding spot, though, I never would have noticed.”

“I got too many laughs in me,” Oscar admitted. Beside him, Elisabeth wriggled free of the support strut and hopped down. He let her help him down to the floor too. “But next time I’ll keep quiet! I got all my laughs out now.”

Adrian snickered. “I don’t mind if you laugh, it makes my job a lot easier,” he teased. “But we can get through plenty of games either way, and we won’t even miss out on dinner. Wanna try again?”

Oscar nodded eagerly. “We have time for at least a little more hiding and seeking.”

Elisabeth ruffled Oscar’s hair as the pair of them made their way back out from under the couch. “We have all the time in the world, poppet.”

#oscar #oscar the oc #adrian kennet #mywriting #guest characters #g/t #gt #g/t fluff #trust au

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rametarin · 3 years

Text

TERFs are wrong. But, so are social constructionist Gender Theorists

You know it is not a question of one extreme or the other. As much as both like to think they are morally right and have “the science” on their side, they don’t. Both are god damned annoying, totalitarian, and are interpreting reality and what that means in order to browbeat and push others, both socially and legally, towards doing things based on what those mean.

Both are trying to control the parameters of all things based on the fundamentals by their interpretation of reality, not by the objective facts. Both are wrong.

TERFs are not wrong in that someone that is born with XY chromosomes and a standard male sex conforming body is male, and you need dysphoria in order to be trans. They are not wrong that your gender is not just a wily nily purely social construct.

They are, however, wrong about absolutely everything else regarding what those genders MEAN, where they’re derived from and why they were derived that way.

And the social constructionists aren’t wrong in that we should make exceptions to the biological rule for people with transgenderist disorders of the mind and brain. But, they are wrong in that so many are totalitarian. They do not want these exceptions to be exceptions, they want the very basis and fundamental understanding, how we define gender and sex, to change to be based not on biological empiricism, facts or truth, but by legal and social oughts and things they argue “should be held true else it demoralizes and oppresses a minority.”

There are not, “millions of genders.” There’s your basic standard assed functioning, and then there’s a disorder we otherwise can’t do anything with or about right now where it’d simply more healthy for everybody around if we let them live with the identity that is in their minds and body.

Furthermore, the nonbinarist movement needs to stop being such a cowardly little bitch and argue for itself outside the umbrella of trans rights, because it sits there demanding changes and exceptions and validations be made for it on the basis of bowing to trans rights, when it itself hasn’t stepped out of its parasitic sphere to fight for any on its own. Strategically using trans rights as a platform for both offensive and defensive purposes.

TERFs, up to now, have been virtually unchallengable because, “you must be a horrible right wing fundamentalist religious monster to oppose EQUALITY for WOMEN!” And they’ve just skirted on that since the 60s. Which was absolute hell trying to convince anybody that radical feminism was nonsense and harbored deep, authoritarian bends on takes with social ramifications. Yall were in their corner when they were talking about how, “society” needed to give women, exclusively, help to go to college because of past oppressions. But when someone tried to tell you they had weird obsessions with vaginas and using them as rubber stamps for whom gets special treatment and privileges and exceptions to defaults that make men do dirty work and women get clean pay? Deafening silence.

But the minute TERFs don’t want transwomen in their magical witch girl’s clubs, fucking with the cosmology? Ohho they’re visible now. You can see their bullshit now. They’re weirdos drawing female symbols and self-portraits with menstrual blood and making hacky poems about their uterus, now. They’re bad people now. You can actually see they weren’t, “being hyperbolic” or “just venting about the evil MEN around them” now. Hahahahaa. Hilarious.

TERFs are wrong. Point blank. But so are the social constructionist extremists and postmodernists behind the appropriated bandwagon of what calls itself the trans rights and nonbinarist rights movement in the west. The basis for which they’ve defined their norms is not one of reality, but “oughts” and “should be’s” and “must bes” and “or else”s. To the point where they invented a slur specifically to denounce those that do not share their view. “Bioessentialist.”

That makes as much sense as calling someone a dirty, “bioessentialist” because they say you need to be an elephant, to be an elephant. Yes, you do need the physical, biological characteristics to really BE that which you aspire to be. No, you don’t get to redefine what an elephant is to force the elephant to “identify” as an elephant so something that is not an elephant can also be an elephant.

If misgendering someone is triggering for a minority, it’s just as triggering when you deny someone’s sexuality or gender when they’re hetero and cis. And many are repulsed by the idea that the reason they’re compatible with their sex and gender conformation is because they, “made a choice.” For that matter, if you’re actually transgendered and not some bandwagoneering asshole, being trans isn’t a choice either. It’s a psychological and neurological impossibility to be anything else, not a lifestyle, not a hobby, not a “preferred state of mind.” Arguing anything else is arguing not for trans rights, but for psycho-social dominance in law.

And if you think misgendering someone that’s transgendered is bad, people that make up at MOST, 0.7% of the human species, and some say as few as 0.3% of the human species (people with cleft lips, born missing limbs and more are born more often) then what the FUCK do you think it is, redefining the identities and realities of 99.3% to 99.7% of the human animal, not to mention how every other animal works? (not counting some exceptions like clownfish.)

Gender is not, wholly, a social construct. It’s a derivative and pluto’s shadow from SEX. SEX is not psychological. Sex is not negotiable. Sex is biological and disease can make it express incorrectly or correctly to function as intended by natural selection. Gender is only a social construct in that some cultures have assigned thoughts and characteristics and responsibilities for people on the basis of said sexual role. That’s it.

But people that try to live purely in the psychological sphere or argue that sphere belongs in the dominant position for mankind try to argue it’s the only one that really matters, and while we’re at it, lets let the minority dictate what is normal and rational and good. So their believe gender as feelings supersedes sex as reality.

And why would they argue this? Because they’re, “just such big fans of trans rights?” No. Because they hate disparity and immutable, biological difference. And so want to use the arbitration of human law and culture to marginalize it and pretend it doesn’t exist- to where using technology to circumvent it and the penal system to enforce that view seems like a reasonable, moral thing to strive for. Trans rights for these people have always just been a nice coat of paint to put their real activism under.

And the biggest bitch of it all is, Radical Feminists and Trans Inclusive Radical Feminists and Social Constructionists all receive their marching orders from the same ideology. The same stupid take that says bugger reality, live in a communal fantasy and enforce everybody else to live in it, too. Else they’re a bad person. Else they’re a fascist. They merely differ in the rules and the fundamental parameters.

Know the difference between, “this person is bad and they should be shamed for their beliefs because they are bad,” and, “This person is bad because they’re sitting on a throne that I want to sit on as is rightfully mine.” TIRFs don’t hate TERFs because they’re wrong, they hate them because they’re in the middle of a power grab.

But we have the opportunity to end this “Critical Lens” shitshow forever. Both sides are exposed and showing their true colors as terrible ideologies and people. Both sides are showing their totalitarianism in the form of competitive propaganda and using the legal system to get their way based on past manipulations and exploitations they got from lying to a public that didn’t want to be misogynistic or prejudiced against the transgender.

All it takes is connecting the dots and understanding just how and why it’s not a matter of “bitter evil borderline-conservative Karens Vs. noble oppressed transgenders.”

TERFs are fucking NOT conservatives. They’re typically the same far-left assholes as the TIRFs. They differ ONLY in that they believe critical theory fucking STOPS at the immutable reality of biological sex, because they stand to lose dominance if it’s not immutable- so they demand it be CONSIDERED immutable. Their status as oppressed inherently, hinges on it.

So that’s it then. You’re left with no real heroes in this fight. But if you take anything away from what I’m telling you today, it’s that you can argue legally for trans rights. Just, on the basis as exception to the biological basis, as has been proven. Asterisks. Hyphens. Acknowledging the reality that the existence of the transgendered does not negate the reality of biological sex, nor those whose genders are a direct result of their biological sex as the norm.

It’s not bigotry to sexually discriminate to some degrees. When dealing with subjectives, it’s a matter of argument. When dealing with biological realities and imperatives, opinion is irrelevant to the self-evident realities, and interpretation matters less than the reality.

But to those that believe any discrimination based on physical differences or state is inherently wrong, just the idea of male and female being two different, named things, (”classes”, if you will) with different, “unequal” functions and capacity, fills them with rage.

Your moralism stops where nature begins. Period.

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m4st4rd · 4 years

Text

the sugar bowl

author’s note: hello friends! the wonderful @guaxinimraccoon has let me use their equally wonderful characters, Brad, Toby, and Siri, to write a fic! please go check them out-- their art is super awesome. i ended up writing a lot more than i expected, but i still love it! this was super fun to make and i’m excited to see what you guys think :). enjoy!

warnings: mild panic & mild swearing but that’s about it

word count: 2.4k

part one | part two

“TOBY? ARE YOU READY?”

After a fitful sleep, Tobias could barely stand to listen to the noise around him. It wasn’t much: the water rushing through the pipes, the skitter of the mice outside his home in the walls. And now, Siri tugging on his leg as he struggled to relax on his hacky-sack chair.

“C’mon, man,” she said, huffing a laugh. “You promised you’d grab some more paper and bread like, yesterday. And that you would get sugar.” Toby didn’t know why she even had the time to pick up a hobby as boring as drawing. There wasn’t much to draw in their little home. He’d rather just try and continue his eventful dream instead of getting dressed just for some scraps.

But he had to. It was his duty as a borrower and as Siri’s best friend.

“Alright, alright.” He got to his feet and ran his hand through his sleep-tousled hair. “But this means you’re making dinner tonight, right?” Before she could protest, he added, “Better start cooking that soup now.”

Siri put on a pouty glare, but her pointed ears twitched with amusement. “Yeah. Whatever,” she mumbled. But she couldn’t keep her face up long. Soon, it disappeared into a grin. He wasn’t prepared when she threw her arms around his neck in an excited hug. “You’re the best, Toby.”

Tobias couldn’t stop himself from smiling, too. “Yeah. I know.”

She waved as he disappeared down the corridor. Neither of them could’ve known what was waiting for him.

***

Ever since Brad moved out of his parents’ place, he knew only one thing: solitary. Not that he necessarily minded — he wasn’t the most extroverted person. Even in college, he would stay in his dorm with a pizza and Netflix while his roommate hit frat parties. In the two years they lived together, they must’ve only spoken a total of eleven words to each other.

But what he did mind was the endless, repetitive schedule. Wake up, check his phone. Have breakfast, take a shower, brush his teeth, pop an aspirin for his morning headache. Head to work and return to boxed mac-n-cheese dinner (or, if he was feeling adventurous, spaghetti). He wanted something exciting, even if excitement, for him, meant taking a different route to work. But he was too afraid of change.

What he found on Saturday evening really threw a wrench into the gears of his brain.

He got home to an empty apartment. Nothing special: a hand-me-down couch next in front of a 90s TV. He contemplated just napping on the couch for a bit before dinner, but he never did that. So instead, Brad took off his shoes, hung up his coat, and headed to the kitchen. There was some leftover tuna salad that he could munch on if he didn’t feel like cooking.

Nothing special.

That is, until he stood up.

He probably wouldn’t have heard it if he was distracted, but it was real and oh-so-soft. A rustle from deep inside his cabinet. Brad could feel his heart stop. Did he have mice? No, that couldn’t be. He cleaned out his cupboard pretty frequently. Bugs? That would be even worse.

Shff. There it was again. It sounded too… heavy to be a roach. Whatever the little thing was, it rattled his cereal boxes. And then, the telltale clatter of the sugar bowl top falling onto the shelf.

Wait, what? Okay. That was weird. Brad took a deep breath. His interest had piqued. He had to see what this thing was.

With a silent prayer, he opened the cabinet.

***

Paper? Check. Bread? Check. Toby was still dusting his knees off as he remembered that he was still missing something: sugar. With a groan, he got to his feet and shuffled over to his hook. “Damn Siri and her sweet tooth,” he muttered (though he’d never admit to her that he enjoyed something sweet every now and then).

He didn’t notice the front door open and the giant enter. He was distracted by the looming jar in front of him. It was difficult getting the lid off, but with a sharp tug and a grunt, it fell to the floor of the cabinet and he prepared to dive in to get a cube.

But before he could get very far, the cabinet door swung open, and light invaded.

And Toby was face-to-face with the human of the apartment.

Brad wasn’t sure what he was looking at. A little man…? A four-inch-tall person, not much bigger than his finger, was standing by his sugar bowl. Pointed ears, wild, electric blue hair, and even wilder eyes stared him down. A patchy bag sat at his feet, and patchy clothing hung off of his thin frame. Was he drunk? High? Did someone roofie his coffee?

Whatever composure Brad had left him. “Wow,” he whispered. Just a breath seemed like enough to knock the little guy over. “Hey, there, du—”

Toby didn’t hesitate to whip his needle out. “Back!” he tried to snap, though it was more like a squeak. God, he must’ve looked pathetic. His legs were jelly. Every bit of him trembled. “St-stay back!”

The giant blinked. He shook his head of shaggy black hair, rubbed his eyes with unfathomably huge fists. Toby did his best to suppress a lame whimper when those hands appeared. “So I’m not dreaming,” he said, more to himself than to Toby. It took every ounce of courage not to cry.

The bean, however, seemed to notice his fear. “Wait, little dude, hey…” He eyed the needle warily. “You don’t hafta be afraid.” Toby didn’t believe him for a second.

The borrower looked suspicious. “Back up,” the little guy growled, and surprisingly, Brad obliged. He took a step away so he didn’t tower over him (and so he didn’t suffer the wrath of his needle).

How did Brad look right now? He wasn’t the biggest person around, but he certainly wasn’t the smallest in his family. Even so, he wouldn’t hurt a fly. He couldn’t even bring himself to squish spiders. He’d always trap them in a cup and usher them onto the balcony. This little person, though, didn’t know that. He held his needle-sword up high, his toothpick arms shaking all the while. It practically broke Brad’s heart.

What’s this guy doing? Toby thought. Nothing was stopping him from snatching him up in a fist and stuffing him in a jar or a shoebox. Was he luring him into a false sense of safety just so his experiments would hurt more? Was he p—

“Hey, man, you okay?” The bean’s thick brows were knit together with concern. “You’re looking a little pale.”

“Wouldn’t y-you be?” Toby scoffed before he could stop himself. Man, I’m so dead. “I-I-I mean, someone as big as you is a little Goddamn terrifying! God knows what the hell you’re gonna do to me! ” He snapped his mouth shut. He’s gonna fucking kill me for real now.

“What I’m gonna d— No, buddy, I swear I’m n—”

“Stay. Back.” Holy fuck, what am I doing?! Toby thought. The most he could do was poke the bean’s finger with his needle, but that would only make him angry. He contemplated running, but his thought dissipated when he realized the giant would have plenty of time to stop him.

Brad’s jaw went slack. For such a little guy, he sure was brave. But after a beat, his words finally sunk in. “Wait. C’mon, man. I’m not— I’m not gonna do anything to you. I’m just. I’m just surprised. I mean, it’s not every day you find a little man in your cabinet.” With a chuckle, he asked, “So are you gonna start paying me rent, or what?” It didn’t immediately dawn on him that this tiny person probably didn’t know what rent even was.

Toby frowned. What the hell is this guy talking about? More to the point, what game is he playing?

With a frown, Brad took another small step back so he didn’t smother the little guy and held up his palms. “Okay, okay, look. I promise I’m not gonna hurt you. Cool?” He didn’t respond, but his shaking arm did lower the needle a bit. That’s a start.

Brad heaved a sigh that ruffled Toby’s wild hair. “Right. Uhm. I’m… I’m sorry for scaring you, dude. I didn’t mean it. I swear.” He fiddled with his thumbs. A shy look crept over his face. “I think we got off on the wrong foot. I’m Brad. What’s your name?”

For a moment, Brad was afraid that the guy was too terrified to answer. But then came the timid voice, so quiet compared to the man’s earlier jab. “Toby.”

Just play it cool, Toby thought. Do what he wants and maybe he’ll let you live.

“Toby. That’s a cool name.” A set of teeth that could snap Toby in half without a second thought were bared at him in a wide smile. Toby could barely hold his ground without flinching. “Wait… You were here for food, right?”

Toby’s heart skipped a beat. “You… You’re not mad, a-are you?”

“No!” Brad said, maybe a little too quickly, because the little guy— Toby — flinched. “I promise I’m not mad,” he added. “Y’know, I was, uh. I was gonna have dinner, anyway. How ‘bout you eat with me? You look like you could use a hot meal.”

“Oh,” Toby said lamely. His head was going a million miles an hour. Was this Brad guy serious? He just found a tiny creature going through his food, and he’s offering him dinner? It’s gotta be a joke, right? Some weird, fucked-up joke. But instead, what came out of his mouth was, “Uh. S-sure.”

Brad couldn’t stop a grin from crossing his face. “Cool. Cool, cool cool. How does pasta sound?”

“P-pasta sounds great.” My God, Siri’s gonna kill me if this guy doesn’t.

“Awesome. Wait here.” The bean ducked out of sight, his footsteps rattling Toby’s entire world.

Is this a trick? Is he gonna put something in the pasta? Why, why did I say yes?! God, Toby, you fuckin’— It took him a while, but Toby finally came to his senses: the giant was gone.

The giant was gone!

He’d left him to his own devices. Never, in all of his years, had Toby heard of a human who would do that. His parents had always told him that humans were malevolent giants that wouldn’t let you go the minute they got their hands on you. Clearly, they were wrong. At least Brad wasn’t like that.

In spite of that, Toby was scared shitless. Every cell in his body begged him to leave, but his feet were rooted to the spot. But did he want to leave? After all, the giant did just offer him a free meal. And he was nice. He didn’t grab Toby, or even talk too loud. And he listened.

One thought trumped all of that: Siri. God, she was probably terrified, wondering where her friend was. On the other hand, she might’ve been ready to jump him when he returned after a talk with a human. Should he go home, or risk it all for some pasta and the chance that he might not die?

Toby was at a crossroads.

***

Brad was over-the-moon. Who would’ve thought that he’d be making dinner for a little, blue-haired guy? An unknown roommate, a potential friend? This was the kind of change he needed.

With a triumphant hiss, he pulled exactly what he needed from his desk drawer: a spool of stiff art wire from his more creative days. He could bend together a little set of utensils so the guy didn’t have to eat with his hands.

“Alright, buddy!” he called as he returned to his kitchen. “It won’t be much, but I promise it’ll be ta— Oh.”

The cupboard was empty. All that was left was the tiny patchwork bag near the sugar bowl. Somewhere, deep inside his chest, Brad’s heart broke just a little bit. Why am I feeling like this? For some tiny dude I met ten minutes ago?

He let out a defeated sigh. Not that he could blame him. Brad couldn’t imagine how terrifying he must’ve seemed to a four inch tall man. Toby wasn’t even the size of his hand. It’s not your fault. With that in mind, he grabbed a pot from under the sink and started boiling water for his dinner. A pasta dinner just for him. Not for two.

At least he knew he wasn’t dreaming.

***

Toby was out of breath when he finally reached his door.

It was late, but Siri was definitely still up and waiting impatiently. How was he going to explain his borrowing run to her? If he told her he was spotted, they would without a doubt have to pack up and leave, which was tedious. That, and they probably would have to live with a human that didn’t have good snacks.

He took a deep breath. He would be honest. Yeah, honest. Brad wasn’t murderous or enraged when he found Toby looting for sugar. He was good, and nice. Siri would understand. He pushed the door aside and entered his home.

Sure enough, Siri was waiting on his hacky-sack chair. But when she spotted him, she looked relieved, not angry. “Good grief!” she cried, charging into him. Her hands shook from where they rested on his arms. “Shit, Toby, were you gone a long time. I thought you were dead!” Toby didn’t have the energy to respond as she looked him up and down. “Where’s your bag?”

Fuck. My bag. He must’ve left it by the sugar bowl in his desperation to leave. “Rats,” he said blankly. What happened to being honest? “I ran into a couple of extra territorial ones on my way back. I gave them my bag to distract them so I could get away.” He feigned an apologetic look. “I’m sorry, Siri. I’ll go again tomorrow. Promise.”

He prayed and prayed that Siri would believe him. With a sigh, she shook her head.

“No, Toby, it’s okay.” His friend patted him on the shoulder. “You’ve had quite a day already. Go on and sit down, I’ll fix you a bowl.” As she turned away, every muscle in his body relaxed. He could’ve died twice today and still he managed to come out unhurt.

Still. He flopped down in his hacky-sack chair and blew his bangs out of his face. There was something missing, and it wasn’t his borrowing bag.

Why did he feel so bad?

#giant/tiny #g/t #g/t writing #brad #toby #siri #not my characters #fluff #i am definitely gonna make a part 2 #this is so fun!!!#:)#mustard writes

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akaluan · 3 years

Note

Oooh, this is so interesting!

But for my second question I was more wondering, for Erich, who has one human soulmate and one spirit soulmate, does that difference in... state? affect the bond in anyway? Like, is there a difference in the bound between a human/human bond and a human/spirit one?

Also, what would happen if Kisuke were to go back to Soul Society? Does the bond get muted or something if the persons are in different world?

Also, how strong does a bond between soulmates can go? Like, does it reach the point where it’s almost a one soul/two bodies kind of deal? (If we take like, Ukitake and Kyoraku, who are very old and have had so long to develop their bond.) What would such a strong bond implies?

Also, does the fact that Kisuke is a shinigami and Erich and Alexis Quincy could possibly have weird consequences? Like, you mentioned that soulmates can bleed through a shinigami inner world. But how does quincy power and shinigami power interact on a soul level? (This could also have interesting consequence with people like Shinji and co who have a hollow in their soul)

I have so many question ohmygod but this is so interesting. So, to finish, what happens to hollow and arrancar? They are a whole soup of different people who each had soulmates, does that have any influence on the hollow itself?

XD Okay another cut bc LONG, but also fun, so!

1 and 3 bc interlinked) state of the bond, human/human vs human/spirit, and strength of the bond

It does affect it to an extent! Erich mentions at one point that he and Alexis are as close to being a single soul in two bodies as people can be, which, in his view, IS correct. He and Alexis have cultivated their bond to be very close, closer than most soulmates tend to go for, and at close range it can be very difficult to tell them apart at the spiritual level bc their souls are kinda bleeding together. It's only really obvious at close range, to be fair, but the effect is definitely there.

Spirits like Shinigami or ppl in the Rukongai, however, can become MUCH closer. If they're not careful, even "physical" traits bleed over a bit, depending upon how close they are. So things like eye-color, hair color, skin tone, etc can be influenced by a super close bond! It won't be directly obvious when Kisuke's in his gigai, at least not initially, and it will take time and lots of trust, but it's very possible that by the time the main Bleach arc starts, Kisuke's eyes have a touch of brown and blue to them alongside the mutable grey-green, and maybe his hair is a bit wavy and a bit darker... well. Anything's possible =)

(Of course, at that point, Erich and Alexis are both souls themselves, so the influence will go all three ways!)

A bond so strong that it physically affects the appearance of a spirit is.. well. It's Not Entirely Discussed, but the implications there in Shinigami society is that you're maaaaybe possibly a little too much attached. In Rukongai it's much different, and viewed as more a sign of devotion and a thing to aim for.

Kisuke doesn't actually know it's possible. Yoruichi does, because she grew up as a clan brat proper and got all the lessons that Kisuke didn't, but she's not going to say anything because for once Kisuke seems HAPPY, so... she's not fucking with that.

Ukitake and Kyoraku do have a very close soulmate relationship, yes! And it HAS influenced their appearance, also yes! but only a handful of Shinigami are old enough to put the clues together, and while the Soutaichou is basically *heavy sigh* at his students, he's given up trying to fight them on this.

2) Kisuke returning to soul society

The connection dims, and it dims quite a bit. It also becomes "directionless" (I believe I mentioned at one point that soulmates in this AU can sort of Hot-Cold their way into finding their soulmates, by traveling around and seeing if the 'ping' they get from their nascent bond changes any) when a soulmate is in one of the other worlds.

4) Influence and consequences of Shinigami and Quincy powers mingling

Hoo boy, this is.. Definitely a Thing.

So, they can and will influence each other's powers, especially if they're not careful. It won't show up in the rest of the story, but if I can draw your attention to the very start of the AU, when Erich "pulls" from his soulmates and throws up a shield to save himself? No one actually realizes this, but that action not only blitzed Erich's connection to Kisuke wide open, but it set the stage for the two of them specifically to be... very interconnected with their powers.

Alexis can manage it with a bit of concentration, but for Kisuke and Erich, using each other's powerset will -- with time and patience and trust -- become almost as easy as using their own. It's also a downside, because they have to learn how to keep from accidentally drawing from the other without realizing. Kisuke will eventually be able to do a hacky sort of materialization with free reishi, and learn how to refill his reserves from the world around him. Erich will be able to use Shinigami Kido and, if it ever came down to it, could weild Benihime and use her abilities almost as well as Kisuke, especially if he's DEFENDING Kisuke and needs her help.

More realistically, from a less Exception standpoint: Alexis and Kisuke

If Erich hadn't done what he'd done at the start, how this would work out is sorta like... they can all share power between them, and they have a touch of access to each other's abilities in a way: Quincy able to purify Hollows, Shinigami able to unmake Hollows, and things like that. Basic, "intrinsic" skills shared between them. In time -- and given a blank zanpakutou -- a Quincy might even be able to form a pseudo-zanpakutou if they wanted, though it would never be entirely correct, and they wouldn't be able to do everything a Shinigami can.

(On a sidenote, the Vizard are a weird edge-case because they do have a Hollow inside them, but it's a Hollow of THEM, there's no... other souls involved. So their soulmate connections become a bit weird, but nothing much changes there.)

5) Hollows and Arrancar

The dominant soul is the one with the soulmate links on display! For lesser Hollows that kinda shift and wibble control between souls, it means their soulmate links can absolutely change day to day. For more stable souls like Arrancar and Vasto Lorde, they absolutely don't, though they can have "vestigial" marks (typically withered leaves or similar) for any strong-but-not-dominant soul inside them that's powerful enough to be a contender for control.

#soulmate au #ren-ard #replies

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cupidquinn-moved · 3 years

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Consider: Harleen Quinzel is a budding musician that moves from the suburbs to Gotham in order to get her break. She’s technically impressive but performs relatively bland and innocuous music. However, Harleen is pretty and blonde, plays the guitar and keyboard very well, and easily books small shows in coffee shops and bars. I kind of imagine her style during this period as Tori Amos lite. Like if someone really liked Kate Bush and Tori Amos and wanted to write a movie or TV show about an artist that made similar music but had to make it for the Disney Channel.

The concept follows Harleen’s persona changing. She starts using the stage name Harley Quinn, experimenting with electronic music, more aggressive lyrics, and starts dressing herself more provocatively (I don’t necessarily mean sexy by noting this, just literally, she wears eye catching colours, unusual styles, and outfits. Very much the style from BoP. However I’m a little conflicted with how to go about it. On one hand, something I like to do with AUs is to mirror canon somehow. Obviously, that brings up the Joker question. Do I fit him in at all? Is a version of him still in his life? Is Gotham still Gotham Gotham or just Gotham, a big city with all the joys and downfalls of a big city. And if it’s still Gotham Gotham, what’s the same? Is there still a Batman and all his rogues? As a narrative, is it hacky to fundamentally change Joker for the sake of mirroring the canon relationship if all parts don’t change? (ie: There’s still a Batman and the rest of the fam. All the rogues aside from Mr. J). Having lived in big cities, I can honestly say, danger is a part of life depending on where you live in said cities. Being relatively poor most my adult life, I usually lived in the “bad parts” and I’ve been visited by violence more than once. I guess what I’ve trying to say is though I don’t believe big cities are the virtual war zones from the minds of conservative fear mongers, I don’t think it’s outside the realm of possibility that living in a large, dangerous city like Gotham (which I believe is based on a cross between the pre-gentrified NYC of the 70s and 80s and some of the high crime cites in New Jersey) can change a person. Even without engaging in a relationship a criminally insane clown. (continues under cut cuz it got stupidly long)

So. Here’s two ideas:

1) Harleen catches the attention of the guitarist of a local rock band called Joker. They recently lost their singer and the guitarist in question, Jay (see what I did there?), thinks she has a certain je ne c,est que, and flatters her into the job. In order to fit the band’s vibe, he forges a new persona for her, encourages her to change her style, her attitude, and basically enables a part of her she’s always repressed (basically call it commentary on how women are discouraged from being loud, taking risks, and drawing attention to themselves). Sliding seamlessly into her new role of Harley Quinn, her wild onstage antics and raw talent, Joker began to experience real success. There’s a relationship between her, but he’s very manipulative and emotionally abusive, always eager to remind her that she’d still be performing in coffee shops and the underground if he hadn’t discovered her. Eventually, though, Jay becomes jealous of the attention Harley gets as Joker begins to make real gains in the fame game. Previously, he had been the one that garnered all the attention and he wasn’t one to relinquish it so easily. Also, you know, sexism. So anyway, Harley liked to drink and partook in a drug or three from time to time, but was far from an addict. Knowing that there would have to be a democratic vote to get her out, Jay begins to encourage her into crazier stunts both on and off stage, framing her habit with substances as much more self-destructive. Eventually, Jay’s machinations pay off and she was kicked out of Joker. So she goes solo....

2) Harleen is changed by both Gotham’s danger (in this case, everything is the same aside from her) and the music industry. Basically, a commentary on how it treats women and her frustration with the constant insistence that she’s talented but she needs to be more to make it. More glamourous or a sex pot. There’s no such thing as respect in superstardom for female artists, after all. Maybe Harleen scores a manger that tries to groom her into being the next Lady Gaga or Kesha. They keep pushing and pushing her to do things she’s not entirely comfortable with. Eventually she fires him after a particularly traumatic event (idek, maybe he crosses a certain line in his treatment of her or after a performance that pushes her boundaries to the breaking point), and having been under so much pressure to present and act in a certain way, Harleen kinda just snaps and decides ‘fine, you want a provocateur sex pot, I’ll give you a provocateur sex pot’ but only on her own terms. She remakes herself as “Harley Quinn” and y’know, does just that.

In my mind, the one with the Joker band is a more fuller AU and maybe there’s no Batman. The second one, everything is the same except for Harley. Maybe. Idek, I kinda leave that up to my partner, especially if they’re part of her canon, giving them room to either dream up a new identity within an AU or stay the same. *shrugs* Anyway, I’m very sorry that this got so lengthy and if you read all this you’re a champ.

#au wool gathering

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canmom · 4 years

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semi-realistic animation & anatomy & stylisation

it’s been interesting watching season 8 of The Clone Wars with a little more knowledge of sculpting and anatomy. the models are stylised, but in a way that clearly shows quite a lot of care to get anatomy that’s fairly realistic. stylisation in 3D graphics is often about softening features and removing detail, in The Clone Wars’s style, the deviations from realism are things like introducing some hard edges here and there to accentuate features.

like check out the three face models here (left to right, Trace, Rafa and Ahsoka):

like just to point to stuff I’ve struggled with while I’ve worked on my own first face sculpture, they’ve taken care to get details like the shape of the muscles underneath the mouth, the sternocleidomastoid muscle on the neck (I’ve gotten obsessed with that one) and the way it connects to the clavicles, the various 3D forms of lips the way the muscles in the face move when someone is speaking...

then they like stylise this a bit: the eyes are bigger, the chin has a sharp edge, hair is a solid volume. they’re also textured in a way that kind of emphasises a painted feeling, with like deliberate evidence of brush strokes. it’s not to create the impression the final image is a painting, but to like use a rendering pipeline designed for realistic images to create something that feels ‘right’ while obviously not being realism.

now have a look at some clones:

here, there’s more hard edges (because Gender lol): along the temples, the jawline, the top of the head, the bridge of the nose. although they’re clones, and based on the same model, they have differences: Rex (the guy in the middle) has a much thinner face and sharper features, the clone on the right has a bigger jawline. of course they emphasise this even more with the ‘Bad Batch’:

note how Echo’s cheekbones are accentuated and cheeks hollowed out, and Wrecker (the big guy at the back) has a much more emphasised brow ridge. every clone has a strong nasolabial fold.

the clones are at least nominally based on Temuera Morrison, who played them in Attack of the Clones:

tbh i’m not good enough at this stuff to be able to say if they were using any specific aspects of Morrison’s face in the clone designs.

of course the main characters Anakin and Obi-Wan are also based on actors, and you can see how they emphasise e.g. Hayden Christiansen’s cleft chin in Anakin’s model with a hard edge, or Obi-Wan’s cheeks seem to be quite sharp.

some of the designs are really extreme. Mace Windu, originally played by Samuel L Jackson, is given a really elongated face and hyper-exaggerated brow ridge and nasolabial fold:

vs. Jackson in the films:

looking at these images side by side, I can see that stuff like the shape of the nose and the eyelids is very clearly modelled on Jackson’s face: it’s a mix of fidelity and exaggeration.

I do wonder what led them to decide to emphasise the brow ridge though, like at least in this photo, Jackson doesn’t have a really prominent ridge there, so how did they know it would still be recognisable? (cynically, they could get away with more because Windu is almost the only Black character in Star Wars...) was it necessary to like, make him look suitably ‘badass’ as a 3D character? here’s a hacky edit with the clone brush tool to imagine how this design would look if they didn’t have that really sharp brow ridge:

does it allow them to more clearly convey expressions with the eyes? I don’t know... further study needed

anyway, whatever face rigs they’re using are surely just as detailed as a rig you’d use for a realistic model, and allow the animated characters to do a lot of acting and expression. I’ve been really impressed by how well they’ve animated body language in this season.

I feel like this emphasis on stylised anatomy is like, not that common in animation outside of anime. anime is interesting because it’s a mix of very carefully observed ‘realistic’ drawing, and really stylised exaggerated stuff. although their proportions are typically exaggerated, anime characters have 3D forms: almost all anime draws its shots as if shot from a particular camera angle and takes a great deal of care about how they move through that 3D space.

i’ll focus on anime that has ‘realistic’ drawing styles, e.g. shinichiro watanabe’s work or a lot of production IG shows. Jet from Bebop for example is p much an anatomy study:

this tends to be very gendered though, according to the design ‘rule’ that adding more lines to a design tends to make it look older and more masculine. contrast Faye Valentine, also from Bebop:

in a closeup like this you’ve at least got e.g. the clavicles and a little bit of shading in the eye socket area, but there’s generally a lot less emphasis on muscle definition, and like her face is pretty much a blank space.

(I’m really looking forward to watching the anime adaptation of Dorohedoro, which has some fantastically solid and weighty character designs with lots of accurate muscle definition in the manga, and it looks like they’re doing that in the anime too. can’t wait to see what I can find out)

in anime, a lot of the time for budget reasons they just animate the mouth on a totally still face - a trick they sometimes even apply in profile. at extremes you have the Ghost In The Shell: Stand Alone Complex style where everyone’s an incredibly solid, well-drawn 3D figure but also everyone stands extremely stiffly, just moving their mouths. (these examples are from TV - film animation generally has the budget to animate things a bit more ‘properly’)

one odd thing I noticed watching Psycho-Pass recently (a production IG show) was a style of shading cheeks on the villain:

for the most part this is a really anatomically accurate face, but this character always has this hard, shadow-casting line on his cheeks. in a front view it kind of makes sense, as a way to show he has fairly hollow cheeks and sharp cheekbones with the limits of cel-shading:

but it makes a lot less sense in side view, like what physically is actually casting the shadow there? (by contrast, the nasolabial fold, which probably would be casting a shadow when a character is smiling like this, is not marked at all)

despite the ‘unrealism’ though, it mostly looks fine. and this is where cel-shading often falls down: the way we draw lines is only partly to do with the actual 3D shape of an object. the lines suggest a particular curve (e.g. the short lines on the nose) but they don’t directly correspond to, e.g., areas of high curvature or overlap.

it’s an artistic choice to put a line to emphasise the way something is curving... like the lines on the nose, most of the nose doesn’t even get a line, but they put a few lines on the tip of the nose to suggest how it’s curving. part of the trick in anime style drawing seems to be knowing when you can get away with leaving a line out, and letting the brain’s ability to interpolate do the work of knowing what’s there.

anyway, of course it’s practical to do more full-face animation in 3D because you have automated inbetweening and a bunch of shape keys for recurring face shapes, which you can render and light from different angles. the challenge of course is to make a rig that’s flexible and accurate enough to blend between those shapes in a believable way.

in general, you can ‘cheat’ a lot more in a drawing than you can in a 3D model. though we’ve now mostly crossed the uncanny valley with improved shading and animation technique and the ability to directly simulate muscles, it wasn’t easy! and it’s not easy for someone who’s just teaching herself this stuff T_T

all of this is trade-offs... the more detail and accuracy you put into a drawing, the longer it takes to draw a frame. if you do 3D, you have to put in a ton of work to get a suitable model beforehand, and you usually lose the power given to you by a suggestive line (unless you do what Into The Spider-Verse did and literally draw on top of the rendered frames...)

after all that... I don’t have a conclusion or recommendation to draw from this, just some observations of how the pros do this stuff which will hopefully help in making my own animations.

#animation #star wars the clone wars #cowboy bebop #psycho-pass

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