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ilikemesometaetaes · 4 years ago

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Set Me Free (M)

Min Yoongi Oneshot

•••> Author: @ilikemesometaetaes

•••> Summary: You are just an ordinary woman with a strange aura about you that Yoongi can’t seem to resist- even past the compulsion of his mentor. The question is: why?

•••> Pairing(s): Yoongi/Reader

•••> Requested by @itsgottabeyoo-ngs : “Hi daddy, One shot request with vampire Yoongi x brat reader. Bonus points for adding in choking or spitting idk make it filthy k thanks love you byeeeee xoxoxoxox”

•••> Word Count: 10.95k

•••> Rating: 18+

•••> Warnings: smut, oral (female receiving), unprotected sex, murder, attempted murder, slight choking/strangulation, dirty talk, biting, blood drinking, spitting, violence, horror, vampire/human relationship, cursing, mental attachment, thirsty Yoongi, Yoongi thinks he’s scary, but he’s totally not

Thank you for the request, babe! This one is a bit to unpack, as you can see. I hope you enjoy :)

~#~

Yoongi never claimed to have his thirst under complete control.

He stands before his brothers once every week for the feed, snarling as he consumes his share of blood, while the others bear witness so as to provide him ceremonial protection- a vampire is very vulnerable while he consumes blood. The polydipsia made one lose all form of reason and sense of mind, driven to the brink of animalistic insanity when it was in the process of mildly quenching the eternal hunger.

Polydipsia, used to describe his level of thirst, was the word made just for him in his own little world.

It wasn’t normal thirst, like a human, but the savage-like impulse to drink and drown until he could swim in a river of blood and take deep lungfuls of the crimson fluid. The impossible desire to consume and be completely consumed by blood until he became it himself always loomed over his mind in his early days as a Deadblood- a vampire youngling- causing him to search for a word that could completely describe his affliction.

Then the Greeks begun transforming their language, perfecting the word that he could use to chronicle his need. He had mulled over the thought throughout the few centuries that the word came into existence, truly connecting with it on a level that was deprived of him when his soul was taken from his body.

But the word was not only used to describe normal thirst; it described the abnormal desire to drink as a symptom of disease- and a disease is what Min Yoongi had.

From the days he explored the lands of Goryeo as a young teenage boy, he knew that disease racked every inch of the world. Street beggars, riddled with sicknesses and incurable illnesses, asked him for coin, food, clothing, and any necessities that could potentially carry them through the night into another sunrise. But the one thing that they begged for the most was water.

Liquid life. Yoongi thinks back on the ironic turn of events and how, even as a privileged boy of nobles, he understood just how desperate a person got when they were deprived of the one, singular fluid that supported life as he knew it.

As Yoongi approached adulthood, he was promoted and bestowed larger honors in the name of the Min clan, allowing him to provide more for the beggars and lower-class individuals that he came across on the streets every day- not that his father would find out.

Until he did.

Yoongi recalls the moment he knew that his father figured out that his son was spoiling the family riches on the lower class. They weren’t sitting down for dinner and having a conversation nor taking a stroll along the river like the two of them normally would- it was quite surprising, really. Yoongi had to applaud his father for the creativity of the circumstance.

He knew that his father figured out his whereabouts when he found himself bleeding out in the middle of the woods with three arrows, adorned with the Min clan crest carved into the wood, sticking out of his chest. He was sent to look for his supposedly lost little sister under the direction that she was probably at a watering hole- which Yoongi had never heard about- about forty-five minutes from the edge of Goryeo’s walls.

Many people ventured outside of the city to fend for food and necessities, or to find civilization elsewhere, so it wasn’t surprising to him that his curious baby sister wanted to see for herself what life was like outside of the city’s limits.

As Yoongi lay dying on the soil of the earth, staring up at the greenery of the trees above while they lightly swayed in the breeze, he realized that everyone, regardless of social-class or physical health, was fighting the same, universal disease: death. No one could escape it and no one was safe. At least, that’s the epiphany he had in an effort to comfort himself while he felt his heart painfully struggle to beat with an arrowhead lodged into it. Copious amounts of blood spurt out with each pulse of his damaged organ.

And then the universe decided to set him free from death with a cure worse than the disease itself.

Yoongi doesn’t remember who his creator was. He doesn’t remember how long he spent on the forest floor with the arrows still in his chest. He doesn’t remember waking up.

His memory of his new life started from the moment his consciousness returned, in the exact second that he found a set of vocal cords clutched in the palm of his hand, dripping with crimson, after apparently ripping them out of a young boy who was actively collapsing in front of him. The boy, who Yoongi immediately recognized from the streets of Goryeo, was choking on his own gore as he clutched at his now nonexistent throat, staring up at his killer with a jumbled expression that silently begged for help yet withdrew from terror.

It took Yoongi five years of trekking everywhere and no where while attempting to control his thirst before he found new meaning. He mostly had a hold on the scorch in his throat by staying away from the city and surrounding villages before he met another and figured out what he became.

The woman- no, girl?- appeared young yet spoke as if she had seen countless winters, the wisdom of a million middays glowing behind her carmine eyes. She was the first person he had met who did not end up dead within the first two minutes of scenting them on the wind.

“You are a vampire. You survive purely on the life essence of others. You are still a young Deadblood. Judging by your age, you should become a Redblood soon.” She sat with her back to him, overlooking the valley below the then-unnamed Odaesan mountain that they sat perched upon. “Do you know who created you?”

“Created me?” He asked. “What do you mean? My parents?”

She turned, her vibrant red eyes continuing to shock him. Did his own orbs look like this?

“I mean, who turned you?” She seemed to look at him incredulously, shocked by his lack of knowledge. “Who gave you their venom- their shi?”

“I…” Yoongi tried very hard to remember anything before the burning sensation that scraped like rocks against the insides of his bones and flesh, but all he could see and feel was fire and agony- and then blood. He couldn’t help but think with a grain of salt, disbelieving of the method in which he was born into his new life. “I don’t know. I just remember from my first kill.”

“Strange.” The other vampire muttered, returning her gaze to the valley. “Strange, indeed.”

Yoongi was always the silent type, only interacting when he needed to as a habit formed to avoid the questioning glare of his father when he returned home late on certain occasions.

But he couldn’t help the burning desire of curiosity within him, a welcome distraction from the need to feed within him. He had so many questions.

“You may ask your questions, Min Yoongi.” The woman sighed, not even bothering to spare him a glance whilst she spoke. The man was shocked to find that she knew his name without him telling her.

“How do you know my name?” The new revelation took precedent in his mind, hoping that she was not an enemy of his clan.

“A valid question.” She mused. “Anticipated, but valid. I suppose I’ll answer your question to the best of my ability.”

Yoongi shifted his position in preparation, a new habit that he formed in his new life. He learned from the first time he moved to stretch that his body did not need to be stretched as it usually did. He never ached, never cramped, never tired, and never lost energy. Despite the lack of his emotions in their usual form, he knew that it should have been unsettling to find such a new change within him, so he did the sensible thing of pretending that he needed to.

He pretended he needed to breathe- after two hours at the bottom of a lake he stumbled upon in his aimless journey, he was amazed to find that he required no oxygen to continue existing- and that he didn’t need to sleep nor use the bathroom. He would practice taking breaths, trying to inhale and exhale evenly without becoming allured to the pungent yet undeniably attractive scent of animal blood so that he could finally smell the forest again. He pretended to go to sleep and wake up with the urge to relieve himself of the noneixstent pressure in his bladder despite not having any of the instincts he once had.

The woman spoke, answering his first question.

“I can hear your thoughts. They’re not necessarily specific, but I can hear when you are wistful- like you are now- or when you are curious or sad or angry. I can hear the causes of these emotions.” She paused. “It comes with the gift of my second life. A form of protection, if you will.”

“Why would I need protection when I am invincible? I’ve seen the things I can do and what my body can endure.” He briefly recalled repeatedly jumping from a cliff, automatically landing on his feet no matter how hard he tried not to. Before, he had a will to survive with a choice of dying, but now? There was no comprehensible choice. “There is nothing that can hurt me.”

Yoongi couldn’t help cocking his head to the side like a confused dog when the woman let out a breathless laugh.

“Because, young one,” She looked at him with her eyes again, a look of mock endearment filling them. “You are not invincible.”

For a moment, Yoongi did not believe her. He believed that the liquid running through his veins was pure ichor, an essence of the gods, but when he returned her look of sincere truth, he understood that dying was still very much possible.

Thanking the gods, Yoongi looked to the ground and began toying with his fingers at his revelation. He could stop murdering people, willing to die in order to do so.

The woman shook her head. “No, Min Yoongi. You do not have to die to stop killing humans. In fact, it is the reason I have not killed you yet. You are unaware of the possibilities.”

His head perked up at the comment, suddenly eager to learn.

“How? How can I live without killing?” All he could see was the young boy that he had murdered in cold blood; the boy’s warm brown eyes staring up at him as he watched the life drain from them burned into his memory- he didn’t even know the boy’s name. The boy could not have been older than his own sister.

“I never told you that you could continue to live without killing. Of course, you have to kill. But you do not have to kill people.” The woman nodded her head down the mount. “Do you smell that? Do you smell the life that lives throughout this mountain?”

Yoongi attempted to focus on his senses but could only feel the thirst once again tormenting his throat. As soon as the woman shifted his attention back to the aroma of life, he salivated. Of course, he smelled the animal’s scents, but he could also detect traces of human life upwind that completely took away his desire for anything but humans.

“Push the thirst aside to open your senses. Embrace them. Embrace your power and your abilities. Focus on those.”

Again, he tried to push the scorch in his throat to the side, only to find that it was an impossible feat seeing as he had not fed in several months. He wanted human blood so badly.

“Poor child. I did not realize how weak you were.” She let a grimace morph her features, the first true expression of genuine emotion that Yoongi had seen on her. “Come sit in front of me. I will help you.”

For a moment, Yoongi hesitated. Was she going to kill him? He was not sure, but after a few more thoughts to himself, he realized that he had nothing to lose. Following her direction obediently, he moved to sit with his legs crossed in front of the woman.

“Now, close your eyes and listen to my voice.” She raised her hands to his head, placing her fingertips on his temples, and began whispering while he let his eyes flutter closed.

He felt as if he was mentally hit by a charging bear.

The woman’s words echoed in his mind, seating themselves amongst every corner and crevice that they could touch before Yoongi could understand what was happening. Shocked by the feeling of being intruded upon, he tried to push back against the mind-numbing force of her words, uncomfortable and feeling violated by the sensation. Instead of stopping them, her voice just broke down his amateur attempt at a mental barrier and pushed its way further into his brain. He was helpless to her superior mental awareness and gift.

“You will not focus on the thirst. You will focus on your abilities. Focus on the blood of animals and the blood of those already dead.”

And Min Yoongi had no option but to obey for he was forced into a dieted life.

But as he stands, thousands of years later, in the middle of your kitchen whilst watching you silently with the inferno of the blazing sun in his esophagus, he couldn’t help the need that overcame him. He could not obey his mentor; miraculously and horrifyingly, the gift of his mentor did not work with you.

He was impelled by his mentor’s gift, effectively removing most of the bloodlust he had for humans. In his lifetime, after the unavoidable command was bestowed upon him, he had only killed a handful of humans when he was consumed by the thirst after living in self-induced exile for so long. But standing before you, he may have needed to add a finger to that handful depending on what you did next.

Yoongi first clocked you on his radar the moment you walked into the small coffee shop he was occupying for the later part of the morning.

Building a friendship with you was quite easy.

You were bright and warm and everything wonderful upon meeting him. Your smile was just shy of naive, yet he couldn’t help the alien tugs on his heart when watching you giggle.

“How old are you, Yoongi?” You asked while circling the straw in your caramel macchiato.

“Old enough.” He chuckled, looking down with what you perceived as shyness.

“Oh?” You laughed with him. “And how old is enough for you?”

“I could ask you the same question. How old do you think I am?” He met your eyes, once again shocking you with their beautifully vibrant shade of brown.

“Well…” You trailed off, studying his facial features closely- the hint of a permanent smile line, fresh haircut, and no wrinkles alluded that he couldn’t be over thirty. “I’m gonna say… twenty-five?”

The man across from you smiled. “Very close. I’m twenty-seven.”

So he wasn’t that much older than you. You could totally do him.

Yoongi noticed the flash of lust that ghosted through your pupils for a split second, recognizing the dilation of them as you glanced at him. He watched you stick your chest out a bit more, begin fiddling with your hair more often, and part your lips while you let the thoughts of sexual satisfaction run across your mind.

“Twenty-seven, huh? That’s not bad at all.” You smiled, letting your tongue lightly swipe along your bottom lip unconsciously.

Yoongi zeroed in on the action with a piercing gaze, watching as the muscle seemed to move in slow motion tauntingly, daring him to dig his fangs into it savagely before tearing it from your mouth to feel the blood pouring from your lips onto his face.

His body reacted sensibly, blood rushing like fake adrenaline to awaken his better instincts- rushing everywhere- and making his jeans become uncomfortably tight as they restrained his filling manhood.

Blood drinking was as exciting as it was satisfying for a vampire. An extremely personal and holy moment, consuming lifeblood was the most raw and sexual moment to experience. A vampire could not experience real sexual desire without it.

He dug his fingers into the faux leather of his side of the booth until they broke through the material to restrain himself from attempting to attack you in the middle of the day.

Quickly, gaining his sense of mind once again, he tore more holes into the leather to round out the punctures so that it could appear as if the holes were from wear and tear.

The scent of your blood transpierced by the hormones and adrenaline beginning to flow through your veins made it just that much more implausibly alluring. Yoongi admitted that you were a beautiful and kind woman from the conversation throughout the morning. He also knew that you had a deviant side due to the surprisingly quick appearance of your lust-filled gaze.

Yet he couldn’t help the urge to murder you on the spot.

He knew that he couldn’t touch you. The supernatural safety of the sun that shone on your body prevented him from laying a finger on your skin without his own lighting aflame. He learned the protection of sun rays on humans the hard way.

His fifth human victim, a monk who travelled the heights of Mount Odaesan- Yoongi’s sanctuary and home- for a religious trial, travelled early in the morning as the sun was rising. Yoongi smelt the sweat dripping from the man’s skin instantly. In the small cove he called home, he tried to resist the urge to kill the man for he hadn’t smelt human blood in several years.

His mentor’s words were ever present. ‘Focus on the blood of animals and the blood of those already dead.’

Despite having those words affecting his instincts, Yoongi had managed to convince himself that the monk was a dead man standing once he smelled remnants of a virus tainting his scent, effectively bypassing the impulsion of the woman’s mind control.

Yoongi found himself rushing at the man without a second thought, fangs bared and fingers curled in preparation to tear the man’s limbs from his body. However, before he could get within two feet of the vulnerable monk, he was thrown back by an invisible and boiling hot force that left him screaming in agony and flying through the air.

The monk quickly ran back down the mountain in terror, yet Yoongi could pay no mind as he lay on the forest floor, ready to die once again as his skin singed and fell from his flesh like swamp sludge.

As his throat tore itself raw from his wails of misery, his body writhed in and out on itself in complete and utter anguish. The smell of burnt flesh overwhelmed his nostrils, pungent and nauseating in every possible way. How he was able to focus on something other than the pain was beyond him.

Despite the burning, Yoongi could feel his aflame skin beginning to heal itself. Clawing through the dirt, he felt the blood stored in his stomach rushing through his veins to the broken and severed ones, rebuilding them and recreating the network of arteries necessary to begin restoring his expanse of skin.

Before long, the pain subsided and Yoongi was no longer screaming. The entire ordeal lasted approximately twenty minutes- long enough that Yoongi no longer heard the footsteps of the monk and long enough for him to process the events that had just happened.

He was thankful that he became a Redblood with the ability to use consumed blood throughout his body, unsure of what would have happened to him if he had been a Deadblood at the time. Deadbloods burned through consumed blood quicker than a spark from a flint could ignite kindling into a flame.

He definitely needed to ask the woman, Zizi, about it. And he definitely needed to track that monk until sundown so that he could get rid of any loose ends.

Yoongi grimaced slightly, remembering the occurrence like it was yesterday, as he sat across from you.

You were still looking down at your cup in blissful unawareness of his inner turmoil and life that he’s lived thus far. You definitely were not dense enough to not notice his gaze on your skin, but you were definitely ignorant of the fact that he was thinking about what would happen if he could just get you to move a few feet to the right to gain cover from the direct line of the sun. He just needed to get you into the shadows.

“Y/N,” He called your name. You instantly looked up in response. “How old are you?”

“Old enough.” You teased him back with his own words. He let a small smile thin his lips before he looked down to hide it. When you followed his gaze and noticed that he didn’t have a drink, you jumped to the opportunity.

“Can I buy you a drink, Min Yoongi?” You asked him.

“Oh, I’m not particularly craving coffee at the moment.” He paused and held his breath, as if trying to find the words to say. “I just like to sit here sometimes and enjoy watching the street.”

“Well,” Ask him! Ask him out! Yes! Do it! Your head screamed at you to be confident. You knew he was the shy type; you would be waiting all day for him to make a move and you just didn’t have the time nor patience for that. “Let me get you a drink at my bar?”

The man looked mildly impressed for a moment. “You own a bar?”

“A small one.” You swiftly added. “It’s not a big popular one or anything but I didn’t want a place too big. I like the smaller things.”

Yoongi couldn’t help but smile. You were a kind and beautiful woman living a simple life. He dreaded the moment that he was going to have to kill you.

“I take it you’re pretty well off then?” He asks. “And please don’t take this as me digging around. I’m just curious.”

“Don’t worry about it. Yeah, actually.” You laughed and sat back in your chair, looking out the window onto the street as people and cars passed by. “I’ve always been pretty lucky for some reason. The gods always seem to be in my favor and give me what I want.”

Yoongi smirked for a moment. If she wants me, she can have me. Then, I’ll have her.

When Yoongi found himself in the prime position to attack you in your kitchen, several weeks later, he knew. He finally had you where he wanted you.

A handful of dates that he found quite pleasant were all it took.

You turned out to be just what he thought- a strangely attractive and alluring woman, the scent of your blood aside. You exhumed an odd magnetism about you that Yoongi had never felt from a human. He regretted the decision of waiting so long to kill you seeing as he was considering letting you live. But he knew that he couldn’t do that.

With your back turned to him, busying yourself with dinner, he could easily snap your neck so that you wouldn’t scream and struggle- and you would be dead almost instantly. A quick and nearly painless death was what you deserved. He didn’t want you to suffer at all.

However, just as he crouched in preparation to lunge at you, you spoke.

“Are you ready for dinner, babe?” You asked him.

He smiled devilishly, venom filling his mouth as he salivated. “Yes, I am. I’m starving.”

You chuckled. “Okay.”

“Go and sit down at the table.”

It was the most simple of commands. Telling Yoongi to sit down wasn’t an order. You weren’t demanding him to do it. You never demanded anything of him. It was a mere suggestion in your eyes.

Yet Yoongi felt his body moving to the dinner table without a second thought, unable to resist obeying your words.

What in the everliving fuck.

He sat quickly, impotent to move from his spot while he waited for you to bring the food from the counter. His thirst obliterated his throat, causing it to seize up and restrict any air that he could previously breathe, but he sat in wonder as you seemed to hold power over him that he had never felt before.

You turned with both of your dinner plates in hand and he quickly smothered the panic on his face, wondering what in the world had just happened.

“I’m not at all a chef, but you better eat everything.” Yoongi tested your words, seeing if the inclination to finish your food was present, only to find a slight mental nudge- as he expected. You didn’t tell him to do anything; you merely made an ‘or else’ statement.

No longer desperate to kill you for the time being, Yoongi sat still and waited for your next words. Once you sat the plate in front of him, you uttered a joke.

“Dig in.”

And dig in Yoongi did. He picked up his fork and scooped into the pasta you made without any willingness to deny you.

The pasta wasn’t fantastic in any sort of the word- It was plain, although it could be due to the fact that it wasn’t at all what he truly craved and needed. It was like eating a piece of stale bread while he was offered a perfectly cooked and outright juicy steak on a silver platter. The food that he ate wouldn’t be consumed by his body and used for nutrients; the shi in his stomach would burn it to nothingness within the next few hours.

Uncontrollably, Yoongi shoved mouthful after mouthful into his mouth- he couldn’t stop. Once he finished chewing one bite, his hand was immediately bringing him another, and then another. Despite lacking the need to breathe, Yoongi felt himself suffocating with each bite as the realization that he could do nothing except eat his food settled in his mind.

“I see you were hungry.” You laughed, unaware of his predicament. Yoongi’s eyes shot up to yours and silently hoped you would give him another command so that he could stop the foolishness.

You, however, just sat there feeling sort of proud of yourself- not only for making an edible meal, but for making one Yoongi seemed to enjoy. Even though it was slightly shocking to see him out of his usually cool character, acting like a man suffering from hunger, you couldn’t help but find it undeniably cute.

Eating slowly while watching him, you let your feelings for him come to the surface.

Yoongi was utterly beautiful. His black hair that fell over his face while he was cleaning up the last bits of his plate was just long enough to cover his eyes, yet as he looked at you without reservation, you felt he had a clear line of sight straight into your soul.

His skin was nearly flawless save for the light and narrow scar that cut into his right eye. Others found the scar intimidating and ugly, but you found it rather attractive. Yoongi, with his uncanny physical allure, was undeniably the most beautiful man you had ever seen.

Your body was alight with joy and content. In the few weeks that you got to know him, liking him was incredibly easy and having him in your home, in a domestic setting, lit your heart on fire with the possibility of falling in love with him.

He was incredibly easy to love, you discovered. Everything about him begged you to fall for him. As if the universe created him just for you, Min Yoongi was the epitome of perfection- in your eyes, anyway.

Briefly, you had shown a photo of him to your mother. She became unsettled instantly by his appearance.

“He’s so pale. And a little scary-looking.” She squinted at the photo you took of him when he wasn’t looking. You never brought him up again to your mother, disliking the fact that she didn’t like your potential boyfriend and found him scary.

The picture just happened to be your favorite- being because he didn’t like pictures and it was the only one you had of him.

He kindly asked you to not take photos of him. When you prompted him as to why during one of your more intimate moments at your bar, he only answered playfully as he held you close to him, lips begging for you to kiss them.

“Because I don’t want to leave evidence.” He whispered, breath tickling your nose. His body was warm and sturdy, muscles rippling under your touch as you clung to his shoulders.

“Evidence from what?” You asked breathily. The heat in your panties had increased tenfold over the last few minutes as his eyes grew hungrier with want. Yoongi’s fingers dug into your waist painfully, pulling you so close that you barely had room to expand your lungs to breathe, yet you couldn’t help the edgy feeling of how rough he could be with you.

“From when I eat you up.”

Thinking back on the memory, you shivered involuntarily, hoping that tonight might be the night you actually get to have him. He’d made you wait for a little over a month and you had no idea why. You definitely felt him straining through his pants a few times. But no kisses or anything further than the pressing of your bodies was accomplished.

Yoongi finished his plate and sat upright briskly, pulling you from your wishful thinking with a jump.

“Y/N,” He nearly growled, shocking you. “What else do you want me to do?”

The fork you were holding clattered to your plate instantly. Wow. He’s sizzling hot.

“I-“ You stuttered a bit. “I- uh.”

“Spit it out.” He hissed. You jumped again, trying to find the words to say with the heat growing in your panties.

Quickly, you answered him. “I want you to take me to my bedroom.”

“Thank god.” He groaned, getting up slowly with a smirk on his face. “Is that just a request? Because I can walk out now if you don’t actually want this.”

“Take me to my bedroom, Yoongi.” You stood slowly, carefully, as if you were afraid to trigger him.

Yoongi pushed in his chair and moved towards you at a speed that was almost inhuman. You yelped in astonishment as Yoongi attempted to control himself- he couldn’t bring you to your bedroom at his natural speed or else he would have a very motion-sick human to worry about. Instead, he trembled with the effort to resist your command at full force, knowing that the only way it was possible was due to the fact that he was still, in fact, taking you to your bedroom.

Picking you up was easier than breathing. You weighed absolutely nothing in his arms because of his advanced strength, so when he felt you trying to assist him in carrying you by holding your body stiffly, he huffed out a laugh whilst he walked.

“Relax, woman. You are as light as a feather.”

You blushed under his words, leaning into his chest to hide your cheeks.

“Stop that.” He growled, entering your bedroom. You looked up at him and he couldn’t tear his eyes from the blood that rushed to your cheeks. “I can’t resist if you do that.”

“Then don’t.” You whispered. Your heart pounded in your chest, begging him to hear it. “Don’t resist.”

His fangs came forth immediately, for he could not resist your command while he flew to your bed to throw you down. Despite your unknowing of what you were telling him to do, he fostered no opposition to what he was about to do.

The roughness of his throw startled you for a moment as you looked up at his vastly approaching figure, only to grow terrified when you caught sight of his face.

The veins protruding out of his temples and cheeks pumped blood straight into the whites of his eyes, turning them completely bloodshot, as they framed the now-crimson irises. Long incisors protruded from his mouth as he opened it with a hiss, revealing the way his human teeth shifted apart to allow his inhuman ones to break through the gums. Instantly, you parted your lips to scream.

Yoongi was upon you instantly, hand covering your mouth and silencing your cry while he snarled menacingly, yet he couldn’t help but feel remorse for killing you.

“I’m sorry.” He whimpered through his animalistic demeanor. “I can’t stop.”

You were screaming below his hand and, instantaneously, he had an idea.

He was leaning forward slowly, able to slow himself in the process of not resisting you. “Y/N,” He strained, changing the frequency of his talent, and waited for you to silence yourself in order to listen to him. He took his hand off of your mouth slowly after he heard your heart calm itself past your weeping. “Tell me to stop.”

“Stop!” You sobbed whilst clawing at his chest and kicking at his legs. “Don’t kill me!”

Not a second passed before Yoongi flew off of you, throwing his back to your wall with a loud thud while he cursed lowly.

You scrambled to the headboard of your bed, pressing your back against it in an attempt to gain some distance between the two of you. Your eyes were wide, chest heaving with your breath short, as you looked at the man in front of you.

“I-“ Yoongi stuttered for the first time in decades. “I’m sorry.”

“Your eyes!” Your burst out. You were unable to contain your fear and shock, so you displaced it into your curiosity. “Y-your- Your face! Your teeth!”

Yoongi stood against the wall, breathing just as hard as you, with his eyes cast to the floor in the process of trying to control his facial features. He could no longer kill you. The thought revolted him- every time he considered drinking your blood, the idea was banished from his mind with a sense of nausea following. Good god. She is unaware of her ability yet I am completely at her mercy.

“I apologize. I couldn’t help myself.” He breathed. What Yoongi forgot to take into account was the fact that he began implementing the gift of his second life on you the moment he stepped foot through your threshold, so your mind was completely scrambled by this point.

It was nighttime now; he could not leave your house no matter how hard he tried. He knew of the fallacy that vampires needed to be invited in and he found himself giggling from time to time at how close humans got to the actual lore of his kind.

He could enter your house, uninvited, during the day. He could lurk every corner of your abode without a bother, yet when night fell and the sun finally set, he would be stuck inside until morning. He knew he would be staying the night in your house the moment he agreed to have dinner with you. If he attempted to enter through your door during the night, however, he would have no luck- the night’s protection would convince his brain to walk away from your home without any further reconsideration until he was a good distance from it.

He was in the first position now.

He wished that he could leave you and disappear from your life without a trace so that you could live a peaceful and happy life without him, but he was afraid that it was impossible now with sundown a mere two hours prior. Your powers were no match for the natural protection of the earth. The both of you had a long night ahead of yourselves.

So he used his ability. Yoongi gave you control- rational thought, rather. His gift allowed him to grant organization of the mind and precise focus to others, but he could also take it away.

Upon entering your home, he began the process of slowly but surely ebbing away your barriers and logical thought- he couldn’t do it too fast or else you would panic like you were now. With a presently impossible-to-kill human whose heart was beating out of her chest and a command to not kill you forcing him into submission, he was obligated to prevent you from having a heart attack that was caused by him.

With laser-like focus, he channeled his gift straight into your open mind. Yoongi rebuilt the walls he had previously broken down over the past few hours, restocked your jumbled thoughts into their proper spaces, and flowed his energy through each corridor of judicious conception so that you could continue to develop your focus into that of supernatural proportion. He hoped that you, with a new mind, would tell him to get away from you and to kill himself. Dying by the hands of such a robust ability wouldn’t be too bad of a way to go.

You, however, never had such a decisive mind. Your mind was never clearer and you had never felt such clarity in your thoughts before. It allowed you to feel the magnetism that he radiated.

You knew he was a vampire. You don’t remember how you knew or how you recognized it, but you knew that he was not the first of his kind you had come across. Maybe it was the obvious fangs that gave it away.

“Yoongi,” You whispered. “You’re a vampire.”

His eyes, now back to their normal gorgeously coffee-bean shade, flicked up to yours in surprise.

“You know what I am?” He spluttered, flabbergasted. “You don’t think I’m a demon? Or the devil?”

“I’m not stupid. I know a vampire when I see one.” Your tone did not waver nor shake despite being a potential victim to a vampire. Was it the adrenaline?

“Then you know that I am a danger to you.” He said lowly, shock still evident on his face, while he began gravitating towards your bedroom door to leave.

“No. Stay.” You found yourself pining for his presence while he froze up in his spot. You eyed the action analytically. “If you were a danger to me, I wouldn’t be alive right now. You had plenty opportunity to kill me.”

“That’s the thing,” His hands pressed to the wall and scratched into it with the effort to move further from you. “I don’t have much of a choice anymore.”

“And why is that?” You relaxed your body and slowly slid your way across the bed towards him.

“Because I can’t.” Yoongi actually gasped for air as you stood from your bed to slowly approach him. “Y/N. Don’t come near me.”

“Why don’t you have a choice?” You ignored his warning, fully aware of the risk you were taking yet uncaring of the consequences. You were too focused on the fact that you actually wanted him.

Yoongi could not move from his spot, a side effect of your command to stay, but he refused to meet your eyes. The irresistible scent of your blood clashing with the order to not kill you fucked with his mind in ways he never experienced, creating an excruciatingly splitting headache between his temples. He wanted to drink from you so bad yet he could not move a single muscle.

“You can tell me to do anything. You can tell me to stay away from you. You can tell me to leave you alone. Hell, you can tell me to kill myself and I’d do it.” He ground out, attempting to press his back further into the wall as he felt your body heat against his skin. You came too close. He could smell your hormones lacing through your blood, triggering a wash of his shi over his dry tongue and a yearning to tear you apart overriding his senses.

He wanted to sink his fangs into your flesh so badly that he was beginning to scare himself. Allowing his venom to seep into your system would undoubtedly send you into ecstasy; you would only feel a pinch of pain as his saliva instantly burned through your nerves and set them alight. He could kill you while you were in pleasure; you wouldn’t feel anything but bliss as he drained the life from you.

“And why do you, a powerful creature such as yourself, allow me to have this power over you?” You asked. Was he in love with you? You definitely could love the man with how much you felt drawn to him but, for crying out loud, it had only been a few weeks.

“I don’t allow it. You are a gifted human. You possess this power over me.” Although Yoongi enjoyed having a calm conversation with you, he couldn’t help but feel bad that he used his gift on you. It was almost an unfair playing card- a “get-out-of-jail” card.

Because you should be running, terrified and screaming, even with his ability active in your mind. Maybe he had used it too much? Yoongi recalled the one time he went overboard with his gift, driving a man to suicide as he focused too much on the meaning of life and the regretful things he had done. Immediately concerned, Yoongi reached out a mental tether- a rare talent amongst his kind- to gauge your stability.

What he found, instead, was a dark and curling line attaching to his, pulling it in as quickly as Yoongi offered it. Before he could reel back away from it, it was fully intertwined and pulling his line to attach to you, only to rear back and completely obliterate his senses when it entered his head.

No. No no no. It’s impossible.

Yoongi was moving forward and caging you against the bed at full speed before he could stop himself, nestling his body between your eagerly opening legs as a hiss escaped his lips. Immediately, he realized that he broke through your command unwavered. The thirst came back at full force when you moaned from the friction on your heat.

“You’re-“ He tested the sensation of true, sexual arousal with a slow grind of himself into you, gasping with a jerk of his dick when his action squeezed his member between his body and yours. “You’re my-“

You moaned again, sitting up slightly to try and capture his lips with your own, unable to control the desire that surmounted in your heart. When he resumed his look of shock, backing away from your advance so that he could look at where your bodies touched, you spoke through the heady emotion. “I’m your what?”

“It can’t be.” He whispered. After a single beat, he leaned down and pressed his lips to yours with a crushing pressure that split your lip instantly.

The pain seared across your bottom lip and distracted you for a moment, emitting a groan deep in your throat that he matched when the taste of your blood exploded onto his tastebuds. Instead of swallowing it like he wanted to, he brought a hand to your chin and opened your lips to spit your blood, along with his venom, back into your mouth so that it would take your pain away.

For a moment, you held the mix of liquids on your tongue, unsure of what to do as no one had ever spit in your mouth before. You looked up to him with confusion extremely evident in your arched brows.

“Swallow it.” He growled.

The taste of iron and an almost sugary sweet tang of saliva was too strong for you to keep sitting on your tongue, so you did as he told you to before he kissed you again to repeat the same action. Slowly, you got into the rhythm of swallowing what he gave you.

Before long, he simply gave you his tongue, allowing you to suck the saliva from his mouth greedily. You didn’t understand why, but the taste was addicting and adding to the pulsing feeling that radiated between your legs. Were you getting lightheaded? No. This sensation was much more blissful and exciting.

He pulled away after sucking on your wounded lip once more, spitting the mixture into your awaiting mouth for a final time before sitting up to look down at your body.

His venom was already taking effect. He could smell it on your skin as it flowed through your veins and filled your system just like a virus would. It would be simple to turn you at this point. You would be his for eternity, bonded to him in ways only the Fated One of a vampire would. Yoongi shook the thought from his head as he wasn’t even sure that you were, indeed, his.

“What am I to you?” You asked genuinely, swollen lip slightly obstructing your speech.

“Don’t worry about that right now, Y/N. Right now, I am going to fuck you, okay?” He met your gaze with his dark eyes filled with confidence, knowing that you would be unable to deny him if his belief was true.

“Yes. Yes, please Yoongi.” You breathed, begging him almost drunkenly. “Please. I’m yours.”

His mind was nudged forward by a different force this time, warranting unknown instincts to play into action.

He felt his center of gravity shift. His skin grew tight and uncomfortable around his body from the emotion that wished to burst through the surface. He breathed with you. Perfectly aligned were your rhythms; his heart soared alongside your own galloping one, desperate to match you in every aspect. The sensations in his body were difficult to ignore as he felt the ancient and sacred pull of a bond lacing itself through his limbs.

Instead of pondering over the reality of it any further, he slid his hand from your chin to your shirt and pinched the fabric between his fingers. You nodded in reassurance.

Your clothes tore form your body like paper. Wrapping his fingers around your arm to keep your body in place, Yoongi ripped your thin blouse from you easily. Your breasts, made plump by the bra you wore, caught his attention the moment they were revealed. Perfect.

Instead of looking like a moron seeing exquisite breasts for the first time, he moved his hand to your dress pants so that he could rid your body of them. In under ten seconds, Yoongi had you almost bare below him. Perfect.

Not even realizing it until you brought your thumb to his lips to swipe his shi from the corner of his mouth, Yoongi shook his head at the fact that the sight of you wriggling and bare-skinned beneath him made him literally drool, but his instincts went haywire when he watched you place your thumb in your mouth to suck his venom off yourself with a low moan of appreciation at the taste.

Yoongi’s hands couldn’t move faster as he tore the clothes from his body, stripping himself bare to reveal himself to you. He wanted to give you everything. To open his mind and spread everything out for you to see- he hoped you could handle it.

You, on the other hand, were laying below him with the desperate need to have him inside you.

You wanted him everywhere. You wanted him to sink himself into you- it seemed to be the only fathomable option. You wanted him to hold you and kiss you and surround you with everything him.

As you stared up at him with a needy look in your eyes, you couldn’t help but want him in every facet possible.

You saw yourself making love to him, holding him, kissing him- loving him. The new sensation brought on you by the psychic connection- that was all you could call it when you felt the mental attachment- brung passionate emotions through your body in an onslaught that you could barely handle. It was too much to deal with without him inside you to be with you through it yet you didn’t know if you could handle what would follow.

Yoongi could smell you through your panties; a delicious scent of the most raw tease he had ever allowed himself to indulge in. Unable to help himself, he moved down your body quickly, throwing your legs open- rather roughly- to give himself room to press his nose straight into your heat. Your aroma filled his nose as he expanded his lungs, triggering his natural instincts to push out his fangs and load his vision with blood to enhance it despite his eyes being closed. Fuck, he wanted to consume you.

You keened at the contact, closing your thighs around his head to trap him there. You felt his groan vibrate on you, driving you closer to the brink of insanity.

Without any further time wasted, he grabbed onto your panties and ripped them from you to expose your pulsating pussy to his mouth without moving his nose away from your intoxicating scent. Not a beat passed before he dug his tongue into you to scoop up your DNA-laced juices. Fuck.

Yoongi lost himself in you immediately. You whined out a small cry, unable to keep yourself from grabbing onto his hair and yanking when all you felt were his lips and tongue laving over your opening relentlessly. There was no skill nor technique in his movements; he was simply devouring you without a mind to pay attention to your bundle, yet you couldn’t stop the sensitivity from boggling your mind and driving you to an instant orgasm.

His hands squeezed your thighs around his head and, for a brief moment, he opened his eyes to look at you. The color of his eyes staring back at you was unexpected- a solid, snow white color filled his orbs and contrasted starkly with the red hue of his engorged veins and bloodshot scleras.

“Yoongi,” You whimpered from another swipe of his tongue and suck from his lips. “Y-Your eyes.”

He pulled away from you instantly at the comment, eyes widening and wet mouth hanging agape, while you let out a groan of relief- or sadness- at the lack of attention to your incredibly sensitive core.

“What color are they?” He asked.

“White.” You struggled to speak, voice cracking under the post-orgasm glow.

He took a moment to look down at your heaving body and messy pussy, jerking forward slightly at the sight of your delicious juice smeared all over your thighs. Once he had a handle on his thirst again, Yoongi met your eyes as the white faded from his irises. “Then you are her.”

“I’m who?” You reached for him, needing to hold him anywhere you could get your hands on. Yoongi caught this action immediately, the same desire to grasp you evident in his hand rushing to meet yours. It was natural to intertwine your fingers while he leaned over you to press his lips to yours in a short, uncharacteristically loving kiss.

“You are my Fated One- my mate. You hold my soul in the palm of your hand, as I do yours.” He murmured, feathering his lips over yours as he spoke.

Under normal circumstances, you don’t think you’d be able to comprehend his words with your current position with him. You were exposed to him and he was exposed to you, making you feel vulnerable and turned on beyond belief. Yoongi was reaching behind you to unclasp your bra while you took in what he had said. His thumb was brushing over your bare nipple before your bra even hit the floor.

“So-” You had to clear your throat again. “So you’re mine? Like, completely?”

He chuckled warmly at your question and you couldn’t stop yourself from reciprocating the smile.

“Yes, Y/N, I am yours.” He brought his hand down to grip your thigh and move it to the side. “I belong to you.”

Yoongi placed his dick against your folds and you watched him so do. You felt his tip capture onto your clit several times as he lathered it with your arousal languidly, preparing himself so that he could slide into you easier. “However,”

“However?” You looked up at him with a questioning look accentuated by your eyebrows.

“You are also mine.” Yoongi stopped his movement so that the head of his cock finally caught onto your opening, kickstarting your heart into a pace that you were afraid would kill you. “Do you understand that?”

He didn’t wait for you to answer.

Torturously, he began to push inside you. You widened your legs to accompany his approaching hips. As you warbled out a cry when he decided to drop his control and fill you completely in the next second, Yoongi began speaking again.

“Do you understand that everything about you,” He reared back and pushed inside you again, forcing your legs open to take him while he did so. “-is mine?”

You couldn’t respond. Your emotions were running rampant with your mind overflowing from too much stimuli while he fucked you. He spoke again without your reply and you could only pull him closer to you and take the feeling of his cock caressing your insides.

“Your lips,” Thrust. “your eyes,” Thrust. “your hair, your hands, your skin;” He punctuated each part of your body with a ram of his dick into you. “Everything, Y/N.”

Yoongi took a moment to look down at your joining bodies, smirking softly at the sight of how easily he slid inside. “-Especially this greedy little cunt of yours.”

You watched his smirk drop while he bit his lip and ground himself into you, lips parting again with a low moan whilst keeping his gaze transfixed on the sinful sight. You watched him in awe as his cock plunged so deep that it felt like it was in your throat.

He snapped his eyes to yours quickly, repeating his prior question. “Do you understand?”

Expecting to be interrupted by a thrust, you sucked your bottom lip in your mouth and braced yourself, only to be grabbed by the neck while he leaned down to bring you face-to-face. You could no longer breathe as he pulled his lips back to reveal his fangs. “I asked you if you understood, Y/N.”

With your airway restricted, you could only nod with your lip still stuck between your teeth. Did you taste blood? Promptly, you remembered that Yoongi busted your lip, yet you were confused as to why you hadn’t felt the pain of it since he first kissed you.

“And are you okay with that?” Yoongi began to nose his way down your neck once he turned your head to the side and slowed the rhythm of his hips. Right before you could answer, he released your neck to look at your face, allowing a large rush of air to enter your lungs just as you were attempting to give him an answer.

“Yes!” You released your lip to scream out at the welcome sensation of oxygen and the feel of his dick pushing it right back out of you. “I’m yours! Everything is yours!”

“Good, my love. Good.” He whispered, smiling down at you. His smile was wiped clean off his face in a heartbeat, his thrusts into you completely ceased, as he zeroed in on your lips. You licked them subconsciously, immediately tasting blood and internally cringing at the flavor of iron coating your tongue.

Yoongi attached his lips around your bottom one quickly and you felt him suck it into his mouth. Your walls squeezed tightly around his at the sensation of his tongue swiping over the spli in your engorged lip again and again. You knew that your lip would be swollen yet you couldn’t find yourself to care because it, surprisingly, didn’t hurt at all. The small bits of Yoongi’s saliva that slipped into your mouth were enough to keep you on edge, tasting like raw sugar at that point.

He began moving inside you again, starting a slow and steady pace. You whimpered into his mouth as he began taking his fill of your blood and you mirrored his thirst with the need to taste his mouth again. Your lips pressed closer to his in order to, hopefully, get a bit more of his spit.

You felt your orgasm building laggardly. It was creeping in at a speed that you were able to prepare yourself for your ascent towards ecstasy. You tightened your legs around his waist and dug your heels into the globes of his ass, pulling him in.

It wasn’t until you were bordering on your climax that Yoongi pulled away from your lip with your pop and sat up to focus on fucking you, his peace of mind obviously waning.

You saw it in his face; you saw the way he couldn’t control his veins from darkening his face; you saw the way his eyes burned white and the way he was attempting to hold himself back from attacking you.

So you did him a favor.

“Yoongi.” You mumbled past your swollen lip. “Bite me.”

Min Yoongi had no option but to obey your command.

He surged forward, pressing himself against your clit deliciously and bottoming out as he lunged for your neck with his fangs fully protruded and a warbled hiss scratching its way out of his throat. With barely enough time to prepare, you bared your neck to him once more and clutched onto his arms for dear life, hoping it wouldn’t hurt too bad.

What you weren’t expecting was for it to feel unreservedly good.

The sensation took you by surprise, warranting a loud moan to escape from your lips before you could stop it. Why did his fangs feel so good in your flesh? It should definitely be hurting. But all you could do was moan and whine like a madwoman as you felt his lips close over the puncture wounds and begin to drink your blood straight from your flesh. His tongue continuously swiped over the teeth marks in your neck, keeping them clear from your body’s natural ability to scar itself and begin blocking the escaping blood. Every lick he delivered sent a pulse straight to your clit and an automatic instinct to tighten yourself around him.

Your pussy quivered around him uncontrollably. You were so close to cumming that you could practically taste the release on your tongue. In the few moments that Yoongi took his sips from your body, his slow propulsions forward into you had become more rough and insistent- as if he was trying to split you in two. Even as you felt your life essence leave your body, you were being filled time and time again by his cock at a deep and passionate rhythm.

At the first sign of getting lightheaded from blood loss, you came- hard.

Your juices squirted around him every time he reared himself back and your eyes rolled to the back of your head while you craned your neck back into your very-bloody pillow. With no where to go, unable to still him with his supernatural strength, you were only able scream out his name.

His speed increased through your orgasm and your sweet exclamations of pure bliss drove Yoongi into a lunatic, freeing himself of control and using his uncanny speed to fuck into you. Your extremely drenched pussy, still convulsing around him was battered and raw, yet he could not find it in himself to care as he desperately surged into you over and over again so that he could fill you with the cum of several centuries. Picturing the image of your cunt spewing his release from it had him closing his jaws and pulling on your wounds harder to get more blood from you.

He knew that he couldn’t drain you. Hearing the pulse of your heart weaken slightly was enough to make him detach his teeth and lick over your wound so that his shi could assist it in healing- it would be completely sealed and unblemished in the next few hours. Instead of worrying too much about your neck, he reared back to look down at you again while he grabbed onto your hips with fervor.

You saw the drops of blood running down from Yoongi’s mouth and chin drip onto your breasts and stomach, creating an erotic and utterly unwholesome image of carnage and horror on your body, but you were unable to help yourself in feeling unsettlingly drawn to the wicked image. With a new flash of desire exploding through your body and reawakening your lust, you reached up and grabbed his neck, pulling him back down to trap him in your embrace.

The oversensitivity of your last orgasm was enough to send you hurtling to the edge of another orgasm- You just needed his fangs in you one more time. Silently begging for it, you kept your grip on his nape and softly nudged him back in the direction of your neck.

Yoongi was close. You could tell. But even past his stupor, he spoke.

“Y/N. I can’t. I took too much.” He almost whined with need, struggling to form words past his fangs.

“Just-“ Your body jolted wildly as he desperately tried to cum. “Just do it!”

Yoongi was able to deny your command, which he figured was due to not being a specific one, yet he couldn’t bring himself to leave it unanswered as his body built in preparation to release.

“I fucking can’t!” He was close to roaring at this point, gums aching to meet your flesh as he pressed his fangs into you and filled you with his essence. He wanted to so badly.

“Drink from me, dammit!” Your eyes were welling with tears of frustration, needing that small push from him to make you orgasm again- his dick hammering your cervix was too much to handle without that small bit of pain to ground you. And without hesitation nor the choice to deny you, he did.

Your orgasms were perfectly in sync as he placed his fangs back into your wounds, delicious blood spilling across his tongue once again. Liquid life. It was the perfect few words for how you tasted.

Your pussy ached with the force of how tight you squeezed around him and Yoongi groaned lowly against your neck as he pressed himself so tightly to you that you knew his hands would be leaving bruises on your hips and ass.

“Yoongi.” You sobbed as his cum filled you, pulsing spurt after warm spurt of the hot liquid onto your abused cervix. The thought of him taking your blood while he gave you his cum was too sinful for you to bear, an outburst of emotion causing you to chant his name over and over again. Never before in your life had you felt so complete and free.

You could feel your blood levels draining as you slowly came down from your climax, knowing that you would not be awake for much longer if he kept drinking.

“That’s enough.” You whispered tiredly, head becoming truly lightheaded. Yoongi, unable to rescind his teeth from your neck, kept drinking from you as the thirst and aggression of the first mating actuated his movements. “Yoongi.”

He tried to pull away- he really did- but the feeling of your blood coating his tastebuds was like finding a quarry in the middle of the Sahara Desert. He lacked the true thirst for humans for thousands of years- and now he was suffering the polydipsia for blood all over again.

“Yoongi, stop.” You commanded, testing your supposed ‘power.’

Yoongi ceased to drink from you yet his fangs were still embedded in your skin, vibrating with pleasure and need. As he stopped, he couldn’t help but whine and then growl savagely with want. The vibration of of his throaty sound in your flesh did things to your body. Unable to resist the temptation, your body clenched involuntarily around his softening cock.

Yoongi groaned again, retracting his fangs and face from your neck, and sat up once more to look at your body. With a slow hand, he stuck out his index and middle finger to smear the droplets of blood on your stomach in small circles aimlessly, picturing you as a canvas made just for him to ruin. “You’re quite the minx, aren’t you?”

“What do you mean?” You giggled deliriously, needing sleep as soon as possible.

“I mean,” Yoongi reached down to smear a droplet of blood across your hip before digging his thumb and fingers into the bone and the flesh of your ass harshly. “Your cunt is playing games with me right now.”

“How so?” You tilted your head to the side in mock confusion.

The vampire pressed his lips into a thin line and sighed almost disdainfully. You gasped as you felt his dick jerk within you, filling to stiffness once more and awakening a new cloud of lust despite the exhaustion you felt. “Well, if you want to play clueless, you can play clueless. We have eternity to teach you how to not play games with me, my mate.”

For eternity? You kind of liked the sound of that.

~#~

If you’d like to read more of my work, feel free to check out my Series Masterlist! If you’d like to read my first fic, check out the DHYB Masterlist!

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harleiquina · 2 years ago

Text

The Fish-wolf

Is not every day that I follow someone elses prompt to come up with a story (I’m not very fond of this practice but I understand why it is helpful) however, after watching The Sandman’s extra episode and seeing people asking about the abandoned (?) concept of a fish that turns into wolf (or was it a human that turned into a fish, hm maybe I got it wrong, nevermind)... my imagination clicked. Whatcha gonna do?

Apologies in advanced for any oddity in my writing, I speak and write Spanish pretty much 24/7 so.... my grammar structure has nothing to do with yours (I don’t know why all the sudden I’m so self-conscious about my commas). Let us pretend that I’m telling this story out loud, maybe that would make it make more sense. Hopefully.

*No muses were harmed while writting this story. Actually I’d like to be left alone for a little bit: I have way to many stories on the works and I cannot keep on coming up with new ones while I have to work. If any of you could say that to them or to Morpheus himself I’ll appreciate it. Just for a little bit, not forever... I’m nobody without my creativity. Although is it truly mine?

Shh! Be quiet! Hasn’t anybody ever told you not to mess with a pack of Were-Wolves resting on the shore?

Can’t you see the thick fur, slightly curved back (as if one of them it’s trying hard to walk in 4 legs) and those big eyes filled with reason and inteligence? I mean, sure... in movies they always exagerate the human side because it’s easier to put a costume on an actor than using a real Were-Wolf, but the concept is the same. I think.

What do you mean with “that those are not Were-wolves”? I swear on every cell of my body and every particle of my ancestors that has transformed itself back to dirt and still lives on this Earth that those are Were-Wolves!

Still, I could spend here a lot of time discussing the diference between movies, real life and the elusive, latin and misteryous cousin of the Were-Wolf known as El Lobizón, but we’ll be here for the rest of the night and tonight is a very important one. Why do you ask?

Well, do you see how one of the wolves (let’s call him like that to shorten time) anyway, do you see how it is just siting IN the water, playing with he waves on his paws, blowing bubbles with his nose and, in occasion, stares at the moon as in a eternal trance that could be mistaken with fascination and longing?

That one, my dear, is a Fish-Wolf.

Hey! There’s no need to laugh! I know exactly how it happened and I am here to tell you.

But nobody invited you so... you can leave... if that’s what you want. No? Ok, let’s get to it.

It was a night like this, many moons ago that a Were-Wolf was quenching his thirst on this river and, without him noticing, one little fish was slightly scratched with his fangs. The little fish, let’s call him... no, not Nemo (I’m tempted on a homage to the Captain, but I’m afraid of the Mouse’s Copyright), hm, maybe Verne could be an option, not a good one but he wouldn’t mind. It’s a fish after all.

So Verne came back with his own, leaving a very faint trace of blood in the water nearby. Because of that the others left him, it’s never good to leave trace when you are a easy prey.

Verne stayed alone until he healed, rather quickly I might add, and eventually moved on with his simple life. And then a new Full Moon came.

As soon as the sun began to set, he could feel a knot in his stomach. I was different to the times he eat something (or someone) that he shouldn’t. This time felt like an emptyness growing deep within. He felt hot as well, something completly new for him. Hiding in his favourite rock, he felt himself getting bigger. He could barely fit there! So, once again he left his community alone and went to the shore. If it was his time to die, he wouldn’t expose the location of the others. Maybe if nature was kind enough he would be found by that terrible bear that killed nearly a dozen of his siblings and if he was really sick to death maybe that would cause him, at very least, a terrible indigestion.

Near the shore the water was slightly warmer,but he didn’t mind, the fact that he now had paws was far more disturbing. Verne also felt his skull changing shape, now he also had a nose! and teeth! and hair! His eyes now were in front of his head and that made him dizzy... and then he realized that he couldn’t breathe anymore! He tried to take as much water as he could but it was the weirdest sensation it felt like burning, and it was also heavy inside of him. Verne surrendered and left himself float as it happens to all fish when it’s time to go. Yeah, I know, quite a surprise he received when he realized that now, outside of the water he could breathe just fine.

Stunned by this discovery, he gazed upon the stars and the moon. That emptyness he felt at the begining was gone, as if the light scared it away. The trance was broken by something moving on top of his head. It was his ears, he always wondered how did they worked and now he could tell that there were others like him nearby. Should he... join them?

He tried to move as usual but it didn’t feel right, so he decided to use his paws to walk on the pebbles below him. I’m not going to lie to you, it took him a few tries to get the gist of it.

Now it was time to set foot for real on land and on grass after that. His heart was pounding, would it hurt? It was dangerous, that’s a given, but how different where this elements away from the bottom of the lake where everything gets softened by the water? He kept his front right paw mid-air for what seemed an eternity and it would’ve remained like that if it wasn’t because another creature was staring at him with curiosity.

“Go ahead” it said “The first night is always a mess, but you’ll get use to it. I’ve seen all of them going through it and they always overcome it... which is saying something. No offense, but humans are quite stupid”

“Humans?” asked Verne.

“Wow! You can understand me! Who are you? I’m a stork”

“I am a fish”

“A fish” the stork was surprised and all the sudden it dawned to her “You’re not here for vengance, are you?”

“I just been through one of the worst experiences in my life and you think that I’ve done it to get you?”

“You are no human, alright” laughed the bird.

“What is this?”

“You mean your dashing new appearance? That, little one, is the body of a wolf. Now if you mean about the gift... well, there it is: it’s a gift. It’s been told by generations that the Moon and the Stars decided to help a small group of humans against some other humans by turning them into animals so they could find food and shelter a lot easier and out of any suspicion, but humans beeing humans thought that this meant to go out there with the power to destroy their enemies. So the gift was changed, now whenever they bite someone they pass it on. It was a good idea, nobody wanted to share this opportunity with their opponents, so the number of blessed ones decreased. Still, sometimes accidents happen, like you I believe”

“Is there a way to make it go away?”

“Just through death. It’s ancient magic, little one, and not casted by any man in a robe claiming to have all the knowledge of the world and gets gold as reward for it even if it’s the planet’s worst liar”

“Humans like gold?” Verne was surprised.

“Humans like lots of things. Some of them have more worth than others for them. Would you believe it? They even kill themselves for said things... what kind of sensible creature sacrifices not hundreds but thousands of lives for a piece of metal? I’d understand better if it was for a really good place to live, but it is still too far fetched. Bah! Stupids, as I said.”

“Then” the fish realized that the conversation strayed too far away of his interest “What should I do?”

“If you want to die we can wait until sunrise and I’ll take care of that”

“No, no. I’m good for now”

“You better be. This will happen for every period of full moon until the very end of your life”

“Every single time?”

“Yes. When you put it like that it helps me understand why humans think of it as a curse. I’d say that you should be smarter” a howl interrupted her “I’d better get going, they are coming and some of them enjoy being the salvage hunter a little too much”

“And you’ll leave me here?”

“Don’t worry, you’ll be fine. When changed, humans are even dumber than before. They’ll think you are one of them and leave you alone” The stork moved her wings and in just a couple of seconds was flying near the clouds.

Verne decided to hide. Thanks to his new paws he was able to cross the patch of grass that created a natural border between the trees and the shore. He sat behind some mossy stones and waited to see the others, they were taking their time and that helped him realize that even if the plants weren’t as smooth as the ones he was used to, they were still nice to the touch. He felt tickles and fell in love with the overly scented combination of green grass, earth and rock.

And then they came. They were only three, one of them seemed to have taken the leader position and the others follwed him. He could tell that they were lost just like him, nobody knew what to do with this new body. The wolf that seemed to be the leader howled to the moon in a position that probably felt cooler than what it looked. Just as the stork said, the humans were dumb: everything they knew about beeing a Were-Wolf came out of movies. It would seem that the main question would be: if you’re not a bloodlust beast of the night, are you even a Were-Wolf?

Verne kept watching them, but the lovely combination of forest’s smells made him sneeze. Before the others could see him, he started to run.

He never felt such freedom before, or at least nothing similar to the wind blowing against him and drawing small waves in his fur. The extasis of feeling his legs trodding with a strenght unknown to him... and the jumps! What a glorious thing it was floating in the air, even if it was for a little bit.

The other three wolves followed him, firstly because he was a stranger and they needed to make their position clear... but then, they felt the same and joined Verne in his life changing discovery.

They run, played, jumped, rolled on the herbs and, once they got tired, just laid down to hear every sound, to smell all the scents and taste the night with every pant.

The sun was starting to show it’s early rays. Verne felt the need to go back to the lake and the others also felt that it was time to leave.

He could barely remember the change back into fish, maybe that’s why he felt for a while that all of it was just a dream. A very wild one. He should stay away from those emerald green pretty algae that he ate during the morning.

But then it happened again at night, and in the next one, and so on until the end of the Full Moon.

He was able to try a different life for 5 nights, try new tastes, smell flowers and pines, feel the vibration of the worms under the soil and dig to find them.

It was a blessing for him, and he was never going to let the Moon and Stars think that he wasn’t greatful about it. Thats why he just stays there, absorving their light giving them nothing more than love in return.

#my writing #aspiring author #the sandman #calliope sandman #should I thank Ric Maddoc? Gross #Really nervous to post this but someone might like it #It's so out of my comfort zone #I write novels not short stories and most definetly not fables #but who cares?#If this ever reaches Neil Gaiman himself I'll be so embarrased #would i?#who knows?#I hope this makes you feel something nice dear reader

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starwarsrefuge · 3 months ago

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Lesson 6: How I wrote Scene 2

In this lesson and for the next several lessons, I'll be teaching you how I wrote each scene. This will help you to write interesting and great scenes beyond trying to write in spirit. In any scenes, there are usually transitional subscene in between each settings since characters have to travel in your world. In the very first narration, the characters are set on a speeder and travel into town. Usually if there are no actions in the scene you can write a very short narration. It could be only several lines and that would suffice. Part of the scene itself would only amount to several seconds to a minute in the movie so a few lines would more than suffice.

Screenplays are not novels. A screenplay is much more shorter and concise. So the descriptions needed are quite elementary and short. The directions I give in the scenes are just getting off the speeder, walking, and enjoying an ice cream with someone else. Read the way I wrote all the descriptions in the narration and write in the spirit of them. For example, instead of walking, your character could be running, crawling, or swimming and etc. The best way to learn for a beginner is to write in the spirit. Take what I wrote and write in the spirit of it.

If you're not actually writing a screenplay intended to sell or to be produced into a film, you can do this. Otherwise, if you are intending to make this film copyrights apply here. But I assume you're only here to learn to write a screenplay, so that does not even apply to you.

Every scene needs something happening in it. It is what makes a story a story, otherwise you would be completely writing something else. And as such, you would have to make it interesting. You could write in free writing, by which, I mean to write just following the flow and see what your imagination and creativity takes you. But for the sake of learning, I advise you to write based on notes you wrote down. When I write a screenplay, I would spend two weeks just thinking of all the scenes and story of the film. After two weeks I would get enough plots and events to write about an hour of the film. If your film is only two hours long, a month would cover the whole of the film. For this film, I would spend one to two weeks thinking of each act which are about an hour each. This film is six hours long so I'm halfway through this process.

In this scene, Rey stumbles onto the street and is almost run over by a gorde, but her father saves her in the nick of time. Keep the actions of the scene interesting. Even in a noneventful scene like this, there is a stake. The stake is Rey being run over by an animal. And keep the risk immediate. And the risk here, is that she would be hurt or even killed if it was not for her father jumping in and saving her in the nick of time. Now it is important to keep the risk immediate otherwise it would be terrible storytelling and it would not at all be interesting. If Dathan was to just walk to the street and pick up Rey before the animal comes it would not at all be a story. That would just be daily life and no one wants to watch someone else's daily life.

Not every filmmaker does this, but what I do when I write a scene is that I try to make each scene meaningful. This usually means to make it emotional. For this, after a risky encounter with an animal, Rey's life was saved by her father, they enjoy a nice ice cream together as father and daughter. This is to show humanity and love in the characters. It is very important to impress emotions into each scene.

Of course, some scenes do not have this and it is fine. But those scenes usually serve other purposes for the film and that would be another lesson for another day.

Scene 2: Coming to Town

EXT. DATHAN’S HOMESTEAD. DAY

DATHAN PUTS YOUNGER REY on the speeder - HE CLIMBS on behind her and THEY leave for town. MIRAMIR is standing there seeing them off

EXT. TOWN. MURAZEN. DAY

Our speeder comes into town. DATHAN GETS OFF and then takes YOUNGER REY

DATHAN

It’s the first time you’d come to town - Rey

YOUNGER REY sees the spectacle that is the town full of people and animals

YOUNGER REY

I’d never seen so many wonderful animals

DATHAN (CHUCKLES)

Oh - you should see when your father was young. The galaxy is bigger than our homestead and it is even bigger than this town

YOUNGER REY

You’d seen the whole galaxy - father?

DATHAN

I sure did - princess

YOUNGER REY

Were you an explorer?

DATHAN

No - but the whole galaxy was within reach then. But I met your mother here. And we had you here on Murazen. And this is a better life with you - my darling

DATHAN and YOUNGER REY walk through the town to the agriculture vendor. They pass by a galloping gorde - a horse-like animal - with his master trying to control it. Rey stops to watch it. DATHAN TURNS around and sees YOUNGER REY still standing there. HE TAKES HER by the hand and they continue to walk through the town. The agriculture vendor is on the the otherside - so they cross

DATHAN COMES to the shop window and RAXO greets him

RAXO

What can I get you Dathan?

DATHAN

Hey - Raxo. Eighty pounds of frelius seeds for the farm

RAXO

That’ll be 856 credits

DATHAN TAKES OUT a credit chip. Meanwhile - YOUNGER REY sees a Jedi toy on the street and wanders to it. At that same time - the gorde gallops out of control and races through the street and about to run over YOUNGER REY. DATHAN hears this and TURNS AROUND. Seeing YOUNGER REY on the street - HE SPRINTS for HER

DATHAN

Rey! No!

HE LEAPS forward GRABBING YOUNGER REY. HE CATCHES HER and THEY TOSSED to the otherside of the street. The gorde runs off - and his master comes chasing him

GORDE OWNER

That’s my gorde. Someone stop it! Hey!

GORDE OWNER continues to run after his animal - passing DATHAN AND YOUNGER REY

DATHAN

Are you okay - Rey?

YOUNGER REY

Yeah - father. I found this toy (SHOWING HIM THE TOY JEDI)

DATHAN

You ought to be careful - Rey

YOUNGER REY

Yeah but you’d come for me - like you’d promised

DATHAN

Yeah - I did - didn’t I? Like I always do.

DATHAN LOADS the three bags of frelius seeds onto the cart at the back of the speeder. Then DATHAN PICKS UP YOUNGER REY onto his forearm and they walk to the ice cream vendor just a couple of shops down

DATHAN

You’d like some haisson ice cream - Rey?

YOUNGER REY

Yes! My favourite

DATHAN (TO THE SHOP VENDOR)

Two haisson ice creams

ICE CREAM VENDOR

23 credits

DATHAN REACHES for a few coins and TOSSES them gently onto the counter. The vendor takes the coins and scoops haisson ice cream onto two square cones. DATHAN takes one and hands it to YOUNGER REY. And HE takes the other and walk over to their speeder. DATHAN PUTS YOUNGER REY down onto the boardwalk and THEY both SIT there

DATHAN (LOOKING AT YOUNGER REY)

I’d come for you - huh. Like I promised (HE SMILES THEN RUBS HER ON THE HEAD)

#Lesson 6: How I wrote Scene 2

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katcadecascade · 4 years ago

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Reader Study (Omniscient Reader’s Viewpoint Oneshot)

*spoilers up to chapter 79

Summary:

“Your face is getting red, Kim Dokja.”

“No it’s not.”

She didn’t need to use lie detection.

Han Sooyoung clapped her hands, peering down at him with a wide grin. “What kind of fanfics did you read?”

Kim Dokja is both impressed and exhausted by the fact that he’s surviving in the apocalypse.

Most of that credit is due to him being the sole reader to know about the webnovel that just happens to become is new reality. There’s still a lot of confusion on how that came to be. Kim Dokja has encountered character from the novel, the deadly scenarios, and even people who were never a part of this once fictional world.

“Are you finally taking a break from your airbending training?”

There were other readers. They didn’t stay with the novel like he did so his title as sole reader remains.

Techniqually…

“Stop ignoring me.” Despite that, Kim Dokja tried his best to ignore his current companion. She continues, “I know what you’re thinking. ‘Why can’t I learn the Way of the Winds skill?’ Its because you’re not the protagonist Kim Dokja.”

Han Sooyoung. The first Apostol, she read the most of the original Three Ways to Survive the Apocalypse aside from his truly. Except she does know a lot more about the novel than others.

Because she plagiarized it.

Or not as she claims every time he calls her out.

Either way she knows about the world. That means she’s dangerous if left alone. Hell, she’ll gather up another cult like what she did with the Apostles and Prophets.

So since Kim Dokja has been separated from his companions, living in the consequences of a kingless world, he struck a temporary contract with Han Sooyoung until the next main scenario.

He’s really regretting his decision.

“Maybe I’ll ask Lycaon to teach me to be an airbender since it’s so important to you. I probably have the SSS grade talent you lack.”

“No.”

Someone needs to learn the Way of the Wind skill to go against the Disaster of Questions. Kim Dokja doesn’t trust Han Sooyoung with that power and the original protagonist is nowhere nearby to get this skill in time.

Logically, he thought he should get the skill but apparently, Lycaon has deemed him void. Despite that, Kim Dokja tried to train with the wolf monster. So after a good few hours of nothing, he finally took a break and is lying flat on his back in the remains of the business district.

“You’re a real rat bastard, Kim Dokja.”

“And you’re a real rat plagiarist.”

“I didn’t plagiarize!” She’s sitting away from him but close enough to kick his foot. “Everything I wrote I saw in a dream and from that point on my novel became popular due to my own writing skills. It became so popular I even got fanfics!”

“I can’t believe you’re bragging about that. They’re probably not even good.”

[Han Sooyoung has activated the skill ‘Lie Detection.’]

[‘Lie Detection’ has verified his words as false.]

“Oh?”

Why did he open his mouth? It’s been a long day of (futile) training under Lyacon. The world is in more ruin because of his choice at the Absolute Throne scenario. He’s away from his friends. The Disaster scenarios are arrive in a few days. Kim Dokja is with the one other person who has read his favorite novel in depth.

Ways of Survival didn’t get popular, it lost a lot of readers. In other words, it never got any fanfics.

But Han Sooyoung’s SSSSS-Grade Infinite Regressor did get a plethora of fanart and fanfics.

So maybe one night curiosity got the better of Kim Dokja and searched for some fanfics of a protagonist very similar to Yoo Jonghyuk.

“Your face is getting red, Kim Dokja.”

“No it’s not.”

She didn’t need to use lie detection.

Han Sooyoung clapped her hands, peering down at him with a wide grin.

“What kind of fanfics did you read?”

Kim Dokja has been lying back, slowing regaining his breath from training. He only has enough stamina to simply roll over and face the opposite direction.

Han Sooyoung merely scooted over to his other side, still grinning.

He turns again.

“You read the steamy fics,” she accused.

“I did not.”

[Han Sooyoung has activated the skill ‘Lie Detection.’]

[‘Lie Detection’ has verified his words as truth.]

“Boo.”

“Did you read your novel’s fanfics?”

“Of course not! That goes against an author’s ethics of copyright.”

He just stares at her.

She glares, “I’m not a plagiarist.”

Kim Dokja would love to have the lie detection skill right now.

Han Sooyoung rolls her eyes and offers up, “Occasionally I’ll check the number of fics and see what the most popular tags is. That’s about it.”

A dangerous expression washes over her face as she remembers what exactly the most popular type of fic is. He can see her calculating the probability of Kim Dokja ever reading those type of fics.

Han Sooyoung stares at him with an open mouth smile.

“You, Kim Dokja, may be one of the strongest incarnations, a pain in the ass to me, the dokkaebi, and the constellations, but in reality,” she snorts at that word, “you are weak.”

She didn’t even need to ask. And yet Kim Dokja already feels defeated.

At least he did not admit it aloud.

No way will Kim Dokja verbally admit that he read self-insert fics as the protagonist’s lover.

It gets a little more worse when he remembers he read female self-inserts before finally scavenging the he or they pronoun fics.

But look at him now.

He’s in his favorite novel and met its protagonist.

Kim Dokja wouldn’t call their first introduction a ‘meet cute.’

No way does any of their encounters qualify as romantic. They fought and disagreed and their last encounter ended with Kim Dokja punching Yoo Jonghyuk into unconsciousness. If anything, Kim Dokja’s aim to be Yoo Jonghyuk’s companion is a fantasy.

Han Yoosong apparently thinks otherwise.

She mockingly pats his shoulder with comfort, “You must be living your fics. Charming your way into Yoo Jonghyuk’s cold barriers.”

“He wants to kill me.”

“Yeah but has he yet?”

Despite the fact that Kim Dokja could come up with many reasons, he says nothing.

Yoo Jonghyuk could’ve killed him at the bridge, at the stations, and, well maybe not at the Throne because of Kim Dokja’s strategy. Every time Kim Dokja said something or did something to convince Yoo Jonghyuk that they are equals and needed each other for upcoming scenarios.

They have yet to ever be on the same page without annoying the other.

And yet Kim Dokja expected this.

It’s the one thing many self-insert fics lack.

As much as Kim Dokja secretly enjoyed the gooey romance orientated stories, none ever measured up with the real stubbornness of Yoo Jonghyuk.

He’s a protagonist who has suffered and thrived and flourished and dealt with impossible odds and despaired and will eventually reach the ending of this story.

Kim Dokja stayed with him for three thousand chapters. Now he wants to stay with Yoo Jonghyuk to… to…

Ah… he got too caught up with the self-inserts fics. A lot of those ended with marriage or something equally domestic.

That’s not an ending deserving of Kim Dokja.

All he wants is for Yoo Jonghyuk and the tohers to make it to the end of this story.

“Hey, you lost in thought about kissing Yoo Jonghyuk?”

“No!”

[Han Sooyoung has activated the skill ‘Lie Detection.’]

[‘Lie Detection’ has verified his words as false.]

She raises an eyebrow, smirking.

“Only because you just said it.”

“Sure,” she smiled like a liar.

Somehow it is the opposite smile of Yoo Jonghyuk’s smile when he threw Kim Dokja off the bridge and into the sea serpent’s mouth.

It’s frustratingly easy to remember how the last sunrays of the normal world is casted behind the protagonist. Seeing that damning smirk finalized the reality Kim Dokja is in.

This wouldn’t be Three Ways to Survive the Apocalypse without Yoo Jonghyuk.

This wouldn’t be Kim Dokja’s favorite novel without Yoo Jonghyuk.

This wouldn’t be Kim Dokja’s life without Yoo Jonghyuk.

So if Kim Dokja indulged into a few reader-insert fics where Yoo Jonghyuk fought by his side, survived by his side, was happy by his side, then call Kim Dokja a hopeless romantic.

“You are a hopeless romantic.”

“Why?” He demanded, less embarrassed and more worried if Han Sooyoung read his thoughts.

“I was there when Yoo Jonghyuk came bursting through the room before the Throne scenario. His eyes were only on you and you just exploded with sunshine.” She sticks her tongue out in disgust.

“I did not,” he shuttered, finally sitting up to defend himself with the little dignity he has left. “Sunshine?”

Han Sooyoung nods as if her words are obvious. She crossed her arms and scowled, “You read too many self-inserts.”

Kim Dokja shuts his jaw. If he says nothing she would not use lie detection.

The results are the same though.

Han Sooyoung laughs meanly, “I don’t blame your taste. Well he’s not for me but I guess he could be a real heartthrob.”

Kim Dokja sighs instead of agreeing.

Technically, all those fics were derived from Han Sooyoung’s protagonist.

As for Kim Dokja’s protagonist, he never got the creative drive (or sacrifice his dignity) to ever write his own self-insert with Yoo Jonghyuk.

Kim Dokja is a reader first and foremost.

And yet he still ends up inserted into Ways of Survival trying to overcome the scenarios, to outsmart the dokkaebi, and to eventually face off against the constellations.

All the while being Yoo Jonghyuk’s companion.

That last one is a work in progress.

“How many fanfics I’ve read doesn’t matter,” Kim Dokja says to Han Sooyoung, but it’s mostly to remind himself too.

“Oh I don’t know about that,” she smirks. “I think we’re in a classic canon divergence story.”

He scratches his chin, “That could be true.” As Han Sooyoung grins triumphantly, he says, “Maybe you didn’t plagiarize. You just wrote a big fanfiction.”

“Hey!”

He slow claps, “What a devoted fan.”

“At least I’m not in love with the protagonist.”

Kim Dokja nearly chokes, “I’m no-“

He shuts up before the display message appears.

[Han Sooyoung has activated the skill ‘Lie Detection.’]

She bats her eyelashes. “I’m waiting.”

“I hate you.”

[‘Lie Detection’ has verified his words as truth.]

“Because I’m not Yoo Jonghyuk,” she said, undefeated.

“Would you drop it?”

“No because it’s kind of flattering. You read fanfics of my novel and it has prepared you for the real deal! So what have you’ve done so far to capture his heart?”

“I’m not going to capture his heart.”

“Why not? He’s already obsessed with you.”

“Why would you think that?”

Han Sooyoung shrugged, “I’m a writer. I see things.”

Kim Dokja just blinks and lies back down.

“Don’t you want to know what I see?”

“Absolutely not, Han Sooyoung.”

“Imma tell you anyway.” His cry in protest is ignored. “In a crowded room where nearly everyone is killing each other, the time limit for the qualifying kings is ticking away-“

“You don’t have to describe it. I was there.”

“…and there! Fashionably late and very dramatic, the last king arrives but he pays no mind to anyone except one-“

“That was the one and only time you’ve seen us together and it was very short.”

“Nah uh,” she shakes her head, “My beheaded avatar. Yoo Jonghyuk practically presented it to you like a cat presenting their kill.”

Kim Dokja opens his mouth and closes it, having nothing to counter that simile.

“If you think I know little then what does that say about you?” She counters as if this is a riddle. “Kim Dokja believes he hasn’t made an impact on Yoo Jonghyuk? The only one who dares to upstand him, shouldering on herculean challenges, and hindering the plans of a great author?”

He frowns, “Are you insulting me or complimenting me?”

“Insulting because you’re too stupid realize that not only are you in a fictional genre, you will easily fall into a romance genre.” She angrily clicks her tongue, “How did an ugly guy like you get a hot harem?”

“My friends are not a harem.”

“Sort seems like it.”

Kim Dokja rubs his eyes, too tired of all this nonsensical conversations.

“My point is,” Han Sooyoung pokes his forehead to make sure he’s paying attention, “that you’re really becoming a reader-insert story. That usually leads to getting dicked down by the protagonist.”

Kim Dokja buries his red face in his hands.

“I’m just saying!”

“Then stop talking!”

“No way,” she pauses for a moment and taps her forehead, “where was I going with this again?”

“You decided to stop talking,” Kim Dokja said in hopes that this conversation will end.

“Nah,” Han Sooyoung waves her hand flippantly and then suddenly snaps her fingers with a grin, “Oh yeah, I was going on about the fact that Yoo Jonghyuk is in love with you like how you are in love with him.”

He just stares at this awful woman and quietly says, “He wouldn’t.”

“Must I repeat all the things I’ve told you?” Fortunately, she doesn’t but instead says, “You’re becoming way too important to a lot of people, including your protagonist.” Han Sooyoung grins, “I’ve read enough fanfiction to know where that goes.”

Kim Dokja unfortunately has read enough fanfiction too.

“Well Han Sooyoung, you’re wrong because the next time I see Yoo Jonghyuk he will likely kill me.”

His confidence does not change Han Sooyoung’s mind. “I think he’s trying to find you at this very moment.”

“To kill me,” he reinstates.

“But,” she flashes a smile, “if he doesn’t kill you immediately, it could be a sign.”

Again, Kim Dokja says nothing to argue against that because… well…

Han Sooyoung interrupts his thoughts with a singsong voice, “Sign of love!”

He stands up and goes back over to Lycaon to try training again, thoroughly ignoring the woman’s complaints.

Everything Han Sooyoung said has some misguided truths. This is the apocalypse. Everyone is depending on someone stronger to survive.

But this isn’t just any other apocalypse, this is the a story Kim Dokja knows from beginning to end. In spite of whatever future awaits them, he will do everything he can to use his knowledge to save everyone.

It’s almost expected that there will be moments where he did not see things coming.

For example, Yoo Jonghyuk showing up and not killing him.

It’s mostly because he’s poisoned.

Oh and the fact that the Disaster of Questions is waking up.

After buying their Midday Tryst and agreeing to the Oath of Existence, Yoo Jonghyuk agreed to not harm and instead cooperate with Kim Dokja for the time being.

All at the price of that Yoo Jonghyuk can hit Kim Dokja once.

Kim Dokja has no idea if this is a sign of love or not.

Maybe he’ll find out once that hit comes.

#my fic #kim dokja #han sooyoung #omniscient reader's viewpoint #orv #orv fic

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hyuckles-chuckles · 5 years ago

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hiding in a tree — j. jaehyun

the most handsome guy on campus asks you out on a date, despite ending up in a tree you aren’t necessarily k-i-s-s-i-n-g him.

pairing ; son of aphrodite!jung jaehyun x fem!reader

other character(s) ; son of hephaestus!johnny seo

genre ; fluff, angst, demigod!au, college!au · word count ; 2.4k · rating ; 15 · warning(s) ; usage of weaponry, demigod swearing, mentions of killing evil monsters

request ; “jaehyun + 1 : ‘what did you think was going to happen?’ + m : demigod!au” by @ahgase55g7 !

masterlist ; adobe’s 1500 follower celebration

a/n ; i truly truly truly love writing demigod/pjo fics, thanks for the request love! i hope y’all enjoy this greek mythology mess + fyi this took me a day to write when it took me a whole year to get tddd out so maybe this is improvement idk you tell me please tell me i love hearing feedback from y’all

If you knew that going on a date with Jaehyun would end up with you stuck in a tree with an enraged boar at the bottom of it as he and his friend tried to kill it, you wouldn’t have accepted. Who were you kidding? He could’ve taken you to the Underworld and you still would’ve enjoyed yourself.

Maybe on your next date you could go to the Underworld since that suddenly existed now.

Jaehyun was probably the most beautiful person you had ever seen. And every single person on your campus would agree with you. You didn’t even think that he knew you existed considering you only shared your Creative Writing class with him since he majored in Visual Art and you majored in Literature. You didn’t even see him at any parties since you started tertiary schooling.

But from those few moments in your only class together, he spotted you from the class, his first words to you being ‘This could be weird since we’ve never spoken before, but I think you’re so beautiful. Would you like to go on a date with me?’ You stood with your mouth agape, only responding with a rather loud ‘yes’ when he started to chuckle at your expression. You were already getting your phone out to get his number, but he said he didn’t have a phone. You were surprised but laughed it off as you jotted the details of the date into your notes app.

Nothing could get rid of the smile on your face that day.

You anticipated your date for a few days, agreeing to have a picnic in the park on the weekend (which you found odd considering your first dates were mainly always at a café — this seemed a lot more romantic in your opinion). While you waited for the weekend, every time you had class together you would sit together and get to know each other better before your date.

You even sneaked some selfies with him while he was paying attention to your lecturer. No matter the angle — flattering or unflattering — he managed to look good in every single one. You were extremely jealous. You even teased him at how unfair it was for him to look so good, causing a blush to form on his dimpled cheeks as he walked you to your apartment.

“Uh, so I’ll see you here tomorrow then,” Jaehyun said at the bottom of your staircase as you unlocked the door to go inside of your apartment building.

“Twelve o’clock sharp. You don’t have a phone so I can’t call you if you’re late.”

“If I’m late, I’ll just call you from a payphone — you gave me your number for a reason,” he chuckled as you stood in your doorway. “Bye, beautiful.”

“Bye,” you greeted him with a wave, closing the door before he could see the smile that spread across your face. You could say you were a little excited for your date with Jaehyun.

You sat at the top of the steps as you waited for Jaehyun. You didn’t realise you had been ready far too early for the date when he was actually supposed to pick you up. But who could blame you when that beautiful boy was supposed to take you on a date? Literally no one could — they would be doing exactly what you are doing.

You looked to your watch, smiling as you only had a minute left until Jaehyun came to pick you up and walk you to the park. You smiled even more brightly when you caught sight of him. Other times you had seen him, he was always calm and collected, a natural smile gracing his features. This time he seemed kind of…stressed. Maybe he was nervous because of your date, but he didn’t seem like himself.

“Hey!” you greet him, walking down the steps, stopping at the very last one. Despite your added height, he was still slightly taller than you.

“Hey, beautiful,” he exhaled, hugging you and bringing you down to the ground. “You ready to go?” he asked, already taking your hand and walking towards the park.

“Jae, wait,” you giggle, pulling on his arm for him to stop. “Are you okay?”

“Yeah,” he stutters. “Why wouldn’t I be?”

“Well,” you muse as you take in his appearance. His hair is dishevelled as if he ran to your apartment. Between the handles of the basket he held was a baseball bat which you weren’t expecting. And when you looked to his half tucked in shirt, you noticed a quite large mirror hanging from his belt. “You seem…off.”

“Trust me, I’m not,” he gives you a reassuring smile. “Let’s just get to the park — and get there fast.”

Jaehyun walks fast in front of you, you jogging to keep up with his pace. When he finally stops you catch your breath and hold your chest. He notices and gets you a bottle of water from the basket.

“Thank you,” you laugh, trying to hide your embarrassment.

“I’m sorry,” he chuckled, running a hand through his hair, making it look even messier than before. “Sometimes I forget people aren’t like me.”

“And what makes you different?” you ask. He suddenly tenses, so you relieve his tension with a joke. “Because you’re prettier than people?”

You see his shoulders relax, which causes you to worry. You got to know him this past week and right now he didn’t seem like himself. “Jaehyun, are you sure you’re okay? We can reschedule the date if you’re not feeling well.”

“No, I’m fine, being at the park is actually keeping me calm,” he reassured you, and even though you knew deep down he wasn’t fine, you had the need to believe so you did.

“So, are you planning on having us play baseball?” you ask as you look down at him preparing the blanket and goods.

“Baseball?” he questions, looking up at you quizzically.

“Well, you have a baseball bat next to the basket,” you remind him of his belongings. “But just so you know, I’ve done all my running for the week.”

“Oh, okay,” he says as he glances at the bat, turning to look up at you from where he sat. “Care to join me?” he asked with a raised hand and a dashing smile.

“Of course I will—”

“Jaehyun! What are you doing here?!”

You both look up at the person who called for Jaehyun. You recognise it as Jaehyun’s friend Johnny. He seems to be in a similar state as your date only much, much worse.

“What the Hades are you doing here?!” Jaehyun exclaims, getting up in an instant, grabbing his baseball bat and looking around the park.

“Hades?” you mumble to yourself, curious as to why he would say the Greek God of the Underworld’s name.

“You told me to lure it to the park!”

“No, I said away from the park!” Jaehyun groans. He seems to have forgotten you’re right behind him, but you know he’s just preoccupied with Johnny at the moment.

“Well, it’s on its way here, you should make sure (Y/N) is protected.”

“(Y/N)? (Y/N)!” he groans, turning around abruptly and placing his hands on your forearms — you would’ve laughed if he didn’t look so scared. “You have to get in the tree.”

“What?” you say as you look at the tall tree. “We’re not tall enough to get me in the tree and also I don’t want to. What’s happening, Jae? I don’t understand what’s happening.”

Jaehyun scrunches his face in frustration, turning around to point his bat to his friend. “Why can’t you listen to me?”

“Because I’m too busy admiring your beauty,” he sneers.

As they argue, you start to feel a rumble at the bottom of your feet and they feel it too. “Okay, (Y/N)!” Jaehyun turns to face you. “I’m going to help you up the tree.”

“Jaehyun, that’s impossible — ah!” You’re surprised at his strength. He holds you by your calves, balancing you so you can grab the branch with ease. “How am I supposed to get down?!”

“I’ll catch you!” Jaehyun smiles up at you, but it fades as you glare at him. “Just get high up, okay beautiful.” You don’t answer him, but you do as he says.

“I can’t believe you brought the Calydonian Boar here on my date,” you hear Jaehyun scold at Johnny from the ground.

You don’t listen to the rest of their argument; your interest is only searching what boar they were talking about and why it was bad to bring to the park. Your eyes widen as you see what Google gives you. There’s no way that they’re talking about the boar that was killed by a king’s son in Greek mythology. There has to be some other boar named after this Greek monster, but you don’t find anything.

You look down to the ground and you see Jaehyun holds his bat and large mirror, Johnny hold a wrench as you see a basic boar run up to them. But as if suddenly a mist was lifted, you see different things. Instead of a bat and wrench, they hold swords — Jaehyun’s a muted red with a reflective blade and Johnny’s a golden colour with ridges in the blade, it seemed seemed to fit their personalities well. And instead of the mirror Jaehyun held, a reflective shield took its place. You crane your neck to the boar and suddenly it’s also changed into the Calydonian Boar and…no way. It had lightning coming out of its mouth!

You refuse to look down, leaning your head against the tree, looking up into the sky as you try to ignore the sounds from the base of the tree. You don’t understand what’s going on or how it’s happening, but you hope that your date and his friend are okay. From your brief reading on the boar, you know it was hard to kill and that it actually killed some of the hunters when it was hunted the first time.

All of a sudden there’s a cheer from the boys, but you still don’t take your chance at looking down. You don’t know what else this boar could do — it might as well take the appearance of those its just killed and is looking for a new being in yourself.

“Beautiful, it’s okay! You can come down now!”

“I’m fine up here!”

You hear nothing for a while until you feel a hand on your calf. You scream at the touch but quickly stop when you see that it’s Jaehyun. You calm yourself with deep breaths, as Jaehyun sits on your branch. You see that Jaehyun has a bruise on his cheek, a rip in his shirt and pants that appear to be smoking and a burn on his knuckles.

You couldn’t believe that he’s actually messier than before your date.

“You okay?” he asks you, a soft smile on his lips.

“Am I okay? Are you okay?” you ask as you take in his appearance once more. You’re pretty sure his shoes were white before and not black.

“Yeah, I guess I have some explaining to do,” he nervously chuckles before taking a deep breath himself.

“I’m a demigod, which means I’m half human and half God — specifically Aphrodite, she’s my mom. Johnny’s also one, we met at this camp for demigods, and he needed help getting rid of this Calydonian Boar which is—”

“I know what it is,” you interrupted, showing him your most recent search. “Continue about your whole demigod thing.”

“You’re taking this awfully well — better than my actual dad.”

“Well, I just experienced it, there’s no reason for me not to believe you,” you chuckled, finally leaning forward and placing your hand on his bare arm that showed through the hole. “Just continue, I’m curious now.”

“Well, that’s the thing,” he grimaced. “I wasn’t actually planning on telling you that today. That would be considered a sixth date kind of confession. I obviously didn’t mean for this to happen, and I understand if you don’t want to continue dating—”

You interrupt him once more by leaning forward and kissing him sweetly, your cheeks heating up as you hear Johnny cheer for you from the ground.

“Woah,” he sighs, as he slowly opens his eyes to look into yours. “I wasn’t expecting that to happen.”

“What did you think was going to happen? I was going to stop dating you just because you’re a freaking son of Aphrodite?”

“It’s a lot more than just me being her son,” he states seriously. “Did you see how I killed that boar?”

“I didn’t want to,” you admit, your face scrunching in disgust as you remember peering down for those few seconds.

“I get that,” he says with a shrug of his shoulders as he gracefully jumps off of the branch onto the one just below your one. “You need help?” he asks with a raise of his hand.

“Uh, definitely,” you say as you take his hand to help lead you down the tree. You yelp when he just jumps from the last branch, rolling onto his back like a gymnast and landing elegantly on his feet.

“Okay, beautiful, jump.”

“Can we just get a ladder?” you nervously ask.

“Holy Hera, I actually have a ladder at camp that’s taller than this tree,” Johnny remembers, frowning when he realises that no one is listening to him.

“I can catch you — just jump!” You know that you don’t want to jump, but you do anyway, screaming as you fall into Jaehyun’s arms. “Told you,” he smirks as he brings you down to the ground.

“Okay, well, I’m going to leave you two — I’ll see you around campus!” Johnny says as he leaves you and Jaehyun alone in the park. “And don’t use your charmspeak on poor (Y/N)!”

“Charmspeak?” you repeat, confused at what Johnny meant by that.

“Uh, I’ll tell you some other time,” Jaehyun mumbles.

“So, that was some fight,” you bring up, looking at the destruction of the picnic that the boar caused.

“Do you want to reschedule this date?” he asked you, moving his hands up and down your forearm.

“How about we order take-out and watch Hercules?” you joke as he walks to your apartment with his arm around your shoulder.“It’s actually pronounced Heracles, but I blame that on Disney.”

to celebrate getting 1500 followers on here, i opened up my requests! be prepared for more requested works from me!

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reachexceedinggrasp · 4 years ago

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Would love to hear about your beefs with Lucas because I have beefs with Lucas

(Sorry it took me three thousand years to answer this, anon.)

They mainly fall under a few headings, with the third being the most serious and the thing that I am genuinely irl furious about at least biannually (and feeling unable to adequately sum up The Problem with it after yelling about it so often is a huge part of why this post has been in my drafts for such a long time):

1. His self-mythologising and the subsequent uncritical repetition of his bullshit in the fandom. Obvious lies like that he had some master plan for 10 films when it’s clear he did not have anything like a plot outline at any point. We all know the thing was written at the seat of various people’s pants, it’s blatantly self-evident that’s the case. There’s also plenty of public record about how the OT was written. Even dumber, more obvious lies, like that Anakin was ‘always the protagonist’ and the entire 6 films were his story from the beginning. This is preposterous and every time someone brings it up (usually with palpable smugness) as fanboys ‘not understanding star wars’ because they don't get that ‘the OT is not Luke's story’... Yeah, I just... I cannot.

Vader wasn’t Anakin Skywalker until ESB, it’s a retcon. It’s a brilliant retcon and it works perfectly, it elevated SW into something timeless and special it otherwise would not have been, but you can tell it wasn’t the original plan and there’s proof it wasn’t the original plan. Let’s not pretend. And Luke is the protagonist. No amount of waffling about such esoteric flights of theory as ‘ring structure’ is going to get away from the rigidly orthodox narrative and the indisputable fact that it is Luke’s hero’s journey. Vader’s redemption isn’t about his character development (he has almost none) and has no basis in any kind of convincing psychological reality for his character, but it doesn’t need to be because it’s part of Luke’s arc, because Vader is entirely a foil in Luke’s story. It’s a coming-of-age myth about confronting and growing beyond the father.

All attempts to de-centre Luke in RotJ just break the OT’s narrative logic. It’s a character-driven story and the character driving is Luke. Trying to read it as Anakin’s victory, the moral culmination of his choices rather than Luke’s and putting all the agency into Anakin’s hands just destroys the trilogy’s coherence and ignores most of its content in favour of appropriating a handful of scenes into an arc existing only in the prequels. The dilemma of RotJ is how Luke will define ethical adulthood after learning and growing through two previous films worth of challenge, education, failure, and triumph; it’s his choice to love his father and throw down his sword which answers the question the entire story has been asking. Vader’s redemption and the restoration of the galaxy are the consequences of that choice which tell us what kind of world we’re in, but the major dramatic conflict was resolved by Luke’s decision not the response to it.

And, just all over, the idea of Lucas as an infallible auteur is inaccurate and annoying to me. Obviously he’s a tremendous creative force and we wouldn’t have sw without him, but he didn’t create it alone or out of whole cloth. The OT was a very collaborative effort and that’s why it’s what it is and the prequels are what they are. Speaking of which.

2. The hubris of the prequels in general and all the damage their many terrible, protected-from-editors choices do to the symbolic fabric of the sw universe. Midicholrians, Yoda fighting with a lightsabre, Obi-wan as Anakin's surrogate father instead of his peer, incoherent and unmotivated character arcs, the laundry list of serious and meaningful continuity errors, the bad storytelling, the bad direction, the bad characterisation, the shallowness of the parallels which undermine the OT’s imagery, the very clumsy and contradictory way the A/P romance was handled, the weird attitude to romance in general, it goeth on. I don’t want to re-litigate the entire PT here and I’m not going to, but they are both bad as films and bad as prequels. The main idea of them, to add Anakin’s pov and create an actual arc for him as well as to flesh out the themes of compassion and redemption, was totally appropriate. The concept works as a narrative unit, there are lots of powerful thematic elements they introduce, they have a lot of cool building blocks, it’s only in execution and detail that they do a bunch of irreparable harm.

But the constant refrain that only ageing fanboys don’t like them and they only don’t like them because of their themes or because they humanise Anakin... can we not. The shoddy film making in the prequels is an objective fact. If you want to overlook the bad parts for the good or prioritise ideas over technique, that’s fine, but don’t sit here and tell me they’re masterworks of cinema there can be no valid reason to criticise. I was the exact right age for them when I saw them, I am fully on board with the fairy tale nature of sw, I am fully on board with humanising Anakin- the prequels just have a lot of very big problems with a) their scripts and b) their direction, especially of dialogue scenes. If Lucas had acknowledged his limitations like he did back in the day instead of believing his own press, he could have again had the help he obviously needed instead of embarrassing himself.

3. Killing and suppressing the original original trilogy. I consider the fact that the actual original films are not currently available in any form, have never been available in an archival format, and have not been presented in acceptable quality since the VHS release a very troubling case study in the problems of corporate-owned art. LF seizing prints of the films whenever they are shown, destroying the in-camera negatives to make the special editions with no plans to restore them, and doing all in the company’s considerable power to suppress the original versions is something I consider an act of cultural vandalism. The OT defined a whole generation of Hollywood. It had a global impact on popular entertainment. ANH is considered so historically significant it was one of the first films added to the US Library of Congress (Lucas refused to provide even them with a print of the theatrical release, so they made their own viewable scan from the 70s copyright submission).

The fact that the films which made that impact cannot be legally accessed by the public is offensive to me. The fact that Lucas has seen fit to dub over or composite out entire performances (deleting certain actors from the films), to dramatically alter the composition of shots chosen by the original directors, to radically change the entire stylistic tone by completely reinventing the films’ colour timing in attempt to make them match the plasticy palate of the prequels, to shoot new scenes for movies he DID NOT DIRECT, add entire sequences or re-edit existing sequences to the point of being unrecognisable etc. etc. is NOT OKAY WITH ME when he insists that his versions be the ONLY ones available.

I’m okay with the Special Editions existing, though I think they’re mostly... not good... but I’m not okay with them replacing the original films. And all people can say is ‘well, they’re his movies’.

Lucas may have clear legal ownership in the capitalistic sense, but in no way does he have clear artistic ownership. Forget the fans, I’m not one of those people who argue the fans are owed something: A film is always a collaborative exercise and almost never can it be said that the end product is the ultimate responsibility and possession of one person. Even the auteur directors aren't the sole creative vision, even a triple threat like Orson Welles still had cinematographers and production designers, etc. Hundreds of artists work on films. Neither a writer nor a director (nor one person who is both) is The Artist behind a film the way a novelist is The Artist behind a novel. And Lucas did NOT write the screenplays for or direct ESB or RotJ. So in what sense does he have a moral right to alter those films from what the people primarily involved in making them deemed the final product? In what sense would he have the right to make a years-later revision the ONLY version even if he WERE the director?

Then you get into the issue of the immeasurable cultural impact those films had in their original form and the imperative to preserve something that is defining to the history of film and the state of the zeitgeist. I don't think there is any ‘fan entitlement’ involved in saying the originals belonged to the world after being part of its consciousness for decades and it is doing violence to the artistic record to try to erase the films which actually occupied that space. It's exactly like trying to replace every copy of It's a Wonderful Life with a colourised version (well, it's worse but still), and that was something Lucas himself railed against. It’s like if Michaelangelo were miraculously resuscitated and he decided to repaint the Sistine Ceiling to add a gunfight and change his style to something contemporary.

I get genuinely very upset at the cold reality that generations of people are watching sw for the first time and it’s the fucking SE-except-worse they’re seeing. And as fewer people keep physical media and the US corporate oligarchy continues to perform censorship and rewrite history on its streaming services unchecked by any kind of public welfare concerns, you’ll see more and more ‘real Mandela effect’ type shit where the cultural record has suddenly ‘always’ been in line with whatever they want it to be just now. And US media continues to infect us all with its insidious ubiquity. I think misrepresenting and censoring the past is an objectively bad thing and we can’t learn from things we pretend never happened, but apparently not many people are worried about handing the keys to our collective experience to Disney and Amazon.

4. The ‘Jedi don’t marry’ thing and how he wanted this to continue with Luke post-RotJ, so it’s obviously not meant to be part of what was wrong with the order in the prequels. I find this... incoherent on a storytelling level. The moral of the anidala story then indeed becomes just plain ‘romantic love is bad and will make you crazy’, rather than the charitable reading of the prequels which I ascribe to, which is that the problem isn’t Anakin’s love for Padmé, it’s that he ceased to love her and began to covet her. And I can’t help but feel this attitude is maybe an expression of GL’s issues with women following his divorce. I don’t remember if there’s evidence to contradict that take, since it’s been some time since I read about this but yeah. ANH absolutely does sow seeds for possible Luke/Leia development and GL was still married while working on that film. Subsequently he was dead set against Luke ever having a relationship and decided Jedi could not marry. Coincidence?

There’s a lot of blinking red ‘issues with women’ warning signs all over Lucas’s work, but the prequels are really... egregious.

#sw #salt #more unhinged rambling #anyway dowload the despecialised editions #unsubscribe from Disney+#be free #usually we'd be having a big family thing for Boxing Day but you know #so God bless us all at home separately #I hope everyone had as happy a Christmas as possible in keeping with the situation #I should see if I can drag my brother outside to build a snowman

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saturatedcoffee · 4 years ago

Text

How Archive Sunday turned 5,000 TikTok followers into $1 million in revenue… in one year

Nothing has made me feel the big 3–0 looming on my horizon more than being a millennial on TikTok. Like more than the 100 million people who downloaded the app at the start of quarantine, it was something I used to pass the time. It was what all the kids were doing, and I was in strong denial about the fact that I was no longer one of them with my skinny jeans and side part―which TikTok has shown me are signs that I am now, certifiably, Old.

What I expected was videos of lip-syncing and dancing―like the app’s precursor, Musical.ly. But what I found was a collection of content creators making videos about my very specific and very niche interests and using that as a marketing tool for their small businesses.

I found a lot of small businesses on TikTok to satiate my quarantine-induced shopaholic tendencies. Like custom joycons for my Nintendo Switch, Japanese anime stickers for my laptop, and cute gear for my battlestation (otherwise known as my home office). What I didn’t realize was that I wasn’t alone-the pandemic had kickstarted an explosion of growth for small businesses on apps and websites like TikTok.

And one of those businesses is right here in Salt Lake City-in fact, right across the street from my very own apartment.

Just because there’s a pandemic doesn’t mean you can’t do business

When I was downloading TikTok at the start of the pandemic, Sasha Sloan was starting her business. “I was just kind of stuck at home in quarantine,” she says. “I was still in school, but I couldn’t go to campus. I couldn’t get a job. And like everybody else, I was just on TikTok all the time.”

What started as a way to make some money and kill some time in quarantine quickly became an overnight sensation.

Her business was simple: buying old Star Wars T-shirts from the thrift store, bleach dying them, and reselling them on Etsy. Coming from a family who had made their living off of recycled fashion, like her siblings’ company Uptown Cheapskate or her mother’s company Kid to Kid, it was an easy model to follow, but one she did all on her own.

With only 5,000 TikTok followers and 50 bleach-dyed Star Wars T-shirts, Sloan put up a video showcasing her product and went to bed. When she woke up the next day, her entire Etsy collection had sold out. “That was the first moment that I was like, hold on, do we have something special here? And then I did it again.”

For the first two months, that’s how it went. Waking up at 6:00 AM, buying shirts, bleaching them, photographing them, and then listing them. “I couldn’t do it fast enough,” she says.

Sloan launched her business, Archive Sunday, with bleach-dyed T-shirts on TikTok on July 7th, 2020. By August, she’d launched her second product: collage walls. One hundred days in, the business hit $100,000 in sales. By the five-month mark, Sloan’s account reached one million followers. Now the business is projected to make a million dollars in sales in 2021.

Pictured: Sasha Sloan with the Archive Sunday collage kit, Athena. Photo provided by Archive Sunday.

A new social media for a new way of marketing

What makes Sloan’s business unique is that it goes beyond traditional methods because the products she sells draw on existing fanbases, like Star Wars and Harry Potter. In fact, I discovered her months ago because she posted a video from my own favorite fandom, Sailor Moon.

“The [TikTok] algorithm sorted me very quickly into fandom. Star Wars, Harry Potter, all that kind of stuff. And I was just watching and seeing how easy it is to go viral,” says Sloan. She’s right. It is easy to go viral on TikTok, especially if you know what you’re doing.

The algorithm sorts users into social circles that share interests — or liked hashtags. When a video is uploaded, the algorithm shows it to a small subset of people. And when they like that video, it shares it with users who may have similar interests. And if they like it, it creates a positive feedback loop that, if it happens enough times, causes the video to go viral. Unlike platforms like Twitter or Facebook, you don’t have to be following the video creator to find their content.

And though it sounds lucky, Sloan says her success was about more than luck, “Everything that’s happened on TikTok is not by accident. I am very strategic, very calculating in what I post,” she explains. “That’s something that I think is the most common and frustrating misconception to me is that I am a blonde girl. I’m a pageant girl. I know how to do my makeup. And I will get the critique that everything I have only came to me because of the way I look. And I just hate it, because I don’t think people realize I’ve been working in the social media world and studying algorithms since I was about 18.”

Pictured: Sasha Sloan in her signature collection, The Burrow, inspired by Harry Potter. Photo provided by Archive Sunday.

Sloan has worked in social media since she ran the verified social accounts for her family’s businesses as a teenager. Recently, she even ran social media for John Huntsman’s campaign for governor as part of her capstone internship, managing million-dollar ad spends. And in her experience, she can confirm that marketing on TikTok is very different from Instagram, Facebook, or Pinterest.

“[TikTok] has created this liberation in social media where, number one, you can make whatever you want because you’re speaking to an audience that really gets you and has your same interests. And number two, it is a meritocracy. On Instagram, celebrities are often the most-followed and your followers decide how much [your content] gets liked. Whereas on TikTok, the algorithm does not care if you have a million followers or if you have ten. The only question is, is this a good piece of content?”

Creative advertising for a creative generation

TikTok is changing the game―and it’s changing the way we sell products. It’s not about paid advertising, because you can scroll right past the ads. You can’t target an ad to Gen Z the same way you can target a Boomer on Facebook. And according to Wallaroo Media, 60 percent of TikTok users belong to Gen Z, who’ve spent their whole lives on social media and are able to tell what’s an ad and what’s actual content. So if you want a TikTok user to watch your ad, you have to make it content they want to watch.

So Sloan has skipped the commercial. “I’ve never spent a dollar on marketing,” she says. “We just make these creative projects and people want to support them. They want to support the outfits. They want to look like our characters. And so we’re almost using fictional characters as influencers in a way.”

The creative projects and fictional characters she’s talking about tie back into her Noble House of Black series, which is a fan-created, live-action series of TikTok videos about three sisters from Harry Potter: Bellatrix, Andromeda, and Narcissa Black (played by Sloan herself). The series tells the story of these sisters in a visual form of fan fiction, wearing Archive Sunday’s clothes and using their accessories which, if fans like enough, they can follow through Sloan’s TikTok profile to the Archive Sunday store.

Pictured: Sasha Sloan as Narcissa Black in the Tiktok Harry Potter fan series The Noble House of Black. Photo provided by Archive Sunday.

What makes the series so engaging is that they’re featuring characters the very large and very vocal Harry Potter fandom is already familiar with. But while these characters exist in the Harry Potter franchise, much of their story is left untold. Which leaves it to the interpretation of fanon — a collection of concepts and ideas that are used in most fan fiction, but don’t really exist in the real story’s canon. And that’s where the Noble House of Black steps in to fill in the story.

“We are representing the aesthetic of fandom, which is not exactly the same thing as representing the original piece of art or work,” explains Sloan, who is very careful to circumnavigate her business around copyright issues. “We’re not copying and pasting the original piece of art. We’re using that art as a launching pad and an expansionary work to create something [new].”

A new kind of business for a new kind of nerd

The business of fandom, and namely fan fiction, is growing. Comic conventions like Salt Lake’s FanX grow bigger every year. The most well-recognized fan fiction website, Archive of our Own (AO3), even celebrated their 7 millionth fan fiction upload in 2020. Fan culture is a booming and underserved market, which has exploded even further with the stay-at-home orders of the 2020 pandemic. And Archive Sunday is capitalizing on it.

The untapped market of grown fans, particularly young women, is what Sloan attributes to her success. “I wanted to create a brand for that girl who is a millennial or a Gen Z or who loves their fandom stuff, is confident, put together, and is still a cool, popular, fun person that you’d want to hang out with.” For the girl that shops at Target, who wants the $200 merch from Disneyland but can only afford the sale at Hot Topic. For the fan who wants to rep their Hogwarts house while also being office-appropriate.

Pictured: The Black sisters from the Tiktok Harry Potter fan series, The Noble House of Black, with the actresses wearing signature Archive Sunday clothing pieces. Photo provided by Archive Sunday.

And Sloan is using her platform not only for marketing but as a tool for empowerment. “Generally in society, women are made fun of for their interests,” she says. “And I think that a lot of young women, in particular, need and desire the ability to look up to other women that have the same interest and are completely confident and passionate about it.”

And as a grown fan myself, I wholeheartedly agree with her. According to a census survey of 10,005 AO3 users, 80 percent of fan fiction readers and creators identified as female, with less than five percent identifying as male. But how many of these women hide behind online aliases and compartmentalize their fandoms from their real lives?

The answer to that question remains unseen, but Sloan is taking the steps to embrace her nerdiness as the girl who reads too much―and turning that into not only a business, but a positive role model for young women.

“When people message me to tell me why they follow me, it’s usually young women who [say], ‘I’m getting bullied in school and everyone thinks that I’m weird. I like all this stuff. I’m so passionate about my books and things. And I don’t really see any representation for that.”

So she’s filling the gap. Embracing her inner geek and using that to connect with other fans, she’s been able to build a business practically overnight. There’s a market here that’s ripe for the picking and desperate for content. Like Sloan, you don’t need to spend a dime on marketing. You just need to be a little creative and jump in the game while it’s still hot.

...

Originally published at https://www.utahbusiness.com on April 27, 2021. Follow me on Medium!

#harry potter #tiktok #ao3 #fanfic #house of black #narcissa #bellatrix #andromeda #sirus black #black sisters #small business #utah #my writing #journalist #article

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guzsdaily · 1 year ago

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A small, but persistent, factory

Day 28 - Dec 3rd, 12.023

So, I don't have a good post subject for today to be honest. Today I just organized some tasks for this week's project, which is learning and creating things like a LinkedIn and resume to get a job, but nothing actually practical I would say. But something that I did today is play Factorio, a lot. So because I already did a post about this game, why not a small update.

And as you can see, it didn't change that much, aside from some decorations, that's because of biters. If you don't know Factorio, biters are your main enemy, and they grow and start to attack more when you start polluting a lot of the world/map. And let's just say that I didn't pay so much attention to it until it was too late, so they attacked, not just once, destroying almost half of the factory.

I'm still learning the survival of the game, and I am trying to research everything I can before start some type of proper base, which is what I'm already starting at the time of writing. However, because of this strategy, I don't have a lot of defenses or even a factory that can easily produce them, as you can see in the print, some belts are low, even more the ones that need things like petroleum.

I have to admit that after that biters attack, I stopped playing for a lot of time, because seeing your progress be destroyed in a blink of an eye is not the best feeling y'know? But also, I don't want to create a new save and give up on this. So I improvised. In this save, I enabled so mods in it, and one of them is one that lets you build water tiles in the map and canals. And you know what can't swim in deep water? Biters! So instead of just going on building walls and tower that can be destroyed, I planned on using these water tiles to, in a coward way, don't let the biters even enter the factory. Which was somewhat of a challenge because the TNT to create this water tiles, is not that cheap, but over time I was able to accumulate enough to at least protect the main base.

After this, I also focused on artillery research, and was able to get the most op thing until now: The tank. I really wanted to have now the screenshots from before, but let's just say that I won't need to care about biters for a reasonable time now:

Nonetheless, as it is shown in the map, I'm now working on making canals between the lakes that are around the base, for two reasons: biters can swim; And I have the Cargo Ships mod installed, so them will be used to navigate around the base to transport items in bulk to different hemispheres of the base. I really want to actually start a proper factory, with heavy use of train networks that I love, and also with something different: proper pollution management. Why? I like the trees of this game, and the idea of a green factory in some sense is cool to me, and managing pollution to not kill them will be an interesting challenge. How? With mainly this mod: Pollution Solutions Lite; so I can even recycle pollution back to energy to be used!

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Well, I think this is for today. It was a silly entry, but an entry nonetheless, and I am kinda proud for not giving up on this save. I want to play another games also, but Factorio is addicting very easily. Maybe a good reason to think more about yesterday's topic of planning my free time, so I can play and do all the things that I like, but that's a talk for another day.

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Today's artists & creative things

Song: Abrasive - by Ratatat (I'm addicted to this song, every time I start writing this daily journal, I start to listen to it)

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This work is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 International (CC BY-SA 4.0) License

#daily journal #factorio

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duhragonball · 4 years ago

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I think I’m just gonna ramble a bit-- nothing earthshaking-- so here’s a nice, unrelated picture of Cooler to set that up.

I managed to get through Camp Nano in April with about an hour to spare. I’m still frustrated with my pacing, because I’ve gotten pretty good at finishing the November writing goals with time to spare, but I always end up falling behind on the shorter goals I try to do during the rest of the year. July is up next, so I’m kind of hoping I can turn this around by then.

April was difficult all over, so I’m trying to use May to chill the fuck out. Somehow I find that hard to do. Like if I’m relaxing, I just get bored or feel unproductive. That’s one reason I’m writing this post. I just want to get some thoughts out of my head so I can move on.

For whatever reason, I got sucked into watching YouTube videos about the Nostalgia Critic and his various blunders from 2012 to present. That sounds pretty sad now that I write it out, because I never followed the guy that closely, so I keep forgetting the hellacious filming schedule discussed in the Change the Channel movement happened years earlier, and the movies themselves were ridiculed as debacles, so it’s not just one bad year, more like nine or ten. Anyway, watching all of this has given me some stuff to think about.

I think I first heard about the NC when he started doing that “feud” with the Angry Video Game Nerd. They did some videos together teasing a crossover, and then they finally went through with it, and it wasn’t terrible, but I had no idea who the other guy was. It was like Batman teaming up with some indie comics character you never heard of. Batman doesn’t need the rub. From the beginning, I got the sense that Nostalgia Critic was the one driving this concept. Once I heard about Channel Awesome and all these YouTube reviewers crossing over with each other, I was sure of it.

Looking back on it all, I get the sense that NC has never really had much of a creative agenda. His early work involved “reviewing” movies by playing long clips of them to recap the plot, and then making some snarky commentary. Not the worst format, except he kept getting copyright strikes from YouTube, which was why he started his own website to host his videos. Over the years, it feels like people have begun to recognize the flaw in that format. Past a point, you’re not really “reviewing” anything. It’s more like an MST3K style thing, only shorter and less authorized.

Years ago, I used to read this site called “The Agony Booth”, which sort of did the same thing but in text. Before YouTube really got going, the only way to lambast a movie or TV episode properly was to meticulously describe it in prose, with the occasional screenshot here and there. Nostalgia Critic probably represents a point where people realized they could do the same thing in video form, except it starts to cross the line from commentary to something else. Siskel and Ebert never did a blow-by-blow synopsis of a movie. Reviewers like the Agony Booth crew did, because they were often discussing old material, and couldn’t show it to you or assume that you had seen it yourself. A lot of NC’s early stuff was the same deal, where he’d recall something from his childhood and rewatch it to see how it holds up in the present. So I’m sure a lot of his content covered old, out-of-circulation things. But he’d do more recent stuff too, and the attitude surrounding YouTube at the time was that you could pretty much do whatever you wanted as long as you kept it under ten minutes.

Anyway, the Channel Awesome thing looked like an alliance of similar YouTube reviewers, and they kept appearing in each other’s stuff, and then they did the anniversary movies, which were basically “mega crossovers” with all of them appearing together in the same... story, I guess? At the time, I wrote the whole thing of as a masturbatory power fantasy. Comic books did crossovers like these all the time, and YouTube seemed to have hundreds of “reviewers” and “personalities” who would put on silly costumes and carry toy weapons like they were about to fight Thanos instead of discussing the ALF cartoon. The second Channel Awesome movie was about high fantasy tropes, and the third one was a space opera, so that seemed to support my assumption.

From watching all these videos about the movies, though, it looks more like each one was mostly about the Nostalgia Critic talking all his “friends” into another one of his kooky schemes, and they all just sort of go along with it, even though they know him to be a self-centered jerk. Then the third one ends with NC quantum-leaping out of the story itself and meeting Doug Walker, the guy who writes and plays the character. They try to sell the audience on the idea that NC had some sort of character development across the three movies, and he decides to sacrifice himself to save the day or something. This was touted as the finale for the character. Except it turned out later that Doug Walker wasn’t just playing a self-centered jerk, he really was a self-centered jerk, because he treated the others like crap during the filming and didn’t tell any of them that he was killing off their website’s top draw.

That leads into Demo Reel, the series Doug Walker introduced to fill the void. From what I’ve seen, it sure looked like he wanted/expected this to be a big hit, and he killed off his biggest meal ticket to make this happen. But everyone hated it. I think the pilot episode asks the question “What is Demo Reel?” about three times. Each time, the answer makes less and less sense. “Demo Reel” the show is about a studio named “Demo Reel”, run by Donnie DuPre, a self-centered jerk who seems to think there’s big money to be made in plagiarizing movies. The whole thing is just a flimsy plot device to explain why Doug Walker and two other actors would bother making a no-budget parody/re-telling of three Batman movies smooshed together. There’s no real-world or fictional reason for three people to do this, it’s just that Doug Walker wanted to make a YouTube video about Batman, but he didn’t want to use the NC format, and he couldn’t just talk over a Batman movie without getting in trouble with Warner Bros. And I guess just... dressing up like Batman and making jokes needs some sort of context, so that’s where the Demo Reel concept comes in.

What really annoys me is that Demo Reel has this “mockumentary” thing going on at the same time, so you end up watching their parody movie and the scenes where they make the parody movie, and you get these interview segments where they talk about talking about making the parody movie. It’s like “The Office” except every character is completely delusional. They’ve all convinced themselves that this is a really good idea, and I guess the joke is that this is a really stupid job and they must be pretty stupid to work at it.

No one knows where Demo Reel was originally headed, because it was so reviled by the audience that it got cancelled in five episodes, ending with the revelation that Donnie DuPre was the Nostalgia Critic all along, in some sort of amnesiac state. Or maybe that was the plan all along, I’m not sure which scenario would be dumber, honestly. New Coke was a sincere effort to phase out the original Coca-Cola formula, but it was such a failure that everyone thinks it was a brilliant ploy to make consumers appreciate the original. So who knows?

Anyway, this started the next phase of NC, where he would just remake scenes of whatever movie he’s covering that week, a la Demo Reel. I don’t know if that’s just a strategy to avoid YouTube copyright strikes, or a stubborn refusal to give up the core concept of Demo Reel, or what. Then he got around to Pink Floyd’s “The Wall”, and everyone crapped on that, big time. I haven’t seen the original movie or his “review”, but from what I gathered, Doug

a) basically did a shot-for-shot remake of the movie, only shorter and cheaper.

b) spent the whole video lambasting the movie and the band for making it.

c) offered his parody songs for sale on iTunes, calling them a “love letter to Pink Floyd.”

The big question is: Why did he put so much work into making the thing when he had so little to actually say about it? There’s no clear opinion expressed about the movie, even though the video is supposed to be a “review”. He kind of acts like he thought “The Wall” was okay, but the parody lyrics read like the awkward part of a celebrity roast. Why go to all this trouble unless you really love or absolutely despise “The Wall”?

Eventually, I started to figure out that this guy really just doesn’t have much to say. He wants to make videos, make movies, make reviews, but it doesn’t seem like there’s any real opinion or thought that he wants to express. I was watching him freak out over the credit card scene from “Batman and Robin” and thought “Are you that upset over Batman having a credit card?” That’s not even in the top twenty dumbest things in that movie. Sure, it’s worth a snide remark, but not much more than that. But he’s “doing a character”, and the NC’s whole schtick is to flip out over stuff like that.

Except it’s not a character, because NC is just Doug Walker wearing a stupid hat, right? In the movies, NC’s whole persona is that he’s a self-centered jerk who treats his friends like a personal army, and the real Doug Walker was doing the exact same thing off-camera. Donnie DuPre was another “character”, wearing a different hat, only whoops, he’s the Nostalgia Critic too. And even if he wasn’t the same guy, his persona was... you guessed it, a self-centered jerk who treats his friends like a personal army.

There was this whole era on YouTube where it seemed like all these “content creators” were trying to adopt silly gimmicks. I’m guessing the Angry Video Game Nerd started the trend, because he dressed up in a white button-down shirt with a pocket protector and glasses. He looked like a stereotypical nerd, you see. And he’d drink a particular kind of beer, and lose his temper and set Nintendo cartridges on fire, because AVGN was a character. You watch James Rolfe being himself and he’s a whole other person, always smiling and talking about horror movies and filmmaking, because that’s what the real guy is about. There’s a separation there.

I think that was the disconnect. A lot of these YouTubers saw James Rolfe playing the Nerd and just assumed the secret was to rant and rave about some topic, and he used a Nintendo Zapper to shoot a pickle monster once, so dressing up like a Power Ranger in a trenchcoat didn’t seem like a bridge too far. Well, no not if you’re trying to make a movie or tell a story. If all you want to do is talk about Star Wars, you should probably keep it simple. I think one of the consequences of Nostalgia Critic’s fall from grace is that modern YouTubers are more grounded. I’ve watched a lot of Jenny Nicholson videos and she’s pretty funny and animated, but she’s not trying to be a charicture of herself. She’s just this lady sitting on her bed surrounded by porg dolls. It works a lot better.

I used to watch the Game Overthinker unironically. Does anyone remember Moviebob? Well once upon a time he wasn’t completely bonkers. The GO series was reasonably well done and uncomplicated... until the dude started appearing on camera and introducing “characters” and storylines that killed whatever point he was trying to make in his video essays. Then I started watching him ironically, and then I sort of stopped caring about him altogether, and then he pissed away whatever goodwill he had. I can’t help but feel like he might have been better off just staying behind the camera, or if he had to be on-screen, just sit on a bed with a bunch of Mario dolls or whatever.

The fad of YouTube personality as wannabe superhero got me thinking of the whole “Mary Sue” and “self-insert” thing. They’re really poorly defined terms, and they’ve been overused in so many unfair criticisms that I don’t think they make much sense anymore. When I first got into fanfic, I saw a lot of people simply writing themselves into their stories. That’s what a self-insert was. You literally inserted yourself in the story so you could tell Wolverine to his face that his haircut looks stupid, or whatever you wanted to say to him. I always found this idea infuriating, because I know who Wolverine is, but this other guy telling him off is a complete stranger, and why should I care about him? Why should Wolverine care?

One response to that problem would be to present your self-insert like a bigger deal than you are. You could put yourself in this story and not only talk to Wolverine, but give yourself an elaborate backstory, where you’re a high-ranking S.H.I.E.L.D. agent, and you and Logan go way back, etc., etc. But that’s a tricky proposition, because if you’re doing it right, you’re just inventing a new character with the same name as you. Or you can overdo it and make the character too big a deal, at the risk of outshining the other characters. The Mary Sue concept originated from this, with Star Trek fanzines getting all these story submissions about young, super-talented ensigns who join the crew and immediately win over Kirk, Spock, and McCoy.

The dirty little secret of character creation is that every character you write is a self-insert or an author surrogate, to some degree. You can have one that’s meant to be your alter ego, the one who’s based on you and tends to react the way you would in a similar situation. But you’re writing all the other characters too, and deciding what they think and say and do, so to a certain point they also think a lot like you do, whether you meant for them to or not. The trick is not to be super-blatant about it, or to revel in the creative freedom to break the fourth wall. Readers hate that stuff, because they don’t know you well enough to get the joke.

That’s the advice I’ve always had at the ready in case anyone ever asked me. But, watching all this stuff about the Nostalgia Critic has made me realize that it applies from the other direction. It’s very easy to say you’ve created a character, distinct from yourself, only for it to turn out to be more of a reflection of you than you intended. I can’t tell if Doug Walker is self-aware or not, but it seems like the joke with all his “characters” is that they’re extremely selfish and shallow, and yet he seems to also be selfish and shallow. So is he aware of this, and he’s trying to exaggerate his flaws for his characters? Or does he just not realize that he’s telling on himself every time he plays these roles? Or does he think everyone is selfish and shallow, and that this is just boilerplate information, like blinking and wearing shoes?

I’ll pick on myself, because it’s handier to do so. I’ve made a bunch of original characters over the years, some that were supporting players, and others who were designed to be big deals. One of my villains was this bitter misanthrope, and eventually I realized that I was a lot more like him than the outgoing group of buddies that he was trying to oppose. That hit me and I’ve been trying to figure out what to do with that ever since.

I wrote a butler in my Hellsing fic, basically an anti-Walter based on Marcus Brody from the Indiana Jones movies. He was clueless and couldn’t stand the sight of blood, and he was really old, so he told the vampires that if he ever had a heart attack and dropped dead on the job that they shouldn’t pass up the free meal. Is that me in there? I tend to think a lot about the world moving on without me, and my own obsolescence. I just didn’t think I was tapping into that when I wrote the character. I wouldn’t even bring it up, except I liked writing the guy so much, and that’s the main thing I remember about him.

A lot of my villains in Luffa are representations of things that I’d like to see punched, because Luffa is an unapologetic Mary Sue Self Insert. I made her all these other things that I’m not: brave, a woman of color, a good cook, a charismatic lover. But fuck that, this was all just a ploy to keep people from noticing any resemblance to me and my imaginary punching agenda. But the villains hold all these shitty attitudes and shitty behaviors, things which I consider to be wrong but sometimes catch myself turning a blind eye to. Jealousy, greed, fear, resentment, and so on.

You end up putting a lot of yourself into your writing, there’s really no way to avoid it. The only real trick is to disguise it a bit so it looks like a story instead of just an essay or an autobiography. I think that’s where some of the YouTube personalities got it wrong, because they would try to tell a story AND write an essay at the the same time, and that’s tough to pull off. One of the big things that came out of that whole Channel Awesome document was this problematic scene in “To Boldly Flee” where Linkara has been replaced by a cyborg duplicate, and he converts Lindsey Ellis into a cyborg, and someone hears all these suggestive noises and thinks they’re having rough sex. It’s awkward anyway you slice it, but it gets even worse because it’s basically the real Linkara and Lindsey Ellis. Their “characters” are so poorly distinguished from the real people that there’s no other way to describe it.

Also, one of the most salient points I picked up from watching all these commentary videos is that real people can’t have character arcs. You can’t just stick Filmdude and Captain Snark and Filmdudette and Movie Sniffer and The Comics Complainer all into the same scene and expect anything important to happen to any of them. They can’t learn anything or grow in any appreciable way during the story, because they’re real and the story is fictional. The only “character” to their roles are the bit where they review pop culture stuff, which might as well be non-fictional, so why bother? Even if I’m wrong, and there really is a more complete fictionalized version of everybody in the Channel Awesome Trilogy, the waters are so muddied that you can’t make sense of it.

And that’s the real danger of leaning too hard into putting a 1:1 replica of yourself into your stories. Stephen King can be a bus driver in one of his movies, and Stan Lee can be a bus driver in Avengers 3, but if Stan Lee just started kicking the shit out of Ultron it’d be confusing, especially for people who didn’t know who he was. And if Joss Whedon started kicking the shit out of Ultron, it’d be even worse, because he’s not as well-known as Stan Lee. You’re better off making up a guy like Thor or the Hulk who can do it for you, and then putting just enough of yourself into those characters that you won’t get caught.

At least, that’s how I see it.

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